Major Karnage (6 page)

“Shit!” Karnage jumped on the nearest hoverbike. It bobbed and
swayed, nearly tipping over. Karnage struggled to keep his balance.
A screen on the centre console flashed to life.

“Please place your palm on the scanner for biometric—”

“Shit-shit-
shit!”
Karnage punched the screen.

“Warning. Sanity level upgraded to—”

“Shut up!”

Karnage jumped off the bike and ran back into the diner. He
grabbed Harvey’s moaning body and threw it through the broken
window. He upturned tables and chairs, propping them in the
windows, bracing them against the doors.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Karnage turned around. Charlie stood in the kitchen doorway,
thrusting the mop forward like a spear.

“Defensive perimeter.” Karnage ripped a booth table from the
floor. Tiles and sheared bolts flew in all directions. “Dunno how
much good this formica shit will be against bullets, but at least it’ll
give me some cover. You keep any ordnance around here? Artillery?
Heavy weapons?”

Upchuck looked at his mop, then back at Karnage. He shook his
head.

“How about emergency rations? No? Guess it don’t matter much.
It’s a restaurant, right? Gotta have at least some food supplies. Don’t
look so worried, bub. I been in tougher scrapes ’n this. I’ll get us
outta here alive.”

“Alive?!”

“Now here’s what we’ll do. You go round the back—”

The mop made a loud clatter on the floor. Karnage turned to
look. The doors to the kitchen were swinging violently on their
hinges. Charlie was gone. Karnage shook his head. “Civilians.”

He grabbed the mop and a chrome napkin dispenser from under
the counter. He jammed the dispenser onto the mop handle and
lifted it above the counter. He rotated the finely polished surface
until he had a clear view of the front window.

The cops had parked their hoverbikes and cruisers in a line across
the lot. Cat ears peeked over the vehicles, angry black gun barrels
held before them. A pair of cops had run forward and were dragging
the limp bodies of Harvey and Princess behind the cruisers.

Karnage swivelled the dispenser, trying to gauge the number of
cops. He stopped counting after ten. He couldn’t handle more than
that. Not alone. He pulled out Harvey’s pistol. He didn’t recognize
the make. It was a revolver of some kind. He popped open the
cylinder. The rounds looked like pill-shaped pink bubble gumballs.
What the hell kinda ammo is this?

A shout came from outside: “Officers clear!”

A megaphone squawked: “Break out the Sudsy!”

Karnage heard the
beep-beep-beep
of a vehicle reversing. He
raised the napkin dispenser to get a look. A giant gun turret rose
into view. Something slick and oily dripped from the barrel.

“Chemical warfare! You bastards!” Karnage dove behind the
counter and swept stacks of napkins out from the bottom shelf.

There was a shout from outside: “Sudsy in position!”

Karnage rolled into the bottom shelf and pressed his body into
the corner.

The megaphone squawked: “Fire!”

There was a torrential whoosh, followed by an explosion of glass
and tables. The liquid blast slammed into the counter. Karnage felt
the cheap particleboard shudder under the impact. He prayed it
would hold. Sudsy gurgled and rioted over everything, like white
water rapids on steroids. Tables tumbled. Dishes shattered. Electrical
circuits shorted out. Dollops of Sudsy splattered Karnage’s back.

The torrent stopped. A steady
drip-drip-drip
filled the gaping
silence. Karnage felt bits of Sudsy run down his straitjacket.
Karnage rolled away from the corner to survey the damage. Sudsy
flowed across the floor in great foamy blobs. He could hear the floor
drains struggling to suck it all down.

Wet footsteps—like galoshes wading through mud—approached
the diner. They stopped. A voice barked out, “Clear!” The footsteps
started forward again.
They’re comin’ for me
, Karnage thought.
They
think I’m done for and they’re comin’ for me! Well I ain’t goin’ down
without a fight!

Karnage slid out from under the counter and crouched on the—

—his feet slipped out from under him. Karnage fell hard on his
ass. Sudsy soaked through his pants.

“Sonofabitch!” Karnage wiped his Sudsy covered hands on
his straitjacket. His hands shot straight down his jacket, near
frictionless.
What the hell kind of chemical shit did these bastards dump
on me?!

Karnage grabbed the counter and pulled—

His hands slipped off. Karnage flopped down on his back.

“What the GODDAMN HELL!”

The footsteps squished closer.

Karnage grabbed and yanked and pulled at anything within
reach. He slipped off everything. The footsteps grew closer. Karnage
braced his hands and feet against the walls. He slipped off, and spun
into the middle of the room, like a turtle on its back.

“If I gotta make my last stand from here, then so be it.” Karnage
pulled the gun from his pants and—

—the gun popped out of his fingers. It shot across the Sudsydrenched floor, ricocheted off a table leg, and disappeared from
sight.

The doors burst open. A pair of Dabneycops marched in. The soles
of their boots were covered in a pink goo that sucked and pulled at
the floor with loud, wet, sloshing noises. The cops wore large tanks
strapped to their backs. Hoses ran from the tanks to large, oversized
nozzles in the cops’s hands. The nozzles were caked in pink goo.

“Subject has been incapacitated,” the first one said.

“Goober him.”

Pink stringy goop slammed Karnage in the chest, propelled
him across the room, and slammed him into the wall. The goober
solidified instantly.

“You may think you got me,” Karnage struggled against the
goober, “But I ain’t that easy to—”

They fired again. Long strings of goober licked up and down
Karnage’s body, enveloping him in a pink cocoon of darkness.

They got him.

“You know what’s wrong with this world?” Charlie asked.

“What, Charlie?” Darla was on her knees, scrubbing Sudsy off
the floor. Charlie was supposed to be scrubbing the walls. Instead
he stood in the middle of the diner, gesturing wildly with his brush.

“A lack of respect for the working man, that’s what! We were just
getting by as it was, and now—well, just look at this place!” Charlie
threw his arm out in a sweeping arc.

Soap splattered across Darla’s clean floor. Darla moved to wipe it
up. “I can see it just fine, Charlie.”

They had cleared up as well as they could manage. What furniture
and stock that remained was stacked neatly on the counter. The rest
lay in a jumbled pile of broken wood and glass in the middle of the
parking lot.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Charlie shook his head, “that lunatic
throwing around my tables, or those damn pigs sprayin’ chemical
gunk all over the place trying to arrest him. I mean, he was just one
man!”

“They did what they had to do.”

“They could have done it a little more carefully! Hell, even I could
have done better than that!”

“Really? I seem to recall somebody marching out there with
a mop mumbling something about putting an end to this, then
running back with his tail between his legs.”

“And what exactly was I supposed to have done? He was
armed
then. He could have killed me, you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you hear what I said? I said he could have
killed
me!”

“You want to maybe put a little more effort into those walls?”

“Well, how do you like that. I stare death full in the face, live to
tell the tale, and all you can think about is your damn—”

A noisy shriek came from the radio resting on the counter. Charlie
jumped and stepped in a pool of Sudsy, nearly falling on his ass in
the process. “Sonofabitch!” He half-slipped, half-stormed across the
room and grabbed the radio. “Would you look at that? It ain’t even
on!” Charlie yanked the plug out of the wall. The radio squawked in
protest, then went silent. “Guess we’re gonna have to add this to the
. . . well, what the hell’s gotten in to you?”

Darla’s face was white. She stared intently at the radio, then
looked at Charlie. “Did that sound . . . squiggly to you?”

“Squiggly?!” Charlie curled his lip. “Oh hell. You’re as crazy as
that—”

The radio screeched again. The lights in the diner went out. A
solid wall of pitch black slid over the sky, as the world descended
into darkness. Flickering panels of light shot back and forth across
the sky.

“Wow, would you look at that?” Charlie moved over to the
window. “Looks like it’s gonna rain something fierce!”

Darla went pale. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I don’t think
those are clouds. . . .”

“Well, what the hell else—”

Their world was consumed by an intense painful green.

Karnage’s arms and legs were strapped to his chair. He was sitting at
one end of a long table, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. His scowling
reflection stared back at him from the two-way mirror in the far
wall.

Could be worse
, Karnage thought.
At least I don’t got a catheter
shoved up my pisshole.

He watched in the mirror as the door behind him opened. A pair
of hulking Dabneycops squeezed through the door. Tasers and stun
sticks hung from their belts. They were followed by a tiny figure
in a Dabneycop uniform, conspicuously lacking a matching helmet
to cover his face. He was a thin, pallid man wearing thick glasses
and a cowlick. The binder he carried was thicker than his rib cage.
He shuffled across the room and sat in the empty chair. His two
Dabneycop flunkies stood behind him. He pushed up the frames of
his glasses, and cleared his throat. “Hello. I’m . . . ah, Dr. Huang.”

Karnage let the silence hang in the air, hoping to unsettle Huang.
It worked. “You a shrink?”

Huang’s head jerked and bobbed like a trained seal. “Ha! I suppose
that you could, ah . . . put it that way.”

“I ain’t talkin’ to no shrink.”

“That’s rather, um, unfortunate as, ah . . . you’re sort of stuck
with me. Ha!”

“Ha,” Karnage said.

Huang paled. He put his binder on the table and sat down.

“That my file?” Karnage said.

“It’s, ah . . . your medical records. Which I suppose is your ‘file.’”

“It say anything in there about how many shrinks I put in the
hospital?“

Huang jerked back as if he’d been slapped. He stared at Karnage
with wide, hurt eyes, then swallowed. He cleared his throat, and
opened the binder. “So, ah . . . let’s get this party started, shall we?
Ha!”

“Ha,” Karnage said.

Huang quickly looked away from Karnage and buried his face in
his binder. “It says here you’ve spent a lot of time incarcer—ah
. . . impris—ah . . . rather, I mean . . . you’ve, ah, spent quite a bit of
time under psychiatric—yes! Psychiatric care. Ever since the W—”
Huang stopped himself. His face went white.

Karnage felt the blood race to his ears. “Ever since what, Huang?”

The guards reached for their stun sticks. Huang swallowed hard.
“Ah . . .”

Karnage strained at his bonds. “Ever since
what?!”

Huang’s eyes darted around the room. “Ever since—ah . . .
hostilities! Hostilities!” Huang grabbed at the word like a drowning
man going for a life preserver. “Ever since the hostilities ended. Ha!
World peace and all . . .”

“World peace.” Karnage resisted the urge to spit. “Don’t talk to
me about World Peace.”

“You, ah . . . weren’t happy about that?”

“Not like it did me any good.”

“You would have preferred that the W—hostilities! Hostilities!”
Huang repeated the word as if it were a talisman to ward off evil
spirits. “You would have preferred that hostilities had continued?”

Karnage wrenched forward. “I would’ve preferred not being
locked up like some kinda goddamn animal!”

“AH!” Huang jerked back. His pen flew out of his fingers and
went flying across the room. He grinned sheepishly. “Ha! Yes! I can
see why you’d feel that way.” Huang pulled another pen from his
pocket and clicked it open. “Ah! But, ah . . . you know it wasn’t, ah
. . . malicious. You were—rather, you are, ah . . . not exactly ‘well.’”

“You saying I’m nuts?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like—”

“I’m not crazy!” Karnage barked.

Huang shrank back. “Well, ah . . . what about the, ah . . . hospital?”

“What about it?!”

“You don’t think that, ah . . . blowing it up—”

“Is that what this is about?”

Huang looked at the two-way mirror as if trying to get guidance.
He looked back at Karnage. “Well, ah . . . yes.”

Karnage leaned in and growled. “Get this straight, Chuckles. I
didn’t blow up a goddamn thing.”

“No?”

“NO!”

Huang squealed, then tried to laugh it off. “Ha! Is this where
the—ah . . . ‘aliens’ come into play?”

Karnage grit his teeth. “You best lose that patronizing tone, Doc,
before I tear it outta your throat and shove it up your—”

Karnage’s neck buzzed. “Warning. Sanity Level upgraded to
Citrus Blast. Please refrain from violent behaviour. Thank you.”

“You should, ah . . . watch that temper, Major. We wouldn’t want
you to, ah . . .”

“Lose my head?”

“Ah. You’ve, ah . . . heard that one before? I should probably, ah . . .
stick with my day job, then, eh? Ha!”