Hurt World One and the Zombie Rats (8 page)

The old man’s name was Noice. He had moved to
Asylum City with the first Maldivian refugees and in quieter
moments would talk of the days before the Maldives Islands were
swamped by the ever rising sea levels. Quieter moments did not come
often, however, for his thoughts remained occupied with his work
and all the ways animals were being mistreated in his adopted
city.

The room was much brighter than the
passageway would have suggested with large clean windows offering
views across the sprawling African districts. And there were
stunning artworks of all kinds on the walls and throughout the
room: donations and acquisitions that could be sold when funds were
required. Noice put his hand on Kaptu’s back and led him to the
centre window, his favourite place to talk.

‘The good news is there is no indication that
you have been followed here,’ he said. ‘I must assume that your
business is pressing.’

‘I’m being pulled out of Asylum City.’

‘Oh. Sad news. Why?’

‘Have you heard of the poacher Mas?’

‘Yes, of course. Are you being sent after
her? You’ll find her a handful.’

‘The World Court has given the go ahead. And
I’m not sure I’ll be back.’

‘You have to think positively. She
might
not kill you.’

‘What are you talking about? Renaissance says
if I take out Mas, I’ll probably be promoted to Hurt World Level
Two.’

‘And if you don’t, there might not be enough
pieces left of you to make it worth coming back.’

‘Is that your idea of positive thinking?’

Noice shrugged.

‘The extraction team is already hovering
about the city,’ said Kaptu, ‘but there is something I want to get
done first.’

Noice folded his arms and looked at him
attentively. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Do you still want the Meltman’s black
bear?’

‘You know I’ve wanted that poor thing for
years.’

‘Have you got somewhere to put it? And I mean
right now.’

‘I’ve got a home ready to go. But it would be
wrong of me not to try talking you out of a rescue.’

‘You’ve never tried to talk me out of
anything before.’

‘Let me put it like this. First you are going
to take on Meltman and his army. In that it is likely you are going
to get at least a little bit hurt. A little bit or a lot. And then
you are going to rush off and take on Mas, who is not an army, but
certainly very talented when it comes to either maiming or killing
people. It is too much to expect to survive.’

‘I’m sorry you feel that way ‘cause I want
you to come along. I don’t know anything about black bears. Least
of all where to take one.’

Noice frowned warily. ‘Alright, I’ll come
along to give directions. I also know the way to the best hospital
for snake monkey bites - some of the world’s leading researchers
are based right here in Asylum City. When you make your move on the
Meltman Express, you might find some comfort in knowing that. Of
course, you might not if you knew the reason the researchers are
based here is because of the ready supply of victims they have
access to. Nice, juicy bites that have all its poison’s horrendous
symptoms on full display.’

Kaptu shrugged. ‘I’ve been bitten by
worse.’

There was a flash of fire in Noice’s eyes. ‘I
hope you’re not referring to my daughter.’

Kaptu looked around the apartment for any
trace of her. There was nothing. Perhaps, that was why the room
seemed drab to him despite all its paraphernalia. Kaptu had heard
she had married and moved to the Mali sector. He tried not to think
about her. Kaptu patted Noice on the shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s go
get you a bear to cuddle.’

*

The steel tracks were beginning to tremble.
The Meltman Express was not far away. How many carriages would
there be? Each one carried about twenty debtors and in tough times
like these, there were a lot of debtors to deal with. Fifteen
carriages? More? The train did endless loops of Asylum City and for
the passengers, it was a one way trip unless somehow their accounts
could be settled. If death eventuated, which was a regular
occurrence, the body would be tossed into the front carriage, food
for the black bear that lived there - simply another meal to be
had. The Meltman would usually consider that as a sufficient
balancing off the books. But if he was still not satisfied, he
would have a family member or friend replace the debtor. He had
been known to wipe out entire families that way. Not that customers
didn’t keep coming. People needed money to live, and the Meltman
would lend large sums readily when banks had turned their backs. He
was not concerned by risky loans. He enjoyed his train.

Kaptu Z was waiting for it on Banaba Bridge
in the heart of the Kiribali zone. He was hanging off one of the
steel girdles beneath the roadway. He wanted the waiting to end. He
didn’t like waiting for any kind of action unless there was a plan
to occupy his mind. Still, he could focus on those vibrations; the
Meltman Express ran on an old vintage combustion engine and was
giving the ground a fair shake. Kaptu had misjudged how far away
the train actually was and been left dangling off the bridge longer
than was comfortable. His hands were starting to tire and with all
those weapons weighing down his body he was not about to climb back
up for a spell.

Kaptu was twenty eight years old: he did not
have an official birth date but instead a
found
date
. His parents had at
least made the effort of abandoning him in the Kashmir zone, where
the local Army Base took in such babies as future recruits. Kaptu
had received a well-rounded though quite deadly education. He had
served ten years in the Asylum City police force, reaching the rank
of lieutenant in the homicide squad before being released into the
United Nations’ Hurt World Agency. It had required a significant
exit fee, enough to train and equip four new police officers, and
Kaptu paid it himself. He used the reward money for the safe return
of a kidnapped aid worker in the Mali Square ghetto. Kaptu finished
that episode dangling from the balcony of a burning skyscraper
seventy floors up. It proved a hot and sweaty ten minutes before a
rescue crew arrived. Sweating hands had almost proven his undoing
then, though at least all his ammunition had already been spent,
making for a much lighter load.

Three years had passed since then. Hurt World
One had kept Kaptu Z busy. Of all the wild life in captivity in
Asylum City, it was the residents who were wildest. Breeders,
gamblers, traders, killers, and when they grew too ugly in their
ways, people like Noice would come to Kaptu asking him to do
something about it. And it had to be Kaptu. Anyone else faced the
risk of provoking the wrath of Mayor Glutter, for he had his
fingers in many pies and was vicious in seeing his interests
protected. But what gave Kaptu protection was the amount of aid
money Glutter received from the United Nations, so much more than
he ever made in his side-businesses and it often came in the form
of New Dollars or gold bullion rather than the Asylum City Yen.
Glutter wouldn’t risk biting that hand. It did not mean Kaptu was
untouchable, however, simply that the mayor did not see any profit
in touching him up himself. Getting himself killed in the line of
duty was another thing altogether though and Glutter was sure it
was only a matter of time. He would have his fingers crossed
now.

The Meltman was the most dangerous of the
Asylum City gangsters. He was entirely ruthless and his reach
extended across the whole city: he made a point of gaining access
to anyone who slighted him, and of being in return nothing but a
shadow, of being nowhere, lost within the tunnels and hideouts that
centred in the Gibraltar and Basque zones and that webbed out into
an endless maze. Kaptu had not gone after him before because it
would have in turn driven him into the shadows as he braced himself
for lethal retaliation - and the only tunnels at his disposal would
have been those he dug in his head. He had seen the result of such
things often enough in the Asylum City police. Cops getting buried
so deep they became lost even to themselves - like disorientated
cavers who no longer knew which passageway would return them to the
surface. Asylum City had developed so many ways to shake the
shackles of reality, both lethal and non-lethal, that there had not
been a confirmed case of suicide in over twenty years. People would
slip away from themselves and just keep going. But Kaptu would hold
onto the surface just as tightly as he was the bridge.

He glanced down at the tracks he was centred
above. Sixty miles of it winding through the city, linking up the
Meltman’s many loan houses, massage parlors and gambling dens. A
train line without stations and that didn’t sell tickets. A
gangster without building permits and a track that even the Mayor
himself did not dare touch.

The train had arrived. Kaptu watched the
carriages speed under him in a blur and let go. Detecting the
sudden descent, his belt thrusters instantly activated. Originally
designed to protect the elderly from falls about the home, Kaptu
had modified his to provide an extra spurt of speed. It gave him
twenty seconds, but that was all he needed. He latched onto a roof
and quickly turned the thrusters off. If he was thrown from the
train, there just might have been enough power left in the
batteries to save a bone or two.

The Meltman Express was reaching speeds of
150 kilometres per hour, entering into the Ukrainian Sector with
its densely packed buildings and its grimy coal-burning factories.
The Meltman’s track was the newest piece of infrastructure in the
district, its shiny high-grade steel a stark contrast to the
crumbling roads and crumbling sidewalks that provided for general
use.

Someone was wailing in the carriage beneath
Kaptu. It sounded like Ukrainian. A forlorn male voice. It might
even have been singing.

And then the first of the snake monkeys came.
The creatures were genetically modified African chimpanzees bred
for extra strength agility and aggression. But it was the immensely
razor sharp teeth and toxic saliva that had earned the creatures
their name, that struck such fear in the heart of Asylum City. The
Meltman Express had two rear carriages set aside for them. Those
carriages were kept clean and well-stocked with fresh meats and
fruits - a standard of comfort the creditors crammed into their
filthy carriages with only stale refuse to eat could only dream of.
Kaptu pulled a long-blade from his military pants, seeing in this
particular snake monkey’s hateful glare every intention to attack,
its territorial instincts a burning fury.

Kaptu lunged across the roof to get in first.
His thrust was quick, though the snake monkey almost beat it with
its own lightning fast movement. Kaptu kicked the dead body off his
blade with the rancid smelling jaws just a few inches away from his
neck; he did it quickly, wanting to free up his blade for the next
one. But most importantly, he had to get to the black bear before
the snake monkeys had time to gather in numbers. That carriage was
also at the front, right behind the snake monkeys’.

Six carriages to cross. Kaptu moved in a
crouch. Another snake monkey charge resulted in another head being
decapitated. Kaptu, however, was not being fooled by these easy
victories: the snake monkeys’ more assured movement on the carriage
rooftops and their fearless approaches could easily have him
caught. In fact, it was inevitable if he did not hurry. War cries
were starting up in the snake monkey carriages at a volume to drown
out the poor wretched Ukrainian’s voice, underscoring how limited
was the time available to get the black bear.

The train rose high into a long loping bend
into the Norwegian Sector. The smells immediately became more
pungent and it was not simply to do with being downward of the
debtor carriages. The heyday of the Norwegian Sector had long since
passed as Norway recovered from the nuclear catastrophe of 2085 had
and asylum seekers were granted special permission to return home.
The once thriving community that was left behind consisted largely
of thieves, drug dealers, junkies and the mentally ill. The
Governor of Norway Town was herself all of these at once. Few
people wanted to live under her control and so the streets and
houses were largely abandoned: it made for the ideal spot on the
Meltman Express’s endless journey to eject a bear.

Kaptu felt he had gotten sufficiently used to
the rooftop conditions to make his advance upright and at full
speed. He leaned hard into the wind as he sprinted, leaping over
the gaps between carriages with a reckless intent.

More snake monkeys came at him. He slashed
through them until their numbers became too dense, prompting him to
stab his sword onto the roof beneath him as an anchor and going to
the laser-acid gun holstered to his chest. Practising one-handed
fire with the large weapon at the shooting range had always felt
like showing off but he appreciated the familiarity of the action
now. He spun one hundred and eighty degrees, mowing down a swath of
the deadly snake monkeys and sending the rest scurrying over the
edges. There was no doubt, however, that the snake monkeys would
regather and attack again.

Kaptu ran, leaping from carriage to carriage,
making quick progress along the train. But in a flash, a snake
monkey leapt up at his legs, tripping him up and setting itself to
plunge its grotesque yellow teeth into his side. Kaptu had braced
his fall with one hand, keeping his sword free for a defensive
swipe that had his entire body contorting with the effort. The
monkey caught the blade in the chest and was sliced clean in
two.

Kaptu recovered his balance in a kneeling
position and again drove his sword hard into the roof; this time he
activated the “can opener” function built into the sword and dived
for cover. The blade actioned into a drill, sinking down to the
hilt, and the explosion charge within punched a gaping hole into
the roof. Kaptu was caught closer than the stipulated distance for
detonation, leaving his body hot and bruised and his ears ringing
loudly. There was no time to try to shake it off, however, for even
with the ringing inside his ears, he could hear the snake monkeys
advancing along the sides of the carriage below. They came rushing
over the edges in a wave of savagely bared fangs. Kaptu dived head
first into the blast hole, plunging into a carriage that was dark
and smelled of animal - it wasn’t lost on Kaptu that the animal in
question was a large bear with a well-honed taste for human flesh.
He braced himself for the impact with the floor, and was pleasantly
surprised that a soft layer of straw was there to cushion the fall.
He tumbled awkwardly through it, catching as he went his first
glimpse of the massive bear. The creature was lying in a corner and
rose onto its hind legs, releasing a deep roar of displeasure at
Kaptu’s sudden intrusion. Kaptu fumbled to hand his tranquilizer
gun and turned it on the bear. His aim, however, was blocked by
pursuing snake monkeys as they descended through the roof’s blast
hole in a giant tangle. Kaptu had to refrain from unloading
laser-acid upon them for fear of hitting the bear. The bear, on the
other hand, set upon them without restraint, its long, razor sharp
claws cutting them to shreds. One of them was tossed Kaptu’s way,
flying backwards through the air. Kaptu picked it off with a single
shot, though suspected it was already dead. He took a step back and
flung a jelly flare onto the wall. The extra light revealed a
hideously blood soaked scene, the bear’s claws slicing through
whole bunches of snake monkeys in each swing. The last of the snake
monkeys were starting to cowering back, providing Kaptu with the
space to unleash the Death Queen’s quick-fire mode upon them.