Biohell (14 page)

“Don’t worry!” bellowed Franco,
suddenly. “I’m coming for you, Mel! I’m coming to save you!” Bravely, he
charged at the monster, shotgun booming. Shells screamed down the short
corridor and the monster moved with inhuman speed, twisting, charging at Franco
as it swatted shells like flies. Franco skidded, thumped against the creature,
felt his shotgun taken from him as he tottered backwards a few steps, like an
old man on acid. He gulped. He stared up at the oiled face inches from his own,
witnessed nose-slits sprouting thick black spider hairs, felt rancid breath
coil across him like a disease-ridden oil-mist. The monster tossed the weapon
to the ground in disgust, reached forward, and slapped Franco a stinging blow
with the back of its hand.

Franco flew, hit the wall, and
rolled into a heap with all wind knocked from him. The creature, in huge loping
strides, was upon him and he screamed, screamed as that distended jaw hammered
towards him and fetid breath invaded him abused him raped him and those long
claws curled around his body, lifted him into the air and the room whirled
around him, his familiar settee and TV and PlayStation 1000 turning into a blur
as he was spun and whirled and thrown heavily to the floor. “Get the shotgun!”
screamed Franco, to Mel in the bathroom. “Get the gun! Save yourself! I’ll try
and stall it!”

The abomination lowered its ugly
pus-riddled face towards Franco. He heard the creak of its limbs, watched as
those eyes moved towards his face and saliva and gunk dripped on him. He
shivered, quivered in pure terror as he wondered how he would die... hey, he’d
seen the movies, right? Jaws in the brain? Fist through the heart? Tear out his
spleen and beat him with it?

The monster’s jaws worked
spasmodically.

Franco closed his eyes and
covered his head with his arms.

“Aiiiiiiiie!” he screamed.

And...

Nothing. Nothing happened.

Franco opened one beady eye. Yep.
The monster was still there. Staring at him. Breathing on him. Why didn’t it
just kill him monster him massacre him chew him break him crunch him hell,
shit,
just get it done and over with and let him die in a moment of pure-fire
agony then enjoy an eternity of peaceful rest in a heaven of buxom half-naked
vixen wenches.

“Do it, you sick bastard!” he
screamed.

The creature, the beast, the
monster... its jaws worked even harder. Saliva pooled in long strings that
tickled Franco’s face. And, well—it seemed to be trying to—

“Speak? Are you trying to speak?”
snapped Franco in astonishment. Where the hell was Mel with that D5? If he
could just stall this savage grotesque beast for a few moments, give Mel time
to get to the gun, well, she was a plucky lass and she’d know what to do...

Maybe she’d save them yet!

“Ranco,” said the beast.

“Eh?”

“Ranco. Is me. El.”

Franco’s mouth opened some more.
He paused, unsure of what to say. Then he shuffled backwards, so his back
rested against the settee. He stared hard and with a fearsome scowl at the
abomination before him.

“Mel?”

“I ove ou Ranco.” There were
tears in the monster’s eyes.

“Well—fuck me,” said Franco.

Mel lurched towards him, and he
held up a hand. “Whoa there girl, I didn’t mean this exact minute. I mean, you’ve
gone through a few changes since I last saw you, lass.”

The creature formerly known as
Mel let out a massive roar which blasted curtains from the rail, overturned the
TV and blew-dry droplets of sweat from Franco’s distended ginger beard.

There came a hiatus in time.

Franco scratched his chin.

“So, I’m thinking, maybe
something went wrong with that there biomod, then?”

Mel roared again, and Franco
scrunched his face up against the onslaught of acidic fetid breath. It was like
rotting corpses. Dead dogs. Open sewage.

“OK, OK, don’t get your knickers
in a twist. I told you, didn’t I, I said don’t go buying pirated bio-mods
because those bloody hackers and crackers and pirates don’t know what they’re
damn well doing. They’ve buggered up the biomod, and now they’ve buggered up my
bloody fiancée.”

He stared hard at Mel.

She was not a pretty sight.

Franco sighed. “Bugger,” he said.

Suddenly, there came a series of
cracking sounds and Mel convulsed, her limbs twisting at impossible angles.
Talons grew from her toes and her back arched, her neck distending yet further.
She started to rampage around the room, smashing at the walls and furniture, a
whirlwind of violence with Franco sat, cocooned in terror, at the core. Her
claws cut lines through the brickwork. Her head smashed lights from the
ceiling. Mel, it would seem, was pissed.

“Calm down, calm down,” shouted
Franco, flapping both his hands, palms outwards.

Mel screeched, her head punching
through the ceiling and shaking, scattering dust and floorboards around the
room.

Franco scrabbled to his feet, and
ran through to the bedroom. He threw open his wardrobe and stared at the tumble
of bombs and guns, knives and Kevlar-titanium vests. In a scramble he pulled
out his old military kit in a spill, rummaging madly through the hardcore stash
until he found...

There. “Baby.”

A TitaniumIII leash, with a
spiked silver collar dangling chunky from one end. Against the leather handle
there was a small red button which delivered a jolt of electric shock through
the collar.
Nice.

Franco used to have a dog, a half
canine, half alien blend of psychopathic muscle-riddled fighting machine. He
loved that dog, Franco did, until it one day tried to chew his head off, and he’d
donated the maniac bastard to the Urban Force to be used in tracking down alien
gugunga
smugglers. The TitaniumIII leash was good for 950,000 lbs of
pressure. You could use it to moor Star Cruisers.

Franco returned, warily, to the
living quarters. Everything was quiet. He peered myopically around the
battered, splintered doorframe. Dust floated in layers. Mel hunkered at the
centre of the room, head touching the carpet, eyelids drooping.

“There’s a good girl.”

Mel growled.

“Come on, don’t be like that.”

Mel growled again. Franco shook
his head in confusion. Just what the hell
had
happened to her? A simple
biomod injection gone wrong? Or something more... sinister?

He crept forward, the leash and
spiked collar in one hand, dangling in what he hoped was a non-threatening
manner. “Would you like a little treat? Of course you would, who’s a good girl,
come on, who’s a good girl then.” Franco held out his hand, wiggling his
fingers and edging closer in a curious sideways crab-motion he sometimes
employed.

Mel stretched forward with her
long neck, and tentatively sniffed his hand.

Neatly, Franco looped the collar
over her neck and compressed the mechanism. There came a click. Mel’s eyes met
Franco’s, and he swallowed, hard.

“Rastard,” she said.

Franco shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry
love. Can’t have you tear-arsing around the place and showing me up in front of
the neighbours, now, can I? Not until we get you sorted.” He stood up, puffed
out his chest, and glanced around the devastation that was his destroyed apartment.
He gave a deep and meaningful sigh.

What next?

A doctor. That was it. A doctor
would know what to do! A doctor could
help them
and turn his girlfriend
back into... well, a girl, for starters. Yes. A good old fashioned quack!

Franco picked up the kube. It was
dead. Franco frowned.

Outside, distantly, a siren
wailed. It was joined by another, and another. Franco moved to the window,
peered outside, but could see nothing and he started to chew his lip. Behind
him, Mel smouldered. Her stench made Franco’s nose itch.

“Strange,” he muttered, although
what could be more strange than a girlfriend turning into an eight-foot mutated
mangled abomination of a monster Franco couldn’t quite vocalise.

He frowned. Something was
missing. Out there. Down there. In the real world.

He frowned, even harder.

What the hell
was it?

What was wrong? Out of place? Out
of step?

And then it struck him. Like an
anvil.

There were no
people.
No
humans, no slabs, no proxers, no huggas, no SIMs. The street outside was
deserted.
More than deserted. It was a
ghost town.

Another siren wailed, lonely and
forlorn.

Franco watched an ambulance dash
down the street, take a corner on two wheels, and disappear, stroboscopic
lights flickering blue from the polished alloy and glass of cubescrapers.

Odd,
he thought. It’s the first full
day of The Quantum Carnival. The streets should be thronged with a million
party people. The City should be
crawling
—as it had only a few short
hours ago. So... where had everybody gone?

He turned back to Mel. She was
asleep, snoring, her small round head gleaming with grey and brown pus. Franco’s
eyes ranged over the body and limbs of his girlfriend, his fiancée, his woman,
his true-love. The woman he wanted as wife. The chick he’d decided to finally settle
down with and pump out a machine gun volley of bambinos.

Now, however, she was
transmogrified into a personification of disgust.

“I mean,” Franco muttered to
himself, “you’ve been with a few beasts in your time... but this takes the
biscuit barrel!” He shook his head. Sighed. Hell. What a day, he thought. What
a
week.

But he needn’t have worried.

Things were about to get a whole
lot worse.

~ * ~

Franco
crept down the sixty-nine flights of stairs, Mel following behind on the TitaniumIII
leash. Her claws raked grooves in the concrete, but Franco pretended not to
notice.

“What we’ll do,” he said, “is
find you a good doctor. He’ll be able to sort this out. No problem. I promise,
sweetie.”

“Grwwll,” said Mel, and blinked
back faecal-matter tears.

The descent seemed to take an
eternity, and Franco reached the hall and peered around. It was curiously
quiet.
Where is everybody? How can they have simply... vanished? Am I in a
dream? A nightmare?
He glanced behind himself, stared at Mel, and suddenly
wished he was.

He stepped onto the street.
Skyscrapers soared above him. Cubescrapers hunkered and squatted further down
the street, in a variety of architectural shapes and blobs. A wind blew cool
air, disturbing several papers which gusted, soaring across the deserted
metalled roadway and pavements, hissing along on a platter of disturbed dust.

Franco padded along the pavement.
He stopped. Checked behind him. The D5 shotgun in his hands wavered. He
shivered, as foreboding crawled up and down his spine.

“This just ain’t right.” His
voice boomed, crashed, echoed loud and brash amongst the deserted towering
blocks. He gazed up, looking for faces in the millions of windows all around.

He could see nobody.

“Focus. Doctor.”