Major Karnage (19 page)

Karnage did a doubletake. “What do you mean it doesn’t look
alien?! What the hell do you want it to look like?”

Sydney shrugged. “I don’t know. Just more . . . alien.”

They heard another squiggly scream, much closer this time.

Karnage rounded on Sydney. “Captain, with all due respect,
get
these fuckin’ cuffs offa me!”

Sydney shook her head. “I’m not convinced. I have to see ’em for
myself.”

“So we’re just gonna wait here until one of those squiggly bastards
comes up and bites us in the ass! Jesus, Captain, what do I gotta do
to prove it to you?”

As if on cue, a collection of white slivers of light shot through the
walls and collected in a nodule by a door. The door spiralled open,
and a squidbug that had been leaning on the door stumbled back
and fell out. Other squidbugs sat inside, collected around an old car
idling in the room. Bits of broken hoverball shell lay around it. The
room was thick with grey smoke. A garden hose had been taped to
the car’s exhaust, and a squidbug was sucking on the end of it. His
eyes were crossed and purple polka-dots covered his skin. He passed
the hose to the next squidbug who eagerly sucked on the end and
turned a kind of chartreuse shade of plaid.

The squidbug that lay at Karnage’s and Sydney’s feet groggily
stood and shook its head. It looked at Karnage and Sydney with
crossed eyes. It worked hard at uncrossing its eyes and focused on
Karnage and Sydney. It blinked slowly as its skin changed colour
from green paisley to blue ripples. Its eyes suddenly went wide and
its skin flowed to solid purple then dark red. It raised its mouth
tentacles, exposing a clawed beak, and screeched at Sydney.

Sydney whipped her pistol from her belt and fired a shot of goober
in the squidbug’s face. The alien’s head disappeared in an expanding
ball of goober as it staggered back into the room. It crashed into the
car, kicking the garden hose out of the exhaust. The other squidbugs
finally looked up from the hose at their struggling companion.
Gradually, they turned their attention to Karnage and Sydney and
worked hard at uncrossing their eyes.

Karnage and Sydney backed away from the door.

“Is that enough empirical evidence for you, Captain?” Karnage
said.

Sydney nodded. “That should just about do it.”

The squidbugs slowly rose to their feet as their eyes focused on
Karnage and Sydney.

“How many rounds you got left in that goober gun?” Karnage
said.

“Not enough,” Sydney said.

One of the squidbugs turned dark crimson. It reached down for a
squiggly spear lying on the floor.

“Only one thing left do,” Karnage said.

“What’s that?”

“Run!”

They raced down the corridor, the squidbugs stumbling after
them. The aliens levelled their energy spears at Karnage and Sydney,
and fired balls of energy at them. The balls went ridiculously wide,
slamming into the floor and ceiling far behind them. One of the
squidbugs tripped on his spear and accidentally shot himself. He
vaporized instantly.

“These guys are the worst shots I’ve ever seen!” Sydney said.

“Quit bitching!” Karnage stumbled and nearly fell. “You picked a
helluva time to come around! You know that?”

“Now who’s bitching?!”

“I am! And I got every right to! You know how hard it is to run in
handcuffs?”

“How was I supposed to know there were aliens?”

“How about because I fuckin’ well told you?”

“I make it a point never to trust anybody in handcuffs.”

A crackling ball of green energy flew over their heads.

“Maybe you should rethink that policy!”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

They rounded a corner, and came face to face with a sealed door.
“How do you open this thing?” Sydney said.

Karnage motioned with his head at the nodules beside the door.
“It has something to do with this.”

Sydney pressed it and punched it, but nothing happened. “How
does it work?”

“I don’t know. I just pushed it, and it worked.”

“It’s not working now.”

“I can see that.”

Energy blasts shot wildly down the corridor, some of them
disturbingly close.

“Goddammit, we have to do something!”

Karnage kicked the nodule. “Open up, you stupid monkeyfucker!”
White light burst out of the nodule and flowed into the floor. The
Sanity Patch crooned “Coral Essence” as the floor spiralled open
beneath them.

They fell into the bowels of the ship.

Karnage plummeted through twisting pipes, slid through long
chutes, and spiralled through giant drains, liquid flowing all around
him. An occasional burst of white light shot down the tunnel in front
of him, opening up new chutes while sealing off others, redirecting
his course as he alternately slid and fell deeper into the squidbug
ship.

The tunnel finally gave way to open air, and he fell through the
pitch black and landed with a splash into liquid. It stung his eyes
and tasted like toxic sludge. He tried to kick his way to the surface.
The handcuffs holding his arms behind his back did nothing to help.

He wasn’t sure if he was swimming up to the surface or down
into the depths. He just kept kicking, hoping eventually he’d reach
the top. He felt something grab his collar and pull him sideways. His
head broke the surface and he gasped for air.

Karnage could feel Sydney pulling again as she swam towards
a circle of white light shining in the distance. It illuminated a halfopen grate in the wall, just above the water level. A particularly large
wave slapped her full in the mouth.

She spat out a mouthful of foul liquid. “Christ, this stuff tastes
awful!”

“Just keep swimming.” Karnage did his best to kick and help
propel them forward.

It was much farther away than it looked. The white ring slowly
grew in size, from a man-sized hole to something that would
accommodate a jumbo jet. Exhausted, Sydney pulled them through
the grate onto its dry smooth surface. They lay there a moment,
catching their breath. Finally, Sydney spoke. “There really are
aliens, aren’t there?”

“Not just aliens,” Karnage said. “Squidbugs.”

Sydney looked out at the giant vat of liquid. “What the hell do
we do now?”

“First,” Karnage twisted his back towards Sydney, “you can take
off these handcuffs.”

“Right,” she said. “Sorry.”

Karnage heard her fumble in her pockets. “Shit,” she said.

“What?”

“I can’t find the key. I must have dropped it.” She ran her hands
along the base of the tunnel, then looked with dread out at the
liquid. She looked back at Karnage.

He ground his teeth. “This is great. No, this is beyond great.
Fantastic! How the hell am I gonna defend myself against a squidbug
attack?”

“Maybe you can kick ’em to death.”

“Can’t you just poke the cuffs with a toe or something and snap
’em off?”

Sydney shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“No,” Karnage said. “Of course not.”

“Come on.” Sydney helped Karnage to his feet. “Maybe we can
find something at the end of this tunnel.”

Karnage looked down into the darkness. “Where does it go?”

“It goes that way. Come on.”

They walked down the shaft for what felt like hours. Karnage
rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms. They were starting to
get sore. He tried glowering at Sydney’s back to make himself feel
better. It didn’t help.

The tunnel slowly slanted upward. It ended at a bend that took it
straight up a few feet before ending at a giant sealed grate. Nothing
but darkness was visible beyond the grate.

A set of rungs led up to the grate. Sydney climbed up and tried to
lift it. It didn’t budge. She looked around the edges. “Maybe there’s a
nodule thing we can hit.”

“I don’t see one,” Karnage commented.

“Keep looking.”

“What’s that?”

A flashing pinprick of white light shot across the grate. The edges
of the grate glowed, and it lifted and slid open.

“Nice work,” Karnage said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Worry about the who and the why later. Help me up.”

Sydney helped Karnage up the rungs, and the two of them pulled
themselves through the open grate. Karnage felt like a rat crawling
out of a drain. Every movement echoed through the cavernous
darkness. The only light in the room was the ring of white light
around the grate. All that it illuminated was Karnage and Sydney
and a soft circle of grey floor.

The ring of light pulled itself from the edges of the grate, and
pooled into a puddle under their feet. It shot a squiggling luminescent
tendril forward and formed a second puddle just a few feet ahead of
them. A third tentacle shot out of the second pool, forming a third,
and then a fourth formed out of the third. The pools propagated
themselves off into the distance until they were barely visible at the
edge of a black horizon, ghostly white lily pads in the dark, quivering
and fidgeting.

“That looks like a path,” Sydney said.

“I know,” Karnage replied.

“Think we should follow it?”

Karnage shook his head. “Fuck no.”

“Me neither.”

The lily pad beneath their feet flickered for a moment, then
winked out.

“Is that supposed to be a hint?” Sydney asked.

“If it was,” Karnage said, “I’m not listening.”

The next nearest lily pad winked out. Then the next and the
next in a chain reaction of winks that looked like a long line of eyes
closing in a Rockettes-style routine. Finally, only one tiny pinpoint
of light flickered in the distance.

“I think they really want us to follow the path,” Sydney said.

“Well, they can go fuck themselves.” He looked up into the dark.
“I’m not gonna be led around like a rat in a trap! You hear me?!”

The pinprick of light shot off angry squiggling lines in all
directions, stretching from horizon to horizon. Then, impossibly,
the lines turned sharply upward and shot up walls the height of
cliffs. They disappeared behind dark rounded masses above them,
and spanned out, soaking the walls in a grey luminous glow.

Karnage and Sydney stared up at the dark mounds high above.
White light flashed and popped from bulbous mound to bulbous
mound. Suddenly, the mounds twitched, and the entire ceiling
slowly lowered towards them.

“Back through the grate!” Karnage shouted. But it was too late.
The grate had slammed shut behind them.

They looked up and watched as the ceiling slowly moved down.

As the ceiling grew closer they saw it was composed of thousands
of translucent spheres of varying sizes. Dark shapes bobbed within
them. The spheres stopped lowering just inches above their heads.
The sudden stop forced the dark shapes to float down against the
bottom of their spheres. A human face appeared. It was a man with
his knees hugged to his chest, sleeping peacefully. He bobbed back
up and disappeared into the mists of the sphere.

“They’re human,” Karnage said.

“Not all of them.” Sydney reached up and grabbed a sphere the
size of a basketball. She pulled it down. Its curled dark shape bobbed
down and up, a tail clearly drifting from its back. “This one’s got
a cat in it.” Sydney let the ball go, and it pushed up into the mass,
forcing the other spheres to make room. The spheres rippled and
bobbed out.

There was a faint rumbling, and suddenly the spheres parted to
make room for one the length of a bus. It pushed itself well down
through the mass, forcing Karnage and Sydney to drop to the floor.
The sphere slowed to a stop inches above their heads, and moved
back up again. The enormous black shape within pushed at the
curve of glass for an instant, before the sphere and its contents
disappeared back up into the ocean of spheres. Karnage and Sydney
looked at each other in shock.

“Was that . . . a whale?” Karnage said.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t see it if you will.”

They tentatively stood. Karnage looked at the millions of spheres
floating above them. “What do you think? Two of everything?
Maybe more?”

Sydney shook her head. “What the hell is this?”

“Maybe it’s their larder.”

The spheres began to rise. The grey lights flickered out of them
and moved back into the walls. The lights in the walls narrowed into
tight lines and pulled back down into the floor where they collected
in a pool of light under Karnage’s and Sydney’s feet. The room
descended into darkness, but Karnage kept staring up, thinking of
the millions of spheres hovering above him.

The puddle of light under their feet flowed forward, pulsing
patiently just in front of them.

“I think it wants us to follow it again,” Sydney said.

“Yeah.” Karnage stared at the pulsing spot of light. It waited
patiently as he tried to stop thinking about what loomed above him.
He looked at Sydney.

“Well,” he said, “so long as they’re bein’ polite.”

They followed the light across the floor for what felt like days. It
stayed a half-step in front of them, rhythmically jumping ahead to
prevent them from touching it with the tips of their feet. Karnage’s
feet were starting to hurt and his neck ached from looking down at
the light when it finally stopped moving.

Once they were standing on it, the glowing pool shot a coil of
light forward that instantly sped straight up a wall directly in front
of them. The lights flared out into tiny filaments and outlined a
door the size of a hangar bay. The filaments broke apart, and rained
down into a large glowing ring around the door. The door spiralled
open with a loud aching groan. The lights flowed back into the lily
pad under their feet. The lily pad drifted through the doorway, and
pulsed patiently on the other side.