by Andy Remic
Betezh was waiting with the KTM Dirt-Spaz motocross bikes fuelled and primed. Pippa had comm'd him during her rapid descent. As her boots hit dirt, Betezh looked into a face lined with tiredness but with cold grey eyes; solid, stone, unrelenting and iron.
Betezh scanned the sky. "It's getting late."
"We have time."
"Wouldn't like to get caught out in unexplored terrain after dark."
"What are you?" sneered Pippa, "Combat K or Combat Chicken Soup? Get your shit together. We're moving out. Mel, you stay here and keep an eye on the 'Camp. And that bastard Miller. Wouldn't like him sniffing around our personal effects. Betezh, you good to go?"
"Yes." Betezh watched Pippa stomp to the bikes. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Whatever you say, boss."
Pippa slung her leg over the KTM and fired the engine, which rumbled into life, vibrating the big bubble tyres. Pippa gestured, and Betezh mounted his own ride, strapping his MPK machine gun to his back and grabbing the high bars with a grimace. "I'm not comfortable on a bike."
Pippa tutted, and opened the throttle, easing around the BaseCamp and heading out across a natural rocky trail. Betezh followed, huge tyres swallowing smaller rocks and ejecting them in his wake with little phrips. He was muttering, but clamped his teeth tight under threat of more Pippa mockery. Betezh never had been comfortable around women. That, and his Frankenstein stitching, was probably why he was still single.
Pippa led the way, first down rocky trails, then to wide natural avenues between sweeping hillsides of forest. Scents bombarded the two Combat-K soldiers, and they powered along at a modest pace, bike suspension thudding, tyres churning grass, until Pippa finally called a halt. Betezh pulled up alongside her.
"Everything OK?"
"It's up ahead."
"And you think it's an old hospital building?"
"Yeah. Either that, or a prison."
"Why would they need prisons on a Sick World?"
Pippa looked sidelong at Betezh, her mouth hinting at a smile. "You never read your background stuff, did you Betezh? You're a man in the same mould as the Franco Haggises of this world, you know that?"
Betezh beamed, taking this as a compliment. "So? Go on, spill the beans."
"There were people here, and aliens here. Sick people. Sick aliens. So far, so normal. But then, the sickness wasn't just a cough and a cold, wasn't just a broken leg. They had the criminally insane here, as well."
"Criminally insane?"
"The nutcases, the sex offenders, the murderers. Imagine a gross genetic blending of human and alien, taking, say, a Triklon for the sake of argument; now, those armoured fuckers were tough as hell, but mentally stable. Mix the two, add a few weird proto-virus strands, and God only knows what some of those doctors witnessed down on this diseased ball of sputum."
Betezh shivered. "I thought this was, y'know, just for illness. And stuff."
"Yeah Betezh. And stuff." She blipped the throttle, and her KTM gave a savage roar, returning to fast idle. "Just make sure you've got your gun primed."
"The DropBots said the place was clear."
"Maybe so. But I don't trust nothing. Only myself. My gun. My instincts. And baby, now they're screaming..."
"Bah! You're just being paranoid. Too much combat, too many army drugs in unwilling veins. You're talking a big load of shit, Pippa, and its spewing from you like a sewage-run overflow." Betezh stumbled into silence. He remembered to whom he was speaking.
Pippa stared at him for a long, hard moment, then shot off on her bike. Cursing, Betezh followed and they sped down a slippery moss-covered hill towards the outskirts of the hospital complex.
Betezh gazed up. And up. And pulled up beside Pippa with a small skid. He noted she'd killed her engine, and Betezh did the same.
"It's big," he observed, without necessity.
Pippa nodded. "Look around. At the mud pools."
Betezh noticed for the first time they'd travelled through a massive field of glooping pools. They bubbled softly, bubbles occasionally expanding and popping on the murky grey-brown surface.
"You smell sulphur?"
Pippa nodded. "I was more concerned about the tracks."
Betezh's eyes followed several long, slithering trails to the edge of the pools. "Ahh, that could be caused by simple erosion. Y'know, rain coming down off the hillside. Or something."
"It's the 'something' I'm worried about."
Pippa dismounted, and her KTM crackled, engine cooling. She pulled free a D5 shotgun and strapped it to her back, then checked her twin yukana swords which glinted with a hint of green.
Green?
Pippa and Betezh glanced up at the same time, where the edge of the horizon was glowing a fiery green.
"What the hell's that?" snapped Betezh, jumpy now.
"Night's falling. Sick World's moon, Jangla, reflects a green radiance. It's a kind of reverse sunset; we're seeing it now."
"So... soon it'll be dark?"
Pippa nodded, and re-sheathed her swords. "Sure looks that way."
"Maybe we should head back to BaseCamp? Y'know, explore in the morning, sort of thing?"
Pippa gave Betezh a withering look, then touched her earlobe comms. "Mel, you receiving? Good. Is everything OK there? Good. Listen, we've found the hospital complex I saw from the mountain top. We're heading in now, to explore..."
"Ow!" snapped Betezh, and slapped at his neck. Pippa frowned at him, and continued to speak to Mel.
Logging out, she moved forward and examined a small, red welt on the big man's tanned, dark skin. "What is it?"
"Felt like a bite."
"But there's no life down here," said Pippa, with a smile. "Come on."
They moved forward, stepping gingerly over a drag-trail perhaps two feet in width. Pippa knelt, examining the ground. "Whatever it was, it came from in there." She nodded up ahead, at the ancient hospital.
"Ouch!" Betezh slapped the back of his hand. He scowled. "Something bit me, Pippa. I ain't happy about this, because I'm the sort of man who attracts all manner of nasties and bugs and flying bastards. Look, you've not been bitten!"
"Maybe I have purer blood."
Betezh followed Pippa, and they came to the towering walls, crumbling grey, pockmarked with centuries of erosion. Wire cores stood out from several fallen sections, and the air was musty, not just with trace elements of sulphur from the nearby bubbling pools, but from a kind of inherent, locked decay on a slow-time half-life release.
Betezh stared at the sky. "It's definitely getting dark."
"Don't be a pussy." Pippa stepped across the threshold, between twisted, mangled, rusted gates which had been folded back as if by an angry giant's hands. There was a huge yard beyond, leading from the perimeter walls to the main building complex, and it was littered with rubble and debris, steel wires and huge chunks of old masonry.
"Why are there no weeds? No trees? No plants in cracks and crevices?"
Pippa shrugged. "Maybe it's the sulphur," she said, softly.
"Nothing wrong with my crack," giggled Betezh.
Pippa stared at him, then moved forward between piles of rubble. The main hospital complex ahead was a huge, cubic structure. Barred windows graced only the upper reaches, all small black holes, like missing teeth, hinting at nothing within. The only entrance Pippa could see consisted of large double doors; large enough, she presumed, to accept a big alien on a stretcher-trolley from a blue-lit turbo-ambulance.
"Ouch!"
Pippa turned. "Are you making this up, dickhead?"
Betezh stared at her, and relaxed into a lazy smile. "No girl, of course I'm not. Hey, you know, when we get back to BaseCamp we should crack open a few beers, y'know, tell some funny stories. I bet Mel has some crackers, y'know, about life as a zombie, and what it's like on your wedding night." Betezh stepped forward, swaggering a little, and poked Pippa in the upper arm. She slapped away his hand.
"What are you doing?"
"What do you mean, what am I doing,
chickpea?"
"Chickpea? Betezh, have you been drinking?"
"No! Of course not! That would be so unfopressional."
"Unfopressional?"
Betezh frowned. "Unfopressional! Pippa, babe, girl, chick, chipmunk, have you been drinking?"
Pippa gave a quick look to the double doors, which were gleaming with green light from Sick World's rising moon as shadows lengthened from the fast setting sun, then pulled free her PAD. "This might hurt," she said, and slammed the PAD extension cable into Betezh's neck. It gave a blip, as it analysed his blood. Pippa pulled free the PAD with a slup and analysed the readouts. She frowned... as something nipped her neck.
"Ow!"
"Y'see!" Betezh started to giggle, and suddenly fell back on his arse in a manner of drunken comedy slapstick. He started to roar with laughter, and slapped both his knees. "This is just great, don't you think? In fact, this looks like a good place to sleep." He started to curl into a ball and close his eyes...
"Shit." Pippa knelt by him, and slapped him, hard, a brutal stinging slap to his heavily-scarred cheek. "Listen! There's morphine in your blood. You're feeling euphoric." Something buzzed by Pippa's face and she twitched, an incredibly fast movement. The something blurred past her vision, then hovered, a foot before her. It was a tiny insect, a tiny metal insect, and Pippa's eyes narrowed as she saw instead of a face, it seemed to have -
A diminutive, almost microscopic, hypodermic needle.
Pippa's arm moved fast, still enclosed around the PAD which gave a chime, and snapped the insect from the air, imprisoning it. The PAD started to buzz as it analysed its trapped specimen and Pippa looked around, wary now. She drew her sword. Betezh giggled again. "Wha' you gonna do with that, chicken? Slice the little buglies in half?"
Something buzzed, and Pippa slammed the yukana. There came a tiny flash as the insect disintegrated. "Yeah," she snarled and, grabbing Betezh's collar, hissed, "Move your arse, soldier, we need to get inside the building. I've got a nasty feeling these little fuckers are gonna come in a swarm..."
"Then we'll get high!" chuckled Betezh.
"No. Then we get dead, then we get eaten. Move yourself!"
Betezh scrambled across the yard, almost on all fours as Pippa's eyes, narrowing through the half-light of the day/night transition, picked out more flying bugs. And the frightening thing was... she'd been right.
They rose from the bubbling pools, moonlight glinting green from the many insects' silvered carapaces, and buzzed in a tiny storm across the yard towards the scrambling duo... Pippa dragged Betezh with all her might, grunting and cursing and screaming at his giggling and general laid-back euphoria as they sprinted now for the abandoned hospital building and slammed against doors, which rattled in a heart-sinking I'm locked kind of fashion.
"Bastards!" screamed Pippa.
"Just press the button," slurred Betezh, grinning inanely.
"What fucking button?"
"That big red OPEN button, there." He pointed with a drooping scarecrow arm.
Pippa slammed her palm against the button. There was a buzz, and the doors opened easily allowing the two Combat-K squaddies to fall into a large, well-lit reception area. Outside, a swarm of insects sped towards the opening and the warm, fresh meat sprawled inside, sweating and stinking nicely. Pippa kicked at the doors, which lazily, languorously, started their juddering procedure of closure.
"Ch, ch, ch," said Betezh, and roared with incredibly boisterous laughter from his rolling, scrabbling position.
Several insects buzzed in, and Pippa's sword slammed left and right, sending tiny flashes sparking against a backdrop of darkening night sky. The doors closed with a click. Pippa whirled, eyes searching, and one final insect landed atop her head and stung her. She dropped, whirled, and her yukana killed the tiny thing with an actinic spark.
"Dit get you?" slurred Betezh.
Pippa rubbed her head. "Yeah. The little bastard."
Slowly, one of her knees buckled, and Pippa toppled to the sterile, cream-tiled floor. She watched the strip-lights overhead, and noted that in the corner, one was flickering, on off, on off, on off, in an annoying fashion. Something crept through her pleasure-filled brain with the lethargy of a steam-train grinding through an uphill tunnel. Who services the lights? Light bulbs don't last for a thousand years. Her eyes dropped, following ancient copper pipe-work, green and furred, which disappeared through the wall... and her last vision was of Betezh's leering, grinning, morphing face as she slipped unwillingly into unconsciousness.
She could smell them. They smelled of warm meat, sweat, salt, fear and sexual fluids. The nurse licked her lips. She liked salt. It made her tingle. And she liked sex juice. It made her writhe. She crept to the edge of the darkness beneath the stroboscopic strip-light and watched the tall woman, the dangerous one with the sword, watched her fall and the nurse's long tongue lolled out, dragging on the floor and leaving a trail of ichor. The nurse dragged herself forward a little, stumps scraping the tiles like wood on stone, and she rubbed at her mouth as drool eased free, smudging her cherry-red lipstick, so carefully applied, reapplied, and reapplied continually for the past several hundred years. After all... she wanted to look pretty. Her eyes fixed on the big fat man, big and fat, yes, but plenty, plenty meat. He rolled about, laughing, infected by the Morphs and their euphoria liquor and the nurse knew, knew as clear as Jangla followed the sun, chasing her like a rabid lover destined never to catch, that the fat man would succumb to the juice and would lie down and sleep and there would be no fight in him, no more, and her job, her joy would be so very much easier.
CHAPTER FOUR
SICK WORLD II: YAX
Franco skilfully piloted the DropShip towards the Yax co-ordinates with a big sloppy grin on his chops. This is going to be so ace, he thought cheerfully, picturing in his mind's eye the huge crate of seventy-two bottles of AssHole Vodka he'd packed, the crate of tinned Nuclear Chilli, a second crate of irradiated Curry Cream Cakes (Yummy, Yummy In My Tummy, Graaargh!) and the raison d'être of Franco's culinary machinations, a third and final crate of Puker's SuperFire Horseradish (guaranteed to put you on the bog for a month, or your money back!!!!!!!!). Franco loved horseradish. It was his favourite food in the world, and he smeared it on anything and everything that couldn't crawl off his plate; and maybe a few things that could.
As he piloted, one hand nonchalantly draped over the steering yoke, he eyed the rear-view mirror. There was Fizzy, red-headed and fiery, high cheekbones, dazzling green eyes, haughty and proud and rebellious and right up Franco's particular fantasy back alley. And there was Shazza, brunette, shorter and a bit more plumped out than Fizzy but hey hey hey Franco certainly loved a chick with a bit of meat on her, a bit of ham on that rump ass, so to speak, a bit of wobble to the chicken breast department... and certainly right up Franco's particular fantasy back alley. And then, there was -
"Shit and bugger and hot damn curried frogs."
There was Olga, huge and hairy, arms like a German shot-putter, head like a bulldog's only without the charm, and a powerful suffocating headlock that guaranteed she got a regular shot of "ze sexual intercourse" she so liked. Olga was staring into the mirror, ergo, into Franco's wandering eyes.
"Har har har!" boomed Olga, her voice drowning out the sultry chatter of the two uber-vixens seated just behind Franco and strategically positioned so that with a certain little twist of the mirror, he could peer down their buxom bosoms. "I see you there little Franco Haggis, all shy and sexy, and giving Olga ze eye in ze mirror you have cleverly positioned to watch your favourite oxen gal. Yar?"
It should be explained that Olga, prior to joining Combat-K as an honorary appointed veteran, had been instrumental in Franco, Keenan and Pippa's escape from beneath the violent lava-filled depths of the GreenSource Mainframe on the Biohell infected, well, hell, of The City only months earlier. During the mission, Olga had developed a serious crush on Franco and wasn't about to let something like his complete lack of reciprocation ge
t in the way of using and abusing his muscular (if somewhat short and stumpy) body. Without Olga, Franco would surely be dead, and there were few moments that went by without her reminding him of the God-awful truth, and thus her need for some kind of payback, preferably in a grotesque sexual manner. Pippa had commented that Olga was the female sexually deviated version of Franco, himself a sexual deviant extraordinaire. Franco had been far, far from amused, and refused to acknowledge she was, in fact, correct.
"Um, actually..." began Franco, in retaliation to this most slanderous of slanders, but his voice petered out as he caught a glimpse of the rapidly changing landscape beneath. Glorious trees and lakes and mountains had gradually dropped, panning out into ocean, and then the ocean filled with chunks of ice. Now, as they cleared a towering black mountain range of jagged dragon's teeth, Franco saw a wilderness of ice and snow unfold before him. There were mountains, yes, but high jagged-bastard mountains filled with the kind of ice that crushed men for breakfast, ate women for dinner, and burped out their bones as a party trick.
"What the hell is this?" he boomed, leaning forward, his languorous slouch suddenly dead and buried. "What's all this snow? And ice? And damn and buggering icy mountains? Eh? I said, eh?"
Fizzy leant forward, red hair a sultry tangle. "You mean you didn't read up on Yax? And you thought Pippa was joking?"
"Eh? I mean, of course I read about it." Franco preened. "It's just, I thought this was some kind of hot desert wilderness, filled with lakes and forests and we could go fishing and dancing, and fishing and loving, and get up to some deep-forest tomfoolery." He coughed. "All I've packed is shorts and t-shirts."
"Honey," said Shazza, running a hand through her hair (replete with Combat-K combat hair-clips), "it's damn near -40oC out there. In a T-shirt you'd last about twenty-five seconds before you went blue, maybe five minutes until death. Why the hell did you think we all brought hi-tech winter kit? Ice axes? Laser-guided grapplers? The finest in heated WarSuits?"
"Um..." Franco scratched his ginger goatee beard. "I thought the axes, were, y'know, weapons. For fighting with. To kind of, go, alongside, your, guns." He faltered. Then brightened. "There must be some winter kit in the hold of this here DropShip, after all..."