1971
The woman stepped from the shadows deep within the shattered remnants of the restaurant and walked to the gaping hole in the tower side.
Dangling fluorescent light fittings, cabling and pipe work swung from the ceiling and rotated in the winds that blew through the dense air across the city below.
The pointed leather toes of her worn boots came to rest at the splintered concrete edge of what was left of the floor and she peered down through the mangled reinforcing bars at the deserted streets and building tops two hundred feet below.
Idly, she kicked a chunk of debris, and it fell, clanking through the steelwork and into space. She watched the object spin away into the distance below, then raised her head slowly to look out across London.
The mist that had covered the world with sullen greyness for the past three years shortened the view, but from this high vantage she could make out the meandering trail of the Thames’ rusty flow, the long gash of Oxford Street fading into the fog and part of the remnants of the high wall that had been built around Hyde Park in ’68.
Pulling her filthy poncho tighter against the chill that accompanied the failing light she looked about her, righting a scorched chair from the remains of the serving bar and placing it at the edge, pointing out toward the sky.
She un-slung both the rifle and the ‘soul sword’ from her shoulders and placed them on the floor at her feet before lowering herself painfully onto the seat to watch the sun going down on the city.
The poncho stank of layered dirt and mildewed fat, but she did not notice as she lowered the hood and breathed deeply, her grime ridden face soaking in the last, filtered, rays of the dying sun.
She lifted her left leg and rested the five inch heel of her boot on the seat edge as she rubbed the throbbing pain in her knee. The boots were unrealistic, she knew, but the stilettos provided the only remnant of femininity to her otherwise utilitarian outfit, now that the colours of her battle suit had faded and bleached away to the same pallid greyness of the skies around her.
Once, the skies had been cobalt blue, and the winds fresh and warm. But in the spaces between the atoms, she pondered, universes had bled through wounds of our own creation, and in the creeping twilight of the world to come, we had played out our final acts on the crumbling stages of our lives.
1966
The E-Type hung above the ashen tarmac swaying gently, the Newton Gear humming, as it cast its neon blue glow onto the gravel below.
The sharp rattle of iron on brick rang out from some yards distant in staccato rhythm as the girl made her way up the rusted access ladder to the roof.
Launching herself onto the hot felt from the arched ladder tops she crouched and pulled one of the twin Beretta pistols from the mirrored holsters built into the corset at the small of her back.
Ahead of her the tall, rangy girl in the mini-dress, traversed the concertina-like roof ridges with inhuman speed and agility.
Long blond hair flowed behind her as she bounded across the open expanse, her figure cast sharply against the crystal blue, cloudless, vastness of the sky.
Sandra Munro adopted a two handed grip and took aim at the fast moving figure, muttering silent obscenities to herself for a moment she relaxed the muscles in her shoulders and prepared to take the shot.
The press had christened them, ‘Ubernauts’ - Tabloid hyperbole conjuring subliminal visions of Nazi androids, unstoppable robotic assassins loosed upon the streets of the capital. Death machines on Piccadilly Circus, grinding the city to bloody dust.
The truth, however, was to prove far worse than man’s mortal imaginings could conjure.
In the early autumn of that year, a darker tide turned…
And there, in the shadows of the Dagenham plant production line, Munro was to bear witness to the new face of horror.
“Halt - or I fire!”
The fleeing figure skated to a halt on the gritty surface, its arms outstretched, and turned slowly toward its pursuer. The heat shimmer from the rooftop obscured the long legs and, for a moment, Munro thought that the creature had levitated in preparation for flight. The evil smile that greeted her, however, dispelled any thoughts of continued pursuit.
The face which now leered across the open space was, to all intent and purpose, a virtual clone of Jean Shrimpton, model of the moment and icon of all things beautiful and desired.
She, and the man known as Archangel had been aware of the ‘Death Dolls’ for perhaps eighteen months leading up to the Dagenham incident, beautiful, animated, assassins of some, non ascertained construction. Highly advanced killing machines, deadly, elusive, and, it seemed, unstoppable.
Across the divide between them, Munro heard a low whining, as of tiny gears turning in the hollowness of a metallic housing. She watched, unmoved, as the ‘Shrimpton-droid’ thrust forward it’s head, shuddering, as a long, conical, metal screw wound its way from between bloodied lips to point viciously in her direction. Then, as the creature began to cover the distance between them with ever increasing strides, she levelled the pistol and pulled the trigger.
The effigy of Jean Shrimpton staggered as the rounds impacted heavily against its chest and shoulders. Blood, oil and fragments of internal matter exited through the holes that appeared in the back of the chequered dress. Its pace of approach slowed and, for a moment, it seemed to stumble, and then continued onward.
Now, with the android no more than twenty feet from her, Munro braced herself for the impact and gritted her teeth. With panic scraping at her resolve she raised the aim of her gun and loosed two rounds in quick succession.
The right hand side of ‘Jean Shrimpton’s’ head exploded. The eye, flesh and skull shattering in a spray of liquid and fragments as the tall figure cleared the final roof ridge and collapsed sideways, connecting with a glass skylight, through which it fell, noisily. Munro heard the sickening noise of the body falling through the machinery below, and finally stood up straight, arms dropping loosely at her side, as she breathed a long, warm, sigh of relief.
A final, heavy, crash and the rattling echo of something metallic rolling across concrete told of the ‘Ubernaut’ reaching the floor of the machine shop, and Munro stepped to the jagged hole of glass and timber that the thing had left.
The city bells began to chime, their melody drifting across the sky, calling the faithful to waiting timber pews across the capital.
Munro scanned the sky. Sunday, she hated Sundays; had always hated Sundays. As a girl in the Cumberland wilds her father had pushed her to go outside, whether rain or shine, to find someone with whom to pass the time.
As an only child, prone to bouts of melancholy brought on by her mother’s premature passing, the inevitability of loneliness was the order of most days; long days filled with self absorbed walks coloured the pallor of grey, clouded, skies and the deepness of reflection that only the saddest of souls may know.
Her mother had been only thirty six when she had died; killed in the forward passenger seat of her father’s car when Munro was only fourteen, victim of a drunken sales clerk celebrating a promotion with friends at a lunchtime pub visit. She would never forget the screaming, and broken bones and the crimson of spilled blood on the road, or the long moments that she had sat behind her in the silence and the rain, and watched her die.
Staring into the darkness as she triggered the descender line anchor that pierced the brickwork with a penetrating, muffled thud, she felt a strange unease, and fancied that she heard myriad whispers, trailing away into the silence of the shadowy corners of the production line below.
He needed to be found. They had him somewhere that much was certain. He was getting older and less capable, and yet she still found it hard to accept that he had allowed himself to be taken.
He was rage. An all engulfing storm of savagery barely contained within the core of a man whose very soul seemed aflame.
And yet, in moments of quiet, to those for whom he cared, he was the light that guided them home.
For ten years he had been her protector, her guide and the true father that she had longed for since her youth, and yet he had remained a mystery, his past shrouded behind a wall of secrecy and shadows.
Once he had been a doctor, she knew. Once, a man named John Michael Kelso. He had been a soldier in the theatres of the Second war. And he had been her friend.
Why he had chosen her above any of the countless others that he had rescued she would never know. But choose her he had, to tutor in the ways of death, and violence, and bloody revenge.
He had shown to her the darkest avenues and alleyways of his beloved London. And within their shadows had he loosed his dogs of war.
And, if this was to be her story, then it was also the story of John Kelso... her Archangel.
She replaced the Beretta into the corset holster at her back, looped her right foot into the foothold at the end of the descender cable, and taking hold of the sliding grip with one hand and the belt feed with the other she stepped into the dark.
Before the sound of her heels hitting the concrete had echoed from the walls, Munro had drawn the second Beretta from its leather cradle.
The machinery and process lines around her told her that she was in the Newton Gear fitting shop, the great chains and cabling nearby still swinging from the passage of the wounded ‘Ubernaut’.
She scanned the floor, as her sight grew accustomed to the gloom, looking for signs of the things movements. Her lips moved in silent recital of a poem she had once heard.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep…"
“And miles to go before I sleep.” Said a broken voice from the shadows somewhere to her left.
A trail of what appeared to be blood and fragments of tissue led Munro’s eye across the painted concrete to a shadowed corner where wires and cabling converged in a large metal switch box some four feet above the floor. Below this, illuminated sparsely by the beam of light that filtered from the roof skylight directly above, lay the ‘Shrimpton’ drone.
“That which is man… is not.” Uttered the prone figure, metallically, the ragged edges of the huge head wound glistening in the dark.
The blood ran in steady streams from the open brain casing, and the thick smell of spilled urine and faecal matter rose as it settled into the angle between wall and floor.
“You… fight in the shadows cast by an oil grey sun, and sing the songs of cordite and flame, in the hope of retaining a hold upon that which you think you are….”
Munro stepped forward until she could clearly see the ravaged face that uttered the cryptic words.
“But that which is man… is not.” The shattered thing repeated.
“Where is he?” Said Munro, the Beretta trained continuously on the bleeding lips before her.
“He is dead, pretty one.” replied the drone. “But rest you in the knowledge that that he will make such a valiant corpse.” The cruel lips twisted into the semblance of a smile. “And yet… Are we not all corpses - in the end?”
“Shut up!” Munro’s voice carried cold, and unmoved. “The only corpse that I see is the one that you are about to become.” She cocked the pistol for effect. “Now one last time - where is he?”
The quiet whirring of gears and the crimson flicker of bulbs within the head cavity were the only reply.
“Who… are you?” Munro spat, frustration kicking in as she became aware of the passing of precious time.
“Ahhhhhh… We are tomorrow’s children.”
For a second the lights flickered to black and the android grew still. Munro moved to approach when, just as suddenly the lights illuminated once more.
“Host of the Great Ones.” The thing continued. “Graven in his image. We are the chosen of the Gods.”
“You don’t look like a ‘Chosen One’ from where I’m standing!” Munro mocked.
It moved to stand but the limbs were too broken, the movement only serving to expel a fresh flood of fluids onto the, already slick, concrete.
“My name… Is Patrick Joshua Bateman.” The voice had changed now, a defiant arrogance replacing the ‘matter of fact’ tone the thing had previously used. “In the inconsequential and squalid world of man, I was a teacher… Grammar School… I vaguely recall… Though things fade… Here in the light.”
Munro watched as the head dropped, and pooled blood and oil ran in thick streams down the remnants of the face.
“I tore them from life… my thirty two ‘sweet’ charges. Tore them from life... in praise of the Great Ones.”
“Shut up!” Munro began to understand the origins of this thing before her. Understood how it bled but was a machine, was flesh, yet not human.
“Tore them from life and offered up their tiny carcasses to ‘Him’… ‘Him’... that removed me from the world of men. ‘Him’ that made me what I am and showed me that the key to the Celestial Gate lay elsewhere than the so called ‘soul’ of man!”
“Where is he?” Repeated Munro, louder, as the single intact eye swung upwards to regard her with a contempt that was palpable.
“You may scatter this form to the four winds and beyond, pretty, pretty one… But we shall endure.”
Munro watched as the creature stretched out a twisted arm, the dripping stump of wrist clicking as the mechanics of the concealed pistol wound into view.
“For we are the ‘Lazarine’ - the everlasting - and we gather at His side to await the storm that is coming!”
Blood oozed along the barrel and formed a thick droplet that glistened in the thin light.
“We are almost complete! The flesh begins to pile and the masters feed on the future that will be…. And the screaming head of your ‘Archangel’ shall be…”
The report from the Beretta crashed around the empty work bays and roof struts of the fitting shop.
“Time to die…” said Munro, coldly, as the remains of the ‘Shrimpton’ head exploded against the wall, spraying the cabling and the floor with blood, bone and metal fragments.
The arm fell to the floor, the integral gun muzzle clanking dully against the concrete as a flood of crimson black oozed from somewhere beneath the still body.
Munro stepped back as the liquid threatened to reach her feet, and from her side a grime streaked transistor radio burst into life.
“…emergency announcement to all residents of the capital… Central and Greater London is on red alert with immediate effect… A suspected nuclear warhead stolen from the Faslane naval yard is currently travelling along Oxford Street heading toward the palace… all civilian population are required to make their way to the nearest building and seek shelter…”
As she made her way swiftly to the exit doors, Munro reloaded the twin Beretta’s, and kicked her way into the cobalt sunlight.