Toxicity (39 page)

“Yes?” beamed Herbert.

“So you mentioned nothing about
deformed toxic creatures, bubbling acid lakes and pits of nuclear waste. Did
you? Dickhead?”

“Ahh, well, you see, what I was
actually talking about was the
Mines of Mercury,
you see, that Greenstar
did indeed clear out and are friendly and safe and good, old-fashioned family
fun.”

“So these are not the Mines of
Mercury?” laboured Svool.

“Oh, no! First, we have to travel
the Asbestos Joy Mines, the Pit of Nuclear Despair, and then the Caverns of
Certain Doom.” He beamed. “Only then do you reach the sanctuary and relative
safety of the Mines of Mercury.” He gave a little laugh, and shook his rusted
head, as if talking down to the mentally challenged.

“We have to go back,” said Lumar.
She thumbed a gesture at Herbert. “This rusty fucking idiot will kill us in
there.”

“Too late,” said Zoot.

“Meaning?” snapped Svool.

“Meaning they’re here.”

“Who’s here?”

“Er. Black Jake,” said Zoot, and
whizzed along, disappearing into the tunnel opening.

Svool looked back, and saw the
huge crowd of gunslinger-type desperadoes advancing down the canyon towards
them. There were indeed about seventy of the deranged-looking individuals, who
had left behind their metal horses and were creeping along, pistols in hand,
moustaches gleaming under the dying green sun.

“Er,” said Svool.

There came a slither of steel on
leather as Lumar drew two pistols taken from General Bronson’s men.

“Get in the tunnel,” she said.

“We’ll die in there,” whimpered
Svool.

“We’ll die out here,” said Lumar.

“And there’s another thing,” said
Herbert - happily oblivious, it would seem, to his impending doom at the hands
of Black Jake. “That smell you’re smelling. It’s explosive. So don’t be firing
them there pistols, or you’ll be bringing not just the roof down, but the whole
dang and blast mountain.” He brayed, spittle flying from rubber lips, as if
chuckling at some incredibly funny joke.

Slowly, Svool and Lumar backed
towards the tunnel mouth. Angelina and Zoot had already entered, and Herbert
clipped and clopped his way round, metal legs working in all different
directions, and headed towards the tunnel...

Black Jake loomed to the
forefront of the group. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, stocky,
heavily-built, and fearsome. His head was shaved close to the skull and his
black beard bristled fiercely. He was dark-skinned, his eyes black, his teeth
black with the occasional glint of gold. He was grinning as he eyed up Lumar.

“Are you the people who killed ma
brother?” he said, and spat a long plume of brown phlegm to the rocky canyon
floor.

“Er,” said Svool.

“He did,” said Lumar, gesturing
with her head towards Svool.

“Oh, thanks a lot for that stab
in the back,” snapped Svool.

“Well, you did, didn’t you? Shot
him a good one between the eyes. BAM! Like that.”

“Is that so?” Black Jake was
scowling now, and his grin had gone, and a dangerous animal ferocity was on his
face, in the hunch of his shoulders, in the clutching of his black pistols.

“Get ready to run...”
hissed Lumar.

“Oh, dear! Oh, deary dear!” The
voice was Herbert. He’d made his way to the tunnel entrance and pushed himself inside,
but his metal hips seemed to have jammed in the opening. His back legs thrashed
pointlessly and he clanked and clunked and made wheezing, unhealthy ratcheting
sounds.

Svool risked a glance back. Lumar
kept her eyes - and guns - on Black Jake. Around him, his many bandit compadres
were grinning and licking foul, black, rotting teeth. Some of them rubbed their
hands together; Lumar fancied she even heard a cackle.

“I’m stuck!” wailed Herbert
suddenly. “Help! Oh, help! I have my arse wedged in the tunnel opening! I do
implore you all to cease this aggravation and help a poor old wounded Special
Friend. I’m your friend. A friend for life.” His legs kicked some more. There
came more buzzes and clanks and clonks.

Lumar watched as Black Jake
raised his pistols. All around him, the seventy or so banditos also lifted
their guns, a rippling of steel like spikes on a porcupine’s back. He spat on
the rocks. “Anyways. Hardly matters who killed ma brother,” said Black Jake. He
grinned wider. “Because I’m going to fuck you both.”

“What do we do now?” hissed
Svool, flapping in panic.

“Looks like we die,” said Lumar,
taking a deep cool breath, and firing both her pistols.

~ * ~

ELEVEN

JENNY
XI AWOKE, upright, facing herself in a mirror. It was a strange awakening, from
deep sleep to sudden total awareness. She was in a white stone room. There were
arched windows looking out over a vast city -the capital city, Bacillus Port.
Greenstar had a massive presence there, with a complex which itself could have been
deemed a city; she remembered, as a child, visiting Bacillus Port and seeing
the high white stone towers. Well, it would appear she was now inside one. And
who would have thought, back when she was a child, that they were used for
torture? She had always imagined something
noble
went on in there. Now,
she was learning different.

She was naked, and tied to some
kind of extremely solid upright slab. Her tall athletic body was bruised and
lacerated in many places, as she could see in her sad pale reflection. She did
not recall getting the wounds, but they’d probably come from the bomb blast at
the factory. She sagged against her bonds and looked into her eyes, into those
reflected portals to the soul, and saw that she had aged. She no longer looked
like a proud, strong warrior - no. She looked beaten, and battered, and
bettered. Her face was gaunt, hollowed almost, and with a start she realised
the effect Randy Zaglax ripping free her back teeth had achieved. He’d hollowed
out her face. Hollowed out her soul. The bastard.

She narrowed her eyes and scowled
at her own weak, naked reflection. She was tied tightly to the slab, only her
head allowed freedom of movement. She turned, looking out over the city she
remembered so well from her childhood. A trip with her father, Old Tom. One of
the good memories. They’d bought ice cream in the streets. Marvelled at the
wonders of Greenstar’s newly created magnificence; right at the start, before
the corruption and - ha, yeah - the
toxicity
took hold at the heart of
the company. Well, at first it had seemed it could be good. A chance for the
planet of Amaranth to
shine.
How wrong they had been. How wrong they had
all
been.

Sunlight gleamed across the city.

Tears ran down Jenny’s face.

“That’s right, bitch. Cry it out.
Because it’s only going to get worse.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m pretty sure, in your
unconscious state, you already have.”

Jenny started to laugh as Randy
came into view, and she took a good hard stare at his ruined face. “And I’m
sure that’s how you have to take all the girls, isn’t it? Or it certainly is
now. Your face looks like an explosion in a distorted chicken factory. And, oh,
look, there I can see part of a frog’s arse. No matter how bad it gets for me,
Randy,
it’ll never be as bad as it is now for you, you fucking deformo. They call
you Randy, but no woman on this fucking planet - not even the
mutants
-
would want to fuck a fuck-up like you.”

Randy leapt forward, a knife in
his hand, murder in his pain-filled eyes. “I’ll cut off your fucking face,
bitch, see how
you like that...”

“Randy.” The voice was female,
and stern. With it came command, and Jenny was sure there couldn’t be that many
people who had any form of control over Randy Zaglax.

“Yes,” he said, and his eyes
focused, but when Jenny looked at him she saw a new-found core of hatred for
her, nestling in his eyes and face and hands. He’d kill her as soon as he
could, she realised. In fact, his insanity was probably only held in rein by
iron-hard bands of authority. Who? Which bitch sat behind her, out of view,
watching like the ultimate voyeur?

It had to be the Big Boss.

Renazzi Lode.

Small, perfectly formed, but with
a tongue of acid, a brain of poison, and the military might of the entire
Greenstar Recycling Company behind her. Jenny had a limited knowledge of the
way the organisation worked - except, perhaps, for how to best destroy its
factories with bombs - but one person she knew held the monopoly and the
casting vote was Renazzi Lode. And the woman was, perhaps, in the room with
her. If Jenny could get to her... reach the unreachable... and slit the bitch’s
throat. That would be a result, surely? Not exactly a direct command from Mr
Candle, but hell, to assassinate the head of Greenstar? Surely it was every ECO
terrorist’s wet dream?

But how?

Randy was staggering in front of
her, and he drew back her attention. He waved the long slender blade under her
nose, and he was grinning, a lop-sided, hanging-flesh look Jenny had come to
know and understand.

“You know something, Randy? I’ve
known beautiful people with the insides of a fucking sewer. And I’ve known
ugly, deformed, twisted toxic mutants - yes, worse even than you - with the
hearts and minds of angels. Looks do not define a person. I know that. I
understand
that. But you, my happy little torturing rapist, you have it all. A face
like the inside of a pig’s rectum, and an inner poison worse than any pollutant
Greenstar could ever pump into the soil. Truly, it would be a service to the
Quad-Gal to put five bullets in your skull. And I say that without hatred or
malice.” She looked up then. “I say it out of love.”

Randy made a strangled noise in
the back of his throat, and looked off over Jenny’s left shoulder. So. To the
left. Good. She had a position.

“You think you’re so perfect,
hey, Jenny Xi? Well look at this. Look at what you’ve done...”

“What I’ve...”

The mirror before her suddenly
gleamed, and then oozed into transparency. It was a screen, looking into a
small, dark, damp cell. There was a figure chained tight and upright against a
wall. It was the naked figure of Sick Note, his skinny arms and legs covered in
bruises and blood, his hacking cough unmistakable. His face was filled with
anger and defiance. “I’ll never fucking talk,” he was muttering, even as the
three men waded into him with baseball bats. His arms and legs jiggled under
the impacts. His head was batted left, then right, like a balloon on a string.
They hammered him and Jenny felt her own mouth go slack in disbelief, for this
was not just a beating, it was fucking murder, the murder of a man, one of her
squad, whom she knew and loved...

“No,” she hissed.

“Yes,” said Randy, close to her,
his stink, the stench of iodine and painkillers and antiseptic filling her
nostrils. “Watch this bit. I think it’s going to be good. And, you understand,
we’re not torturing him to make him talk... oh, no! What would be the point of
that?” Randy grinned at her through destruction. “We’re just fucking him up to
show you what
you
are doing to your friends. You lost your last squad,
right? Lost them to a man. The only survivor was Jenny Xi. Well, let’s see if
history can’t repeat itself...”

“Stop,” said Jenny, suddenly
weak, voice husky. “Stop it, now!”

“Oh, stop, stop, stop!” exclaimed
Randy effetely, placing his palms against his raw stitched cheeks, against his
torn ragged face which made the effeminate voice and play-acting seem even more
ridiculous; even more surreal. But what happened next was in no way a dream. What
happened next forced ice acid into Jenny’s brain and held it there; like her
head was on a spike.