“The same as you, I guess, we saw it coming and kept moving until we found this place which seemed airtight.” Kali sat across from Digger, several desks away, “The gas seemed like it was filling the whole arena, or this section of it. I bet those-, bastards, on top of the game, have a way of piping the gas in and out, making it chase us like an animal.”
The maps on their wrists, all four of them, updated with the latest positions of all contestants. Icons for Digger and Homer now overlapped with Kali and Tanai. Their camera drones were outside but the building would be strewn with cameras. Producers and viewers would know about their truce. Most other teams had stayed roughly where they were before. Lyncher Lee and Frankie LaPalma were in the Shantytown section in spite of the poison gas. The vampirish supersoldier, Alucard, and his partner Sunni Skyez had made it into City Center since the last update.
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
Following the rings of the arena like a path, Digger tapped the next adjoining section. It was listed as ‘Suburbia’. Under the name, it still said ‘THREAT: ????’
“This lot, these three teams here are all bunched up and haven’t moved.” Digger said, “Haven’t heard jackshit from them the whole time.”
“Maybe they’ve teamed up, Dr Klou and Martina Hart, they knew each other.” Kali said, “They might have convinced their partners to join together.”
“Maybe two teams, but three? The only time I’ve ever seen three teams join together it was last season when those three got together to try to beat the rules totally.” Digger said, “No way, not this early in the game.”
“Maybe they had to come together to get away from whatever that section’s-, you know, poison gas or whatever the threat in that part is.” Kali said, “It’d be helpful if they all wiped each other out though.”
Tanai was rocking from foot to foot. Digger leaned back in his creaking chair but he had his UMP45 in reach. There was always the possibility that as soon as the irradiated sarin cleared the other pair would turn on Homer and him.
“So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Digger said.
Kali’s hands were all working in unison. She reloaded and checked her two remaining pistols. One of her larger mechanical hands tapped the desk in front of her.
“They called it terrorism.” She said, “And yes, I wanted them to be terrified. Megacorps came to take our neighbourhoods, places where hundreds of generations had called the same few square miles home. It was filthy, cramped, dangerous, but it was alive. The megacorps first came with gifts and propaganda to win hearts and minds, then they came with their legal documents, guns and machines. Population is growing while usable land is shrinking. They bulldozed my people and culture, promised them a new home then flushed them into the gutter, so I bulldozed them.”
“Didn’t you also-, like rob banks and stuff?” Digger asked.
“Expropriation.” Kali said.
“The bodymods, they help with that?” Digger said.
“Many hands make light work.” Kali gestured in a complex pattern.
“What about your partner, what’s his story?” Digger said.
“He’s not much for conversation.” Kali said, “He’s good at following orders though. Weapons, guns and knives, whatever, are strictly controlled in Japan, so Yakuza are heavy into illegal bodymodding to give themselves a hidden advantage, I guess that’s how he got the glow-tatts and Taser hands.”
“Same with this guy back here, on the conversation front. He’s the strong, silent type.” Digger said, “Buy he’s my validation for years of shit been put on me. No mind powers, they said, no mutants that could make you do shit you didn’t want to do. Wasn’t my fault, but when they didn’t believe me I had to take off.”
“So he’s a mutant, for sure? Doesn’t look like much of one.” Kali said.
“Saw him stop a knife in midair, with his brain.” Digger said, “He can control people, probably kill them with mind bullets, who knows? You want to see?”
Digger drew the combat knife from his sheath. He turned on Homer, pulling it back as if about to throw it at the boy. Kali waved one of her hands.
“I’ll take your word for it.” Kali said, “Poison gas outside, remember? Not a lot of room for error.”
“Yeah, looked like it took a bit out of him, poor little fella.” Digger said, “He hasn’t said anything but I’m guessing those needles on his hip are booster shots. Steroids for psychic freaks, bloody hell, I don’t want to know what he can do with them but I guess we’ll see?”
xXx
Earlier, before Digger and Homer had gotten trapped inside the building with Kali and Tanai, the vampire supersoldier called Alucard darted from building to building through Shantytown. He stayed low to the ground. The man looked like some kind of goblin, bald and with long, pointed ears. His pale skin was the colour of spoilt milk. A pair of black welding goggles covered his oversized eyes, the soldier’s enhanced sight and hearing designed primarily for fighting at night. He seemed uncomfortable and exposed in daylight. If the game lasted into nightfall the bioengineered vampire would be in his element with a huge advantage over the other contestants. He and his partner would have to survive until then first though.
Alucard’s partner, Sunni Skyez, born Ellen Kalani Liebowitz, once had a bustling career as a TV weatherwoman for one of the East Coast’s most popular stations. Blonde, beautiful and body-sculpted, she had hardly stood out in a field of other young women who’d discovered they couldn’t act or sing and went looking for other ways to get famous, except for her natural charisma. Sunni could make a crippling Ozone threat sound like perfect beach weather and a supercell the size of Texas about to crush the Eastern seaboard feel like just an excuse for a cozy day snuggled up inside the anti-climate bunker.
Much like Digger Dundee, Sunni had an innate hatred of the genetically engineered, both those who had the engineering forced on them or had chosen it for whatever reason. When she got into politics, that same charisma that saw her excel at work allowed her to become a leader for several fringe groups united under a common cause. Seizing on fears in the aftermath of the African Bio-Wars, the groups were terrified about an invasion of gene-modders and mutant freaks taking over America. Sunni became a fixture at rallies and on network holovision screens as a commentator on the issue. Given failures of earlier wall-building attempts and fears that some of the mutants might have the power of flight, although unfounded, her group mainly caught attention with their demands to build an enormous geodesic dome over the entire New United States, except for the California Islands which were too liberal anyway and would be left to fend for themselves.
Media attention and her adoring fanbase couldn’t satisfy a blood thirstier side of Sunni Skyez though. Seeking more recognition, Sunni and a core group of followers staged several false flag attacks to justify a string of brutal murders on gene-tampering and bodymodded individuals. Their defense that they couldn’t be tried for murder because their victims were less than human didn’t go far. Some had ironically less bodymodding done on them than Sunni had gotten herself, early in her career. Convicted, tried and imprisoned, she maintained a loyal social media following from behind bars.
Twin camera drones circled Sunni, capturing her from all angles. The weather woman had plenty of experience on camera but in all other respects she was out of her depth. She carried a bulky weapon, a long barrel and heavy body attached to
an ammunition drum. A harpoon gun that fired metal stakes, each almost a foot long and magnetically boosted.
“Slow down, Batboy!” Sunni said, “Damn freak, we can’t all move as fast as you!”
Apart from the exotic gun and body armour, Sunni looked like a rich tourist on safari. She checked the map on her arm. Another couple of freaks were nearby, cybernetically enhanced but almost just as bad, Kali Badami and Tanai.
Twin submachine guns, MP5Ks, clattered against Alucard’s sides. The supersoldier was squat and heavily muscled, his pale arms exposed outside of his armoured vest. He stopped and turned in the shadow of a tin shack. Even in daytime, with the whirr of their drones and other ambient noise, he could hear the beating heart in Sunni’s chest. Behind his opaque goggles, Alucard looked back and his eyes fixed on the pulse throbbing in Sunni Skyez’s slender neck. The albino supersoldier didn’t need haemoglobin and had no innate desire to drink blood in spite of his caste’s vampiric appearance. After the Bio-Wars, however, when he’d gotten away from the warlord that had forced the genetic engineering on him, Alucard had found a witch doctor who’d told him virgin blood would cure him of his afflictions. He might have gone slightly overboard acquiring it, and even developed a taste for it, without ever finding a cure.
Sunni and Alucard moved into another tunnel running between two sections. It was narrower than some of the other tunnels, like the one Digger and Homer had traveled through, and sloped upward. It emerged in the City Center section of the arena at the top of a broad set of concrete stairs. Alucard, comfortable in the darkness of the tunnel, hung back for a moment. Sunni led the way, stomping down the steps.
Everything seemed deathly silent, dust hanging over the ruined markets and buildings. Sun flamed off some intact windows left in taller buildings. As Sunni reached the bottom of the steps something shifted in the rubble and started making a high-pitched noise. Alucard leapt down the stairs and hit his partner from behind. The two of them crashed across the ruins, rolling to a stop clear of the whining devices.
A pair of Claymore-style mines popped up like car headlamps from where they’d been hidden in the rubble. The large, boxy shells let out a piercing whine. Both erupted, their blasts crossing over to completely scour the stairwell. Disc-shaped flechettes tore deep furrows in the concrete and if either contestant had been in the path of the shrapnel they would have been shredded. One of the camera drones was caught on the outskirts of the overlapping blasts and exploded in midair.
Alucard covered Sunni with his body as ricochets rained down around them. Overlapping shockwaves rattled across the ruins of City Center. Alucard stayed pressed against Sunni for a few moments too long, his skin cold against hers. Sunni shoved the vampish soldier backward.
“What are you doing, freak?” Sunni said, “Get the fuck off of me! If it wasn’t for those bracelets I swear I’d have put a harpoon through your head already.”
Alucard climbed off Sunni. While the two were on the ground the maps on their forearms updated. Sunni was too disgusted to bother checking until she had dusted herself off and climbed to her feet.
Gunfire erupted, sizzling by their heads. Bullets raked across the ruins and up the stairs already damaged by the blasts. Alucard moved like an animal, instantly dropping and scrabbling across the rubble that carpeted the ground near the arena wall. He grabbed one of the SMGs strapped to his side. The two of them had stumbled not only into a booby trap but right into an ambush as well. Uzi Kahneman and Boche were lying in wait not far from the tunnel and had heard the mines.
Alucard extended one MP5K straight out in front of him. It let loose with a ripping noise. Kahneman was half-hidden behind a cratered wall, firing with his twin T-shaped Mini Uzis. His partner, Boche, circled around a spar of ruins yanking at the cord of his chainsaw so it let out a loud roar. Alucard yanked his other MP5K out of its holster and fired in two directions at once. Boche and Kahneman were both dangerous but Alucard was an experienced supersoldier as well. Kahneman emerged further from behind cover, hosing Alucard’s position with bullets.
“Fuck you, you think I’m easy pickings, you suckers?” Sunni yelled.
Sunni sunk to one knee, raising the stock of her harpoon gun to her shoulder. She fired a couple of foot-long harpoons at their attackers. The projectiles were thick, like sleek railroad spikes, and had a silvery finish that gleamed in the sun. The magnetic slingshot that flung the harpoons forward hardly made a sound. One of the spikes hammered Kahneman in the side of the chest while he was focused on Alucard. He staggered backward under the impact.
“Koos akhotkha hatsola’at!” Kahneman yelled
Kahneman gripped the shaft of Sunni Skyez’s harpoon. His body armour had stopped the point from penetrating too deeply, although part of the tip had punched through. The ex-Mossad agent twisted and yanked the spear loose with a grunt of pain. Blood splattered down the front of his clothing.
“Today’s forecast, high chance of harpoon to the face, bitch! Bring an umbrella!” Sunni said.
Sunni swivelled toward Boche and fired. Coat furling, Boche moved incredibly fast as he brought his revving chainsaw up and around with bladed teeth spinning. With a metal shriek, he deflected the harpoon. The spike hit the ground and rang across the dusty asphalt as it spun away.
Boche closed the distance between himself and Sunni. Engine howling, he cleaved the heavy weapon around in a wide circle. It was all Sunni could do to block the first blow with her bulky harpoon gun. The impact caused her to stumble backwards, struggling to keep her grip on the gun. Boche swung again, teeth chattering off the side of the weapon and creating a shower of sparks, and caught Sunni’s hand clutching the barrel. Her fingers were ripped apart and flung in an explosion of blood. Sunni screamed and stumbled backward, dropping the harpoon gun.
“You fucking Nazi prick! Mutant freak!” Sunni yelled.
Boche waded forward and booted Sunni in the chest, launching her backward. Blood sprayed in an arc from her mangled hand. Alucard closed in behind Boche while he was distracted. He fired one of the MP5Ks, extended in front of him, and Boche ducked. The Nazi supersoldier lifted one side of his armoured coat like a batwing to protect his head and bullets were caught by the tough material. When his gun was empty, still moving forward, Alucard pitched it at Boche rather than reload. Boche swung around and batted the thrown submachine gun out of the air with his chainsaw as well, just like he’d done with the harpoon. Alucard brought his second MP5K up, planning on firing it into Boche’s gut at point-blank range, but Boche closed the distance between them. He grabbed the gun around the barrel first, shoving it away.
The two genetically engineered mutants fell to the ground, wrestling. Boche managed to rip the second submachine gun out of Alucard’s hand and sent it spiralling across the rubble, but he also lost his grip on his running chainsaw. Alucard was short and stocky compared to the towering Nazi, and not as strong, but more agile. Chimplike, he clamoured around Boche and got on his back. Alucard bared his teeth and snapped them shut on the side of Boche’s neck.
“Sheisse!” Boche yelled.
Blood spurted out of the bite. Staggering, Boche managed to get to his feet with Alucard clinging to his back. As soon as he was straightened up, Boche threw himself backward and arched into the ground, landing on top of Alucard. The blow made Alucard lose his grip. Bleeding from the neck, Boche turned around and punched Alucard across the face. Alucard’s dark goggles were knocked sideways, off his eyes, and he shrieked as he was suddenly blinded by sunlight. Boche punched him again and again, fists like a jackhammer, driving his skull into the ground, before gripping him by the throat and lifting him into the air.
“Hey! Hey, that’s my mutant freak you’re holding, you Nazi shit!” Sunni yelled.
Struggling thanks to her mangled hand, Sunni had recovered her harpoon gun. Sitting on the ground, she awkwardly levered the bulky weapon into place and fired left-handed. Boche pulled Alucard around into the harpoon’s path. The metal spear whistled into Alucard’s c
hest, tearing through his body armor and nailing the vampiric mutant in the heart. Alucard spasmed and blood immediately started pouring down his chest.
“Motherfucking freak! You’re all freaks!” Sunni said.
Boche kept holding Alucard aloft as if the dead man weighed almost nothing. The kill switch on his pale arm started wailing, sending a signal to Sunni’s bracelet. Drugs and adrenaline flooded Sunni’s system, numbing the pain from her bleeding and mangled hand. She tossed her harpoon gun aside and started to climb to her feet, panting. The woman had seen how the bracelets worked and knew all she needed to do was stay close to Boche until her time ran out, triggering the bomb in her kill switch, to take her revenge.
Before Sunni could run at Boche, there was a withering burst of gunfire that tore through both of her legs. Kahneman had reemerged from behind cover, left side bleeding. He aimed and fired not to kill Sunni Skyez but to take out her legs, blowing out both of her knees. Sunni buckled and fell forward, landing on her hands.
“I’ll fucking kill you both!” Sunni said.
“Run! Get clear!” Kahneman said.
Boche turned and threw Alucard’s body at Sunni as she tried to get back up. The hefty corpse hit her, knocking her to the ground again in spite of her drug-fuelled strength and rage. Kahneman had already disappeared back into the rubble. Straightening his coat, Boche recovered his chainsaw from where he had dropped it before retreating.
“Fucking freaks!” Sunni yelled.
Sunni threw Alucard’s body to one side, the butt of the harpoon sticking from his chest. As the other pair disappeared she struggled to get to her feet. Even though she couldn’t feel the pain, however, her legs were riddled with bullets and refused to work. Blood running heavily off her legs, she made it a few steps and then collapsed. Dying, her kill switch triggered a second time and exploded, eradicating her body along with Alucard’s.
Chapter Twelve
“Mutant menace! Endlessly spawning in the genetic fleshpots of Sub-Saharan Africa! Soulless test tube terrors causing crops to spoil, molesting livestock, and eating the brains of honest, God-fearing folk! Think it couldn’t happen here? Think again!”
Kill Switch: Final Season Page 13