by Gord Zajac
CHAPTER THREE
Karnage looked back at his older self, and nodded. “All right. Here we go.” He banged on the door, and it opened.
Twenty Patricks stood in the middle of the room behind General Mayhem.
Karnage jerked a thumb at his old self. “He wants a word with you,” he said.
Karnage stepped out of the way as Mayhem wheeled forward. The Patricks followed close behind. Karnage stepped back, allowing them to pass. He shuffled towards the wall. None of the Patricks were watching him. They were all fixated on the old Karnage.
“So?” General Mayhem said. “Have you considered my offer?”
“I have,” the old Karnage said. “And you can shove it up your ass.”
Karnage saw Mayhem’s neck stiffen; his voice remained neutral. “Can I?”
“You sure as hell can,” the old Karnage grinned, baring yellow teeth. “What did you think, General? That I’d want to kiss and make up after all those people you killed? That I’d find it in my heart to forgive the Butcher of Bereznyi? The Terror of Tatvan? The Siberian Slayer?”
The flightpacks were mounted on a raised platform just beyond the cloning tanks. Karnage inched towards them, keeping his eye on the Patricks. One of them clenched a gloved fist.
“You’re a monster,” old Karnage said. “You can try and hide all you like behind your shiny medals and little pretty stars. But that don’t change the fact you’re a cold-blooded killer. I did what I had to do because it had to be done. You? You did it all because you got off on it. You’re no hero, Mayhem. You’re a goddamn sociopath.”
Karnage inched himself up to the platform, and unstrapped a flightpack from the wall. He watched the back of Mayhem’s head shake slowly. “You Carpathians are all alike, aren’t you?”
Handsome and dashing, Karnage thought.
“Dashing and handsome?” old Karnage said.
“No,” Mayhem’s voice slowly turned into a low growl. “Naive, short-sighted, and incredibly out of your depth, you ungrateful little carpy.”
The Patricks moved in tighter around Karnage; their anger was palpable.
Old Karnage smiled, nodding. “There he is. That’s the General Mayhem I know.”
Mayhem jabbed a shaking finger at old Karnage. “You know nothing about me! Just lies and half-truths and propaganda fed to you by your superiors! Nothing about my struggles. Nothing of what I’ve been up against. You—”
The base of the flightpack scraped along the floor. One of the Patricks turned, and caught a glimpse of Karnage out of the corner of his eye.
“Stop him!” Mayhem shouted.
The Patricks turned and raced towards Karnage. Karnage tried to strap into the flightpack, but a Patrick tackled him to the ground. Karnage’s world became a frenzied maze of gloved hands and angry gritted teeth shouting, “Stop him! Stop him! Stop him!”
Karnage lay on the ground, his face pressed into the floor. A sea of shiny black boots stretched out before him. Between them all, he could just catch his older self’s face. Sorry, old man, Karnage thought.
It’s okay, kid, the old Karnage thought. You did your best.
Mayhem looked at Karnage, then back at the old Karnage. “So that was the plan, was it? You keep me busy while your partner goes for help?”
Karnage felt lips near his ear. “A nice try, Major.”
Another Patrick from somewhere in the crowd spoke: “But I’m better than you.”
Mayhem smiled. He toyed with the joystick on his wheelchair. “Still, I shouldn’t be too surprised. Admittedly, I was expecting a lot from a carpy like you. I had such high hopes, Major. I had hoped . . . ah, but it doesn’t matter now, does it? There’s nothing going on behind those defiant eyes of yours, is there? Just empty, primal rage. You’re a vacant meatbag. Good for spare parts, but nothing else.”
The hair on Karnage’s neck stood on end. What does he mean spare parts?
“What do you mean spare parts?” the old Karnage said.
“Your mind may be unwilling, but your body is quite strong. While not quite as effective as providing a new host, we can use your genetic material to repair artifacts in the clones.”
“Like a patching material,” said a Patrick.
“Or spackle,” said another.
“The technique isn’t perfect,” Mayhem said, “but it should bring the error rate down to tolerable levels. Just think, Major. Instead of a partnership, it will be a hostile takeover.”
“Quite hostile,” said a Patrick.
“Very hostile,” said another.
“Your strength combined with my mind. Mayhem & Karnage. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“Much better than Karnage & Mayhem,” said a Patrick.
“Much much better,” said another.
“But first,” Mayhem said, “we must dispose of the old material.”
Karnage heard a bullet click into a chamber above his head.
“No!” The old Karnage struggled against his bonds. “Let him go, Mayhem! Or I’ll—”
“Or you’ll what, Major?” Mayhem leered. “There’s nothing you can do. Look at you.”
“Struggling,” said a Patrick.
“Helpless,” said another.
“You’re done for, Major,” Mayhem said. “Finally beaten. There’s nothing you can do to change that now.”
The old Karnage glowered at Mayhem. “You wanna bet?”
“I suppose you have an emergency backup plan, then?”
“I do,” the old Karnage said.
Karnage looked up, as the realization of what the old Karnage was about to do sank in. His heart thudded in his chest. No, Major! Don’t do it!
Sorry, kid, the old Karnage thought, it’s our only choice.
“And whatever would that be?” Mayhem said. “Just two words,” the old Karnage said. He locked eyes with Karnage. “The War.”
The War!
Karnage’s mind filled with violent images. Fire-tinged hate billowed up from his belly, like napalm pouring out of guts.
The War!
He burst out of the pile of Patricks. Screams and chauffeur hats flew in all directions. He let out a cry of primal rage as he remembered . . .
The War!
He charged across the hangar towards old Karnage, who was struggling in the wheelchair against those same visions. Patricks leaped out at Karnage. They tried to grab him, to throw him down. Karnage’s fists flew, clearing a path through the mob. He broke noses and snapped wrists with barely a thought. Screams of indignation and howls of pain poured out all around him.
He jumped up onto the wheelchair. The momentum of his landing threw the wheelchair backwards through the cargo container until it slammed into the wall. The blow knocked the metal door shut behind them. Something clanged against it, and shouting and banging from the other side confirmed that it was stuck.
Karnage ripped the restraints off of the old Karnage, whipped him out of the chair, and threw him against the wall.
“Don’t talk to me about The War!”
The old Karnage’s eyes were shut. His teeth gritted. Karnage felt him straining against the violent hallucinations running through their shared mind. Old Karnage’s Sanity Levels rocketed upwards. The old man’s mind reached out to his through the chaos and the flames: Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney. Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney. Come on, kid. Concentrate. We can stop this. Think, kid. Think! Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney. Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney. Come on. We can do this.
Karnage tried to focus on the chant. Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney. Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney. He could feel it pushing through the noise and the fear. Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney. Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney.
That’s it, kid. We’re doing it. We’re doing it!
The visions slowly pulled themselves apart, replaced with the faces of each of his missing comrades. Cookie, Velasquez, Heckle
r, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney. Cookie, Velasquez, Heckler, Stumpy, Koch, Sydney.
The last of the visions spilled away, and Karnage let go of his grip on the old man’s neck. The old man’s Sanity Patch went silent. They looked at each other and smiled. We did it.
The container door banged open behind them. A Patrick appeared in the doorway, holding a gun. “No!” Mayhem screamed. Another Patrick knocked the gun down. “We need the meatbag,” he hissed.
“Follow my lead!” The old Karnage grabbed the wheelchair and charged forward, ramming through the crowd of Patricks like a battering ram. Patricks flew in all directions, some diving out of the way, others knocked away by the onslaught of the chair. Karnage followed close behind in its wake.
“Get to the flightpacks,” the old Karnage barked.
Karnage headed for the platform while the old Karnage ran with the chair towards the cloning tanks.
“Protect the tanks!” Mayhem screamed.
The Patricks raced after the old man, but he slammed the wheelchair into the base of a tank, knocking it down. It smashed against the floor, spilling its underdeveloped contents across the concrete.
Karnage jumped onto the platform and grabbed a flightpack. He turned and saw the old man go down in a sea of Patricks. Go on, kid. Get outta here!
Karnage nodded and strapped himself into the flightpack. He hit the hoverball activators, and they hummed to life. He rocketed up towards the open skylight above.
Pain exploded out of Karnage’s shoulders. The hoverball bucked and spun out of control, and he crashed back down to the platform.
He writhed in agony on the platform, the flightpack pinning him to the ground. He felt like he’d been hit by twin shotgun barrels. He could hardly breathe. The pain grew worse, coursing out of his shoulder blades in hot waves. It felt like he was being torn apart. He caught something squiggly from the corner of his vision. He looked over his shoulder.
A pair of tentacles hovered in the air above him.
He followed their squiggling length down, and was horrified to find them attached to his back, squeezing out between his shoulders and the flightpack.
He caught the eye of the old Karnage, who was pinned to the floor under a mob of Patricks. They all stared in horror at Karnage. Mayhem slowly backed his wheelchair away until he hit the far wall.
Karnage locked eyes with his older self, and the realization of what was happening hit them both at the same time. He wasn’t just missing the Sanity Patch on his neck.
There was no band around his leg.
“Monkeyfucking squidbugs!” Karnage screamed. He writhed on the ground in agony. Squiggles danced across his vision as the alien DNA took over his body.
CHAPTER FOUR
Karnage watched in horror as his younger self writhed in agony beneath the flightpack. A second set of arms shot out from the kid’s armpits. The straps of the flightpack snapped off as his body doubled in size. The shoulder tentacles grabbed the mangled flightpack and tossed it through a cloning tank. The Patricks scrambled off of Karnage and backed away.
The young Karnage slowly rose to his feet. He was at least eight feet tall. His shoulder tentacles waved violently above him. He opened his eyes. His pupils had become long drawn-out squiggles. His skin pulsed and flowed with colour like a squidbug. He looked down at his four hands and the tentacles flowing from his back. His clothes lay in tatters over his body. He locked his squiggly eyes on Karnage. He pointed with one of his four arms at the flightpacks. He opened his mouth to speak, straining to untangle his twin tongues into a single coherent syllable:
“Go!” Karnage nodded and ran for the flightpacks. The mutant Karnage charged past him, his skin turning red as he let out a squiggly scream.
The mutant Karnage swatted the charging Patricks aside like flies. His open palms made loud scrunching noises when they collided with the bodies of the Patricks. Tentacles grabbed a pair of Patricks by their necks and whipped them back across the hangar. There was a loud smash, and Mayhem screamed something about the tanks, but Karnage couldn’t make out exactly what over the mutant’s angry, defiant roar.
Karnage pulled a flightpack from the wall. Gunfire whizzed past his head. He looped his arms through the straps. A Patrick tried to pull him out, but a tentacle appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the Patrick by his ankle and whipped him away. There was a painful scream and something exploded.
Karnage hit the activators and rocketed up through the skylight. He came out above a small abandoned airport nestled at the base of a low ridge. He looked down at the hangar below and caught one last glimpse of the young Karnage through the skylight. He was looming over Mayhem, his tentacles quivering fiercely above him. Mayhem lay in the corner, his wheelchair knocked over, surrounded by the broken bodies of the Patricks. He shakily held a pistol up towards the young Karnage’s chest, then smoke billowed out of the skylight, and they disappeared from view.
Give him hell, kid, Karnage thought. Give him hell.
MK#10: ALIEN KARNAGE
CHAPTER ONE
Karnage cleared the ridge and the flaming airport disappeared behind him. Nothing was visible but a column of smoke growing smaller in the distance as he sped away. There’s your funeral pyre, kid. Rest in peace. Karnage closed his eyes and took a moment to mourn his wasted youth.
There was a loud bang, and the flightpack bucked violently, spinning out of control. Karnage’s eyes flashed open to see a giant ball of pink goober growing out the side of one of his hoverballs. The ground was quickly hurtling up towards him.
The controls fought him as Karnage struggled to pull the flightpack out of its tailspin. He couldn’t keep it flying for much longer. He aimed for a soft field of pinkstink nestled in a dry riverbed surrounded by dunes of shifting sand, and brought the flightpack down as gently as he could.
He bounced twice before finally skidding to a shuddering halt in the middle of the field. The flightpack listed over and fell on its side, taking Karnage with it. He fumbled with the straps, but the goober had swelled over the buckle. He touched the hardened pink ball, close to his head. Someone had taken a potshot at him. But who?
A loud squiggly screech ripped across the field. The ground shook under Karnage’s feet as a horned worm lumbered over a sand dune and down toward the riverbed.
Karnage yanked and pulled on the straps, trying to rip himself free. A ball of goober shot out from the worm’s back, and hit Karnage in the side, sticking him and the flightpack to the ground as it swelled. He was held fast.
The worm crawled across the field toward him. Karnage spotted a pair of tiny figures on the worm’s back, standing to either side of the horn. They were human.
The worm stopped a few feet away. Karnage could see deep into the worm’s mouth. Curls of yellow mist hugged the worm’s serrated pallet.
A third figure moved forward, stopping at the tip of the worm’s head. Karnage made out the outline of a rifle in its hands. A glint of sunlight reflected off of a scope as the rifle pointed towards him. A familiar voice called down to him.
“Don’t move, pal. Not unless you want a face full of goober.”
“Stumpy?” Karnage shouted. “Is that you?”
The figure lowered its rifle. “Major?” He motioned behind him, and a rope ladder rolled down the worm’s flank. The figure disappeared from the head, and reappeared climbing down the ladder.
It was Stumpy all right. He wore a loud Hawaiian shirt with charcoal grey dress pants tucked into combat boots. The goober rifle was strapped to his stump. It had been heavily modified with an extra-long barrel made from some kind of iron pipe. The scope looked like it had been pieced together from a pair of binoculars.
Stumpy walked over to Karnage and looked down at him with a huge grin. “It’s you,” he said. “It’s really you.”
Karnage motioned with his head to Stumpy’s rifle. “You shoot me outta the sky with that thing?”
Stumpy looked at his rifle, and his face went red. “Aw, gee, Major. I didn’t know it w
as you. I thought—well, if I had known, I wouldn’t have . . . I mean . . .”
Karnage smiled. “That was some shot, Corporal. Shame that kind of marksmanship got wasted in the C&E. You’d have made one hell of a sharpshooter.”
Stumpy grinned. “It’s good to see you again, Major.”
“You, too,” Karnage said. “You got some solvent to get me outta this thing?”
Stumpy turned to the figures on the worm and shouted. “Get me some solvent!”
“Is it him?” a voice shouted back excitedly. “Is it the Lightbringer?”
“Yes,” Stumpy shouted.
“The Lightbringer! The Lightbringer has returned!” The worm riders jumped up and down excitedly, then disappeared from view as they ran down its flank.
“Lightbringer?” Karnage said. He eyed Stumpy’s clothes suspiciously. “What the hell, Stumpy? Have you hooked up with them Spragmites?”
Stumpy watched the figures coming down the ladder. He leaned in to Karnage. “I’ll tell you about it, later, Major. On the way back to the compound.”
“Compound? What compound? What the fuck is going on!?”
Stumpy looked up at the figures running towards them. He waved and smiled at them, and spoke out of the side of his mouth at Karnage. “I’ll tell you later, Major. Trust me, it’s all right. I’m workin’ with Tristan. She explained it all to me. I’m on her side.”
“And who’s side is she on?” Karnage said.
Stumpy gave Karnage a startled look. His mouth opened to say something, but the bounding figures of the two Spragmites coming within earshot forced his mouth shut again. They stopped before Karnage, eyes wide and blazing, and dropped to their knees to bow. “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow,” they chanted.
CHAPTER TWO
They freed Karnage from the goober, and the Spragmites led Karnage and Stumpy back up the rope ladder onto the worm, all the while chanting, “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow.”
A pair of tents had been erected on the worm’s back, tied to the worm’s hairs. Stumpy led Karnage into one of the tents while the Spragmites lowered a rope to bring up his flightpack.