Quickdraw Quilton / El Carnicero
Sunni Skyez / Alucard
Talons / Dr Martina Hart
Wilhelm Schrei / Mahmet Adani
“Since you were all unconscious when we brought you here, I’m sure you’re all wondering where this year’s Slayerz is taking place!” The voice said.
The screen changed to a video, apparently a live feed, of an airborne aircraft carrier floating through thin streamers of cloud. The aircraft carrier was absolutely enormous and flew in complete apparent defiance of all natural laws. Four tremendous jet engines, one at each corner of the craft, kept the ship afloat. Its top surface was nothing but a massive runway with a series of grey buildings and tower off to one side. The runway and airplane bays around it were empty now. They were inside the giant, flying craft. Digger had almost forgotten about the hard vibrations of engines he could feel through the floor. If he squinted, he could make out a large square inset in the aircraft carrier’s landing strip with a seam down its middle. That would be the hanger doors that were closed above them right now.
“These things are shit for gas mileage, all got discontinued.” Digger said.
“Slayerz has repurposed this scrapped aircraft carrier to get to your final destination.” The screen said, “You are currently hovering at thirty thousand feet above the Slayerz arena.”
Suddenly, an explosion ripped through one of the airborne aircraft carrier’s four engines. An orange fireball blew open its casing, hurling shrapnel and pieces of monstrously large fans into the sky. The blast rattled through the walls of the hanger from the outside and the room tilted. Most of the contestants stumbled sideways, struggling to keep their footing until the ship righted itself. Outside and on the screen, the busted engine was billowing smoke as the other three engines kept the carrier aloft. A strained hum started coming from the walls and the ship began to drift downward.
“Every few minutes, we will take out another engine until the whole ship simply drops from the sky.” The voice from the speakers said, “Return to your hallways and follow the lights. They will lead you to parachutes that will guide you into the arena and to your weapon crates on the ground. Your time starts now, good luck, and remember the team that slays together, stays together.”
The room broke into chaos. The teams of two couldn’t get split up but some pairs squared off as if ready to fight. The room shuddered, however, with the aircraft carrier’s remaining three engines already struggling. Digger felt his stomach lurching as they lost altitude. Grabbing the boy, his partner, by the shoulder, he steered him toward the entrance to the corridor they had both left earlier.
“Come on, mate!” Digger said, “We’ll worry about getting stuck into this lot once we’re off this bloody flying boat!”
Chapter Four
“Slayerz is brought to you by the following sponsors…”
“Hi kids! I’m Sammy the Active Shooter Squirrel! I’m off my meds! I believe the Deep State and Satan have teamed up to use algebra to turn children gay! And I’m here to give you some tips about how to survive the next mass shooting event at your school!”
Sammy, a cartoon squirrel dressed in brightly coloured paramilitary gear, holds a handgun in one hand and a rifle in the other. Small, round-headed children gather around Sammy. A blocky building with ‘Elementary School’ written across the roof occupies the background.
“Know your nearest exit and keep a clear route between you and that escape! Uh oh, looks like Suzie doesn’t know where the exit is!”
Gunshots.
“Can’t make it to the exit? Get under a desk or table, or barricade yourself inside the nearest room! Uh oh, Timmy, that’s under the desk! Not on top of it!”
Gunshots.
“Is your shooter going from person to person methodically executing anyone they find still breathing? Spread some of your friend’s blood on you and lie very, very still! And hold your breath as long as you can! Uh oh, Molly, is that blood too icky to put all over your nice dress?”
Gunshots.
“Great job, everyone else! Come give Sammy a hug!”
Gunshots.
“No matter what they say, don’t try to hug an active shooter!”
“If your parents really love you they’ll buy you a Sammy the Active Shooter Squirrel brand backpack complete with Kevlar lining! Guaranteed to keep you one hundred percent safe so long as the shooter only hits you in one specific area from one specific angle! And only once!”
Digger and the boy, Homo Superior No. 11, ran back into the hallway. Vibrations thudded hard through their feet. As they moved away from the hanger, a series of lights flickered across the ceiling. The sentry guns that had followed them were hanging from their railing and tagged after the pair like guards.
“Stay close to me, kid.” Digger said.
Dressed in boots, camouflage and body armour, Digger was still unarmed. He wasn’t sure if the ship would be like The Gauntlet in other seasons or not, so he kept his eyes open for traps. Most of the doorways and bulkheads had been sealed off so there was only one way to go. Under normal circumstances, the ship would have been a maze. Winding through the ship, Digger followed the lights on the ceiling. The boy tagged behind him silently.
Everyone had split up back in the hanger, and Digger and the boy hadn’t seen any of the other teams since heading into their corridor. Suddenly, their passageway came to an intersection. Digger was watching the ground for tripwires when something hit him from the side. A fist crashed into Digger’s jaw, whipping his head around.
The Chinese Mixed Martial Arts fighter, Lyncher Lee, appeared from the other corridor and was instantly all over Digger. She wrenched Digger’s arm around, trying to put a lock on it. The big Australian threw himself in a circle, driving Lyncher into one of the walls.
Compact and well-muscled, Lyncher Lee was wearing some kind of exotic body armour that didn’t restrict her arms or legs. Her face was emotionless, mouth set in a hard line, with her black hair cut short and straight. Digger could already taste blood in his mouth from the first hit. He ran the woman into the edge of the wall again. Lyncher was forced to let go but ducked as Digger swung around and tried to hit her. In her time as an MMA fighter, Lyncher Lee had notoriously killed several opponents in the ring. Once was considered unfortunate and twice an unlucky coincidence but three times and people tended to get a little bit suspicious. Lyncher might have gotten away with a lesser charge and a lifetime ban from the sport, if she hadn’t lost her temper and killed two police officers who’d come to question her about the deaths.
With a howl of effort, Lyncher’s partner Frankie LaPalma came rushing up behind Digger. Clearly the two of them had seen the intersection and were lying in wait for whoever came through. If they could get the first kill it might help them on the ground. Although they too had started out unarmed, Frankie was holding a length of narrow pipe he had managed to pry off a wall. Lean, dark-haired and handsome, Frankie LaPalma had run drugs and managed clubs for the Italian Mafia in a former life, a good and easy life. If his habit of bringing young women back to his apartment and plying them with lethal levels of pills so he could watch them choke and overdose hadn’t caught up with him then he would still be enjoying that life.
Frankie hauled the pipe around at Digger’s back but Digger was too fast for him. Spinning, Digger snapped out and grabbed the young Italian by the wrist. Digger shoved, forcing Frankie to beat himself over the head with his own pipe, and then threw Frankie down the hall. While Digger was distracted, Lyncher swung around and kicked him in the side. Digger’s body armour absorbed most of the blow but when he tried to tackle Lyncher again he grabbed nothing but air. Meanwhile, the boy had retreated into the corner. He was no help to Digger at all as he sunk to the floor, covering his head as if trying to make himself as small a target as possible.
“Fair go, we don’t have time for this shit!” Digger said, “Wait until we’re on the ground and I’ll definitely kick your arses for you!”
“Fuck you, buddy!
Going to show you who you’re messing with!” Frankie LaPalma said.
Frankie clamoured to his feet again and swung his pipe into Digger’s midsection. Lyncher hit Digger from the other side, kicking out his knee and trying to wrestle him to the ground where the difference in their sizes would matter less. Frankie tried to hit Digger across the side of the head but Digger deflected the blow and threw them both off.
Another explosion rippled through the hull as a second engine was destroyed. This time the shockwave was much worse. The aircraft carrier tiled wildly as if dropped suddenly into rough seas. All three of them, Digger, Lyncher and Frankie, were separated and hurled violently from one side of the corridor to the other. Only Digger’s young partner managed to stay where he was, tucked in the corner. The others bounced and were jarred by the metal walls, falling in individual heaps as the airborne ship righted itself. Digger felt his stomach flip flopping again. With only two engines left the ship was already plummeting from the sky. It would be down in another few minutes whether the other engines stayed operational or not.
Having got the message that time was limited, Lyncher Lee and Frankie LaPalma scrambled to their feet. Rather than continue the fight they took off down the hallway, where the lights on the ceiling were leading them. Digger pulled himself upright as well.
“Yeah, you’d better run, arseholes!” Digger said.
Lyncher and Frankie followed their lights to a large airlock at the end of the corridor. Fuming about missing her chance with Digger, Lyncher grabbed the wheel on the centre of the airlock door and unwound it. The room behind the door was small and bare except for a pair of crates. A scanner attached to the boxes painted Lyncher and Frankie’s faces and lids peeled open, revealing two parachutes. The pair quickly strapped them on, around their shoulders, chests and legs.
“Does this look good? I never done this before!” Frankie said.
A second door with a porthole inset in it opened to the outside, filling the room with sunlight and howling wind. Lyncher Lee and Frankie were battered by sudden hurricane force. Air from the outside was thin and filled with oily smoke. Frankie edged himself forward to the doorway and tried to peer out, through the thinning clouds.
“Jesus, Mary and God’s own cuckold Joseph!” Frankie said, “I can’t do it! I can’t do that!”
Frankie gripped the doorway so hard his knuckles were quickly turning white. Lyncher didn’t waste time with discussion. She hammered suddenly into Frankie from behind and propelled him through the door with a surprised scream. Frankie’s cry was lost in less than a second as he was whipped away from the craft in the high wind. Lyncher stepped through the doorway and jumped out after him. Both windmilled through the air until the parachutes erupted from their packs, triggered automatically a certain distance from the ship. Around the aircraft carrier, miniscule compared to the slowly plummeting ship, other teams were also leaping clear. Their parachutes blossomed, carried away like dandelion seeds.
Back down the metal corridor, Digger got to his feet and moved to the boy. The floor was swaying underfoot. As the remaining engines went into overdrive the walls started literally shaking.
“Come on, mate!” Digger said, “We got to go! Quick smart!”
The boy was crouched down, protecting his head. One of Digger’s big hands wrapped all the way around the teenager’s skinny arm. Hauled to his feet, the boy didn’t resist as Digger pulled him down the corridor.
Passing through the intersection, Digger continued to follow the same row of lights as before. There would only be one set of parachutes for each team. The lights led them up a cramped stairwell and into an open entryway. Up the top of the stairwell the thundering of the overloaded engines was twice as loud. A massive bulkhead door led outside which Digger unwound and flung open, shielding his eyes from the sunlight. Their ears popped as the pressure changed. Wind howled through the open doorway. As his eyes adjusted, Digger could see the enormous deck of the aircraft carrier stretched out in front of them.
“Come on, mate, over that way!” Digger said.
Digger pointed to a couple of grey crates at the opposite edge of the massive deck. The boy hesitated, eyes wide at the brightness. He stayed at Digger’s heels as the Australian mercenary started across the landing strip. The remaining engines were almost deafening. Exposed, the pair looked like a couple of bugs making their way across the hood of an enormous car.
Meanwhile, far below them, below the earth of the arena itself, was the control hub for that year’s edition of Slayerz. The hub was smaller than it had been most seasons since they hadn’t had to hold the contestants in their little apartments in the building along with an army of support staff. They had shipped the contestants in from a facility off-site in the airborne aircraft carrier. A warren of rooms and corridors revolved around the central control room. The control room was ringed with technicians at various workstations. One giant screen dominated the front of the room surrounded by columns of smaller vidscreens.
In the centre of the control room was a huge holopad, a circular table covered in a grid of grey lines. Normally once the game got started it would show a holographic, real-time depiction of the Slayerz arena created by circling satellites, displaying the positions of all contestants as they moved around and fought. Right now, however, it showed a hologram of the airborne aircraft carrier instead. Two of the engines, at opposite corners of the craft, were blooming with pillars of smoke that blew diagonally sideways as the craft dropped, the smoke plumes cutting off in unnaturally straight lines as they reached the edges of the hologram depiction. The other two engines were still whirling. Glowing red dots, representing the contestants, streamed off the side of the holographic carrier and dropped away to safety.
“Ladies and gentlemen and associated others, we are off!” Zachariah Hawthorne said, “How does it look?”
The head producer stood at the back of the room, on a balcony overlooking the holopad and the work of the technicians. He was dressed much the same as he had been on the day he’d visited Digger Dundee in the Bangkok prison, in a black suit with a silky, purple shirt. Gold rings and hoops clustered his fingers and his ears. It was Zachariah’s first season as head producer and he needed everything to come off perfectly. The former Slayerz head producer, Roland Smith, had failed so utterly during the last season that he’d been forcibly retired by the network and brought up on charges, with his trial still ongoing. Despite the pressure, Zachariah smiled wide and carried himself with a cocksure, easy confidence.
“Sir, most of the teams are off the ship and on their way down to the arena!” One of the technicians said, “Two teams, Dundee and Homo Superior, and the team of Wilhelm Schrei and Mahmet Adani, have just made it to the flight deck where their parachutes are located. Dundee and the boy got held up by a skirmish with Lee and LaPalma.”
“Get ready to blow another engine on my say-so.” Zachariah said.
“Sir, are you sure? We don’t want to lose too many teams before we even get to the arena, not this season!” The tech said.
“I said, get ready to blow another engine.” Zachariah said.
The air tasted thin and wind whipped their faces until tears streamed from their eyes as Digger and Homo Superior No. 11 made their way across the flight deck. The aircraft carrier continued to fall, still thousands and thousands of feet off the ground. Two more contestants were also making their way toward another couple of crates, ahead of Digger and the boy. The noise of the engines in the open was almost deafening and smoke stung their already watering eyes.
Suddenly, a third explosion ripped through one of the remaining engines. The shockwave pounded Digger and the boy, rippling through their bodies and throwing them backward. Scorching heat washed across the deck. Pieces of the engine fanned out from the craft and into the sky.
The entire carrier-sized aircraft pitched as if rolling into the trough of a tremendous tidal wave. Digger fell as the deck under his feet went from horizontal to almost completely vertical. It was like
being thrown against the side of an upturned skyscraper. Digger jammed the fingers of one hand into a miniscule groove on the deck and held tight, scuffing his boots against the deck as well. The boy, his partner, had also fallen and started to slide. He stayed silent and his face never changed expression even as he was thrown forward, the sight of the ground far, far below yawning into view off the side of the tipping carrier. Fortunately, Digger hadn’t forgotten about him. Fighting to keep his hold, Digger swung around with his other hand outstretched and grabbed the boy by the back of his body armour, arresting his slide abruptly.
The other two contestants weren’t so lucky. Wilhelm Schrei was another German doctor who’d been captured during the African Bio-Wars, working for one of the many warlords. His attempts at creating lethal bioweapons had resulted in the deaths of thousands. His partner, an ex-freedom fighter, or terrorist depending on which side you were on, called Mahmet Adani, hit the deck and managed to cling on for a handhold. Wilhelm, however, tumbled forward and rolled right over the lip of the deck with a distinct and piercing shriek. Instantly he disappeared as the ship rocked, smoke blanketing the deck.
Wilhelm fell through the last streamers of low-lying cloud and plummeted toward the earth. Under the ship, the actual arena came into view, distinguished by its enormous walls, looking like a series of five overlapping rings. Dr Schrei had little time to appreciate the architecture or the way the rings broke up the city the arena had been built over into five distinct sections as his eyes streamed water and his lungs went raw with soundless screaming. Even as the aircraft carrier spiralled overhead the doctor plunged to the ground even faster. When he met the hard-packed desert floor, Wilhelm’s body simply exploded. Shards of bone that were shattered by the landing erupted through his skin and bits of flesh and gore were sprayed over a five metre radius.
The massive ship struggled to right itself. The final engine remaining of the four that had been originally visible was whining so hard it sounded like it would blow up of its own accord, trying to take the craft’s weight. Digger supposed there must have been a fifth, unseen engine directly below the ship or he had no doubt the whole craft would have rolled and dropped like a stone. Thankfully, after hanging on its side for a few moments, the aircraft carrier began to make its way back to being roughly horizontal again. Pitching and seesawing, it started to go into a sickening spin, but Digger was able to get back to his feet. They didn’t have long to get clear, whether the last engine blew or not. Gritty smoke swirling through the air, Digger dragged his partner upright and kept heading for the parachute crates.
Kill Switch: Final Season Page 4