Major Karnage (13 page)

“Can’t say I’m too surprised,” Karnage said. “If I get you power,
can you get this system up and running?”

Stumpy ran his fingers over one of the consoles. “Running? Hell,
I can probably get it to do backflips.”

“I’ll settle for a good steady jog,” Karnage replied. “I’ll try the
emergency generators. See if they got any juice left in ’em. The
second you get power, you get this thing up and running. Don’t wait
for me. And Corporal?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Barricade this door when I leave. No matter what happens—no
matter what you hear goin’ on outside—you stay put. Do not open
that door for anyone ’less they give you the password.”

“What’s the password, sir?”

“Mayhem.”

Stumpy saluted. “Won’t open it until I hear the password.”

Karnage returned the salute. “Good luck, Corporal.”

“You, too, sir.”

Karnage slipped outside. He heard the scrape of desks being
pushed up against the door as Stumpy barricaded himself in.

The Godmaster Array glowed brightly before him, returning
diffused moonlight heavenward. Karnage unholstered his goober
gun and stared fiercely at the orange fires burning brightly in the
distance.

He hadn’t had the heart to tell Stumpy the generators were deep
in the Spragmite encampment.

Karnage crawled over a gnarled orange hedge at the base of the
crater. The hedge contained the remains of a once mighty electrified
fence topped with razor wire. It had long ago lost its battle against
the invading onslaught of creeper. Karnage hoped he would fare
better against the Spragmites.

He found himself facing a sea of cookie-cutter townhouses
buried in orange creeper. He was on the outskirts of Camp Bailey’s
housing district.

Karnage felt a momentary pang of yearning. He wanted to find
his old barracks. To check out the dumpsters behind the Mess
where he and his buddies used to hide from annoyed drill sergeants
and furious MPs. The military had been a lark back then. Duty
something to be shirked. Work to be skirted at all costs. That was
before they had been shipped out. Before their first big foray into . . .

The War!

Fresh-faced recruits bein’ shoved into that meat grinder of death.
Black smoke chokin’ your throat and burnin’ your eyes. Voices screamin’
all around you, prayin’ to gods of every stripe, shape, and colour. Nothin’
answerin’ those prayers but the hot spray of bullets and explosive death.
And when the smoke cleared, the field was thick with charred, twisted
bodies. Nothing moved. Nothing moaned. Nothing left alive. Nothing but
a single, snivelling recruit hiding under his buddies’ corpses. A cowardly
little bastard who hadn’t had the guts to fire one single shot.

And then the bodies were pulled away, and that recruit found himself
staring into the face of Uncle Stanley himself! An enemy officer—with
uniform so crisp, you could cut yourself on the crease of his pants—staring
down at him through sightless, unseeing driving glasses. Big black pits of
shine that reflected nothing but the gore around him, and the frightened
face of that chickenshit little private. The officer aimed his pistol at the
private’s face, and squeezed the trigger—

—and nothing happened! No roar. No searing flash followed by pain,
coldness, and death. Nothing but the tiniest click. The officer looked at his
pistol, then at the recruit. The officer’s lips parted, exposing jagged yellow
teeth and a voice like crushed gravel poured out: “Looks like today’s your
lucky day, kid.”

And he turned and walked away! Left that chickenshit little recruit to
wallow in the rot and the filth, huggin’ his knees to his chest, gazing out
at the churned mass of blackened, twisted corpses, vowin’ it would never
be like this again never again never again never again—

The hallucination shattered as Karnage’s hands found a wall to
slam his head into. His Sanity Patch buzzed.

“Warning. Sanity Level upgraded to Sandy Dreams. Please
refrain from violent behaviour.”

Karnage scowled. He had barely begun, and was already burning
through Sanity Levels. He had to keep a better handle on things. Too
much was at stake. Too many lives were at risk.
Cookie. Velasquez.
Heckler. Koch. And now Stumpy, too.
They were all counting on him.
He wouldn’t let them down. Not this time.

Not ever again.

“You all right, buddy?”

Karnage looked up. Two men stood before him. The one who
spoke was moving towards him. He wore a tuxedo jacket over a
flower print dress. The other wore a shirt made of orange creeper
with a pinkstink boutonniere. He held a thin slab of smooth plastic
in his hands. Images flickered across its back, lighting the man’s
frightened, bulbous eyes. “Carlos!”

The one moving towards Karnage turned and looked at his
companion. He pointed at the plastic slab. “Why are you shooting
my feet?”

“Carlos, look at—”

Carlos pointed to his face. “Here, Simon. Shoot here. I can’t use
this if all you get is my ass.”

“But—”

Carlos moved back to Simon and grabbed his hands. He lifted the tablet so it pointed at Karnage. There was a lens on its front in the
shape of a D.

Carlos moved back beside Karnage. “Am I in the shot?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good. Now shut up.” Carlos turned towards Karnage, but kept
his face pointed at the camera. This meant he was only looking
at Karnage with one eye. “Are you all right? You sounded like you
needed help.”

“Carlos!” Simon hissed.

Carlos kept his grinning face on Karnage. He hissed at Simon
through his teeth. “What?”

Simon pointed at Karnage. “His clothes, Carlos. Look at his
clothes!”

Carlos looked at the open jacket of Karnage’s police uniform,
the leather straps of his straitjacket just visible underneath. Before
Carlos could register the string of goober grenades on his belt,
Karnage struck out with his fist and caught Carlos across the jaw.
Carlos staggered backwards and fell to the ground and stayed there.
Karnage’s neck buzzed.

“Warning. Sanity Patch upgraded to Lemon Breeze. Please
refrain from violent behaviour.”

Karnage turned his attention to Simon. Simon stood frozen in
place, his eyes glued to the tablet’s screen. The lens still pointed
at Karnage, albeit shakily. Karnage walked towards Simon. Simon
stared at the screen, his hands shaking more and more violently
with Karnage’s every step. Karnage pulled the tablet out of Simon’s
hands. Simon looked up into Karnage’s face. His eyes rolled into the
back of his head, and he fell to the ground.

Karnage dragged the two men into the nearest townhouse. He
stripped Carlos of his clothes, stuffed the unconscious men into
a closet, and barricaded the door. Karnage threw the police jacket
aside. He pulled the dress over his head. It neatly covered his belt
of goober grenades. He slipped on the tuxedo jacket. It just covered
his goober rifle. He took another look at Simon’s camera. The glossy
plastic was covered in smudges and scratches. There was a Dabney
Corporation logo engraved into its side. He flipped it over, and was
greeted with a shot of his feet. A tiny red dot flashed in the corner.
He couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. He tucked the tablet into
his jacket, and headed into the Spragmite compound.

Creeper and pinkstink hung between lampposts like garlands.
Hand-cranked lanterns hung from the creeper, their blue LED glow
bobbed and swayed in the wind like drunken fireflies. Pink and
orange topiary worms dotted the front yards of the derelict houses.

People stood around bonfires in the streets, talking and
laughing. Some toasted skewered lizards and bits of squiggly
root over the fires. Everyone was dressed in the same haphazard
improvised fashion as Carlos and Simon. Many of them carried D
tablets similar to Simon’s. They were unabashedly recording any
and all of the festivities. Seeing this, Karnage fished his D tablet out
of his pocket, and used it to observe his surroundings. Occasionally
someone would wave to him through the viewfinder, but beyond
that, he was invisible.

A squiggly screech pierced the air. Everyone stopped what they
were doing, except those with cameras. Their lenses searched back
and forth, as if looking for the source of the noise. Karnage found
himself doing the same.

A young boy came running down the street. “The Worm is
coming! The Worm is coming!”

The hairs on Karnage’s neck stood up. He turned his camera
towards the end of the street.

Another screech poured across the compound. It was followed by
a chorus of drums. Their deep, pulsing beat throbbed through the
air. People thronged to the edges of the street, staring eagerly into
the distance. Karnage joined the throng. People happily moved out
of his way when they saw his camera. He joined the other shooters
at the front of the pack.

Flickering lights and dancing shadows played across the street
in the distance. An enormous shadow writhed into view, making
giant squiggling patterns against the surrounding houses. Dancers
twirling flaming batons moved in time with the drums and the
wriggling shadows on the walls. Their writhing caused the flames
to write in huge, angled squiggles. The shadows grew closer, and
finally, the beast emerged from the darkness.

The Worm was the size of a bus, writhing and wriggling as it
squiggled down the street. A single horn protruded from its head,
wobbling erratically with each thrust. The light from the flames
reflected off the body in long, fluid sparkles. It was as if the beast
was covered in tinsel. And as it grew closer, Karnage realized that
it was.

Dark shadows of human feet could be seen just under The
Worm’s body. A whorl of cardboard teeth spun inside the worm’s
open mouth as if on casters. Circling the beast was a man on a
bicycle that looked like the bastard child of a tuba and slide whistle.
A giant piston bolted to the rear tire ran into what looked like a
bagpipe bag attached to the end of a giant tuba bell. The rider blew
into a mouthpiece mounted above the handlebars. An oscillating
squeal blasted out of the tuba bell: the same damn noise Karnage
had heard earlier.

Karnage nearly spat in disgust. Is this what it was all about?
No aliens? No worms? Just a giant parade float and a mutant slide
whistle?

A jagged noise tore through the crowd that threatened to rip the
pavement from the road. The worm dancers lost their balance. The
slide whistle cycle went crashing to the ground. A hushed silence fell
over the crowd. Even the crackle of the bonfires seemed to die down.

A voice from the crowd shouted, “Spragmos has come!”

The crowd broke out into a cheer. The dancers jumped back into
their dance, more energized than before. The parade picked up its
pace, and the crowd fell in behind and followed them. Karnage
stayed with the throng. For better or worse, they were heading in
the right direction: toward the emergency generators.

At the heart of Camp Bailey was the Weapons Testing Facility: an
exact replica of the Godmaster Crater. This artificial canyon was
the military’s testing facility for the latest in Spragmos Industries’s
military-grade weapons, hardware, and explosives. It had led to the
facility being known as the WTF or the What-The-Fuck, as in “What
the fuck was
that?!”

Orange creeper now grew from the top of the WTF. It had been
neatly trimmed back to expose the mile-high SPRAGMOS lettering
etched into the mountain’s side. Giant bonfires illuminated the
lettering from below. Karnage was overwhelmed by its primal
majesty. If he hadn’t known about the WTF’s history, he would have
sworn it was built to be a temple.

As they approached the WTF, people broke out into spontaneous
song. To Karnage’s ears, the lyrics sounded like gibberish, punctuated
with repetitive chants of “The Worm is the word! The Worm is
the word!” followed with more gibberish. It had all the annoying
catchiness of an ad jingle. Karnage caught himself humming along
at one point. He vowed in that moment to track down whoever wrote
it and knock out every one of their teeth before breaking a number
of specially selected bones in their body. He stopped himself from
determining exactly how many and which ones before he set off his
Sanity Patch.

The creeper on the buildings grew thicker as they approached.
The buildings here looked like little more than giant hills of creeper
and pinkstink. He felt like he was tracing the vegetation upriver to
its source. Was it alien in nature? Or a military experiment gone
wrong? He didn’t know. The only thing he knew for sure was how
much it stank. It smelled like a giant mountain of burning metal,
plastic, and tar.

The creeper was trimmed back in a wide semi-circle around the
entrance of the WTF. The giant bonfires framed its massive doors.
As the crowd approached, the doors opened, and the parade made
its way inside.

Just beyond the bonfires, Karnage saw the emergency generator
building. It was adorned with pinkstink garlands. A pair of sombre
men stood outside the doors, wearing long dresses and leis made
of pinkstink and creeper. They carried what looked like shepherd’s
hooks with stylized worms on the ends. Karnage pegged them for
priests. A long line of Spragmites were lined up outside the building.
As people made it to the front of the line, they would kneel before
the priest. The priest would place a hand on their heads, mumble
something, hand them a slip of paper, then let them into the
generator building. After a few minutes, the person would emerge,
and the next would be allowed in.