Biohell (37 page)

“Do you see anybody?”

Knuckles crouched, peering in
different directions. “It seems mostly deserted down there. There’s a group of
men, I think, near the main entrance at ground level. Probably worried about
the fire eating through their defences.”

“Well, the damn deviants want
something from in here. That much is obvious.”

“Yes,” said Knuckles, eyes stoic
and older than myth. “Fresh brain.”

~ * ~

Keenan
helped Franco over the ridge, just as the Corvette, far below, detonated with a
boom.
Fire rushed upwards, and with a squawk Olga accelerated and, her
great behind aflame, toppled over the ledge and onto the organo-glass floor
which rippled softly under her weight. There came a hiatus. Then she squawked
again, and Franco ran over, patting at her flaming rump with hearty slaps that
sent many a pound of rolling flab quivering across her great bottom.

Franco hopped about, patting and
blowing. “I can’t believe they blew up the Corvette!” he scowled. “A mighty
fine vehicle, that.” Pat pat, blow blow.

He stopped.

Keenan gave him a weak smile.

“What?” said Franco.
“What?”

Keenan shrugged, and Franco
turned to meet Olga’s eyes. His hand was still touching her long extinguished
bottom. She was smiling, showing crooked teeth, broken from far too many bar
brawls.

“Please, carry on, Olga
like,”
she purred, although it was more the purr of a sabre-tooth tiger than that
of
felts silvestris catus.

“A ha haha,” said Franco,
withdrawing his hand just a little too quickly.

“No, you continue, Olga much
enjoy!”

Franco skipped backwards, and
bumped into Keenan.

“Come on lad, we’re moving.”

“Yeah, Keenan. What we gonna do
for transport now?” He gazed over, where they could see from their vantage the
gathering of thousands of zombies in the alleyway. His implication was obvious.
The game was getting more and more dangerous by the minute. Locating a
groundcar was no longer going to be easy. Their mission had, it seemed, led
them further into the heart of darkness. And there would be no Conrad to write
a conveniently neat ending.

“We’ll sort something out. Let’s
find this Professor Xakus. If he’s still alive.”

“I never thought of that,”
rumbled Franco.

“And
if he’s
not mutated.”

“Ahh. Bugger.”

“Exactly. Let’s move.”

They worked their way down
through the library, past shelves of books, digital tomes, organo-glass reading
cubes and plasti-sheets. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves, millions of tomes
containing billions of words, knowledge, entertainment, the history of a
hundred alien species; all contained under one transparent semi-living roof and
huddled amidst stone walls which harked to a distant age, long gone from the
reality of physical memory.

Keenan led the way now, Knuckles
and Franco following, Olga to the rear and strangely silent. Down organo-glass
stairs and ramps they moved, not trusting the lift system due to flickering
lights and other strange electrical occurrences. Keenan carried his Techrim
11mm, preferring its discreet bulk and short-distance killing power to the
over-heavy Kekra. Franco carried both Kekra quad-barrels; they were his weapons
of choice. Knuckles had his rusted machete, whereas Olga simply had her fists.

Down they moved, through silence
punctuated by distant roars of the besieging foe. Occasionally, The Great
Malkovitch Library shook. And, despite organo-glass ceilings, it got darker as
they descended, gloomier, as if moving warily into an undersea tomb.

The first man they met, old and
crooked with a shock of bright white hair above circular spectacles, simply
screamed and charged away, bent back and walking stick forgotten in his eagerness
to escape the perceived enemy.

“Did I say something?” said
Franco.

“I think it’s more the way you
look.”

“Cheers.”

They followed the stampeding
octogenarian, guns still drawn, until they emerged from a broad sloping ramp
onto thick red carpets and the central entrance hall. There, gathered with a
variety of bristling weapons, was a group of men, not one under the age of
seventy. As Combat K and their companions appeared, weapons levelled with a
rattle of machine-gun alloy.

One gun slammed, and a bullet
whined over Keenan’s head to embed in organo-glass with a soft
plop.
A large
man at the centre of the group slapped another man’s weapon down, scowling. “Sorry,
ND.” He poked the responsible OAP in the chest. “We only shoot the zombies,
Henry, you hear me?”

“Shoot the what?”

“The
zombies.
TURN YOUR
HEARING AID UP! YOU UNDERSTAND?” The large man mimed his instruction, but the
OAP with the H&K P5 semi-automatic wasn’t listening, instead, taking a few
tottering steps towards Olga... or more precisely, the huge woman’s huge
breasts.

“I’m looking for Professor Xakus,”
said Keenan, stepping to the fore.

“Well, you found him,” said the
large man, who despite his age still had a bearing of power, of innate
strength. Keenan studied him; Xakus was a touch over six feet tall, with
jet-black skin and a bush of white, frizzy hair atop a cubic skull. His face
was square-jawed, wrinkled with age despite the latest anti-ageing drugs
flooding the market, and deep-set brown eyes studied Keenan with a glittering, bright
intelligence. Keenan immediately liked the professor; he felt comfortable in
the man’s presence.

“We are on a two-fold mission,”
said Keenan.

“You military?”

Keenan considered lying, but
dismissed the thought instantly. “Combat K. Well, me and the little ginger one,
Franco. The lad is Knuckles, a local gang-lad; don’t leave your wallet lying
around. And the woman is, ahh, Olga. A
lady friend
of Franco’s we seem
to have picked up on the way.”

“I didn’t invite her,” muttered
Franco.

“That’s the way it looked to me,”
snapped Keenan.

Professor Xakus gestured to the
group, numbering perhaps thirty and sporting the largest variety of home-knitted
cardigans City-side of Quad-Gal. “Meet The Professors. We were here for a
simple frag-sesh when the whole zombie fiasco escalated. As professionals, we
are often entrusted with the keys to the library; all the staff had left for
The Quantum Carnival. We were celebrating in our own way.”

“What’s a frag-sesh?” asked
Franco.

“Gaming. Networked computers. You
all connect to a game, and run around trying to kill one another in a digital
representation of whatever battlefield you choose.” He smiled. “You get to blow
the shit out of those you love without actually resorting to caving their head
in with a crowbar. You see him over there?” Xakus pointed to a bent and crooked
man, who must have been a hundred years old to the day. He sported shaved white
hair, a short white goatee beard, and piercing blue eyes. He was clasping a D4
shotgun in gnarled hands the texture of old tan leather. “That’s Rembo. He’s
the reigning champion on Quake Fortress, Age of Vampires
and
Battlefield
Quad-Gal. This library had become our digital battlefield until the zombies
invaded!”

“Well, it’s for real, now,” said
Keenan, voice soft.

“Yes. Unfortunately. It’s one
thing fighting in a digital representation; in reality, the experience is a lot
more sobering.”

From outside, there came a
mammoth
boom.
The huge, towering doors shook, along with the walls.
Behind the group, books—proper, old, leather-bound paper books—rattled from
shelves and clattered across the floor. Xakus clutched his hair, his
frustration obvious. “They’re priceless!” he whispered.

“They’re trying to burn their way
in,” said Keenan, rubbing at weary eyes. “You seem to have attracted a fair
horde out there. Have you any idea what they want?”

Xakus shook his head. “I have no
idea, Mr Keenan. But they’ll never burn through those doors; this library could
withstand a serious blast. Its cargo is precious indeed.”

“Yet it’s not designed for war,”
said Keenan.

“You are, of course, correct. I
expect it’s merely a matter of time.” Xakus sighed, rubbing at his chin. His
face was set in deep thought. “Quickly now, tell me who sent you, and why you
seek my help. I think, soon, we will be heading for the back door. MICHELLE is
waiting.”

“Steinhauer sent us. My
home-world of Galhari has been overrun by a race known as junks—the organic,
germ-ridden toxic shite of Quad-Gal. I retrieved one of their SinScripts;
Steinhauer seems to think you can decode the information therein. Can you do
this?”

“Yes. Given time, and the right
equipment. I need a CryptorBox. And I cannot do it here; CryptorBox decryption
requires large reserves of power. So, the junks are on the move, are they? So
many researchers thought them extinct. Were there many?”

“Millions,” said Keenan, quietly.

“Ha! So it is true. Leviathan
lives.”

“Leviathan?” Keenan felt his
heart turn cold. Ice rippled through his veins. His soul crumbled into ash.

“The World Eater,” said Xakus,
eyes distant. “The junks are his slaves. They do his bidding. The SinScript is
formed in an ancient digital language, long forgotten by most of the so-called
sentient beings in the Quad-Gal. Leviathan, the junks—they do not originate
from this life arm. They come from somewhere else; somewhere far distant we
could never imagine.”

“This is your area of study?”
asked Keenan.

“What? No, no; it came as a
by-product. I worked NanoTek as a biomod engineer. I worked on some of the
original blueprints for the biomods in current circulation; we studied hundreds
of different organic races in the initial blueprint stages of biomod design.
The junks became a little bit of an obsession for me. This is why Steinhauer
sent you. Why he thinks I can help.”

Keenan nodded. “This leads us to
our second problem. Franco here, his wife-to-be, Mel, has been seriously
affected by a biomod; it’s turned her into an eight-foot mutation.”

“Like the creatures out there?”
said Xakus, eyes glittering.

“No. Different. Bigger. More dangerous.
You were an engineer, yes? Can you help change her back?”

“I would need Level 1 equipment.
I no longer have that kind of authority.”

Out of the corner of his eyes,
Keenan saw Franco deflate. “But if we could get you to this Level 1 equipment,
you could change Melanie back?”

“Yes, theoretically. Anything is
possible. But look outside, around you, Keenan. The nanobots have gone haywire;
the biomods have deviated a population. It is horror made real. An abomination
of science.”

“So it’s true, then?” blurted
Franco. “The biomods
have
changed everyone into zombies?”

“On a basic level, yes,” said
Xakus. His face was filled with thunder. “I warned Dr Oz. The algorithms were
too loose; there was too much scope for evolution. And then the pirates, the crackers,
the hackers—they stuck their fingers into the pie and turned what could have
been a saviour of so many organic races into a living, breathing nightmare.
Boy, Dr Oz will be
pissed.”

“For causing so much death and
destruction?” asked Franco.

“You’re kidding, lad, right?”
Xakus boomed laughter, and slapped Franco on the back. “No, because of the bad
PR it’ll cause. Think what this little incident will do to global Quad-Gal
biomod sales. Would
you
buy one after you’d seen a zombie army rampage
across an entire planet?”