by Andy Remic
Laugh at me, will you?
Laugh at my pus and deformities?
I'll show you!
She climbed up the vibrating, swinging mechanical arm like Spider-man, and leapt with a feat of great agility onto the rolling cab of the digger. Miller heard the thud, and glanced up, scowling. One of the bucket arms swung towards the cab, and Mel ducked as it hissed overhead, bent, then slammed her claws through steel and peeled back the lid like the lid from a baked-bean tin.
"Argh!" squawked Miller in disbelief, and lost control of the awesome machine for just a few moments. Mel reached in, gripped him by the throat with one set of claws, and hoisted him out, dangling like a rubber rag-doll.
"Frwlcker," she growled, and shook him.
Miller did a hangman jiggle, hands clawing at Mel's muscles as he turned slowly blue. Eventually, she released him, and dropped him back into the cab where he spluttered and choked. She squeezed in beside him, and draped one arm over his shoulders in a moment of intimacy.
"Wherww werww thrww shrpwss grwing?"
"Eh?"
Mel gave him a backhand slap, the kind of lazy backhand slap which could remove a head from shoulders. Miller's spit and blood decorated the inside of the cab, and he held his hands up before his face, squeaking.
"No no no! Not the face! I wouldn't like to get, um, deformed." He stared hard at Mel's disfigured image. "No offence meant." He watched the glint in her eye, and caught on fast. "OK, OK, you want to know where your friends have gone? That's easy! Easy peasy! Look, I have this tracker." He pulled out a small black bauble, with a flashing blue light. "We can track them with this! It's linked to their spinal-implanted... logic... cubes."
He faltered to a halt, aware he'd made a huge mistake. "Um," he said. His voice dropped, low, so it could only just be heard above the rumble of quad engines. "It was given to me. By Quad-Gal Military. So I could, y'know, keep an eye on you lot. Make sure you didn't... find... anything."
Mel took the tracker, scowled, and put the digger in gear. Pulling on levers, she retracted the many arms and spikes and buckets, and then roared over a mound of bricks scattering debris and steel and the remains of the collapsed, quake-ravaged hospital...
"'Ranco," she said, eyes moist. "I'rm crumming frw youww!"
The digger rumbled over hill and down dale. The landscape, Mel soon realised, even under the light of the green moon, was doing strange things. Things a landscape shouldn't be doing.
It was moving, for a start.
"Well look at that!" said Miller, leaning forward to peer through the cracked windshield. "That forest over there is running like water!" And it was; the trees flowed across the landscape, branches and leaves wavering, as if washed away in a mudslide - only the ground was solid, liquid solid, and shifting uneasily like a cunning sort of quicksand.
"Don't be driving in that!" said Miller, urgent now. "We'll bloody sink!" He thought for a moment. "This landscape contravenes Health and Safety guidelines, Section 15B of the Guidelines for a Safe Landscape pamphlet, you know. Any landscape should be a stable landscape, and trees should not move around in case they hurt people, or affect their health, or their safety." He seemed quite happy about this. He felt like he was doing his duty. Like a good and efficient Health and Safety Officer should.
"Grwl," said Mel. As an abomination, she had a pretty poor view of Health and Safety Officers, and Health and Safety in general. After all, her very existence went against everything Health, and everything Safety. She killed people and ate their brains, for a start.
"What's that?" shrieked Miller.
"Grwl?"
"It's the river! It's solid! But it was sunny today! How can it be solid?"
And Miller was right. The river, despite moving like a river, was sluggish, a kind of liquid solid, and quite disconcerting to watch. Mel rumbled to a stop beside the embankment and one of the digger's arms reached forward and prodded the river. It glooped in a dangerous sort of manner.
"That," began Miller, and Mel smacked him. "OK," he said. "Be like that. I was only going to point out..." She smacked him again. One of his teeth rattled against the cockpit windshield, and he grabbed at his face with injured hands and injured pride.
Miller stared hard at Mel. "You're a bad girl!" he yelled, blood spittle foaming around his lips as one hand probed inside his mouth. "You shouldn't do that to me! It... contravenes..."
She glowered at him. "Shrt fuwrk up!"
"OK! OK!"
Mel eased the digger into the river, or rather, onto the river. The digger, despite being many thousands of tonnes in weight, failed to penetrate the surface. Instead, it was like a fat man walking on a saggy trampoline, and they bounced their way across the river in uneasy silence, like a hushed audience waiting for a drunk tightrope walker to fall.
They made the opposite bank, and the digger churned up the mud wall and sat on a ridge of rock, silhouetted by the green light of the moon. It clanked, groaned, and sighed, settling on its haunches.
Mel examined the small tracker in her claws. She gazed off across the landscape, which seemed to squirm before her eyes, as if she were drunk, as if she were high. It was unreal. Surreal. A vision of madness, as if the very land itself possessed life, possessed a sentient will.
With a clank, the digger lifted from its caterpillar haunches, and lurched off after Franco.
Franco stumbled down the stairs, through oily smoke, and stopped as the smoke cleared and he realised he was alone.
"Huh? Keenan? Pippa? Olga?"
Silence reverberated down the cold corridor. In fact, it wasn't just cold, it was freezing and Franco's man-breast nipples stood out through his PVC nurse's uniform in a quite garish and horrifying display of faux excitement.
"Hot damn and bloody bollocks! I'm alone! Where did everybody go? What kind of depraved and arse-like magic is this?" He gazed around myopically, his Kekra little comfort after the sudden disappearance of the other Combat-K members.
Franco stepped forward, squirming uncomfortably in his requisitioned second-hand boots. He hated boots. Sandals were his thing, even if he ran the risk of blowing off his own toes with grenade shrapnel. Franco didn't care. He'd risk toe amputation, or toeputation as he called it, just to let a bit of air circulate. After all, Franco suffered something chronic from athlete's foot. It had been said, in drunken military circles, that Franco had the worst feet in the Quad-Gal. The smelliest. The stinkiest. Like a chicken-farm gone bad. Like sour cheese and rotting fish. They were bad. Hell no. They were baaad.
"Ho hum. Why's this always happen to me? I thought I was doing too well, and people should stop calling me Franco 'Lucky Dick' Haggis because they're using up my luck and it's starting to run out! Hot damn."
Franco stopped, breath streaming. The corridor, with its many glass windows, was long and straight and rimed with ice. Franco reached out, touched the glass, and yelped, withdrawing his finger and leaving a strip of skin against the pane.
"Bugger! That's cold, that is."
Franco was talking to himself, a trait he often developed when he was feeling alone, or stressed, or alone and stressed. He frowned. This wasn't looking good. "It's not looking good," he murmured, and pressed his Kekra against his cheek. He yelped again, as the gun - so cold, it was white with frost, and dripped frozen icicles of oil - stuck to his skin. With a tearing sound, he ripped it free with a high-pitched feminine squeal reminiscent of a woman having her fanny waxed.
Franco stared at the gun. Some of his beard, replete with skin, was stuck to the rectangular barrel.
"Damn and bloody bollocks! Where is everybody? KEENAN?" he boomed, not caring who heard anymore. "PIPPA? BETEZH? WHERE ARE YOUSE FUCKERS?"
A head appeared, further down the corridor. It was a stern-looking woman, broad and stocky, wearing a tight blue uniform and with her hair fastened back in a tight bun. She had a round face, pointed nose, and arms as thick as Olga's; and that was thick. They could bend steel bars. Crack open coconuts. Crush a man's head. All with a
simple blip of the throttle.
"You!" she shouted, and her voice dripped with so much authority Franco almost snapped to attention. Almost. Decades of slovenly ways had taken their toll. "Stop your shouting! We have patients here! Have some compassion!"
"Yes, ma'am," mumbled Franco, lowering his face submissively and shuffling forward. "Very sorry, ma'am."
The nurse stepped out, stern face appraising Franco as if observing a diseased-riddled chicken dancing before her. "Yes. Well. As long as we understand one another. And no need to stand on formality, young man. No need to call me ma'am. My name is Nurse Armbreaker. And you may call me Nurse Armbreaker."
"Yes, Nurse Armbreaker. I'm Franco, Nurse Armbreaker. Listen, can I ask you something, Nurse Armbreaker?"
"Of course, young man."
"Where am I?"
Nurse Armbreaker scowled. "This is The Clinic of Anonymity."
"The... what's that supposed to mean?"
"It is where," said Nurse Armbreaker stiffly, "men and women come when they have certain, shall we say, problems."
"Problems?"
"Down there."
"Down where?"
"Down there."
"You mean in your arse?" snorted Franco.
"Sometimes," said Nurse Armbreaker stiffly, "the anal region is afflicted, but of course in these sort of cases, any part of the genitalia can suffer all manner of problems." She smiled, a cold stiff smile, breath steaming from her nostrils.
Franco, face locked in rigid spasm, was animated suddenly and he rubbed his chin. "You mean this is a VD clinic?"
Nurse Armbreaker rolled her eyes. "I suppose some would describe it as such, although here we just refer to it as The Clinic."
"Har har har," said Franco.
"Excuse me?"
"I mean," snorted Franco, chuckling and rubbing his beard, "this is where you get willy and fanny problems, reet? Where todgers turn green and fall off, where grapes grow on pouting pussies, where slack and loose individuals get their comeuppance for not being careful! Har har har."
Nurse Armbreaker stared hard at Franco. "There is no comedy," she said, "in Venereal Disease."
"Oh there is, I tell you, there is, there was this one guy in the squad by the name of Big Bucket Bollocks, or that's what we used to call him on account of his testicles being shaped like comedy buckets, and this also linked to the joke about his sperm being grittier than sand, oh how we all did laugh over that one, then there was Sally Slack, who it was said shagged a whole platoon and in the process she gave them all Weeviles, a most terrible parasitic infestation whereby they takes your todge, right, and then burrows millions of tiny holes in your bulging helmet making it look like the bloody surface of a bloody moon, or something, and Slack spreads this all around the blokes with her easy ways and we're all standing on the parade ground, and those who was scratching, we'd nudge each other and say, 'Heh, he's added a bit to Sally's Slack', and how we did roar with laughter at that one, then there was this other geezer called Freddy Full Load, suffering from a bout of rabid Cumitis, and he used to have that much spunk in him he could pretty much fill a pint bottle every hour, and that's what he used to do and we'd leave it out for Gunnery Sergeant McKinnon to put in his tea. Oh Gods, how we did laugh at that one."
Franco rambled to a stop, lost in distant reminisces. He noticed Nurse Armbreaker's face, and his grin fell quicker than a whore's panties at the flash of a gold crown.
"I see," said Nurse Armbreaker.
"That was a long time ago," said Franco, shuffling his feet. "By the way, why is it so cold in here?"
"To help the patients. It slows down the acceleration of the many rare and wonderful venereal diseases which appeared after humans and aliens started..." she scowled just a little bit too hard, "having intimacies."
"You mean sex?" beamed Franco.
"I mean intimacies. We don't use the S word in the Clinic. It just isn't right."
"What about blow jobs?" asked Franco.
"Excuse me?" snapped Nurse Armbreaker.
"What I mean is," he coughed, "you know, other sexual terminology? Like cunnilingus? Anal entry? Sloppy pussy? That sort of thing?"
Nurse Armbreaker had gone whiter than white; quite a feat in the freezing environment of The Clinic's corridor. Then her eyes narrowed, and a smile crept across narrow lips.
"Can I help you, Franco Haggis?"
"Eh? Yeah, sure, I'm looking for my friends, we seem to have become separated, there's this big dude called Keenan, thinks he's the boss but we all know little ol' Franco is the one really in charge, then there's Pippa, a right feisty one her but I have it on good authority she bangs quicker than a madman on a drum-kit, and is as slippery in the vagina department as a bucket of soapy eels." He grinned, face leering as he imagined Pippa naked. He'd seen her a lot, in his imagination; and he had her well-installed in a variety of sexual simulators using modified DNA to recreate a digital doppelganger. Better than life? Damn fucking right!
"Not like that," said Nurse Armbreaker, voice husky, and strangely quiet.
"Like what then?"
Nurse Armbreaker stared at Franco's groin. He laughed, but the laugh was wooden and tinged with just a little bit of fear. "No no no," he said, "you've got it all wrong, there's absolutely nothing deviated about Franco's tackle, mate, nothing wrong at all. All plumbing is working very well, thank-you-very-much."
"Really. Didn't you just scratch?"
"No, I don't think I did."
"Seize him!"
"Eh?"
Two beefy, stocky, butch nurses grabbed Franco from behind, and Nurse Armbreaker stepped forward, close, intimate, and removed his gun. She stared at him, from a face lacking in any sense of humour. Franco strained, and one arm broke free, but quick as a flash Nurse Armbreaker showed why she had that particular name. She grabbed Franco in a head-lock, and lifted him easily from the floor. The other nurses stepped away, thick black sensible shoes squealing on the chilled floor tiles, and Nurse Armbreaker single-handedly carried Franco in a kind of twisted embrace, his head and neck under one arm, trapping him.
Franco squawked, kicked his legs, then tried to head-butt Nurse Armbreaker. In response, she tightened her grip and Franco choked, red in the face, turning to blue as she literally crushed the life from him.
With a final twitch, Franco passed from consciousness.
The last thing he heard was his Kekra hitting the floor.
Never let your guard down. Trust nobody. Be ready for surprises. Be alert. These were Franco's mantras, his internal diatribes which formed his personal philosophy when on a mission. However, as he groaned, his whole body feeling as though it had been through a car-crusher, he realised he had broken Rule 1. Yeah, and Rule 2. And possibly Rule 3 and Rule 4 as well.
"Shit and bugger," he groaned, although the words were unintelligible to those surrounding him, and Franco's eyes fluttered open and he stared up at bright white lights. The lights of an operating theatre. He groaned. "Not again. What is it with these medical muppets?"
He tried to sit up, and found he was restrained. Leather straps fastened his wrists, upper arms, waist and ankles. He had been stripped naked. If he tried, he could lift his upper body about six inches from the - he suddenly realised - wheeled trolley, and this enabled him to see he was not, in fact, in an operating theatre. Oh no. This was much, much worse.
"Where am I?" he squeaked, voice far less than the usual Franco drawl.
Nurse Armbreaker stepped into view. She wore a smile, but her eyes were cold. Indeed, colder than the liquid nitrogen used to freeze off public pubic warts. "Franco Haggis. Welcome back to the world of the living. Thank you so much for volunteering to take part in our medical experimentation into alien-human hybrid venereal disease."
"Wha'?" said Franco, still groggy from his crushing, although the bright lights and tangible fear were bringing him around fast. "What's going on? Eh?" He strained against his straps, and jiggled the whole trolley which reminded him so much of life back a
t Mount Pleasant when he'd been incarcerated as insane. "What you doing to me, woman? I demand to be released this instant!"
"No," said Nurse Armbreaker, "I have your medical consent form here." She flashed a document beneath his nose. He caught the words... sexual, disease, help us, experiment, grotesque, and severe, plus his own genuine signature, before it was whisked away again. Franco paled. Grotesque, it had said. Franco didn't like the word grotesque. It reminded him of grotesque things.
"Now listen here," he said, and Nurse Armbreaker, who had been sneaking forward, attacked him with a syringe which jabbed his arm and injected amber fluid, straight to his bloodstream.
Euphoria flooded Franco, and he felt his lips and tongue turn to rubber, his muscles turn to jelly, and his penis enlarge and engorge at quite an alarming rate. Wow, he thought, as he watched himself stand proud, as stiff and robust as it could ever be. What happened there, then?
"A penile stimulant," said Nurse Armbreaker, face stoic. "It has the unfortunate side effects of making your brain quite ridiculously simple, but we can't have everything, can we, and for the purposes of this medical experimentation, intelligence is unnecessary."
"You viagra'd me!" slurred Franco.
"No." Nurse Armbreaker smiled, a glitter of teeth. "This is something much more potent."
"Help!" wailed the conversely enlarged and enfeebled Franco.
"There is nobody to help you," said Nurse Armbreaker sternly. "Take your medicine like a man! Be upstanding! Uplifting! After all, your dreams are about to come true. Bring in Candy!"
"Candy?" thought Franco. He perked up a bit. Maybe things were looking up? He heard sniggering, and twisted to see several of the beefy nurses from before, all wearing blue uniforms, all carrying clipboards and tiny pencils. Occasionally, one scribbled something. They were observing him! Him! Franco Haggis!
He turned back, and caught sight of the screen. It was illuminated from behind, and he saw the shadowy outline of the perfect woman. She was tall, with an hourglass shape, wide hips, huge globes for breasts. Her hair was long and flowing, and her silhouette was one of the most perfect things Franco had ever seen. He watched the silhouette undressing, and his mouth began to drool. I wouldn't have needed none of that penile stimulant, I tell ye! he thought. What's going on? What damn and bloody game are they playing here?
