Major Karnage (11 page)

Riggs’s heart dropped out of his stomach, through his lower
intestine, then slithered down his leg onto the floor. He did his best
imitation of a smile. “Of course,” he said.

Patrick reached into his coat. “Mr. Dabney sends his regrets. He
wanted to deliver this message to you in person, but business has
called him away.” Riggs half-expected to see Patrick pull a gun from
his coat. Instead, he pulled out an interoffice envelope. He unwound
the string holding it closed.

“I realize this all may seem a bit . . .
dramatic, but he didn’t want to risk sending this through regular
channels.”

Riggs nodded, pretending he understood. Whether the hatchet
was delivered in person or by special courier, that blade was still
whistling for his neck. It didn’t much matter how it was delivered.

Patrick flipped open the envelope and pulled out a tablet. He
held it in front of his chest and flicked it on. Steve Dabney appeared
on the screen. He wore his trademark blue turtleneck and corduroy
pants. His close-cropped hair and wireframe glasses made him look
much younger than he was. He flashed a smile so charming it could
sweep the habit off a nun; it only half-worked on Riggs. He knew
what the man behind the smile was capable of.

“Malcolm! I’m sorry to have to handle things like this, but I’m
in the middle of some sensitive negotiations and I can’t pull myself
away.” Steve glanced from side to side, then leaned in closer to the
screen. “Look, let’s cut right to the chase: you fucked up. I mean, you
really screwed the pooch on this one. The board is screaming for
your head.”

Riggs braced himself.
Here it comes.

“So I’m removing you from the Karnage assignment.” Steve raised
his hands towards the screen, palms up. “Now, look. Don’t panic.
Things look bad, I know. But I’ve been talking you up to our silent
partners here. They’re very interested in your extensive knowledge
of the good major. They want to make you part of their team. A
consultant of sorts—we’re still ironing out the details. I can’t get
too specific, but I
can
say that this is a fast-growing organization
with plenty of room for advancement.

“Now, I may have jumped the gun a bit here, but I went with my
gut and accepted the contract for you. You’re not going to let me
down by saying no, are you? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity
here. You’d be a fool to pass it up. You’re not going to let me down,
Malcolm, are you? You’re taking this position, yes?” Steve nodded,
answering the question for himself. “Good. It’s settled, then. You
can hitch a ride with Patrick here. He’ll deliver you to our silent
partners. Be well, Malcolm. See you.”

The tablet blinked off. Riggs stared at the blank screen. He
looked up at Patrick.

Patrick returned Riggs’s gaze. “Not quite the reprimand you were
expecting, sir?”

Karnage felt something nudge his shoulder. He pulled himself up
from sleep and saw it was Stumpy’s stump. “Wake up, Major. We’re
almost there.”

Karnage rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “How much farther?”

“Not far,” Stumpy tapped the dashboard screen. “According to
those Globesat coordinates you gave me, it shouldn’t be more than
a few klicks.”

Karnage stretched and looked out the window. The desert
landscape was dotted with massive pits of black tar. Gnarled pink
plants grew around the edges. Ropey tendrils of orange interwove
themselves around the pink, snaking from one tar pit to the next.

“What the fuck is all this?” Karnage asked.

“That’s pinkstink,” Stumpy pointed to a clump of pink flowers
as they passed. “Scrunch it in your fingers and it gives off an awful
smell. The viney stuff is orange creeper. Grows like a weed. It gets
in everything. Tear it down one day, and it grows back up the next.
A real pain in the ass.”

Karnage gazed out at the landscape. “This all used to be trees,
Stumpy. Pine and cedar and shit. And now . . . now there ain’t even
stumps. It’s all so different. So . . .” A chill ran down Karnage’s spine.
“. . .
alien.
”

There was an ear splitting bang, and the car lurched forward.

Karnage braced himself against the dashboard. “What the hell’d
we hit?!”

“I don’t know!”

There was another bang, and the back of the car pitched upward.
Stumpy pointed his stump behind them. “It’s comin’ from the
trunk!”

“I think our passenger is finally awake,” Karnage said.

The rear of the car lurched again and slammed into the ground
hard. Yellow gas spewed from the driver’s side.

“We got a flat!” Stumpy slammed on the brakes and pulled the
cruiser over. The banging and lurching got worse.

They got out of the car and inspected the damage. A crack had
formed in one of the hoverballs. Yellow smoke spewed from the
crack. The car lurched again, and the ball slammed into the ground.
Another crack appeared.

Stumpy shook his head. “If she keeps this up, we won’t have a ball
left to float on!”

“Can you fix it?”

Stumpy ran his fingers along the cracks. “I think so. Grab me a
goober rifle.”

Karnage fished a goober rifle out of the back seat. Stumpy took
the rifle, and cracked it open.

“What are you doing?”

“Breakin’ the seals. Kills the pressure from the nozzle. It gets
messy, but it should work.” Stumpy snapped the rifle back together.
He pulled the trigger. Half-hearted spurts of goober oozed from
the nozzle. Stumpy placed the nozzle against the hoverball and ran
it down the crack, leaving a line of goober in its wake that swelled
and filled the crack. The yellow smoke thinned out to a fine trickle.
Stumpy tossed the goober rifle to the ground as it was slowly
engulfed in the pink stuff oozing from its seams. He patted the
hoverball.

“That should hold us for a while. Should be enough to get us to
Camp Bailey, anyway, so long as our passenger doesn’t screw things
up.”

The car lurched again.

“It doesn’t sound like she’s gonna be all that cooperative.”
Karnage fished another goober rifle out of the backseat. He turned
to Stumpy. “Get behind the wheel. When I give you the signal, pop
the trunk.”

Stumpy eyed the rifle. “What are you going to do?”

Karnage switched off the rifle’s safety. “I’m gonna reason with
her.”

Karnage stood in front of the trunk, goober rifle at the ready.
He signalled to Stumpy. Stumpy popped the trunk. The lid flew
open and the duffel bag launched itself into the air. It crashed into
Karnage, knocking him to the ground. Karnage rolled out from
underneath it and scrambled to his feet. He pinned the gyrating bag
with the butt of his rifle. The bag writhed under the rifle like an
angry snake, trying to wiggle free. Karnage reached forward and
unzipped the bag. Sydney’s tousled head burst out. Her face was red.
Her eyes shot daggers at Karnage. Her mouth was covered with a
strip of duct tape. It flexed in and out as she let loose an angry tirade
of muffled curses that would have made Velasquez proud. Karnage
waited until she had exhausted her expansive vocabulary, then
saluted. “Evening, Captain.”

Sydney glared at Karnage, her eyes full of hate.

“I apologize for the bumpy ride,” he said. “I’ll admit this ain’t
exactly the sort of treatment suited to an officer of your calibre, but
it’s the best we could do under the circumstances. We should be far
enough from the enemy that your gag won’t be necessary. If I may,
Captain?”

Sydney stared at Karnage with a cold, burning hate. Karnage
took that for assent. He grabbed the corner of the duct tape, and
ripped it off with a quick snap. Sydney’s teeth grazed his knuckles as
he pulled his hand clear. The clack of her teeth snapping shut echoed
across the desert.

“Easy there, Captain. You nearly took my hand off.”

“Sorry,” Sydney said. “I won’t miss next time.”

Karnage nodded. “Good. Either do the job right the first time or
don’t do it at all. Sometimes you don’t get a second chance.”

Sydney scowled. “You know, taking me hostage was probably the
stupidest thing you could possibly have done.”

“Hostage? Oh, no. You ain’t no hostage. Not by a long shot. You’re
a POW, with all the inherent rights and privileges therein. And as
for me bein’ stupid, from what I’ve seen you’re probably the only
Dabneycop with even half a chance of bringin’ me in. So long as I
keep you with me, you can’t be plannin’ any nasty surprises for me
and Stumpy here. This way I know exactly where you are and what
you’re up to.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“If you like.”

“Well, I’m not. You’ll find I’m very hard to hold onto.”

Karnage smiled. “You’re angry. I get that. Mad. Pissed off. Hopin’
to cause me a lot o’ trouble as soon as you’re able.”

“You got that right.”

“And you understand o’ course why I can’t let that happen.”

“And what do you plan on doing about it?”

“Well, I could just knock you cold with the butt o’ my rifle here.
But I thought I’d give you a choice first. See if you’d be willin’ to keep
your temper.”

“I’m sorry, are you asking me to behave myself?”

“I am,” Karnage said. “Only until we get to our destination. Then
you can jump up and down and scream and holler, and raise any kind
o’ holy hell you like.”

“And where are you going?”

“Camp Bailey.”

Sydney furrowed her eyebrows. “Camp Bailey? Why the hell
would you go there?”

“Stumpy and I are gonna fire up the Godmaster Array and stir up
some shit. Ain’t that right, Corporal?”

Stumpy saluted. “Sir, yes, sir!”

Sydney looked incredulously from one to the other. “You can’t be
serious. Do you have any idea what’s waiting for you out there? No,
of course not. If you did, you wouldn’t even be thinking of trying
something so damn stupid.”

“Why? What’s out there?”

“The Church of Spragmos.”

Stumpy fell back against the car with a loud thud. “Sweet Christ,
say it ain’t so.”

“It’s so. It’s beyond so. It couldn’t be more so. It’s the biggest so in
the whole damn universe, that’s how so it is.”

Stumpy slid down the car. “Fuck me running . . .”

Karnage turned from one to the other. “Wait a minute. Hold on
here. The Church of
what
?!”

“The Church of Spragmos,” Sydney said.

“Spragmos . . . you mean like the
gun
manufacturer?!”

“That’s right.”

“What the fuck do they worship? Guns?”

“No,” Sydney said.

“They worship . . . The Worm.” Stumpy was clutching his arms
to his sides.

“Okay, so they worship a worm.”

“Not a worm,” Sydney said. “
The
Worm.”

“All right.
The
Worm. What the hell difference does it make?”

Sydney stared at Karnage. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“No, I do not fucking know. I spent the last twenty years locked
up in a goddamn insane asylum. There is a lot I do not know. Now
quit starin’ at me like I got monkeys growin’ outta my ears and tell
me just what is so goddamn frightening about this goddamn worm!”

“There’s not much to tell,” Sydney said. “Nobody knows where it
came from. But it’s real. And it’s dangerous.”

“How dangerous?” Karnage asked.

“Dangerous enough that we stopped sending troops out to the
base because they weren’t coming back.”

“So you just let those bastards dig in and grow stronger, while
you hole up in your office suckin’ yer thumb, hopin’ they go away?!”

“You think I didn’t try?! I filed thirty different requests for
counter-terrorism support! Those bastards left me twisting in the
wind! You tell me what I was supposed to—”

A shuddering screech hurtled across the desert, a violent, jagged
line of sound that cut through Karnage like a knife ripping through
fabric. “What the fuck was that?”

“That,” Sydney said, “was The Worm.”

“Oh fuck me.” Stumpy buried his head in his hands.

Sydney looked around. “We must be a hell of a lot closer than I
thought.”

Stumpy turned to Karnage, his face white. “Major, we got to get
out of here. There’s got to be another way. Another old army base.
Camp Casey is just another few hundred klicks away. We could make
it. I know we can!”

“Listen to Stumpy, Major,” Sydney said. “If the Spragmites find
you out here—”

The sound tore through them again, raking up and down
Karnage’s spine like an electrified cheese grater. It was so jagged.
So angry. So unlike anything he’d ever heard before. And yet, at
the same time, it felt so familiar. Like something from a dream.
Or a faded memory. A jagged black line etched in skin, slightly red
around the edges from being pressed too hard.

And that’s when it hit him: the noise wasn’t jagged at all.

It was squiggly.

Karnage turned to Stumpy. “Camp Casey’s no good to me. I need
that Godmaster Array, worm or no worm. Cult or no cult. Camp
Bailey is our only option, and that is where we’re headed.”

Sydney looked at Karnage, aghast. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve
said?”

“Every one of ’em.”

“And you’re still going in there?”

“I am.”

“You’re crazy!”

“I been told that before.”

“You’ll die!”

“I been told that, too.” Karnage looked at Stumpy. Stumpy sat
there, leaning against the car, staring into the distance, rubbing
the end of his stump. “You ain’t gettin’ cold feet on me, are you,
Corporal?”