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Stone Cold Progress

  In a lightproof environment, vampirical app developer Vlad the I’mPaler was working. He was, as his name suggested, unsettlingly pasty.

  The ghoulishly luminous youth was not Gary’s first choice. Or his second. But he was available, and, in this case, that was enough.

  “So, vot do you vont the app to do?” he asked.

  “Everything!” said Gary.

  “Vee might need to be more, shall ve say, specific!” said Vlad, flashing a sharp-toothed smirk.

  With great reverence, Gary pulled a tea-stained sheet of paper from his pocket. The plan. The master plan! He unfolded it slowly, placing it before the app developer like a sacred text.

  What Vlad saw was a crude assortment of sketches—one of which showed Gary handing out fish to an awestruck crowd, the resemblance to a certain biblical scene entirely intentional. In stark contrast, another featured fat stacks of cash, boldly labelled:

  Gary’s money. Hands off peasants!

  (Hands Off was underlined. Twice.)

  There were also crowns. Fish. A fleet of trucks. And, at the very bottom, the master plan itself.

  Vlad chuckled as he read it:

  Copy UBER but with fish.

  “Zis isn’t goingz to be eazy,” said Vlad.

  “Changing the world never is!” Gary replied sagely.

  And with that, the coding began in earnest.

  ***

  With the app underway, Gary shifted his focus to building the fleet. He brought Greg with him to the dealer, which proved to be an unsurprisingly terrible idea.

  “Sound the horn!” Greg shouted—not for the first time either. In fact, they’d been testing the horns of every truck on the lot for a solid half hour.

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  With a placating smile, the dealer gave the horn a good, long blast.

  Greg was unmoved.

  “I think we could go louder,” he muttered.

  “It’s not a fucking sound off,” said Gary. “We’re looking for two affordable trucks.”

  “This one’s the 2016 model, refrigerated like you said, and in pretty good nick too.”

  “How much you want for it?”

  “This one’s twenty-five, and the Hyundai you liked was twenty-nine.”

  “Louden the horns, and we’ll talk,” said Greg.

  “On that note…” said Gary, thinking fast. “Can you go and sound the horn in the wagon, see if we can’t get that loudened while we’re at it?”

  Greg hurried off to do the job.

  “You know we don’t louden—”

  “I know,” said Gary. “But it pays to humour him. Right, is bank transfer okay?”

  As they ironed out the financials, both men failed to notice a very conspicuous bush on the very concrete lot.

  “Caught a little gem, I did,” gushed Jim “The Bush” Devereaux. “The cameraman just confirmed the purchase of two refrigerated trucks. Spent a pretty penny on those—fifty-four grand by my calculations. I’ll stay on them,” Jim whispered, “and keep you in the loop.”

  ***

  Warehouse space didn’t come cheap, and the ones that did came with pretty significant drawbacks. So far, their options were: an ex-meth lab, an active crime scene, or a deceased doomsday prepper’s underground bunker.

  Their search was looking decidedly hopeless. The sky above them? Suitably bleak.

  “One more,” said Gary, pushing the worn-out fishmen forward, his relentless ambition driving them on. Truth be told, he wasn’t excited about their final destination.

  But when they arrived, a miracle!

  The clouds relented. The sun beamed down—heavenly and golden—upon what was quite clearly the perfect location…

  A disused morgue.

  “Gives me the chills,” muttered Gideon, who was prone to superstition.

  “It’s meant to,” said Gary. “Think about it, bros. Built-in refrigeration! It’s practically turnkey.”

  “Is that a human hand?” asked Gorbachev, pointing to a dark corner.

  “Kidding,” he cackled. “Geez, lighten up!”

  “This is it, bros!” said Gary. “It ticks all the boxes.”

  “Creepy? Tick,” muttered Gideon. “Haunted? Tick! Tick!”

  “Might be nice having a bit of company,” said Gary. “And if ghosts make it cheaper, well, that’s just good business.”

  Outside the ominous location, stood Jim “The Bush” Devereaux, blending effortlessly into an overgrown verge.

  “They’ve chosen the old morgue as their base of operations. Does it bode well for them, I wonder? Only time will tell.”

  Jim clicked stop on the recording and forwarded it to Thorne.

  With the spying done, Jim attempted a stealthy retreat—only to lose his footing and tumble headfirst into the road.

  Jim froze as he heard an emphatic beep! The squeal of tyres.

  “Son of a bitch!” he yelped, as the car clipped his hip with a loud thunk.

  He scrambled to his feet, hobbling away before anyone could fathom why a fully grown man was masquerading as shrubbery.

  “The bush endures,” Jim muttered, stumbling back to the safety of his car.

  He patted his pockets.

  No keys.

  Because, naturally, he’d locked the bastards in the car.

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