All Against All

  Even though they had an aversion to serious news that bordered on the pathological, an exception was made for Goliath. He had grown to become a household name, more famous than the models and socialites that soiled their pages on a daily basis.

  With The Daily Ink’s help, Goliath had become an antihero for the ages.

  The park bench on the corner of Wyatt Street and Pharaoh Place was a mere three blocks from The Daily Ink’s headquarters, but it may as well have been located in another country. Even though it was the middle of the day, Alice didn’t feel at all safe.

  She found herself deep in xombie territory.

  “Xombie” was the derogatory term given to the grimy street rats hopelessly hooked on drugs – specifically, the prescription medication Xylox. The general public treated xombies with utter contempt and regarded them as the lowest form of human life. Their debilitating addictions had turned them into grotesque, deformed creatures with skin the color of rotting citrus and a smell to match.

  Xombies were much, much worse than regular junkies. They had reached a point where their addiction controlled every aspect of their lives. Scoring a Xylox hit was the only thing that mattered to them, and when a craving struck there was nothing they wouldn’t do to get their hands on some more.

  This armpit of the city was thick with xombies, rendering it off-limits for normals. This was an area that anyone would avoid if even the slightest amount of common sense resided within them. Muggings and assaults were an everyday occurrence in these xombie ghettos, even in broad daylight.

  Most frustrating of all for Alice, three xombies had taken up residence on her park bench.

  They were nothing more than skin and bones, like three shrink-wrapped reanimated skeletons. They huddled around a single glass pipe, vaporizing their stash of pills and sucking in the toxic fumes.

  Alice stood back and observed from a safe distance, hoping they might move along soon. But it quickly became apparent they were only just settling in for the day. As soon as their first chemical cluster had been incinerated and inhaled, the pipe was restocked and round two commenced.

  Alice knew she would be waiting all day if they kept this up. She had to get rid of them, and knew of only one thing xombies would chase more than Xylox.

  She moved upwind from the park bench, then discreetly dropped a handful of small bills on the ground.

  A moment later, the wind picked up the loose notes and blew them past the xombies. The three addicts immediately pounced up and chased after the money like kittens pursuing a butterfly.

  Even though she had just tossed away a small chunk of her daily earnings, Alice convinced herself that she had performed a valuable community service. That one act meant an innocent civilian wouldn’t be getting robbed on their way home tonight, or someone’s house wouldn’t get broken into. It would be her good deed for the day.

  She swooped in on the bench as soon as they were out of sight. She ran her hand along the underside, her fingers moving over the bits of splintered wood and hardened lumps of chewing gum. Alice grimaced, and tried not to think about the cornucopia of germs and bacteria she was exposing herself to.

  Her hand then landed on a small piece of plastic, taped to the bottom.

  An electrical charge shot through the entire length of her body. She had no idea what this stick contained, and for all she knew someone was playing an elaborate practical joke at her expense. But by that point she didn’t care. It had been years since she’d experienced this level of excitement in her job.

  She left a message for Dinah, informing her that she was leaving work for the day after being struck down by a mystery illness, then rushed back to her apartment.

  She pulled out the antique notebook computer she kept in a box of knickknacks at the back of her closet. She had only used the notebook once or twice in her life, but any journalist worth their salt had one of these stashed somewhere for moments just like this. Memory sticks may have been phased out decades ago, but they remained a popular old-school way of passing around information when the sender wanted to avoid leaving a digital fingerprint.

  She jammed the memory stick into the port at the back and opened the file.

  Needlemouse had promised footage depicting a police officer engaging in illegal behavior with a known criminal. It most certainly did that. The picture and sound quality were crystal clear, and showed the uniformed officer handing over two packages of counterfeit Xylox in exchange for an envelope stuffed full of cash. The officer was easily identifiable, with both his face and badge fully visible. The two packages were clearly labeled as police evidence. The officer could even be heard cracking a joke about selling the dealer his own confiscated drugs back to him.

  Alice could hardly believe what she was seeing. After years of producing “news” of zero consequence, mostly involving celebrity cheating scandals and public intoxication, the biggest story of the year had fallen out of the clear blue sky and into her lap.

  Her next six hours were spent working without a break to produce five thousand explosive words on what she had witnessed. Never mind the article about the mystery lottery – this would be the story that propelled her into the big time. The fallout was bound to be huge, and the implications set to rocket through all levels of the police force.

  Alice was revising her fifth draft when something caught her attention out the corner of her eye.

  A small brown envelope had materialized on the floor, over by the front door. She had no idea how long it had been sitting there. She had only just noticed it. It seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere.

  She set her work aside and went over to pick it up.

  She used the lid of her pen to tear the envelope open. Inside, she found a simple light blue piece of card. She flipped it over and saw a photograph of a woman in her thirties with green eyes and a bright smile.

  It was a face she recognized. Her name was Naomi Duke, and she was one of the contestants in the lottery. Alice recalled seeing the same photograph as part of the package she received last week.

  Written across the photograph, in large red font, was one simple word.

  “ELIMINATED”.

  Chapter 6

  Naomi Duke’s funeral was a quiet and sombre affair. This was to be expected when one died so young, so suddenly, and under such inexplicable circumstances.

  Alice observed the proceedings from afar. She didn’t know if it was inappropriate to turn up to a stranger’s funeral like this, but something compelled her to come. She made an effort to be as unobtrusive as possible, watching on respectfully as her coffin was carried to its final resting place.

  The ceremony was cloaked in silence as Naomi’s mortal remains were lowered into the ground. The only audible noise came from the passing traffic in the near-distance, and the omnipresent hum of the surveillance crafts hovering in the sky one hundred meters overhead. They were a bitter reminder of what many believed to be the cause Naomi’s tragic demise.

  Twelve years ago, the city councilors’ never-ending quest to privatize public space reached its logical conclusion when they hit upon the idea of leasing out large chunks of the sky for commercial purposes. To them, it was unfathomable that this vast natural resource existed and yet no one had figured out a way of making money from it. The councilors quickly moved to rectify this oversight, then rewarded themselves with hefty bonuses for initiating this previously untapped revenue stream.

  This led to numerous private operators launching permanent surveillance crafts above the city and charging a fee to view the captured footage. Their biggest clients were security firms and the police force, who used the images to track suspects and assist in criminal investigations. But this service was available to everyone, from overprotective parents and jealous spouses, through to weirdos and voyeurs who simply enjoyed watching anonymous people go about their daily lives.

  On this particular day, Alice counted five surveillance crafts in the immediate area. Some of the more populous parts of the city could
host as many as thirty, floating in the sky like mechanical jellyfish.

  Five days ago, Naomi Duke was found dead by the side of the road. The top of her head bore a gaping wound. A pool of blood stained the cement surrounding her body.

  The cause of death was recorded as major head trauma. A chunk of metal the size of a bar of soap was found a few feet away. An early theory was that a component from a surveillance craft had dislodged, and Naomi had the terrible misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A freak accident, they said. Something no one could have possibly seen coming.

  ASE Industries, the company responsible for operating the surveillance crafts in the area where Naomi’s body was found, strongly disputed these claims and denied any culpability.

  Alice was so preoccupied with the lingering crafts floating ever-present above her, and their alleged role in today’s events, she hadn’t noticed that the mourners had begun to disperse. She suddenly felt exposed, like she had been caught out doing something she shouldn’t. She did her best to regain her composure.

  But she was thrown when she looked across and saw a man staring straight back at her.

  He stood on the other side of the cemetery, flanked by two towering stone crucifixes. There was no mistaking it; his gaze was fixed solely on her.

  A feeling of severe guilt came over her, like she was a teenager caught shoplifting. She worried this man was about to confront her and demand to know why she had turned up to this funeral uninvited.

  But the second the stranger’s eyes met her own, he looked away. He kept his head low, his gaze now firmly on his feet. All of a sudden he seemed like the guilty party.

  Alice thought he looked somewhat familiar. The more she watched him, the more certain she was that she knew him from somewhere. Had they met before? Maybe he lived in her neighborhood.

  A gust of wind blew. The man’s hair stood straight up, and his combover was revealed.

  A random name floated into Alice’s mind: Carson Dowling.

  The man’s name was Carson Dowling. She knew his name, but nothing else. How was that possible?

  For the next minute her mind raced through every conceivable scenario as to how she knew him. Was he a friend of a friend? One of her teachers from school? Had she seen him on TV or in The Daily Ink? For the life of her, she couldn’t figure it out.

  And then it dawned on her.

  She knew his name because she had seen it alongside his photograph. And she had encountered him once before, standing near the front steps of the community hall a couple of weeks back. He was the guy rolling his own cigarettes and suggesting they were being filmed as part of a prank TV show.

  Carson Dowling was one of the twenty-seven lottery contestants.

  No sooner had Alice realized this, more contestants came into view. There was Vicki Malseed, the petite brunette lingering self-consciously over by the petunias.

  Then there was Bourke Nation, the guy in the designer sunglasses and stylish gray suit, mingling with the other mourners and trying to look as if he belonged there.

  The more she looked, the more familiar faces she spotted. They had been there all along, but only now had they come into focus. Like one of those optical illusions that fools your brain into failing to see objects that are right in front of you.

  There were maybe eight or ten in total, and they were all there for the same reason she was.

  They were looking for answers.

  There was a slight degree of awkwardness immediately following the funeral when the contestants all realized they had been caught out gatecrashing. But after a period of stilted and reluctant small talk, they decided it would be best if they went somewhere to discuss what had happened.

  They converged on the nearest bar, two streets across from the cemetery. It took a couple of drinks for everyone to loosen up (except for Alice, who chose a non-alcoholic beverage), but it wasn’t long before they all spilled what was on their minds.

  “The police said it was just a freak accident,” said Morgan Compston, a guy with the look of an unemployed computer programmer – glasses, greasy ponytail, and a complexion that suggested he was allergic to sunlight. “They have no reason to believe anything sinister might have occurred.”

  “Of course they’re going to say that,” Carson Dowling replied in his cigarette-scratched voice. “They don’t know what we know. A freak accident is one thing, but a freak accident days after the lottery commenced? You have to admit, that looks more than a bit suspicious.”

  There were a few murmurs of agreement.

  Alice didn’t want to believe it, but she conceded that Carson was probably right. Her journalistic instincts – if she could describe what she did as “journalism” – told her there was unlikely to be smoke without fire.

  “So you think she might have been killed by someone in the lottery?” asked Vicki Malseed, the softly-spoken brunette.

  “If I was in charge of the investigation, that’d be the first place I’d look,” Bourke Nation said. “See who would benefit the most from her death and take it from there.”

  An awkward lull followed, as the group’s eyes darted suspiciously from person to person. Accusatory looks were tossed around like a grenade with the pin pulled out.

  Alice was first to break the silence. “If Naomi was killed – and that’s a big ‘if’, we have no proof yet to suggest otherwise – obviously it’s not going to be any of us. No one would murder someone and then show up to their funeral.”

  “A psychopath would,” Bourke replied. “That’s plausible.”

  He drained the rest of his vodka, then gestured to the bartender for a refill.

  “It’s also plausible that a small piece of metal came loose from a surveillance craft and Naomi suffered from the worst luck,” Alice said.

  “Do I have to be the one to state the obvious?” Carson said. “You don’t think that maybe that big tattooed guy – Roque Fenton is his name – that maybe he was somehow behind this?”

  Right away, they all knew who Carson was referring to. Roque Fenton’s photograph jumped out at them the moment they saw it in the package. Everything about him screamed “violent ex-con”, from his shaved head to his facial tattoos, to a neck that was twice as thick as his head, to the numerous knife scars adorning his cheek.

  If science ever successfully spliced human and pit bull DNA, Roque Fenton would be the result. This guy was like a walking sack of bricks.

  “You think he might be a killer based on his appearance?” Vicki said

  “No, I think he might be a killer based on his appearance and his extensive criminal record,” Carson said.

  The group immediately fell silent.

  Carson leaned back and took a sip of his drink. He enjoyed having the group’s undivided attention for once.

  “My sister-in-law is on the force,” he continued, “and she looked into him for me. I had her look into all of you, in fact. And out of everyone in the lottery, Roque Fenton is the one that concerns me the most.”

  “Wait, you’ve been snooping in on our private business?” Bourke said, his indignation rising.

  “His name is pronounced Rocky, not Roke,” Morgan said quietly.

  Carson ignored them both. “This guy has done time in prison. He has convictions for breaking and entering, car theft, drug possession and receiving stolen property.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily make him a killer,” Morgan reasoned. “It’s not like he’s been arrested for violent crimes – aggravated assault, attempted murder, or anything like that.”

  “Hey, if he’s willing to break into someone’s home to steal a few thousand dollars worth of property, imagine what he’d do for a hundred million,” Carson said. “Roque Fenton looks like someone who’d kill for a lot less.”

  Alice shook her head. “That doesn’t prove anything, Carson. You can’t convict someone on the basis that they look the scariest.”

  “Balls to that,” Carson said with a dismissive snort. “This isn’t a c
ourt of law, and I don’t have to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. I’m just pointing out the facts. And the facts state that we have one person dead, Roque Fenton is the prime suspect, and everyone here would be wise to get decent security upgrades for your homes.”

  Chapter 7

  Alice was the first of the group to leave the bar, right around the time Carson Dowling and Bourke Nation began dominating the discussion to the exclusion of all others. The two of them duked it out for the title of head gorilla, thumping their chests in a macho display of strength and bravado.

  Bourke let it be known that he wouldn’t hesitate to bump off any other contestant if he thought they were going to get to him first, a statement Alice believed did nothing to ease anyone’s anxiety with regards to their present situation.

  Carson, meanwhile, had already decided Roque Fenton was guilty of murder, and embarked on a long-winded rant about why he needed to be stopped before it was too late. He suggested that everyone arm themselves with weapons and confront Roque as a group to let him know he was being watched.

  This was the point where Alice decided to leave. Bourke and Carson were both drinking heavily, their voices rising in line with their blood alcohol content. Alice considered their behavior quite inappropriate given that they had just come from a funeral. When the barflies who had been drowning their sorrows since ten a.m. started shooting sideways glances in their direction, that was a good sign that it was time to leave.

  The fact that the bar was a haven for bacteria, with sticky dust- and ash-covered surfaces that hadn’t been wiped down since the mid-fifties, also played a part in her decision to depart.

  She slipped away quietly, making her getaway before she could be recruited into the Carson Dowling Neighborhood Militia.

  She thought she had managed to escape without anyone noticing, but a minute later she heard the clacking of heels on concrete as someone hurried to catch up with her.

  “Alice!” she heard a voice cry out.

  She turned and saw Vicki Malseed rushing towards her.

  “Are you leaving?”