by Andy Remic
Why was Mel still slumbering in bed? That wasn’t like Mel. Mel was a stickler for rising early bright and shine. Even after a crate of DOG Town red.
A million horrific scenarios galloped across his imagination. Franco sprinted into the bedroom, saw scattered, tousled sheets. But Mel was gone.
“Melanie?” he bellowed, panic giving his voice a bestial urgency.
No answer.
“MELANIE?” he screamed.
“I’m... in the bathroom.” Her voice was weak, thick, muffled by the hefty bathroom door. Her tone held a wavering, ethereal quality. It sounded strange.
“Are you OK?”
“I just feel a bit... queasy.”
“OK. I’ll make you a coffee.”
“That’d be great, Franco.”
Franco staggered into the kitchen, scratching at his testicles. He switched on the CoffeeChef™ (Coffee coffee you wanna nother coffee?—although you probably had to be there to appreciate the joke). He lounged against the worktop, breathing deeply, and trying to work out any way in which Voloshko could find him. The bastard would certainly make some kind of effort. After all, Franco had made the head of a global Syndicate look like a dick.
From the bathroom, there came a thud.
Franco turned and stared at the door, languishing innocently at the end of the long corridor.
“Mel?” he called.
No reply.
“You OK in there?”
“Franco. I don’t want you to get angry.”
Franco sighed. That was bad, that was. Any dialogue which began Franco I don’t want you to get angry meant he was, nine times out of ten, pretty much damn guaranteed to get angry. Taking care to keep his voice calm amidst his pounding headache and general feeling of unwell-being, he said, voice steady, and measured, “Why would I be getting angry, my love?”
“I just want you to promise me you won’t get angry.”
“How can I promise something, when I don’t know what the something is, that might make me angry? That’s unfair, that is. You’re taking advantage of my good nature and prior ignorance to a situation I know nothing about.”
“Franco!” she squawked.
“OK. OK. I promise I won’t get angry.”
“Good.”
“So then? What’s wrong?”
“Now, you promise, don’t you?” Her voice had gone all wavery again.
“Yes,” sighed Franco. Behind him, the CoffeeChefTM pinged. Franco poured two cups of steaming, frothing Heaven, and stood, a cup in each hand, facing the bathroom door.
“OK. I bought a...”
Here we go, thought Franco. A settee. A TV. Some curtains. A new dishwasher. For a tax inspector, Mel was awesomely lax when it came to inspecting the tax.
“... a biomod upgrade.”
There was a crash as the coffee cup hit the floor. Coffee surged across the tiles. “You did what?” shouted Franco. “How the hell do you think we can afford that? We’re getting married in a few days! They’re bloody extortionate! We’ve already talked about this, and...”
“You promised, Franco.”
His teeth snapped shut. He felt his new denture twinge.
“Anyway,” continued Mel’s wavering, “I didn’t get a proper NanoTek one because they’re too expensive. My friend Emily took me to the market and we met this lovely lad, a friend of hers called Knuckles, who sold me a cut-down pirated hacked model for a tenth of the price. Cheap as chips. A bargain!”
“That’s even worse,” groaned Franco, rubbing at his thumping cranium. What next? A head transplant? “Listen.” He breathed deep, exaggerated breaths designed to halt impending palpitation. “At least, now, cheer me up here girl, and tell me you haven’t taken them, it? Yet.”
He waited. There came another, louder, thump. And a strange stretching sound.
Franco’s head snapped left. There, on the worktop, was a tiny vial. On it, neat lettering read BIOMOD 0.2mg. He picked it up. Stared at it. Sniffed it. Frowned at it. Was it empty? What was he looking for? It looked empty. Shit and holy damn buggery, it bloody damn well looked bloody damn well empty! Franco spied the leaflet. His eyes raked the NanoTek instructions, expensive text on extensive vellum, the usual extravagant NanoTek way:
Patient Information Leaflet
BIOMOD CAPSULES 0.2 mg
©NanoTek Corporation
KEEP ALL BIOMODS OUT OF THE
REACH OF CHILDREN.
REMEMBER: Only a doctor or Biomod
Sales Representative can prescribe this
biomod medicine/ human/alien upgrade. It
should never be given to anyone except the
person it has been prescribed for. It may
harm them in a grotesque and horrific way.
Franco stared at that last bit. It may harm them in a grotesque and horrific way. His scowl was crooked on his face, like a painting hanging not-quite-right on the wall. “Melanie?” he shouted again, still holding the single coffee cup. “Did you take the goddamned damn bastard bio-mod, or what?”
There came a roar so deep and monstrous and terrifying it shook the windows in the frames of the apartment. The bathroom door flexed and wobbled like a tree in a twister. On the floor below, and in the surrounding apartments, burglar alarms started to shrill, their high-pitched squeals piercing the relative silence.
Franco clutched his already throbbing head.
He glanced down at the coffee.
Glanced back up at the bathroom door.
And watched, mouth agape, as a fist the size of a plate smashed a hole through the heavy anti-intruder panelling and flexed long claws that belonged nowhere near a human hand.
The second coffee cup smashed on the tiles, sending another stream of dark brown soaking into Franco’s comedy rabbit slippers. His head lifted. Oh my God, he thought. There’s a monster in there! In there with Mel!
He sprinted for the living room, rolled across the coffee table like a true action hero, grabbed his D5 shotgun and pumped it viciously. He stampeded back into the corridor, and was just in time to see two of the long, armoured hands wrench the door from its quivering frame and launch it down the corridor. With a yelp Franco ducked, and the door hummed over his head and became half-buried in the wall above the front door. It quivered, like a large rectangular arrow.
The creature stepped into the corridor, stooping crookedly. It was eight feet tall.
Franco gawped, shotgun forgotten. The creature was slim and wiry, skin a dark mottled brown, spotted, corrugated, and slick with grease. The torso was a mockery of a human female body, with long, quivering, dangling breasts reaching almost to the monster’s waist, and with nipples like plums oozing grey pus. The neck was long, curved, the head small and round and hairless, the lower jaw staggered out from a horrific face in a staccato jump, the nose two pin-pricks, the ears flaps of puckering anal flesh against more pus-oozing orifices. The neck crackled with plates of armour as the monster moved its head, rapping its skull against the ceiling. Fingers flexed like a newborn babe’s. Franco’s eyes dropped... to the long legs, and the pink quivering vagina, slick with gore and grey slime. It was distended, wobbling, and nearly made Franco throw up. It was probably the worst thing he’d ever seen in his entire life. A nightmare, for a man so fond of the female sexual organ.
“Don’t worry!” bellowed Franco, suddenly. “I’m coming for you, Mel! I’m coming to save you!” Bravely, he charged at the monster, shotgun booming. Shells screamed down the short corridor and the monster moved with inhuman speed, twisting, charging at Franco as it swatted shells like flies. Franco skidded, thumped against the creature, felt his shotgun taken from him as he tottered backwards a few steps, like an old man on acid. He gulped. He stared up at the oiled face inches from his own, witnessed nose-slits sprouting thick black spider hairs, felt rancid breath coil across him like a disease-ridden oil-mist. The monster tossed the weapon to the ground in disgust, reached forward, and slapped Franco a stinging blow with the back of its hand.
/> Franco flew, hit the wall, and rolled into a heap with all wind knocked from him. The creature, in huge loping strides, was upon him and he screamed, screamed as that distended jaw hammered towards him and fetid breath invaded him abused him raped him and those long claws curled around his body, lifted him into the air and the room whirled around him, his familiar settee and TV and PlayStation 1000 turning into a blur as he was spun and whirled and thrown heavily to the floor. “Get the shotgun!” screamed Franco, to Mel in the bathroom. “Get the gun! Save yourself! I’ll try and stall it!”
The abomination lowered its ugly pus-riddled face towards Franco. He heard the creak of its limbs, watched as those eyes moved towards his face and saliva and gunk dripped on him. He shivered, quivered in pure terror as he wondered how he would die... hey, he’d seen the movies, right? Jaws in the brain? Fist through the heart? Tear out his spleen and beat him with it?
The monster’s jaws worked spasmodically.
Franco closed his eyes and covered his head with his arms.
“Aiiiiiiiie!” he screamed.
And...
Nothing. Nothing happened.
Franco opened one beady eye. Yep. The monster was still there. Staring at him. Breathing on him. Why didn’t it just kill him monster him massacre him chew him break him crunch him hell, shit, just get it done and over with and let him die in a moment of pure-fire agony then enjoy an eternity of peaceful rest in a heaven of buxom half-naked vixen wenches.
“Do it, you sick bastard!” he screamed.
The creature, the beast, the monster... its jaws worked even harder. Saliva pooled in long strings that tickled Franco’s face. And, well—it seemed to be trying to—
“Speak? Are you trying to speak?” snapped Franco in astonishment. Where the hell was Mel with that D5? If he could just stall this savage grotesque beast for a few moments, give Mel time to get to the gun, well, she was a plucky lass and she’d know what to do...
Maybe she’d save them yet!
“Ranco,” said the beast.
“Eh?”
“Ranco. Is me. El.”
Franco’s mouth opened some more. He paused, unsure of what to say. Then he shuffled backwards, so his back rested against the settee. He stared hard and with a fearsome scowl at the abomination before him.
“Mel?”
“I ove ou Ranco.” There were tears in the monster’s eyes.
“Well—fuck me,” said Franco.
Mel lurched towards him, and he held up a hand. “Whoa there girl, I didn’t mean this exact minute. I mean, you’ve gone through a few changes since I last saw you, lass.”
The creature formerly known as Mel let out a massive roar which blasted curtains from the rail, overturned the TV and blew-dry droplets of sweat from Franco’s distended ginger beard.
There came a hiatus in time.
Franco scratched his chin.
“So, I’m thinking, maybe something went wrong with that there biomod, then?”
Mel roared again, and Franco scrunched his face up against the onslaught of acidic fetid breath. It was like rotting corpses. Dead dogs. Open sewage.
“OK, OK, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I told you, didn’t I, I said don’t go buying pirated bio-mods because those bloody hackers and crackers and pirates don’t know what they’re damn well doing. They’ve buggered up the biomod, and now they’ve buggered up my bloody fiancée.”
He stared hard at Mel.
She was not a pretty sight.
Franco sighed. “Bugger,” he said.
Suddenly, there came a series of cracking sounds and Mel convulsed, her limbs twisting at impossible angles. Talons grew from her toes and her back arched, her neck distending yet further. She started to rampage around the room, smashing at the walls and furniture, a whirlwind of violence with Franco sat, cocooned in terror, at the core. Her claws cut lines through the brickwork. Her head smashed lights from the ceiling. Mel, it would seem, was pissed.
“Calm down, calm down,” shouted Franco, flapping both his hands, palms outwards.
Mel screeched, her head punching through the ceiling and shaking, scattering dust and floorboards around the room.
Franco scrabbled to his feet, and ran through to the bedroom. He threw open his wardrobe and stared at the tumble of bombs and guns, knives and Kevlar-titanium vests. In a scramble he pulled out his old military kit in a spill, rummaging madly through the hardcore stash until he found...
There. “Baby.”
A TitaniumIII leash, with a spiked silver collar dangling chunky from one end. Against the leather handle there was a small red button which delivered a jolt of electric shock through the collar. Nice.
Franco used to have a dog, a half canine, half alien blend of psychopathic muscle-riddled fighting machine. He loved that dog, Franco did, until it one day tried to chew his head off, and he’d donated the maniac bastard to the Urban Force to be used in tracking down alien gugunga smugglers. The TitaniumIII leash was good for 950,000 lbs of pressure. You could use it to moor Star Cruisers.
Franco returned, warily, to the living quarters. Everything was quiet. He peered myopically around the battered, splintered doorframe. Dust floated in layers. Mel hunkered at the centre of the room, head touching the carpet, eyelids drooping.
“There’s a good girl.”
Mel growled.
“Come on, don’t be like that.”
Mel growled again. Franco shook his head in confusion. Just what the hell had happened to her? A simple biomod injection gone wrong? Or something more... sinister?
He crept forward, the leash and spiked collar in one hand, dangling in what he hoped was a non-threatening manner. “Would you like a little treat? Of course you would, who’s a good girl, come on, who’s a good girl then.” Franco held out his hand, wiggling his fingers and edging closer in a curious sideways crab-motion he sometimes employed.
Mel stretched forward with her long neck, and tentatively sniffed his hand.
Neatly, Franco looped the collar over her neck and compressed the mechanism. There came a click. Mel’s eyes met Franco’s, and he swallowed, hard.
“Rastard,” she said.
Franco shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry love. Can’t have you tear-arsing around the place and showing me up in front of the neighbours, now, can I? Not until we get you sorted.” He stood up, puffed out his chest, and glanced around the devastation that was his destroyed apartment. He gave a deep and meaningful sigh.
What next?
A doctor. That was it. A doctor would know what to do! A doctor could help them and turn his girlfriend back into... well, a girl, for starters. Yes. A good old fashioned quack!
Franco picked up the kube. It was dead. Franco frowned.
Outside, distantly, a siren wailed. It was joined by another, and another. Franco moved to the window, peered outside, but could see nothing and he started to chew his lip. Behind him, Mel smouldered. Her stench made Franco’s nose itch.
“Strange,” he muttered, although what could be more strange than a girlfriend turning into an eight-foot mutated mangled abomination of a monster Franco couldn’t quite vocalise.
He frowned. Something was missing. Out there. Down there. In the real world.
He frowned, even harder.
What the hell was it?
What was wrong? Out of place? Out of step?
And then it struck him. Like an anvil.
There were no people. No humans, no slabs, no proxers, no huggas, no SIMs. The street outside was deserted. More than deserted. It was a ghost town.
Another siren wailed, lonely and forlorn.
Franco watched an ambulance dash down the street, take a corner on two wheels, and disappear, stroboscopic lights flickering blue from the polished alloy and glass of cubescrapers.
Odd, he thought. It’s the first full day of The Quantum Carnival. The streets should be thronged with a million party people. The City should be crawling—as it had only a few short hours ago. So... where had eve
rybody gone?
He turned back to Mel. She was asleep, snoring, her small round head gleaming with grey and brown pus. Franco’s eyes ranged over the body and limbs of his girlfriend, his fiancée, his woman, his true-love. The woman he wanted as wife. The chick he’d decided to finally settle down with and pump out a machine gun volley of bambinos.
Now, however, she was transmogrified into a personification of disgust.
“I mean,” Franco muttered to himself, “you’ve been with a few beasts in your time... but this takes the biscuit barrel!” He shook his head. Sighed. Hell. What a day, he thought. What a week.