The Faceless by Simon Bestwick

the bastard thing. He somehow knew it would have the same cold, greasy feel as the cap.
    No wonder the fucker’s face’d looked like there was something wrong with it. There bloody was. Must be deformed or summat.
    Martyn reached into his pocket, found his key ring. Eva had given him a little key ring torch for his birthday last year. If it still worked–
    He clicked the switch. A pale beam fingered at the dark. The sirens were louder still. Nearly here. Better get a shift on, you want to be a have-a-go hero.
    Shining the torch ahead, he risked a step in through the door. The torchlight picked out peeling walls; bricks and lathwork showed through the gaps. There was a table with a bucket on it in the middle of the floor. He pointed the beam down at the floor. The boards were still there, at least; they hadn’t been ripped up for firewood. That was about all you could say for them though; they were pitted and rotten. Would they bear his weight? One way to find out. Best foot forward, lad.
    A faint, brittle sound. He flashed the torch at the kitchen door. Was that a flicker of motion? No. There was nothing there. Nothing.
    He stepped forward, shone the torch around the room as the first police car screeched to a halt outside, and a horde of white, mangled faces swarmed out of the room’s back wall. And all of them were screaming.
     
     
    THE TESTAMENT OF PRIVATE LEONARD BLOOR CONCLUDED and nothings changed has anything changed and drinking drinking to blot it out and stump of left thigh failed to heal properly and became infected septicaemia set in resulting in and lying in bed at home speckled with fagash and vomit and crying crying crying for all the things now gone and burning with fever heat and running with sweat and floating and seeing visions the old men will see visions and the young men will dream dreams and saw my comrades my friends the battlefields ruined plain spread out before me and the eyeless bloodless limbless faceless dead dying maimed crippled wounded disfigured scarred in endless procession across it british french german turkish italian austro hungarian russian belgian serb who are they who are we what does it matter all torn meat and churned mud linked solely by the capacity to suffer kyrie eleison and delirum coma and death from septicaemia and into thy hands o lord but there are no hands were no hands to receive me only darkness and the howling void and no justice done no leg restored no restitution recompense or peace

 
    GUEULES CASSÉES

 
    ‘C’ BLOCK
     
     
    Flakes of paint lie like brittle leaves on the cracked floor tiles. The exposed brickwork is fretted and crumbling. A peeling wooden door with a pane of safety glass stands ajar. Beyond it, decaying, eyeless faces stare emptily from the wall.

 
    CHAPTER TEN
     
     
    S TAKOWSKI SAW TWO cars in the car park by Witchbrook when he pulled in: a white Nissan Micra and a police Land Rover, back doors open. A girl – nine or ten – sat on the running board, wailing in the arms of a thin blonde woman beside her. Two uniforms, both young, hovered nearby.
    “Jesus Christ, they’ve just left her like that?”
    “They’re green, ma’am.”
    “Bloody will be when I’m done with them.”
    “Flu outbreak. We’re short on experienced officers.”
    “Ask me if I give a toss.” They got out. “They catch anyone?”
    “Said they had a bloke in custody, but he says he’s the kid’s dad.”
    “Who’s on scene?”
    Stakowski central-locked the car. “Tranter and Wayland.”
    “Thank god. Was worried it might be Janson. Can you go supervise?”
    “Aye. Just let’s get a description of the dad first.”
    “OK.”
    The blonde woman wore minimal makeup and dressed like a maiden aunt; be pretty if she gave herself the chance, though. He knew her from somewhere, but couldn’t place it yet. Mist drifted down the hillside. The woman’s teeth chattered, but she still held the sobbing child close, stroked her hair.
    “Get some