Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  "No," said Franco, in all seriousness. "I was Captain of our School Debating Team. It trained me to keep my mouth open at every possible opportunity, especially when being addressed by a particularly foxy young squad killer." He leered at Pippa, and gave her a wink... as something large and shovel-like, pressed against his arse.

  Pippa turned from the hospital doors, which seemed to glow, almost surreally, with a hint of whiter-than-white.

  Olga loomed over Franco, beaming. "Hello sweetie," she said.

  Franco coughed. "Um. Hello love," he said, and reaching up, pecked her on the cheek.

  Pippa blinked a lazy, tomcat blink, and bared her teeth in a sudden wide and understanding grin. "So then," she drawled, as with deft hands she settled the Zeppelin3's engines and killed the power. The huge vehicle gave a sigh. "You two, you know, a bit of an item now, are you?"

  Franco's smile was tighter-than-tight. "Yes."

  "So, you fancy a slice of Olga pie, do you Franco?"

  "Shut up."

  "Fancy getting your face between those two massive ripe peaches of bosom, do you?"

  "Shut up."

  "Fancy giving her a bit of the slick Franco loving?"

  "Shut up."

  "After all, they don't call you Franco 'Horny Stud Muffin Who Can Fuck All Night' Haggis for nothing now, do they, eh Franco?"

  "Shut up."

  Pippa turned, and Keenan was pulling on his pack. Fizzy and Shazza had sorted out their kit, and removed the tight-fitting nurse uniforms which Franco seemed strangely reticent to remove. Snake was ready, with Olga his appointed guardian (for Health and Safety reasons, i.e. Snake's Health and Combat K's Safety). Betezh was packing guns, raided from the Zeppelin3's armoury, and only Franco seemed to be messing about, with Olga's hand apparently permanently spot-welded to his arse.

  "We ready?" she said.

  "Most of us," said Keenan, eyeing Franco warily. "You up for this gig, Franco? Or are you going to stay here and play with your fat girlfriend?" He switched to Olga. "No offence meant."

  Olga grinned with teeth that could bite through live electric cabling. "None taken, stick man whom I could break like a brittle twig with one great blow of my great fists!" She leered close and winked. "Understand that, little jelly-man?"

  Keenan laughed, and Pippa smiled. It was the first time she'd heard Keenan laugh in a long, long time; offset slightly by the fact he held onto his damaged ribs, and finished the laugh with a bout of painful coughing.

  "Come on. Let's roll. The ice is beginning to close in on my brain. I'm starting to feel like I need one of those Rainbow Pills. Franco lad?"

  "Yeah boss," said Franco, miserably, as he wrestled two-fisted with Olga's great, spade-like hand.

  "Put some boots on, there's a good lad. The tight tits I can live with, but we can't have you hobbling around the place like a leper on ecstasy, can we?"

  "Sure thing boss."

  "What shall we do with him?" Pippa pointed at Paddy Pudson, who cringed back, cowering, face contorted in raw fear unlike any show of cowardice Combat-K had witnessed in a very long time.

  "Slot him," said Franco, pulling on some thick-soled army boots. "Put a gun up his chuff and give him ten rounds."

  "I implore thee," whined Paddy.

  "For fuck's sake," muttered Keenan. "Tie him to the rail with some acid-rope. Good and tight. I doubt there's much he can get up to out here on his lonesome. We good to go, people?"

  Everyone gave Keenan a nod, and Pippa unrolled the airship's ladder, which clacked to the rocky cavern floor. With only the whine of the wind moaning through the giant archway, they descended and walked across rock, guns primed, to stand behind Keenan at the doors to Ward 1. A ragtag band of miscreants and cutthroats, they looked more like a hardy crew of mutinied pirates than a professional group of elite special force soldiers.

  Keenan placed his hand against the double doors, and pushed.

  Bright white light greeted them.

  Like lambs to the slaughter, they trooped inside the Asylum.

  "Wow," said Franco.

  They all stared about. The corridor was long, and wide, and brightly lit. The floor tiles, an alternating chequered pattern of green and white, gleamed. Everything was quiet. Still. Motionless. No breeze, no noise; a hiatus in time.

  "It's so... clean," said Pippa.

  "It's too clean," growled Keenan, MPK muzzle pressed against his cheek. "I don't like it. Get ready for something bad to happen... I can smell it on the breeze."

  Franco gave a deep sigh, and Keenan looked sideways at him.

  "What?" said Franco. "What? It's just this place mate, it's so, so, so reassuringly clinical. Not like those other bad places we visited with all the demented nurses and stuff. This is better. This is what a hospital should be like. I have spent a long time in hospitals and I know these things!"

  "Stop talking."

  "Yeah boss."

  They eased forward, boots squeaking on immaculate tiles. They passed trolleys which gleamed, chrome shining like a waxed automobile. They passed wheelchairs, motionless, PVC buffed to a shine, tyre-rubbers a perfect gleaming grey, axles smeared with a dab of grease. They passed a wheeled stretcher, and Keenan reached out slowly, as if afraid the apparition might vanish. He touched crisp white cotton. He leant forward, and sniffed it.

  "Well?" said Franco.

  "It has a hint of lemon," said Keenan, frowning.

  "This is a cool joint," said Franco, beaming a smile.

  "How can it be a cool joint, dickweed?" said Pippa. "It's a damn hospital corridor!"

  "You don't understand." Franco looked almost dreamy. "I had some reet good times at the Mount Pleasant."

  "I thought they electrocuted your testicles?"

  "Hey," Franco nudged Pippa, grinning, and looking quite delirious in his tight nurse uniform. "You could always give it a try, if you like."

  Olga muscled forward, and didn't quite push between Franco and Pippa. She smiled, a broad smile that reminded Franco of an alligator yawning.

  "Olga uneasy," said Olga, and cracked her tattooed knuckles. She hoisted her D5 and stared around. "This place, it smell like... like a lunatic place."

  "How would you know that?" said Franco.

  Olga shrugged her huge shoulders. "She just does! Stop asking ze questions. You get Olga all confused."

  The woolly silence was broken by the sound of distant footsteps, and a bristle of weapons crackled through the corridor, too many muzzles pointing at the distant set of double swing doors.

  Keenan eased the team forward, their movements fluid now with the promise of further combat, their faces streaked with dirt, and sweat, and blood, and droplets of pus. They looked worse than any deranged combat squad had a right to look; and against the pristine and immaculate surroundings of this virginal hospital corridor, there seemed to be a curious visual reversal.

  The footsteps grew louder, ponderous in their measured pendulum. They stopped just beyond the double doors, and Keenan moved forward, gun before him, eyes hardened and face a mask. His weapon lowered, jaw muscles tightening, and Pippa read his intention... to put rounds through the wood.

  "No," she said, her words drifting down the sterile avenue.

  The double doors swung open and, stooping to fit his bulk through the wide expanse, a huge, huge man pushed himself through the portal, like a turtle's head emerging from its shell. He was big. No. He was big. He didn't walk into the stretch of corridor, he rolled into it, his layers of fat falling over themselves in an eagerness to obey gravity. The man's head was like a potato, with a thick shaggy mane of brown hair, huge laughter lines, and deep brown eyes, each as big as a man's fist. He had a huge shaggy beard which reached almost down to his waist, and was not so much a singular entity as a continuation of the mane of hair he wore on his head, giving him the look of a huge potato-lion.

  In terms of fashion, there was no sign of the recurrent medical theme here. He wore what could only be described as a baggy smock, rainbow-striped, th
ick-knitted, loose and, one presumed, easy to move in. It was a dress. It was a tent. However, it could not disguise the battle of the flab, currently lost. His arms and legs were thick, powerful, and naked. He wore boots that had seen better days, and laced with bright colourful tassels. Overall, he gave the impression of a fat hippy grizzly bear.

  "Holy bat shit!" said Franco, his tongue lolling out.

  Keenan simply cocked his weapon with a single, echoing, determined click.

  The bear-man beamed down at them, as if they were his newly-found best friends. He roared with laughter, suddenly, a blast of hot mirth that made Keenan cringe, and the giant rolled forward a few steps and placed his hands on his hips, head touching the ceiling.

  "Welcome!" he boomed. "I am Lunatrick, and you have entered my domain!" He laughed again, a great bubbling geyser outpouring of sound that welled from his considerable belly and emerged like a flow of comedy lava.

  Franco eased forward. He coughed. "Um, Lunatic?" he said.

  "No no!" The huge bear waggled a finger, and Franco found himself momentarily hypnotised by that gesticulating digit. "I am Lunatrick! I am the king! This is my Ward! My Asylum! The Mad Morgue! The Looney Bin! The Chamber of Comedy Conniption!"

  "Um," began Franco, who could be a pedant.

  "And yes," roared the giant, Lunatrick, "you are very welcome! We don't get visitors often and I'm not sure why! Yes you are, we had those visitors the other decade and you crushed them in the Randy Rollers! No, I don't remember that, what are you talking about? Actually, you're both wrong because there were visitors but they had guns and tried to shoot us, me, him, all of us, and we ended up putting them in the Boiling Pot of Horrors where they, um, boiled to death, remember? I remember no I don't!"

  Lunatrick beamed at the stunned gathering. Weapons bristled uneasily. Franco toyed with the pin on a BABE grenade. It would be so easy... one pluck, one twist, roll it under the fat man's practically immobile body and boom! Lunatrick, specialist organic wallpaper.

  "Actually," said Pippa, forcing a smile, "what you said, just then, didn't actually really make any sense."

  "Yes it did no it didn't it's because they don't know but should we tell them because if we tell 'em they might get scared and think we're... mad." Lunatrick beamed again, and something scuttled through the shaggy mane of hair, surfaced, tiny little beady eyes staring, and then disappeared like an otter in a pond. "Sorry. It's complicated."

  Keenan pulled out his silver cigarette case, shouldered his weapon, and rolled himself a smoke. Lunatrick watched Keenan, a huge smile on his broad chops. Keenan lit the weed, took a deep puff, and blew smoke in Lunatrick's face.

  Lunatrick gave a little cough.

  "Why don't you explain it," said Keenan, with a tight smile.

  "YES!" boomed Lunatrick. "I might but it could get complicated so listen very careful! Especially those at the back!" Lunatrick beamed at Fizzy, Shazza and Snake. They scowled at him as one, guns not quite pointing away from him and his big beard.

  Lunatrick settled himself on the ground, his colourful rasta-robes spreading out around him, like a chicken settling on a batch of eggs. "You are in my Kingdom, my World," he began. "I am the Asylum King, and Ward 1 was the original ward of Sick World, of Krakken IV. I have been here from the beginning. Yes. That is so."

  "But..." said Franco.

  "Yes?"

  "That'd make you over a thousand years old!" blurted the little ginger squaddie.

  "Yes. It has been a long hard struggle, often backwards. Here, we are a thousand looonies. We are the maniacs, the greebos, the vagabonds, the freaks, the gypsies, the deviated, the frankies, and we number more than five thousand now, an incredible feat, for coming by extra body parts is a real bitch."

  He smiled again.

  "You said looonies," said Franco, again, the pedant.

  "Yes. Looonies."

  "Don't you mean loonies?"

  "No. We have extra oomph. You'll see. When you meet them shall we show them? Yes, that would be wise. But only after we've told them. That makes sense. Not to me it doesn't. Don't be such an idjit. Now then, back to business, telling you about my army. The Army of the Mad. That's me, Lunatrick, and my droogs, the Army of the Mad."

  He paused.

  "You are insane," hissed Pippa.

  "Exactly," said Lunatrick.

  "But he's blocking the way," whispered Keenan, "and it'd take more than an elephant gun to shift the bastard. So let's hear him out; maybe the looony can help us."

  "I was the Ward Manager," said Lunatrick. "In the beginning. I was human. Once. Sort of." He giggled, and rocked back and forth. Long pools of saliva drooled, pooling in his lap, but he seemed not to notice. "But things changed, the luna went ding-dong, and topworld cut us off, cut the chain, pulled the plug, cast us out and down and twisted into downside, madworld, luna, but they called it luna meaning lunatic, not the moon, the green moon. Why don't you tell them about the Upsamid? Yes. That would make sense, for we've been waiting for the Keenan for a thousand years. Ever since boy-o told us about him. Yes. He did, didn't he? Yes. He sure did glad we got that all sorted out and straightened away."

  "What the hell's wrong with you, lad?" snapped Franco. "Can't you speak proper like what I does?"

  "I am tri-polar," said Lunatrick smugly, playing with his strings of drool.

  "You mean bi-polar," said Franco, a self-appointed expert on all things mental. "I knows about that, so I do."

  "Tri-polar," said Lunatrick. "I am home to three personalities. Unfortunately, we never get on we fucking well do, no we don't you two muppets are always arguing and I'm the only sane one anyway looonies why are you two arguing when we should be discussing the Upsamid? Yes, the Upsamid, tell Keenan about what the Junkala King said about showing him to the Upsamid."

  "The Junkala King said I would come?" Keenan's eyes were shining.

  "He saw you. In a fast-forward dream. A twisted prophecy, no less. I we us have to take you to the Upsamid, show you how to reach the Elysium Casket and that will point you in the direction of VOLOS will it? Yes it shure nuff will and that's what these dudes want a way of finding VOLOS to sort out this godforsaken cursed ball of mango." Lunatrick's look suddenly shifted, in a way very reminiscent of Franco; Pippa and Keenan exchanged knowing glances.

  "What's that mean?" scowled Franco.

  "It's the crafty witch-look of the mad," said Pippa.

  "Conniption," said Keenan, tapping his nose conspiratorially.

  "Yeah, conniption," smiled Pippa.

  Keenan took several steps closer, and the huge bloated Lunatrick looked up at the soldier. "You want something, don't you?" said Keenan. It wasn't really intuition, because Lunatrick observed a kind of genetically-modified Arthur-Daley-ducking-diving-fucking-skiving aura that befitted every used car, buggy and shuttle salesman Quad-Gal wide. "What is it? What do you want?"

  "I want a new world," said Lunatrick, eyes gleaming.

  "Meaning?"

  "Exactly what it says on the tin. I was here, Keenan, from the start. I was here at the beginning of Sick World. I watched the Sick Crates being lowered, helped smash off the sides and watched the wounded, the lame, the diseased, watched the krooped, the muffled, and the kijangered, watched them all limp, walk, hop, and slither from their Sick Crates. But we never cured them, did we? We never helped them... we just made matters worse."

  Keenan realised with a start that Lunatrick was crying, huge tears from his huge brown eyes. Despite his obvious lack of secure screws, it was still a touching sight. Lunatrick cared about the deviants of Sick World. Because he remembered them when they were not so; remembered the abuse of medical trust.

  "OK," said Keenan, throwing Pippa a scowl. She shook her head, and rubbed at weary eyes. "I'll make a deal. Lead us to VOLOS and QGM will find you a planet. Uninhabited. And we'll do an airlift for all who want to leave. How does that sound? A fresh start. The chance to begin again."

  "There's something else," said Lunatrick, rubbing at his
eyes and sucking up huge drools of snot that hung from his over-large nostrils. He chewed for a few moments, thinking, then swallowed.

  "What do you want next, our fucking eyeballs?" muttered Pippa.

  "Shut up," snapped Keenan. Then, "Go on, what is it?"

  "You must reverse the mutations," said Lunatrick. "Everything you see here, on this planet, it is as a result of VOLOS. We are his personal playthings. The wars they fight up above," he gestured with a hand the size of Franco's head, "they are engineered by VOLOS. But more importantly, we are a test bed for the junks, guinea pigs, experimentations, VOLOS serves a Higher Purpose. Or so he thinks. I we us are tired of seeing the abuse and endless suffering. We want it to end."

  "We can end it with napalm," muttered Pippa.

  "I will do what I can," said Keenan, "because I understand, understand VOLOS, I can see glimpses of his mind like water droplets in ice. And, bizarrely, VOLOS is intrigued by our little escapade. I don't think he'll hinder us, too much."

  "Why not?" snarled Pippa. "He's done a damn good job so far."

  "Because," said Keenan, eyes narrowed, "he wants something."

  "What's that? Our testicles?" said Franco.

  "No," said Keenan, staring hard at Lunatrick, who had started gibbering and playing with his fingers. "When the Kahirrim, Emerald, entered each of our minds, she left a residue, a substance which has altered us from human. Made us..."

  "Hot damn superhuman!" exclaimed Franco. "I always knew I was special!" he beamed.

  "Yeah, special fucking needs," said Pippa caustically.

  "I'll give you some special needs," Franco said, and licked his lips.

  "Only when I'm unconscious," said Pippa.

  "That can be arranged."

  "You're a bloody pervert!"

  "I try," said Franco, with a grin.

  "He wants us. To experiment with." Keenan's smile was glass-cold. "He wants to add us to the Sick World gene pool, see what new and interesting breeds he can develop. This place has become stale for VOLOS; there's no new blood, no new meat. There's been no new genetics for a thousand years; the place is a DNA ghost-ship."