Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey Page A

underestimate it. Remember you can still threaten them. Physically, I mean. If you pull your foot back to kick, a
     man is going to cover his balls. I know that sounds crude, but its the only
    And that was it—or almost. In the margin, opposite the phrase “Take backup,” someone had scribbled two more words in red biro.
    Felix Castor.
    I was still staring blankly at those two words when the phone rang. Actually, I became aware that it was ringing—the sound
     had been going on for some time underneath Internal Bleeding’s relentless bass beat and the equally unremitting noises of
     my neighbors dismantling their flat. Not my mobile; Ropey’s phone. I picked up and said hello by reflex, even though I couldn’t
     remember ever giving the number to anyone.
    “Mr. Castor?” A man’s voice, slightly breathless and thin—not a voice I recognized.
    “Yes.”
    “Interurban Couriers. Can you come down and sign for a package?”
    “A package?” I echoed, slightly false-footed. “Who from?”
    A short pause. “Well, the address is E14, but there’s no name.”
    The only guy I knew out that way was Nicky Heath, a data rat who sometimes ran searches for me; but he wasn’t working on anything
     for me right then, and he wouldn’t be likely to use a regular courier service. Being both paranoid and dead, he had his own
     specialized ways of working.
    “Mr. Castor?”
    “Yeah, okay. I’ll be right down.”
    I got up and went to the front door of the flat, unlocked it, and stepped into the corridor. A few steps brought me to the
     lifts. I pressed the buttons until I found the one that was currently working—the council tenant’s equivalent of the “find
     the lady” game. The lift was on the fifth floor, only three floors below me, but instead of going up, it went down. Someone
     else must have pressed the button at the same time.
    As I waited for it to make its stately way back up the stack, I listened—since there wasn’t any other choice—to the shouting
     and swearing echoing from farther up the corridor. It amazed me that the other residents on this floor weren’t poking their
     heads out to add their own shouts of protest to the overall row. Judging by their prurient interest in my comings and goings,
     it couldn’t be out of an exaggerated regard for other people’s privacy.
    Something snapped in me at long last, and I walked back up the corridor to give my psychopathic neighbors’ door a dyspeptic
     kick. “Turn it in, for Christ’s sake,” I shouted. “If you want to kill each other, use poison or something.”
    A door opened at my back, and I turned to find the woman in number 83 glaring at me.
    “Noise was getting to me,” I said by way of explanation. She just went on glaring. “Sorry,” I added. She slammed her door
     shut in my face. While I was still staring at the NO CIRCULARS sign, I heard a ping from back the way I’d come, followed by a muffled thump: the lift warning bell and the sound of the
     doors opening.
    I jogged down the corridor, determined to catch the lift before it changed its mind. I stepped inside, found it empty, and
     pressed G. Just as the doors started to close, I saw through the narrowing gap the front door of Ropey’s flat standing open.
     In the five minutes that I was downstairs, the neighbors could have the TV, the stereo, and the three-piece suite. Irritably,
     I hit DOOR OPEN with my free hand, and the doors froze, jerked, froze, with about a foot of clearance to spare.
    But before the doors could make up their mind whether to close again or slide all the way open, the entire lift lurched, the
     floor tilting violently. Taken by surprise, I staggered and almost lost my footing. From above me came a sound of rending
     metal.
    I had half a second to react. As the lift shuddered and lurched again, grinding against the wall of the shaft with a sickening
     squeal, I fought the yawing motion, barely keeping my feet under me, and flung myself through the