by Andy Remic
What were they? From whence had they come? Were they defending the weird glass building? The REC, whatever that was? Or maybe, yeah, maybe they were mystic guardians defending the treasure within!
Franco nodded to himself and, moving to the Giga-Buggy, re-armed himself with another D5 shotgun, and an MPK machine gun. Might get rough, he thought, and added a few grenades to his belt.
Bravely, Franco strode through the snow, images of Iskander's Crown and the gleam of sub-PlutoniumIII clear in his money-addled mind. He strode with long loping strides towards the REC Centre's entrance far below...
Behind, Sax stood in the snow panting oil-mist. The metal dog shuffled woodenly over to the sign and regarded it for a while, head tilted to one side, unconvincing hair flopping in its eyes.
Sax reached out, and licked the sign. Under its heated oil tongue, a thin film of snow and ice melted. REC Centre. Sax licked some more, and below the acronym three words were revealed.
RESEARCH. EXPERIMENTATION. CONFINEMENT.
Sax trotted back to the Giga-Buggy, curled up, farted a sour-oil fart, and promptly went for a recharge.
Wind blew loose snow through the green-tinged night. Franco halted at what he presumed were gates, and reached out, touching their slick, glass-like substance. The whole place looked modern. Too modern. Out of synch with the idea that this place had been abandoned a thousand years previously.
"Hmm." Franco scratched his chin, and stepped forward across the threshold. Winter flowers, white and blue, lay scattered randomly about, the only sign that what was once a kind of exercise yard for patients was now given over to the elements and raw cruelty of nature. No longer was the guiding hand of Sick World's doctors and nurses in charge of ordering chaos.
Franco edged forward, his new D5 weaving a slow figure of eight as he searched for howling Hapes. Reaching the double doors, again of steel and dark glass, there was that sign again. REC Centre. Franco pushed open the doors and stepped inside.
It was cool, and dark, but emergency lights picked out silhouettes down a long, wide corridor. Emergency lights? Was it feasible they'd been on, and working, since the mass evacuation of the planet a thousand years ago? Franco, despite being quite mad, found it improbable.
So, he mused, that meant somebody was changing the light bulbs. But why? Some kind of mad hermit left behind? Or a family of hermits? A whole clan of hermits? And why the hell did he think it might be hermits?
Striding forward through barely lit gloom, Franco started to hum to himself, a tune that went de dum de dum de dum de dum, da dumly dum de dum... and as he gained more confidence, and the corridor stretched off before him, wide, and inviting, long, and seemingly never-ending, so his impending happiness at finding the impending treasure of Iskander's Crown broke through his caution and he burst into song:
The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train?
Franco's words echoed and bounced down the sterile medical corridor, growing louder, more boisterous with every passing syllable. Will I be a king when I find this crown? he thought, eyes wide, gun weaving. Am I, he supposed, the man who would be king?
His song stopped, and so did his sandals. His words boomed ahead, bouncing from wall to wall to wall, then echoing back from the tomb-world-lit gloom like a fish on a piece of elastic.
Franco twitched. He whirled, suddenly, D5 pumping, eyes squinting. "What was that? Who's there? Show yourself!"
Nothing. Nothing moved. Not a whisper of breeze stirred the wide sterile corridor.
A feeling crept over Franco like the repeating chilli remnants of last night's curry. A feeling stirred deep in his bowels, again, the symptoms of a particularly bad vindaloo. It was quietly nauseating.
Distantly, something flickered. A blue sparkle, which reminded Franco of long-gone childhood days on Quad-Gal Bonfire Night, celebrating the attempted detonation of the Quad-Gal UN Parliament, a little ginger Franco with mad afro, eyes wide, nose cold, holding a blue fizzing sparkler in stumpy fingers.
Franco moved forward, silent now, cursing himself for his boisterous singing and acutely aware that during a treasure hunt one shouldn't perhaps be singing about the treasure one was hunting for. Just in case, y'know, you alerted any possible guardians, denizens, or other Bad Monsters.
Franco headed towards the place where he'd seen the blue sparkle. Nothing. Nada. Deserted. Just an abandoned steel trolley, listing slightly because it had a missing wheel. Franco's eyes roved over the walls, ceiling and floor, his unease growing exponentially, but unaware exactly why.
He coughed. Puffed out his chest. "Right then," he said, scratching his beard. "OK then. So, this recce went well, didn't it? Maybe I'll just, y'know, head back to Fizzy and Shazza and Olga, check out that sausage stew they's cooking up, maybe pop back tomorrow to try and find this here treasure."
He stopped. Realisation dawned, and he turned back, staring at the trolley. There were straps. And bare wires. And... electrodes. Patches. Clamps. Testicle clamps. The trolley was just like the one they'd used to restrain Franco Haggis at The Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the "nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged". Which could, possibly, mean... Franco's eyes went wide. That this REC Centre had in fact once been a mental hospital!
Shivers wracked Franco's body.
Goosebumps wandered liberally over his arms and neck, and, whilst once he would have savoured this faintly sexual experience, here, and now, in this horrible terrible place, the feeling left him nauseated. "Bugger."
Franco started to run, his spine tingling, his hair standing on end, and then a curious thing happened. Static discharged through his beard, crackling and sparking and sending bright stars flashing before his eyes.
"Ow! Ow ow!" he stopped, skidding to a halt, rubbing frantically at his smoking beard. "What was that? What magic is this? What the buggery happened?"
Blue light sparkled at the end of the corridor, and Franco noted it was the place where he had originally entered the REC Centre. Then the light started to grow, a tiny, sparkling ball of blue fire which separated into twin balls of sparkling blue fire as it grew closer and closer and Franco heard a rushing sound and in panic he fired his D5 with quad snarls but the light jigged, down and left, then back on course, and crashed into him with sudden violent ferocity sending a shock through his chest and head which slammed him backwards, D5 skittering away, and delivered a few hundred volts direct to his system -
Franco lay, stunned. He could taste copper. Smell ozone. His fingers tingled.
Groaning, he started to sit up but something landed atop him, pinning him down. His eyes adjusted, past the sparkling blue lights which were... which were hands, long-fingered hands filled with sparks of electricity dancing and swirling and discharging constantly. Even now he could hear a faint hum of restrained power. Franco coughed. Beyond the lights he saw a man, naked, thin-limbed, taut and muscular, with a huge blobby head and thick electric cables running on and out of the skin on his arms and chest and neck. The man was bald or, at least, what remained of his hair was charred, blackened spider-hair in tiny smoking clumps. His eyes were wild, truly wild, spinning like a scoreboard on a pinball machine. He opened his mouth to smile, and Franco squinted - there was a black box trailing a cable like an umbilical. It took a few moments for Franco to realise it was a battery pack.
Fear slammed Franco. A weird, mind-expanding fear. He bucked, attempting to struggle and the man with the battery pack in his mouth clapped his hands in a shower of fizzing, crackling sparks, and slammed both fists down on Franco's head. Electricity shrieked, Franco went rigid in electric-shock spasm, and all his lights went out.
The pain was intense, even in a pit of unconsciousness. Like a drowning man struggling for the surface, Franco swam from depths and surfaced into darkness. He blinked a few times, mouth full of metal, tongue an electric eel, skin scorched and tingling and burnin
g. "Urgh," he muttered, and turning his head slightly, spat a desert dry spit which achieved nothing. "What hit me?"
"I expect you met one of our Convulsers," said a soft, gentle, female voice. It was a voice filled with caring, a voice filled with understanding, a voice that said to Franco I am a nice person who will not cause you any pain and I belong to a creature who is a beautiful angel and might, if you're really lucky, give you a snog.
Franco forced himself not to turn. He had learned by bitter experience it was far too easy to break his illusions.
"What," he said, experimenting with the shape of his tongue and lips and teeth, which all felt metallic and covered in fur after his savage electrocution, "is a Convulser?"
"They run wild around the REC. They charge themselves up and electrocute anything that crosses their path. We keep stingers to deal with them; sends them squealing and spitting batteries back to whatever hell it is from which they squirm."
"Was I right in thinking it had ECT pads for its hands?"
"Yes," said the sanguine voice that, with each passing second, filled Franco with a growing confidence that he'd been rescued from a fate worse than death. "They've taken the Electro Convulsive Treatment machines that were once used on patients, and absorbed the machine into their flesh; it's quite horrible and bizarre, if you ask me."
"I agree!" agreed Franco.
"By the way, my name is Sabrina."
Franco bit his tongue, and turned his head. She was sat by his bed, his hospital bed, and Franco's eyes immediately fell on her generous cleavage. Sabrina's bosom quivered like ripe, vibrating melons, filling, or rather, over-spilling, a skin-tight nurse uniform which required little, if at all any, imagination. Sabrina coughed, and Franco's eyes lifted from this simple visual pleasure to her face which, if anything, was even more beautiful. She had perfect, flawless, almost translucent skin. Her features were framed by a shock of bright blonde hair, and she wore a very sexy and very inviting succulent red lipstick.
"Are you a nurse, or an angel?" said Franco.
Sabrina laughed coquettishly. "Oh, you do flatter me, Franco."
"You know my name?"
"We went through your pack. Please excuse us, but you were unconscious for hours and we wanted to check your blood group and allergies before administering any treatment."
"You administered treatment?" Franco was suddenly suspicious. Franco was always suspicious. It came from suffering eternal and continuous bad luck.
"Just a muscle relaxant, to combat the shock given by the Convulser. And some burn cream applied to your chest. You were scorched by the impact." Franco relaxed a little, and released a large sigh. "There's nothing to worry about here, Franco, we're all friendly nurses. Very friendly nurses. And you've been such a brave, brave little boy."
I'm in bloody heaven, thought Franco, suddenly.
Thank you, God. Thank you for delivering me from evil! And for delivering me into the bosom did I say bosom ha ha I meant hands of this buxom lovely nurse wench. Franco beamed, his beam an all-teeth beam.
"So," edged Franco, careful now, precise, for he didn't want to ruin this illusion which had saturated many a fantasy on long, lonely evenings with only his right hand for company. "So... let me get this straight. You're a nurse, there's lots of other nurses, and you're here in this hospital in the middle of nowhere..." he glanced about, noting the plethora of empty beds, "and with no patients to satiate your lust did I say lust ha ha I meant professional medical need to help people and make people better. Would you say that's a fair appraisal of the situation?"
Sabrina leant a little closer. Her eyes sparkled, as if filled with angel dust, and Franco could see she was gently amused by him, no, not gently amused, more than that, she was dazzled by him.
"You, little Franco Wanco, are our only liddle biddy patient. And you're being such a good boy, such a brave soldier, such a grown up liddle policeman, so you are."
"I am?"
"Yes." She was closer now. Her breath was sweet, like flowers. "You are. And do you know what happens to brave little soldiers on this particular ward filled with generously proportioned and sexually deprived nurses?"
"Something nice?" ventured Franco.
"Oh yes, baby, something nice," she crooned, and lifted her arm, resting her chin on her hand. Only, she didn't. Because she didn't actually have an arm, or a hand on which to balance her beautiful and flawless chin.
Franco stared. And he stared damn hard.
"What's that?" he ventured, eventually.
Sabrina fluttered her eyelashes. "What do you mean, sexy?"
"Um. That thing. There. Where your arm should be?"
"That? Why, that's my No. 3 Syringe."
"But... but... it's your arm, woman!"
"Yes, I had it genetically hot-wired to my stump after the amputation."
"The amputation?"
"Yes. The multiple-amputation. During the War of the Doctors."
Sabrina stood suddenly, a fast, fluid motion, her limbs unfolding as if she were some kind of mechanical spider. Both her arms were huge, steel hypodermic needles, each hand a needle like a finger of sharpened razor steel. She had a bosom, yes, a sexy bosom, no doubt, a charged and wobbling Franco-wet-dream of a bosom, certainly, but below her waist her legs weren't legs at all, for each limb had been replaced, bone-grafted, with a crude steel and plastic crutch, little holes peppering each alloy length in order to adjust her height. Sabrina took several steps back, her crutch-legs clacking on the tiled floor. Only then did Franco notice the smell. The medical smell. The stench of sterile swabs, of iodine-cleansed instruments. The perfume of the autoclave machine.
"Is something wrong?"
"Gah," said Franco, and sat up. Although he didn't. This seemed to be a day of things not happening.
Franco realised he was strapped, very firmly, and with wide leather straps, to the bed. "Bugger," he said, eyeing Sabrina with the sort of look a donkey reserves for a carrot when the pesky vegetable is tugged away.
Sabrina clacked forward, generous bosom bouncing. "Sorry about the straps, Mr. Haggis. But this is a sanatorium. And we see from your records that you were once a patient at The Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the 'nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged'. Well, we'd be happy to continue with your therapy at no extra cost." She smiled. It was a dazzlingly beautiful smile. "We're nice like that, around here."
"No," croaked Franco. "Wait! I was discharged..."
"You escaped."
"I was wrongly incarcerated! It was a set-up! After the days in the Combat Squad..."
"Ahh yes, the Combat Squad. Combat K. Another figment of your mad and overused imagination. Shame on you, Franco, for coming up with such a psychologically weak scenario in which you perpetuate your super-hero combat-soldier narcissistic wank-fantasy little boy chickenhawk longings."
"I'm not mad, I tell you!" snarled Franco, yanking against the straps with all his strength. The bed jumped a little, metal legs clattering.
"Now now," said Sabrina. "Time for you to calm down, little man. After all, there's a whole host of nurses here with, shall we say, very special requirements of you. After all, we haven't seen a male specimen of your masculinity, your calibre, for, oooh, about a thousand years."
Franco squinted. Behind Sabrina, from the gloom of the emergency lighting, emerged at least another five or six nurses. Each one, in their day, must have been a stunner, but now they were a sick and maudlin collection of medical experimentations gone wrong. One woman had scalpels for arms. Another's upper torso had been organically welded to a wheelchair, and her stumped arms had tiny grippers with which to grasp the rubber wheels. A third - Franco blinked in horror - had a colostomy bag for a head, her little blue brain swirling around in some kind of murky brown liquid, along with her eyes, which bounced around like energetic goldfish. Another nurse had some kind of weird stainless-steel integrated head and neck brace, metal scaffolding rising from her shoulders and encompassing her face. Big metal tee
th protruded roughly from her jaw and fake teeth clacked together with tiny, tinny sounds. This eager nurse came forward, metal teeth clacking almost uncontrollably, as if in a frenzy of excitement, or - the horror - sexual arousal.
"This is Ginger," said Sabrina, smiling kindly and calmly down at Franco's prostrate body. "She has a very special request." Sabrina gazed at Franco's groin.
"Oh no, no way, you can just all get to buggery, you bloody mad rampant deviant nurse bitches from hell!"
"Buggery?" said Sabrina, with a narrow smile. Ginger produced a long, slightly banana shaped metal object from beneath her tight-fitting uniform, allowing her buxom breasts to bounce back into place. The object gleamed, as if well polished, or at least, well used. Franco paled. It was a C1 Three-Blade Sigmoidoscope Anorectal Retractor, 140mm. Ouch. "If that's what you want, Mr. Haggis, we can certainly entertain. After all, we are here, simply, to please." She smiled, waving the Anorectal Retractor.
"No!" screamed Franco, "No no no!" He thrashed and jerked and pulled and struggled at the leather straps, but they were old, and well-designed, designed, in fact, to stop people escaping. "You'll not get away with this! I'm a man! I have my, my morals! I'm not..." he fluttered his eyelids, "some kind of tart."
"You must calm down," said Sabrina, eyes glinting. "It hurts less that way." She advanced, lifting one hypodermic arm. Franco saw clear fluid sloshing around inside the chamber. She gave it a little squirt, and fluid spurted from the tip, a premature ejaculation. "Here," she leant close, smiling broadly, her perfume engulfing Franco with a heady fragrance that made him swoon. "Let me give you a bit of help.'
CHAPTER FIVE
SICK WORLD III: SECOND DJIO
Keenan stood on the ramp, shielding his eyes from glaring equatorial sun and breathing in a hot, arid air which made him want to choke. The heat shimmered on the desert. From the DropShip ramp spread a hostile dry wilderness of sand and rocks, thousands upon thousands of large, rounded boulders, and several remote outcroppings of staggered ancient cliffs, sheer and orange and distantly threatening. Keenan moved down the ramp and rolled himself a cigarette using Widow Maker tobacco.