Behind him Chloe came careening around the corner, and then she too came to an abrupt, terrified halt, while Paola, half-blinded by tears and steaming on in confusion, careened into both of them, knocking them over like bowling pins. All three of them rolled in a tangled mess of bodies, shrieking and grunting with pain and fright, down the last few steps and spilled chaotically onto the rough concrete surface of the alley. Daekwon too came veering around the final corner, with the soldier in hot pursuit, but when he reached the last few steps he too froze with abrupt and unexpected horror, for standing at the bottom of the stairs, aiming an AK-47 assault rifle at his chest, was another man dressed in combat gear.
This one, however, did not look anything like the soldier behind him, or the ones he had seen on the rooftop. He was a large, powerfully built African American man; middle-aged, it seemed, from the grizzled salt-and-pepper tone of his balding, close-cropped hair and the twin grey patches, one on either side of his protruding chin, marring his otherwise dark, neatly trimmed beard. What remained of his springy hair was buzzed close to his large, round skull, which was covered with an assortment of keloid scars which bore grim testament to a long life of seemingly ceaseless violence.
Overeager cheekbones strained against the gash-scarred mahogany cheeks of his broad face, and beneath them the almost comically massive jaw, all angles and iron-like bone density, may as well have been a steel accessory, grafted bionically to his human skull to replace an inferior, weaker biological part. Dark, small eyes, radiating aggression, were set below black smears of eyebrows in the battered sockets of a professional pugilist, but only one of these onyx orbs shone with life; a long, knotty scar ran from the man’s forehead over his left eye, which was milky with blindness. This was not his only prominent scar; across his throat were not just one but three grotesque slash wounds, while a mess of badly burned skin, like molten wax, covered a lot of his neck.
With his statuesque build and blacksmith’s shoulders, his combat gear and his oaken muscles, this new arrival cut an imposing figure. Over his black tactical gear he wore a bulletproof vest and other items of body armour, and his utility belt and bandoliers were laden with an array of military accessories; a bowie knife, a multitool, a coil of rope, stun grenades, smoke grenades, assault grenades, and a .45 calibre pistol … but what drew the teens’ eyes to the centre of his broad body was the AK-47 assault rifle he was gripping with both hands.
‘Get down boy, now,’ the enormous soldier rumbled in a distinctly foreign accent, his tone even but unmistakably authoritative.
In the face of such a potently intimidating figure, Daekwon, his mind a madly whirling tempest of confusion and panic, could do little but obey. He scrambled down the final few steps and threw himself down onto his belly, tucking his hands behind his head.
The soldier behind them came hurtling down the stairs, murder blazing bright and savage in his eyes, which were stark white against his black balaclava, his combat shotgun shouldered and his finger brushing the trigger with a ravenous hunger, only barely restrained … but when he rounded the final corner, he did not find four teens to massacre. Instead, he was greeted with a burst of fully automatic AK-47 fire to the torso, throat and face. The bullets punched him back and threw him over the railing, and he toppled to the ground, dead before he hit it.
Jun, who had seen the whole thing, stared up at the newcomer with a look that was neither fear nor awe, but a curious mix of the two.
‘Are you going to kill us too?’ the boy asked, strangely calm.
‘Get up boy, and run,’ the soldier barked flatly, turning his attention first to the rooftop of the building behind them, which he swept via the sights of his AK-47, and then to the body of the tiger, who was still breathing, shallowly and raggedly, on the flattened car. ‘Run fast, run far, and forget everything you saw here. Go now, all of you!’
Daekwon scrambled up onto his hands and knees, realising that this man was neither a law enforcement officer nor one of those who had been pursuing them with murderous intent. And as he looked up at the armed colossus, he knew – he did not know how he knew, he just did – that he was no mere man.
‘You one a’ th-, th-, them, ain’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, boy,’ the soldier rumbled, ‘but you and your friends need to get out of here right now.’
‘You like that t-, tiger there,’ Daekwon insisted. ‘You can … you can d-, do it, can’t you? Turn yourself into an animal. I c-, can’t believe I’m sayin’ this shit, but we s-, seen it, plain as day. We seen that that t-, tiger there, he was a man a couple m-, m-, minutes ago.’
‘You’re insane,’ the soldier muttered, sparks of anger glinting in his single functional eye. ‘Listen to yourself! You—’
‘It’s on my ph-, phone, man,’ Daekwon said. ‘The whole thing. I g-, got it on video. We ain’t crazy, man, we all s-, saw it, and we all got it on f-, film, and I ain’t going nowhere, not until I g-, get some answers … I wanna know what the f-, f-, fuck you are,
