Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  They found Franco's Buggy, deserted except for the recharging angular form of Sax. The dog snored, an odd bubbling sound like snot being sucked through a straw. His wig was curiously askew, as if he'd been through the wars.

  "Where did he go?"

  They peered through the storm, which seemed to increase in fury even as they stood, shivering, huddling within WarSuits and heavy jackets. The building was impressive, all glass and crystal walls, sloping zeniths and retro-wood slats.

  REC CENTRE.

  RESEARCH. EXPERIMENTATION. CONFINEMENT.

  The three women exchanged glances. "I don't like the sound of that," said Shazza.

  "What's this experimentation bit mean?"

  "Keep your guns ready," growled Olga. She set her square chin in a square pose. "Franco needs help. I know it! We're going in."

  Fizzy, Shazza and Olga formed a tight squad triangle as they crept from the snowy blizzard outside, into the darkened interior of the REC. Everything was quiet, gloomy, and they moved with ease down wide corridors.

  "He's got to be in here somewhere," said Fizzy, staring gloomily at her zero-reading PAD. "I still don't understand how everything managed to blow a fuse at the same time. It's as if the whole damn planet turned against us!"

  "It'll be magnetism, or something," said Fizzy, covering her arcs of fire. "I've seen it before, often in violent storms like this. We're close to the pole as well; that sort of shit plays havoc with complex electronics."

  "Still, I'd feel happier if we could reach Pippa. Or even Keenan. It's giving me the creeps, this Franco going missing business."

  Olga said nothing, for she was still basking in the glow of her rescue by these, her two new best friends.

  "Wait!" hissed Shazza, dropping to one knee. She lifted a sandal, and showed it to Olga. "Is this one of Franco's?"

  Olga nodded, paling in the gloom. "That's not ze good sign."

  "At least we're in the right place."

  "Let's just hope he's in one piece."

  "Franco is very resourceful," said Olga. "If there is ze way for him to survive, he will have taken it."

  "Even at the expense of his sexual integrity?"

  "Yes, especially at ze expense of ze boy's sexual integrity," said Olga, missing the joke entirely. To Olga, Franco was a paragon of sophistication, fine morals and charisma.

  "Yes. Well." Fizzy and Shazza exchanged glances, and then continued until they heard a distant fizzing sound. Somewhere, in the gloom, there came a faint glow... as of electricity.

  "Olga not like that," said Olga, lifting her shotgun.

  "Down here," hissed Shazza.

  They cut left, down a narrow winding corridor littered with medical debris. Broken trolleys, unopened boxes half rotten with damp and showing the gleam of dulled medical instruments, rusted oxygen cylinders, piles of yellow bags of clinical waste; even body bags, which were curiously full and made the girls curiously uninterested in investigation.

  Olga shuddered. "Might be zombies," she said.

  "I thought Franco's wife was a zombie," said Fizzy.

  "Ex-wife," said Olga, with a tight smile.

  Suddenly, a scream rent the air, distant, agony-filled, desolate, frustrated, and most of all, male.

  The scream died.

  "Franco?"

  Olga nodded, and took the lead as they pounded along the narrow winding corridor. She kicked trolleys out of the way, the shotgun small in her large and large-knuckled fists. She stopped before a door, and with a deep breath, and an apprehensive glance back at Fizzy and Shazza, who nodded their readiness, lifted her heavy boot and slammed the door off its hinges. The door hit the ground, and a sight from a nightmare met their wandering eyes. Franco hung from a hook, a butcher's slab in oil and white underpants, and surrounding him, dribbling, drooling, and in various states of dismemberment, were thirty to forty genetically modified and medical-implement-merged nurses, their peroxide hair permed or splayed in extravagant bouffants, their cherry-red lipstick smudged, or at the very best, applied with cement trowels.

  One nurse had hold of Franco's bulge, and Franco's eyes bulged from their sockets, and Franco's bulge bulged embarrassingly from his big white underpants. "Ahh," he said, eyes falling on the stunned shocked expressions of Fizzy, Shazza and Olga. "Ahh, I know what it looks like, but - honestly - I can explain."

  "Kill them all!" screamed Sabrina, waving her hypodermic syringe arms, and the nurses turned, and charged...

  The following battle was not so much a battle as an explosion in a medical charnel house. Olga's D5 boomed, and the nurse with a colostomy bag for a head suddenly found out the downside of having a skull made from a plastic bag. The colostomy bag burst, and her brain and eyes ran out in a stream of diarrhoeic colostomy coolant as her hands scrabbled for her eyeballs and brain, fumbling them like a blind rugby player in a bath of meatballs. Guns roared, bullets spat, and the deviated nurse horrors slammed at the three female Combat-K squaddies, snarling, spitting, tearing with claws and jaws and needles and scalpels and Franco squinted through the fine blood mist which hung and spurted into the air as the short violent battle raged through the room and left a spread of mangled nurse corpses lying like so many bludgeoned seal cubs on a Scandinavian beach.

  Panting, the three Combat-K women reloaded weapons, their bodies tense, ready for more combat. Olga was the first to come down from the high of sudden violence, the adrenaline of finding herself still alive, and Franco gestured wildly with his head. "Through there! Sabrina, the leader, she ran away! She got away!"

  Olga ran to the door, but it was bolted shut on the other side. Olga blasted at the locks, D5 booming, but it was no good; the alloy portal was starship hull grade, and it'd take more than shells to loosen a hull grade rivet.

  "Thank the gods!" boomed Franco. "I thought I was a goner!"

  "Looks more like a boner to me," chuckled Fizzy, calming herself after the fight. The three women picked their way through straggled corpses, careful to avoid scalpel arms and hypodermic fingers. They stood, like judges before a disgraced criminal, peering up at Franco, Franco's underpants, and Franco's telltale bulge.

  "Listen," he said, "this ain't how it looks."

  "How does it look?" said Shazza.

  "I know it looks like I'm oiled up and having fun, but I'm not, reet, them damn deformed nurses with their pretty faces and bobbing breasts, well, they, they," he pouted, lower lip protruding, eyes drooping, "they took advantage of poor Franco."

  "Yeah, I can see that," snapped Fizzy.

  "I believe you," said Olga.

  "You do?"

  "I know how loyal and morally righteous you are," said Olga, voice small, eyes peering up at the little fat man. "I know you would never do anything to destroy the prospect of our blossoming true love."

  Franco's mouth opened and closed like a guppy fish for a moment. His teeth clacked shut. "Cut me down, there's a good lass," he said.

  Minutes later, Franco was nursing reddened wrists, and he glanced about hopefully. "You find my pack? My clothes? My Kekras? They're damn fine weapons, Kekras, it'd be a shame for them to go to the mutant nurse brigade."

  "We've got this." Shazza passed Franco the sandal she'd found.

  Franco growled. "So, it's like that, is it? White ASDA underpants and one flip-flop." He brightened. "I've been to battle in less! They don't call me Franco 'Resourceful Bastard in ASDA Underpants' Haggis for nothing, you know! Come on squad! We must leave this place, and get back to BaseCamp! We must report this incident to QGM and seek further instructions on... on... what's that look mean?"

  "It's about the BaseCamp," said Shazza, in a small voice. "It's, um, kinda been destroyed."

  "Gods! I leave you three chicks in charge of the Base for a few damn and bloody hours, and what do you do? I suppose you vacuumed and polished until there was nothing left, eh? I said eh?"

  "Next you'll be asking us to iron your shirts," muttered Fizzy.

  "Damn right!" snapped Franco, who had surprisingly a
cute hearing, surprising in the fact that his job was that of demolitions expert, and he'd lived his whole life alongside loud bangs. "Damn good of you to offer. I'll take you up on that, just as soon as I find a shirt."

  Franco took a proffered spare D5 shotgun from Olga, and strode ahead, single sandal flapping, chest puffed out, in command once again.

  "What a misogynistic dick," snapped Fizzy, brows furrowed into a fearsome frown.

  "Hey," chuckled Franco. "They don't call me Franco 'Gymnastic Dick' Haggis for nothing, you know?" He winked, making a strange clicking, clucking sound. "Now, which way is out? And I need to warn you about these electrocutional motherfuckers... Convulsers, they're called, give you a real sting! Better let me deal with them if we meet any. Wouldn't like you three little girls to break a nail."

  He suddenly paused, and frowned, staring at something amidst the detritus on the floor. "Hmm," he said, and stooped, fingers curling around a long, thin metal cylinder. One end gleamed with a curled thread, and it was on a loop of chain, as if somebody had been afraid to lose it.

  "What's that?" said Fizzy.

  "It's a Leksell gamma-focus."

  "Which is what, exactly?"

  "Um, a device that can focus things. Like radiation. And bomb-blasts." He grinned. "If you're being naughty, of course."

  "And what do you intend to do with this Leksell gamma-focus? Looks like a useless pointless piece of junk, to me."

  "Hey! It may come in handy! Did I ever tell you, I'm an expert with bombs? This can be used to infuse a direct injection through an HJG grenade blast; it can be used to navigate a T5 mine-blast form-field; believe me, it can also..."

  Fizzy held up a hand. She yawned. "Yeah Franco," she said. "You convinced me. Now shut up."

  Grumbling, Franco hung the Leksell around his neck, and led the way through the gloom and medical detritus, the three women following, all with guns primed. Olga remained curiously silent, her eyes never leaving Franco's rump.

  The darkness, the gloom, they were cloying, claustrophobic. Soon, this mixed annoyingly with an ice chill, as if the REC Centre's heating had given up the ghost and was allowing the treachery of the icy outside ice-world in.

  At a junction, Franco stopped, sandal sliding a little on ice. He looked left. He looked right. He looked back at his squad.

  "Do you know where we are?" he said, with a hopeful beam.

  "No," said Shazza, slowly. "You took point. We assumed you knew the way. You mean to say you don't?"

  "I've just been locked up with deranged suicidal nurse freaks from hell. How, in the name of Schwarzenegger, could I know the way?"

  "Why did you take the lead, then?" said Shazza.

  "Because I always take the lead. I am the leader. Ergo, I lead."

  "Even when you don't know the way?"

  "Yes," said Franco through gritted teeth. "I expect my faithful deputies to point out directions if I go wrong."

  "Would that be Deputy Dawg?" said Shazza.

  Fizzy giggled, moving close to her friend, a hand on her shoulder. "Hold up Shaz, come on, give him a break. He's had a rough time, I think. The last thing he needs is some rampant radical feminist lesbian on his case." She grinned at Franco.

  Franco frowned, digesting this, hands on his stocky requisitioned D5, lips moving soundlessly.

  "What?" he said, finally.

  "What?" said Shazza.

  "You said," again his lips moved wordlessly, "rampant radical feminist lesbian," said Franco.

  "Yes," nodded Fizzy.

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why a rampant radical feminist lesbian?"

  "Because I am?" suggested Shazza, revelling in Franco's growing discomfort.

  Franco thought about this. "No way," he said, in a hushed and reverent tone. Around them ice crackled, like a frozen lake shifting, or some mammoth glacier retreating. The squad's collective breathing, now, was ejecting in short bursts of white mist. It was definitely getting colder. Much colder.

  "Which bit?" said Shazza. "The rampant, the radical, the feminist, or the lesbian?"

  "The, the damn and bloody lesbian bit!" snapped Franco, mouth open in an O. "That's just, just, just, just..."

  "Just what?"

  "Just damn and bloody unbelievable! I mean, look at you! Just look at you!"

  "All the girls usually do," said Fizzy, moving closer to Shazza, so that the slim flanks of their bodies touched. "It can make me real mad, but then, I'm not such a jealous girl, and we do try to have a reasonably open relationship."

  Franco stared, gobsmacked, first from Shazza to Fizzy, then from Fizzy back to Shazza. "What?" he nearly screeched, so that all three women winced. "What? You as well? You're both damn and bloody lesbians? You're both... homo and sexual? I just, just, just don't bloody believe it."

  "What's so hard to believe?" said Fizzy. "It's not like this is a new thing. Gods, it's not like we're alisexual, trikumsexual, or even DNAlesbos, sharing genetics and becoming one another, or anything." Her hand stroked Shazza's thigh, and Franco's beady eyes watched the movement with the sort of look a dog reserves for a hot meat bone.

  God, he thought to himself. After what you've just been through?

  Some perverts never learn...

  "Yeah," Franco mumbled, kicking his single sandal, "it's just, I thought, maybe, one day, I might make one of you, a meal, or something."

  "But you're married," said Shazza.

  "Divorced."

  "There's always Olga. She's a single girl. She'd do you proud, so she would."

  Franco stared at Shazza with a teeth grin and narrowed eyes. Slowly, he shifted his gaze to Olga, who was staring down at him with wide eyes and a look of puppy love. She smiled, showing her missing, broken and gold-capped teeth. Her hands were clasped together meatily around her shotgun. Her breasts wobbled enticingly, like eels in a bucket.

  "Now wait a minute," said Franco.

  "She did bring us here to rescue you," said Fizzy.

  "Without Olga, you'd be dead meat, Sausage Man."

  "And she's very faithful. Like a hound."

  "And look at those boobies! She'd give you some Amazing Big Loving, Franco."

  "She'd give me Broken Back Loving," snapped Franco. "Just listen..."

  "And you did refer to her as a 'chick'," said Shazza.

  "No I didn't."

  "Yes you did."

  "I bloody didn't."

  "You bloody did. You said, 'Gods! I leave you three chicks in charge of the Base...' You called Olga a 'chick'. This is slang for a sexy woman. Ergo, you think Olga is sexy."

  Franco's mouth opened and closed again, he whirled in the ice, and strode off straight ahead, limping slightly, and muttering to himself. Behind, Shazza and Fizzy followed, chuckling, and bringing up the rear was Olga, eyes gleaming, hands slippery on her gun despite the chill. "He'll crumble," she muttered, nodding to herself. "He will give in to my feminine guile! And if that doesn't work, I'll drug ze little bastard."

  Around them, with the patience of a glacier, the ice slowly invaded.

  Franco had stopped at a window, and the three women moved close, staring out and down. Their combined breathing frosted snowflakes on glass, and collectively their mouths hung open in surprise, awe, and with a hint of fear thrown into the emotional cooking pot for spice and fire.

  "That looks bad," said Olga, clasping her shotgun ever more tightly.

  "What the hell are we looking at?" said Franco. He was shivering now, despite the fine protective elements of his white ASDA underpants. "It's just so... vast! How can it fit inside a hospital? Are we still inside the hospital? It's just too bloody big!"

  They stared.

  The cavern, for a cavern was what fell away from the iced window, was formed of rugged red rock. It fell away for hundreds of metres to a distant, smooth, polished floor of square white hospital tiles. A cool wind eased around the edges of the window, carrying the tang of iodine and antiseptic. But it was events within the cavern that blew the
soldiers' minds.

  Within the cavern was an army.

  However, this was like no army Franco, or the girls, had ever seen. It was not made up of traditional soldiers, there were no infantry, no cavalry, no special forces in makeshift tents drinking brews and smoking smokes. The mad bustle of activity below in the cavern, the military squads, were all made up of...

  "Are they what I think they are?" said Franco, slowly.

  Fizzy rubbed at the glass with the elbow of her WarSuit, and nodded. "Yep."

  "It's just, you'd think, you know, if you were an army, and you were, you know, preparing for battle, that first you'd take off your hospital gown. You know what I mean?"

  "It's the backless nature of the items that disturbs me," said Shazza.

  "And those machine guns look funny," said Franco, tilting his head. He watched a squad jog across the white tiles, big black boots at contrast with the puke-green backless hospital gowns. "They don't look right. I should know. I know my machine guns, I do."

  "They're too long, and thin," said Shazza, slowly.

  They watched for a while. The "soldiers" had quite obviously once been patients. They wore hospital gowns, boots, and many wore cam-cream smeared liberally across faces (and even arses) in some bizarre caricature of a soldier. A squad jogged past, bearing weapons, and each of the twenty-five-strong unit pulled tall alloy trolleys containing small bags of fluid. Little wheels rattled across hospital tiles happily, and Franco scratched at his ginger goatee beard.

  "I mean," he said, a man stunned, "how do you go into battle dragging a fluid or blood infusion on a trolley stand? What you gonna do when you have to run across a field, or hit the deck? It hardly makes a soldier manoeuvrable. It kinda kills a squaddie's agility."

  "I was wondering," said Shazza, stroking her own weapon, "who they think they're going to fight?"

  The others nodded, pondering this puzzle, and watching the manic bustle of activity below. Franco counted, and worked out maybe five to six thousand patient/soldiers stationed there. Many were sat on benches, with sergeants - these seemed to wear blue patient gowns, still backless, revealing large white and black buttocks - who waved sticks and shouted a lot, as sergeants were wont to do, and prodding at map charts on moveable whiteboards.