by Andy Remic
Something glinted. In the ice. Buried.
Franco squinted.
"Wassat?" He scratched his beard, and killed the Buggy's engine. Silence fell in like a tumbling of worlds. He opened the cockpit, and the outside environs were curiously still, perfectly calm, a plateau of the idyll. Franco climbed clumsily up, clumped across corrugated steel, and thumped into the snow up to his knees.
He started to move forward. "Blast. Bugger. Damn." The snow impeded every movement, every little action, making every exploit ten times harder. Wading forward, Franco was soon red in the face and acknowledging in that secret place every sausage-eater holds in his heart that he really, obviously, most definitely should give up dodgy meat.
Franco halted. Everything was Christmas still. He squinted again, altered direction, and waded forward like a whale in quicksand.
"Ah har!" Franco stopped, and poked at the glinting thing. It was a sign. A metal sign. Franco brushed away loose snow and scratched his nose. The sign read: REC CENTRE. Franco prodded it. "Eh?" he said. "What's that supposed to mean?"
And then, with a subtle shifting of focus, a different world swam into view. Franco blinked, lower jaw dropping open like a slack primate on discovering a stash of bananas. There, as if formed from ice and glass, was a building; low walled, gleaming, refracting, a prism in its entirety and so placed as to be almost invisible from any angle amidst its snowy domain.
"Wow," said Franco. "This must be it. The Treasure Temple! The place where I gets to fill my pockets!" He licked ice-rimed lips, and rubbed vigorously at his ruddy cheeks. He blew into frosted hands. His eyes gleamed like jewels. "Man," he chuckled, "I'm gonna be so fucking rich!"
Franco moved forward, pushing through snow towards the obvious entrance...
It could not believe its luck. Meat. Warm meat. Breathing, sweating, stinking, ripe with salt. It heaved itself onto its haunches, tensed its massively powerful muscles, brushed free a recent fall of snow, and bellowed like an exploding sun...
The Hape charged at Franco, who stood, stunned, mouth agape, arse reciting a sonnet. It was big, eight or nine feet in height, covered in a thick, shaggy, matted fur, its eyes blood red, its fangs a dirty yellow and pulled back over jaws and teeth and tongue which reminded him so very much of a human -
"Rrrshcriek!" screamed the Hape, pounding snow, claws leaving long grooves, head pushing obscenely forward on muscles as thick as Franco's waist in its eagerness to rip and tear and rend and feed -
Franco fought with his pack, and dragged at his D5 shotgun. Ice-numbed fingers fumbled and tugged at straps as the huge, huge, grinning, screaming monstrosity, a kind of long-armed ape with a skinless human face and bobbing, curled white hair and blue, blue eyes slammed towards him with sickening speed. The D5 came free, swung around. Snarls smashed the crisp air and the creature faltered, stumbling a little, but still came on. Fangs stretched for Franco. He could seem himself reflected, distorted, in their glistening slime... The D5 boomed in his hands again, shells screaming into the mass of fur and muscle, but still the beast came on, and Franco started to stumble back, worry etched into his features as he pumped the weapon, fired again and again, each shot slamming the huge beast, slowing it a fraction in its erratic hate-fuelled charge but not actually dropping it...
"Wah!" screamed Franco, pumping shot after shot into the beast, and as it finally faltered, stumbling, feet-like claws skidding and gouging the snow, it slammed him, taking him in a huge furry embrace that sent his D5 skittering lost in the snow and sent him rolling, rolling in an embrace like lovers through powdered white as they whirled round and round. Franco could smell hot fur and meat and bad breath and blood and the thing had him, encircled, ensnared, clasped like a horny drunk fat bird as they pulverised through the snow and eventually and finally rolled to a halt.
Franco waited to see if anything else horrible might happen.
Finally, he opened a beady eye.
A seven-thousand foot drop met his gaze, only inches from his nose. It was quite possibly awesome.
With a grunt, Franco reached up and lifted a mammoth, heavily muscled arm from his chest. It flopped uselessly to one side, and Franco scrambled from the Hape's death-grip. Franco stared down at the human face, the ape body, and nodded to himself. Yeah, he thought. Hape is a good name. A human ape. He shuddered. What sort of weird messed-up deviant experiments have been going on here? He stood up. Hot damn and damn bloody chickenballs. Franco shuddered, then stamped his sandal in the snow.
"Goddamn!" he shouted. "What's going on? The damn DropBots scanned this place! They said it was deserted! No life! Lifeless! Safe! And then this here big bastard of a human ape monster thing comes charging and spitting and snarling at me from the snow!" He stamped his foot again, sheer indignation overwhelming his fear.
Franco stared hard at the grey-white fur. The humanesque face was oval, quite pretty. And now, quite dead.
"Bugger."
Franco cast about for his D5, aware he stood on the edge of a precipice. "There! Aha!" He crunched toward the edge of the drop, and reached for his D5. There came a distant, second-hand creaking of snow. Franco froze like an idiot in a spotlight.
Somewhere, in a distant cage of memory, a key turned in a lock with a tiny click.
What was the word? he thought.
Cornice?
Hell, he thought. Isn't that when snow builds up on the edge of a ridge, or overhang, or summat, and then some fool and damn blast idiot goes wandering over it not realising that all they're actually standing on is raw snow, and not that good hard solid hard rock beneath?
Franco gazed down. His fingers flexed.
The cornice creaked, and Franco fancied his boots slid a little deeper into the treacherous overhang.
He twitched.
From the corner of one eye he watched at least a dozen of these newly christened Hapes awake from slumber in deep snow-holes and rise, like mighty fur-bedecked leviathans, shaking off snow from shaggy matted hides and turning blue-eyed, oval-faced intelligent gazes on this little sandalled man stretching for his gun beside the recently felled corpse of one of their ilk who also was conveniently lending a good six-hundred pounds of excess baggage to the creaking, and now sliding and collapsing cornice...
Franco grabbed his D5 and pounded through the snow, sliding and kicking as behind him the snow floor disintegrated and the dead Hape's body slid, arms akimbo, spinning around as it moved and then disappeared into valley oblivion below and Franco found himself pounding through snow and sprinting against a sucking avalanche intent on dragging him like sand through an hourglass.
The awakened Hapes howled, pounding chests with fists the size of shovels.
And as Franco slid and fought the sucking ground, like a squadron of fighter bombers, the Hapes spread out and charged.
"It's getting late," said Fizzy, watching the sun sink over the horizon from the ramp of the BaseCamp. "He should have been back now."
"Ach," snapped Olga, scratching her mighty bosom, "Franco's a big boy, bigger than most," she winked, "and he can look after himself." Her eyes misted in reminiscence. "Did I ever tell you about ze zombies? When I was shot, and the horde was rampaging in on me, and Franco, bravely, heroically, powerfully, waded in and shot ze zombies from their feet and rescued me from that baying horde! Har har har. He was a sight to behold!"
"I'll bet he was," sniggered Shazza.
"No!" snapped Olga, pointing with her large wooden spoon which now dripped sausage stew. "You mock! You should not mock. Yes, he wears flapping sandals and has a beer belly you can balance your dinner on, and yes, he appears a loud, uncouth, misogynistic psychopath with an insane streak only held in check by rainbow pills. But there is more to ze Franco than meets ze eye."
"Such as?" Fizzy was cleaning her weapon, a Meckler & Seburg 11mm machine-pistol with fire-thrower attachments. Green light from the rising moon played over the matt black weapon, giving it an eerie, ghostly look.
"He has a noble heart, he is a man of cou
rage and great bravado, he is true to his friends, and he believes in a fair fight. Ha, Fizzy and Shazza, I challenge you to find another such man in this depraved and sexually deviant day and age."
Shazza coughed. "Have you read his Poop Sheet? Franco Haggis is the biggest sexual deviant this side of the Seven Rings! Pippa, as part of the same Combat-K squad, filed no less than seventy-two complaints of sexual harassment, and shot him. Twice."
"Ach, that was only her being playful. I spoke with Pippa. She enjoyed the attention."
"She enjoyed the..." Shazza stared hard at Olga, at her huge flat head, her flat features, her gold teeth, her body like a mud wrestler and biceps nearly as thick as her own voluptuous waist. Shazza shook her head. "You're a crazy fool, Olga. A chick with an obsession, and I hasten to add that I use the term 'chick' in its broadest possible capacity. A bit like your arse."
Olga scowled. "I'll have you know, you skinny little tart tits, that..."
A sudden howl rent the air, a screeching, warbling, multi-layered wail of such tortured proportions, such strangled angst and pain-filled despair that all conversation died and the three women stared at one other, aghast. Fizzy cocked her M&S with a hollow clack.
"What," said Shazza, "was that?"
"I thought the DropBots reported this planet uninhabited?"
"It would seem they were wrong," snapped Olga, and disappeared, reappearing with a D5 shotgun clasped in her big hands. It seemed tiny, like a liquorice lollipop in the hands of a child. Olga's face was gargoyle stone: solid, unbending, grim.
It came, scuttling across the snow in the green light of the rising moon. It was small, like a fist- sized spider, but even in the green light it was quite clearly -
"A head!" snapped Olga. "It's a head! With legs!"
The head - small, shrunken, skin wrinkled like a prune - sported four spidery black legs erupting from points on the topside of the skull, and carrying the head almost like a fruit in a basket. Tiny insectile claws made a skittering sound as they gripped the ice, propelling the head forward with surprising speed and agility. Long blonde hair trailed behind the voodoo visage, and the most frightening aspect of the entire vision wasn't the tiny black emotionless shark eyes, but the bright red lipstick smeared liberally on shrunken prune-lips...
The head leapt straight at Olga, who jerked as if tugged on a line. So entranced was she by the vision it hadn't occurred to her it might be hostile. The screech came again and tiny lips opened revealing razor teeth, lipstick tinged, snapping for Olga's throat -
Her D5 boomed, and the head was punched back into the air, a reverse trajectory. Olga aimed down the short stocky weapon, and sent another volley of quad-shells which exploded the head, spattering the snow with thick black-oil blood and tangles of back-combed blonde tufts.
"Ugh," said Olga.
"Good shot," said Shazza.
"Cheers."
"What the hell was it?"
"A Head?" offered Olga, eyes scanning the nearby rocky ground and distant screen of thick conifer forest. "A genetically mutated Head? Hey, I seen much worse with ze zombies. Did I tell you about..."
Another came, scuttling hurriedly across the ice. The three women watched it dispassionately.
"This is gonna get tiresome real fast," said Fizzy, priming her flame thrower. The Head scuttled, shrieking, and leapt, a huge stream of fluid ejecting from its screaming mouth and slapping up the wall of the BaseCamp where it hissed, fizzing, as some form of concentrated acid. Fizzy squawked, ducking the stream, and flames billowed from her weapon, catching the Head in the blast and roasting it, still screaming, punching it back blackened and crisped. Flames flickered down, leaving scorched hair brittle on the snow. The Head warbled, and finally rattled into silence. Flames died to embers, a smell of roast pork filled the clearing.
Olga nudged Shazza. "See that? It was a Piss Head, har har."
Shazza scowled. "This is hardly a time for jokes."
Olga nodded ahead towards the distant tree line. "I quite agree," she said, voice a low husky growl, hands tightening on the D5.
From beneath the trees came five, ten, twenty... fifty of the Heads, scuttling out in a small dark horde, each face smeared with lipstick, each trailing bright peroxide-blonde hair, each shrunken little head fixing dead black eyes on the three women on the acid-scorched ramp. Their legs jiggled up and down like badly-controlled puppets. Their shriek, when it came, rose in pitch and volume to a terrible degree of rage and had the three women stumbling back up the ramp, stamping free snow as the Heads charged and leapt, jumping in bounds of perhaps ten or twenty feet at a time like leaping fleas on a dead dog's carcass. Olga slammed the ramp button, but it gave a buzz. Olga stared at Shazza. She slammed the button again. Again, it gave an obstinate, middle-finger screw-you-bitch buzz.
"It's been locked on the cockpit console!" shouted Fizzy.
"Better go unlock it, then," growled Olga, and levelled her D5. Quad-shells howled across the clearing, disintegrating two Heads into black-tar splatters. More streamed past, and the mass seethed, surged, and leapt towards the base of the ramp as Fizzy disappeared and Shazza lowered her own M&S weapon. Bullets cackled through the scampering Heads...
"Better start praying," said Shazza grimly as the first Head landed on the ramp, and Olga blasted it into shards of infinity.
"I did that the day I was born," said Olga, and pumped her weapon.
Franco sprinted, but with each powerful scamper his legs were sucked away and he was dragged backwards towards the fast approaching precipice. The howling Hapes had spread out, teeth glinting, rabies dripping like nectar from bent and crooked fangs in freakishly calm human faces. It unnerved Franco more than any venereal disease ever could, and that was saying something. The Hapes, now in a crescent horn formation, charged to within a few feet of Franco who screamed like a woman, throwing up his arms shamelessly to protect his face (not the face, not the face!) as he tried to aim his D5 amidst desperate scrambling...
A Hape leapt, snow hissed, and it was spun away, howling. The others leapt and Franco, spinning now in the sucking falling snow, was spared a horrible death at the teeth of the Hapes as they all went over the edge amidst a seething roaring pounding booming fall of deafening tumbling snow chunks and ice blocks and general avalanche...
Franco, arms above his head, wailed for his mother.
Franco's sandalled feet, toes blue, pedalled hopelessly as the snow and ice roared around him and in the melee he jostled and bumped against equally panic-stricken Hapes whose only misfortune in life now was to a possess a hunger that far outweighed their intelligence.
Suddenly, the snow and ice were gone.
Franco swung, his mouth open like a guppy fish, wondering what the hell had happened. Below, he watched the avalanche, replete with snarling, thrashing Hapes, descend into oblivion. Noise diminished, slowly, like thunder from a vanishing storm.
Franco swung, a fish on a hook.
"Huh?"
He glanced back, and saw some kind of Titanium line attached to his pack. He scratched at his beard. He contemplated what had just happened, and the only conclusion he could come to was that someone, or something, had rescued him.
Franco stared down at seven thousand feet of sheer, steep, ice-cliff. Wind slapped him like an irate girlfriend. Franco swung, idly, aware with growing irritation that that was all he could do.
There came a jerk on the line.
Slowly, Franco started to ascend.
Sourly, he realised his D5 had gone. "Bugger bugger bugger." With a series of jerks and tugs, he finally broached the edge of the cliff, devoid of its overhanging and very treacherous cornice. His hands gripped claw-like in snow and he dragged himself up a low slope, panting, red in the face, sweat stinging his eyes and tickling through his short ginger goatee beard. And, into view, came...
Sax. Sax the DumbMutt. All v1.2 of it.
"Bollocks," said Franco, not quite believing what he was seeing.
"Borrocks," agreed Sax, and padded
forward, panting, a faithful metal hound, a true friend and rescuer for this, its fallen master. The DumbMutt stopped, and a long metal tongue, plated with scales in the manner of a snake, lolled out and licked Franco's face, leaving an oily residue, smelling like old tuna.
"Get the fuck off!" he snapped, slapping the tongue away.
"Ruff," said Sax.
Franco scrambled to his knees, and followed the trail of cable back to the Giga-Buggy. Quickly, his mind worked out the series of events.
"So you stowed away in the Buggy with me?"
"Ruff."
"And kept your head low until we stopped?"
"Ruff."
"Then you saw me in trouble, and launched the Buggy's Compact Cable as I went over the edge, thus stopping me from falling to an untimely but much deserved death?"
"Ruff. Borrocks."
"Yeah yeah, well." He gritted his teeth. Took a deep breath. It was going to hurt him to do it. Torture his soul. But, he recognised: he must. "OK then. Sax. Thanks. Thanks for saving my life. Good dog. Good boy."
"Ruff." Sax wagged its tail.
"Now, get back in the damn Buggy. Before I catch fleas."
Sax padded off, and clambered into whatever rearward orifice had ejected him like a long slick metal turd.
Franco fought with the cable for a good few minutes, finally managing to disengage himself. He stood, ruffled, pride injured, but alive. Saved by a metal DumbMutt. "The bastard," he muttered, realising that sometimes, possibly, it was better to be dead. He strode back to the sign, looking warily about for more of the Hapes.