Biohell

The City: an entire planet teeming with corruption, guns, sex, and designer drugs. Humans are upgraded by the injection of microscopic nanobots, courtesy of new technology from the Nano-Tek corporation, but when this highly desirable technology heads onto the black market, millions of people inject themselves with pirated biomods—and transform into zombies. Now they roam the streets, out for blood, packing shotguns and bombs. The Combat-K squad are dropped into this warzone to uncover what's turned the planet into a wasteland of murder and mutations, and soon their focus is on the darkness at the Nano-Tek corporation itself…This is hardhitting science fiction from the author of 'War Machine'.

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BIOHELL

[Combat-K 02]

Andy Remic

No copyright 
 2012
by MadMaxAU eBooks

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PROLOGUE

HIGH OCTANE

Keenan
sat his KTM crosser atop the volcanic cliff and gazed over fifty square klicks
of disused quarry. Black rock aggression spread like an unravelled web filled
with thousands of tunnels, dips, banks, drops and jumps. It would have been an
adrenalin-junkie’s playground—if it hadn’t been so damned dangerous.

Keenan revved the bike hard,
1250cc LC12 titanium lekradite single-cylinder engine growling harsh, like a
caged SPAW before its alloy breakfast. Sunlight glimmered on Keenan’s piss-pot
lid with raised black visor, and he lit a home-rolled cigarette and breathed
deep on Widow Maker tobacco. The tip glowed. Smoke trailed from his nostrils.
Keenan smiled, as he relaxed into the moment.

Reaching inside battered old
leathers, he pulled free a flask and drank. Brown droplets of Galhari Jataxa
spirit glistened on his lips like a henna tattoo. His brain descended into
honey, and he welcomed too readily the disturbing familiarity of an alcohol
kick...

A distant drone cut through
maudlin reminiscing and dragged Keenan kicking to the present. Three bikes
slammed across flat, hard-packed earth at speed, sand pluming a wake of
confetti streamers. He watched, cool and detached, from his high vantage point
on the perimeter lip of the quarry. Dismissing the joyriders, he tapped down
his visor and dropped the bike off the ledge in a sudden lunge... the engine
screamed, and suspension juddered under clamped fists. Adrenalin rushed Keenan,
wind smashing him, laughter filling his helmet. He crouched tight and fell down
the vertical wall with tyres thudding and suspension pounding to level out some
two hundred feet below in a valley of scattered volcanic cubes, heart in his
mouth, balls in his pelvis. Keenan cruised the flat moonscape, regaining his
heartbeat, then picked up his speed in sudden aggressive acceleration, leaning
forward over the tank as the bike howled and climbed, low pressure tyres
digging
into rock and shale and propelling him up the incline. The bike leapt above
the ridge, taking air, then hunkered down on suspension as Keenan’s boot tapped
down in a neat halt. He took the cigarette from his mouth, and with lazy
contempt flicked free a narrow column of ash.

But...

They wouldn’t leave him. Despite
nicotine, adrenalin, alcohol, trikalla surges, and, sometimes, when the
nightmares got too bad, something stronger... the
images
would not
disperse. They followed, doggedly, nagging old ghosts prickling his spine with
memory and making him shiver to his bloody, battered core. Words scrolled,
ancient, staccato, stuttering, an old black and white movie filled with white
noise and a billion-mile fragmented signal from a desolate world...

A world of betrayal, a world of
hate, a world of the dead...

It can’t be true.

I’m sorry, Keenan.

Why, Pippa? In the name of God,
why?

You betrayed me.

I betrayed you? That’s a fucking
reason to kill my wife, my Rachel, my little sweet Ally? You fucking whore. You
fucking disease. How could you do it to them? How could you murder my babes?

Keenan shook his head. Tears wet
his cheeks. He rubbed them savagely, as if they were the enemy. He took out his
flask. Sank another drink. “You bitch. I hope you rot in hell.”

He heard the roar of engines,
clearer now, brittle sounds cracking the stillness. He glanced back to the
ridge he’d occupied only a few short seconds ago. Three bikes sat sky-lined.
Matt black, with riders clad in black. The machines gleamed like cruel insects.
And... something, some primal instinct slammed Keenan through his drug buzz and
he screwed the KTM’s throttle wide open as machine-gun fire roared across space
and bullets whizzed and whistled around him. His bike leapt, front wheel
clawing the air, engine spitting hot slivers of shaved cylinder fire which
erupted from scorched exhaust cans. Keenan shot across the plateau with bullets
flickering around him. Sparks spat from the bike, kicked spurts of dust and
rock... but one— one found its mark, skimming through bike armour on its
wormhole trajectory and carving a line across Keenan’s flank, opening him like
a sardine tin, like a zip. Keenan grunted in shock, felt a flush of warm blood.
The impact twisted him, a sledgehammer blow. He hunkered forward, low over the
tank, as the bike teetered across Devil’s Brow, then skidded, slithered, and
dropped off the violent, broken-tooth edge...

Keenan rode the KTM in a state of
descending, cool fury. There was no pain and he gave a grim smile inside his helmet.
That wasn’t necessarily a
good
thing. The KTM roared and bounced
inelegantly to the rocky floor, and stalled with a cough, rolling a few feet in
silence. Tyres crunched loose gravel. Keenan grimaced, mind cold and
analytical, breathing deeply, corroborating internal diagnostics—and the
problem he faced. Three bikes. Machine guns. One probability.
Assassins...

Sent for him?
Specifically,
for
him?

For a long, long moment he sat
there.
You could let them take you. Finish the job. It wouldn’t be so bad.
Wouldn’t hurt. Go on, end the pain, sever the suffering, twist a lid on that
jar of bubbling torment. What’s the point going on, compadre? They’re dead.
Your girls are dead and gone and buried and dust... murdered meat, mate, and
you couldn’t even kill the bitch who slaughtered them in their beds, could you?
Couldn’t even finish that simple
—
final
—
job. You coward. You
liver. You maggot.

No, growled Keenan, teeth
grinding.

Why ever not?

Keenan heard the bikes’ screaming
approach and their sudden drop off Devil’s Brow close behind in a shower of
raging thunder, suspension pounding, juddering, as they slammed down the slope.
Through waves of surging adrenalin tinged with pain, Keenan loosened the strap
on his helmet.

Why not?
he thought, mind a savage tornado.

Because I’m still alive, fucker,
that’s why not...

The bikes howled at him. In one
movement Keenan tugged free his helmet and whirled, the lid smashing the face
of the closest rider as the group swept past. The figure was knocked back, bike
veering right to smack a fist of rock. His body propelled like a stone from a
slingshot, bike smashing end over end against the rocky ground; rider, with
flailing slapping machine gun, tumbling to land heavily on his back, stunned
into a coma. Keenan hit the starter, dumped the clutch and his KTM shot at the
man, front wheel lifting. The man’s hands rose in submission as Keenan’s rear
wheel connected, caving in the assassin’s chest and leaving a long streak of
crimson flesh vivid on black rock.

Keenan slithered to a stop.
Glanced left. The two riders had halted, surprised by this sudden turn. As if
through honey, they lifted guns and Keenan spun his bike on a slippery platter
of geysered blood and—screamed at them. Bullets howled like needles, then he
was past in a roar and through them and thundering down the valley floor,
swaying left, then banking right to avoid priapic knives of rock. He hit a
jump, soared over a deep crevasse known locally as Widow’s Hook, landed light
on the KTM’s back wheel, and banked along a sloping wall with engine thumping
rhythmically. He risked a glance back. The attackers were following. He watched
them jump, land, and Keenan lowered his head and opened the throttle. The
titanium lekradite breathed deep, breathed strong, exhaust note roaring with a
metal purity of rawness and engineered savagery. Ahead, Keenan focused on the
old mine tunnels, complete with timber barricade and huge signs displaying
skull and crossbones alongside Quad-Gal symbols for heavy tox pollution.

Keenan roared at the barrier,
feeling a fresh pulse of blood wash down his flank as he shifted uncomfortably
in the saddle. He flicked the clutch, kicked the front wheel into the air and
smashed through shards of wood—and on, into solid black.

Lights swept on, and the bike’s
roaring reverberated, deafening him. Keenan didn’t slow, despite the insanity.
The tunnel was narrow, winding, littered with rock. But... Keenan had been
there, once before... years earlier. A self-confessed adrenalin junkie, he
found the alluring danger of forbidden places hard to ignore.

Now memories flitted like teasing
butterflies. The KTM slammed through darkness, Keenan’s head low over the
buzzing tank to avoid unforgiving overhangs. Sparks showered as he caught a
foot-peg on rock, jerking the bike.