Biohell (26 page)

“It’s
not there,” said Franco.

“What do you mean, it’s not
there?” Keenan pushed past Mel and crouched at the corner of the street, chin
on the barrel of his MPK, peering at where they’d landed the Y Shuttle
Drunk
and Loving It.
Franco was right: the ship wasn’t there. Porky Pauper’s
Fast-Food Burger Emporium wasn’t there. In fact, the
street
was gone.
All that remained was a pyramid pile of rubble over which stumbled a few lone
zombies searching for meat and brains.

“This darkness is giving me the
creeps,” said Franco. Being a denizen of The City he had grown accustomed to
pretty much constant daylight. The odd few hours of nightfall tended to pass
whilst Franco lay deep in drunken slumber; as such, his night vision was
underdeveloped.

“Don’t be such a big girl.”

Mel, crouching beside Franco,
started to scratch behind an ear with her foot claw. A rasping sound, as of
metal on metal, echoed down the rubble-piled street. One of the zombies looked
up—a quick, unexpected movement. With a guttural snarl it leapt towards them,
scattering bricks and shards of glass, using hands as feet as it pounded
towards the group with a sudden burst of acceleration.

Keenan stood, and growled, “I’m
sick of this shit.” The zombie leapt, and Keenan unloaded ten bullets into the
sagging grey flesh, each impact spinning and punching the marionette until it
landed, rolling, rags fluttering, twenty feet away. Keenan glanced at Franco. He
shook his head. “Looks like we’re on foot.”

Franco gestured past Keenan with
a twitch of his head. Keenan looked back, to see the dropped zombie crawling
unsteadily to its feet. Keenan could see clean through several holes, jagged
with splinters of bone. He pulled a smile without humour as the zombie,
snarling again, charged with a limping, wounded, tortured gait. Keenan leapt to
battle, ducking a swipe of claws and side-kicking the creature in the chest.
But it was fast, faster than Keenan expected; claws closed on his leg, catching
him in steel manacles and he was spun horizontally, second boot hammering at
the creature’s face. It stumbled back, tripped, flailed as it hit the ground.
Keenan landed lightly, leapt forward, placed his boot on the creature’s chest
and gazed down into yellow, feral eyes.

Once human, he thought.

It was once a person. A man.

“Shit.”

He unloaded twenty bullets into
the zombie’s head until there was nothing left but a protruding shard of slick
spinal column. Decapitation by machine gun. Keenan glanced up. Around. The
activity had gained them some attention. He cursed.

“Neat,” said Franco, watching the
gathering crowd of zombies climbing up over the rubble pyramid and shuffling
together, silhouetted against a bright sulphur glare of strobing lights from a
nearby train-wreck, which rested on its side amidst the annihilation of the
street. “You dealt with that incident in a perfectly covert manner. You didn’t
get us into no bother, no sir. No unwanted attention at all!”

“Quiet! Cam? Which way to the
market?”

“Which one? The City has one
hundred and seventeen thousand.”

Keenan looked at Franco, as the
background noise of groans and moans increased in volume. “Which market,
Franco? To find this boy, Knuckles? Come on, the bastards are
coming.”

Franco shrugged. “How the hell do
I know? I’ve no bloody idea where the damned woman shopped. Shopping is an
activity for the female of the species!” He spat with aggression, face
contorted in hatred, and growled, “I wouldn’t be seen
dead
with a
fucking plastic carrier bag!”

“You’ll be dead pretty soon if
you don’t explain where we’re going,” said Cam, voice an atomic whisper.

Mel grunted, heaved her bulk to
its taloned feet, and set off at a lumber down a street littered with broken
glass, which glinted, sparkling like tiny, fallen stars. She glanced back, over
one rippling shoulder, then continued, claws raking the ground.

“Where’s she going?” rumbled
Franco, eyeing the approaching horde of zombies.

“I think she’s showing us the
way,” said Keenan. He glanced wearily at the buried Y Shuttle. “So much for
weapons, bombs and the Permatex War-Suits I had stashed for you and Pippa!”

“Pippa? You mean we’re meeting
her?” Franco’s face lit up. He had a
special
affection for Pippa.

“No. But I have a nasty suspicion
she’ll find us. I don’t trust Steinhauer as far as I can piss. This little
drama is starting to feel too much like a bad gig. Convenient. I’m only here
because I want to know why the junks invaded my world; Steinhauer, on the other
hand, seems to want Combat K together again.”

Franco nodded, pumped his D5
shotgun ten times, and they set off at a run. Behind, the rag-tag collection of
zombies pursued doggedly, but these were the slow, the lame, the injured, the
deviant. The stronger ones had more important work to do.

~ * ~

Despite
her bulk, Mel ran quickly, talons pounding the littered city streets. Keenan
and Franco kept pace, with Cam bobbing just behind, his haywire scanners trying
their best to locate threat.

They halted by a wide-open plaza.
Fires burned, and they could see where a collection of people— with a few
proxers and Slabs thrown in—had built a high barricade. At the foot there lay a
smattering of dismembered zombie bodies. Further out, in staggered arcs, lay
the smoking, blackened corpses of the deviant.

“Flamethrower?” said Franco,
dropping to one knee beside Keenan.

“Yeah. They’re doing a good job
in that temporary fortress.”

Franco stared across the paved
space, beyond several burning cars, and could see huge Slabs bearing what
looked like industrial pipes but with flames flickering in holed barrels. They
patrolled up and down the makeshift ramparts, which had been hastily built from
sections of concrete and steel, and old steel barrels.

Slabs were genetically modified
humans bred in Vats for an ancient game of war on a planetary scale, designed
to amuse decadent game-head humans. They were, to all intents, genetically bred
defects: huge, muscular, with cubic heads and flat faces, awesomely powerful in
battle, but what Man—as God—had given them in brawn, he had taken away in
brain.

“What you thinking?” whispered
Franco.

“I’m wondering why Mel has
stopped.”

“Is this place in the way? Is she
frightened of the fire, do you think?”

Keenan shrugged. “She’s your girl,
Franco. Ask her.”

“Mel? Mel!”

Melanie turned, globular head
dropping to within a few inches of Franco’s face. She made a strange keening
sound, and her chain dragged across the ground.

“Es?”

“Why have we stopped?” hissed
Franco. “Do we need to get through here?”

Melanie shook her head. Her
corrugated neck made strange hissing and popping sounds.

“Why then?” Franco frowned. “Is
this the marketplace where you bought the biomod?”

Mel nodded, pea-head bobbing.

“But it’s no longer here! How are
we going to find this lad, Knuckles?”

“We’ll ask the locals,” said
Keenan, who’d lit a cigarette. The burning fires reflected in his eyes. “With a
name like that, I’m pretty sure
somebody
must have heard of him. Sounds
like a wheeler-dealer type.”

“The City has a population of
trillions,”
said Franco, staring hard at Keenan. “Your optimism never ceases to amaze
me.”

“Any better ideas? After all, it’s
not my bird who’s got fleas.”

“Funny, Keenan, very funny. I’m
laughing so hard my sides are splitting.”

Behind them came a groan, and the
sound of sodden limping in the darkness. Keenan shuddered. “If we don’t move
soon, that might well come to pass. After all, your sides are the quickest way
to your kidneys. Come on.”

“We can’t take Mel in there,”
hissed Franco, clasping his gun. “They’ll burn her!”

Keenan gave a half-smile,
wrinkling his nose at the stench of smoke. “I’m sure they’ll see her feminine
side,” he muttered.

~ * ~

Keenan
approached first, and waving his arms, shouted, “Ho! In there! We’re friendly,
hold your fire.”

A huge flat Slab peered over the
jagged barrier of concrete. Small black eyes stared at Keenan without
compassion. “What you want?”

“We’re looking for information.
On a lad called Knuckles, used to work the streets round here.”

The Slab stared at Keenan for a
long time. “You not one of them flesh eating boobies?”

“No,” said Keenan. “Do I look
like one? I have all my own arms, see?”

The Slab stared again and Keenan
sighed. Slabs were hard. Rock hard. But intelligence didn’t feature high on
their list of employee attributes. In fact, you were lucky to get a stupid one.

“You
might
be boobie,”
said the Slab, slowly, face wrinkled in concentration. Keenan caught the whiff
of a flamethrower held just out of sight. His hand tightened on his MPK.

“Look, what’s your name?”

“I is Rappo, and I is no cherry
spuke, nor a cheese in fact! Ha! I know your damned zombie games. You boobies,
you sneak in, past this old spuke and try and eat my brains yes you would!”

“Rappo. Rappo.” Keenan smiled,
holding out the flats of his hands. “Is there a human there I can speak with?”

“No. Rappo in charge of EPF.”

“EPF?”

“Exterior Perimeter Fence. No
clever spuke getting past this cheery cherry Slab! Oh no! Rappo not have cheese
for brain just cheese in his belly!”

“Listen, Rappo. My name is
Keenan. I’m a soldier, look, with a gun. I’m a friend. I’ve served with many
Slabs in my time; after all, would a zombie
really
know that you were
born in Vats, that you feed in Troughs, and that a spuke is another name for
bastard?
Well?”

“Suppose not,” rumbled the Slab. “Who
that with you? In the darkness? You being clever cherry and trying get old
Rappo to let you zombie motherfuckers in?” He growled a string of expletives in
a language Keenan could not vocally replicate.

“No. No. Listen, just let us
inside...”

Suddenly, Mel charged, leapt the
high concrete barrier and Rappo let out a screech like nothing Keenan had ever
heard. Flames roared, billowing into the sky but Mel was past, down in the
trench, and there came a single solitary
thwack.
Something slapped hard
against the ground. Keenan put his head in his hands, then with a mumbling
Franco in tow, climbed the barrier of concrete, scaffolding and barrels, and
jumped down into the trench. Rappo was laid out cold. Mel held the flamethrower
like an interesting toy, staring down into the glowing nozzle.

Gently, Keenan prized the large
weapon from her talons. “Better let me have that, love. Don’t want you burning
your own head off, do we?” Keenan prodded the Slab with the toe of his boot.

Franco was beaming. “A single
punch! What a gal! Never seen a Slab laid out with a single punch before! Who’s
a good girl, yes, jubba jubba jubba, who’s a pretty little girl then.”

Mel rolled on her back, and
Franco rubbed her belly.

“Franco!” snapped Keenan. “Mission.
Biomods. SinScript. Knuckles.
Remember,
fuckwit?”

“Aye, Keenan, aye. Just giving
praise where it’s warranted.”