by Andy Remic
“Dexter Colls. You’ve been causing a riot.”
“How’s the knee?”
“Hey, fuck you, pal. You’re in a shit-storm and you don’t even know when to keep your flapping mouth shut! I ought to shoot you right here and now. I should gun you down, and kick your body into the fucking river.”
“Why don’t you, then?” Dex’s voice was cool, but his eyes were filled with a controlled rage.
“Somebody wants to see you. Wants a little chat.”
“Who?”
“Your guardian angel. A man named Romero.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s heard of you, boy.”
Dex considered this. “Fuck him. He’ll have to come get me himself.”
Jim grinned, and slowly removed his jacket, dropping it to the track. “You know what, Dexter? I was hoping you’d say something like that.” He rolled his shoulders, and cracked his knuckles, and only then did Dex notice Jim’s athletic breadth of shoulder. He was a pugilist, that much was clear. He had some experience.
“Be careful what you bite off,” said Dex, glancing again at the SIMs. They were motionless. So - the wolfhounds had been called off. The idiots had been trying to kill him, and only now, finally, had their insane hunt been stopped by people with authority. So - now it was just him and Jim?
“Whatever I bite, I chew,” said Jim, stopping a few feet from Dex. “One last chance. Are you coming without a fight? Or do I have to break a few bones to persuade you?”
Dex grinned. “I’d rather fuck your mother.”
Jim’s smile vanished and he attacked, launching three right straights, a left cross, and a side-kick that caught Dex by surprise. It hit him in the sternum, lifting him a little and slamming him back onto his arse. Dex touched a hand to his chest, and looked up, eyes flashing with anger. He got to his feet, lifted his fists, and advanced on Jim...
They exchanged punches, and Dex blocked Jim’s straights. Jim stepped in close with a hook, which Dex took on his arm, and slammed his forehead into Jim’s nose, which gave with a crack, spurting blood. Jim stumbled back, eyes blazing with fresh hate, and snorted out blood and snot.
“Gotta sting, that,” said Dex. “Better get back on your chopper and fuck off before I do some real damage.”
Jim charged, throwing a fast flurry of punches. Several hit Dex in the face, and his anger flared, and he drove blows into Jim’s head and cheek. They danced for a few moments, both hitting and blocking, flirting on a high wire. Then Dex started to tire. It had been a long and stressful few days, and coupled with the recent excitement with the SIMs, the chase in the forest and village, and his pursuit on the rollercoaster track - Dex was bone weary. Ready to drop.
Jim caught him with a right hook, and another, and another. Dex was forced down on one knee, panting, blood drooling from his lips. He looked up - into a kick, which slammed him flat on the rollercoaster track.
“You had enough, big boy?”
Dex glanced up. “That’s exactly what your mom said.”
“Fuck you, Colls. You won’t be so smug when you see your wife and kids. Maybe even now they’ve been destroyed, like the others.”
“The others?”
Jim’s eyes shone. “You think you’re so fucking smart, Mr Earth policeman. You have no idea what’s going on here, no clue as to the bigger picture.” He glanced over at the chopper, and waved it in. With rotors chopping and whining, it shifted sideways; there was a clang as the alloy ladder met with the high bridge.
“I know you have your brain in your scrotum, if that’s what you mean.”
Jim pulled free a Makarov, and knelt suddenly by Dex, and placed the gun to his head. “I ought to kill you here and now, smartarse. Fill your dumb fucking skull with steel. It’s the least you deserve.”
“Go on!” screamed Dex, suddenly. “Fucking do it! You’re a fucking coward, and you’ve taken away everything I love! Kill me, slot me, but please, do it now before your bad fucking cancer-breath poisons me with its spewed vomit-stench! Go on, you coward, you sliver of cunt! Shoot me!”
~ * ~
CHAPTER TEN
MONOLITH
Lady Goo Goo leapt, huge chomping mouth of razor teeth agape and slamming for Amba’s head, and she knew, knew what it reminded her of: a striking cobra intent on eating her head and body, swallowing her whole... Her arm snapped up, pointing the shotgun, but not at Lady Goo Goo. No. She pointed it at Jonno, the simpering helpful android. Both barrels barked, and the blasts decimated Jonno’s head, punching him from his feet in a tangled mess. Lady Goo Goo dropped from the air as if shot, and curled into a foetal ball, crooning, fingers twitching, a puppet with its strings cut...
Amba strode over to Jonno. His shattered head was a mess. One eye had gone, one cheekbone had disintegrated, and she could see his teeth through an open, flapping skin window. His skull, also, had partially vanished, taking a goodly sized section of brain with it. Maybe a third of his entire head had been blasted clear by twin shotgun blasts.
Amba stood, and stared.
Jonno started to chuckle, gurgling as blood collected in his throat and pooled in the hollows of his blasted skull.
“Clever girl,” he said.
“What the fuck are you?”
“The puppet master,” he said.
“No. What are you?”
Jonno simply stared at her with bright eyes, and licked at torn, shredded lips with his spaghetti tongue.
“You killed your Lady Goo Goo,” he said, finally. And Amba felt like a fool, for it had been Jonno all along. The whimpering creature back there was a construct, a weird type of android construct, and here was Lady Goo Goo before Amba. Oh the irony. The comedy. Amba had instructed Lady Goo Goo to take her - him? - to its own self. And the puppet was too tough to be beaten; even by an Anarchy Model.
Amba crouched, then, and placed a hand on Goo Goo’s. The android, or alien, or whatever the hell it was, it was shaking, vibrating like a thousand volts of juice were ripping through its nervous system.
“Tell me,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “What’s going on here? What game is being played?”
Goo Goo’s eyes met Amba’s.
“No game,” it said.
And the creature died.
Amba stood, and glanced around. The jungle construct was limp and lifeless, as if with this creature’s death all life had been sucked out of the place. She spied her FRIEND, strode forward and took the weapon.
You let them take me, sulked Zi.
Shut up. We have bigger problems.
The SIMs?
Yes. And Napper, after that. You know what these Secret Police types are like...
Leave them to me.
Amba moved quickly to the doors, and slid out into the gloom of the Firelce Mountain High-Security Military Facility.
~ * ~
Dex saw the insane light in Jim’s eyes. The slap of the wind from the rotors was rhythmic, hypnotic, as the world fell into treacle slow-motion and Dex licked his lips, watched Jim’s mind crack like a rotten egg as the anger and hatred washed over him. He saw the finger tighten on the trigger. Dex had pushed Jim beyond the event horizon, and there was no going back; for whatever reasons, Jim hated Dex, hated him with a venom like some scumbag shit bag alien - and despite his orders, despite his training, he was going to kill Dex on that high rollercoaster bridge and simply face the consequences...
Dex powered a blow into Jim’s wounded knee, his smashed knee-cap, his bullet-ravaged joint, and Jim screamed and twitched as he pulled the trigger. The bullet skimmed Dex’s cheek, grazing the skin, so close the cordite trail stung his eyes. Dex slammed another punch into Jim’s knee, took the Makarov from the twitching man’s hand, stood, and kicked Jim from the high bridge. Jim flailed, and fell from the track, his arms and legs flapping all the way down to the bottom.
Dex ran for the chopper, and the pilot took precious seconds to realise just what the hell had happened. The SIMs were quicker to re
act. The SMKKs howled behind him, bullets smacking into the track as Dex sprinted... The chopper suddenly banked, but Dex leapt and grasped the ladder. He sailed out over the vast spread of forest and rocks and river, his lungs in his mouth, his balls in his brain, and he clambered up the alloy with gritted teeth and dark glittering eyes, leapt into the cockpit and lifted the Makarov. The pilot turned, lifting his hands. “No! Please, no!”
Dex put a bullet between his eyes, jumped forward and took the controls, swung the chopper around, armed the miniguns, and ploughed towards the SIMs who were standing, faces neutral, wondering what to shoot at next. With a blast and scream, the miniguns cut the SIMs in half where they stood, sending them toppling out into infinity.
Dex hovered for a few moments, rotors whumping, and - face grim - manoeuvred the pilot from his seat and out the loading doors. He pulled them closed with a grunt and jumped back into the pilot’s seat, took the chopper around in an arc and slammed down, under the high rollercoaster bridge and towards the river and the rocks far below. He pulled the chopper up on a bed of hot exhaust fumes, and hovered for a while, searching. It took him maybe five minutes to spot Jim’s bent and broken body. Satisfied, he lifted the chopper high into the sky, spiralling up past the rollercoaster bridge and the bodies of massacred SIMs, and up into the clouds where he paused, calling up a map of the Theme Planet on the HUD.
Dex powered the chopper away from the Forest of Iron, following the map. Below, the whole of Adventure Central spread out, muggy through wisps of straggled cloud. As he cruised, there to the left Dex saw Pterodactyl Castle, with its high towers and walls made from reconstituted dinosaur bone and skin. The gates were dinosaur fangs, the roofing tiles made from the armoured spine-plates of a fukyusaurus. Up ahead, piercing the clouds with their sheer height and mass, were the Skycloud Mountains - the place all true adventurers went to climb, power-glide, abseil, base-jump and snowboard. It was a place for the ultimate adrenaline junkie. A place to voluntarily chuck yourself down the mountain and beg for broken bones. What a mug’s game! What a bad joke. Performed by skinny, bum-fluff-faced idiots who craved some kind of natural high, when you could get a perfectly respectable high from a good bottle of whiskey and ten pints of Wifebeater. Bah, humbug. Damn moaning granddads, and all that.
Dex banked the chopper, engines pounding, rotors pulsing above. Far below in the sunshine glittered the Lagoon of Serenity, and Dex realised the river he’d seen earlier, from his vantage point on the high rollercoaster track, did indeed feed this lagoon. On the far side of the water, the Death Rapids stretched away, all white and foaming and dangerous looking, even from this height. Another group of idiots, begging to chuck themselves against the wrath and psychopathic nature of Nature, to fuck with the God of the River and wonder why they came out the other end either pulverised like dog meat, or in a body-bag filled with aqua. What a bunch of morons! Dex had had just about all the adventure he could take. He’d overdosed on adrenaline. He’d pumped himself full of excitement until he wanted to puke. What’s wrong with sitting in front of the telly? What’s wrong with cups of hot chocolate? What’s wrong with languorous mornings under the duvet, playing hunt the pickle with your giggling wife? But no. Dex had been forced into a situation where he was force-fed “adventure” and “fun” and “danger” and “thrills,” all the specialities of the Theme Planet - and all he wanted to do was find Katrina and the kids, and head home for a quiet life.
The chopper left the Lagoon of Serenity and the Death Rapids far behind, and quickly - because this was the terraformed magic of the Theme Planet! - the landscape shifted from forest and rivers to a sudden desert, which seemed to emerge from nowhere. These were the Lost Dunes, leading to the Caves of Hades. Sand stretched out for an eternity. Huge, towering dunes seemed to fight one another, climbing and crawling over one another to reach the sea... and Dex slammed along, cruising low, rotors kicking up a huge desert storm in his wake.
“I just want to go home,” he said, out loud, words startling him.
And in frustration, and pain, and exhaustion, Dex realised he wanted to cry.
~ * ~
The chopper clicked to itself as its engines attempted to cool under the blaze of the desert sun. Dex jumped down, boots sinking a little in the sand, shaded his eyes and stared at the Caves of Hades ahead. There was what could only be described as a slab of rock, perhaps five kilometres wide, and a kilometre high, that ran (as Dex had discovered from the brochures) all the way to the sea.
The Caves of Hades.
Shit, thought Dex. There’s so many of them!
He knew the Caves led to a secret tunnel, another wonderful exploration adventure for the terminally enthusiastic “holiday adventurer.” And the tunnel led across to The Lost Island - on which, Jim had claimed, were imprisoned his wife and children. But now - now he had to submerge himself in a mad cave complex searching for the hidden tunnel. Great.
Dex made a low growling sound, and checked his stolen Makarov. Looking back inside the chopper, he found the armaments cache and raided it. He strapped on a bulletproof vest, and took an SMKK and stash of magazines, and as many mini grenades as would clip to his belt and fit in his pockets.
He climbed back out and stood in the sand, feeling a little ridiculous. There was a sign a few feet away. It read:
WELCOME TO THE CAVES OF HADES!
HO HO HO!
HAVE FUN IN THIS VERY SPECIAL
THEME PLANET EXTRAVAGANZA!
AND REMEMBER... BE CAREFUL, BRAVE ADVENTURER!
THERE’S SOMETHING WITH TEETH IN HERE...
“For the love of God,” muttered Dex, making sure his grenades were strapped on tight. All he needed now was to bump into another family on vacation, and watch them run screaming as he, the Mighty Dexter, strode forward less like a Colossus than some tarted-up Holiday Action Man.
I’ve had better weeks, he thought.
And I’ve certainly had better holidays!
He strode through the sand, and stepped up onto a rocky plinth that led to a wide walkway, which in turn led to the hundred or so openings which fed into the Caves of Hades. Dex walked forward, the sun beating against his back, and as he approached a cave picked at random, a cool breeze, like sour breath, eased out to meet him.
A plaque read:
Here be monsters
Dex frowned, and cocked the SMKK. Stepping forward into the gloom and the damp, he said, “Oh yeah? Bring it on, then.”
~ * ~
On high, jagged cliffs overlooking the ocean there was a vast black castle. Its walls were polished granite, smooth and difficult to climb, and high above, circled constantly by cawing green-and-grey gulls, there were soaring towers, crennelations along huge battlements, slits for archers yards wide and gulleys through which to pour boiling oil on attacking armies. The castle was bigger than big, as if Theme Planet had seen pictures of old castles on old Earth, and thought fuck that, we can do bigger and better than that! and had done. It was truly a vast and imposing structure, and would have been near-impossible for any attacking army to breach... unless they climbed up the advertisements. These were positioned at regular intervals, and would have given any attacking soldiers with grappling irons firm purchase on their way up to breaching the battlements, killing the soldiers and savaging any handy nuns. The ads were for items not exactly in keeping with the style of the vast black castle, such as turkey’s comedy gobbling condoms! Go on, be a turkey - gobble gobble!, and sonja’s fabulous chicken beard party beards! Get yourself a chicken beard today, they’re gobble-gobble-chickentastic! And farter’s beans! Fuck your digestion up good and proper, go on, be a farter: buy farter’s beans - available in different sizes of barrel, and scorcher’s fireworks! Guaranteed to blow your whole damn head off! And buy tiff and ken’s new album, “dance the funky chicken, “ available on holo, proj-k, ggg and firedisk... Let tiff and ken transport you to a world of croons, kooks, googs and not-rights..... Go on, buy tiff and ken, they’re funky spunky, and you know you want to!<
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At the summit of the castle, in big, chintzy, tacky, glowing neon letters that seemed just a touch out of character with a historically accurate, if somewhat overlarge, medieval military fortification, were the words:
MONOLITH RIDE MUSEUM
“It’s a reward,” said a wiry, weathered old man, who wore a floppy hat and carried a back-pack. Amba glanced at him, sitting on a rock and staring with beady eyes towards the castle. He drank out of a canteen and reached forward, rubbing at what, presumably, were sore, battered feet. Scruffy hiking boots sat to the man’s right. She imagined she saw steam rising from his tattered, threadbare socks.
“A reward?” said Amba. “For what?”