Toxicity

by Andy Remic

  Poor dead mother. Don’t cry for me, darling.

  And... your sister.

  Nixa? Poor sweet dead Nixa. I’ll cry for you, honey. We’ll all cry for you.

  ~ * ~

  AND AGAIN.

  Why do you hate your father?

  Oh, well, that’s a long story. A complicated story.

  Why do you hate him?

  I hate him because...

  Go on. Explain it to me. Was it because of the drink? The womanising? More drink? The whiskey bottle, constantly stuck to his lips like a baby bottle? He’d glug it down, couldn’t get enough, stagger down the middle of the road with groundcars swerving around him, then fall over outside his own house, piss in his pants, sleep on the concrete. Isn’t that right? ISN’T THAT RIGHT?

  Nixa. You came back.

  Why do you hate him, Jenny?

  I hate him because he died. I hate him because he left me. I hate him because... I love him so much.

  ~ * ~

  JENNY HELD HIS hand. It was warm. Too warm. Warm with the fever. She looked down into his eyes. They were watering, and weak, so unlike the strength he had once shown. Strength, and a love for his country. His world. Amaranth. Beautiful Amaranth...

  “I want... to say. Something.”

  She looked down with pity, and her own tears fell into his eyes. They shared an intimacy that only incoming death can bring. A total intimacy that made a mockery of words.

  “Of course,” she whispered, her lips trembling with fear; because it was Old Tom, her father, her dad, the man who held her in his arms when she was frightened, the man whom she snuggled up to, smelling of tobacco and whiskey, his whiskers rasping against her skin and making her squeal. And he was as big as a giant, bigger than God; bigger than the world. Swimming in the sea, he supported her weight and stopped her sinking under the waves. In the woods, he pushed branches out of her way and lifted her over fallen trunks. When riding her bike he was there, holding the saddle and laughing as she weaved a random track, learning her balance. But he was always there. To stop the fall.

  How could he die?

  How?

  “I love you, Jenny. You know that, don’t you? I’ve always loved you. Ever since I held you as a babe. I couldn’t cut the cord - you know that? The midwives laughed at me. I said I was frightened of hurting you.” He started to cough, and endured a savage coughing fit. She held a handkerchief to his mouth. It came away with spots of blood.

  She held his hand. It was huge. How could a man with such huge, strong hands die? It was impossible. They were wrong. The doctors had to be wrong. After all, what did they know?

  “I want you to promise me something,” he said. His eyes were distant. Milky. Dreaming.

  “Anything. Anything at all.”

  “I want you to save Amaranth. Save our world. Make it green again.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Old Tom smiled then. And his eyes closed. And he died.

  ~ * ~

  “I WILL. I promise.”

  Jenny opened her eyes. She was shivering. Freezing cold, fingers and toes frozen and stiff. Something smelled funny. Something smelled... bad. And then she realised. She knew the scent. Knew that scent more than her own. It was Randy Zaglax, the pampered poodle without a face. She should have known. He’d spent enough hours trying to smooch up to her with the sole intention of getting her into bed. Now, the only bed she’d be willing to share would be a coffin.

  She started forward again, and then froze as fingers closed around her ankle.

  “Gotcha,” he said.

  She lifted her knee, and drove her free foot as hard as she could into his patchwork face. There came a breaking sound, and Randy screamed, long and loud. She stomped him again. He screamed again. It gave her some small satisfaction.

  Jenny scrambled forward as fast as she could, pistol still gripped tight in one chilled hand, claustrophobia a cold dark mistress in her chest. Her mouth was full of her panicked heart.

  “I’m going to kill you, whore!” shrieked Randy. He fired his own pistol, and a bullet whined and whizzed up the tube. It hissed past Jenny so close she felt the spin and heat of the bullet. This sent another burst of panic firing through her. How many shots would it take in such a confined space to hit her?

  Another shot whined past, bouncing from the inside of the tube and sending sparks shrieking.

  Jenny was sobbing now, and she stopped, and tried to focus. She rolled onto her back, opened her legs in a most undignified posture, and pointed the gun, like a black metal dick, and fired from her own crotch into the darkness of the tunnel.

  There was a pause, and a slap, and Randy started screaming, screaming so long and hard that Jenny thought her ears would bleed. She scrambled along again, arms and legs, elbows and knees raw and scraped and bruised and battered - and suddenly the ground seemed to give way, and Jenny was falling amidst a tumble of what felt like polystyrene planks.

  She hit hard tiles with a slap and lay there, stunned. Like a fish on a block.

  Slowly, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the hole through which she’d tumbled. Shivering, aching, fear raw in her mind and stomach, she lifted her gun and aimed and focussed and waited.

  Randy appeared, slick with blood, his twisted rebuilt face manic and inhuman. Jenny fired, one-two-three-four-five shots, and gunsmoke drifted, and Randy had gone.

  Jenny climbed to her feet and looked around. She was in some kind of kitchen. The floor was made of hard white tiles, small squares which stretched off to walls of polished stainless steel. Steel benches lined the walls, littered with pans. Everything gleamed as if some maniac with a love of polish had been at work. The kitchen wasn’t in use; no pans bubbled, no happy chefs tossed salads or pared meat from bone. It was deathly still, quiet as the grave, cold as a corpse.

  Jenny walked, feet slapping, and found a door. It led to a corridor, and the corridor led to more rooms. She peered through glass squares in each door, and the third one down was some kind of locker room. She tried the handle, stepped inside, and started going through the lockers. There was a wide range of different outfits, mainly of the chef or kitchen orderly variety, and thankfully Jenny pulled on baggy white pants and a cotton smock. She found white pumps, which she gratefully pulled onto her freezing feet, and all of a sudden she felt less vulnerable. A little bit of her confidence returned.

  “You’ve been through a lot, girl,” she murmured, eyes narrowing. “Now it’s time to finish this thing.” But she could still hear Flizz’s screams echoing in her ears. Still see Sick Note’s face as the chainsaw came down on him, and his blood splattered the ground. Her face twisted into a nasty grimace and she looked up, looked around. “I’m going to bring you all down, motherfuckers. Going to give you a taste of your own sour medicine.”

  ~ * ~

  IT TOOK HER three hours to find the cell block. Most of the blocks were automated, and Randy’s magical set of keys unlocked everything. He was high-ranking, that was for sure. A regular ziggurat type of guy, no doubt with a CV as long and fictional as it was fancy and stencilled. In the end, sick of searching endless corridors and empty kitchens - What was this place? It felt like a complex waiting to be filled with an army! - she found a terminal in an empty office, which smelt of polish and wax and air freshener, and she sat and booted up the computer and, using the codes on Randy’s keys, managed to find herself a map of the complex. It was big. No. BIG. Her eyes scanned the images, and noted the underground private train system which linked most of the major cities on Amaranth with the Greenstar Factory Hub.

  “Bingo,” she said, without any form of smile or self-congratulation. But she had found it. The base of operations.

  The Factory Hub.

  But first?

  She needed backup.

  Now, however, she’d come across a problem. Three guards, seated around a steel table, reading. She really didn’t want to kill them, but... hell. They’d put a bullet in her skull first chance they got.


  Luck was on her side. A comm buzzed and one of the guards had a heated conversation. Cursing, he scraped back his chair and disappeared into the depths of the prison block complex. A few minutes later, one of the remaining guards stood and stretched, complaining about his back. “I’m going for a piss. Hold the fort.”

  Jenny followed him at a discreet distance, sneaking into the restroom thirty seconds behind him and thanking her lucky stars that he’d locked himself in a cubicle. She decided to work on the shock principle.

  The shot blasted a hole in the steel door and punched a hole in the tiles six inches from the man’s head. When Jenny kicked the door open, it smacked him in the face and he sat back down on the toilet, pants still round his ankles, blood pouring from a broken nose.

  “Don’t kill me,” he said, clamping the bridge of his nose between thumb and fingers.

  Jenny advanced. She smiled. “All I need is information,” she said.

  Five minutes later, the guard with the broken nose, relieved of his weapon - which sat in Jenny’s belt -stopped outside a blank steel door. It was heavy duty, reinforced with bars, and Jenny smiled nicely at the guard. His comrade was unconscious back at the desk, a copy of a pulp paperback covering his face, his hands and feet tied tight with wire.

  As the door opened, the man within rose like a ponderous mountain. He had dark skin and wore simple prison clothes. He’d been beaten badly, his nose was still bent, but his eyes were bright and filled with fire.

  “Jenny!”

  “Zanzibar. Come on. I’m breaking you out.”

  “I knew you’d come.”

  He grinned at her, and in that face, in that smile, in that connection, Jenny realised she was back; back with her family. Zanzibar stepped out of the cell, and stretched, and glared at the guard. He grinned, and it was the grin of a shark. The guard visibly flinched.

  “You okay, girl?”

  Jenny nodded, and burst into tears.

  ~ * ~

  JENNY STOOD HOLDING her pistol, and stared at her squad. What remained of her squad. Her friends. There was Meat Cleaver, stocky, his eyes narrow and slanted, looking almost naked without his trademark knives and sharpened meat cleaver. Nanny was there, face wrinkled, hair hacked into a crew cut, haggard, shoulders square, almost a cube of muscle, but looking even more fearsome in the harsh glare of the prison. Bull was there, a short stocky man with angry eyes, an angry face and a horde of facial tattoos.

  And then there was Zanzibar. Her old comrade. Her old friend. They’d been in it together; from the start. Through training, field ops, bombing raids; they’d saved each other’s arses a hundred times. He was a dark-skinned man-mountain, hair short-cropped and brown, eyes so deep they were pools of velvet.

  “Flizz?” he said.

  Jenny shook her head, looking at the ground.

  “What about Sick Note?” asked Nanny, her voice a soft rumble. There’d always been rumours about her and Sick Note, which they’d both vehemently denied. And not just because it was against squad protocol; they both seemed embarrassed at the notion of love, as if it would destroy their “hard man” image.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jenny, looking at the ground again.

  Nanny made a strangled sound. “How did he die?”

  “It wasn’t... good.”

  “How did he die?” There was a furious light, like the eternal fires of Hell, in Nanny’s eyes.

  “With a chainsaw. At the hands of a woman called Vasta. She’s the Head of Security.”

  “I will kill her.”

  Jenny nodded, and took a deep breath, and looked up at Zanzibar. He was staring at her, head tilted to one side.

  “You have a plan?” he said.

  “This place is linked to the Greenstar Factory Hub by an underground train network. All the major Greenstar places are slotted into this crazy spider’s web they’ve built. But what I also saw, in the schematics, was a network of pipes running from the Hub to every damn Greenstar base, carrying lirridium fuel to large tanks - I mean large tanks - which resupply Shuttles and Dumpers. You see where I’m going with this?”

  “Detonate the Hub, a chain reaction should feed through the pipes and take out every Greenstar base on the planet.” Zanzibar’s eyes were shining. “Sounds dangerous, though.”

  “Certainly,” said Jenny.

  “Suicidal, in fact.”

  “Without a shadow of a doubt.”

  “But we cleanse the planet of Greenstar.”

  “Guys?” Jenny Xi looked around at what remained of her squad. “We’ve been through some shit together. Through some pain. I am going to the Greenstar Factory Hub. And I’m going to blow it, or die trying. I don’t expect any of you to follow; you have your own lives to lead. In three minutes, I leave this room, and I won’t think anything less of those who choose to walk away.”

  “I’m with you,” growled Nanny. “I want some fucking payback.”

  “Me as well,” rumbled Meat Cleaver.

  Bull gave a grunt, which Jenny knew from experience was an affirmative. Once again tears sprang to her eyes; but these were tears of love, and a feeling that she was part of a union, a joyous need to do the right thing and get the right thing done.

  She looked to Zanzibar. He was grinning, despite the torture on his face. “We’re all with you, little lady. Just lead the way.”

  Jenny gave a nod, approached the guard and put a pistol to his head. “First, we need the armoury. If you’d be so good as to give us directions.”

  “We have no armoury here,” said the guard.

  Jenny lowered the pistol and put a bullet in his shoulder. Blood exploded. Shards of shoulder blade hung from the wound. The guard gasped, dropping to one knee, but Zanzibar grabbed him and hoisted him up.

  “I think you should take us to it,” said Jenny, little more than a whisper.

  “Okay,” said the guard, lips trembling, blood leaking between his fingers.

  “Let’s move,” said Jenny.

  ~ * ~

  BOOTS THUDDED DOWN the polished steel corridors. Jenny, Zanzibar, Meat Cleaver, Bull and Nanny were now dressed in black combat fatigues, courtesy of Greenstar’s secret armoury, and carried a range of D4 shoguns, SMKK machine guns and Techrim 11mm pistols. They had packs full of HighJ explosives, and Nanny had treated herself to Kekra Quad Barrel Machine Pistols. It had been a particularly well-equipped armoury.

  “How did you know they’d have such a stash of hardware?” rumbled Bull, as they stopped at a corridor intersection and crouched, weapons bristling and covering arcs of fire.

  “Greenstar sort out their own problems. Each and every factory has a stash that makes the Amaranth Regular Army look like chicken farmers. It’s almost as if... they’re preparing for a war.”

  “Maybe it’s a precaution in case the other planets of Manna decide they no longer want to allow Greenstar to abuse the ecology of this world?”

  Jenny nodded. “If politics fail, then they will resort to violence. Yes. I can see the logic in that; after all, it’s the way it’s always been with politicians, down the ages. Fucking scumbags. All in it for the power, the glory... and the money. Especially the money.”

  “Let’s move.”

  They sprinted down another corridor and stopped, peering down a stationary escalator. Below them, they could just see the edge of a platform - like any underground train station. Only this was for the internal use of Greenstar staff only.

  Jenny made several hand gestures, and led the way down the escalator, treading softly, SMKK in her hands. The schematics had shown that the trains were automated; but that didn’t mean they weren’t guarded. But then, this place was hardly a hive of bustling activity. Jenny felt suddenly uncertain about what would happen when they reached the Greenstar Hub - after all, it was central. The core of all Greenstar’s Amaranth activities. They’d have to leave the train early, do the last few hundred metres on foot. See if there were access tunnels they could use to bypass what was surely a “central” station.
/>   Reaching the bottom of the escalator, Jenny stopped, Zanzibar by her shoulder. Something felt wrong. It was just too easy. Too quiet. Did they know the escaped ECO terrorists were on a new warpath to destroy Greenstar in totality? Or were they tied up with some other problem?

  Jenny motioned to Zanzibar, and she veered left down the cold, deserted - but sparkling clean -platform. Zanzibar went right. Meat Cleaver followed Jenny, and Nanny followed Zanzibar. Bull turned and covered the escalators with his SMKK, his face set and hard, eyes focused.

  Jenny reached the end of the platform, but it was deserted. She signalled back to Zanzibar, who also confirmed no activity; they jogged back to the centre of the platform and peered into the dark hole of the tunnel.