Boche / Uzi Kahneman
Bolt / DFN Jefferson
Dr Klou / Echo Three
Dozer / Taka
Homo Superior No. 11 / Digger Dundee
Juan Sanzeros / Ludd
Kali Badami / Tanai Den’atsu
L.L. Bitters / Rick O’Shae
Lyncher Lee / Frankie LaPalma
Macbeth Madaki / Junior Du Preez
Marcus Halligan / Luthor Crispee
Quickdraw Quilton / El Carnicero
Sunni Skyez / Alucard
Talons / Dr Martina Hart
Wilhelm Schrei / Mahmet Adani
“Righto, Homer, game on, my old son.” Digger said, “They have our location just like we’ve got theirs. They’re going to be hunting for us if we don’t get on top of them first, let’s move out.”
The two of them descended down the side of the overpass. Ribbons of concrete made up the roads and branches of the interchange, clogged with hundreds of dusty, battered cars and trucks. They were left from when people fled the city in the early days of the war. When checkpoints had shut down their movement, people would have streamed out on foot. The cars were still filled with electronics, suitcases full of clothing, food supplies, and other loot that couldn’t be carried and that no one had returned for.
Digger kept his eyes open for other contestants, H&K UMP45 ready. He also hadn’t forgotten the host mentioning there were other dangers, unique threats in all the different sections. Part of him wanted a run-in with one or the other, a bloodthirsty part. The kid, however, made things more complicated. The other teams were all in pairs, almost all deadly individuals in their own rights, but Homer was only a liability as far as Digger could tell. If the kid got killed, Digger would soon follow. For now, Digger decided to avoid a battle if he could. Part of his reasoning at least derived from the fact they had landed in a section with no mutants, only other soldiers. Men who Digger respected for their deadly abilities if nothing else.
Down the bottom of the overpass’ on-ramp, Digger came across cars and other vehicles strewn with hundreds of bullet holes. Broken glass littered the dusty asphalt. A battle that had taken place years ago, long before the arena walls went up. A couple of dirty mounds by the cars Digger realised were dessicated corpses in tan uniforms. Digger bent and scooped up a helmet from one of the bodies. Its skull came away from the neck with a papery tear, the helmet strap running under its chin. Digger upturned the helmet and the skull fell out along with a handful of dust. Clearing out the last particles by banging the top with his fist, Digger then wiped it and revealed the letters ‘U.N.’ in pale blue on the white of the helmet.
“Come here, mate.” Digger said.
Homer obeyed and Digger rested the helmet on top of his head. He did up the strap under the boy’s chin but the helmet was far too big for him, and slipped down over the boy’s ears.
“There we go, maybe that’ll keep your brains in between your ears, where they’re meant to be.” Digger said, “Even if those brains are already a bit scrambled.”
A metallic grating sound caught Digger’s attention in the silence of the endlessly stalled traffic. Past the low concrete wall in the middle of the freeway. Gears grated and a sound like metal footsteps clanged. An old truck marked ‘Soylent Cola: For a Taste of Life!’ had been left by the side of the freeway. Its ramp was down and lying in the road. Footsteps echoing, a hulking shadow moved out of the belly of the truck and swivelled towards Digger and Homer.
“Bloody hell.” Digger said.
The shape was that of an old military mech, moving on two robotic, chickenlike legs. The mech was dusty and the noise it made when it walked was like it needed oil, like it had been left in the arena for years. The mech’s body was bulky and armoured, painted desert tan. Two small arms dangled from under its angular head, dotted with cameras for eyes. What Digger really noticed, however, was the minigun mounted off to one side on the mech’s back. That gun could have made all the bullet holes riddling the cars nearby, and the corpses of the two soldiers lying in the dust. For a moment, the mech seemed to be assessing whether they were a threat or not.
“Big, angry chook!” Digger said, “Move it!”
The mech’s minigun barrels began to spin. Digger threw himself to the side and hit Homer, knocking them both to the ground. They landed under the low concrete barricade as the minigun started thundering, the hammering blasts cutting across the quiet of the arena. Bullets chewed chips out of the top edge of the concrete barrier and drilled into the surrounding cars. Digger pushed Homer to keep moving, crawling back the way they had come.
The mech emerged fully from the Soylent Cola truck, clanking down the ramp. It paused for a moment, smoking muzzles twirling, as it circled around. Digger got to his feet and fired his submachine gun. The UMP45 fired powerful .45 ACP rounds, recoil thumping Digger’s shoulder. The slugs screamed off the mech’s heavy armour without leaving a scratch.
Digger adjusted his aim, a couple of bullets punching through the lenses of the mech’s face but not making much of a difference. The mech opened up with another roaring tear as Digger dropped. Rounds chewed through metal and concrete, smoke filling the air. The mech must have been part of the unique threat in that section of the arena, and there was probably more than one. Digger’s SMG was useless against the military war machine. It advanced on the pair, goose stepping around wrecks and getting ready to climb across the freeway barricade.
“Come on, Homer! Let’s go!” Digger said.
Digger pushed Homer forward. The two of them raced through the vehicles and off to the side of the on-ramp. Rather than head back up the overpass, Digger ducked around it and put the ramp between them and the military mech.
Under the overpass was a sprawl of ruined ground, littered with chain link fencing and trash. Ahead of them was what looked like a small factory. As the gunfire stopped, Digger could still hear grinding gears and heavy footsteps as the mech followed them. He pushed Homer on ahead, glancing back over his shoulder every few seconds. The white helmet jostled on Homer’s head.
“Head for the building, mate! We need to get away from that fucking tin chicken.” Digger said.
Chapter Six
“My name’s Randy Liebowitz, and I’m a motherfucking centaur.”
Pull back on Randy Liebowitz. He is a centaur.
“People ask me, Randy Liebowitz, why turn yourself into a centaur? Aren’t you worried about what people will think? Don’t folks look at you like some kind of freak? Do you have difficulty with stairs and buildings with low ceilings?”
Randy Liebowitz charges down a sporting field, empty stands stretching away into a void. His magnificent flank ripples as his four equine legs tear up clods of grass. Whipping in the wind, he is wearing a purple and green jersey with ‘LIEBOWITZ 12’ stencilled on the back.
“If being the goddamn best there is was easy, then everyone would do it. I’m an athlete. I top out at eighty Ks an hour and I’m fucking unstoppable. I’ve got a cock like a kindergartener’s arm and testicles the size of motherfucking avocados.”
One of Randy Liebowitz’s forelimbs lashes out and kicks a football. It sails through the air and tumbles perfectly through a couple of goalposts, stretching high over the field. Each of Randy Liebowitz’s hooves are clad in specially made leather booties, laced up to support his fetlocks. All four bear a distinctive swooshing tick.
Nike.
Just Do It.™
To the northeast, three more teams had landed in the Towers section. DFN Jefferson and the man called Bolt came down among the buildings of the abandoned business district. Their GPS-guided parachutes swung sadistically close to skyscrapers, almost skimming the pair off their sheer surfaces. They came down in an empty side street near the main road, chutes flapping behind them.
DFN and Bolt collected the weapons selected for them from a pair of beeping crates. DFN or Death From Nowhere Jefferson was a sniper in a former life. A compact woman with dark skin, black hair and stern features.
The right side of her face was dominated by a military grade artificial eye. A thick band of metal wrapped around her temple and surrounded her eye socket. The eye itself had been replaced by a glowing green lens that jutted from her face. Her crate contained a lightweight rifle, long and thin with a box magazine. She unfolded it and extended the stock against her shoulder. Bolt’s case gave him a couple of small stun pistols, shiny and white with guards that looped over Bolt’s knuckles. DFN studied the tall buildings surrounding them.
“This is my kind of territory.” DFN said, “Move out.”
Buildings and roads were cratered and blasted from missile strikes and artillery. Rubble littered the streets along with the occasional abandoned car. The wreckage was strewn with thick vines and a jungle of hardy, mutant plants that hung from buildings and overhangs, filling their entryways. DFN and Bolt moved to one office tower, its windows blown out. The sniper acted as a scout while Bolt fidgeted and darted around her.
Bony and vaguely Egyptian, Bolt had a build like a strung-out junkie but with stringy muscles covering his arms and legs. His ratty beard was unkempt along with his black and curly hair. He was wearing a lightly armoured yellow jacket covered in tags and zippers. Bolt didn’t look too impressive but as they reached the office building he suddenly split away in a blur of motion that made DFN jump. The man moved like a hummingbird, darting across the lobby with his feet hardly seeming to touch the ground. He didn’t just sprint across the room, Bolt could swivel and turn on a dime at superhuman speed. DFN had seen it before, up on the ship, but was still amazed. She hadn’t had much experience with mutants or genetic experiments during the African Bio-Wars, not up close. Seeing Bolt use his abilities made her anxious. DFN kept him covered as he raced across the lobby almost faster than the eye could follow.
“Watch for traps! Be careful!” DFN said.
“You mean like this that I clocked as soon as we stepped through the door?” Bolt said.
Bolt’s words came out in a breathless stream of syllables. Standing across the room, he lobbed a boxy, lunchbox-sized object at DFN. The sniper traded her rifle awkwardly to one hand, catching the box with her other one. ‘FRONT TOWARD ENEMY’ read the raised letters across the face of the object. A Claymore mine, old fashioned and, knowing Slayerz, probably on some kind of delay timer, but still potentially deadly. Seven hundred ball bearings set in 680 grams of C4 plastic explosive on a concave plate, being caught in front of one was like being caught by the world’s largest shotgun blast.
“Are you crazy? What the hell do you think you’re doing?” DFN said.
“Relax stick with me alright?” Bolt said.
Bolt picked up a metal chair. A couple of old vending machines were lined up against the wall of the lobby. Swinging the chair into one vending machine in a blur of motion, he battered it until the machine’s glass imploded.
“I’m starving they gave me a hyperactive metabolism as well as overclocked my reaction speeds so I can just about waste away while I’m standing up if I’m not careful can’t just wait around for the next food drop I’ve got to find something to fuel up you know?” Bolt said.
As he spoke, Bolt scooped candy bars and bags of snacks out of the remains of the machine. His hands flashed as he stuffed candy into his flapping mouth.
“That stuff is years old.” DFN said.
“I’ll take my chances in here I don’t think it’s going to matter much I’m fast enough to outrun all those other guys but I don’t know about you.” Bolt said.
“Upstairs.” DFN said.
They found a perfect place for a sniper nest upstairs. DFN crawled on her belly up to the blown-out window of one of the many deserted offices. The scope of her lightweight rifle plugged into her artificial eye. Overlooking the main thoroughfare, the lip of the windowsill gave DFN a commanding view over half of Towers. Across the road and down the block was a large mall called Diamond Plaza. DFN could even see across the nearest wall into the section called City Center.
“Now what are we doing?” Bolt said.
“We wait.” DFN said.
xXx
After leaving the airship and parachuting to the ground, Lyncher Lee and Frankie LaPalma landed in Shantytown. Most buildings were little more than tin shacks but they formed a maze throughout that part of the arena. Piles of old trash were heaped between shacks, rotting away to nothing. In the southernmost part of the section, shacks and trash blended together until there was nothing but a huge garbage dump, stretching all the way to the wall. Frankie stripped off his parachute.
“I can’t believe you threw me out of that goddamn thing!” Frankie said.
“Shut up, unless you’d rather be part of that.” Lyncher said.
Lyncher pointed to the mushroom cloud created by the aircraft carrier’s fusion engine explosion. It stretched skyward past the arena walls. Before LaPalma could argue, a low, insistent beeping attracted them to their crates. They scanned the pair’s faces then hissed open. Frankie pulled an old fashioned Thompson submachine gun and several round drums of ammunition out of his crate. The wooden furnishings on the gun were stained dark. It was heavy enough that Frankie struggled to hold the gun aloft as he loaded it. Lyncher took a moment and then lifted out a strange object that looked almost like a scrunched up ball of thin scaffolding.
“What the fuck is that?” Frankie said.
Lyncher Lee jerked the strange object downward and it unfolded, extending into a skeletal, vaguely humanoid shape. The device, a high-tech exoskeleton, was made from thin but incredibly strong struts. Lyncher jammed her foot into the footwell of one leg. The scaffolding clamped around her boot and started to climb her calf. Stepping forward, she allowed the exoskeleton to grip her other leg and climb the rest of her body in an oddly organic way, like metallic ivy. It attached itself to her exotic-looking body armour, outfit and exoskeleton clearly designed to go together, and wrapped itself around her arms like binding. Once the exoskeleton was complete, struts of thin, white metal crisscrossed Lyncher’s entire body and only left her head and neck free.
“What is that supposed to do?” Frankie said.
Lyncher moved with a gentle mechanical purr toward the nearest solid building. A crumbly concrete wall faced her, covered in graffiti. Lyncher drew her arm back and punched. A loop of white metal covered her knuckles to protect them as her fist slammed into the building. A spider web broke out across the concrete, and concrete chunks fell away from the centre. Clearly the lightweight exoskeleton greatly enhanced the MMA fighter’s strength and power.
“Oh, shit.” Frankie said.
“Let’s move.” Lyncher said.
Fixing the strap of the Tommygun around one shoulder, Frankie stroked the broken section of the wall and looked back at Lyncher nervously. Two camera drones appeared to watch over the pair. Lyncher looked down at her bracelet, a gap in the exoskeleton allowing her to check the screen. Powered armour purring, Lyncher bent at the knees and jumped. She leapt easily to the top of a wall two metres off the ground and surveyed their surroundings.
xXx
Meanwhile, in the easternmost section of Suburbia, Dr Klou and his partner, Echo Three, had already collected their weapons and were on the move. Camera drones floated behind them. Although it was closest to the Shantytown section, the middle and upper class neighbourhoods that made up Suburbia would have been separated from that part of the city by walls even during pre-war times. Houses around them had been mostly untouched by war. Large, white homes of various styles of architecture stood behind tall gates. Whole communities looked like they had been evacuated only yesterday and there was no sign of trash or rubble in the streets. Much of the menial labour in a place like this would have been performed by droids before the war and it seemed like, even years after the fact, some of those droids and automated systems were still running. Even the lawns of different homes created a curious checkerboard. Some yards and gardens were brown and long-dead, leaving only dust after years of baking in the African sun, while others w
ere green and freshly cut, glistening with moisture.
“We have to avoid the others at all costs.” Klou said, “Follow my orders and maybe you will get out of here with your pretty little head intact.”
“Don’t do that anymore.” Echo Three replied, “Don’t follow anyone’s orders.”
Tall and rangy, Echo Three was a young woman in her early twenties, white, with dark blondish hair. Like Homo Superior No. 11, or Homer, her background was that of a failed science experiment. The legacy of those experiments showed down the left side of her skull. On the right side, her hair was long enough to hang loosely down to her neck but the left side had been shaved. Half a dozen metal sockets each roughly the size of a quarter were embedded in her scalp and drilled all the way through her skull. They looked like the kind of socket audio equipment could be plugged into, but bigger. She was dressed in jeans and a white shirt under black body armour, and carried a basic red fire axe as a weapon.
“Quatsch, if we are going to live longer than five minutes in here, you little idiot, we have to work together.” The German doctor said, “And that means you working for me.”
Klou was also tall and narrow, with a beakish face and thinning hair. He was carrying a laser rifle, a much more dangerous weapon than Echo’s axe but not as powerful as some of the weapons the other contestants had been given. Of course, Klou also had his own weapon in the form of his mutant arm. Covered in hard, diamond-shaped scales, the arm was pitch black while Klou’s own complexion was a pasty white, slightly longer than his right arm and ending in fingers with curved talons. Klou might have been a scientist, not a fighter, but he wasn’t to be underestimated.
Kill Switch: Final Season Page 6
