Hardcore - 03 (22 page)

"Calm? But they're gonna kill me!"

"Hmm." Father Callaghan placed his chin on his fist, and nodded, thoughtfully, gazing into the fire. "That's interesting. Tell me more."

Franco scowled. "What more do you need to know?"

"Well, I've been programmed with a trillion separate response arcs."

"Ha! You're nothing but a damn chip."

"Still, I'm here to help."

"By doing what?"

"By calming you in your hour of need. By making you
think."

"I don't
need
to think, I
need
a machine gun."

"No no no. First, use your mind. Then, your fists."

"I can't do anything. They keep drugging me, just like at Mount Pleasant, and they they they keep me strapped up tight. I've tried to escape, but they just keep oiling me up like some huge fish, and and and
and
it's just not damn bloody
fair."

"You know what I'd do?"

"Hmm?" Franco was staring into the flames now. He was considering jumping in them. "Go on, bloody Father bloody Callaghan, religious extraordinaire with so much good advice to give. Go on!"

"Oh, to mock! Franco, 'tis simple. You need to play dead."

"Easy for you to say! You are dead."

"No, I am non-living. AI. Still, think about it."

"Ha! Bloody useless damn Temple Pill. I want my damn $19.99 back."

Father Callaghan, the fire, the dark mountains, all started to fade in pixellated blocks, like a low resolution computer game or bad video decoding.

"Think about it," whispered Callaghan.

Franco opened his eyes. The darkness receded. Lights came up, to reveal no less than forty nurses in various states of dismemberment and dress, forming a huge circle around his bound and hanging body. Franco glanced up, at the leather straps which tied his hands tight to a large, rusted, iron hook. Franco swung, gently, like a dead dog on a washing line. He blinked a few times, and gradually became aware of... the silence.

"Father bloody Callaghan," he muttered. And realised the nurses, all of them, with their peroxide-blonde hair and red lipstick, with their rubber-ring bellies and strapping calf muscles, their genetically grafted medical implements and strong, black, sturdy, comfy shoes; all of them, it dawned on Franco's diseased and whirling mind, all of them carried -

A weapon.

"Ha ha ha," said Franco. "Now listen here, girls."

The circle started to close.

"Now, just hold on a moment, ladies."

One nurse gave an experimental
swish
of a giant scalpel attached to the end of a pole. It reminded Franco disturbingly of the Grim Reaper, albeit with curly blonde wig and a succulent choice of lipstick hues.

"We really do need to talk about this." Franco stared up, wiggled his hands, flexed his numbed fingers, and breathed the pervading medical stink of sterile utensils. He started to struggle. Infuriatingly, the nurses did not increase their pace.

They knew when they'd cornered a rat. When it had nowhere left to run.

And when it was ready to
die...

The Heads leapt towards the BaseCamp's hull doors, and Olga's D5 boomed and clattered alongside Shazza, pale and green-tinged in the moonlight. Their guns roared, fire flaring from barrels, and then Fizzy was back, panting, face sweat-streaked.

"Stand back!" she screamed, and holding a Nape firethrower, she pushed between her two comrades and as the Heads converged and leapt as a pack, so flames roared out to meet the unholy alliance of spider and nurse, engulfing the mass and spitting them backwards, black and flaming, chittering and stamping little burning legs.

The three female squaddies stumbled back, and as Fizzy slammed shut the BaseCamp's door they caught a glimpse of hundreds more advancing from the night. Within seconds, there came
thuds
and
bangs
and
clangs.
Dents quickly appeared in the thick steel, like bulges in a balloon, and the three women stared at one another.

"This can't be happening," growled Fizzy, face lit in an eerie manner by the glow of the Nape's flickering nozzle.

Olga gestured to the BaseCamp's five-inch plate-armoured door. "It not just happening. It getting worse!"

They could hear a
fizzing hissing
sound. Even as they watched, droplets of acid-molten alloy rolled down the interior and started to melt through the floor.

"We need to get the hell out of here," snapped Shazza.

"What about Franco?" said Olga, eyes hard. "He's out there. Somewhere. On ze other side of those
things."

"He chose to leave," hissed Shazza. "The dickhead."

"We have to reach him!"

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes!" There came a crunch. Fizzy and Shazza stared at where Olga's hand had crushed tiny finger-shaped dents in her D5 shotgun. They glanced at each other.

"Let's get off the ground first," snapped Shazza. "Then, if we're still alive, we can get a lock on the ginger midget."

They ran down narrow alloy corridors, thumping them shut in retreat. BANG BANG BANG went the doors, sealing the three women further and further in the belly of the metal tomb. Olga had fished out her PAD, eyes scanning millions of frequencies. And even as she ran, pounding along, girth squeezing through narrow apertures, bosom wobbling frighteningly, she was intent on the task of locating Franco which
technically
should have been very, very easy. She cycled through comms. Everything was dead. Franco had, digitally at least, vanished.

"Bugger," said Olga.

"Strap yourselves in," cried Shazza, pulling at her harness as they reached the cockpit. "It's going to be a wild ride when the BaseCamp turns back into a DropShip! It was never designed to do it carrying human cargo. We're
supposed
to be outside. This is
supposed
to be a simple, non-threatening mission!"

She slammed the keys, and the BaseCamp vibrated savagely.

On the screen before Shazza symbols flashed in blue. Then red.

Behind, down the metal corridors, they could hear doors being wrenched apart. The Heads, well, what they lacked in size and stature, they made up for with ferocity.

"There's only two doors left," whispered Fizzy.

"The BaseCamp won't change back," snapped Shazza. "Something has to be damaged."

"We must get out of here!" roared Olga, eyeing the door warily. Her hands were sweat-slippery, panic writhing on her fat face like the contortions of a stroke victim. More clangs echoed from the BaseCamp's interior.

"There's a trapdoor. Down to the Giga-Buggy." Shazza pulled out of her harness, hair sticking to her sweating brow, and dropped to her knees. She hoisted open the trapdoor, peered into the gloomy subterranean space, then dropped lithely through. Fizzy followed, with louder clangs ringing in her ears, and Olga stared at the space, then down at her enormous belly blubber. "Bugger," she muttered, threw down her shotgun, and jumped, wedging tight in the trapdoor space and grunting, locked in position, her legs kicking below, arms flapping above. Wedged.

She felt Shazza and Fizzy grab her legs and start to heave. Her belly squidged and slopped, but overhung the trapdoor square by many inches and for the first time in her life Olga wondered about the wisdom of a diet.

"I'm stuck!" she bellowed.

Muffles came from below. Again, her friends tugged on her, leaving claw imprints in her fat leg flesh.

There came a
clump.
Olga lifted her head, little eyes fixing on the final door. She licked nervous lips, and suddenly realised her position. She'd thrown down her weapon, leaving herself unarmed.

There was more tugging, but Olga's eyes remained on the alloy door. Then there came a thump and a dent appeared. With a hissing sound, acid started to eat through the portal and Olga started to scream and bellow, struggling and wiggling, twisting and pushing as below hands pulled at her sturdy calves and wobbling thighs.

"They're getting through!" she screamed. They would eat her. Eat her face, her eyes, her head. Olga shuddered. Nobody should have to die like that. She cracked her knuckles, and with a grim scowl, thought to herself,
Well, I will take zem with me!

Below, there came the roar of an engine. Olga increased her frantic struggling, eyes growing wide as she realised with a bitter taste on her tongue that Fizzy and Shazza were abandoning her. Leaving her to die. Leaving her to be eaten by those terrible, genetic mutations...

I cannot believe it, she thought sourly.

I can't believe they'd run away...

Saying nothing, Olga continued her frantic silent struggle, eyes locked morbidly on the door. Long streaks had burned through with acid. The alloy portal quickly resembled silver confetti streamers. Beyond, filling the corridor like an explosion in a mannequin factory, were hundreds of bouncing spitting wild-eyed scraggy-haired nurse Heads. They bounced and charged and sprang and leapt. The doorway groaned. Olga had only a few seconds left...

Olga heard the spinning of tyres, could smell a hint of exhaust fumes; and she knew.

Knew now, that she was all alone.

She was going to die, alone.

It was raining boulders, a storm of jagged rock, a torrent of giant stalactites tumbling and crashing around him, obliterating everything into pulverised stone shards. Keenan could see Elana's blood, leaking from beneath the large boulder which had crushed her, and his mouth was dry, his brain bitter, and his eyes narrowed as anger coursed his veins. He was sick. Sick of being used. Sick of being bullied. Keenan gritted his teeth, and, glancing up, stepped out.
Fuck it
, he thought.
So what if I die? So what if I am crushed? I will get to join my dead girls, be with them for all eternity. What care I for the problems of Quad-Gal?

He laughed then, a sound verging on the manic, and with head held high he walked across the crumbling hall. Rocks and boulders slammed all around him, but like a man blessed, a man with an intuitive gift, he passed through the crumbling Cathedral untouched.

Standing on the platform, he sailed up through colours and he could feel a mammoth animosity, bearing down on him... Keenan blinked, the alien substances in his veins surging and roaring through his mind. And he could see, and he could feel, and the Dark Flame burned in his heart and Keenan could see VOLOS for the first time and knew, knew his life was strange and odd and
old,
as old as Leviathan. And with a certainty, and surety, as clear as night follows day, death follows life, Keenan
knew
VOLOS could not see him, he was invisible, and more, Keenan knew that VOLOS feared him.

Up soared Keenan, his hands outstretched through the swirling colours and mist, and all around him the world roared and Keenan, flying blind, trusting to Fate, landed at a random platform and walked along a narrow tunnel, and out into the dark fresh night...

Outside, the Rockfall was stuttering now, dying, the rocks from the sky becoming fewer, more staggered, smaller in size and ferocity. And then the holocaust from the heavens abated, and everything was still except for a pall of desert dust hanging above the beaten ground. Keenan climbed a nearby dune, and turned.

Around him spread a sea of dust, swirling, disturbed, and Keenan watched the Cathedral, now Elana's tomb, crumble and crack, toppling in on itself. Eventually the rumblings and violence subsided, until an eerie silence rolled across the desert. Keenan scratched his chin, and considered his position.

What had happened in there? Had he been guided?

He looked at the backs of his hands, criss-crossed with tiny scars from a thousand different battles, a myriad of ancient wars. Never had Keenan been so reckless; never had he given in to intuition, to another sense, so readily and with such little care for his own self-preservation.

I should have died
, he realised.

But you did not.

I should be buried in that tomb of rock.

But you are not.

His eyes played across the desert, and with a click of his tongue, he stood in a quick, fluid motion. Energy surged through him. He felt young again, whole again, awash with a strength which had gradually bleached away over the years. Keenan felt more powerful than he'd ever felt. It was a feeling he liked, and he revelled in the dark energies whipping through his veins, heart and mind.

He turned. Orientated. Snake. Ed. Maximux. Keenan grimaced, and clenched his fist, cracking a few knuckles. Those back-stabbing treacherous whores. When Keenan had finished with them, well. His eyes shone dark in the desert gloom.

Well, thought Keenan. They'd be better off dead.

Keenan crouched in the sand, fingertips stretching out, resting lightly on the cold, rough surface. The dust had nearly settled, sand clouds drifting to rest in a shroud over the newly-fallen rocks. Keenan smiled grimly, watching the BaseCamp, now nothing more than a battered, smashed wreckage. So, he thought, that's the way we're going to play this game. He glanced up at the sky, and shook his head. Rocks from above! Rock rain! God did have a wicked sense of humour, didn't he?