by Gord Zajac
“We’re with you, Major. Every one of us. We’re with you. . . .”
He whipped around. “Cookie! It must have been!”
“Who’s Cookie?”
“One of my troopers. Former Communications engineer. He was already interceptin’ the alien communications before they struck. Maybe he finally cracked ’em! Maybe he hacked into the alien ship. Maybe that’s what he meant when he said they were with us. Like the French resistance! Maybe—”
An invisible fist smashed into the back of Karnage’s shoulder, spinning him back around. He heard the echo of the gunshot seconds later.
Karnage stumbled forward. Blood welled from his shoulder. He turned back to see Sydney charging up the crater’s wall.
“No!” He barked. “Stay there! It’s a sniper!”
“You’re bleeding! I can’t leave you out there!”
“Yes you can! I won’t let that monkeyfucker take us both down. You stay where you are, Captain. Wait for your opportunity. Find a moment to strike!”
Sydney nodded, and disappeared behind the darkened hulk of the Sudsy tanker. Karnage suddenly felt light-headed and fell to his knees. Karnage looked at his shoulder. Blood welled from a jagged wound the size of a baseball. Thank god. It went right through. He clamped his hand over it, trying to stem the flow. Blood poured through his fingers. He squeezed harder, did his best to shut out the pain, and looked across the arena for signs of the sniper.
Walking across the torn landscape was a slim dark figure.
Karnage squinted, trying to make out the details through the desert haze. It was a man with a sharp military brace. Calm. Selfassured. Like he didn’t have a care in the world. Karnage thought he could make out a uniform of some kind.
An Uncle Stanley uniform! His heart thudded in his chest and the blood spurted from his shoulder at a quicker pace. It was an enemy officer all right, emerging from his nightmares, coming to finish him off once and for all! Karnage watched his Angel of Death approach, preparing himself for the end.
But as the stranger approached, Karnage saw that it wasn’t an Uncle Stanley officer at all. It was a man in a crisp black chauffeur’s uniform.
Even though it only took a few minutes, it felt like hours before the chauffeur closed the gap between them. Karnage couldn’t hear anything above the sound of his own breathing. He thought he heard some rustling behind him that might have been Sydney moving for cover, but it also might have just been the sound of his own blood spilling out his back. He felt relief again at the gaping wound in his shoulder. Thank god the bullet hadn’t played pinball with his internal organs. He might live through this yet.
His vision was slowly whiting out—his blood pressure was dropping fast. The pain began to ease. It felt like it was being pulled from his body with the blood that was passing through his fingers.
The chauffeur stopped a few feet in front of him. His fingers twitched with energy. He knelt down in front of Karnage, his face practically beaming. “Hello, you,” he said.
Karnage looked at the chauffeur’s gun. “Spragmos X-75?”
“It is.”
Karnage tried to focus on the Observation deck in the distance. “How far away were you when you took that shot?”
“Hundred and fifty metres, give or take.”
Karnage tried to nod. Pain exploded through his neck. Bad idea. Blood spurted through his fingers. He clamped his hand tighter on the wound. “Sloppy,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“I said sloppy.” Karnage tried to sit up, realized that was a mistake, and dropped to his side. “Your aim was off. You should have been able to hit me square in the chest from that distance.”
The chauffeur cocked his head, a bemused smile on his face. “That is just so you, isn’t it? Look at you. Still putting on a brave face, even now, when there’s no one here to see it. I’m not even sure it’s an act, to be honest. Not with your reputation. You must have been quite the sight to behold on the battlefield.”
“What do you know about any of that?”
“Oh, I know everything—absolutely everything—about you, Major. And may I say, it is an absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“It is?”
“It is. Believe me, it is. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Patrick. That’s really all you need to know for now. Perhaps we can catch up later. Oh, I sincerely wish it hadn’t had to happen quite like this.”
“Like what?”
“Me nicking you like that from afar. It was a potshot, really. Not very sporting at all.”
“No,” Karnage muttered. “It wasn’t.”
“I would have loved to have settled this in a fair fight. To see how good you really are. Still, orders are orders, and I must carry them out as directed.”
“You’re not supposed to kill me?”
Patrick looked at him with genuine affection. “Now why would anyone want to do a silly thing like that? Look at you. You’re simply . . . brilliant.” Patrick stood and started to remove his gloves. “I’m going to take a look at that wound, now. Don’t want you bleeding out on me until I deliver you to my employer. You’re not planning to give me any trouble, are you?”
“No,” Karnage said.
“But I will,” came another voice.
Patrick looked up, and a ball of goober struck him in the chest, knocking him to the ground and instantly swelling up to cover his arms and head.
“Took you long enough to do something,” Karnage said.
“I had to wait until I had a clear shot.” Sydney holstered her goober pistol.
“I thought he was gonna talk me to death.”
“I kept waiting for him to kiss you and get it over with. He sounded like your biggest fan.”
“He had a helluva way of showing it.” Karnage winced as Sydney pressed on the wound.
“You’re lucky,” she said. “Looks like the bullet passed right through. Jesus, you’re bleeding pretty badly.”
“I know,” Karnage said. “I think I’m in big trouble here, Captain.”
“You’ll be all right,” Sydney said.
“Unless you’re a trained field medic,” Karnage said, “I’m in big trouble.”
“You’re not gonna die. I won’t let you.”
“It’s all right, Captain.” The last of Karnage’s vision washed away. He had to force his lips to form the words: “Promise me one thing. Cookie. Velasquez. Heckler. Koch. Stumpy. Find ’em. Save ’em. Stop the squidbugs.”
Sydney’s voice came from far away. “You won’t need me to do that, Major. You’ll be able to do that yourself.”
He tried to answer but his mouth wouldn’t form the words.
Karnage strained his ears as Sydney’s voice faded away. “Don’t give up on me yet, Major. I think I know someone who can . . .”
He passed out.
MK#7: LESSONS IN KARNAGE
CHAPTER ONE
Karnage dreamed of squiggly beasts and black-clad men with pistols for hands. The beasts lashed out with tentacles that sucked him down and wrapped him in their grip. The man in black stood behind the fray, at one moment wearing a chauffeur’s outfit, the next a charcoal grey medal-laden Uncle Stanley uniform. Always smiling, always the teeth flashing, telling him it’s his lucky day. Gloved fingers pointed at him, the end of the fingers open and hollow like a gun barrel. White hot muzzle flashes burst from the leatherclad digits. Squiggles shot out from the fingers, stabbing into his shoulder, poking and prodding, searching and burrowing, leaving a fiery trail of absolute agony in their wake.
The pain became more focused in his shoulder, and the squiggles finally pulled away, leaving him alone in the darkness.
Karnage opened his eyes. A silvery sphere floated above him. A giant lens sprouted from the ball, pointing down at his shoulder, as long metal tendrils quivered below the lens, poking at bandages. Karnage tried to scramble away, but he couldn’t move anyth
ing below his neck.
“Get the fuck away from me, you squiggly bastard!”
The lens swivelled up and looked at Karnage. Its inner aperture quickly irised shut and open again, as if it were blinking. A mechanical voice crackled over a speaker. “Sydney, it seems your comrade is awake.”
The sphere pulled up and away, and Sydney moved into Karnage’s field of vision.
“Hello, Major,” she said.
“Captain, what the fuck is going on here?! What the hell was that thing?! Where are we? Why the hell can’t I move?!”
“You were shot,” Sydney said. “You were in danger of bleeding to death. So I brought you here.”
“Where the hell is here?!”
The sphere floated down again, and blinked its lens at Karnage. “Here is home.”
Karnage craned his neck. He was lying in a rescue basket, a thin sheet draped over him, the basket suspended from a complex grid of scaffolding running across the arched ceiling. Floodlights dotted the scaffolding. Just visible beyond the lights were more hoverballs fixed with lenses and tentacles. They stared down at Karnage, the lenses zooming in and out, changing focus as the spheres hovered closer or farther away.
A pair of oval bay windows projected out from the wall, filtering sunlight through the grime-streaked glass. Various bits of medical equipment were pushed up against the walls.
“Home? Whose home? It sure as hell ain’t mine! And you still haven’t told me why the hell I can’t move!”
“You can’t move because you’re a very uncooperative patient,” Sydney replied. “I don’t need you pulling your stitches out. Not after all of Uncle’s hard work. As for whose home this is, it belongs to Uncle.”
One of the spheres dropped down from above. It placed a tentacle on Sydney’s shoulder. “Don’t be so modest, dear. You know this home is just as much yours as it is mine. If only you would visit more often. And in less brutish company.”
Karnage’s eyes goggled. “That thing is your uncle?!”
The sphere blinked its lens at Karnage. “Of course not. What a preposterous supposition. What you are looking at is simply a drone. One of many, in case you haven’t noticed. They are my eyes and ears in the compound. I am sequestered elsewhere.”
“Why?”
“I have my . . . reasons.”
“He’s a close family friend,” Sydney said. “And he is doing everything in his power to save your life.”
Karnage looked down at his bandaged shoulder. “Why? What’s wrong with my shoulder?”
The drone bobbed up and down. “Very little, actually. The bullet passed right through the shoulder, missing the scalpula and brachial plexus completely. You should be laid up for a few days at the most. No, your shoulder isn’t the problem.”
A second pair of drones floated down and pulled back the sheet covering Karnage’s leg. A shining metal band wrapped around the middle of its shin.
“What the hell is that?” Karnage said.
The nearest drone flashed its lens at Karnage. His tentacles quivered with excitement. “That is all that stands between you and the unknown frontiers of science!”
“What the hell’s he talking about? What the fuck is wrong with my leg?”
“Technically, nothing,” the drone said. “Which is the source of your trouble.”
“What do you mean? What the hell are you talking about!” Karnage barked.
“It’s your ankle,” Sydney said. “You twisted it in the arena. You could barely walk on it. Remember? And then on the ship, hours later—”
“It was fine.” Karnage looked down at his foot. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “What did those squidbugs do to me?”
Sydney turned to a drone hovering by her shoulder. “Show him.”
The drone beside Karnage swivelled its lens at Sydney. It squealed: “Delighted!”
Three drones descended from the ceiling. Their lenses zoomed out, and projected light, each one projecting a different primary colour. The beams intersected, creating a holographic projection of a DNA double helix.
“Human DNA,” the drone beside Karnage said. “The building blocks of all life on earth.”
The double helix shifted to the right, and three strings of vibrating noodles affixed with shifting coloured beads squiggled in beside it. They tangled and untangled themselves randomly, twitching in agitation whenever they made contact. The coloured beads jumped from one strand to another when the strands touched.
The drone beside Sydney hovered closer to the projection. “Extraterrestrial DNA,” it said. “The building blocks of the alien infestation. Unstable. Volatile. Infectious.”
The twitching strands lashed out and grabbed the double helix, tearing it apart, wrapping itself into the debris. The beads flew loose from the strands and rocketed about the morass like a hurricane. It looked like a violent feeding frenzy.
“What happened? What is that? Is that what’s happenin’ inside o’ me?!”
“As near as Uncle can tell,” Sydney said, “the squidbugs fixed your ankle with an injection of their own genetic material. But it’s doing something more than just repairing the damage. It’s . . . rewriting your genetic code.”
“Rewriting it into what?!”
“And that is where we stumble into the unknown!” The drone beside Karnage squealed. “It is rewriting your genetic structure, taking the best genes from your DNA and combining it with select genes from itself, synthesizing a new hybrid creature.”
“What do you mean a hybrid creature? What the hell is it turnin’ me into?!”
The drone clapped a set of tentacles together. “It’s unpredictable! The infestation takes so many shapes. The possibilities are endless!”
“I wish you wouldn’t sound so pleased about this, Uncle,” Sydney said.
The drone beside her placed a tentacle on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, my dear. I just get so excited about new discoveries. Please. Forgive my enthusiasm, Major.”
Karnage didn’t care. He was staring at his foot. It didn’t feel different. And yet, somewhere, deep inside of him, the squidbug DNA was attacking, changing him into something he didn’t want. Suddenly the invasion had become personal. So much more personal than Karnage could ever have imagined. Rage boiled up inside him. He wouldn’t let them get away with it. He wouldn’t let them win. Not like this. Not now.
Karnage laid back and closed his eyes. “Cut it off,” he said.
He heard the whirring of the lens on the drone beside him. “What?”
“I said cut it off! I’m not gonna just lie here and let those squidbugs turn me into something I’m not. I’m me. I’m Major Karnage. Any part of me that says otherwise can go to hell. So cut this fucking thing off. NOW!”
Sydney stared at Karnage in shock. “You can’t be serious.”
“What part of my little tirade made it sound like I was joking?”
“You won’t be able to walk—”
“I’ll strap a fucking chainsaw to my leg if I have to! I’m not lettin’ those squidbug bastards get the upper hand!”
“Upper hand? Listen to what you’re saying! It’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face!”
“Who said anything about cuttin’ off my nose?! It’s my foot that’s gettin’ all up in my face! So cut that monkeyfucker off!”
“Ooh!” Another drone descended from the ceiling, squealing. It stopped above his leg. “So dramatic. So final! And so wholly unnecessary.” The drone tapped the metal band on Karnage’s leg. “The UVL blocker is containing the infection. It soaks it up, like a sponge, and should prevent further contamination until I discover a means of extraction.”
“Extraction? You mean you could cure me?”
“Not at the moment, no, otherwise I would have. Extraction is not yet within my grasp. But I will find a cure, rest assured. Some sort of stem cell vaccine is my current favoured approach. While not exactly the most elegant of solutions, it just might do the job. I’ve taken the liberty of harvesting som
e of your unfused genetic material and cataloguing it in my database. You don’t mind, of course. I thought it would be prudent in case some unforeseen complication causes the infection to spread.”
Karnage’s mind was reeling from the mental assault. “Wait. How do you know so much about the squidbugs?”
Sydney took a breath, as if she’d been dreading this. “He’s been studying them,” she said.
“Oh yes,” the drone beside Karnage’s head chirped. “Quite extensively, if I may be so bold.”
“How extensively?” Karnage asked.
“Would you like me to show you?”
“Please,” Karnage said. “Do.”
The drone clapped its tendrils. “Excellent!” It turned to Sydney. “Please be a dear and let the good major up.”
Sydney looked warily at Karnage. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” she said.
“I do,” Karnage said.
“As do I.” The drone beside Sydney patted her on the arm. “You have been outvoted, my dear.”
Sydney moved beside Karnage’s bed and prepared to tap him on the neck. “I’ve always hated democracy,” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
A drone led Karnage and Sydney out of the room and down a spiral staircase. They came out into the glare of sunlight, at the base of a water tower. The tower was in the shape of Dabby Tabby’s head, the oval windows making up the cat’s long-faded eyes. Streaks of rust ran down its face. The words WELCOME TO LAKE DABNEY were still visible across Dabby’s forehead.
The water tower stood in the middle of an abandoned amusement park. Twists of sagging roller coaster stretched across the sky, threatening to give way and fall on their heads. The bright colours of the fairground had long faded to a dull grey. Splash pads stood empty and cracked. Bright red water slides had faded to sickly pink in the harsh sunlight. Tattered canopies on sagging shelters leaned against each other like drunkards so that the whole compound looked like a teetering house of cards that threatened to fall down if you looked at it funny.
“What kind of idiot builds a waterpark in the desert?” Karnage said.