Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [53]
The things didn’t come back and after they caught their breath Anna and Creed crawled to the edge of the hole and looked through. Peering over the ragged lip of torn linoleum they saw the flashlight lying on the floor below, shining its beam into what appeared to be a beautiful garden of gleaming crystal.
The glittering shapes were broken bottles, smashed at the neck and set in concrete so that their jagged edges were aimed rigidly upwards. If Anna had fallen onto them she would have been torn to pieces.
Creed used his empty shotgun like a walking stick to test the floor and they made their way around the hole. The corridor on the other side was safe to walk on. The dead things with the teeth turned out to be dogs.
‘Why weren’t they barking?’ said Anna.
‘Maybe they weren’t pleased to see us,’ said Creed. He abandoned the useless shotgun and borrowed Anna’s sidearm. There were tiny, pencil‐thin beams of light shining at them. They were coming through bullet holes in a door at the end of the hallway. Creed and Anna went through it together.
And that’s when they found out why the dogs hadn’t made any noise.
A middle‐aged man in a dirty black raincoat was lying dead on the floor of the room. He had been hit by one of the stray bullets that had come through the door and caught him just under the chin. He’d been killed instantly.
The room was full of laboratory apparatus and gleaming surgical instruments. The biggest piece of furniture was an old kitchen table. Fixed to the table, squirming and terrified, was a small puppy. He was restrained by lengths of wire and black electrical tape.
On the table beside him were a syringe and a scalpel. His frightened brown eyes rolled in his skull and followed Anna and Creed as they inspected the room and pieced it together.
An operation was about to take place. The man had been ready to anaesthetize the dog and remove its larynx. After surgery the dog would never be able to bark again.
Anna and Creed later learned that this was a standard tactic in drug fortresses. Taken as puppies the dogs were operated on, then brutalized and starved for months until they were conditioned to attack intruders. When they were ready they were left to roam the dark corridors of a building. Silent killers, they were trained to attack at crotch level. The mature ones in the hallway would have disembowelled Creed and then torn Anna’s head off. She couldn’t have used her shotgun without going through the floor onto the spikes below.
The hole in the floor was also a standard tactic. The drug dealers who ran the houses sealed off whole sections. They stretched lino over holes in the floorboards and established booby traps. Dogs roamed the dark hallways, too light to go through the lino. Customers knew the safe routes into the drug forts. Cops met with a surprise welcome.
As Creed and Anna set about freeing the puppy they heard the sound of feet rattling on the fire escape outside. They tore black paper off the window in time to see a dozen junkies and dealers escaping into the rain.
Upstairs they found the place deserted except for a three‐year‐old infant. The child was filthy, covered with scabs and suppurating sores. He tugged anxiously at Creed’s hand and told him solemnly, ‘Watch out for the needles. Don’t touch the needles.’ The child looked up at Creed through crusted eyes, anxious to impart this essential information. Discarded syringes lay on the floor all around them.
‘Those were probably the first words he ever learned,’ said Anna as they stood in the rain, watching an ambulance take the child away. Her voice was a little unsteady. She gave Creed a disinfectant tissue to wipe himself off where the child had touched him and then they went back into the building and brought the puppy out. He lay on a blanket on the back seat of the squad car, whining now and then as they took a corner. They drove