Toxicity

by Andy Remic

  “So we wait,” said Zanzibar.

  “They know we’re coming.”

  “I, also, have this feeling.” Zanzibar slapped her on the back. “Into the lion’s den, little lady. Don’t worry overmuch. We’ll give them a taste of their own toxicity; that is a promise.”

  Jenny nodded, ran a hand through her hair, and checked her weapon. It was new, and stiff, still showing traces of manufacturer’s grease and PASS testing stickers. It’s like they’re waiting for a war... preparing for a day when each and every factory or base will have to defend itself with an army. There’d been enough weapons in the armoury to indeed equip an army; five armies, if the truth be told. Certainly many, many battalions.

  Within minutes, they heard the train rattling down the tracks. It roared from the tunnel, decelerating with incredible force and noise. It was a single carriage, and it was empty. The doors slid open with a hiss.

  “Too easy,” muttered Jenny.

  “Like stepping into the jaws of a beast,” said Zanzibar. “And yet we must do it.”

  “I know. Let’s go...”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” said a strangled, pain-filled voice, and Jenny’s head swung up fast. There was a clatter of a grille, and Randy Zaglax crawled from the narrow pipe with his pistol trained on Jenny’s face. He was soaked in blood, presumably his own. One arm hung limp by his side, the other held the pistol. However, despite his ragged, battered, torn appearance, the whistle and hiss of air moving through his torn throat as well as his lipless mouth, and the sodden footfalls on the platform from his blood-soaked feet, his one good arm, holding the gun, was straight and true and steady.

  Jenny felt Zanzibar tense by her side, but raised a hand. “No!” snapped her command, and everything fell into languid, honeyed slow motion. Jenny lowered her own weapon, which had snapped up the moment she heard Randy’s voice, and her eyes narrowed, fixed on Randy.

  “You can’t stop us,” she said.

  “Oh, but I can.”

  “If you shoot me, my squad will drill you full of bullets. You’ll be dead, Randy. Dead and gone and wasted.”

  Randy’s rebuilt face twisted in pain, and he twitched, the fingers of his limp arm clawing his leg spasmodically. “No!” he hissed. “Stop it! Stop telling me what to do! Get out of my fucking head!”

  “We still clear on the escalator?” said Zanzibar from the corner of his mouth.

  “Yeah,” growled Bull.

  “You have two minutes before the train departs,” came a mellow female voice over the speaker system. The train sat on its tracks, humming gently to itself. It seemed almost to vibrate, as if in eagerness to be off on its journey.

  Randy’s gun wavered now, and then sharply rose, the heel of his palm rubbing against his own forehead. His pistol was pointing at the ceiling. Zanzibar made a gesture to kill, but Jenny waved him down. She approached Randy.

  “Hey. Randy?”

  His gaze snapped back to her. His eyes were rolling and crazy. Saliva pooled from his lips, falling down his bloodied chest.

  “No! No, I won’t do it, I don’t care, you can only push a fucking man so much and you’ve gone beyond a fucking joke, bitch!”

  The gun was waving around manically, and Jenny lifted her own weapon. Randy had passed beyond sanity and she could see he was a danger to everybody. Even himself. She made a grim decision. It was with no joy she would have to kill him... maybe once, when he’d been sane and evil; but not now. Not like this. This would be like putting down a rabid dog. Simply a necessary act that had to be done. Complete. Finished. A necessary kill...

  “Wait!”

  Randy’s hand slammed up, gun still pointing at the ceiling, and his lips were twisting silently as if speaking impossible words. And then he fixed Jenny with a look that she would never forget until her dying day. It was like a man looking out from behind a mask. Utter, total, cold sanity stared out through those bloodshot, watering eyes. Randy looked out at her from the cage of his own mind; from a torture cell of his own making.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, through the blood and the spittle.

  Jenny stared, unsure of what to say.

  “I’m truly sorry I did those things to you. I’m sorry about everything that happened. I had a madness upon me.” Then he seemed to relax. He was breathing deeply, the hole in his throat whistling. “It all got fucked up. Can’t you see? I went beyond the mortal realm. Into Hell.” He laughed. “Go, Jenny. Detonate the lirridium pumps at the Hub!” His gun turned on himself, and a single shot rang out. There came a chink as the shell casing bounced on the hard tiled floor of the station. Randy’s body crumpled straight down in a heap, and blood leaked from the bullet hole as his pulped brains dribbled like a streamer of jellied mush.

  “Shit,” breathed out Jenny, and turned to Zanzibar.

  “Jenny?” whispered Randy.

  Slowly, very slowly, she turned back to the corpse. The eyes were lifeless. Gone to another realm. But the mouth was moving, tongue flickering, teeth chewing spasmodically.

  “Yes?”

  “Come to us, girl. Come to us at the Greenstar Hub... we want to watch you die!” Randy’s lips and voice made a high-pitched cackling sound, and then were still.

  “Holy Mother of Manna,” said Zanzibar, and made the sign of the protective horn. “She possessed the dead!”

  “Who did?”

  “Renazzi Lode. The Director. I recognised her voice!”

  “Thirty seconds until departure,” came the mellow voice of the train’s simple AI brain.

  “INCOMING!” yelled Bull suddenly from the foot of the escalators. Machine guns screamed. Bull’s SMKK rattled, return fire ejecting from the barrel, bullets yammering up the incline and punching three guards from their feet. Bullets kicked shattered tiles from the tunnel wall, punching dust into the air, sending shards flying outwards.

  Then there came a dull bass WHUMP. Bull was picked up, folded into a ball, and tossed across the space. He hit the back wall of the tunnel with a slap. There was a rattle like machine-gun fire, but it was Bull’s bones snapping within the pulped skin ball of his body. He fell onto the tracks, instantly dead.

  “Onto the train!” screamed Jenny, and the remaining members of the squad backed onto the train, guns blazing. Zanzibar shot out the windows and they hunkered down between benches, guns yowling across the platform. Guards came sprinting down the escalator, wearing body armour and helmets. Their own guns were roaring. Bullets screamed like jungle insects.

  And there was Vasta, cool, calm, walking between the guards and holding... an E3 Accelerator.

  Jenny’s gun trained on Vasta, but her bullets seemed to worm around the woman, failing to puncture her flesh.

  “Time for departure.” The door shuddered shut, peppered with bullet holes.

  The train gave a sudden jerk, then a lurch, and accelerated rapidly into the tunnel opening. Jenny turned, breath caught in her throat, and saw Vasta run, leaping down onto the tracks. The Head of Security turned the E3 Accelerator into the darkness... and the remainder of Jenny’s squad ducked down, heard the painful dull WHUMP... and for a second, nothing seemed to happen. Then the rear of the train screamed and steel compressed and the train bunched up into an alloy-and-steel fist, slamming towards Jenny, whose mouth was open in an O of shock and surprise...

  I never thought I’d die this way...

  I never thought it would end this way...

  And the darkness of the tunnel seemed to last forever.

  ~ * ~

  FIFTEEN

  SVOOL WAS EXHAUSTED. Never had he felt so tired. Not even when he’d slept with the Sixteen Sluts from the Wheels of Hell, drunk a full three litres of Jataxa Spirit and taken enough drugs to drop a platoon, before going on to pen (what was widely agreed to be) one of the greatest Saga Poems of the millennium, in a fit of alcohol and drug-fuelled debauchery which left his sexual health in tatters, but garnered him considerable respect from his peers. No, not even that blip on his chart of insanity c
ould match the utter, total, complete sense of emptiness, hollowness and despair that now filled him from crown to crotch with the direst exhaustion. He stumbled along, often held up by Lumar who was there for him, strong for him, mopping his brow and helping his legs motivate.

  They had marched for days. Through caverns and tunnels, through mines and stairs and portals and up and down sheer rock chimneys. After a day, Herbert and Angelina had been left behind, for the under-mountain terrain had become narrow and impassable for them, breaking down into crawl-tunnels through which only Svool and Lumar could squeeze. So they had parted - but not before Herbert had blown Svool a big, oily, sloppy kiss, winked, and said he’d catch up with him real soon. After all, they had a nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-year relationship to look forward to. Svool had scowled and looked less than impressed, and even as they left in a steel boat across a deep lake of lirridium, Herbert had blown yet another kiss and waved a sheet of metallic, hole-punched paper at him.

  “What was that?” said Lumar, eyes narrowed.

  “My deed of ownership,” said Svool miserably.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning he’ll find me, no matter where I go. Curse Metal Mongrels, Inc. Curse their mad robotic creations of Hell!”

  That had been two days previously. Now, Svool was ready to weep. No. It was worse than that, and he never thought he’d be willing to voluntarily shuffle off his own mortal coil; but dammit. He was ready to chuck it all in and die.

  Svool staggered on, lost in a private world of pain and suffering and misery. The cool breeze helped soothe his skin, but it really was a disgrace, really was asking too much of a poet and future awesome film star of the Quad-Gal. His cowboy boots clattered on the metal walkway, but he felt weak at the knees and almost collapsed. He grabbed at a metal rail and again Lumar was there, bless her little cotton lizard socks, there to help him along as he murmured on the edge of reason and understanding. And then bright lights dazzled him, and he dropped to his knees, and vomited again, and no matter how much Lumar urged him on he just lay there and sank, swiftly and with welcoming arms, into a state of deep unconsciousness.

  ~ * ~

  WHEN HE OPENED his eyes, Svool was in a bed. He stared at the ceiling for a while, luxuriating in what he could only describe as the most unbelievable comfort he had ever experienced. No more walking. No more crawling. No more starving. No more pain... and then the pain did hit him, and it was a pain of chafed skin, of blisters, of tiny cuts and scratches and bruises that seemed to run up and down his entire body.

  “Urgh. Where am I?”

  “Hello, Svool!” It was Zoot, hovering at the foot of the bed. Zoot seemed to be glowing pink, which was the colour he always used when extremely happy about the entire Manna Galaxy and everything happening within it.

  “What’s going on, PopBot?”

  “We’ve been found! Rescued! By a crack military team of military crack specialists! After your horrible terrible crash, the Shamans sent out search parties, and all these bulky heroic soldier types have been scanning the waves and sands and mountains for you, beloved Svoolzard, the greatest of poets.”

  “So... they found us?”

  “Yes! Isn’t it wonderful!”

  “So... our adventure is... over?”

  “YES!”

  “So, no more, y’know, adventures with Lumar?”

  “Correctamundo!”

  Svool’s head was buzzing. It felt familiar and yet alien at the same time. He forced out several words, but they slurred into a slurry of oblivion. His vision started to waver uncontrollably. “What’s wrong with me?” he managed, through thick rubber lips.

  “Oh, the soldiers brought you lots of pampering, Turkey Whiskey - which they’ve fed to you intravenously - and 10mg of SLAP, a snort of TWAT and a hefty dollop of SPUNK. All delivered straight to your no-doubt pining and drained drug-fuelled metabolism!”

  “No, oh, no!” groaned Svool, sinking back on his bed with his head spinning. And that was the feeling, and it felt bad, and he realised - suddenly - that during his time on Amaranth, on Toxicity, in a massive ironic reversal, he had thrown off the shackles of his internal toxicity - his drug dependency. He’d gone cold turkey and survived. And now the bastards had force-fed him another circulatory system full of shite.

  Claws tried to drag him back down to sleep, but instead he forced his legs out of bed and stood up, swaying. He was naked, but that didn’t matter. Giggling, a horde of young hellakunga girls came stumbling in, long breasts wobbling like streams of jelly.

  “Ooh, Svool, remember us?”

  “The times we had!”

  “The suckling we did!”

  “Your tongue is so horny!”

  “Your hands are so thorny!”

  “Come and sit on my face!”

  “Can I sit on your face?”

  “Oooh, Svool, recite us some poetry!”

  “Want to feel this? Touch this? Squeeze this?”

  “Gah,” said Svool, and pushed his way through the quivering jelly-flesh, a selection of nubbins and lots of nuzzling warm noses. Outside, in a sterile alloy corridor, where it was so cold Svool’s breath emerged as smoke, Lumar L’anarr was waiting, her green eyes focused on him. She was dressed in fresh combat fatigues and looked... incredible.

  Svool blinked and took a deep breath. He felt the drugs thundering around his veins like a freight train. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop! But of course, it wouldn’t stop, because it was inside him, in his flesh, in his blood, taking over his control. “Shit,” he said, and leant against the wall, and vomited.

  “You okay?” Lumar crossed to him, and patted him on the back.

  “They force-fed me SLAP, TWAT and SPUNK!”

  “That’s what they thought you wanted. Sergeant Hardspore, well, I tried to reason with him, but he had his instructions.” She slapped a fake salute at her head and wobbled her lips. “You know what these bureaucratic army types are like.”

  “Instructions?” snapped Svool, standing up and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Suddenly he smelled perfume, and in disgust realised it was his own golden curls, which had been oiled and combed with rancid scent. “What docile dumb son-of-a-bitch muppet gave the stupid dumb docile bastard instruction to perfume my hair, fill me full of drugs and let a platoon of naked jelly-tit hellakunga girls loose on me? Eh?”

  “You did,” said Lumar, smoothly.

  “Er. Eh?”

  “Here. Look.” And she handed him a document on a metal leaf, and it said in big bold letters: IN THE EVENT OF ME BECOMING LOST, OR DETACHED, OR OTHERWISE KIDNAPPED OR SOME SUCH NONSENSE... and went on to specify exactly what the Quad-Gal Authorities and the Shamans of Manna should do in order to have their favourite poet returned to them...

  “Ahh,” said Svool as he read down the sheet. “Ahh. Oh. Ahh. Yes, I see. Oh, dear. Oh, bugger.”

  When he finished, he met Lumar’s steady green reptilian gaze. “I bet you think I’m an idiot.”

  “Oh, no...” she said.

  “Oh, yes.” He held up one hand, and tried to look regal.

  “No. Let me finish. I don’t think you’re an idiot. I know it. However, I am willing to look past your failings, because Chorzaranalista brought us here for a reason. She has a plan. All the children of Toxicity have a plan. And we are to be involved... if you can get the skag out of your brain for a moment.”

  “Hey! I was force-fed this shit...”

  “Under your own instruction.”

  “Admittedly under my own instruction, however, I have changed, my time on this planet has changed me; my time here with you has changed me!”

  “How so?”

  “Well, once I would have tumbled into bed with all those jelly girls!”

  “So why don’t you go back to them? Svool? Hey? After all, you are... the Poet Master. Behold, Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV, Third Earl of Apobos, poet, swashbuckler and bon viveur, a legend in the hallowed halls of poetic creation, in the art of verse and a
lliteration, in the dazzling creation of metaphor and pun, sexual athlete, comedy chef, genius extraordinaire, Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV!”

  “You’ve got a good memory,” coughed Svool, averting his gaze.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Er. Listen. We’ve come this far together. I have a proposition.”

  “Oh, yeah? Go on, fucker, make my day.”

  “First, we will do whatever Chorzaranalista requires of us. And I mean whatever. What I’ve seen on this world, well, nobody should have to live like that. Such levels of pollution and disregard; it should never have happened. Greenstar are evil, and they need to stop their polluting right now. They need to be stopped!” He stared hard at Lumar. “We need to stop them!”