by Andy Remic
"Why, Emelda? What did I do to you? Why do you hate me?"
"You fucking burnt witch, we want you to die, we hate you, hate your stupid little bitch face and stupid little burnt-stick arms and legs."
There was no reason. Something clicked inside Pippa.
She smiled, even as Emelda slapped her a stinging blow across the face, making skin smart with an imprint of fat, red, crooked fingers, making blood trickle from a split lip and Pippa's eyes turned triumphant in a cold, analysing, grey glow.
"Burn the witch?" she whispered, understanding flooding her, and she struck the match and threw it into Emelda's frizzy hair in one swift movement. Emelda's hair was a monstrosity of curled hair filled with hairspray. Flammable. Her head went up like an inferno, curls crisping and Emelda screaming like... like a live pig on a spit.
Pippa smiled as Emelda rolled around on the floor, screaming, trying desperately to put out her blazing hair. None of her friends helped. They backed away, like the cowards they were, and faded into the shadows for eternity.
Pippa stood, watching Emelda squirm, head tilted to one side, eyes bright, screams now gone as her lips melted, her skin melted, but the eyes were there, would always be there, watching her, haunting her...
Now, Pippa blinked.
Now, her own eyes were bright. She rubbed at them savagely, and rolled her shoulders, feeling the scar tissue stretch. She'd stopped moving, was frozen to the spot, nostrils twitching at the scent of burnt flesh. She heard sobbing, distant, muffled, and padded forward between huge stacks of industrial containers... unsure of what she might find. Emerging from between teetering stacks she found the containers arranged in a large square, and within the square was set up an emergency field hospital with perhaps fifty benches. Each bench contained a burn victim; men, women, even children; most had entire bodies scorched, skin blackened, arms stretching out with crooked fingers, faces contorted in hot fire agony and painted by patches of colour, raw pink, angry red, charcoal black. Pippa gasped. Amongst these many victims ran three nurses, tall, slender, with peroxide-blonde hair and cherry-red lips. They did not complain, they simply hurried about, administering jabs and offering support with soothing voices and calming smiles.
Pippa moved forward, and one of the nurses turned. "You! Help, over here! Please!"
Pippa slung her D5 across her back and hurried towards the nurse. With a fire-dry throat, eyes wide as she took in the flame-carnage, she croaked, "What do you want me to do?"
"Here, inject them with this."
"Painkillers?"
"Yes."
Pippa moved amongst the wounded, the scarred, the burnt, the desecrated. Bacon lips pleaded for help, whimpered in agony, screamed and croaked with fear, but it was the eyes, the eyes were the worst, the pleading in deep, watery depths. Pippa came upon a young girl, six years old, her back savagely burnt, her limbs moving in exaggerated slowness as if she swam through the air, as if trying to crawl away from the pain, the burning, which had ravaged her. It's me, thought Pippa, tears streaming down her own face. It's me!
"Help me," said the little girl, and Pippa gave her an injection but could see that it did little to relieve the pain. "Please, please help me." She was weeping, the burnt husk of her body shaking as sobs wracked her skeletal, pork-crisp frame.
Pippa gave her a second injection, and the girl slumped forward. Pippa felt a nurse's hand on her shoulder. Cherry-red lips tickled her ear. "You'll have to kill that one, pretty. She's beyond our help." No, Pippa wanted to scream, she's not beyond help, I can help her, I can save her and she was back there, in the fire with the flames ravaging over her and she was back there, watching Emelda squirming on the floor trying vainly, and with slow weakening struggles, to put out the fire in her own hair as the skin on her face melted like hot wax and the whole merged and blended until Pippa screamed, long and harsh, and jabbed the hypodermic, delivering a sweet injection of euthanasia.
"Well done," said the nurse. She pointed. "Now the next."
Pippa moved on, killing the burnt husks, the damaged beings, one by one by one until she reached the end of the row. Then she turned, and came down the next row, delivering her injections of mercy and crisped body after burnt husk slumped to the benches, sighing, expiring, and Pippa was crying, sobbing, weeping openly as she murdered and murdered but this was right, wasn't it? This was the right thing to do, because these people were dying, dying slow horrible deaths under slaughter of the flame and she had the power of life and death in her hands, she had the power of...
God.
Pippa finished at the last row, and the final body slumped, dead, to the cool flat bench. Weeping, Pippa looked up, and felt suddenly that something was wrong. The three peroxide nurses were stood together, on the other side of the space, huddled together, watching her with suspicious eyes.
"We should call you the Goddess of Mercy," said one, voice deeply sardonic.
"You are a Killer, that's for sure," said the second.
"A Bringer of Death," said the third.
"I was helping them!" shouted Pippa, "I was putting them out of their misery!"
"Are you happy to be alive, fucker?" snarled the first nurse, peroxide curls bobbing.
"Maybe somebody should have put you out of your misery."
"If that fireman hadn't arrived, you would have been toast."
"Roast pork Pippa."
"Cooked toddler-girl."
"Fried female eunuch."
"Burn the witch," said the first nurse. They started to move, walking slowly through the aisles, spreading out, and Pippa became aware of movement, from around the space, as between the containers emerged more nurses, hundreds of nurses with their smart, tight, white uniforms, their bulges of generous belly and bosom, their peroxide-blonde hair and cherry-red lips only now, now they didn't look so pretty with their curled claws and blackened teeth stumps and glittering, feral eyes which set them apart, a million miles apart, from the human...
"Burn the witch," they chanted, crooked croaks rising in volume as they swarmed towards her like a plague, "burn the witch, burn the witch, burn the witch!"
Pippa screamed, covering her ears, then dragged her D5 shotgun from her back and blasted a nurse from her feet. She accelerated backwards, a flailing rag doll, a hole through her midriff showing burnt and blackened intestines. The nurses opened mouths, and flames curled from pink eel tongues, flames burned in their eyes and every single nurse was on fire, on fire within and Pippa tried to back away between the benches but there was no escape, no retreat, nowhere to run that the burning nurses could not follow. They had her cornered, a rat in a corner, a fish in a net, a six-year-old girl in a burning room with no help, no rescue, no love, simply waiting to die.
"I don't want to die," sobbed the six-year-old Pippa.
As she waited for the flames to come.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CRASH & BURN
"Wait!" hissed Pippa. "No. I won't let it end like this. I won't die like this. I won't fucking kill like this!" Tears streamed down her ashen face, and she threw her weapon to the ground. "I will not fight you," she said, voice a hoarse whisper.
The nurses surged up to her, their breath fire, flames curling from lips, and their hands touched Pippa, caressed her, stroked her hair and body and she gave herself to them, no longer caring, and she knew, deep in her soul, she should never have burned Emelda, it was wrong, it was evil, and now she stayed her hand, did not toss the match into Emelda's hair, instead taking the beating and crawling home, weeping, for revenge could never be the right way.
Pippa breathed, deeply. She opened her eyes. Stared into the burning, glowing orbs of the nurses.
"I will not fight you," she growled. "Do your worst."
She closed her eyes, and waited for death, but opened them again as she felt the nurses retreating. The benches were gone, leaving a large cool space, and in the middle of the area something glittered on the matt floor. Pippa walked forward, and knelt, and picked up the single match.
She smiled.
And felt a great weight lift from her heart.
Everything was noise and chaos. An eternal tumbling of worlds, planets clashing, smashing, colliding, a roaring and twisting and bashing of steel, stone, concrete, all rushing and clashing together in a madness. She threw up her hands as the insanity took her, and was pulverised by the chaos, battered and bashed, torn, pulled down in a rabid violence which left her totally stunned.
Gradually, the roaring subsided. It was an avalanche in reverse, starting fast and gradually decelerating through smashes and cracks, until only occasional concussive booms detonated the silence. Then there were more cracks, and bangs, and the trickling of dust which seemed to go on for a long, long time, so long she wondered if her breathing space might fill with dust and fine debris; suffocate her with a liquid solid.
And then... silence.
A period of time passed, but she was concussed, battered from a very great height. She had no idea how long had passed, only that time had passed. She felt as if she meandered in and out of consciousness, although she could not be sure. She could taste blood, which ran down her throat, lubricating her dryness; and for this she was thankful, yet at the same time worried. It was not good to drink blood. If the bleeding continued, she would obviously... die.
To die.
For months, she had never considered the concept. Even during her extensive Biohell adventures, she had never once stopped to think about the risks of her actions, the possibilities of death in the violent environment in which she operated. But now, when she thought about it, thought about death, she wondered what would be in store for her.
After all, was there a God for eight-foot transmogrified mutant zombies?
Was there some kind of flesh-hanging, pus-ridden, brain-eating deity?
Did zombies have a heaven? A place where the flesh was always rotten, the brains always ripe and chilled, and people didn't run screaming the first second they laid eyes upon you?
I'm delirious, thought Mel. It must be the battering. And the loss of blood. And the loss of... Franco.
Dear, sweet Franco. Didn't he see? Didn't he realise? She had divorced him for his own sake! She had killed their marriage because, despite loving him to bits, she knew in her heart of hearts that a fine strapping squaddie like Franco couldn't possibly spend the rest of his life married to an eight-foot monstrosity, with breath like a fetid corpse and who got slick every time he took off his hat and exposed the pulsing beat at his temple.
Brains, y'see? thought a dazed Mel. It all came down to the brains.
Man brains, woman brains, kiddie brains; hell, even fish brains. It was all the same bucket of mush to her. They were sweet, they smelled sweet and by God they tasted finer than any vintage Champagne. Mel would swim an ocean for a platter of raw brains, she would climb a volcano, crawl across a continent of broken glass, abseil the world!
And sex? Zombies alive! Don't get Mel started on sex!
As a woman, Mel had contained a healthy sexual appetite. But as a zombie? Mel didn't understand the exact biological workings of a zombie, but by everything that was holy, her libido had increased to the extent she was milking Franco like an over-milked goat. The poor, bleating, deflated little bugger.
And now. Here. Trapped.
Trapped under a collapsed hospital. Waiting to die.
Tears formed in Mel's tiny black zombie eyes and, gathering her strength - which was considerable - she heaved at the bricks and steel around her. Muscles squirmed up and down her arms and shoulders, but nothing shifted and Mel released a pent-up breath of anger and frustration. Dust trickled over her face, and made her cough.
Entombed, she thought sombrely.
Buried alive.
How long would it take a super-strength super-zombie to die from starvation? Then a horrible thought bit her. What if she couldn't die from starvation? What if, being a zombie, that sort of long-drawn out agonising death was denied her? What if she was tougher than tough, tougher than death. And she would have to spend years, decades, trapped down there beneath the rubble?
"Grwll grwll mrwl brdwll," she growled, and heaved and heaved, muscles bulging, eyes bulging, heaving and straining and straining and heaving, but the steel stanchions would not shift, the rubble barely creaked, and Mel, after perhaps twenty minutes fighting her entombment, slumped back into her tiny cubby hole, shaped in a random scatter of chaos to cruelly preserve her life.
Bugger, she thought.
And wished Franco was there...
Distantly, something made a grinding sound. The ground beneath, and indeed around, Mel shook. Stones started to vibrate, dust trickled and blinded her. As she blinked it free the grinding accelerated into a clanking, a deeply-throbbing mechanical sound like some great and titanic form of earth-moving equipment.
A pounding began, and scatters of sound which thudded through the earth and hurt Mel's ears. There were scrapes and bangs, metallic squeals and Mel, with a feeling of elation, suddenly realised somebody was digging.
Rescue! Franco had come to rescue her!
Franco, Pippa, Betezh, Olga, they had seen her buried in the rubble of the collapsing hospital and dug out some earth-moving equipment and they were attempting to free her from imprisonment. The joy! The elation! Oh how she'd give Franco the fucking of his life for this! She'd ride him till he bled, in a simple appreciation at his loyalty, at his unstinting belief in her failure to be squashed.
The pounding and grinding continued, and through vibrations she felt the digger getting closer and closer. Then a horrible thought occurred. What if the digger dug through her? After all, those huge bucket teeth were savage and made no distinction between flesh and brick!
Mel's teeth started to gnash and gnaw in frustration. It would be a savage and unfair death! Rescued, but murdered in the process! Oh how the God of Zombie Comedy liked his little japes! The bastard.
Suddenly, bricks and steel shifted above her, the whole world seemed to tilt and wobble and move, and a grim dull daylight flooded in. Mel realised it was evening, turning to darkness. Green tinged the bricks, and the huge shape of the digger with its seven mechanical arms, caterpillar tracks, and four huge hydraulic legs which were currently lifted above it, giving the whole giant machine the appearance of some kind of deformed robotic spider-octopus hybrid.
Quad engines droned and roared, exhaust fumes plumed, and the digger dropped again, grasping a H-section of steel weighing perhaps eight-hundred tonnes and tossing it aside easily. Mel shrugged free of her imprisoning bricks and started to wave her arms. Spotlights strobed across the scene.
"Grwll grwl!" she shouted, as the digger turned and whirled, caterpillars crushing bricks into dust. It spun again, many arms flipping and flopping, great steel limbs which suddenly dropped towards her. She ducked, to avoid decapitation, and the machine dug out another scoop of bricks.
Mel scrambled quickly up the mound of debris, waving her brown mottled arms and screeching a high-pitched zombie screech she knew might attract the driver's attention over the roar of engines. "Dwn herww!" she shouted. "Dwn herww!"
The digger whirled over her head, trailing bricks.
One bounced off Mel's domed skull, and spun off into the pit from which she'd emerged. Mel scowled, and her lower jaw moved out with cracks of annoyance and twisted tendon.
Suddenly, the digger quietened and spotlights swivelled on ball-joints to focus on Mel, standing atop the pile of bricks. She shielded her eyes from bright light, piercing in the fast-falling gloom of late evening, and breathed deep on engine fumes as the digger, motionless now, filled her with a sudden, quiet, dread.
"Hello?" shouted a voice.
Who was it? Betezh? Franco? Keenan?
"Grwll, grwl grwl grwwwll!" bellowed Mel.
She sensed, more than heard, the driver's uneasiness. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, there's been a terrible misunderstanding. I saw you buried, but now I realise... I thought you were somebody else."
Thought you
were somebody else? Mel was an eight-foot super-soldier, a man-made zombie creation with mottled pus-oozing skin and a head like a football on a long, corrugated neck that wouldn't have been out of place as roofing material. Who the hell had he mistaken her for? How many zombies roamed Sick World?
"Grwll?" she said, and little linguistic clues clicked to form a whole. She recognised the voice. She recognised the shape in the digger's cab. Oh damn, she thought. Oh hell. It was Miller. Miller the Health and Safety Officer. Miller, the turncoat.
"Just climb back down in the 'ole, there's a good girl," Miller was shouting from the high cab. "I'll pile in a few hundred tonnes of bricks and we won't say anything else about this matter, aha haha."
Mel growled, and took a threatening step forward...
"Or maybe not," said Miller, and the digger sprang into action. Arms with teeth and buckets whirled over Mel's head, and she leapt, narrowly missing being cut in half. Despite the digger's sheer size and weight, it could move fast, and was surprisingly nimble for something weighing in at eight thousand tonnes. Caterpillar tracks crushed bricks, quad engines throbbed and Mel landed on a slope, rolling down in a tangle of bruised limbs.
The digger pursued, rumbling, and Miller shouted, "I really am sorry about this, Melanie old girl. But it seems you contravene Health and Safety regulations. You stink, a bit, you see. And you're a bit of an abomination against humanity. Ha ha!"
A spike slammed towards her, and Mel skipped sideways, arms stretching out and encircling the huge steel point. She was hoisted high into the air, the digger's arm crackling and surging, Mel's legs dangling at crazy angles as she was hurled through the green-tinged evening. She screamed, as much as a zombie could scream, and heard Miller cackling within the safety of his cockpit pod. She glimpsed his face, a demonic mask through spider-webs of cracked glass, and it was the glee in his face that rankled Mel more than anything and sent her surging into a bizarre zombie berserker rage.
