Warhead

by Andy Remic

  ‘Do it!’ barked Carter, turning to look behind him, half expecting a Nex gunman to emerge at any moment.

  With a grunt, Mongrel leapt out onto the girder. It shook. His feet did a crazy little dance and his arms windmilled in huge sweeping arcs, fists clenched, head swaying in some crazy parody of a spastic attack. He finally gained his balance. He turned towards Carter, eyes wide, and grinned.

  ‘No problemo!’ Then he winked.

  Carter groaned, shaking his head as Mongrel nearly slipped. And with arms outstretched, the huge squaddie began to cross the fire-scorched metal beam. He negotiated the middle gap without mishap, and Carter was just about to cheer when something went rotten and dead inside his soul.

  ‘They’re coming, they’re close,’ came Kade’s corpse-cold voice.

  ‘The Nex?’

  ‘Aha! You’re bright as well. Thought you might need, a bloody-fisted hand, brother. I’ve been watching you recently, and I have to say that I’m proud of you—proud of what you have achieved with your violent ingenuity ...’

  ‘You’ve been quiet since Constanza mentioned your name.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that fucking bitch needs to die ... give me some control and I’ll see what I can do, eh, mate? She is a weevil in the flour; a beak in the chicken burger; an eyeball in the steak. She needs to be excised with a sharpened scalpel, fucked hard and brutal from behind, like a dog, then burned on a pyre stained red with her own heavy stinking womb-flow.‘

  Carter glanced down at the Browning in his hand. When he looked up, a Nex was creeping around the corner, moving with the ease and grace of a natural predator.

  Carter raised his gun and pulled the trigger. Behind him Mongrel wavered precariously, and cursed, shaken by the gunfire. His stare dropped to the black gulf below and with a supreme effort, he struggled across the last stretch of the beam with a lurching zombie gait.

  The Nex charged, Carter’s Browning boomed again in his fist as the Nex raised its Steyr TMP but Carter’s bullets smashed into the stock, sending the gun flying from the Nex’s grip. Carter’s weapon’s firing pin gave a dead man’s click and he cursed himself: Kade had rattled his brain, making him lose track of how many bullets remained in his gun.

  The Nex leapt, and Carter charged to meet the mixtture of insect and man. He ducked a savage right hook, and thundered a straight to the Nex’s chin, sending it staggering backwards. He followed through with a series of vicious hooks and jabs, but the Nex blocked the blows on its forearms and grabbed Carter’s head, bringing its own forehead down in a vicious head-butt that broke Carter’s nose yet again. Carter dropped to one knee as a kick struck his head and he rolled with the blow, close to the edge of the drop.

  Carter leapt up, blocking a hook and sweeping a low kick that the Nex dodged. Then Carter’s next heavy punch found the Nex’s groin and his strong fingers grasped the thin body-hugging uniform, dragging his adversary into a bear hug. Carter grinned evilly, blood running from his broken nose, and smashed his own forehead into the Nex’s face, three times, feeling something crumble beneath the mask. The copper eyes, however, still stared at Carter.

  ‘You will never escape this place,’ the Nex hissed.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘There are things here you could never imagine in your worst nightmares!’

  ‘I have some pretty fucking bad nightmares.’

  Carter hoisted the Nex into the air and heaved with all his might. The body flipped, trying to twist from its trajectory—but the Nex could do nothing as it plummeted past the girders and fell, tumbling into the darkness of the chasm far below with its hands flailing and grasping at cold air. Carter moved to the edge and stared down.

  There was no scream; just a heavy, sodden slap of impact. ‘Come on, Carter!’ yelled Mongrel from the opposite ledge. Carter could sense the approach of more Nex; he ran at the girder, sprinting across the narrow blackened strut, sweat gleaming on his brow. In a few strides he had covered the distance.

  Constanza stepped past him and opened fire with her sub-machine gun. Bullets flashed across the abyss. Nex ducked low and the group backed away. Constanza kept firing three-round bursts as Carter produced another HPG.

  ‘Oh no,’ muttered Mongrel.

  ‘Oh yes,’ snarled Carter, pulling the pin and rolling the HPG towards the broken girders and the dark pit beyond. The group ran, crouching behind a protective wall as a muffled blast boomed down the corridor. Carter glanced around the corner to see smoke billowing from new wreckage. A bomb-blast atop a bomb-blast had destroyed the remaining girders.

  ‘Messy,’ said Mongrel, peering over Carter’s head.

  ‘Come on, you fucking circus monkey.’

  ‘Monkey? Moi?’ Mongrel grinned, flames reflecting against his few remaining teeth. ‘I gorilla, that for sure, but nothing so low-rent as mere monkey.’

  The two men followed Constanza further into the depths of the abandoned base: Spiral_R.

  They passed laboratories, many of them wrecked by bombs or riddled with bullet holes. Several were even flooded, with alloy benches floating in a thick slop of evil-smelling broth. They saw ransacked storerooms, empty except for old sacks and dented metal containers. They passed deserted barrack rooms, several still intact, but many the scenes of past brutal battles. Old black bloodstains still marked the peeling walls and decayed bedding. Dead maggots lay in old tins of rotten grey meat.

  Mongrel peered into one such room. ‘Looks like they got slaughtered in their sleep.’

  Carter frowned then. Something had been nagging at him since they had entered Spiral_R; something subliminal, a test of his observation skills. Something which had been scratching at the edges of his brain—and he knew he was missing something of great importance which was actually glaringly obvious. Yet he could not focus, could not pinpoint, could not tie the fucker down.

  Constanza stared at Carter’s expression, reading his confusion. She frowned then, golden-eyed gaze moving nervously around the room. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There are no bodies,’ Carter said, realisation striking him like a hammer blow. ‘There should be bodies—or decomposed flesh, or skeletons, or something. Shouldn’t there?’

  ‘By God!’ thundered Mongrel ‘You is right!’

  Carter whirled to face Constanza. ‘Is this the work of ‘our people?’ His inflection made people sound like war criminals. ‘Is this place where they harvest? Were the dead Spiral men and women their fucking food store?’

  ‘No,’ said Constanza softly, shaking her head, brow creased. ‘They were cannibalistic, yes, but it was more of a holy ritual, more of a system to instil fear in their enemies, a method to keep the tribe intact. It was a form of survival, Carter. And I would like to see how you would have coped in such a situation.’ She met his hostile stare, her head held high and proud. ‘We’re not so different, you and me. I wonder how you would have relished the role of monarch?’

  ‘You talk of survival. It is ironic, then, that the Nex wiped the cannibal army out so swiftly.’

  ‘They were still people,’ said Constanza. ‘Yeah, they were victims of a biological mess—and it fucked them up. But, hey, isn’t that what society is all about? Protect those whom nature has picked to die? Don’t judge me, Carter. Never judge me.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Carter, his tone hard, his expression unreadable. He did not like this place. It smelled of death. And the smell lingered. ‘I’ve got a feeling the chasm won’t stop the Nex for too long. Let’s move on.’

  In silence, Constanza led the way and they followed the corridors which were now sloping steeply downwards. Hundreds branched off, an incredible and complicated maze of rooms and labs and offices.

  ‘We’ll probably lose them down here,’ said Constanza after a while. They had taken many turnings, and she had led them a zigzagging route. ‘Unless their sense of smell is that acute.’

  ‘It is,’ said Carter sombrely.

  They followed more ramps. The signs of battle were fewer down here; there was less
destruction, fewer bomb-blast scorches and bullet scars. Until the group suddenly reached a long sloping corridor which had had all the wall panels ripped free, leaving bare trailing wires and the visible remains of thousands of panel-chassis components. Above the group the emergency lighting flickering intermittently. They halted.

  ‘I not like this,’ said Mongrel.

  ‘Who’s ripped off the wall panels?’ asked Carter. ‘And why? What possible use could anyone have for them?’

  ‘Let’s hope we don’t find out,’ said Constanza briskly, striding along under the flickering lights.

  Mongrel leaned towards Carter. ‘I got real bad feeling about this,’ he muttered.

  ‘Join the fucking club,’ said Carter.

  The long ramp suddenly ended, running out into a huge gloomy chamber. Carter squinted, and could just make out machinery on high gantries and rails, huge cranes and industrial robots—all silent and dead. Ahead, the darkness was deep and black, but they could make out the lights of a distant corridor, a tiny square of light on the opposite side of the vast space.

  ‘Why it so dark?’ asked Mongrel warily as they attempted to get their eyes to adjust to the gloom.

  ‘Forget the darkness—what is that fucking smell?’ Carter coughed thickly on a pungent, putrid aroma.

  They paused, suddenly aware of a new noise as well. The sounds of their footsteps, their quiet voices, the coughs and wheezes of Mongrel—all this had cloaked a background crackling hiss.

  ‘What that noise?’ said Mongrel.

  ‘Come on, Constanza, what’s going on here?’ Both men turned to the woman, who shrugged, silhouetted against the flickering light of the corridor. They could not read her facial expression.

  ‘It is many years since I ventured this far under Spiral_R. All I know is that this way was clear and brightly lit the last time I passed through. This is an assembly and repair bay, for tanks, bikes, fighters, choppers—you name it. Tibet isn’t the most hospitable and easily reached location; vehicles formed an important part of the Spiral operation out here. There are several such bays.’

  Suddenly, a scream echoed out shrilly from the dark. It made the hairs on the back of Carter’s neck stand out and he tracked the sound with his Browning as it died away to a bubbling murmur.

  ‘What the fuck? snapped Mongrel.

  ‘It has to be your cannibal friends,’ said Carter with a wry smile. He checked the magazine in his Browning, then patted at his pockets, making sure that he had enough ammunition. ‘And they’re out there in the dark.’

  ‘You mean we got to cross blind?’

  ‘Your eyes will adjust.’

  ‘I not sure I want them to!’

  ‘Come on,’ snapped Constanza impatiently. ‘If it is the cannibals, then at least they shouldn’t be armed. Not with guns, at any rate. And when you think about it, boys, standing here against the light just silhouettes us. Nice clear shot, anybody?’

  Jerked from their reverie, the two men hurried after her. Something crunched under their boots. ‘Let’s all stay close now,’ said Mongrel, voice wavering, sweating heavily as his huge head swung nervously from left to right. Something brushed against his leg and he kicked out, biting his tongue to stifle the urge to yelp. You is being big baby! he thought wildly to himself. You is being big pussy cat! You be tough, you is the Mongrel, not some little pizda maggot.

  ‘Just fix your stare on that far light,’ said Constanza. ‘That’s your target; that’s where we’re going. We will be there in a few short minutes.’

  ‘This a very big chamber,’ muttered Mongrel, talking merely to take his mind off his sudden fear. ‘It not very nice, oh no. It cold, and not smell too good. When I get out of this, I going get myself big hot dog with all runny mustard and ketchup. No! I fancy chilli dog! Filled with fire. And large mug of sugary tea, good old-fashioned English brew.’

  They walked on through the darkness, bumping into small, soft objects, and sometimes with their boots crunching what felt like tiny stones underfoot. Slowly, their eyes adjusted slightly to the deeply oppressive darkness.

  Carter suddenly slid on something which compressed under his boot; he nearly fell. There was a heavy squelch and a pop. Breathing deeply, he scraped the boot against his other one and with jaw clamped tight continued on, his stare fixed straight ahead.

  And then a moaning sound began, a low ululating, drifting lament rising from the croaking, husky throats of many beings.

  The noise ascended like a chant, filling Carter and his companions with a rising sense of horror.

  Mongrel bumped into a figure, dimly outlined and shambling in the gloom. He screamed, and fired a shot in panic, dropping the shape instantly. There was a bright flash of fire from the muzzle of his gun, and in the sudden illumination the group saw exactly where they were and what surrounded them. They saw a true vision of Hell.

  They were in a pit, low-walled and circled by ramps. Everywhere lay bodies, diseased and naked, thin-limbed and covered with sores weeping pus, riddled with infection and creating a communal stench of slowly rotting, barely living flesh.

  In the flash of light, Carter saw hundreds of figures. Some lay prostrate, alone, unmoving; some squirmed together in sliming parodies of disease-sex, fucking in slow, rhythmical movements, sores and parted flesh rubbing together in a total merging of blood and pus and semen and contagion. Some bodies lay in tiny piles, human pyramids of putrefaction sporting twisted limbs and slack jaws and staring eyes and a core of decay, with a grinning round-eyed cannibal sitting atop each pile as if he was king.

  And the floor: what had once been an alloy-panelled vehicle bay was now a sea of blood and pus, a scatter of bones and skulls, old weapons blood-congealed to metal, and occasional dismembered limbs. Carter saw that where they thought they had been walking across gravel, they had in fact been traversing a bed of yellowed old knuckle bones.

  Both Carter and Mongrel retched as the darkness closed back in. Constanza said, her voice shaking slightly, ‘I think we’d better move. And fast. We’re attracting some unwanted attention.’

  Mongrel wiped his vomit-stained mouth on his sleeve. Suddenly he pulled free his ECube. He activated it and a dull blue glow radiated, allowing the group to once more witness the horror of this pit of squirming human decomposition.

  ‘Like moths to a light bulb,’ warned Carter.

  ‘I need to see!’ bellowed Mongrel. ‘I sick of standing on popping eyeballs!’

  They began to jog, now that they had a light source, albeit a feeble one. Constanza had been right: they were attracting attention. Lots of it.

  A grey-haired man with no teeth and a missing nose, naked except for what looked like a green knitted jumper, lurched into their path, a bright light in his grey eyes and his maggot-like penis swaying. They dodged to one side, veering around his shambling efforts at walking. But a hand lashed out, nails blackened with blood, and grabbed at Mongrel who squawked and put a bullet between the old man’s eyes. The disease-riddled corpse collapsed to the ground.

  Carter looked back and saw that already a woman had dragged herself to the old man and was eating his face, chewing at his cheeks, tearing at strings of flesh.

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Mongrel. ‘Overreaction.’

  ‘Even napalm wouldn’t be a fucking overreaction here,’ came Carter’s low growl. ‘You did him a favour, mate. You did him a big fucking favour.’

  They sped on, and more figures—all around, but more importantly, up ahead—had crawled to their sore-speckled feet. The group were suddenly confronted by a huge bloated woman, so large she was unable to stand. She squatted back on her wobbling tree-trunk haunches, and heaved a slithering still-birth into the mire on platters of gore, pushed from bright pink flaps of a warped and distended vagina. They sprinted around this cackling monstrosity, as she took the still-born and began to feed.

  ‘I think I want to die,’ stuttered Mongrel.

  ‘Better death than this.’

  Ahead, figures were lumbering to
cut them off. Constanza had raised her gun but seemed unable to fire. The suddenly halted, and Mongrel and Carter nearly slammed into her rigid back.

  ‘What is it?’ barked Carter.

  ‘I can’t! I can’t shoot them! They are unarmed, polluted. They may be freaks—but they do not know what they are doing! I can’t kill them in cold blood.’

  ‘They want to fucking eat you!’ screamed Carter, and wrenched the sub-machine gun from her hands. The gun blasted in his steady grip, and he mowed down a line of staggering human-form disease, creating a gap through which they could escape.

  Mongrel went first, then Carter. Finally, Constanza followed, tears on her cheeks. The walking corpses milled around in confusion, then fell to eating, with file-sharpened teeth, their fallen comrades.

  Mongrel was the first to get his boots on the ramp of the alloy corridor. He stood there, a look of horror on his face, and turned with haunted eyes as Carter and Constanza joined him. ‘I thought I had stomach for anything,’ said the big squaddie. ‘But that... that! It make a man want to forget fried breakfasts—oh, for at least a week!’

  They moved up the corridor, away from the squirming mass of rotting cannibals, and stopped at the top, breathing slowly, calming their thumping hearts.

  ‘You nearly got us killed out there,’ said Carter.

  Constanza stared up at him. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she said simply.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I could not shoot them because there were faces I recognised. Some of those people were ex-Spiral! God only knows what happened to them down here, what toxins and poisons have been let loose in this place ...’

  ‘Makes me happy to breath Tibetan air,’ muttered Mongrel. Then he launched into a quick-fire barrage of stilted Russian, German and tension-relieving gibberish. Carter nodded. He hoisted the sub-machine gun and pocketed his Browning. Then his face set in a hard mask and he glanced back down the corridor. Eyes stared back from the edges of the gloom, watching him carefully. There was intelligence in there. And patience. Carter shivered.