Biohell (13 page)

What if they’d rumbled Franco,
and linked him to the jewel heist of a few years previous? Five of the Seven
Syndicates had money in on that deal... which meant Franco had
now
made
enemies of six of The City’s toughest criminal underworld organisations.

Makarov in hand, his weariness
evaporating, he called out in a wavering warble. “Mel?
Mel?”

“In here.”

Franco scowled, but his racing
heart calmed a little. He holstered his weapon, locked the door carefully
behind him, and picked his way across the rubble of his apartment.

Franco peered into the bedroom. “You
OK, honey?”

“Mmm. Mmm.” Mel turned, still
half-asleep, hair tousled. “Hiya. You’re back late.”

“Busy day at the office,” grinned
Franco.

“Hope you didn’t cause any
trouble?”

Picturing the headless body of
Keg, and the exploding inferno of the Apache F52, Franco shrugged powerful
shoulders. “Nah. Nothing little old Franco couldn’t handle. After all, they don’t
call me Franco ‘Trouble Free’ Haggis for nothing!”

Mel frowned. “Franco...”

“Yeah yeah, I know. They don’t call
me Franco ‘Trouble Free’ Haggis at all. But hey...”

“Did you get the jasmine oil?”

“Sorry. Slipped my mind. I’ll
pick it up in the morning.” He yawned. “Listen. You go back to sleep, I’m gonna
grab a few beers and wind down before I hit the AM pillow.”

“Don’t stay up too late. You
know
we’re going to the Tek Central Carnival Opening with Jim and Sandra
tomorrow afternoon. I don’t want you yawning all the way through the
presentations.”

“I know. I
know.”

Franco grabbed himself a ten-pack
of Wife-Beater and slumped on the settee. Despite there being truth in what he’d
told Mel, there was also another reason.

He cracked open a beer. Placed
his D5 shotgun across his knees. And waited to see if he’d been followed.

Unlikely. But always possible,

Outside, millions thronged the
streets, singing and dancing and drinking and drugging. The thump of distant
music became a mantra. Screams and laughter the chorus. And the Carnival Song
dropped a gear, wound itself up, and
trillions
really started to get
jiggy.

~ * ~

Franco
opened his eyes, slowly. Confusion was his master. Rat-spit his saliva. Tom-tom
drums his skull. “Shit,” was all he managed. Then his wandering blurred vision
fell on the ten empty tinnies of Wife-Beater. Stupid.
Stupid.
And into
the thunder of his skull intruded a white-hiss cackle of vacant TV broadcast.

“Ugh. What channel was I
watching?” Most ran 24 hours. That meant it was a pirate channel. He reddened.
That usually meant cartoon alien porn.

Franco sat up, his bones
creaking, empty tins rattling from his body. His D5 shotgun hit the carpet with
a
thump.
His feet were encased in his large fluffy comedy rabbit
slippers. His tired eyes tried to focus on the clock. 11.17 AM. Hot damn, he’d
overslept!

Franco climbed wearily to his
feet, clutched his head in his hands, and wrenched his skull sideways. There
was a sickening crack of crunching neck tendons. “Ahh,” said Franco. “Ahh. Ahh.
That feels better.” Outside, the siren of an emergency vehicle wailed across
The City.

But... he thought.

But but but.

But
why
was he still
sleeping at 11.17 AM?

Why hadn’t Mel woken him?

Why was Mel still slumbering in
bed? That wasn’t like Mel. Mel was a stickler for rising early bright and
shine. Even after a
crate
of DOG Town red.

A million horrific scenarios
galloped across his imagination. Franco sprinted into the bedroom, saw
scattered, tousled sheets. But Mel was gone.

“Melanie?” he bellowed, panic
giving his voice a bestial urgency.

No answer.

“MELANIE?” he screamed.

“I’m... in the bathroom.” Her
voice was weak, thick, muffled by the hefty bathroom door. Her tone held a
wavering, ethereal quality. It sounded
strange.

“Are you OK?”

“I just feel a bit... queasy.”

“OK. I’ll make you a coffee.”

“That’d be great, Franco.”

Franco staggered into the
kitchen, scratching at his testicles. He switched on the CoffeeChef™
(Coffee
coffee you wanna nother coffee?
—although you probably had to be there to
appreciate the joke). He lounged against the worktop, breathing deeply, and
trying to work out any way in which Voloshko could find him. The bastard would
certainly make
some
kind of effort. After all, Franco had made the head
of a global Syndicate look like a dick.

From the bathroom, there came a
thud.

Franco turned and stared at the
door, languishing innocently at the end of the long corridor.

“Mel?” he called.

No reply.

“You OK in there?”

“Franco. I don’t want you to get
angry.”

Franco sighed. That was bad, that
was. Any dialogue which began
Franco I don’t want you to get angry
meant
he was, nine times out of ten, pretty much damn guaranteed to get angry. Taking
care to keep his voice calm amidst his pounding headache and general feeling of
unwell-being, he said, voice steady, and measured, “Why would I be getting
angry, my love?”

“I just want you to promise me
you won’t get angry.”

“How can I promise something,
when I don’t know what the something is, that might make me angry? That’s
unfair, that is. You’re taking advantage of my good nature and prior ignorance
to a situation I know nothing about.”

“Franco!” she squawked.

“OK. OK. I promise I won’t get
angry.”

“Good.”

“So then? What’s wrong?”

“Now, you promise, don’t you?”
Her voice had gone all wavery again.

“Yes,” sighed Franco. Behind him,
the CoffeeChef
^TM
pinged. Franco poured two cups of steaming,
frothing Heaven, and stood, a cup in each hand, facing the bathroom door.

“OK. I bought a...”

Here we go, thought Franco. A
settee. A TV. Some curtains. A new dishwasher. For a tax inspector, Mel was
awesomely lax when it came to inspecting the tax.

“... a biomod upgrade.”

There was a crash as the coffee
cup hit the floor. Coffee surged across the tiles. “You did
what?”
shouted
Franco. “How the hell do you think we can afford that? We’re getting married in
a few days! They’re bloody extortionate! We’ve already talked about this,
and...”

“You promised, Franco.”

His teeth snapped shut. He felt
his new denture twinge.

“Anyway,” continued Mel’s
wavering, “I didn’t get a
proper
NanoTek one because they’re too
expensive. My friend Emily took me to the market and we met this lovely lad, a
friend of hers called Knuckles, who sold me a cut-down pirated hacked model for
a tenth of the price. Cheap as chips. A bargain!”

“That’s even
worse,”
groaned
Franco, rubbing at his thumping cranium. What next? A head transplant? “Listen.”
He breathed deep, exaggerated breaths designed to halt impending palpitation. “At
least, now, cheer me up here girl, and tell me you haven’t taken them, it? Yet.”

He waited. There came another,
louder, thump. And a
strange
stretching sound.

Franco’s head snapped left.
There, on the worktop, was a tiny vial. On it, neat lettering read
BIOMOD
0.2mg
. He picked it up. Stared at it. Sniffed it. Frowned at it. Was it
empty? What was he looking for? It looked empty. Shit and holy damn buggery, it
bloody damn well looked bloody damn well empty! Franco spied the leaflet. His
eyes raked the NanoTek instructions, expensive text on extensive vellum, the
usual extravagant NanoTek way:

Patient Information
Leaflet

BIOMOD CAPSULES 0.2
mg

©NanoTek Corporation

KEEP ALL BIOMODS OUT
OF THE

REACH OF CHILDREN.

REMEMBER: Only a
doctor or Biomod

Sales Representative
can prescribe this

biomod medicine/
human/alien upgrade. It

should never be given
to anyone except the

person it has been
prescribed for. It may

harm them in a
grotesque and horrific way.

Franco stared at that last bit.
It
may harm them in a grotesque and horrific way.
His scowl was crooked on his
face, like a painting hanging not-quite-right on the wall. “Melanie?” he
shouted again, still holding the single coffee cup. “Did you take the goddamned
damn bastard bio-mod, or what?”

There came a roar so deep and
monstrous and terrifying it shook the windows in the frames of the apartment.
The bathroom door flexed and wobbled like a tree in a twister. On the floor
below, and in the surrounding apartments, burglar alarms started to shrill,
their high-pitched squeals piercing the relative silence.

Franco clutched his already
throbbing head.

He glanced down at the coffee.

Glanced back up at the bathroom
door.

And watched, mouth agape, as a
fist the size of a plate smashed a hole through the heavy anti-intruder
panelling and flexed long claws that belonged nowhere near a human hand.

The second coffee cup smashed on
the tiles, sending another stream of dark brown soaking into Franco’s comedy
rabbit slippers. His head lifted. Oh my God, he thought. There’s a monster in
there! In there with Mel!

He sprinted for the living room,
rolled across the coffee table like a true action hero, grabbed his D5 shotgun
and pumped it viciously. He stampeded back into the corridor, and was just in
time to see two of the long, armoured hands wrench the door from its quivering
frame and launch it down the corridor. With a yelp Franco ducked, and the door hummed
over his head and became half-buried in the wall above the front door. It
quivered, like a large rectangular arrow.

The creature stepped into the
corridor, stooping crookedly. It was eight feet tall.

Franco gawped, shotgun forgotten.
The creature was slim and wiry, skin a dark mottled brown, spotted, corrugated,
and slick with grease. The torso was a mockery of a human female body, with
long, quivering, dangling breasts reaching almost to the monster’s waist, and
with nipples like plums oozing grey pus. The neck was long, curved, the head
small and round and hairless, the lower jaw staggered out from a horrific face
in a staccato jump, the nose two pin-pricks, the ears flaps of puckering anal
flesh against more pus-oozing orifices. The neck crackled with plates of armour
as the monster moved its head, rapping its skull against the ceiling. Fingers
flexed like a newborn babe’s. Franco’s eyes dropped... to the long legs, and
the pink quivering vagina, slick with gore and grey slime. It was distended,
wobbling, and nearly made Franco throw up. It was probably the worst thing he’d
ever seen in his entire life. A nightmare, for a man so fond of the female
sexual organ.