by Adam Bennett
He looked down at the group cavorting around the fire. Many more figures were coming in from dark portals and holes in the ground. They joined their friends in their revelry. Voro shook his head. They were too trusting. Just because this gang of mutants controlled this area of the sump they believed they were beyond reproach, untouchable. They always failed to remember those from the tower above. Voro and his family had preyed on them for years, thinning but not annihilating the herd. It had been a while though, he reflected, and he was shocked by the numbers of them streaming into the space below. He felt the organic weapon in his hand shiver with excitement; it could smell them.
* * *
Jolek moved deeper and deeper into the sump, sliding through pipes, splashing through sewers, his bodysuit sleek and shining with slime. He felt annoyed and agitated; he hated going down this far, but there had been little prey up on the higher levels. The families had been hunting up there too much, easy pickings were rarer now.
He hadn’t had a good week. He had woken up the morning after the bet feeling terrible; brain bug comedown and a wicked hangover obscured his memory of the night before and what he had agreed to. A mocking neuro-memo from Vero had reminded him. One hundred kills, a level-up the wager. He had panicked and done something drastic.
The days between then and now had been a haze of pumping his brain full of chemicals, alternating between cloud and frenzy, down and then up, a rollercoaster of escapism and pleasure, hate and loathing. By the time he was to descend into the lower reaches of the tower, down in the sump that stretched far underground, he had been a jangling mess. This was why he had no conventional weapons, why he had been to the black market gene splicer and gotten the craziest thing his wealth could afford.
He looked at it now, so incongruous, so innocent. It was just a vial full of green junk, twinkling in the dark like a tiny galaxy, a cosmos of putrid ooze. Was he really going to inject this stuff into his bio-suit’s chemical hub? Did he want to win that badly?
He put it out of his mind for a while and checked his bio-scanner, letting the array of his neural uplink show him the lay of the land, the maze of tunnels and broken hallways, the cascades of waste from the tower above, and the rising bile from the depths below. He ran a scan for energy signals. A red splotch showed up, a giant heat ping. It was just what he needed.
He didn’t want to think what would happen when he used the vial. He just wanted to get it over and done with. He didn’t want to think, didn’t even want to be here. He just wanted to get back to the tower with his kill count and rub it in Voro’s face. He just wanted his level-up and then it was back to his drugs and his easy life. He hated it down here in the sump. Why would anyone come here?
Because it was a true test of will, a true test of a hunter’s skill. Jolek realised he was no hunter, he was a cheat. He didn’t care. He despised Voro. He was probably out there, methodically making his kills, tagging and bagging them. Jolek felt sure he would lose the bet if he tried to match Voro at his own game. This was why he had the vial, why he was willing to take such an insane risk.
He moved closer and closer to the heat signature, thankful for the protection of his bio-suit as he swam across a glowing lake of liquid metal. He could smell the acrid taint of it cloud his nostrils, felt it being frantically filtered out of his bloodstream. He gave himself a measured dose of confidence using his brain bug and a hint of hate. He dialled down his revulsion and pushed on through the quicksilver pool, swimming hard with chemically enhanced muscles.
Emerging from the metallic lake he clawed his way up a bank of rubble and stood, dripping molten metal. He brushed off the clumps of nano-bot leeches that had attached themselves to his bio-suit. He had to urge his brain bug to give him another dose of anti-revulsion. This made him feel a lot more at ease, and let him feel the confidence and hate already coursing through his bloodstream. He was going to win. He was going to beat Voro.
The heat signature was just on the other side of a set of walls and broken bulkheads. He worked his way through the rubble. He could hear noises now; a chorus of riotous voices, guns going off, the massive crackle and fizz of a blazing fire. Up ahead was light and the poison stench of petrol and toxic sludge. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled forward.
Through a metal grill he could see the scene; a hundred or more mutant rabble gathered around a bonfire, partying. He was high above them, looking down through rising green and black smoke. They were strange melted shapes, humans turned sour through long exposure to the toxic waste of their environment. This place, these people, were the dregs of their society, the chaff that drifted to the bottom. They didn’t deserve to live, they had no purpose, other than to be hunted.
For all that though, they were survivors. Jolek knew he would die in this environment without his bio-suit. How had these creatures clung to life so tenaciously? He didn’t care. He just wanted his count, and here they were, a mass of kills big enough to unleash himself upon. It was time.
He took the vial from its holster and placed it into his bio-suit’s chemical hub. He paused. Was this the right thing to do? He wasn’t even sure how to stop it once it started. The black marketeer had tried to warn him. He wouldn’t listen; he was confident his brain bug would come up with something. There was a chemical answer for everything. If it got out of hand, or lasted too long the bug would come to his rescue. It always had in the past.
As if to prove a point his brain bug pumped his mind full of reassurance and a touch of tranquillity. He felt relaxed, his mind floating on a calm stream. He was sure. He put his hand on the chemical hub. He activated the vial. Suddenly, his brain bug shuddered and filled his mind with panic. Something was wrong. The brain bug was rejecting the serum. The serum was fighting the brain bug. The brain bug was losing.
The serum coursed through the bio-pathways of his suit. It uploaded its protein matrices into his bloodstream, flooded his cells with new DNA. It started a chemical cascade that Jolek instantly knew was beyond his brain bug to reverse. His muscles expanded, puffing his body like a balloon. He became something else. He became a weapon.
* * *
Voro said a quick prayer to his ancestors and then let the organic weapon go to work. It swept up his arm eagerly and stretched out over his shoulder, down his arm, and up over his head. It clawed its way into receptors on his bio-suit and interfaced with it seamlessly. Suddenly Voro was aware of its senses, he could see what the weapon could see, smell what it smelled, feel what it felt. It was like looking down the sights of a living sniper rifle.
Using his subconscious intuition and the will of the weapon itself, he picked his targets from the mutants below and began to fire. There was a smell like excrement as the weapon fired its living projectiles; little black and pink insects that shot straight and true. They hummed as they cut the air and hit their targets with a soft, fleshy impact. There was no blood. The targets went down, the insects expanded and ate them from inside out.
All was chaos and confusion around the fire. The mutants began firing into the galleries and ruins all around them, unable to locate their attacker. More of them fell and began to turn into bloated sacks as the insects consumed them. They ran around in panic, tripping over their transformed comrades. One of them fell in the fire and began to scream as he burned.
Voro laughed, sensing it all through the eyes of his living rifle. He could feel its hunger being sated, felt its joy at the kill, and he revelled in it as well. On and on the killing went until there were no more targets. The air grew still, only broken by the crackling fire and the grotesque sounds of the feeding frenzy within the organic sacks of flesh below.
Voro checked his kill count. Ninety nine. He cursed. He was utterly livid. There had been so many down there. Where had they all gone? Now he was going to have to stalk them through the tunnels once more, and he knew how hard that could be. The mutants were wriggly little buggers in their own environment.
Voro felt his organic weapon pulling at him and he reluct
antly began a chemical cascade using his brain bug that would allow it to detach from him. It slithered off and spread a set of four translucent wings that unfolded from a slit in its back. It went to be with its prey, to be with its offspring. It flew amongst the sacks, tending to its feeding young, preparing to consume them in turn and complete its lifecycle.
A huge, resonant bellow echoed throughout the chamber, causing Voro to jump and his brain bug to contract instinctually and give him a shot of adrenaline. It sung through his veins and he looked around frantically for the source of the noise.
A shape fell from high among the twisted mass of the ceiling. In near panic Voro urged his bio-suit to send a pheromone recall to his organic weapon, but it was too late. The bulk fell upon his beloved weapon and pulverised it. The feeding sacks pulsed in symbiotic response.
Voro saw the shape stand up and terror filled his mind in a wave of chemicals stabbing along synapses. It was like a massive malformed ape, with melting red flesh and thick green veins visible along monstrous muscles. It stopped for a moment and let out a tremendous roar, a throaty, rasping bellow that resounded around the chamber. Then it thrashed about itself, popping the feeding sacks in a frenzy, their skins rupturing and deflating as great clouds of red mist were thrown into the air.
Voro stood transfixed in shock. For a second he thought about trying to kill the beast, a fine trophy to round out his one hundred kills, but then it turned its baleful red eyes upon him. In a flash he felt he saw a hint of recognition cross the creature’s face as they looked at one another. Then Voro turned and ran.
* * *
Inside the beast Jolek felt himself going insane in his bloodlust. His grotesquely misshapen body was strong and unstoppable. He felt like a god. All he saw was his kill count going up across his optics interface and a terrible red haze. When the counter reached a hundred he wanted to stop, but he knew he couldn’t. His brain bug was shrivelled and atrophied, a rotten lump inside his head, no longer functional. The serum had taken over every process in his body and he was something more, and something much less, than human now.
He saw Voro up on the ledge looking down at him. A part of him knew it was his competitor, his friend, and another part of him didn’t care. All he saw was a bag of flesh, a thing to kill. The bet was long gone in his mind. He was carried away on a wave of chemical impulses far beyond his control as he began to frantically climb towards his prey.
* * *
Voro fled in utter terror. He could hear the creature tearing at the walls behind him, screaming with its demon voice down the hallway. It was gaining on him, and he knew he was going to die. His brain bug urged him not to give up, giving him shots of every enhancing drug in its arsenal. He ran faster, his mind became clearer. He began to think as he ran.
The only weapon he had were the micro-lasers in his hands. They would be like pinpricks to a monster like that. What else? He had nothing. No. Not nothing; he had his suit with its bio-interface, and he had his brain bug.
A few seconds later the beast caught up to Voro and made a dive for him. The shock of the impact took his breath away. They tumbled into a mass of rotten wood; eight legged rats scuttled away in fright. The beast had Voro in its grasp, its strength immense. It was crushing the life out him. He had to act fast.
He linked his brain bug to his suit’s bio-interface. A series of needles poked from his bio-suit. The brain bug did the rest. It activated its natural defence mechanisms, infecting its prey with its own gene code. It went to fight the beast on a molecular level. Into its cells it went, cutting protein molecules and rerouting DNA strands. It took over the bio-machinery of its foe.
It did what Jolek’s brain bug would have done if it were functional—it reversed the process of the serum. The beast began to deflate just as Voro felt his own life fading away beneath the crushing mass. His brain bug brought him back from the brink, a last shot of adrenaline giving his heart a kick and restarting his crushed lungs.
Voro lay gasping for air, thrashing about as he rolled from beneath his assailant’s limp form. It was dead, overwhelmed by the competing forces tearing it apart at a cellular level. Voro read his own vital stats from his optics interface in disbelief.
“Thank my ancestors, I’m alive!” he croaked, sitting up with a jerk. He felt his brain bug go numb inside his head like a frozen rock—it was exhausted but he didn’t care, it had saved his life. He shook his head to clear his vision and looked at his kill count. It had clicked over to one hundred. A thrill ran through him, completely natural perhaps for the first time in years. He had done it! He had won the bet. He couldn’t wait to tell Jolek, to rub it in his face and claim his prize—a level-up in the tower!
He looked at the shape next to him. He blinked a few times, clearing the optics interface and the haze of pain and adrenaline. Looking up at him with dead eyes was the malformed, but still clearly recognisable, face of Jolek.
Voro couldn’t believe it. He poked the face with his finger to prove to himself it was real. He shook his head. He wasn’t going up a level after all. He had won the bet, nearly died, and all for nothing.
“Fine!” he shouted, fed up and resigned in his exhaustion. He picked himself up and wearily made his way towards the portals that led to the upper reaches of the tower. To his own surprise he began to laugh. At least he was still alive, and he had one hell of a story to tell at the lodge.
The Hunters was first published in THE COLLAPSAR DIRECTIVE: A Science Fiction Anthology along with 20 other fantastic stories. You can find it on Amazon in ebook or paperback.
The Butcher of Blengarth
David Bowmore
The threat of snow hangs heavy in the air as a figure carrying a backpack walks along a road wet with day old slush. Wind whistles through the woods banked high above the traveller on either side of the road.
In this part of the world, street lighting does not connect one town with the next. Thick cloud obscures all illumination from the moon and stars. A torch held in one gloved hand provides limited light, making the journey slightly more bearable. The figure’s shadow begins to grow and stretch ahead, as a vehicle approaches from behind.
Turning, the figure extends an arm with the thumb raised. She blinks several times as the headlamps of the small, blue car pass by, leaving her once again in comparative darkness.
Who in their right mind would stop for a stranger on a night like tonight?
To her surprise the car slows and eventually stops, evidently waiting for her to quicken her pace.
The window rolls down smoothly, and a warm feminine voice from within says, “Get in then.”
She stands back and opens the door with a loud creak that sends nesting birds scattering from their night’s rest.
“Thanks,” she says, sitting awkwardly with the backpack wedged between her legs.
“I’m going as far as Blengarth.”
“That’ll do. Thanks.”
“Where’re you headed?” the driver asks, changing gear.
“Anywhere, as far away as possible.”
“There’s a blizzard coming.”
Snow begins to fall, proving her correct. She flicks a stick on her driving column to activate the wipers.
“Shit, really? I thought the worst was over.”
She thinks she’s upset the driver with her coarse language. The swish-scree of the rubber wipers highlights the silence settling inside the car.
“Don’t you worry about picking up hitchhikers?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, I might be a serial killer.” She smiles to emphasise the joke.
“I see what you mean, but how do you know I’m not?”
The driver smiles at the look of surprise on the hitchhiker’s face and then winks to let her know she’s pulling her leg.
“Only joking. Name’s Mira.”
“Hi. Janet,” says the hitchhiker, offering her hand. They shake awkwardly.
The flakes of snow increase in size and b
egin to lay thick on the bonnet of the car. The windscreen wipers flick the wet splotches faster. Mira turns the heating up.
“I hate this stretch of road,” she says. “The council never seem to spread grit here.”
The back end slides as they round a tight curve, causing Janet to close her knees tight on the backpack.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe. Trust me. Are you running from someone?
“You can tell?”
“Who sets out on a night like this without planning?”
Janet fiddles with the toggles at the top of her bag. Then, taking a deep breath, says, “Yes, I’m running. The situation with my partner is over. He won’t accept it. I tried leaving once before and he broke a mug of tea over my head, he did. I needed stitches.”
“Shit!” Mira throws a concerned glance out of the corner of her eye.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t unload on you.”
“Doesn’t matter. Sometimes a stranger is the best person to talk to. If you ask me, you’re doing the right thing. Men, they’re all bastards.”
Silence settles between them again. Mira has to slow the car as the snowfall becomes increasingly thicker, making it difficult to see the front of the bonnet.
“So, he doesn’t know you’ve gone yet?”
“No, I’ll get word to him in a day or two.”
“I’m sorry.” She is hunched over the steering wheel as if being closer to the windscreen will help her to see further.
“When you’re not picking up runaways, what do you do?”
“Me? I’m a butcher.”
“Oh… you don’t see many women butchers.”
“I know it’s not a normal trade for us to seek out, but believe me, I do the job as well as any man.”
“It will be a long time before men believe that.”
Mira took her eyes of the road for a second to share a sympathetic smile, and then said, “Jesus, this snow. Can you believe it?”