Gun Machine by Warren Ellis Page A

clippings, a riot of black-and-white imagery that probably made sense to no one but these two. Food wrappers, disposable coffee cups, and pill packaging formed a small mountain under the worktable. He spotted an old black plastic bucket filled with well-worn paintballing gear in the far corner of the room and wondered if the red on the back of one gun’s butt was paint or old blood.
    “You’re not the CSUs who were originally on the job,” Tallow said.
    “No,” spit Scarly. “It got handed off to us. Which makes perfect sense, because what you really want on a job like this is as much confusion in the evidence chain as possible. And I guess me and Bat hadn’t eaten our ration of crap for the year. So here I am, with a career-ending job and a working partner with the magical talent of making guns shit themselves in his face.”
    “So,” said Tallow, “tell me how I can make your lives better.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Seriously. I know my boss did something, like I said…”
    Bat sniggered. “Yeah. Your boss made some disciplinary paper on our boss fall into a memory hole.”
    “But that wasn’t enough to get you two off whatever hook she’d decided you deserved?”
    Bat gave Scarly a meaningful glare. “Guess not.”
    Tallow pointed at Scarly’s arm. “You were getting a tattoo when you were maybe supposed to be processing the shootings at Pearl?”
    Bat made a face. “Her wife insisted. Switched her cell off and everything.”
    “You know,” said Scarly, “if I’d known marriage was this much trouble, I never would have joined the protests demanding the right. You straights can fucking keep it.”
    A great tiredness draped its boughs across Tallow’s shoulders. “Could we maybe continue this near some coffee?”
     
    They led Tallow to a small conference room a couple of corridors away and persuaded a coffee machine to grind out a tarry paper cup full as he spilled into a worn plastic spoon of a chair and tried to marshal his forces. The CSUs sat opposite Tallow. Scarly dropped a folder of photos on the tabletop and pushed him the cup as Bat finished swabbing his ear and tossed the stinking towel on the table too.
    “So. Seriously. Where are we right now?” Tallow asked. Not really wanting the answer. He tried to close a hand around the precious coffee but had to jerk his fingers away, sharply enough that his wrist popped painfully. Tallow wondered if the other end of that coffee machine was slurping water out of a lake in Hell.
    “The ECTs are moving the guns in small batches,” Bat said. “We’re making them take so many photos that one of them asked if she was being trained to shoot porno.” He opened Scarly’s folder and fanned out the photos, all from apartment 3A. “They’re coming back here, we’re logging them, matching their locations in the apartment to the floor plans and the previous coverage the other CSU team took. And right now, we’re picking weapons at random to test-fire and do ballistic matches on. When the fucking things don’t explode on firing.”
    “And that wasn’t even the oldest one,” said Scarly.
    “I refused to test-fire the oldest one we’ve seen so far. Look what the fucking Bulldog did to me.”
    “How old?” said Tallow.
    “You’re interested?” Bat leaned forward. His large eyes widened disconcertingly, to the point where Tallow worried that they might fall out of Bat’s head and into his coffee. Where they would boil and possibly explode.
    “I like history,” said Tallow, gingerly sliding his cup to one side.
    “Stay put. I got something to show you.” Bat flapped off into the corridor.
    “What was the gun that exploded?” Tallow asked Scarly.
    “I think it didn’t explode so much as come apart like rotten cheese. Once our guy used a gun, he put it in his little room and seemed not to touch it again. They all just rusted out on the wall or whatever. There’s paint in some of them.”
    “But the firing pin flew out?”
    “That’s