Biohell (47 page)

“You’ve been monitoring?”

“Oh yes, and you’re not going to
like what I have to tell.”

“Try me,” said Keenan.

“This is how it goes. The zombies
are humans and
other race organisms
that have taken biomod organic
upgrades. These upgrades have then deviated the host system to produce a wide
variety of mutations. You with me so far?”

“Hardly rocket science,” grunted
Franco.

“Some of us have a limited
intellect,” said Cam.

“Hey, you referring to me? Let me
tell you,” he pointed his stubby finger, “I might not have a triple degree in
psykey... in sarky... in damn mind games, but I’m cleverer than a bloody
sausage, I promise you that.”

“A bloody sausage?”

“Don’t be disrespecting the
sausage. A hot-dog has more guile than you think.”

Cam considered this, then, moving
on, said, “It’s incredible what one can witness from an aerial perspective out
on the streets.” Cam remained unperturbed as Franco made threatening hand
gestures. “The behaviour of the deviated organisms is strange; some have
grouped together, formed almost military units which have taken over SAM sites,
military depots, communications towers; they seem to have learned from their
surroundings, adapted, almost like machines, and some have created an
unbreachable fortress down in DOG Town and CoreCentral. Quad-Gal Military could
retake The City, but at a great, great loss. It would either have to use a mass
infantry incursion—or simply clean huge sections of the planet of all life.
But, of course, the Commandments would never allow such genocide to occur. Even
mutations have rights; as laid down in the New QGL Scripts post-Helix.”

Keenan stroked his stubbled chin.
“We’ve seen as much on our travels, Cam. What you’ve witnessed, it means only
that the deviated creatures are fighting to survive. They know the army could
attack at any minute in SAM proof dropships; all they’ve done is throw up basic
defences. Any rat fights when its back is against a wall.”

“Yes, but I’ve also seen
behaviour at odds with the group mentality. Some of these creatures are acting
independently. However, the strangest thing of all are the... how can I put
this? The
zombie
killers.”

“You mean humans fighting for
their lives?”

“No. There is a breed, or a
strain, whatever you wish to call them, which are actively hunting down and
destroying other deviants. They are awesome in their killing prowess.”

“You think they retain
characteristics?” said Keenan. “From when they were human? After all, Mel still
seemed to have feelings for Franco despite being an eight-foot monstrosity.
Maybe the mutations only mask certain character traits. Biomods turn a person
into a monster, but inside, they still retain some human desires and needs. Or
alien desires and needs. Or whatever.” He rubbed his temples. “This is insane.
It’s turning my brain into spaghetti.”

“There’s one other thing,” said
Cam.

“Go on.”

“The zombies are emitting...
signals.”

Keenan and Franco exchanged
glances. “What does that mean?” said Franco, eventually. “Or am I being a
short-arsed dumb ginger bastard again?”

“Each deviant emits a tiny,
almost unrecognisable, but nevertheless
powerful,
digital signal burst.
At a rate of about one burst per hour.”

“What kind of signal?”

“They are encoded beyond my
ability to decrypt.”

“Wait a minute,” said Keenan. “I
watched you decode logic cubes in Pippa’s skull when we lifted her from the
prison planet, Hardcore. That was high-tec military shit. You’re good at this,
right?”

“I admit to having some skill in
this field,” said Cam. “However, the signal bursts from the zombies are far
beyond my current skill-set. I hate to say it, but whatever data is being
transmitted by the mutations, it’s totally indecipherable. I cannot crack the
codes.”

“Where do the signals go?”

“A barren wasteland at The City’s
northernmost hemisphere. The one place The City’s engineers will not
build—where lines of latitude and longitude meet. Zero degrees, my friend.”

“Convenient,” said Keenan.

“Probably a relay point,” said
Cam. “Throws trackers off the scent. The signals are so advanced they could be
bounced to a million other points before final destination. We’d never hunt
them down, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.”

“How come,” said Franco, voice
measured, “these zombies are sending signals? They’re not wireless radio
stations, are they? I thought they were just people full of little robots gone
wrong? Little bloody buggers rampaging through your sewage streams and turning
your belly inside out?”

“That’s incredibly mentally
adroit of you,” said Cam. “If we find out
why
the deviants are
transmitting, we’ll probably find answers to the whole screwed up debacle being
played out on this devastated planet.”

“Let’s get moving,” said Keenan,
glancing over to where Knuckles was still crying over the corpse of Little
Megan. Olga helped the orphan to his feet. His eyes were red-rimmed—-and filled
with a deep and burning rage. Keenan glanced to Professor Xakus, who seemed oddly
aloof; cool, detached, staring out over the darkened city where distant fires
burned and occasional gunshots shattered the oppressive silence. The City felt
like a city under siege; a world of darkness and despair. Keenan shivered. “Xakus?
You still with us?”

“Yes. We will reach NanoTek. I
will discover what went wrong. This place has become an abomination. The
biomods were never meant for this; they were supposed to save life, not destroy
it.”

Keenan’s smile was touched with
evil. “The lament of every bio-weapon engineer and scientist on every damned
world between here and Ket. We didn’t mean it. It was an accident. Pitiful.”

“In this case, however, true,”
said Xakus, eyes full of silver tears.

“Tell it to the dead,” said
Keenan, his voice hard, head pounding and robbing him of sympathy and
understanding. “The living no longer have time for excuses.”

~ * ~

They
stood on the pavement. Rubble lay strewn in huge scatters. Franco stared
constantly about, twitching, eyes gleaming, looking for trouble. The night was
sable, skyscrapers and cubeblocks rearing and blocking out what few stars still
shimmered. Again, thick oily snowflakes fell, coating the world in a slippery,
evil-smelling grime. MICHELLE squatted against the side of The Happy Friendly
Sunshine Assurance Company, and seemed to be preening herself, if that was the
right word for a fifty foot tall biomechanical war organism. She stood when
Xakus appeared, and leered down with several booming
clanks
from her
great height. Franco squawked, and jumped back, cocking his Kekras.

“I... wouldn’t do that,” said
Keenan.

“She bloody freaks me out,”
snapped Franco.

“She’s our transport.”

“Well, she’s a bloody buggering
freak if you ask me. I just can’t be doing with these biomethological transport
vehicles. Why couldn’t we travel in a tank like every other insane person? Huh?
Answer me that!”

“She saved our lives,” said
Keenan. He lit a quick cigarette. Widow Maker entered his lungs and he sighed,
staring at fingers gun-blackened by oil. Were they trembling? He would
kill
for
a drink. “She got us out of that library. Smashed those GK AIs like they were
toys.”

“Ha!” said Franco, brightening. “She
did that.” He frowned. “I just wish we didn’t have to crawl up her arse.”

“It’s not her arse,” said Keenan.

“Yeah it is,” said Franco,
staring distantly into the cloud-heavy sky. “She’s biological, innit? She’s
called MICHELLE. She’s a she. She has a rear pipe. We crawl up the rear pipe. A
rear pipe is an arse, ergo, every time we climb inside, we’re giving her a good
bumming.”

Keenan stared hard at Franco. “I
cannot believe we stem from the same biological race,” he said.

“Ha! Listen buddy, I’ve had a lot
of arse problems in my time. It’s like, God, or some dude or geezer, has given
me the perfect face—” he stared hard, challenging Keenan to disagree through
the cloud of cigarette smoke, “but to compensate for perfect and finely
chiselled features, he has forced me to endure all manner of arse infestations.”

“Arse infestations,” said Keenan.

“Aye. I had that recurring
fissure during Combat K training. Had to have six-needle injections straight up
bam! into the anal pipe. Ouch! Then I had those bowel problems, oh how the lads
laughed every time I had to stampede to the bogs. Then I was cursed with that
damned alien arse virus from Ket, which haunts me even now—whenever it decides
to rear its ugly turtle head! It’s like having a disease with its own
artificial intelligence! When is it most inconvenient for Franco to have a
shit? NOW!!! ATTACK!!! NOW!!! And then, as if to make a mere mockery of my
humble existence, events transpire so’s I have to travel around
inside
a
giant arse! Do the gods have no end to their wicked sense of humour? Do they?
Huh?”

Keenan drew on his cigarette,
lips compressed, apparently lost for words.

“Listen Keenan,” Franco puffed
out his chest, on a roll, “you just haven’t been afflicted like me, right? Oh
no. Is there to be no end to my arse suffering? And you shouldn’t mock, because
you shouldn’t judge a man until you’ve walked in his shoes.”

“Or shit with his arse?” said
Keenan.

“There you go again, with the
jibes the jokes the mockery the put downs. I don’t laugh at your funny face—”

“My
what?”

“Or Xakus’s frizzy hair, or Olga’s
bouncing titanic obscenity of a bosom. Oh no. And I didn’t mock Pippa when she
was part of the squad.” He stumbled into silence. Rubbed at his goatee. “Shit,
man. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK.” Keenan slapped him on
the back, and stamped his cigarette butt under his boot. “Pippa’s gone from my
head. I have a funny feeling I’ll never see her again. I’m over her. Her
disease is gone from my skull, buddy. Her face has been erased from memory.”

“I’ll believe that one when I see
it,” mumbled Franco.

The group approached MICHELLE,
and were absorbed into the war machine one by one, until only Franco stood on
the greasy narrow street. Snow swirled around him, making his skin red with
frost. He rubbed at his chilled nose, which was dribbling, and gave a short
bitter laugh, glancing nervously at the desolation surrounding him.

“So you think you’ll never see
Pippa again? No mate.” His voice was deathly quiet. “We’ll see her again.
Because she wants you, Keenan. She needs you like an orbital needs its host
planet. Without you, she’ll surely die.”

He grunted, puckering his face
and clenching his arse as MICHELLE, ironically, accepted him into hers.

~ * ~

Xakus
piloted MICHELLE with as much stealth as a fifty foot bio-mechanical war
transport could muster; MICHELLE
crept,
clashing and grinding through
the streets, squashing only the occasional stray zombie which crossed her path.
Keenan stood behind Xakus as MICHELLE’S scanners, using infrared, shifted from
left to right and she halted with a clank, and a hiss of expelled gas.

“Down there,” pointed Keenan,
examining his TuffMAP™. “There should be an old warehouse, some kind of haulage
depot. You see it? I’m sure the MonkeyMan has it logged.”

“Turn left, oo oo.”

Xakus nodded, and MICHELLE strode
forward through the deserted district, huge metal boots cracking the road. They
entered an area filled with massive decrepit warehouses. Many were crumbling,
with shattered windows and half-destroyed roofs-. Timbers and alloy emerged
from walls like exposed bones. Bricks were absent, giving the impression of
gaping maws.