Biohell (35 page)

“You dick.”

“Hey, it wasn’t
my fault.
Mary
just cut out on me.”

“Mary?”

“A car’s gotta have a name. And I’m
not getting inside a bloke ten times a day.”

“Very droll. Remember your biting
point, Franco. Control is everything.”

“I tell you, it wasn’t my fault!
Mary’s a contrary mule!” Franco pouted, a bit primly. He fired the old engine
on the tenth attempt, revved it high and slammed hard up the slithering slope
of stone, leaping a little from the top and cannoning down the opposite side
where they suddenly slewed through a shop-front, skidded sideways through ten
high shelving units, and slid to an abrupt halt, thumping the far wall. Ceiling
beams, plasterboard and dust rained down on the cowering inhabitants, and everybody
coughed long and hard as dust continued to rain, then drizzle, then trickle,
and finally stop. All around lay a shop hit by a bomb.

“Right,” said Keenan, eyes steel.
“Time for me to drive.”

“But Keenan...”

“No arguments, Franco, get the
hell out of the driver’s seat.”

“But
Keenan...”

“No!”

Franco stood forlornly on a pile
of smashed planks and battered shelving as Keenan reversed the Corvette
Scrambler and, with thuds and crunches, managed to extricate the huge, iron
vehicle from the crushed and battered mess. He rumbled outside, and Franco
gazed around at the shop’s interior. With sudden realisation it hit him like a
new day. He was in a pharmacy. A drug store. Filled with...
drugs.

“You OK in there, Franco?” came
Keenan’s drifting voice.

“I need a toilet break,” said
Franco, eyes shining. “Last night’s sausage has worked its way through my
sewage system. Hey, you guys, enjoy a quiet cigarette, I’ll be out in a few
shakes of a cat’s whisker.”

“Don’t be long,” snapped Keenan,
voice muffled.

Franco gazed around. Through
gloom he could see shelves lined with boxes, bottles, tubs and tubes. He rubbed
his hands together. His face beamed.

“All
righty
then!”

He ran to the counter, rummaged
around and located a canvas pack. Then he stalked quickly between the shelving
which still stood—miraculously—erect, grabbing at tubes and potions, boxes of
pills and rolls of medication. He paused, reading a packet’s contents, then
tipped ten boxes into the sack. Then he moved to the counter and eyed the
locked door
behind.
It had a one way mirror. Franco grinned. In there,
he thought to himself, you keep all the pretty drugs, the special drugs, the
drugs I might really need, don’t you? He rubbed his hands together. Found a
plank of wood. Hefted it thoughtfully, and hammered it into the mirrored door.

After a few whacks, the portal
disintegrated and Franco stepped through falling dust—into a punch. The blow
lifted him from his feet, spat him back ten paces, and deposited him on his
behind. Stars fluttered in his head, and blood spurted from his nose. He
coughed, stunned, and stared up through swirling dust at—

At a towering, bulging,
power-house of a, a, a...

“A
woman?”
he snapped.

“I am Olga!” boomed the
heavily-muscled, strapping beefcake of a lass. Her hair was tied back in a
tight black bun, and layered with a fallout of debris. “You fool! You have
broken my door! I was hiding! Now I have nowhere to hide from ze zombies!”

Franco climbed warily to his
feet.

“Hey, listen, I’m sorry about...”
he began, as a second punch whirred like a partridge through the gloom and
lifted him from the ground a second time, sending him flailing over a
still-standing shelf unit, in which he caught an errant sandal, and both Franco
and the shelving unit cannoned into a second shelving unit, and the whole sorry
mess went down in a tangle of limbs and galvanised metal planks which clattered
and clanged amongst wood and dust.

Franco groaned, then struggled to
extricate himself like a fish from a bucket.

“I hide from ze zombies!” insisted
Olga. She stood over him, fists like spades on her meaty hips. “What I do now,
huh? You take me with you! You protect Olga!”

“Protect you from
what?”
snapped
Franco, struggling from the carnage. He stood, staring up at the bristling
woman. She was... titanic. Shit, he thought, rubbing his bruised jaw. She must
weigh three hundred pounds! His eyes followed her rippling, fatty curvature.
Huge breasts filled a shapeless smock which billowed down to a rotund waist and
stocky, hairy legs like tree-trunks.

“You staring! You like Olga? You
like a bit of what you see?” Suddenly Olga smiled. Her huge football head broke
into a cracked-egg of appreciation as she eyed Franco up and down.

“Whoa girl!” said Franco, holding
out both his hands. “Just wait a minute! I need to rummage through your drug
store, and then I’ll be on my way. I ain’t giving you the beady eye!”

“You take me with you!” insisted
Olga. She tilted her head, in what she must have thought was a coquettish pose.
“If you help Olga, if you take her with you, protect from ze zombies, Olga show
you where ze special drugs are.” She smiled. She had three teeth missing.

“OK. OK. OK.” Franco struggled
over broken shelving, and entered the narrow room behind the counter with Olga
close behind. His hand stayed on the butt of his Kekra, and Olga’s hand strayed
perilously close to Franco’s butt.

Franco eyed the dilapidated,
dust-spewing ceiling.

“Why me?” he groaned.

~ * ~

Keenan
looked up and down the street, finishing his cigarette and grinding the remains
under his heavy boot. He was just considering whether or not to go in after
Franco—not a decision he took lightly, because he had seen Franco heave and
strain his way through a good ten-pounder before now— when a sheepish and
slightly more battered version of the little stocky squaddie emerged, carrying
a canvas sack, and closely followed by a woman whose clothing could easily
accommodate three.

“Franco?” came Keenan’s enquiring
stare.

Franco avoided Keenan’s eye. “Don’t
ask. Long story. Woman in distress. I said we’d take her to safety.”

“Woman?”
hissed Keenan, his voice low. “Franco,
we’re not a fucking charity. We’ve got a mission! We can’t go picking up every
stray waif we come across.”

Franco frowned. “Hardly a waif,
Keenan.”

“Dickhead!
What’s in the sack?”

“Provisions.”

“Food?”

“Drugs.”

“This ain’t the place to get
fucking
high.”

“No, but it’s the place to get
fucking
sane.
I can feel the twitching coming on, Keenan. It’s the
stress. The stress of seeing a loved one rendered into a terrible horrible
monster!”

“I’ll render my fist in your
terrible horrible face in a minute.” Keenan breathed deeply. He loved Franco,
he really did. But sometimes he simply wanted to put the shaved ginger head
between a door and jamb, and slam it a few times. He gritted his teeth. He knew
what Cam would say, probably in an AI whine.
He’s your best friend. You know
he’s mad. If you don’t want his help, don’t damn well ask!
Keenan rubbed at
his brows. “OK,” he said, releasing a breath of aggravation. “Knuckles, get in
the front. You can help me navigate. And Franco?”

“Yeah Keenan?”

“Get in the back with your
girlfriend. You can keep each other company.”

“I resent that implication! I’m
soon to be a happily married man!”

“What, to an eight-foot mutation?”
barked Keenan.

“Things could be worse.”

“How so?”

Franco considered this, as he
watched Olga heaving her huge body into the Corvette. It strained, springs
squealing in protest. One side of the vehicle listed, as if carrying a very
great weight; which it was.

“OK, things couldn’t be much
worse,” he conceded. “But don’t keep rubbing it in. I’m sorry about Olga. I’m
sorry about Mel. I’m sorry about the car crash. And I’m sorry about the mess.
There. I’ve apologised.” He bristled.

Keenan laughed, rubbing at the
back of his head. “Shit, Franco. You are just one insane motherfucker.”

“You got another headache?”

“Mm.”

“I got some painkillers! In the
sack! You want me to dig you out a pill?” Franco’s eyes gleamed.

“It’s a headache, Franco; the
last thing I need is one of your psychedelic drug trips. No, I’ll pass, thanks.
The pain’s not bad, just there, nagging at me like a wife with a new credit
card.”

“That’s not politically correct,”
snorted Franco.

“But correct,” said Keenan,
baring his teeth. “You’ll learn, mate. When you marry one of your two, ahh,
chosen ladies. Unless, of course, you marry them both.”

Franco eyed Olga warily, then
climbed into the Corvette beside her, scrunching his frame into the narrow slot
now available. Olga shuffled, with a big toothless smile. Then, she lifted an
arm and placed it ponderously across Franco’s shoulders, nearly buckling the
small chap under the weight of her bicep.

“You gotta be joking,” mumbled
Franco, eyeing Olga’s tattooed knuckles as he tried to get comfortable beside
her titanic, heaving bosom; and tried his damnedest not to meet Keenan’s
chuckling, over-critical stare.

~ * ~

“It’s
blocked,” said Knuckles, as the Corvette stuttered to a halt, tyres grinding
loose rubble. They stared at the alley, where two low apartment buildings had
collapsed into one another, merging, to form a three-storey pyramid of rubble.

“Other ways?” said Keenan. They
could still smell fire. It smelt stronger now, and tangy with a secondary, acid
stench. Keenan was sure he could hear the moaning of zombies.

“Yeah. One.”

Keenan reversed the Corvette,
struggling to see past Olga’s width. They skidded into a narrow cross-roads,
and the hackles on Keenan’s neck suddenly lifted. Behind them, advancing
swiftly and in complete silence, was a wall of zombies.

“Keenan!” wailed Franco.

“I see them,” he growled, and
slammed his foot to the floor. The Corvette cut out with a grunt, and a
backfire
crack
of unspent fuel. The zombies, seeing fresh meat stranded,
accelerated.

Keenan turned the starter. It
grumbled, rattling like a spanner in a turbine.

“Keenan!”

“We go now,” said Olga, eyes
wide, brows furrowed. “Ze zombies come! Oh my!”

Keenan turned the starter again,
pumping the pedal. Fumes exploded from roof exhaust as zombies flooded past the
vehicle, several leaping to grasp the back. Wheels turned, tyres spinning, as
Franco struggled to drag free his Kekra and unloaded a hail of bullets into
twisted, elongated deviant faces...

A roar went up, from all around.
It was like a battle cry, the roar of an advancing army, a war host of
terrifying and epic proportions. To Keenan, it sounded a million miles from the
simple zombie moans of the movies... the simple cackle of brainless undead.

The Corvette lurched, engine
screaming, and sped down the street. Five zombies clung to the Corvette’s
tailgate, and Franco unleashed a hail of bullets into their faces, destroying
eyes, eating away grey, sickening flesh, but still they hung on with the
tenacity of a yappy terrier. Franco clambered over the boot and started
hammering at grey-flesh fingers sporting long, twisted talons with the butt of
his Kekra as Olga grabbed the back of his pants to stop him toppling from the
bouncing, juddering vehicle.