DOA III

by Bentley Little

When she left him, he was on his knees, hands furiously ripping into the tops of his pantaloons, looking to rip off his testicles and massacre his cock, which some of them did in the initial stages of the inducements of the venom’s impact.

  She didn’t hang around to enjoy the spectacle. She was already emerging from the stairwell of the vault, raising the latch of the door and pulling it open. She slipped into the dark streets of Gothvraggon, the door shutting behind her with a light click of its latch re-locking, just as she hoped it would.

  My Disease-Ridden Spit took two or three steps and disappeared into the night, as if she’d stepped into a crack in the darkness.

  But there was no crack there. My Disease-Ridden Spit had disappeared into the night.

  Quite literally.

  Two thousand years ago, a teenage boy was being hideously (and possibly) murdered in a manner which was of great interest to Mertens, who now prepared himself to watch it via Exo-anima Tech-attainted retroscopic film footage which, said Leopold Firth, “you may find a little disturbing.”

  Firth also said: “It’s probably best if you watch it through the virtual overdrive, just to get a sense of what’s really going on.” He handed Mertens a psycho-fluid mix of virtualizer. “It’s traumatic. More especially for you.”

  Mertens gave Firth a comprehensive look. “Go on,” he said.

  Firth raised a hand and made a series of gestures that threw up an electro-static sheen quickly resolving into a montage of film. Mertens drank the virtualizer and waited for the overdrive to kick in. When it did, he lapsed into the viewpoint of the teenage boy, with no sense whatsoever of what preceded the scene he now entered into... Warren stands shaking in a renovated farmhouse kitchen and gestures as if indicating the corpse of an adored family pet he doesn’t want to look upon for more than he has to.

  “Get away from me,” he says.

  But, in truth, there’s no one there.

  Not yet.

  Warren lets his body slouch like he can’t hold it up.

  “Get away,” he says. “I know you’re watching me.”

  He is bewildered. He is scared. But the things he’s seen, they are real—coming in and out of the gloom, like flickering elements of old-style cinema—faint traces of shape, odd and grotesque; not like ghosts, but alive.

  “Get the fuck away from me.”

  He takes a step backwards...

  It’s impossible to understand what’s going on. The kitchen begins to grow dimmer, as if thick clouds are passing overhead, blocking the light from the windows with a mouldering gloom. The walls begin to change colour. The wallpaper darkens. It becomes stained. The kitchen is different—now semi-derelict and more like a steading.

  Warren’s mouth falls open. He lets out a startled cry that catches in his throat. He tries to take hold of the kitchen unit where the fridge should be. It’s gone. The kitchen has become utterly transformed. No longer renovated. It is old and decrepit and smelling of something that might be rotten meat. Dead meat. The remnants of slaughter. There is a heavy tang of fish, too. Rotten fish. All of it rotten. The meat, the fish. The smell was as thick as a substance.

  Warren feels himself starting to retch.

  A loud, heavy squawk—a rasping, grating, piercing sound—causes him to jump and turn ‘round sharply. He staggers back in stunned amazement. He bangs into something. It might have been a table. He wouldn’t have known. He’s staring at the thing before him, as if his eyes had been drawn to a magnetic impulse.

  A tall thing with a man’s body, wearing a black suit, stands before him. It has thin wiry arms that start to waver and sprawl like branches on a tree that lean towards him. The hands unfurl. But they are not hands. They’re claws. Like twigs. With black hooks on the ends of them. Not fingers. Just knobbly black hooks on the ends of arms that waver like pieces of coral.

  But that isn’t the worst thing. It’s the head. The head, above all. The head of a gigantic seagull propped on a man’s distorted, lanky body. Its black eye squinting like a pith of ruin, intense with curiosity... and something else.

  The head leans back. The huge beak opens up. A stink comes out of it. It squawks—an obscene rasping that ratchets the ear and sets the teeth on edge.

  Warren is pinned against the table. If it is a table. Seagull Head is squinting at him. Then it starts to move towards him with shuffling, pathetic, discordant steps. It turns its head at an angle, cocks it from side to side with inelegant, jerky movements. Its beak is angling towards Warren’s face. The beak is hard and sharp. Jagged. It stinks. It is the stink of fish and rotten meat—the stink of oceans and the shit that litters them.

  Warren turns to run. The urge comes to him like an electric shock. But there’s something beside him blocking his path. Something he hadn’t noticed before. Something small. With horns. A small boy with the head of a goat.

  Warren screams. The Goat Thing grabs a hold of his leg, wraps itself around his thigh, like it was trying to mate with him, the way that dogs do.

  Warren starts to struggle. He tries to hit the Goat Thing around the head, batter it with his weak fists. But Seagull Head is upon him and starts pecking at his face. Its claws start to rake into his body. The beak digs into his face with the force of a bludgeon, dunting against his forehead and cheeks, hitting him in the teeth and shattering them with its blunt force.

  Warren is grabbed by Seagull Head’s hooks. He is thrown onto the table. It was a table. The Goat Thing now has a hold of Warren’s hair, trying to pin his head down on the table top. The table stinks of the same stench as Seagull Head’s beak—stinking meat and rotten fish; the shit of oceans. The table top is covered in a layer of slime. But it isn’t slime. It is blood and gristle. Of animals. Of fish. Of people. Warren knows that it was people.

  He knows that it was people because whatever had happened to them was happening to him now.

  Seagull Head thrusts its beak and hooks into his chest and belly and begins to rake and peck like some crazed, malfunctioning automaton. Warren tries to react against it. But Seagull Head is all over him, and the Goat Thing is pawing at his face, trying to gouge out his eyes. It isn’t clear if the Goat Thing is using human hands with cartilaginous fingers or some kind of mutated variation of hoofs.

  When the beak of Seagull Head starts to rip into his unprotected genitals, Warren’s eyes burst open like new moons. And then the Goat Thing is able to gouge into them with slow, pawing movements with the hand-hoofs of a small boy. Small enough to enter into the eye sockets, mangle the fleshy orbs and reduce them to a bitty liquid pulp. The destruction of the eyes triggers the negation of the virtual overdrive and positions Mertens on the spatial proximity of egressed voyeur mode.

  The Goat Thing pulls itself onto the table and lays on top of Warren’s chest. It passes its snout over his face. Sniffing him. Savouring. Warren is convulsing but conscious of it all. Then the Goat Thing unfurls its long, wet tongue, slips it into one of Warren’s pulped eye sockets and begins to lick.

  The Goat Thing sucks up the mashed fluids of the eye socket, then proceeds to lick out the other one. By then, Warren has gone well beyond the threshold of pain and has entered a new era of sensations.

  With his eyes licked out, he can’t see anything of the device that the Goat Thing is inserting into his empty sockets.

  But Mertens can.

  The kid is about to undergo an extraction procedure. The soul particles located in the genetic interior of his brain cells are about to be harvested. The eye sockets have been cleared out for a reason—to allow better access for the soul machine to do its work.

  But then, before the grotesques are able to apply the extraction force, something happens.

  Two figures appear out of the gloom. They transpire like images through a paper lantern.

  Mertens stiffens.

  He stiffens because he recognises them.

  Waves crashed like the end of the world on the rocks of Sarnath. Stone buildings rose out of the shoreline like exoskeletal extensions t
o its crooked geology—symmetry rising out of chaos, decrepit and stiff against the backdrop of the Dismal Cliffs of Raaw. Ships lay offshore, precarious against the headwinds, sails folded with their anchors straining against the incessant swell and the boom of the surfs.

  The Prostitute of Death pulls her coat around her throat and shivers.

  Where oh where is the cobra girl?

  She backs into a doorway where the damp shadows offer minimal resistance against the cold. She is nervous. Her mission is extremely dangerous. Her target is a NewGov assassin who’s been coalesced with the soul particle of a praying mantis.

  “Therefore—” Mertens had stressed the point with an unshakable lack of subtlety— “you know what happens in the aftermath of love-making.”

  The Prostitute of Death had said, quietly, “I know my insects.”

  Which is why there wouldn’t be any aftermath.

  “Here I am!”

  My Disease-Ridden Spit emerged from the darkness with the suddenness of a bang on the head.

  “Cobra. Must you?” The Prostitute of Death grew flush with anger. My Disease-Ridden Spit smirked and retrieved the sex toy from the inlets of her trench coat. She slipped it into the hand the Prostitute of Death, who duly deposited it into some secret part of her stylish ankle-length windbreaker.

  “So how the fuck do you intend to get personal with this mantis bitch?” said My Disease-Ridden Spit. “Not everyone wants to fuck you, you know.”

  The Prostitute of Death gave a light shrug.

  “I know my insects,” she said.

  “You think this is going to be hard core easy?” said My Disease- Ridden Spit, her voice straining with rage as usual. “I tell you girl, this mantis bitch is monster crazy. She eats people after she fucks them. Are you aware of that?”

  “I know my insects,” said the Prostitute of Death, adding, “My pheromonal secretions will do the trick.”

  “Ah, of course,” said My Disease-Ridden Spit, dripping wet with irony, “you’ve been coalesced with an insect yourself, haven’t you? What was it again? A moth? A blue-arsed fly?”

  “A butterfly,” said the Prostitute of Death, her voice as flat as a slab of concrete.

  “Oh, my mistake,” said My Disease-Ridden Spit, feigning surprise without feigning the fact that she was feigning it. “Well,” she added, “I’ll leave you to it, flutter-by girl. Good luck with the crazy mantis bi—”

  A screed of metabolic energy thrilled through the veins of My Disease-Ridden Spit like a failed orgasm. The Prostitute of Death received the same influx. The eyes of them both widened with an involuntary act of paying attention.

  It was a non-audible message alert, sent via Soul Tech impulse meta-channels, coming straight from the horse’s mouth of the Intel Core:

  Code Absolute. Code Absolute. Code Absolute.

  The thrill in their veins subsided. The message lapsed out. A Code Absolute summons was one that had to be obeyed at all costs. Mertens would be waiting for them.

  “Seems like some shit has hit the mega-fan.” My Disease-Ridden Spit raised her eyebrows. “You’re off the hook, butterfly girl.” She winked. “For now.”

  Oddly, the Prostitute of Death wore a look of puzzlement on her impeccable features that made them look even more beautiful than they already were.

  “What’s up, whore face?” My Disease-Ridden Spit said this with a modicum of sympathetic interest.

  The Prostitute of Death sighed.

  “It’s just,” she said, “I was really psyched up for tackling the mantis bitch.”

  Then she straightened her shoulders, hardened her gorgeous features and said:

  “Fuck it, cobra girl. Let’s go.”

  Mertens, Overseer of the Intel Core of the Anarcho-Pact network operations, was doing what he did best: briefing the TerrorSluts on the particulars of their mission.

  “NewGov have secretly deployed several teams of sub-agents called Ungodheads who have embarked on a programme of Exo-anima interdimensional seepage between different versions of the same world. They are looking to harvest the soul particles of historic humans to be used as energy ducts for various power projects. Soul particle energy has enormous potential, especially in relation to developing high tech lighting systems, travel systems, and weaponry.

  “In this case, we’ve tracked two Ungodheads who’ve transversed time and targeted, in the past, an innocent boy on the cusp of manhood—a teenager. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the teenager in question is a direct descendent of one of the most important figures of the underground networks.

  “The Ungodheads have to be stopped,” said Mertens, his voice loaded with a dry, emotionless candour that made him sound like an electronic malfunction, “and you’re going to stop them.”

  He looked steadily at TerrorSlut Cobra and TerrorSlut Butterfly, possibly waiting for questions. My Disease-Ridden Spit obliged.

  “And just who or what the fuck are they, then?”

  “The Ungodheads?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hybrid types,” said Mertens. “Bio-mechanical mashups. Old school bastardisations. Genetic fuck ups. The kind of shit that existed before the discovery of the soul particle. But they’ve also undergone a process of reversed coalescence, where human soul particles have been blended with non-human agencies instead of the other way ‘round, which is extremely problematic. As well as illegal.”

  “Fuckers breaking their own fucking laws,” hissed My Disease-Ridden Spit.

  The Prostitute of Death looked tense with apprehension and innocence in equal measure.

  “Why’s it problematic?” she asked.

  “Because,” said Mertens, “reversed coalescence tends to infect non-human entities with intelligence—the wrong kind of intelligence. It makes them more deliberative, more destructive, more wilfully cruel.”

  A short silence.

  “So what the fuck have they been coalesced with?” My Disease-Ridden Spit again.

  “One with a seagull and the other with a goat.”

  “Shit.” My Disease-Ridden Spit stared at the floor. “Those are nasty fuckers. Eat fucking anything.”

  “Quite,” said Mertens.

  “And what about this thing with the ancestor?”

  Mertens coughed and said:

  “Aside from attempting to illegally harvest human soul particles from the ancient past, the NewGov have inadvertently or deliberately targeted an antecedent of one of our most important senior members. If they succeed, and the antecedent dies, this will cause the historical cancellation of his descendants, who will cease to exist even before they began to. Our intel confirms that the antecedent— a boy of fifteen years old—is the ancient forefather of... of me.”

  The TerrorSluts exchanged a WTF glance before Mertens went on.

  “We need to undertake a mission of interdimensional seepage transference that takes us back to the cross-points in space and time where we can deter the Ungodheads from completing their task. Otherwise—” Mertens clasped his hands behind his back and swivelled slightly from side to side— “I won’t be here to greet you when you get back.”

  My Disease-Ridden Spit frowned and seemed offended. The way she often did.

  “But you’re here now,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Mertens. “Which means, your forthcoming attempt to save my ancestor has evidently succeeded.”

  Silence. Then:

  “But,” said the Prostitute of Death, “doesn’t that mean that there’s no need for us to go back?”

  “Why?” said Mertens.

  “Because you’re already here.”

  “But if you don’t go back,” said Mertens, “I won’t be.”

  “But,” said My Disease-Ridden Spit, “if you won’t be here, if we don’t go back, then why the fuck are you?”

  “Because,” said Mertens, “you do go back.”

  “But what if we don’t?”

  Mertens sighed and said, “Because, if you don’t, then I won�
�t be here when you get back. Which means there’ll be no Intel Core. Because I designed it. Which means there’ll be no Anarcho-Pact. Which means there’ll be no TerrorSluts for Eternity. Which means, therefore, you will go.”

  My Disease-Ridden Spit knew he was right. The Intel Core was the centre of everything—and without it, the centre cannot hold.

  “In that case,” she said, cracking her knuckles as she spoke, “when the fuck do we get started?”

  Exo juice: a calculated blend of historical and genetic Soul Tech combinations that transports you to another place in space and time. Transference between the meta-dimensions was a bit like being senselessly drunk for a few split seconds.

  Then, suddenly, you were there.

  In a semi-derelict farmhouse kitchen where the victim is spread-eagled over a stinking table being set upon by the grotesques of the Ungodheads. They have a device they’ve pushed into the victim’s eye sockets. It’s a soul machine, and it’s actually attached to one of the Goat Thing’s hand-hoofs. The grotesques are about to activate the extraction force, which will kill the boy outright, when:

  “Fuck me, butterfly girl. Look at these fucking mishaps of nature. And I thought you were the ugly one.”

  Seagull Head and the Goat Thing turn their heads in bewilderment at the interruption. After a brief pause to allow their dull amazement to run its course, they disentangle themselves from their activities on the table. Seagull Head starts stooping and lurching across the floor, a vicious squawking erupting from his saw-edged beak. The Goat Thing rasps through his malformed mouth, slavers dripping from his nostrils, his tongue rollicking like a gigantic slug. He scuttles on his little legs, hand-hoofs raised; he makes directly for the Prostitute of Death who draws a stiletto from her thigh-length boots and prepares to engage.

  My Disease-Ridden Spit turns her attentions to Seagull Head, who shambles towards her like an optical illusion. She draws her blade; he is upon her, faster than she thinks, and cracks his beak right against her forehead. She falls back and slams the back of her head on the floorboards; for a time, all is lost.

  She comes to. Seagull Head is pecking into her abdomen with skin-splitting force. He’s aiming for her vital organs. Branch-like claws rake into her. My Disease-Ridden Spit tries to roll free but is far too fuck-a-doodle-dandied to do anything.