by Gord Zajac
They followed the blood trail out to the parking lot. Sydney pointed to a pair of swooping crescents carved into the gravel shoulder of the road.
“Skid marks,” Sydney said. “You’ve got to be leaving in one hell of a hurry to make hoverballs do that.”
Karnage squinted down the road. “Looks like he’s long gone, then.”
A drone flew down in front of Sydney. Its lens zoomed towards her. “Oh, thank Darwin! I am thrilled—nay, ecstatic to see that you are unharmed.” The drone tentatively poked at Sydney’s head with its tentacles. “You are unharmed, aren’t you?”
Sydney swatted the drone away, rolling her eyes. “Yes, Uncle.”
“Excellent! That is such a relief!”
“I’m good,” Karnage said. “Thanks for asking.”
The drone spun and flashed its lens at Karnage. “Indeed you are! Well, this is most surprising. Does this mean you were able to defeat the marksman?”
Karnage looked down the highway. “Mostly,” he said.
“Wonderful! I am pleased to see that your ‘crash course’ in the Eleven Senses has provided you with such stellar results. I must admit, I am completely flummoxed. It should not have been possible for that gentleman to have breached the perimeter. I am at a loss to explain why his presence went undetected.”
“There’s a lot about this guy that isn’t possible,” Karnage said.
“So it would seem. As a result of this puzzling bit of data, I am afraid I must now ask you to leave. I am instigating a security lockdown until I can pinpoint the faults in my system. It’s nothing personal, I assure you. I simply must make my personal safety my highest priority. Despite a complete understanding behind the theory of all martial arts, I am compelled to admit I have no skill in their execution myself. You understand, I’m sure.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Karnage said. “We were just leaving, anyway.”
“Excellent! Well, I must see to my diagnostics. Bon aventure!” The drone sailed back into the compound.
“And just where are we going?” Sydney said.
“To talk to our buddy Steve, of course,” Karnage said.
“Steve? As in Steve Dabney?”
“Yep.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Why?”
“He’s in Dabneyville.”
“So?”
“You can’t go to Dabneyville!”
“Why not?”
“Do you have any idea what Dabneyville’s like? It’s a fortress. Cameras everywhere. Dabneycops crawling all over the place. You’ll never get in. And even if you did, he probably already figures that you’re coming. He’ll be expecting us.”
“Good,” Karnage said. “That’ll give him time to get good and scared.”
Sydney shook her head. “Steve Dabney’s not afraid of anything.”
“Maybe he should be.”
“Maybe you should be.”
“Does that mean you’re not coming?”
Sydney stared off down the highway. She hung her head and sighed. “No. No, it doesn’t. If I don’t come with you, you’ll just end up getting yourself killed. And where the hell will that leave us?”
“Squidbugged,” Karnage said.
“Squidbugged?”
“Yeah.” Karnage knocked on the metal band under his shin. “Squidbugged.”
“You just love inventing new words, don’t you?”
“Yep. I’m a regular wordicologist.”
MK#8: KARNAGE GOES TO TOWN
CHAPTER ONE
Sydney and Karnage drove to Dabneyville in a black limousine. Sydney explained that she had “borrowed” it from Patrick after he had shot Karnage at Camp Bailey. The biometric scanner on the dashboard had been ripped off and the red and green wires had been twisted together.
“Tampering with security systems is a criminal offence under the Dabney Intellectual Property Ordinance,” Karnage had reminded her.
“You want me to go and turn myself in?” she had said. Karnage had told her not to bother.
They brought the only weapons they had: Sydney’s goober pistol and stun stick, and Patrick’s pistol that Karnage had “liberated” from its holster. The goober gun had three rounds left, and the pistol had seven. While not the kind of heavy artillery Karnage would have liked for taking on the Dabney Corporation, it would have to do.
They took off down the highway in the same direction as Patrick’s skid marks, following him towards Dabneyville.
“Anything I need to know before we get to the city?” Karnage said.
“If we can help it, we’re not going to be seen. But if we are, you’re going to have to work hard to blend in. Look happy all the time. If you go around frowning and scowling at everything like that, Dabneycops will assume you’re up to something.”
“I am up to something.”
“Yeah, but you gotta keep that info to yourself. You can’t just go barging in, shooting at anything that moves.”
“Don’t worry,” Karnage said. “I wasn’t planning on doing that anyway.”
“Good.”
“I only got seven bullets.”
“Just try to look happy, okay?”
Karnage bared his teeth. “How’s this?”
“Hideous. Just keep your mouth covered.”
The desert stretched out in a flat plain before them. Nothing marred the view but the occasional bit of debris on the gravel shoulder. Slowly, a cloud-covered mountain peak appeared on the horizon.
“There it is,” Sydney said. “Mount Dabney.”
The mountain slowly revealed itself. It sat alone on the flatlands. A gleaming white wall ran around the mountain’s perimeter. Roof peaks and spires jutted up behind the walls, running up the mountain’s sides in an erratic spiral. A needle-thin tower with a bulbous top dwarfed all the other buildings, its antenna peak just touching the clouds above it.
“Seems kind of weird. A single mountain sittin’ out there all by itself,” Karnage said.
“Used to be a whole range of mountains out here,” Sydney said. “But they tore ’em all down. Used the aggregate to build Dabneyville.”
Ahead of them, the road began to rise. Sydney pulled the car off the road and started driving on the plain.
“What are you doing?”
Sydney pointed to the road as it rose up from the desert floor, revealing giant pillars of pitted concrete underneath. “That’s the GDE. Don’t want to get caught up there.”
“GDE?”
“Gail Dabney Expressway,” Sydney said. “It’s the only road in or out. They call it the Bridge to Nowhere, cuz no one in the city ever wants to leave, and no one outside of the city ever wants in. They all think they got it better than each other.”
Karnage thought about the squidbugs. “Little do they know they’re all screwed.” He looked up at the road. “If that’s the only road into town, then why aren’t we on it?”
Sydney pointed to cameras mounted on lampposts above them.
“They monitor all traffic in and out of the city. Not that there’s much of it.”
“Wouldn’t they have spotted us already?”
Sydney shook her head. “Cameras don’t work this far out. Those are only for show. It’s once you get closer to the city you have to worry.”
She pulled the car under the GDE, and tucked it up on the inside of one of the pillars. “We walk the rest of the way,” she said.
Karnage looked out towards Dabneyville. “Looks awful far to walk.”
“We’re almost inside the perimeter of aerial surveillance. If we don’t ditch the car soon, they’ll pick us up for sure.”
They stayed under the shade of the road, picking their way through the rocks and debris. Garbage littered the underside of the road: broken electronics, tatters of clothing, crumpled potato chip bags and coffee cups, all emblazoned with the Dabney Corporation logo.
“Is there anything the Dabney Corporation doesn’t make?” Karnage said.
“No,” Sydney said. “They own everything.
And everybody.”
“And now they’re handin’ it all over to the squidbugs.” Karnage touched Patrick’s pistol in his pocket. Only seven rounds. He hoped he wouldn’t blow his own head off when he used them.
They heard a high-pitched buzzing overhead. Sydney pressed Karnage against the pillar. He peered around the side. He saw a small circular shadow flowing across the desert floor. He looked up. A Dabneycop flew overhead. He had a pair of hoverballs strapped to his back. A pair of arching handles rose over the hoverballs into the pilot’s hands. It sounded like a giant wasp. Karnage fought the urge to swat him with the pistol. They waited until he disappeared from sight.
“There’s the welcoming committee,” Sydney commented.
“Something tells me they won’t be that welcoming,” Karnage said.
“How very perceptive of you.”
“How are we going to get in?”
Sydney pointed into the distance. “There’s an unused maintenance hatch around the west side of the wall. We can make our way in through there.”
“Don’t they know about it?”
“When you’re in the business of wilfully forgetting your failures, there’s a lot of things you train yourself not to know about.”
“So how come you know about it, then?”
“Because I make it a point to remember everything.”
The sun was setting when they finally reached the gleaming white walls of the city. They waited under the bridge for night to fall, then Sydney led them out along the perimeter of the outer wall.
The walls were at least a kilometre high. Moisture had flaked the paint off along the bottom, revealing pitted grey concrete underneath. They heard the buzz of an air patrol above them and saw a spotlight fly across the desert. Karnage was reminded of the pools of light that had helped them on the squidbug ship. Except this particular light was anything but friendly. Karnage held his pistol tight in his fist. The light passed by, missing them completely, and disappeared around the curve of the wall.
Sydney pointed ahead of them. “There it is.”
Karnage squinted in the gloom. He could just make out a faint dark patch on the wall. As they approached, he saw it was a ruststained door. It was slightly ajar. Sydney tucked her hand behind it and pushed it open. The door’s hinges groaned in complaint. Sydney looked into the darkness beyond, then turned to Karnage and winked.
“Open sesame,” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
Karnage ducked his head to avoid hitting a pipe as they walked through the dank narrow corridor. “What is this? Some kinda sewer system?”
“No.” Sydney kept her flashlight in front of her. “It’s the old subway system. They shut it down decades ago.”
Karnage eyed the narrow corridor. “Must have been one hell of a skinny subway.”
“This is just a steam tunnel,” Sydney said.
“Why do they call it a steam tunnel?”
Sydney pointed to a giant pipe running along the wall beside them. The words CAUTION: STEAM – HOT! were stencilled onto its surface.
“That explains that mystery,” Karnage said.
“We’ll hit the main system up ahead,” Sydney said. “These tunnels run under almost every building in the city. You can get anywhere you want, so long as you know the right route to take. Problem is there are no maps. They purged everything when they shut it down. Most people don’t even know these tunnels exist.”
“How do you know about it, then?”
“I told you. I was stationed here. I made it a point to know about them.”
“That mean the other Dabneycops know about them?”
“Not like I do,” she said. “There are a few main routes they patrol, looking for fugitives and the like. But that’s about it. They don’t bother with the rest.”
“But you did.”
“As much as I could,” Sydney said. “These tunnels go on for days. It’d take years to find them all.”
“Sounds like a helluva big subway,” Karnage said.
“It’s a helluva big city. It’s not just subway tunnels, though. There are maintenance corridors, steam tunnels . . . it’s crazy. If you’re not careful, you could end up anywhere.”
The corridor ended at a half-open door. They squeezed through, and found themselves on a subway platform. A row of rusted turnstiles divided the platform in half. On one side, wide stairs led straight up to a brick wall. On the other, the platform led off to a steep drop into darkness. The floor was covered in mosaic tiles of Dabby Tabby’s grinning face. A torn poster on the wall showed Dabby Tabby wearing a train engineer’s cap and sitting astride a long gleaming bullet-shaped subway train. RIDE THE BLUE ROCKET ran across the bottom of the poster in faded blue text.
They climbed off the edge of the platform down onto the tracks. The floor of the tunnel was covered in ankle-deep water. Karnage recognized the toxic smell of squidbug. The beam from the flashlight caught glimpses of orange creeper and pinkstink hanging on the walls. Bright red lily pads with yellow veins drifted past their legs.
“This stuff always down here?” Karnage asked.
“No,” Sydney said. “This is new.”
They heard muffled voices up ahead. Sydney quickly turned off her flashlight. Their eyes adjusted to the pitch black of the dark, and they saw a soft blue glow lighting the tunnel ahead.
“I thought you said these tunnels were deserted,” Karnage whispered.
“They’re probably just refugees.”
As they approached the light, the voice grew clearer. “. . . and you, too, will learn to awaken The Worm within.”
“Well, shit,” Karnage said.
They rounded the corner and came into another station. The light came from a giant D-Pad that was propped against a turnstile. It showed Melvern standing before a clear blue sky looking off into the distance. A pair of Spragmite priests stood to either side of the monitor, nodding their heads solemnly.
A small group of people stood in front of the monitor. A man held a baby in his arms, a young boy clutched to his leg. An old woman sat in a wheelchair. An old man in a suit leaned against the handle of the chair, a hand on the woman’s shoulder. A young man with spiky green hair stood off to one side watching morosely. A pair of teenage girls huddled together in the back, holding each other for support. They occasionally exchanged terrified looks. Strings of numbers were printed across the backs of the girls’ shirts. Karnage pointed them out to Sydney. “What are those? Like serial numbers?”
“No,” Sydney answered. “They’re expiration dates.”
“Expiration dates? For what?”
“For the clothes. Lets you know when they go out of style.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know,” Sydney said. “Used to be they’d put it inside the clothes, so you’d know when to buy new ones. Then the fashion conscious started putting them on the outside, to declare to the world how trendsetting they were. Those poor girls. Look at those dates. They’re at least six weeks old.”
Karnage found the sorrowful look on Sydney’s face a bit perplexing, but surprised himself by keeping his opinion on the matter to himself. “How are we gonna get by ’em?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sydney said. “They’re fugitives. They won’t pay us any mind.”
“Fugitives?” Karnage looked the crowd over again. They appeared completely harmless. “Fugitives from what?”
“Debt,” Sydney said. “You can’t make your payments, they ship you out to the labour camps. Most of these people wouldn’t last five minutes outside the city, and they know it. So they hide here. Pray for salvation.”
“And in come the Spragmites.”
Sydney nodded. “That’s right.”
A searchlight flicked on at the top of the stairs, striking the group of refugees, before a group of Dabneycops bounded down the steps brandishing goober rifles.
“Everybody freeze!”
The green-haired youth leaped up and bolted. A Dabneycop raised his r
ifle and fired. Screams erupted from the crowd as the young man disappeared in a giant ball of pink goober. Nothing was visible but a small tuft of green hair.
One of the priests charged forward. “You dare interfere with the work of Spragmos?!” He gave a yelp as he disappeared in another ball of goober. The crowd had pulled itself into a tight circle, clutching each other and whimpering. One of the girls was crying.
The fattest of the Dabneycops waddled forward. He raised a megaphone to his lips. “All right, everybody settle down and nobody else will get goobered. Now there’s no point in running. We’ve got all the exits covered. Everybody step forward in a line. Come on, let’s go. You, too, grandpa. You’ll do your part and pay your own way.” He put down the megaphone and turned to the other Dabneycops. “Round ’em up.”
The Dabneycops moved down among the crowd. The other priest shot the fat Dabneycop a glowering look. “You will pay for this outrage,” he said.
“Tell it to the magistrate, Father.”
“You will refer to me as Presbyter, heathen!”
“Stick a sock in it, Father, or I’ll goober it shut.”
“He’s talking a big game,” Sydney whispered, “but look how he’s coverin’ his badge number. Doesn’t want the priest to figure out who he is.”
“McClaine! We got everybody?”
“Just gotta unstick the kid, sarge.” McClaine was spraying a can of solvent at the base of the goober ball with the shock of green hair. “We should do a full scour of the tunnel. Make sure the other platforms are clear.”
The sergeant shook his head. “Forget it.”
“But our orders say—”
The sergeant stuck a finger out at McClaine. “I know our orders, constable. And I am telling you that the lieutenant can go piss up a rope. I am marking this sector as clear and that is final. Powell! What the hell are you gawking at?”
“Behind you, sarge!” Powell pointed to a cigarette floating in mid-air, smoking itself behind the sergeant’s head.
Karnage tightened his grip on his pistol. “We got a problem.”
The sergeant turned just in time to see a squidbug appear around the cigarette. “What the hell is that?!”