But as Tasker watched the roads getting narrower, winding and remote, he found some hope creeping in that this might be an exception, at last, and he could actually take one of these companies down a peg and make a difference.
Duvcorp had exploded into the American automobile industry in the late 1970s and reinvested huge profits into electronics, to become world-leaders in computing technology in the ’90s. Their components quickly became ubiquitous: whether you settled on a Mac or a PC, you still got a Duvcorp sticker somewhere. Making all the right connections in business and government, they soon became one of a handful of corporations who wielded as much power as the governments who might hold them accountable. And, somewhere along the way, they got wind of the technology the Ministry tried to keep out of the public eye. Unexplained phenomena, dangerous curiosities. It was simple enough to keep a lid on individuals and smaller entities, but Duvcorp were too powerful to regulate. Putting untold lives at risk.
Every four or five months, Tasker found some way to humble a big corporation, when their latest (classified) technology was revealed to be dangerously esoteric. Ferociously catastrophic events were averted and mid-level fall-guys were imprisoned (or conveniently disappeared), and Tasker could go back to his wife and daughter proud that he was Making a Difference. He had to be, to justify staying away from home for so long, missing Rebecca growing up, leaving Helen alone, even if she always managed words of support when they spoke. He wanted to be with them both, badly, but more than that he wanted to come home knowing it was safe. These corporations were stretching their grubby claws into every corner of the world; it was only a matter of time before one of them accidentally unleashed some unholy force in their own backyard.
He’d travelled to Tokyo for that; seeing that Mogami now had connections in Ordshaw, UK, he needed to know exactly what they were up to. But Mogami’s Japanese prosthetics project had been swept under the rug before Tasker had uncovered exactly what untold horrors they’d been experimenting with. They’d probably resurface in two years, building clones or engineering war spiders or something.
Everything about Laukstad felt like an opportunity to double his losses. The snow cover was thick on the roads, no one had been in or out of this area in days – all he was going to find was a town whose phone-lines had gone down. They probably had Duvcorp hardware up here, that was how the informer had known . . .
After a final turn, the village sat ominously below, at the bottom of a steep slope, by the harshly churning sea, in the eerie mid-afternoon dark. Akre grunted at the wheel to say he felt something was off. Tasker felt it too, tensing at the too-quiet scene.
They drove closer and the officer slowed right down. He whispered a Norwegian curse. Tasker leant into the windscreen to see why. Laukstad was a tiny community, not more than a dozen timber houses, a jetty and swaying boats. All unlit. Its single road was scattered with bumps of snow, like a mess of randomly placed speed bumps. The length and height of prone bodies. The closest one had a smaller bump out to the side – like an outstretched arm. Bodies was right, buried under snow.
Akre stopped, cursing again in whole sentences Tasker didn’t need to translate to understand. Disbelief and fear and outrage. The officer turned a questioning face to Tasker, like he would know what was going on here. Tasker did not, but the Duvcorp lead had contacted his Ministry for a reason. Whatever this was – and it looked like a lot of people dead – then it must border on the unnatural. A test gone wrong, a substance spilt, or worse? A creature set loose?
“Have your gun ready,” Tasker advised, drawing his own pistol from under the heavy winter coat. Akre nodded, doing the same but clutching his weapon tightly. They hopefully wouldn’t need them. Whatever happened here happened days ago. When Duvcorp’s leak said so.
They each took a torch and exited the 4x4 into a biting gust of wind. It passed in a second, having taken the top dusting off one of the nearest mounds, revealing boots underneath. Akre rushed ahead to brush handfuls of snow away, uncovering a man with taut clutching fingers, eyes open under a shimmer of ice, blood frozen around his neck and chest and mouth. His throat had been torn out as though by a wild animal or a jagged tool. Fishing hook or wolves, who could tell the difference now? Tasker’s gut hinted worse. What lurked in the Arctic circle? The ice jackals of Archangel had been culled years ago, but it wasn’t unthinkable . . .
Akre shook all over with horror, so Tasker patted his shoulder to indicate they move on.
There wasn’t enough left of the next body’s smashed face to preserve the pain and terror.
Tasker stepped away as Akre radioed back to Tromsø in stuttering starts. He noticed other mounds in the snow, now – smaller ones. Bits of debris and household items partly covered. A long pole stuck out of one buried body like a grave marker. Harpoon? Windows in the buildings were shattered. A door rocked against its hinges. Another had been broken off entirely, jammed across its entrance. Walking between the bodies, looking into the dark recesses of the houses, Tasker saw how the people had fallen, chased out of their own homes? There was blood around a door jamb. Smashed crockery in one entrance. He moved closer. Another body in there, feet pointing out, opposite direction to those that died fleeing. He crouched and gasped at the likeness. It could easily be Rebecca – a girl no older than ten with frozen blonde hair, stubby nose, and a death-mask of terror, neck raked by four claw marks and a chunk bitten from her cheek. How could this happen – what manner of monster left marks like this, a bite that size and shape? He moved from the girl to the next nearest body, a woman fallen while fleeing from the building. A horrible gash ripped from her throat. He brushed the snow away from her hand, revealing nails cracked and bloody. Whatever this was, these people had fought against it, coming and going.
“What happened?” Akre demanded, torch-hand shaking. “I don’t see any animal tracks.”
Tasker cleared his throat, swallowed, making like he was giving the massacred village another careful look while trying to stop his voice coming out in a frightened squeak. He tried not to picture the worst, that this was Rebecca and Helen, that this was so close to home. “Cut off out here, four hours of sunlight a day, must’ve been people not right in the head. Junkies on a spiked batch of drugs or outsiders with a bad religion?”
Akre wore a horrified expression Tasker was all too familiar with. The policeman could scarcely believe such a thing possible, knowing things like this didn’t just happen, but forcing himself to take this mysterious expert’s explanation seriously. Akre couldn’t know there was only one reason for the Ministry to have been alerted to this. This wasn’t a random attack. Someone or something had made this happen, with means that would be anything but natural.
“No weapons used that weren’t the basic tools they had lying around,” Tasker confirmed to Caffery, his handler, over the phone. “Teeth marks, clawing from fingernails, lot of blunt force, but no signs of unusual tracks in or out of the village.”
“Not ice jackals, then,” Caffery said.
“My instinct says there’s a human element, or something close to it,” Tasker admitted. Were there reports of yeti in Norway? He doubted it; this felt messier. “There was a fight, or at least the start of one. These people thought they could defend themselves. But so far they’ve not identified anyone who shouldn’t have been there, and it doesn’t look like anything was taken. It’s like some gang of killers swept in from the mountains or off the sea and disappeared in the mist.”