Page 30 of Fury

Her footsteps were quiet now, the soft padding of her feet almost inaudible now that my heavy boots were the only noise. The dark corridor glowed green, emergency lighting offering a tiny hint of illumination against the shadows.

“You sure there’s someone here?” Heidi whispered, her voice abnormally loud in the silence that surrounded us.

“Well, someone triggered the alert.”

“A cat?”

“You have cats in the building?”

“Dunno. Could be.”

I felt the shrug of her shoulders, the slight bob of her hand in mine.

“Heidi. If the alarm triggered, it picked someone up. Someone who doesn’t work here and knows that there are cameras and alerts everywhere. Someone who may have threatened your life.”

Her hand clinched around mine, a sudden squeeze, a sudden tension. Gone as quickly as it came in her attempt at staying in control. I’d seen this control in the face of danger before. Not by a woman, granted. But my comrades and officers. Trying to stay cool under pressure but inevitably being out of their depth. It took a certain someone, a certain amount of psycho, to keep their calm under a death threat of any kind.

I could feel the chill in the air as we slowed outside the morgue, a draught slipping out from under the doors. Heidi’s hand tightened against mine, and I could hear the skip of a breath, an inhalation of fear. And even I found standing outside the room filled with dead bodies uneasy. Like I could feel death peeling off them all, drifting towards us, cold chilly tendrils reaching outwards.

“Do you want to stay here while I go check?” My voice was low, but even that sounded amplified as we stood outside the room of the dead.

I shouldn’t be bothered. I’d seen enough death in my life that it should be as common as a Geordie council estate. But even now, lingering outside the room where my dead president lay was uncomfortable. And I didn’t know who else might be in there, snooping around, waiting to pounce.

“Please don’t leave me,” the strain in her voice was unquestionable.

But I had questions. Was that through fear or merely the fact she had to admit right now that she needed someone? Needed me. Whichever it was, I would gloat later, because right now I was who she needed, wanted, and that did something stupidly warm and fucking fuzzy to my insides.

“Alright, doll.” And even those words didn’t trigger her. “Stay right behind me.”

I nudged at the door, tentatively pushing, holding my breath. The only sounds the heavy beating of my heart and the ragged breaths of Heidi from right behind me.

I don’t know what I expected when I pushed the door inwards. Someone to jump out? A missile to come flying at us? A zombified corpse rushing us with its arms outstretched. But I didn’t expect silence, and an eery calmness. It was like everyone was sleeping, and the only sounds of life were coming from the two of us.

The light flickered, shuddering three or four times, the filament jolting sending a scattering sound bouncing round the space in front of the individual fridges. The sound was loud enough to wake the dead, echoing offensively. When it finally stayed on, there was nothing there. A room only the two of us stood in.

“Anything look disturbed?” I asked, scanning the doors for anything slightly ajar, anything out of place.

“I dunno. I don’t come in here. Too many dead bodies,” she answered, the tiny hint of anxiety in her voice, the first syllables faltering before she won the battle for control, as I suspected she always did.

“Helpful.”

Heidi shrugged. “Nope, no. No one here. Let’s get out.”

“Ok. We’ll check the back door, then I want to see the cameras.”

“You can’t see that from your phone?”

“Nah. Only an alert. Didn’t want you to think I was stalking you.”

“You are stalking me.”

I grinned. She wasn’t wrong.

“Maybe a little.”

“Why?”

Why? Because I’d told Indie I would sort our President’s funeral out. Because I wouldn’t be outwitted by a woman. Because this woman I couldn’t leave alone. And this woman was living rent free in my brain, and in my little brain that stood to attention every time I thought about her or got annoyed about her. She was all I could think about from the very second I’d laid eyes on her.