Read Online Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets by Alessio Lanterna - Free Book Online Page B

had been teletransported to the Sixteenth Level. The higher floors and Nexus had been secured a couple of days previously.
    There was an ocean of rabid street cleaners, hysterical shop assistants, furious electricians, blood-thirsty butchers before us. No Colonel, sir, there are no subversive plans. And the democracy is right here, in front of us. The population wants heads to roll.
    “Stones!”
    We raise our shields to protect ourselves from the improvised bullets raining down on us. They’re not exactly stones—at least, not
only
stones. My shield deflects, in the following order, a dead rodent, a toaster, the right-hand wing mirror of some mutilated car and another dead rodent. A shower of bricks hurled by a gigantic ogre sends four cops a few metres away on my left flying into the air. Three pick themselves up and resume their position, but the one who got the full force of the bricks drags himself behind us, yelling and clutching his shattered arm, his ulna bone sticking out of his flesh and uniform.
    “Sergeant, they’ll
murder us
if we stay here!” shouts a voice from the front.
    “Oh Father! Father protect me… aargh!” wails a fellow cop, crying.
    “We’ve got to break them up!” adds another at the top of his lungs.
    “Get ready for a lighter charge!”
    Is he completely mad?
    “Masks! Two canisters … Stones!
    The shields go up. A pair of shoes, half a brick. More stuff thrown at us. A gremlin arrived from somewhere, he gets battered with truncheons until he stops struggling. A wheel rim rolls in the few metres, separating us from the frenzied mob. It falls short and doesn’t do any damage, thank God.
    “Masks!” repeats the sergeant. “Two canisters of tear-gas and then charge! Ready!”
    We’ve got some tear-gas left, I thought we’d used it all. Perhaps we have a chance of surviving our own attack. Maybe not all of us.
    The dull
thuds
of the tear-gas canisters spread smoke all over the square where the four main ringroads of the Fourteenth meet. It’s supposed to be a chic area, instead it’s a battlefield. We’re wearing gas masks, and the religious among us pray to their Gods. I pray to a random God, it’s not like he’s going to answer anyway.
    As soon as the shapeless mass starts to die down, we surge forward, with a blood-curdling cry, and cosh them. We cosh everywhere. I cosh a psycho with a scarf over his mouth and a plank of wood that is bigger than him. Despite the tear-gas he’s still standing. I cosh a woman kneeling who suddenly raises her arms. I prefer not to wait and find out whether she’s pulling out a weapon or simply surrendering. I cosh one of those bastard gremlins who infiltrate armour with shards of glass to slice officer’s tendons. I cosh a half-ogre, his face is a mask of blood. I cosh a bearded fella who’s taken a truncheon from an officer, but he’s too intent on coughing and crying to defend himself.
    Inside the smoke, all we do is cosh.
    …
     
    “Are you listening?” Cohl’s got this annoying habit of talking when I don’t feel like listening to him.
    “What do you want now?”
    “Know what you found out, seeing as I
worked
this morning.”
    I give him a quick summary, suitable for the whole family, leaving out personal details, ogres and suchlike. In the meantime, the waiter brings a mixed salad to the Inspector, who enthusiastically plunges his fork into it and extracts a rich mouthful of vegetables. He sticks it in his mouth and his face immediately flares up, his eyes wide with shock. Then he gulps down half a bottle of water, draining three glasses in quick succession. The waiter clearly forgot to say “not spicy” to the chef, who prepared a classic bowl of molten steel. Once he’s collected himself, Cohl feels ready to deliver some prime bullshit.
    “Well, I think we can trust a person like Mr Valan.”
    “This is why I’m a Lieutenant of the Guard and you’re an Inspector of the MetroPo, kid. You understand fuck all.”
    “But