by Andy Remic
“Great. We’ll be seen for miles around.”
“Keenan! Stop it!”
“Sorry mum,” he grinned.
“Let’s go.” Franco’s gaze fixed ahead, on the crowd of zombies that were gathering, milling, moaning, frumping, at the end of the street, some pointing towards the rumbling Corvette, the smoke fountain, and the advertisement of sentient life within.
Behind, Mel slammed down steel shutters.
Franco stomped the accelerator.
They roared towards the zombies... and The Great Malkovitch Library beyond.
~ * ~
Combat K cruised, slowly, through decimated, rubble-strewn streets, the Corvette rumbling and belching, Keenan hanging over one side with a loaded Kekra and his Techrim close to hand, Knuckles sat on the back seat, his machete in his lap, his eyes cold. “Turn left at the end of this street,” he said, voice low. Franco nodded.
An eerie silence had descended on the group, and indeed, across the cold desolate world in its entirety. A mournful wind blew down the street, bringing with it a smell of fire. Franco shivered.
“What have they done to my home?” he said.
“Who?”
“Whoever turned all these people into zombies. This was supposed to be The Quantum Carnival. It was supposed to be party time for the entire bloody city; instead, it turned into a big bloody massacre by deviants. It’s a bloody disgrace.”
“Best time to catch everybody,” mused Keenan.
“What?”
“It’s a coincidence that this plague, this scourge, whatever the hell happened here; well, a coincidence it happened at just the right time. Yeah? As The City had a large influx of tourists for the carnival. Wouldn’t you say it was convenient?”
“You think it’s man—or alien—made?”
“I guarantee it,” said Keenan, eyeing the domineering buildings as the group cruised past. His eyes lifted, staring up at blank glass walls, vast obsidian cliffs towering high above him and exuding cold. “Whatever happened here—well, it stinks of expediency. And whether the hackers and the pirates intended it or not, if this thing was caused by the biomods, then it’s a fucking scandal.”
“I always said people should take more care of what they put into their bodies,” nodded Franco.
“No you didn’t,” frowned Keenan. “I’ve watched you shovel mountains of shit into the charnel house that is your belly. Everything, mate, from the mangiest kebabs ever to hang from a ten-week skewer of disease-riddled grease, to that odd alien lager which used to turn your piss black and made your skin erupt in orange pin-prick blotches.”
“Ahh, Ye Olde Burklewurts. A fine pint of alien ale.” He smacked his chops. “Could just do with a pint now. Anyway Keenan.” Franco fixed him with a baleful stare. “I heard you’d stepped up your drinking regime, partaking of the odd litre of Jataxa between meals.”
Keenan spluttered on his cigarette, and laughed. “Hell, Franco, ever the discreet diplomat, hey? Where did you hear that?”
“I just heard it.”
“Where?”
“Here and there. Knocking about. You know how it is. So then? Are you a mess?”
“Don’t worry mate, I’m not a raging alcoholic.”
“The mantra hiccupped by every raging alcoholic.”
Keenan fixed him with a hard stare. “I stepped up my drinking. Yeah. I fucked myself up on regular occasion. I have that right. What happened with Pippa... and my kids...”
Franco slowed the Corvette. “Listen Kee, I know it’s none of my business, nothing ever is, but I haven’t let that minor indiscretion stop me before. You have to let that Pippa shit go, bro’. You have to let it pass. To die. Before it kills you.”
“Pippa murdered my kids.”
“I don’t believe she did,” said Franco, slowly.
“What do you mean?”
Franco tapped his skull. “Hey man, you’re talking to the expert in psy... pscolog... head problems, here. I’m the guy who spent years at Mount Pleasant having my testes zapped and my brains subjected to every form of mental narcotic on the market. I know a thing or two about crazees. Betta believe it.”
“So... explain it to me.” Keenan’s eyes were rock.
“OK. You were married, with two beautiful kids. Pippa was your lover, and your wife found out. Then, whilst we’re all stuffed in prison, your wife and kids are murdered before you have time to explain. Pippa felt guilty about all of this... she felt like, somehow, it was her fault. She imposed blame on herself—so hard, it tortured her, and she ended up believing it.” Franco nodded to himself. “People do it all the time. Tell themselves something over and over again until they believe the bullshit. Either with denial, or in this case, with Pippa, an act of murder she did not, actually, physically, commit. But she still felt responsible. Because she was shagging you, and in her head that led to their deaths. You dig, yeah?”
Keenan stared at Franco. The smell of fire was getting stronger. The Corvette rumbled.
“A possibility?” said Franco, eventually, looking sideways at his partner.
“Do you have any proof?” said Keenan. His voice was barely audible over the roar of the Corvette’s belching exhaust.
“No-oo,” said Franco. “And I might be wrong. But it is possible, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s possible,” snapped Franco. “You never gave Pippa a chance to explain, and when we blasted out of Teller’s World, and performed that—I might add—insane K Jump which led to all that shit in the Dark Zone after we put down Leviathan, well,” Franco rubbed at his ginger beard. “You two never got the chance to talk.”
Keenan gave a single nod. “I’ll think on it.”
“Stop here,” said Knuckles, and reluctantly Franco halted the Corvette in the middle of the road, amidst abandoned vehicles, many of which had been burned.
“You see something?”
Knuckles stood on the back seat, holding on to the Corvette’s cage, head poking out into a cold wind reeking of fire. “I think our route is blocked.”
“By?”
“Burning zombies,” said Knuckles.
Keenan and Franco both stood on their creaking seats, staring down the ominous road. There was indeed a distant glow, filling the street like a sea of molten lava. The wind gusted, again, with a raw stench of fire. And it carried with it a low grumbling sound, an undercurrent of bass dissension.
“But hot damn, you’ve got good eyesight,” snapped Franco.
“How close are we to this library?” said Keenan.
“A few kilometres.”
“Is there another way round?”
“Yes.” Knuckles nodded. “Straight ahead, for a few hundred metres; I’ll show you a maze of alleys we can cut through.”
The Corvette rumbled on, weaving between burned out cars and the occasional dismembered body, either of a human or alien, regularly showing the head slit open, cranium removed, and all brains scoured out. Sometimes, they saw the carcass of a zombie. Many had been burned into blackened husks.
“Seems there’s some resistance,” said Franco.
Keenan nodded. “Maybe some areas were hit worse than others?”
“Down there,” snapped Knuckles.
Franco steered the Corvette into a narrow network of alleys between decrepit buildings. This was an older, more original area of The City with far less glass and alloy on display, and more ancient, blackened, crumbling brickwork, sometimes stone, and even wooden buildings. Here they weren’t high edifices, but short stocky buildings, rimed with filth and centuries of pollution.
“Nice place,” sneered Franco.
“This is where I was born,” said Knuckles.
Franco shut up. He’d started to sweat, despite the cool breeze rampant in the streets. It was getting more and more narrow, with frequent blockages of groundcars, barrels, lumps of masonry, abandoned market stalls; sometimes Franco guided the revving, spewing Corvette high onto a mound of rubble or wood, huge kn
obbled tyres crunching and grinding and spinning, his hands sweat-slippery on the sturdy wheel of the off-roader. Once, as they breached a rise of loose white stones, the engine stalled and they slithered back towards street level, wailing, tyres locked and sliding without control. The Corvette thumped onto the road, suspension clanging, and Keenan glared at Franco.
“You dick.”
“Hey, it wasn’t my fault. Mary just cut out on me.”
“Mary?”
“A car’s gotta have a name. And I’m not getting inside a bloke ten times a day.”
“Very droll. Remember your biting point, Franco. Control is everything.”
“I tell you, it wasn’t my fault! Mary’s a contrary mule!” Franco pouted, a bit primly. He fired the old engine on the tenth attempt, revved it high and slammed hard up the slithering slope of stone, leaping a little from the top and cannoning down the opposite side where they suddenly slewed through a shop-front, skidded sideways through ten high shelving units, and slid to an abrupt halt, thumping the far wall. Ceiling beams, plasterboard and dust rained down on the cowering inhabitants, and everybody coughed long and hard as dust continued to rain, then drizzle, then trickle, and finally stop. All around lay a shop hit by a bomb.
“Right,” said Keenan, eyes steel. “Time for me to drive.”
“But Keenan...”
“No arguments, Franco, get the hell out of the driver’s seat.”
“But Keenan...”
“No!”
Franco stood forlornly on a pile of smashed planks and battered shelving as Keenan reversed the Corvette Scrambler and, with thuds and crunches, managed to extricate the huge, iron vehicle from the crushed and battered mess. He rumbled outside, and Franco gazed around at the shop’s interior. With sudden realisation it hit him like a new day. He was in a pharmacy. A drug store. Filled with... drugs.
“You OK in there, Franco?” came Keenan’s drifting voice.
“I need a toilet break,” said Franco, eyes shining. “Last night’s sausage has worked its way through my sewage system. Hey, you guys, enjoy a quiet cigarette, I’ll be out in a few shakes of a cat’s whisker.”
“Don’t be long,” snapped Keenan, voice muffled.
Franco gazed around. Through gloom he could see shelves lined with boxes, bottles, tubs and tubes. He rubbed his hands together. His face beamed.
“All righty then!”
He ran to the counter, rummaged around and located a canvas pack. Then he stalked quickly between the shelving which still stood—miraculously—erect, grabbing at tubes and potions, boxes of pills and rolls of medication. He paused, reading a packet’s contents, then tipped ten boxes into the sack. Then he moved to the counter and eyed the locked door behind. It had a one way mirror. Franco grinned. In there, he thought to himself, you keep all the pretty drugs, the special drugs, the drugs I might really need, don’t you? He rubbed his hands together. Found a plank of wood. Hefted it thoughtfully, and hammered it into the mirrored door.
After a few whacks, the portal disintegrated and Franco stepped through falling dust—into a punch. The blow lifted him from his feet, spat him back ten paces, and deposited him on his behind. Stars fluttered in his head, and blood spurted from his nose. He coughed, stunned, and stared up through swirling dust at—
At a towering, bulging, power-house of a, a, a...
“A woman?” he snapped.
“I am Olga!” boomed the heavily-muscled, strapping beefcake of a lass. Her hair was tied back in a tight black bun, and layered with a fallout of debris. “You fool! You have broken my door! I was hiding! Now I have nowhere to hide from ze zombies!”
Franco climbed warily to his feet.
“Hey, listen, I’m sorry about...” he began, as a second punch whirred like a partridge through the gloom and lifted him from the ground a second time, sending him flailing over a still-standing shelf unit, in which he caught an errant sandal, and both Franco and the shelving unit cannoned into a second shelving unit, and the whole sorry mess went down in a tangle of limbs and galvanised metal planks which clattered and clanged amongst wood and dust.
Franco groaned, then struggled to extricate himself like a fish from a bucket.
“I hide from ze zombies!” insisted Olga. She stood over him, fists like spades on her meaty hips. “What I do now, huh? You take me with you! You protect Olga!”
“Protect you from what?” snapped Franco, struggling from the carnage. He stood, staring up at the bristling woman. She was... titanic. Shit, he thought, rubbing his bruised jaw. She must weigh three hundred pounds! His eyes followed her rippling, fatty curvature. Huge breasts filled a shapeless smock which billowed down to a rotund waist and stocky, hairy legs like tree-trunks.
“You staring! You like Olga? You like a bit of what you see?” Suddenly Olga smiled. Her huge football head broke into a cracked-egg of appreciation as she eyed Franco up and down.
“Whoa girl!” said Franco, holding out both his hands. “Just wait a minute! I need to rummage through your drug store, and then I’ll be on my way. I ain’t giving you the beady eye!”
“You take me with you!” insisted Olga. She tilted her head, in what she must have thought was a coquettish pose. “If you help Olga, if you take her with you, protect from ze zombies, Olga show you where ze special drugs are.” She smiled. She had three teeth missing.
“OK. OK. OK.” Franco struggled over broken shelving, and entered the narrow room behind the counter with Olga close behind. His hand stayed on the butt of his Kekra, and Olga’s hand strayed perilously close to Franco’s butt.
Franco eyed the dilapidated, dust-spewing ceiling.
“Why me?” he groaned.
~ * ~
Keenan looked up and down the street, finishing his cigarette and grinding the remains under his heavy boot. He was just considering whether or not to go in after Franco—not a decision he took lightly, because he had seen Franco heave and strain his way through a good ten-pounder before now— when a sheepish and slightly more battered version of the little stocky squaddie emerged, carrying a canvas sack, and closely followed by a woman whose clothing could easily accommodate three.
“Franco?” came Keenan’s enquiring stare.
Franco avoided Keenan’s eye. “Don’t ask. Long story. Woman in distress. I said we’d take her to safety.”
“Woman?” hissed Keenan, his voice low. “Franco, we’re not a fucking charity. We’ve got a mission! We can’t go picking up every stray waif we come across.”
Franco frowned. “Hardly a waif, Keenan.”
“Dickhead! What’s in the sack?”
“Provisions.”
“Food?”
“Drugs.”
“This ain’t the place to get fucking high.”
“No, but it’s the place to get fucking sane. I can feel the twitching coming on, Keenan. It’s the stress. The stress of seeing a loved one rendered into a terrible horrible monster!”
“I’ll render my fist in your terrible horrible face in a minute.” Keenan breathed deeply. He loved Franco, he really did. But sometimes he simply wanted to put the shaved ginger head between a door and jamb, and slam it a few times. He gritted his teeth. He knew what Cam would say, probably in an AI whine. He’s your best friend. You know he’s mad. If you don’t want his help, don’t damn well ask! Keenan rubbed at his brows. “OK,” he said, releasing a breath of aggravation. “Knuckles, get in the front. You can help me navigate. And Franco?”
“Yeah Keenan?”
“Get in the back with your girlfriend. You can keep each other company.”
“I resent that implication! I’m soon to be a happily married man!”
“What, to an eight-foot mutation?” barked Keenan.
“Things could be worse.”
“How so?”
Franco considered this, as he watched Olga heaving her huge body into the Corvette. It strained, springs squealing in protest. One side of the vehicle listed, as if carrying a very great weight; which it was.
“OK, things couldn’t be much worse,” he conceded. “But don’t keep rubbing it in. I’m sorry about Olga. I’m sorry about Mel. I’m sorry about the car crash. And I’m sorry about the mess. There. I’ve apologised.” He bristled.
Keenan laughed, rubbing at the back of his head. “Shit, Franco. You are just one insane motherfucker.”