Gun Machine (Excerpt) by Warren Ellis
Written by
Warren EllisGun Machine (Excerpt) by Warren Ellis
Written by
Warren EllisGUN
MACHINE
WARREN ELLIS
Little, Brown and Company
New York Boston London
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TWO
John Tallow stood while the medics scraped up and lifted and
bagged and took away his partner of four years, and then he sat on
the stairs silently so that they had to lift Rosatos killer over him to
get him down and out of the building.
People said things to him. Gunfire in close quarters had temporarily dulled his hearing, and he wasnt that interested anyway.
Someone told him that the lieutenant was driving out to tell
Rosatos wife the bad news. She liked to do that, the lieutenant, to
take that weight off her people. Hed known her to do it three or
four times in the past few years.
After a while, he became aware that someone was trying to get
his attention. A uniformed police. Behind him, the Crime Scene
Unit techs were moving around like beetles.
This one apartment, the uniform said.
What?
We checked all the apartments, to make sure everyone was okay.
But this apartment here, theres a shotgun hole in the wall and no
ones answering the door. Did you check this one apartment?
No. Wait, what? That holes kind of low. I dont think it can
have hit anyone.
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GUN MACHINE
Well, maybe the occupants out at work. Though thatd make
him kind of unique in this building so far.
Tallow shrugged. Force the door, then.
The doors tight. Cant imagine what kind of locks behind it,
but it dont want to give.
Tallow got up. He knew buildings like these werent Fort Knox.
But if the uniform said the door wasnt giving, it was pointless to
repeat the effort. The door wasnt the thing. The hole was. He got
down on one knee by the hole. The internal walls in these places
werent worth the name. Plasterboard partitions, for the most part.
When this building was crammed with people, way back when, it
mustve been like living in a hive.
The hole was a foot across. Tallow peered through it. No light in
there. Tallow shifted his position to let in ambient light from the
hallway. The uniform watched him frown.
Give me your flashlight, Tallow said.
Tallow twisted it on and played it through the hole. Things
glinted in the dark, as if he were shining the flashlight into the
teeth of an animal deep in a cave.
Get a ram, Tallow said.
The uniform went downstairs while Tallow sat on the floor with
his back to the wall, dismissing the CSU complaints with a finger.
Thatd come back to bite him later, he knew. CSUs loved to complain, and if he didnt listen, theyd find someone who would.
Then again, maybe hed earned a pass today.
Tallow sat and thought about his partner for a while. Thought
about never having met his wife. Having actively avoided it, if he
were honest. Remembered feeling relieved that Jim and his wife
had gotten married on vacation, so he couldnt and therefore didnt
have to attend the ceremony. Tallow had decided, after the one
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WARREN ELLIS
time hed had to crush a stranger with the news that her husband
had died on duty with three big bullets in his gut, that he couldnt
be married. He didnt want to stand at a wedding and think about
being married. He didnt want to sit at Jim Rosatos table and think
about being married.
The uniform had found another uniform, and together they had
unhappily carried the ram upstairs, blistered black paint over blue
metal.
Tallow stayed on the floor and hitched his thumb at the door.
The uniforms put the ram to the door. It bent and held. They
looked at each other, swung back harder, and drove the ram in
again. Wood splintered, but the door stood.
Tallow got up. Take out the wall.
You sure?
Yeah. Its on me. Take it out.
The ram crushed the wall in. A few dull thumps sounded from
within. The CSUs cursed their mothers for the dust the strike
kicked out. Three more short swings made a hole big enough for
Tallow to step through. Two more dull thumps. He twisted on the
borrowed flashlight and passed it around slowly.
The room was full of guns.
Guns were mounted on all the walls. There were half a dozen
guns at his feet. Turning around, flashlight at shoulder level, he saw
that guns were mounted on the wall he had come in through. Some
guns were mounted in rows, but the right-hand wall had them in
complex swirls. Some were laid on the floor on the far side of the
room, forming a shape he couldnt quite fathom. There was paint
daubed on those.
There were scents he couldnt place. Incense, perhaps. Musks.
Fur or hide.
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GUN MACHINE
Rippling patterns of gunmetal, from floor to ceiling. In the stale,
faintly perfumed air of the room, Tallow felt almost like he could
be in a church.
Nobody was in the apartment but him. He pointed the flashlight at the door. The door was reinforced with sliding metal bars
and heavy locks. There was the red flicker of an LED on one of the
locking devices. Tallow couldnt figure out how anyone could get
into this apartment by way of the door, but he could see that a ram
wasnt going to do it.
Tallow carefully stepped through the apartment, checking all
the rooms without touching anything.
There were guns in all the rooms.
In the back room, there was a gap between the heavy curtains
covering the sole window. A single shaft of light fell through the
gap into the small gun-encrusted room. Dust motes hung in the
still beam. Tallow stood for a moment without breathing. Left the
room slowly and silently.
Tallow almost smiled as he put his head back out through the
hole, pointed at a CSU, and said, Got something for you.
11
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or
dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright 2013 by Warren Ellis
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning,
uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the
publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you
would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written
permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank
you for your support of the authors rights.
Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
mulhollandbooks.com
First Edition: January 2013
Mulholland Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book
Group, Inc. The Mulholland Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group,
Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the
publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out
more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellis, Warren.
Gun machine / Warren Ellis. 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-316-18740-4
1. Private investigators Fiction. 2. Serial murders New York (State) Fiction. 3. Cold
cases (Criminal investigation) Fiction. I. Title.
PS3555.L61717G86 2013
813'.54 dc23
2012025256
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
rrd-c
Printed in the United States of America
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