Major Karnage

by Gord Zajac

  A high-pitched whine—like the cry of an angry bumblebee— pierced through the cacophony. Karnage looked up. There was an explosion of concrete and sparks as a battered Dabney cruiser burst over the edge of the wall. It spiralled through the air, and slammed into The Worm’s head.

  The Worm let out a horrid screech and recoiled, tumbling over itself. The cruiser bounced across the arena and rolled to a stop. The Worm’s body crashed atop the cruiser just as a tiny figure leaped clear of the wreckage. Karnage smiled.

  It was Sydney.

  She ran up to Karnage. “You all right?”

  “I’ll live.” Karnage tried to walk towards The Worm, but the pain in his ankle was too much and he crashed to the ground. Sydney helped him up.

  “Where are you going?”

  Karnage shook his head. “I have to do this. Now. Help me. Please.” Sydney propped Karnage up as he half-limped, half-hopped towards the massive beast. The Worm rocked itself, moaning horribly. Karnage grabbed its side, and started climbing. The tentacles made a half-hearted attempt to stop him, but they barely had any strength left. Karnage quickly scaled The Worm’s bulk and emerged onto its head.

  The horn was the size of a small tree. The cruiser had mostly torn it from its base. It lolled from side to side as if in a drunken stupor. Yellow smoke spewed from the wound. It smelled like a cross between nicotine and car exhaust. Karnage wrapped his arms around the horn and pulled.

  The Worm screeched. It suddenly found new energy as it bucked and writhed, trying to throw Karnage off. Karnage wrapped his arms and legs around the horn. His weight tore it further and further as The Worm writhed more and more frantically. Karnage’s sweaty hands started to slip. His strength was leaving him. He dug his nails into the horn’s scaly surface. He had to outlast The Worm. Stay the course, soldier! Stay the course!

  There was a wrenching snap, and Karnage and the horn toppled down The Worm and slammed into the ground. The Worm convulsed, contorted, then went limp. Smoke spewed from its mouth.

  Karnage felt an arm on his shoulder. It was Sydney. She twirled a set of handcuffs on her finger.

  “What are those for?”

  “You’re under arrest.”

  “You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” Karnage said.

  “Nope,” Sydney said. “Not kidding. Not kidding at all.”

  Spragmites poured into the arena. They were fast approaching Karnage and Sydney. “Captain,” Karnage said, “may I respectfully suggest that this ain’t the best time for you to be slappin’ a pair of cuffs on me.”

  Sydney eyed the approaching horde, and tucked away her handcuffs. “You mind telling me what’s going on here?”

  “It’s kinda complicated,” Karnage said.

  “Try me.”

  “Me killin’ the worm was supposed to get me outta here.”

  “Why don’t you sound like it worked?”

  “Somethin’ tells me you might have screwed things up.”

  “What? That thing where I saved your life?” Sydney said. “Sorry about that. Won’t happen again. Promise.”

  The Spragmites surrounded them. Some stared at The Worm in awe. Others stared at Karnage and Sydney. Some in reverence. Others in fury. Among them was the High Prophet. He pushed through the crowd. A phalanx of D-pads followed him. He pointed an accusing finger at Sydney. “Interloper! You dare interfere in the affairs of Spragmos?! You will pay for this outrage!”

  “What is this outrage you speak of, High Prophet?” All eyes turned to see Tristan standing amongst the crowd. Those near her backed away in surprise and fear.

  The High Prophet’s eyes narrowed. “I should have known. They are in league with the Blasphemer!”

  “I am in league with no one, High Prophet.” Tristan turned to the crowd. “You all saw, as I. Just when it seemed certain The Worm would not find this man worthy, this woman burst through the heavens like a saviour, as if sent by Spragmos himself—”

  “Lies!” shouted the High Prophet.

  Tristan turned her wondering gaze to the High Prophet. Her tone remained even. “Why such hostility, High Prophet? Are you filled with uncertainty for the future now that the Prophecy has been fulfilled? Do you fear the change the Lightbringer signifies? Do you fear the True Path?”

  “I fear nothing. And he is not the Lightbringer!”

  “No,” Tristan said. “He is not. They both are.”

  The crowd gasped. The High Prophet sneered. “More lies! The Scripture only speaks of one Lightbringer, not two!”

  “Your interpretation of the Scripture is meaningless, High Prophet.” She turned to the crowd. “Spragmos has spoken. The Worm is The Word, and The Worm has chosen.”

  A few voices in the crowd called out “Mama-oo-pow-pow!”

  The High Prophet waved frantically for silence. “No! My people, do not be fooled!” He pointed an accusing finger at Karnage and Sydney. “These two are blasphemers! Heretics come to destroy The Word and The Worm! Come to destroy Spragmos himself! Awaken The Worm within you, and you will see the truth as it has been revealed to me!”

  “But The Worm is The Word,” Tristan said. “There is no other truth to be revealed. There is no need to try to read further into what has occurred. The Worm has spoken. They are the Lightbringer.”

  “No!” The High Prophet shouted. “They cheated!”

  “You can’t cheat The Worm. And The Worm is The Word.”

  A larger chorus of voices picked up the chant: “Mama-oo-powpow!”

  “Don’t lecture me about The Word! I know more about the Scriptures than you could ever—”

  An ear-splitting alarm cut through the air.

  “What the hell is that?” Sydney shouted.

  “Proximity alarm,” Karnage said. “Somethin’s invadin’ our airspace.”

  Winds whipped up in the arena, throwing dust and debris everywhere. The Spragmites scattered in all directions. Karnage, Sydney, and the High Prophet stood in the midst of it all. Tristan had long disappeared.

  “The coward!” the High Prophet cried. “She knew she lost, so she fled! Run, Tristan! Run! For when I find you, I won’t make the mistake of sparing you again! Oh no!”

  The sky suddenly went pitch black. Karnage looked up, squinting through the sand and wind. Flashing lights littered the sky, illuminating mammoth panels running the length of the horizon. Something had blocked out the sun. Something that looked like . . .

  Unidentified Flying Objects of Death!

  Karnage grinned.

  “You see?!” The High Prophet pointed at the darkened sky, shrieking to be heard above the wind. “Spragmos has come! He will not stand for this outrage! He will smite you! He will smite you all!”

  A panel on the ship slid open. Something large and phallic descended towards them. Spragmites ran in all directions as green energy crackled along the shaft, collecting on its bulbous end. Sydney grabbed Karnage’s arm and screamed in his ear. “We have to get out of here!”

  Karnage shook her off. He raised his arms towards the ship, and closed his eyes. “Come get me, you bastards.”

  Karnage’s world filled with an intense painful green.

  MK#6: ALIEN KARNAGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Karnage woke lying face up on a hospital gurney. Soft white light enveloped him. He sat up. Medals jangled against his chest. He looked down. He was wearing a full-dress uniform. Karnage looked around. The world was empty: nothing but soft white light gently warming his skin. He lay back on the gurney, and closed his eyes.

  So, Karnage thought, this is death.

  “Major?”

  Karnage opened his eyes. Cookie stood before him. He was wearing a hospital gown. His bald head was smooth and free of scars. Glowing green squiggles danced up and down his forearms. “Major? Are you awake?” Cookie said.

  “I dunno,” Karnage said. “Am I dead?”

  Cookie shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Cookie smiled. “I’m sure.�
�

  “Well that’s a relief.” Karnage sat up. “What with all this white shit everywhere and me bein’ decked out in full military dress and all, you could see why I might jump to that conclusion.”

  “Nobody’s dead yet, Major.”

  “Nobody? You mean Velasquez? Heckler? Koch?”

  Cookie nodded. “All still alive, sir.”

  “I knew it. I just knew they weren’t . . .” Karnage dropped his shoulders and let out a sigh of relief. “Good. That’s good.” He looked up at Cookie. “I found ’em, Cookie. I found ’em! It was just like you said. Comin’ in all squiggly and on an angle and shit. I don’t know what they done to me. Last thing I remember they opened up some monkeyfucker of a death ray on my ass. Next thing I know I’m here, talkin’ to you! And look at you.” Karnage grabbed Cookie by his arms. The squiggles squirmed hotly under Karnage’s grip. “You got no bandages on your head or nothin’. You’ve never looked better. Except those squiggles. Shit, they’re writhin’ and spreadin’ and dancin’ like . . . like some kinda . . . hell, I don’t even know! What’s it all mean, Cookie?”

  “It means you still got a lot of work to do, Major. You found the aliens. Now you gotta find a way to stop ’em.”

  “But how, Cookie? How?”

  Cookie tapped his temple. “You just gotta use your head.”

  “My head is fucked up,” Karnage said. “I still see things, Cookie. Things from—” Karnage cut himself short before he could finish the thought.

  “It’s okay,” Cookie said. “You can say it here. The War.”

  Karnage cringed, ready for the visions to explode in his head. But nothing happened. No fire. No chaos. No pain. Just peace. He nearly wept.

  “You’re not crazy, Major,” Cookie said. “You got a good handle on things. Better than any of ’em would have thought. But you’re not done yet. You still got a ways to go.” The squiggles on Cookie’s arms grew brighter and hotter. They twined around Karnage’s fists, now so hot they burned his skin. He tried to pull away, but they wouldn’t let go. They twined up his arms.

  “What’s happenin’, Cookie?”

  “It’s time for you to go, Major.”

  “Go where?”

  “You’ll see.” The squiggles grew brighter. They washed everything out into a fierce, pulsing green. The squiggles pulled Karnage’s hands from Cookie’s arms, and Karnage tumbled backwards, falling through the ever thickening tangle of squiggles. As he fell, Cookie’s voice floated down to him through the distance:

  “We’re with you, Major. Every one of us. We’re with you. . . .”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Karnage slowly drifted up into consciousness.

  His entire body felt weightless. He waited for the dream-like feeling to dissipate.

  It didn’t.

  The burning stench of pinkstink and hoverballs filled his nostrils. He opened his eyes. They were met with a stinging yellow mist. Karnage gasped and coughed, struggling to breathe the toxic air. He could barely see his hand in front of his face. He reached out. His fingers hit a smooth concave surface. He ran his hands across, feeling out how the surface arched and curved around him, enveloping him in a compact sphere. He felt like he was trapped inside a hoverball.

  Karnage punched the walls of the sphere. His Sanity Patch buzzed “Frothy Cream” as the entire sphere rocked forward, tilting and listing. Karnage braced his hands and feet against the walls of the sphere, trying to right himself. The sphere stopped listing. Bracing with his other limbs, Karnage lifted a foot and kicked hard into the sphere. Cracks bloomed out under his boot and the sphere jerked down. His Sanity Patch crooned “Sandy Dreams.” He lifted his leg, and kicked into the cracks. His foot smashed through. The yellow smoke poured out through the hole, and the sphere plummeted.

  It crashed into a hard surface, shattering everywhere. Karnage coughed as thick plumes of yellow smoke puffed out of his lungs. It tasted worse than it smelled. He retched and gagged until nothing but spit came out. Throat raw and nostrils burning, he felt like he’d been breathing hot ash. He lay against the floor trying to catch his breath and draw in clean air, but the stench lingered. Finally, he pulled himself to his feet.

  He stood in a gleaming metal chamber that was all angles. Thick translucent tubes wound across the walls, creating squiggling patterns. Green light flowed through the tubes with the occasional blip of white streaked through the green. The lights pulsed and flowed like blood pumping through veins. Karnage touched one of the squiggles. The white bursts spun around his fingers a moment, as if scanning them, then sped off. He felt the heat of each green pulse. This is it, he thought. The belly of the beast.

  The path of the squiggles was interrupted by an arched doorway large enough to fit a commuter train. The door looked to be made of a spiral of roughly hewn blades. The squiggles cut a path around the door, collecting around a nodule of translucent spheres that throbbed and fluttered in time with the light passing through it. Support beams in the shape of talons flowed up the walls into the curved ceiling. Pearl-coloured spheres hovered above him, nestled together in the apex of the ceiling’s curvature.

  As light glowed fiercely around the door and collected in the nodule, the blades of the door spiralled open. Karnage pressed himself up against the wall. His heart beat in his chest. He was about to get his first glimpse of an alien. Another pearl-coloured sphere floated into the room, and the door closed behind it. The sphere began to rise towards the ceiling. As it did so, a dark shape floated down against the side of the sphere. It was human. Karnage awkwardly made a grab at the sphere, pulling it back down so he could peer inside. The human shape touched the side of the sphere, and Karnage saw the face of the person inside. It was Sydney. Her eyes were closed. Her knees were curled up to her chest, her arms gently wrapped around them. She looked like she was sleeping.

  Karnage braced the sphere on the floor and banged on it with his fists. “Captain! Captain, can you hear me?!”

  She didn’t respond.

  Karnage heard a crack-hiss behind him. He turned and saw a wooden matchstick floating before the door, its freshly struck flame flickering. Above the match and to its right floated an unlit cigar. The match rose up, and kissed the end of the cigar. The end glowed to life as unseen lungs inhaled. Grey curls of smoke blew out around the cigar, as an explosion of colours flowed and poured like liquid across an unfamiliar silhouette.

  The colours settled and receded to reveal a seven-foot-tall insect with a squid for a head. The cigar sat nestled in a quivering fringe of small tentacles that covered its mouth. A pair of longer tentacles hung from the creature’s temples like sidecurls. One of the side tentacles held the lit match, which shook it out. Its bony arms clutched a gnarled spear with a surface covered in squiggly carvings. Green energy pulsed along the grooves.

  Karnage’s body tingled. Here he was: finally face to face with an alien! It was more alien than Karnage could have imagined. Squigglier than he could possibly have imagined. He did his best to suppress a gleeful grin. “Well, ain’t you one ugly lookin’ squidbug,” The squidbug turned an eye towards Karnage as it puffed on its cigar. Its pupil was a long squiggle smeared across a mottled eyeball. It took a drag on its cigar, plucked it out of its mouth with a side tentacle, and tossed it away. It flicked the wrists of its bony claws, and the spear glowed. Green energy crackled across its surface, collecting around the bulbous head. The squidbug’s skin darkened to a deep crimson, and it thrust the spear forward. A sizzling ball of green shot out at Karnage.

  Karnage side-stepped the blast. He could feel its electric charge pull at the hairs on his skin. The ball collided with the wall and disappeared, leaving a smoking black crater. Karnage dove forward and grabbed the shaft of the squidbug’s spear. He slammed it up into the squidbug’s mouth. It made a loud clack on impact. The squidbug lost its grip on the spear as it staggered back. Karnage’s neck buzzed as the Sanity Patch upgraded to Daffodil.

  The squidbug let out an indignant screech. It pressed it
self against the wall. Its skin changed colour, pulsing and flowing through different shades and patterns until it had blended perfectly into the wall, disappearing from view.

  Karnage charged with the spear as the squidbug vanished, hitting nothing but wall and nearly jarring the spear out of his hands. The Sanity Patch crooned “Citrus Blast” as he stumbled backward. Somewhere behind him he heard a squiggly screech that sounded far too much like laughter for his liking. He spun around and squinted his eyes, trying to catch any hint of the beast. CRACK! A tentacle shot out and caught Karnage across the jaw.

  He lost his grip on the spear and it clattered to the ground. “Son of a—”

  CRACK! Another tentacle clocked him from the other side, knocking him away from the spear.

  “—bitch!”

  Karnage staggered back. He turned in the direction of the last hit.

  CRACK! A third blow caught him in the back of the head. He stumbled forward, stars shooting across his vision.

  “Monkey—”

  CRACK! Another blow caught him across the face. Karnage grabbed the tentacle before it could recoil. He yanked it hard towards him, throwing a punch along its length.

  “—FUCKER!”

  His fist sank deep into soft flesh. There was a terrible squeal, and the squidbug appeared in a flash of cycling colours. It fell to the ground, lying limp on the floor as all the coloured drained out of its skin, leaving it an insipid grey. Karnage’s neck buzzed. “Warning. Sanity Level upgraded to Peachy Keen. Please refrain from violent behaviour.”

  Karnage grabbed the spear and used it to fish Sydney’s sphere down from the ceiling. He braced it against the wall with his foot and stabbed it with the spear, cracking open the shell. He tore it apart with his hands as his Sanity Patch upgraded from Peachy Keen to Tangy Orange to Sharp Cheddar.

  Sydney lay on the floor, coughing and gasping. Yellow smoke poured from her lungs. Karnage threw her over his shoulder and headed to the closed door. He tried pressing on the nodules beside it. The green lights seemed to ignore him. A sliver of white flowed down into the nodule, stopped, and circled around Karnage’s hand. White slivers started flowing down into the nodule from the surrounding tubes, and it soon filled with white. The door spiralled open, and Karnage stepped through it.