Spiderlike, one mutant baboon launched itself at Crispee. Two abortive, reddish limbs dangled out of the centre of the baboon’s chest while eyeballs surrounded its head like a halo. Crispee cut the animal down in midair, bullets slicing through the baboon’s body and spraying black ichor as it was ripped almost in two. Another baboon hit him from the side. Its fangs sunk into the man’s forearm.
“Get off of me, you damn, dirty motherfuckers!” Crispee yelled.
Crispee whipped around, trying to get free of the ape. Reptilian scales covered the baboon’s back. Crispee slammed it into a nearby streetlamp and swapped his gun from hand to hand. Jamming the barrel into the top of the baboon’s head one-handed he fired, bullets shearing through its face and blowing its brains out.
The battle whirled into the middle of the street. There was so much chaos though, DFN couldn’t have hit either of the other contestants with any certainty even if she’d wanted to. Crazed with fear, Halligan triggered his flamethrower and arced it around him wildly. Living flames covered half a dozen baboons closest to him, clinging to their furry and rash-eaten bodies. Creatures scattered in orange blazes across the street, shrieking. In his frenzy, Halligan almost clipped his partner, Crispee. The thirty foot tongue of flame from Halligan’s weapon swept over the rubble, igniting everything flammable in its path.
The burn-scarred soldier leapt clear. Bleeding heavily from his right arm, Crispee was surrounded by a pack of mutant baboons. Pouring onto the man, shrieking mutants attacked with claws and fangs. Blood sprayed as if from out of a wood chipper as Crispee was torn apart. Two hulking baboons tore Crispee’s arms off at the shoulders as his kill switch started to wail.
“No! No, it’s not fair!” Halligan yelled.
Camera drones circled through the air, capturing the carnage. Needles injected Halligan with adrenaline and drugs to keep the man fighting. At least a dozen remaining baboons ringed around him. Big and small, they ranged from hulking brutes to children not much bigger than the average monkey. Whipped up into a territorial rage, creatures flung themselves over and over at Halligan even as he tried to use the flamethrower on them. Quickly they overcame him as they had with Crispee, tearing, biting, and pulling him apart as he screamed.
After about a minute, DFN and Bolt watched as Halligan’s kill switch triggered a second time and exploded. They had seen the result on their screens before but it was their first time witnessing it in person. There was a terrific blast and Halligan’s flamethrower tank was ruptured as well, showering the street in flaming napalm. It was like a volcano suddenly erupting in the middle of the street. Almost all the baboons were incinerated instantly in the blast, piled on top of Halligan. A few that had been set on fire already, or were caught on the outskirts of the explosion, ran screeching before dropping in blackened, burning bundles of fur and flesh.
Chapter Nine
“Many teppanyaki restaurants promise great show for honored customers! But only Tomogui Teppanyaki employ honorable uplifted cephalopod chef for making good times and tasty treats! Much family fun!”
Shown as a cartoon behind a steaming hotplate, a bright pink octopus wearing a white chef’s hat gives a wide grin. Its many tentacles juggle knives and serving implements.
“For great sacrifice, freshest seafood, you can even eat honorable chef! He knows only fine dining trickery and servitude!”
An enormous anime sweat drop appears on the octopus chef’s forehead. Weilding a cleaver, it lays down and lops off one tentacle then tosses it onto the grill. Cartoonish blood jets from the severed limb.
“If any reason honored guests are not one hundred percent satisfaction, Tomogui Teppanyaki must correct!”
A hand from offscreen hands the nervous octopus a samurai sword. Twisting it around in its tentacles, the octopus rams the sword deep into its midsection and slices from left to right, committing seppuku. Its eyes turn into Xs and a tongue lolls out of its mouth. Green intestines spill out of the gap and smoke as they hit the grill.
“Tomogui Teppanyaki! We encourage to play with your food!”
The passage Digger and Homer took between sections was about as large as a train tunnel. Concrete pressed on them from all directions. Digger kept his submachine gun raised and watched for traps or anything else that could pose a threat. It was dark but a large archway glowed with sunlight directly ahead. Homer followed Digger, as curious as a child and seemingly calm again.
“We’re pushing it.” Digger said.
The sleeves on Digger and Homer forearms updated with a beeping sound. Instantly, a pair of massive doors started grinding closed across the tunnel’s end in front of them. Digger glanced back and saw another set of doors doing the same thing in the direction they had come from. On their forearm screens, a half-hourly update started playing.
“Heil to the chief, Rick!” The first announcer said, “Boche and Uzi Kahneman have gotten ahead to a strong start, going blitzkrieg on Quickdraw Quilton and El Carnicero.”
“A head is exactly right, Fred, Quickdraw Quilton put up a good fight but came up a little short.” The second man said, “El Carnicero with the sacrifice play, an excellent attempt with Boche almost forgetting the new rules around kill switches but not quite enough to take out the Nazi supersoldier!”
Images and explosions flashed across the screens on their wrists but Digger ignored them. Pulling Homer by the shoulder, Digger broke into a run. Noise from the doors filled the whole passageway with deafening vibrations. Boots pounded the concrete floor. The shaft of sunlight was quickly narrowing. The iron doors, covered in huge rivets, were half a metre thick and inescapable. As it got darker and darker in the tunnel, Digger didn’t want to know what would happen if they didn’t reach the end and got trapped.
“Move your arse!” Digger said.
“Monkey business getting the best of Marcus Halligan and Luthor Crispee.” The first voice coming from their sleeves said, “Looks like that weapon drop was accidentally placed in the middle of a nest of mutant baboons, and look at them going bananas!”
“Marmoset knock you out, Fred, Crispee definitely had a monkey on his back and ended up disarmed.” The second said, “Meanwhile, Digger Dundee and his young partner, I believe going by the name of Homer now, clashing with Macbeth Madaki and Junior Du Preez but game called on account of robots! Madaki and Du Preez, some great teamwork to take those mechs down.”
“So now we know the Freeway Interchange threat is mechs left roaming around since the Bio-Wars, and Towers is home to some nuclear nasties in the shape of mutant animals.” The first commentator said, “Can’t wait to see what the other sections have in store!”
Turning sideways, UMP45 still in hand, Digger shot through the gap before it could close and crush him. He reached back to grab Homer’s skinny arm. The kid weighed almost nothing as Digger hauled him through the crack. The doors slammed shut just centimetres behind Homer with a resounding clang, motors going quiet. Digger looked down at his sleeve again, where a list had appeared on the screen. Three of the fifteen teams had been scratched out.
Boche / Uzi Kahneman
Bolt / DFN Jefferson
Dr Klou / Echo Three
Dozer / Taka
Homo Superior No. 11 / Digger Dundee
Juan Sanzeros / Ludd
Kali Badami / Tanai Den’atsu
L.L. Bitters / Rick O’Shae
Lyncher Lee / Frankie LaPalma
Macbeth Madaki / Junior Du Preez
Marcus Halligan / Luthor Crispee
Quickdraw Quilton / El Carnicero
Sunni Skyez / Alucard
Talons / Dr Martina Hart
Wilhelm Schrei / Mahmet Adani
Whipping his submachine gun back to his shoulder, Digger scanned their immediate surroundings. The wall stretched over their heads and off to each side, putting them in shadow. Dust from the earlier fusion blast was drifting across the sky like a veil. In this section, low, ramshackle houses fanned out in front of them. Streets, or what passed for the
m, were unpaved and spread between houses with no sense of organisation. This was part of the arena known as Shantytown. The vast majority of surrounding buildings that Digger could see were little more than tin shacks, built of sheets of corrugated iron and plywood, water stained planks and other random bits of trash.
“Alright, mate, looks like all three teams that landed here originally are still scattered about.” Digger said, “Kali Badami and the Japanese bloke with the glowing tattoos, Tanai. That fucking vampire mutant and his partner, Sunni Skyez, and those two idiots we had a run-in with up on the ship, Lyncher Lee and Frankie LaPalma. None of them are close to here though, so that’s good. Bitters and O’Shae are alive but they’re on the other side of the fence. Let’s go, don’t want to stick around one spot for too long, but keep your head on a swivel. Like they were saying, every section has its own threat, right? And we don’t know what this section’s is yet. Can’t be worse than those mechs, couldn’t even shoot them except that last one I nailed, waste of bullets. You’re my canary in the coalmine, Homer my old son, you keep those eyes and ears open.”
Homer seemed to take on the responsibility solemnly, nodding under his oversized and dusty helmet. Digger had started to feel a genuine affection for the kid, silent and useless as he’d been so far. After battling through Freeway Interchange, the boy looked younger than ever. Digger had a hard time believing Homer was old enough to drink, let alone be a hardened criminal who deserved to be in there with the likes of him.
“We need to get you a shooter, mate, some kind of weapon.” Digger said, “At the moment all you got is those tubes and I don’t know what they do, do you even know? Something that goes ‘pew pew’ but only for the bad guys, alright?”
The two of them headed deeper into the Shantytown section. Ranks of rambling and badly leaning houses closed around them. Many had already collapsed into piles of trash, planks and beams, and other building materials, all covered in dust. Some were hard to distinguish from the garbage lining the streets, trash mounds that were crammed into alleyways or heaped into ditches. Thankfully the smell wasn’t too bad. Everything had been baked in the sun so long that whatever could putrefy and rot had already done so, and had wasted away.
Soon, Digger and Homer started to come across bodies as well. Skeletons dressed in rags with grinning skulls. Gaping eye sockets followed the duo. It was then that Digger realised he hadn’t seen any scars from battle in that section. There had been skeletons back on the freeway too, but there had also been bullet-riddled cars and bomb craters. There was no such damage in Shantytown. All the shacks that had collapsed seemed to have done so out of neglect, not from fighting. The bodies lining the streets or inside the tiny homes were rotted but intact.
“Bit eerie, isn’t it, mate?” Digger said.
Homer’s face was screwed up in concentration, as if trying to focus on a single voice in a room full of loud conversation. They hadn’t come across any tripwires or traps but Digger felt increasingly edgy. He could see dozens of potential hiding places for other contestants.
“If we could find that vampire piece of shit and put an end to him, that’d be a bloody good start.” Digger said, “Get ourselves on the scoreboard. Get our heads in the fucking game.”
Digger had seen similar places during his time in the military, in other parts of Africa and what was left of the Middle East. Even as less fortunate parts of the world had gained strength economically the divide between rich and poor had deepened. Once upon a time, the shantytown city would have been bustling with the city’s underpaid factory workers, members of the service industry, beggars, criminals and underclass scrounging for every scrap they could live off. Now, it was totally silent and filled with bones. That was war but Digger couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was very wrong.
With no set form to the streets, rows of indistinguishable garbage shacks and low, equally ramshackle buildings became a maze. No landmarks rose over the rooftops to guide them except for the arena walls, which were smooth and unmarked, surrounding them on all sides. The electronic maps on their wrists moved with them at least, even if the last known positions of the other contestants stayed fixed. The screens showed little detail to the haphazard streets and alleys of organically assembled shelters, however. Digger kept moving toward the last known position of Alucard and Sunni Skyez. He spotted several bodies lying in the road ahead. Unlike the skeletons these corpses were fresh, with meat on them, and not human. Digger jogged ahead, wary of any traps.
“Dogs, that’s nasty.” Digger said.
Digger covered his mouth and nose from the spoiled meat stench. Three wild dogs lay in pools of dried, maroon blood thick with dust. They hadn’t been killed since the start of the game, judging by stiffness and the dried blood it had been a few days. Hindquarters and muzzles were stained dark red as if blood, fluids and pieces of their organs’ inner linings had come shooting out of both ends. Gagging, Digger continued to study the animals but he couldn’t see any actual marks on their scrawny bodies.
“I know what did this, I’ve seen it before.” Digger said.
As if on cue, Digger and Homer looked up and saw something creeping through the street ahead. With a sickly green glow, a toxic gas crawled over the ground, staying low like fog but swelling to become taller and sending out tendrils as it filled the road. It crept between the shacks and down alleyways. Digger stumbled back and pulled Homer with him.
“Irradiated sarin! Just like I was thinking, it’ll kill you and me well dead.” Digger said, “Starts with a bit of stinging in the eyes, and then you can’t breath. Gas starts eating away at your insides like little critters, throat lining, lungs, your tear ducts, start crying and coughing up blood. Then, mate, gets into your nervous system, lose control of all your extremities. Start shitting yourself like you had a great big feed of bad Mexican the night before, until that turns to blood too. Start vomiting up big pieces of your stomach lining and lungs, before it flicks your switch. That’s why all the bodies, skeletons, and no bullet holes. Clouds of this stuff can hang around for years in some places like bloody blob monsters, like it’s living and feeding on all the dead. It’ll kill you quick, but it won’t kill you nice.”
As Digger raved the two of them had doubled back and were racing away from the gas in the direction they had come. The multitude of crooked dirt streets made it impossible to tell if they were taking the same route or not, however. Green glimmers showed in cracks between shanties. It was like the poison cloud was moving to surround them. Knowing Slayerz, Digger thought, it was probably being piped in deliberately.
What they really needed was to get inside somewhere and seal themselves off from the gas until it passed. The huts were useless with all their gaps and cracks. Digger saw a clump of buildings made out of old shipping containers, more solid than most. Even they had ‘windows’ cut in the sides with no glass though, and huge holes had rusted through the metal in some places.
Bullets ripped through the air and stitched up the tin wall of a nearby shack. Digger swore and darted sideways into a nearby alley, taking Homer with him. He had been so focused on the gas they’d almost run straight into another ambush. Firing wildly, Digger squeezed off a burst in the general direction the shots had come from.
“Nearly had you there, convict!” Bitters yelled.
The British soldier opened up with another long, ragged burst. Rounds chewed apart the shacks above Digger and Homer’s heads like they were made of cardboard. Sheets of tin and corrugated iron, and the other trash the shelters were made of, provided no real protection whatsoever.
“You lot again, where the fuck did you come from?” Digger said.
“One exit closed, another opened! That’s how it works!” Bitters said, “Come on, you can’t run forever!”
Digger moved toward a heap of garbage that seemed more solid than most. Leaning over it, he fired the UMP45. He could see Bitters across the intersection with his drum-loaded assault rifle. Digger’s heavy slugs cut throu
gh the nearest hut. They knocked out some kind of support and the small structure collapsed in a cloud of dust. Bitters retreated while sweeping his weapon from side to side.
A throwing knife sprouted from the mound of trash near Digger’s arm. Digger rolled backward on instinct and another knife hammered into the shack wall above his head. The Irishman, O’Shae, had circled around through the buildings with throwing knives bristling from his hands. Digger started to take aim but O’Shae vanished back into the gap as quickly as he’d appeared. Digger sent a short burst through the walls of the shack O’Shae had moved behind, just in case he hadn’t kept moving. The concealment of the shacks wasn’t solid enough to work as cover.
Homer appeared at Digger’s side, tugging at his sleeve. He turned and pointed down the alleyway where they had taken cover.
“What is it?” Digger said, “Oh, shit, good job!”
A swirling green miasma crawled down the alley towards them. The deadly irradiated sarin gas. They couldn’t stay where they were or they would be overcome by it in seconds. Digger stood up and threw himself into the street firing his UMP45, moving away from the gas. Homer followed close behind as they circled around on Bitters.
Bitters was forced back by the Australian’s wild charge, staying close to the shacks as bullets scoured the walls around him. O’Shae emerged and hurled another blade in Digger’s direction but Digger managed to twist out of its path, the knife rifling past his shoulder. Digger fired again and hit O’Shae in the chest. The bullets were caught by his body armour but the blows knocked him on his back.
Meanwhile, irradiated sarin had poured into the street behind Digger and Homer, the leading wall of it now as tall as Digger. More of it had appeared in the street behind Bitters. Thickening tendrils grew between buildings to either side of them. Still backing up, Bitters stumbled into a patch of irradiated gas. It swirled around his feet like mist.
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