by Andy Remic
“That’s a Mammoth Mk13,” said Franco, voice quiet, reverent, almost unheard over the still crackling fire below.
Keenan nodded. “No flesh shall be spared,” he said. “That’s some damn hardware.”
Belching thick smoke, the tank thundered from the street, engine reverberations booming between towering blocks. Quad tracks ate rubble, mounted a ground car and crushed it easily into a pancaked bean tin with organic squeals.
“The thing is, can it get through the armoured doors below?” said Franco.
“Maybe not on its own,” said Keenan. “But look.”
As the Mammoth Mk13 rumbled onto the plaza, churning plastic grass and mowing down small trees, from the smoke of its inelegant wake came another Mammoth, then another, another, until six units spread out and halted, rumbling, twelve guns pointing directly at The Great Malkovitch Library.
“Haha,” said Franco, without a smile. “I think it was time we made a sharp exit.”
“How the hell did zombies learn to drive tanks?”
“Remembered genetics?” said Franco.
Keenan looked at him sideways. “That’s quite good. For you.”
“Hey, I’m not just some uncouth, misogynistic, beer-drinking, heterosexual power-house, with no appreciation of the finer points of science, literature and art.” He farted. “Am I?”
“You could have fooled me,” said Keenan, eyeing the tanks. He glanced at Xakus. “You mentioned a back door? A way out?”
The tanks revved, and suddenly one fired, rocking on heavy suspension. Twin booms filled the plaza, and 250mm armour-piercing shells slammed across the clearing and connected with the library. The building shook. High up, stones detached from roof ledges and clattered like cobble rain around the group. They sprinted back to the sanctuary of the interior, and Xakus nodded as more shells smacked the library and the world was filled with noise and violence and heavy metal aggression.
“It’s not exactly a back door,” shouted Xakus over the screams of fire and detonation. “But MICHELLE will help us escape.”
“Who’s Michelle?” shouted Franco.
“You’ll see!”
The library was in chaos, pounded by the six tanks. The front of the building was crumbling, disintegrating under a howling onslaught. Outside, zombies were clawing at the rubble... a little too eagerly, for the tanks continued to fire and many zombies were blasted to merge with stones and marble. As the group sped back down ramps to ground level where the main doors—incredibly— were still holding, although battered and limp and allowing flames to lick through, so more explosions rocked the building and several flaming zombies were catapulted through gaps leaving flaming trails through the air to connect with walls, limp and bloody, and rolling to a stop where they set scattered books alight. The group of aged academics had a quick conference, leaning on shotguns, and Keenan glanced from the old men to Xakus.
“What’s going on? We need to move.”
“They will not leave.”
“That’s crazy,” snapped Keenan. “This place is about to be overrun!” Even as he spoke, they could hear zombies dragging at the flaming debris stacked against the building. Many zombies caught fire, and blazed merrily through the gaps in the armoured doors. Not one screamed.
One old man, with wispy white hair and watery, rheumy old eyes, glared at Keenan. He loaded a D4 shotgun with liver-spotted hands, and grinned with a mouth of missing teeth. “Just because we’re old, doesn’t mean we don’t still have fire! You young ‘uns get gone, MICHELLE couldn’t carry us all anyway... we will stay here, protect the library... protect the books.” He looked incredibly sad, for a moment. “We won’t let those bastards burn ‘em. This ain’t nineteen-forty-four.”
Keenan nodded, filled with a sadness and respect as the old academics formed a shuffling line and readied themselves for the zombie charge. Again, bombs rocked the building. Debris smashed and splattered from armoured doors, revealing widening gaps through which the zombies started to squeeze, grey-flesh hands brandishing machine guns and pistols. The line of old academics opened fire, decimating the first row of snarling zombies...
“Time to go,” said Franco, softly.
Keenan nodded. “Xakus?”
“Follow me.”
They ran, back through narrow, wood-lined corridors which smelt strongly of musty old tomes. Thick carpets lined the way, and ancient oil paintings hung at intervals, stern faces staring down disapprovingly at the fleeing group.
“What did he mean, nineteen-forty-four?”
Xakus gave a cold smile. “Only the insane burn books,” panted the old black man, stopping for a moment, sweat rolling down his face. “Give me a moment, lads, I’m not used to all this excitement.”
“Is this back door at the back?” said Franco.
“A classic question,” said Keenan.
“Actually, no,” said Xakus. “It’s beneath us.”
“Not back to the tunnels!” groaned Franco.
“This is something different,” said Xakus.
They ran on, as gunfire and screams echoed behind. The zombies had flooded the library’s foyer, many leaping past the old men who had formed a circle of guns, and were killing with ancient cackles and the madness of the doomed.
Zombies spilled into corridors and lecture halls, storage rooms and high-ceilinged halls. They galloped, teeth gnashing, and several picked up the strong scent of brains and fresh meat...
Xakus stopped by a keypad in the wall. His gnarled hand flickered, and the floor suddenly opened at their feet, a ramp hissing down into a subterranean vault on heavy hydraulics. Lights glittered into life as the group peered down at what appeared to be an underground runway.
“MICHELLE’S down there?” asked Franco, peering warily into the ice-chilled gloom.
“Follow me.”
They were alerted by snarls and moans, and Keenan and Franco whirled, guns booming and cracking. Two charging zombies were caught in the hail, smashed up and back, limbs flailing as black blood and pus splattered out in an arcing gore rainfall. Behind, more zombies were advancing, yellow eyes narrowed, broken teeth bared in menacing snarls.
“Get moving!” roared Keenan, as his Techrim destroyed a zombie’s head and sent cubes of skull thumping across plush carpet.
“We’ve got a problem,” said Knuckles, voice edged with a filigree of panic.
Keenan glanced back at their escape route, down the long metal ramp to where tiny lights flickered like stars. At the bottom, standing patiently, were the three alloy GK AIs, thin gloss black limbs motionless, matt black eyes fixed on the group above. Keenan’s mouth dropped. The three GKs spread apart, the central one drawing twin yukana swords from metal sheaths on its back. The one to the left suddenly sprouted a thousand gleaming, shimmering needles which rippled across alloy limbs and back and head. The one to the right transformed arms and legs into long killing blades which clattered at the foot of the ramp, kicking up sparks.
“Holy duck shit!” boomed Franco, as a flood of zombies from behind, punching and kicking and snarling and scratching, fought one another to get down the corridor leading to the stinking stench of pumping meaty brain...
Keenan stood, frozen, between hammer and anvil.
The spiked AI’s eyes swivelled to lock on Keenan. A moment passed between them—in which Keenan felt himself totally ensnared, fixated by a graceful example of a beautifully advanced prototype technology. In a simple, measured, elegant female voice, the AI spoke.
322 Biohell
“Combat K.” She seemed to smile, giving a single nod, glossy hydraulic jaws hissing as they worked in a sad mimicry of human speech. “It’s time to retire.”
~ * ~
CHAPTER 10
HURT
Melanie rocked back on her haunches, watching the children who had gathered round the small fire on the rooftop of the Happy Friendly Sunshine Assurance Company. They were singing softly, a lilting ballad led by Little Megan, with Skull and Glass crooning in the
background as Sammy tapped out a rhythm on an old tin can with a long, dangerous looking stiletto dagger. Drool pooled from Mel’s distended jaws, ran down her chin, and formed a long, sticky umbilical to the floor. She glanced down. There was a large oval puddle, from the recent torrential opening of the heavens, and Mel shuffled herself to the pool and gazed at herself. One taloned hand lifted, the arm slim and wiry, skin a mottled dark brown and spotted with black, rippled and corrugated in places as if her own skin didn’t quite fit her, like a badly oversized rubber jacket. Her skin was slick with grease, and it shone. Her small black eyes moved down the shimmering reflection of her own body, past the obscenely dangling breasts with massive, pus-oozing nipples, to the angular and bony disjointed legs with knees that worked the wrong way and large, flapping, taloned feet. And then she gazed at her face, and let out a little whimper through her stepped-out lower jaw. Her head, small and round and hairless, sat atop a long neck with crackling armour plating.
What am I? she thought.
You are Melanie.
What have I become?
You have always been this way...
No, no, I was different. Before. I was a... woman. A human. With white flesh and long brown hair and gentle eyes. She closed her tiny black pin-pricks and focused internally. Somewhere, in her confused and raging skull, an image forced itself clear of the mire of hunger and hatred and blood-red rage; Mel concentrated on that image, held it strong in her mind, and holding its hand brought it to the fore of consciousness. She could see herself. As she had been. When she was...
Normal.
I was normal.
So what am I now?
Her eyes opened, neck crackling as her head moved and lowered, staring into a rippled reflection of organic horror.
I am a monster, she realised with shock.
I have become a deviant.
Sorrow washed through Mel, and she felt herself slipping down a slick greased slope into the broiling pot of turmoil and anger and hatred. Grinding her teeth, her stepped-out lower jaw clacking, she dragged herself back up the mental slope and touched again a world of humanity, a world of remembrance, a world of normality.
So... what happened? How did I come to this?
She remembered her job. A tax inspector. She smiled. It was so gratifying.
And she remembered...
Mel frowned. Francis. Her boyfriend. Her lover. The man she wanted to...
Marry.
Where had he gone? Had he abandoned her?
Melanie felt tears well within her mottled, distended breast, and she breathed deep, triple lungs rasping air through teeth more titanium than bone. Memories danced just out of reach. Images, blurred, of a childhood, of friends, of a job, a love-life. Emotions raged within her, and she felt herself slipping back into an uncontrollable pit of rage and despair... where a demon lived, a demon that wasn’t her, filled with the need to hunt and feed and rip and tear and kill...
“Mel?” It was Little Megan. She touched Mel’s grooved talons; tenderly, like a child touching its mother. “What are you doing sitting here all by yourself? Come over to the fire, where it’s warm.”
Mel nodded, eased herself to her feet and towered over the tiny girl. She lolled to the fire and all the children glanced up, smiling as they huddled together. Little Megan patted a space on the ground and Mel squeezed beside the kids, feeling huge and cumbersome, ungainly and suddenly very, very ugly.
Who did this to me? she thought idly, as the singing resumed.
Who changed me into this horrorshow?
Little Megan rested her head against Mel’s arm, ignoring the slick grease on the deviant’s skin. The orphan girl gave a little sigh and closed her eyes, and Mel started to croon, a lilting noise that rose in volume and joined with the children’s sad, steady rhythm. And Mel sang, sang to the sky, sang to the stars, sang to the children, a song without words and yet which conveyed emotion—that of love, and sympathy, and sorrow; a song about loneliness murmured in dreams; a song about life. And, ultimately, death.
Mel did not know that she’d fallen asleep, only that she awoke.
The fire had gone out, was nothing more than glowing embers, lava etched on charcoal. Her nostrils twitched, at the woodsmoke, and at... something else. Something alien to her surroundings.
She scanned the group. The children slept, peaceful, breathing deeply in their little comfort circle. Peaceful, at rest, safe in the knowledge that they were protected by an eight-foot deviant mutation who had successfully battled zombies and expelled them from the Happy Friendly Sunshine Assurance Company.
But, ultimately, how much am I like the enemy? thought Mel.
Am I a zombie... as well? Am I undead? A non-person? An eater of brains and flesh?
She frowned. More and more human thoughts were starting to cascade through a mind she now acknowledged as bestial and base. What was happening? Was she learning? Learning to be human again?
There came a tiny sound, of steel on wood. Her head slammed left—and there, not ten feet away, crouched a man. He was bulky, tall, his face aged but handsome, with neat black hair and a neat black beard. But his eyes were hooded, brown, bottomless windows to a soul twisted with pain and degradation.
The man smiled. “Hello, Melanie.”
“Grwllllll!”
“Do not be alarmed.” The man was holding a stick and a knife. Again, he shaved a sliver from the stick, watched it curl to the floor, then tested the point of sharpened wood with his thumb.
Mel wanted to say, what do you want? I warn you, I’ll rip off your head, rip out your spleen, chew through your face and spit out your eyes! But the rage waned, and something cold settled across her soul. The man exuded power. And his eyes... his flesh was young, the prime of health and youth. But his eyes were old.
The man tutted, and glanced down at the length of wood in his powerful, thick-fingered hands. “It’s a very great shame it has come to this, Melanie. You do not know me... only of me. You are the pretty, transmogrified girlfriend of Franco Haggis. Franco Haggis has done me a very great harm. However, it is you I seek. And you have been very difficult to track down.”
Mel surged to her feet, talons clacking, but the man put his finger to his lips. His old eyes were smiling. “Shh. Be calm, my sweet. This won’t take long.”
From out of nowhere three Apache F52 Gunships roared from the false horizon of the skyscraper’s roof, veering up from their rapid smashing vertical ascent and dropping, levelling, engines screaming and groaning with leashed power behind the brown-eyed man. He stood smoothly, tossing away the stick and sheathing his knife beneath his coat. He placed hands in pockets, coat tails flapping in the awesome downdraught of three thrumming, enraged war machines with miniguns primed. Mel took a step back, glanced down at the sleeping children who were stirring now, and gave a growl so deep and guttural it went unheard.
The Apaches disgorged a swarm of Battle SIMs, heavily armed and armoured, mechanical eyes glowing faintly as boots hit the ground with synchronised thuds. Their armour clicked and whistled, like a platoon of insects; the SIMs spread out behind the man.
“Forgive me.” He smiled, but not with his eyes. “I am being rude. Let me introduce myself. I am Mr Voloshko. I own The Hammer Syndicate, one of the seven largest ruling conglomerates on this decadent and rocky ball of shit. You have been a very naughty girl, Melanie.”
Mel launched herself in rapid acceleration to the attack, talons up and hammering in a dark arc for Voloshko’s throat. He flipped to one side with surprising agility for one so large, and five of the SIMs lowered broad-barrelled guns... and fired.
No bullets, but TitaniumMesh, a living, organic biomerge of wire and AI threads. It ensnared a suddenly growling, hissing, thrashing, struggling Mel. Her talons lashed out, but could not penetrate the fibres. Sparks crackled along web circuits. The TitaniumMesh stung her, and she yelped, a base canine sound as five layers merged and slid and oozed and tightened. They slid around her struggling, slapping body, cons
tricting her; within seconds she fell, her limbs pinned to her sides, her head locked in a vicelike grip.
There was a slap as she hit the rooftop.
Voloshko strode forward, leant down, ran his hand along Mel’s trapped jaw. Then he turned to the SIMs, waved them in. “Take her back to Hammer HQ.”
SIMs ran forward and hooked the TitaniumMesh to an Apache. Rotors thrummed, engines roaring, and the machine leapt into the air. Cables pulled taut, and Mel was hoisted violently up, away from the roof of the skyscraper, into the freezing cold of sudden high altitude.
She gazed down at the children. Watched Voloshko turn his back on the waking group, and glance purposefully at the emotionless group of insectile Battle SIMs. He smiled a broad smile, showing a single gold incisor.
