Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  "Touch them, and I'll blow your damn head off."

  "Keenan, old boy!" beamed Snake. "What brings you out here?"

  "Surprised, dickhead?"

  "Not at all," said Snake, voice smooth, glancing to Ed, who gave an almost imperceptible nod which did not go unnoticed by Keenan. "I know Ed gave you the jab, but it was for your own good. Your own safety, compadre. We were just looking out for you, because if we didn't..."

  "You'd lose a lot of money?"

  Snake shook his head. "What you talking about?"

  "The treasure. The crown."

  "Ach, that treasure." Snake grinned, and moved fast, gun coming out as Ed dived for his shotgun and Maximux charged Keenan. Keenan squeezed off three rounds, gun level, head cool, and the second shot went through Snake's wrist with a crunch of bones and a spurt of fluid flesh. The third buzzed from Snake's WarSuit, as Ed fired his shotgun and Keenan dropped to one knee, teeth grim, Techrim in both hands, and returned fire. Bullets howled across the desert. Ed was punched back, three rounds in his WarSuit as Maximux hit Keenan full on, and Keenan rolled back, coming up fast, a right hook slamming into Max's face, a left straight breaking his nose, and a front kick lifting Maximux from his feet and depositing him five feet away on his arse. Gun gone, with a scream Keenan charged, fury swamping him, all reason dissipated like early morning mist, and he slammed into Ed who was rising with his shotgun, WarSuit buzzing and sparking after Keenan's bullets, and the two men hit the ground. Ed head-butted Keenan, stunning him, but Keenan's fist found the tattooed man's jaw and knocked him back. Max leapt on Keenan's back, and Keenan slammed his head back and dropped one shoulder, and his right elbow powered into Maximux's throat to the accompaniment of choking sounds. Keenan's fist hit Ed between the eyes, a second blow cracked the man's cheekbone, and a third laid the tattooed man out cold. "That's for the injection," snarled Keenan through a mouth of blood. He whirled, kicking up sand, but Snake was nursing his blasted hand and Maximux had gained his feet, circling Keenan, a short gold blade in his hand.

  "I'm going to gut you like a fish," said Maximux, and Keenan could read the light of madness in the man's eyes. But then, he'd kind of known that from the start.

  Max leapt forward, the knife slashing for Keenan's throat and Keenan swayed back, dropping a shoulder, moving fast. Again Max leapt, and Keenan kicked sand in his face, dodging back from the random sway of the flashing blade.

  "We should have killed you back at the monument."

  "Stop talking, and show me," snapped Keenan.

  "I'm going to cut out your eyes."

  "Why, you need four, dickhead?"

  Maximux cursed.

  The blade flashed for Keenan's throat and he ducked, rolling, coming up fast and giving a single shake of his head to Cam. No. I want this one, he was saying. I want this fight. I need to feel the surge. I need to prove I am still Combat K. Still a soldier. Still a man.

  They circled in the sand.

  "You scared, Keenan?"

  "What, of a piss-stinking twitching lunatic like you?"

  "You bastard."

  "Better a bastard than have my brain dribble like jelly from my ears."

  Maximux screamed something unintelligible and charged Keenan, who sidestepped, slamming a punch to Max's temple. He stumbled, knife slashing out, and whirled - into Keenan's boots. Max stumbled back, coughing. Keenan leapt again, both boots aiming for Max's head, but Max grabbed his attacker's legs and they went down in a tumble. They wrestled for the knife, punches a blur, and suddenly everything went still. Keenan stared down into Maximux's eyes, and there was a connection there. For an instant Keenan saw the light of madness fade, and Max was as sane as the next man. Then he gurgled, his chest heaved, and blood came out of his mouth and ran down his chin giving him a crimson beard. Keenan's gaze lowered. The blade protruded from Maximux's throat, angled steeply, cutting down through the man's lungs.

  Maximux tried to speak. Keenan gritted his teeth, felt Max convulse beneath him. Max closed his eyes, and died.

  "Don't move, dickhead." Keenan froze, the barrels of a D5 caressing the back of his skull. The voice was Snake's. All humour, all slickness, all gentle camaraderie; all had gone. "Get to your feet. Slowly. And tell the PopBot if it so much as farts I'll let you have all four barrels. I don't believe the little bastard can move that fast."

  Keenan caught Cam's attention, and the PopBot lowered towards the ground, resting on the sand, submissive, like a dog rolling over to reveal its belly. The last thing Cam wanted was to provoke an emotionally-high trigger-happy psychopath like Snake.

  "Seems like we have a problem," said Snake.

  "Yeah. It's hard to get blood off a fine dagger like that."

  "You absolute bastard."

  The D5's stock slammed Keenan's head, and he went down on one knee, blood drooling from his jaws. Stars spun in his head, mental confetti, and he waited for his mind to clear, fists pounding on the inside of his skull like an enraged beast trying to escape the cage.

  "What do you think?" Snake was talking to Ed, who was nursing his battered face, wincing at his cracked and swollen cheek.

  "Kill him," said Ed, voice emotionless. "Kill the Combat-K bastard."

  Keenan turned, eyes meeting Snake's singular orb. Snake gave a little shrug, as if to say, hey, what the hell, I only work here. His fingers tightened on the triggers, and the D5 gave a terrible, fire-screaming roar...

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CONFRONTATION

  Miller, Health and Safety Officer, wasn't feeling very well. He sat on an alloy bench in the BaseCamp, staring at Mel, with her slick and scaled skin, pus oozing from orifices, fetid breath filling the room with fetidness. Miller rubbed at the lump on his head, at the bruises on his arms under his (now torn) shirt, and stared down at the neat form balanced on his knees. At the top, he scratched with a precise and fine-nibbed pen:

  Accident Report.

  He glanced up again, and noted that Mel was watching him. He wondered how long it would take to catch an infection from the mutated woman, indeed, the zombie, and made a mental note to file a report about the problems of travelling with a zombie deviant, just as soon as he'd finished the report on the circumstances that had led to his now several accidents aboard the DropShip/BaseCamp combo.

  Victim: Professor Chris Miller, GIOSH, GEBOSH, GREBOSH, GUBBOSH.

  Attending Officer: Professor Chris Miller, GIOSH, GEBOSH, GREBOSH, GUBBOSH.

  Report filed by: Professor Chris Miller, GIOSH, GEBOSH, GREBOSH, GUBBOSH.

  "Grwwwwl," said Mel. It was a long, low, drawn out kind of growl. The kind of growl a panther makes a nanosecond before pouncing on prey. The kind of growl a bear makes when it comes upon a starving human emptying its carefully hoarded winter stash. This was not a growl for the faint-hearted. This was not a growl, for example, that instilled happiness.

  "Yes?" Miller raised his eyebrows, like tufts of chewed taffeta against the bright orange of his ersatz suntan.

  "Ippa een oo ong," said Mel, forcing words between her twisted jaws in a close approximation of human speech, but not for one second allowing the recipient to forget she was an eight-foot deviant zombie monster who could quite easily (and quite readily) bite off and chew an entire human head.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Ippa. And Etezh. Een oo ong."

  "Pardon me?"

  "Ippa and Etezh een oo ong!!"

  "Say again?"

  Mel stood, and her head scraped the ceiling of the BaseCamp. Miller noted this, and clocked the fact he would suggest slightly higher ceilings for travelling mutants for safety purposes, re: the bumping of heads, despite the fact it would cost trillions of QG dollars for this pointless work; after all, Mel was one-of-a-kind...

  Mel moved close, stooped, and pushed her face close to Miller's. Her breath rolled over him like sewage, and he gave a little cough. There was a snap as he broke the nib of his pen. "Ippa!" spat Mel. "One oo ong! Ot come ack! Eed go ook for em."

  Mel reached out, and
picked Miller up by his shirt-front. Turning, she propelled him to the ramp and tossed him outside, where he rolled in the night dirt and lay for a moment, staring at a green-tinged sky.

  Mel leapt out, and picked Miller up. He stared around. "You want to go and look for them? Why didn't you say? All I need to do first, Melanie, is ask you to fill in a request - in triplicate - asking your onboard superior - that's me - for permission to leave the BaseCamp. Then I can submit forms F5 and EGH7.2 to QGM for various permissions and grants, and we can reconvene, ooh, say 9.30am to discuss how we can best go about a search and... and... and..." He stared at Mel. She pulled out an MPK machine gun. It looked very small in her long brutal talons.

  "Ollow me."

  "Where?" Miller's voice was small, like a child's.

  "Ee ake uggy."

  "But I can't drive it! I haven't filled in the correct paperwork, nor requested an Off-World Driving Permit! I couldn't possibly..." He stopped. Mel was growling at him again, her breasts wobbling and dribbling ooze from the rotten, plum-like nipples. Miller swallowed, and decided he maybe could keep his mouth shut on this one occasion. Nothing like a zombie for teaching someone to overlook pedantry.

  "I rive! Oron."

  Within minutes they were in the Giga-Buggy, Mel scrunched in, head pressed against the roof. She fired the engines, talons clumsy on controls, and Miller scowled at his zombie pilot. "I don't think it's actually very safe, actually," he whined. Mel revved the engine. "You're too big. And clumsy. And, um, have you applied for your Provisional Zombie License? I'm sure you're not allowed to drive unless you have one, along with a P5 Medical Certificate." The way he said not allowed made Mel, even in her mutated state, think of the class swot. And she hated those guys.

  Mel revved the Buggy again, and slammed forward over dirt-track, wheels pounding rocks and suspension sending Miller ploughing into the padded ceiling of the vehicle. When he emerged, red-faced, blood trickling from his nose, he scrabbled and strapped himself in, pulled out his pen, and started to write a letter of complaint.

  The Buggy crunched stones. Mel peered outside the cockpit, head tilting, eyes scanning. It's too quiet, she thought, eyeing the hospital building, its crumbling grey walls, high windows like opaque black eyes. She glanced back at Miller, still filling in his damn forms, and released the doors with a hiss.

  "Did you do a Possible Hazardous Air Check? Did you?"

  "Grwll."

  "What about a Hostile Environment Risk Assessment?"

  Mel slapped Professor Miller, a lazy, backhanded motion that flung him across the Buggy's interior and left him gasping beneath shaggy eyebrow tufts. She moved, body squirming and leaving trails of pus on the walls and, dragging him behind her, threw him outside. He landed in mud, ruining his fine clothes further, and Mel dropped out. She cocked her MPK, and pulled a D4 shotgun out, proffering the weapon to Miller.

  "I'm a pacifist," he said.

  She offered the weapon again, with a jerk.

  "No, I couldn't possibly. I am merely here in an observatory capacity."

  Mel growled, and offered the weapon a third time. It was the sort of growl that said take the weapon motherfucker before I shove it all the way up your arse. Miller took the gun, gingerly, and peered down the quad barrels.

  Mel moved ahead, wary, head on her long neck weaving as she scanned the undergrowth. The moonlight was fading and a curious twilight had suffused the landscape, making everything grey-green and blotched, as if the world was drawn in chalk. Mel moved to the two abandoned bikes, propped on side-stands, and stopped, head coming up, then gazing at the distant double doors of the hospital.

  Pippa and Betezh are in there, she thought.

  Mel smiled, a zombie smile, and led a whining, complaining, moaning Miller towards the double portal.

  Pippa struggled with all her might as the decapus charged, its thick limbs a whirling spaghetti mess, and slammed the two occupied trolleys with its bulk, limbs curling around Betezh's trolley where the man screamed and whined and moaned and begged, lifting him and the trolley in a swift sweeping motion, and sending him spinning across the operating theatre. In the charge, Pippa's trolley was flung onto its side, where it spun across the floor, spitting sparks.

  Betezh hit the floor and compacted into his trolley. He screamed like a girl. Pippa, face scrunched, rode out the spinning until she came to a skittering, juddering halt. One wheel on her trolley rotated slowly, squeaking.

  The decapus roared, tentacles coming up, beady eyes squinting, beak clacking. Pippa's eyes fell on a stray scalpel. She urged her fallen trolley to the scattered implement, and her questing fingers stretched as the decapus moved, bulk weaving as it stared first at Betezh, then towards Pippa.

  "Go for Betezh, go for Betezh," muttered Pippa as her fingers found the scalpel, and twisted, playing with the blade, manoeuvring it slowly into a position where she could attack her binding straps.

  The decapus charged at Pippa, clacking and howling...

  "Bastard bastard bastard." The scalpel sheared the straps and, with the huge blubbery creature bearing down on her, Pippa sat up, twisted awkwardly, and slashed the bindings on her ankles. The decapus was feet away. Inches. A tentacle limb the width of Pippa's waist swept towards her, and Pippa was up, swaying, and back-flipped three times out of the limb's trajectory. She landed lightly, scalpel still held, and her head snapped right to Betezh. The decapus turned on him, a limb lashing out towards the stunned soldier's head...

  Pippa's arm came back, and slammed the air. At the end of her fist was the scalpel. It flew, straight into the eye-cluster of the decapus. The beast suddenly howled, all ten limbs lifting high in the air where it beat the ceiling in agony and black blood gushed from the small wound of popped eyes.

  Pippa ran to Betezh, scooping another medical implement, what looked like a small saw, from the floor. She skidded on knees to his position, and cut the four straps holding him to the mangled alloy trolley.

  Panting, Betezh knelt beside Pippa and they both stared at the decapus, which had lolloped off across the theatre, stopped, and was swirling its tentacles in apparent pain.

  "What now?" panted Betezh.

  "We kill it."

  "What with? They took our guns..."

  "I need my pack."

  "That psycho Bleasedale put them over there, in that locker in the corner... I watched one of the nurses rummaging through it."

  "That one, there? The one on the other side of the monster?"

  "That'd be the one," said Betezh, with a dark grin. "You never thought it'd be easy, did you?"

  Pippa snorted, and unrolled smoothly to her feet. She waved her arms, and the decapus seemed to calm, rotating with squelches to face her. "Get over to Bleasedale," muttered Pippa. "Stop the beast from killing her."

  "Why?" snorted Betezh. "The jackbooted freak would be better off dead."

  "Because I want to question her," said Pippa, and charged at the decapus which reared up, massive, ten thick limbs whirling like a basket of snakes. Five rushed out to meet Pippa, but she leapt, somersaulting above the creature, and spreading into an athletic roll and dive which took her to the lockers. Confused, the decapus whirled about, and focused on Betezh. It roared, and the floor shook.

  "Not me! Not me!" screeched Betezh, and covered his head with his arms.

  Pippa slammed into the lockers, opened a thin metal door rimed in rust, and grabbed her pack. Because, combined with her pack, were her -

  Swords.

  Twin shrings chimed the air. Confidence, strength, calm, all flooded Pippa and she turned, her eyes narrowing as the decapus towered over Betezh and the beast prepared to slowly cave in his head.

  "Hey, you, you fish-stinking heap of gelatinous shite!"

  The decapus paused, its blubbery body undulating around, beady eyes fixing on Pippa. She leapt, twin yukanas whirring in blurs of dark steel. Tentacles came up in defence, but a yukana was forged from a single molecule, and could cut hull steel. They slammed through blubbery te
ntacles, which parted pumping tar-ooze and slapped to the sterile tiled floor, writhing as if they had a life of their own.

  Pippa ducked a tentacle strike that would have clean removed her head, rolled right, and in three strokes cut another tentacle into separate chunks, which thudded to the ground, twitching and filling the air with a stench like woodsmoke and fish.

  Betezh, who had finished cowering, began scooping up medical implements. These, he launched at the decapus, many embedding in its thick hide as it screeched and roared, beak clacking, and tried to turn Pippa into psycho paté.

  The rest of the battle was short, sharp and vicious. Removing most of the other tentacles, Pippa stepped in close, looked up into beady eyes, and rammed a yukana through the decapus up to the hilt. The beast quivered, and slowly sank down into a spreading blob. Its limbs went still. Silence fell like fallout.

  Betezh stood, and puffed out his chest. "Did you see that? Did you see how brave I was?"

  "What?"

  "All them scalpels and stuff, look, they're all stuck in its hide. I'm a damn fine shot, even though I say so myself."

  Pippa stared hard at Betezh, and shook her head. "Wake that bitch up. We need to get out of here."

  After reclaiming his pack, Betezh slapped Dr. Bleasedale across the face until, blurry-eyed, she coughed and became animate. She blinked, confused, then stared morosely at the decapus. "You killed him?" she said, voice low.

  Pippa nodded. "Ya, daarling. Come on, on your feet. You're going to show us the way out of this shit-hole."