by Andy Remic
“Yes. But Hammer didn’t expect the deviation. That came from... somewhere else. There’s something not quite right here. The puzzle doesn’t quite fit.”
As they were talking, Keenan had been analysing the surroundings. He gestured with his MPK. “There’s a way across.” Keenan’s voice was soft, face thoughtful. “Up there.”
“Amongst the rigging?” Franco stared at him. “Are you mad? Amongst the lights and the strobes? Amongst the wires and the cabling? It’s not designed to take somebody of my,” he patted his rotund belly, “advanced metabolic stature.”
“Look at the bolting on the mesh.” Keenan scratched his chin. “It’ll hold.”
“Have you done a Risk Assessment?”
Keenan’s scowl sank below contempt. Then he leant forward, staring down at the spiral staircase which led to the lower halls of the disco. “What I want to know, is, why did the zombies remain here?”
“Locked in,” said Xakus. He gestured to the far doors.
“So somebody wanted to keep them here? Why?” asked Franco.
“We’ll ask Voloshko when we meet him,” snapped Keenan. He strapped his MPK to his back, moved to the edge of the stairs, and reaching up, started tugging at the edge of the ceiling mesh. After a few moments he peeled a panel free, which wobbled as he threw it to one side. He glanced back at the two men. “I’ll go first. Xakus, next. Franco, to the rear.”
“Why do I always have to go last?” mumbled Franco.
“Because you’re armed, dickhead.”
Keenan hoisted himself up, onto the meshed false ceiling, and squeezed between thick cabling and trailing wires. The mesh shook worryingly under his weight, but held, as he’d predicted. Warily, he eased forward, crawling past stacks of flaring, flashing lights which spun colours across his face and vegetable- and grease-smeared WarSuit.
Xakus climbed next, and leaving a suitable gap, followed Keenan out above the sea of gyrating zombies.
Finally, Franco had to run and leap, catching the edge of the mesh and hauling his bulk up, legs kicking frantically. He sat, panting for a moment, then realised he was being left behind.
“Guys? Hey, you guys? Wait for me!”
He started out, crawling hurriedly over the shaking, vibrating roof-mesh after the fast disappearing figure of Xakus. Behind Franco, unseen, several bolts jiggled and worked free of their L-shaped brackets and clattered like metal rainfall on the bone staircase below.
Far beneath, the zombies boogied.
~ * ~
Franco was sweating as he crawled. It stung his eyes, tickled his beard, and made him squint like an unconvincing D-list Hollywood actor in a cheap horror flick as the rubber-suited monster comes round the corner.
“Franco? Where the hell are you?” boomed Keenan’s voice above the din of Ronan’s warbling.
Franco froze. Keenan’s voice was in the wrong place which meant holy shit he’d managed to go and get himself—
Lost.
“I’m here,” he squeaked, eyes frantic and searching for a way through the forest of cabling, the barrage of flashing lights and the zaps of strobe which periodically blinded him.
“Where, lad?”
“Na na na na na na” sang Ronan.
“Here! I must have taken a wrong turn!”
“There are no turns!”
“Listen, it’s not my damn fault this entire mesh business is so confusing you know I don’t like being locked up after what happened at Mount Pleasant with the testicles an’ everything and it’s just unreasonable for you to expect me to negotiate such a downright discommodious obstacle!”
“Discommodious? Just get your arse over here, Private!”
“Keenan, something feels weird.”
“That’s because the whole damn ceiling is shaking! Get over here now!”
“Keenan, the floor’s moving, the floor’s tilting, oh my God oh bloody bugger and damn and blast...”
“Franco!”
There came a long, staggered cracking sound followed by a comedy hiatus, as if God wanted to extend this moment of pure and perfectly timed slapstick. Then came another, final, sickening crack.
A whoosh of air.
Franco felt his world tip and amidst flashing, coloured lights and flickering strobes and a sensation of rolling and whirling and falling he lashed out with desperate fingers as Ronan’s melodic croon rattled around his skull like bone dice and a true horror and realisation struck him like a baseball bat in the face because if the ceiling mesh did collapse and there was a sea of zombies just waiting to feed on his brains down below...
Then they’d feed on his brains down below.
Franco blinked.
Ahh, he thought. ‘Twas all a dream!
His brain spun into nasty focus.
Actually, it wasn’t a dream.
I shouldn’t have taken that last rainbow pill, he thought amiably as a decent kick of euphoria slid like honey needles through his veins. He looked up. Oh look, he thought idly, my fingers are all white where they’re clasping that nice bending flexing mesh ceiling. Then he looked down. Something heaved against his shoulder, and he shrugged at the static weight, thus dislodging a block of coloured lights which flashed and spiralled on its way to the dance-floor. Only it didn’t connect, because there was a shambling zombie in the way. The huge block of lights flattened the zombie with a squelch, and continued to flash, whirling colours, spinning and rotating across ceiling mesh. Oh look, thought Franco, there’s coloured lights on the roof and coloured lights on the floor as well and I wonder if they make a rainbow when they collide in mid-air? That’s a nice concept. The sort of thing you could tell to small children. Rainbows. Na na. And look! The lights are shining on the zombies’ faces. And the zombies’ faces are all turned up to look at me. Haha. Franco gave a little wave. Only it was with the hand he was using to hold onto the flexing, wobbling ceiling mesh.
Franco fell.
It seemed a very, very long way down.
Long enough, at least, to sober up.
~ * ~
In his time Franco had attended all manner of dodgy concerts, festivals, events and gigs. Franco quite often lost himself to the music, rocked out, and was one of those annoying individuals who liked to climb on stage and hurl himself into the crowd, happy in the knowledge they were crammed like sardines and would carry his considerable lopsided weight, sandaled feet kicking people in the mouth as he performed his personal dodgy group fantasy.
This fall, however, was the stage dive of his life...
Viewed from above, Franco fell spread-eagled, like a starfish, both hands clasping Kekra machine pistols, face in a kind of rapture of euphoric stupidity. Below, alerted by falling debris and a pulverised comrade, the mulling zombies looked up, soft moans emanating to mingle quite convincingly with the Ronan Keating backing track.
Into this sea of upturned faces, Franco fell.
He connected with a series of dull thuds, like tiny flesh detonations, but despite his modest height he carried some serious weight and his landing dropped several unfortunately situated zombies as effectively as any D5 shotgun blast. Like a sea of unloving flesh, the crowd of deviants parted, then surged back, undulated, a necrotic river, a pus-weeping ocean, and Franco went down and under with arms flailing and mouth a silent O of wonder and intrinsic, disbelieving horror...
Franco disappeared from view.
Kekras roared.
Slabs of zombie flesh spewed up and out in a chunk fountain, and despite Franco’s earlier misgivings about these poor creatures being unfortunate victims of circumstance, he chose to momentarily ignore deeper philosophical speculation as the rancid snarling beasts homed in on his fresh, if not entirely functioning, brain.
“Keenan!” came his wail from beneath the sea of surging zombies.
Keenan, on the lip of the roof, chewed his lip, MPK wavering. “Shit.” He couldn’t fire into the mass. He might hit Franco! His head snapped back. “Xakus, get us down there!”
“Fol
low me.”
They jumped down into a connecting corridor, sprinted down slippery spiral stairs, and came up against a locked bone gate, the bars wrist-thick and human-fat yellow.
Keenan poked his MPK between the bars, and the weapon screamed, fire ejecting from the barrel, bullets mowing down a field of scrambling, half-dancing, half-gyrating zombies and turning the zombie disco into a zombie rave.
“Franco!” screamed Keenan. He took a step back, analysing the bars. He smashed a side kick, but it did nothing more than leave a black rubber mark. He lined up his gun, and unleashed bullets which chipped and spat bone shards, but the bars held and Keenan gritted his teeth. “Bastard.” He peered into the surging, heaving gloom.
Between the packed mass of scrambling deviants, he could see nothing...
~ * ~
Franco struggled, a turtle on its back. His Kekras were gone. Taken in the scrum like candy from a kid. A bloated face with no lower jaw leered at him. It could make no other expression. Franco slammed a right hook to its temple, knocking the zombie sideways with a grunt. Another face replaced the first, this one with maggots in its hair. Franco squawked, eyes wide, mouth open. He jabbed a punch to its nose, spreading gristle across yellow zombie flesh, then again, a right hook to the jaw which knocked the jaw clean free with a crunch. A bloated purple-black tongue lolled out, unrolling like diseased liquorice, to give Franco a slimy zombie kiss. “Aiiee,” he said, grabbing the tongue and giving it a hard tug. The tongue came free in his hand and started struggling, and the zombie stared at him, eyes wide, drooling into Franco’s screaming mouth. Thick zombie pus ran over his lips, across his tongue and teeth, into his throat. It tasted of rancid amputation. Franco gagged, stomach heaving as he whacked the zombie with its own bloated tongue, a comedy sausage, then clubbed it with his left fist, knocking it aside. Another, a woman this time, lurched over him, onto him, claws scrabbling for his brains. Distended blue breasts rubbed in Franco’s face in a parody of the act he so loved, and grimacing, he bit hard and was nauseated to find a ripe nipple part like well-cooked meat and slide slug-like down his. throat. No, he screamed at himself. This cannot be happening! Cannot be real! He felt her claws on his head making circular motions in an attempt to remove his skull-top like a PreCheese jar lid. He wriggled under the weight of pressing zombies, felt a hand on his crotch and fear slammed his brain like a train-wreck. No! Not his nuts! Anything but his nuts! Twisting and straining in renewed panic like a kitten in a sack, Franco managed to free a D5 shotgun from his pack-holster. The deviant’s face stared up him, grinning through crooked black teeth. It licked mephitic lips. Franco scowled. “Not on my watch!” he snarled, and pushed the D5’s barrel into the zombie’s molten mouth. Teeth fell free, rattling like ivory dice. “Suck this.” He pulled twin triggers, watched the face— and entire head—disappear in a smush of explosion leaving nothing but a wavering spine tip, charred and smoking and wriggling weakly. Franco felt his head suddenly wrenched to one side. He squawked. The hands above grasped him, screwing his skull with tenacity. The female zombie leaned across him, intent on her task, great rotten breasts suffocating him. Franco struggled, head smashing from left to right and back. Claws gouged a circle around his skull-top. This was it! Death by screw-top! Banishing Queensbury Rules, Franco thumped the zombie in the belly and felt her stiffen in shock. He rolled, wriggling, dragging himself powerfully from the rugby scrum of squirming bodies, and rolled onto his hands and knees and began to crawl in an accelerated comedy fashion. A zombie jumped on his back. Franco’s head slammed up, back, a rear head-butt. The zombie disappeared, but left its upper denture embedded in Franco’s head. He scrabbled at it frantically as he crawled. “Euch!” he muttered, finally levering the teeth from his indented skull with a crunch and bringing them before his disbelieving eyes. He stared at the yellow fangs, still attached to a broken upper jaw. “You dirty, dirty bastards! Horrorshow! Pure horrorshow!” He crawled like a maniac, veering left and right between legs, between zombies, as hands, claws and talons thrashed at him, grasped at him, tore his clothes and his damaged, sparking WarSuit. Fangs bit his toes and he cursed his sandals. His D5 made a rhythmical clattering as he crawled beneath the writhing zombie throng. And then he saw it! The exit from the zombie disco. They may take my life, but they’ll never take my freedomm! He crawled, faster now. Hope burned like a birthed protostar in his breast. A zombie lurched before him. The D5 boomed, kicking, scattering the creature across the wall. And then he was free of the scrum, staggering to his feet and slipping and sliding on gore as he lunged for the exit—only to realise, with horror, that the exit wasn’t an exit at all, but blocked by wrist-thick curved bars of bone, absorbed into the organotower and molecularly redistributed to create a prison cell just for him. “Oh how the Gods mock me!” he wailed. Franco slammed against the bars. Blinked. Saw Keenan. Saw the attached explosive. Saw the flickering red light.
Keenan snarled, “Get back, idiot!”
Franco whirled, and charged like a lunatic towards the lurching zombies who were taken by surprise as their quarry sprinted panic-fuelled into their midst... with a click High-J detonated. Zombies were thrown around the disco as if in a blender.
In their midst, knocked and bashed and churned, gyrated a very unhappy Franco Haggis.
~ * ~
Franco opened his eyes—to see Keenan standing over him, an MPK in one hand, Techrim in the other. A low growling, moaning sound came to his ears. Keenan glanced down. Grinned. Through gritted teeth, he said, “I’d get moving real fast, Franco. They’re about to attack. Again.”
Franco scrabbled up, pulled free a fresh D5 shotgun, and scowled at the wall of wavering zombies. Around him lay a platter of torn zombie body parts, a mish-mash puzzle of severed arms, legs, limbless torsos and decapitated heads.
“They’ve been pulled apart! And I was in that?”
“It would seem you’re made of sterner stuff, Franco lad.”
Keenan opened fire at the wall of deviants, then the two men turned and fled, slipping on severed fingers and toes, and the occasional ear. They made for the blasted, bone-bar exit. Franco suddenly stopped.
“What is it?”
“A gift. For my leedle friends.” Franco rummaged in his pack, dropped a grenade at his feet, wiggled the pin at Keenan, then snapped, “Let’s go visit Voloshko.”
~ * ~
Xakus guided them up through the ever squirming interior of the organotower. They had evaded no less than six charging squads of mission-fevered Battle SIMs, and as they stood, sweating, and panting, waiting for Xakus to regain his breath, Keenan lit a cigarette and blew smoke over Franco. Franco had found a rag in his pack, and was scrubbing at his face, his beard, and his infected tongue.
“I feel dirty,” he said.
“You are dirty,” said Keenan, gazing at Franco’s bedraggled exterior. “You look like someone who’s just been mauled by zombies. Either that, or been to bed with them.” He winked.
“Shut up! Ugh! It was just, slime, in mouth, breasts, blue pus, green pussy, ugh. Not tell. You. How bad. Feel. Want. Vomit. Insides. Out. Sheeeat.”
“So, one to tell the grandchildren, then?” Keenan finished his Widow Maker. He checked his weapon, they eyed Xakus who appeared exhausted, dangling at the end of his tether. As he pointed out, he was a professor, not a soldier. And this mission was difficult, physically and emotionally; even for veterans.
“I can go on,” said Xakus, finally. “I’m just thankful the Battle SIMs have not taken up pursuit.”
“That’s the thing about SIMs,” said Keenan, his eyes and gun barrel endlessly roving for fresh danger. “Theoretically, they make great guards; I’ll be the first to admit they’re a bastard to put down. But when the danger is real, and you need some genuine IQ, a Battle SIM is not what you want by your side.”
Xakus nodded, and hauled himself to his feet. “It’s not far. I’m sure of it. All these egomaniacs seem to nest at the summits of their respective towers. That’s how this one was
designed. In the organic blueprints, anyway.”
Keenan gave a nod, checked his PAD. It was dead. Had been since they entered the organotower. Even Cam hadn’t been able to explain the phenomenon, although in fairness, Cam himself had been behaving strange since entry. And now Cam had vanished, Keenan once again felt like a father waiting till three AM for his daughter to return from her first trip to a nightclub. He was filled with a subtle uneasiness. When Cam disappeared on side-quests—well, it always made Keenan twitchy.
The group moved on. The temperature was still rising, and Keenan felt his mood turning sour, more bitter, the closer he got to this man, this Minister, of The Hammer Syndicate. Back at The Happy Friendly Sunshine Assurance Company Voloshko had not just taken Mel, he’d had the rebel kids, harmless as they were, exterminated. Violence against children always sat bad with Keenan. It made him do things he knew he would later regret, but strangely, in a detached way, was a personal parameter of viciousness he could not change. Deep down, Keenan was a bad man, a vengeful man, a bitter man, and he acknowledged these character traits without remorse. After all, somebody had put down the fuck-ups, didn’t they? And it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the government.