Biohell (22 page)

“No-ooooooo!”
screamed Franco, letting off
another savage D5
boom
which punched a hole through a female zombie
allowing Franco to see through the gap, and watch a tiny tail-end of spine
wriggling like a worm in the core of a rotten apple.

The D5 was wrenched from his grip,
passed back amongst the horde. It was discharged into the air. Moans surrounded
him. He could smell burning, feel their claws raking his flesh, smell their
dead, putrid organics dripping from bones. It smelt like a ten-day dog corpse.
The perfume of the zombie.
Eau du undéade.

Claws tore at him, and he started
to punch out, breaking jaws left and right with powerful hooks. Several jaws
detached from faces and hung, swinging on elastic tendons against hole-filled,
serrated chests. Franco dodged hissing talons, ducking and diving. He belted
out a few savage straights... but the weight of the
crush
forced him to
his knees, and they tore at his hair and face. A
slash
of claws opened a
line down his jaw and Franco’s blood spurted free in a pulse which made the
zombies go suddenly wild, howling at this promise of fresh meat and bright
blood and succulent
brains...

A scream rent the air,
high-pitched and metallic and keening. Franco shuddered—a moment before
realising it was coming from
Mel,
his
Mel!
She had seen his
jaw-line opened by a claw, watched his blood spurt free. And now her own jaws
were clacking a curious drumbeat, her small black eyes gleaming as she pulled
herself to her full height of eight feet plus—towering over the zombie horde—
and with a blur and
slam
of violent acceleration she began to maim and
massacre all around. Franco stumbled back, stunned, the zombies turning to face
this new threat that pirouetted like a whirlwind of death amongst them. Claws
slammed heads from bodies, cut arms and legs from torsos, punched holes through
chests and ripped free hearts and spinal columns on ejected fountains of black
and green blood. Mel howled, small round head bobbing like a bean on elastic as
she whammed and slammed and mashed and maimed, turning and whirling, jigging
and dodging. Guns rattled and boomed, dropping zombies to the left and right of
Mel, but she growled and charged, and with a sudden howl the zombie horde
turned to flee under the terrible onslaught of Mel’s distended jaw and blood
dripping claws. Boots and toe-less feet stamped down the road, and the horde
sprinted away leaving behind a hundred slaughtered, dismembered monsters, some
writhing on the ground, many just motionless and oozing blood and grey pus.

Franco, seated on his rump, coughed,
and looked up as Mel turned and stared at him. Fury was her face, insanity her
eyes. She lifted her claws and stalked towards him, a strange bobbing gait as
Franco found himself scrabbling backwards in panic, eyes fixed on those
terrible, natural killing blades.

Mel reared over him!

“Argh!” squawked Franco, terror
in his heart and breast and soul, and fear eating what little bit of his
manhood remained.

Mel slumped down, sighing, head
pushing forward on her long slick neck and nestling in his lap. She crooned,
and with a dawning horror Franco realised the eight-foot pus-ridden horror was
fluttering her eyelids at him.

“Ove ou,” came the disjointed
words. Mel’s jaws clacked, like badly fitting pincers. Her long muscular neck
undulated, making a sound like a bag of marbles in a meat-grinder.

Franco reached out, and steeling
himself, patted her head. “There, there,” he said, voice cracked and weak and
almost feminine. And at that moment in frozen, horrific time, he wondered which
bit was worse: the fact Mel might try to kill him, or the prospect she might
try to fuck him.

~ * ~

The
Y Shuttle swept down from towering, storm-filled skies. Rain pounded the hull,
wind howling, the storm trying its hardest to thump them into the wrong side of
oblivion. Keenan, now at the controls, skimmed towards The City’s Freeport
Range, but something made him decelerate rapidly and pull up at the last
moment.

“What is it?” said Cam.

“Look,” said Keenan.

They watched in ill-disguised
horror as the huge swarm of zombies ambled across the Freeport Landing Zone
beneath, eyes turned up, mouths hung limp. The group suddenly opened fire, and
a thousand machine guns howled sending bullets scything past the Y Shuttle and
Keenan twisted the controls, the Y Shuttle’s engines screamed and it banked
violently to shoot up into the storm with rain rattling off the cockpit and
tracer dancing against armoured engine ports.

“I know Steinhauer said a large
number of the population were a genetic malfunction, a transformation of humans
and aliens into mutants; but he never said anything about them using damned
machine guns!” Cam sounded affronted.

“Zombies with brains,” said
Keenan. Then laughed. “God does enjoy dicking with me. Cam, we’ve leapt from a
junk-ridden war-zone into a cesspit of plague. What the hell are we doing here?”

“I never suspected it would be
like this. And
you
agreed to come. Steinhauer played you like a
xylophone.”

“I can’t leave Franco down here
to have
all
the fun, can I?” Keenan fired the Y Shuttle low across towering
skyscrapers. Below, huge tracts of The City were deserted. In other parts,
fires raged and riots were in progress. Zombie riots. From their high vantage
point, it appeared a vision of hell.

“Cheer me up. Tell me this
mutation thing isn’t contagious.”

“Scanning now.” Cam went silent
for a while, as Keenan dropped down between tower blocks and skimmed low above
the streets, watching in grim silence as zombie creatures hunted down screaming
men and women. God, he wished the Y Shuttle was armed... and he suddenly
regretted not accepting Steinhauer’s offer of a Hornet. What had he said? Keep
their entry low-key. Covert. Don’t draw attention to themselves. But hell, he’d
love to have sent a savage volley of fire to pulp the mutated bastards raging
below. Instead, all he could do was watch in a brooding silence. Nothing burned
Keenan worse than innocents destroyed by evil strong.

“OK,” said Cam, eventually. “You
were right to use that terminology. These things are... zombies. Of a sort.”

“I never invented it; I read it,
in the Black and White News Clip provided by Steinhauer,” said Keenan. “But
still, zombies... you’re pulling my dick, right?”

“The mutations below are
unfortunate people who took pirated, cracked and hacked biomod technology in
order to improve their physical aspects. They call it a human upgrade. Very
droll.”

“You mean NanoTek?” said Keenan.

“Yeah. So you’ve heard of them?”

“I’ve seen one of these biomods
go wrong before,” said Keenan, voice a low drawl. “A rich bitch down on
Galhari; holidaying on a yacht. They had to scrape her off the poop deck with a
shovel. Her father wanted me to investigate—and I tried, but man, I’ve never
seen a conglomerate as powerful as NanoTek. They put so many obstacles in my
path I needed an army of lawyers just to take a shit. Eventually, I filed a
lawsuit against the owner himself, I targeted the
individual
rather than
the organisation. A guy called Dr Oz.”

“What happened?”

“The rich bitch’s father was paid
off by Oz. It seems if you add a few more zeroes to any cheque then the
after-effects of murder can be negotiated. The whole incident made me sick.”

“Well, it’s a lot
more
sick
down there,” said Cam. “It’s a plague-town. Very dangerous. How many weapons
did Steinhauer provide?”

“Everything I need. And I’ve
still got my trusty Techrim.”

“You understand that... if we
meet resistance, it will be a tough gig.”

“I didn’t expect anything less,”
snapped Keenan. “I ain’t here for a holiday.”

They cruised for a half hour, and
eventually located the narrow street—aptly named
Stud Avenue
—which led
to Franco’s apartment. Keenan had Cam check the location locks five times. “After
all,” he said, “we don’t want to get stranded in No Man’s Land.”

Keenan lowered the Y Shuttle onto
a Porky Pauper’s Fast-Food Burger Emporium car-park. There were a few derelict
groundcars, and the Y Shuttle compressed them with grinding shrieks and
bangs
into steel pancakes. The ramp clanged open just as the storm, growing in
fury, unleashed its elemental payload; rain slammed, thunder grumbling across
dark bruised heavens. Lightning stalked the skies. Keenan strode down the ramp,
heavily tooled, and stood at the bottom in the shadow of the Shuttle. He lit a
cigarette, Permatex WarSuit gleaming with spatters of rain, and peered out into
the gloom. A huge glittering neon sign announced: “PORKY PAUPER’S TRIPLE CHILLI
CHEESEBURGERS! GO ON, BE A PORKER! ENJOY FIVE FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!!”

“Looks like a bargain,” said Cam,
spinning close, red warning lights fluttering across his black casing. “Cheap
as chips.”

“Have you ever
eaten
a
Porky Pauper’s? There’s so much fat you need liposuction before you’ve even
finished.
It oozes, like a thick white syrup, from the edges of the burger.” He
shivered. “Gross. Franco loves ‘em, the gastronomic pervert.”

“I’ll scout for trouble.”

Keenan glanced around at the
shattered, battered, bullet-ridden war zone. “You’re joking, right?”

“I never joke,” said Cam primly,
and spun away into the rain.

Stamping out his cigarette,
Keenan cursed his existence and stepped into the heavy downpour. It was like
walking under a waterfall. Externally, he was instantly soaked. The WarSuit
monitored his temp and kept him dry and snug within. He moved out, jogging,
senses alert, a slick Techrim in his fist. He followed Cam’s bobbing unit
through the gloom of high-rise scrapers. Up close, the streets were filled with
detritus: broken glass, planks of wood, bullet casings. Blood smeared doorways
and the battered spider-webs of impacted shop windows. Occasionally, Keenan
thought he saw a body part. He looked away.

Cam stopped. “Up there.”

Keenan peered through sheets of
rain. The alley was narrow, very dark, and skyscrapers and cube-blocks teetered
above him for as far as the eye could see, sending the already gloomy, sodden world
into deepest intimate shadow. The skyblock flanks were slick with black rain.
Windows watched, like the dormant opal eyes of some sleeping leviathan.

“Nice,” nodded Keenan. “Well,
nice
place
for an ambush.”

“Zombies aren’t that
sophisticated,” said Cam.

“These aren’t zombies,” said
Keenan, “they’re mutations. And from what I saw when we floated over this
charnel house, I’d say they still had brains enough. And guns. Too many guns.”

“Come on.”

With a deep breath, Keenan
hoisted his MPK and followed Cam into the jaws of the alley.

~ * ~

The
door slammed, and Franco stood, panting, weary, drenched to the bone, staring
at a point at the centre of his battered, wrecked living room. Mel moved off,
head whacking the ceiling to send plaster-dust drifting, and she disappeared
into the kitchen. Franco heard the tap running, and he sighed, deflating. He
was exhausted. Gods, he had been close—so close—to death! What in the world was
happening? The City—once haven to every hedonistic whim—had turned into a circus.
A freak show. And Franco was there at the centre wearing the star attraction on
his sleeve: his beautiful girl.

“Mel, my sweetness?” he said,
eyeing the kitchen nervously. He glanced down the savaged corridor to the
bedroom—and the stash of dangerous weapons he knew lay in his wardrobe, under
the bed, and in his battered brown leather suitcase.

Mel came padding back, small eyes
squinting, oiled head glistening like an overripe olive, distended vagina
leaking some kind of thick green ooze which bleached patches of Franco’s carpet
as he watched with an open, awestruck mouth. She grunted, and stood before him,
skin rippling like a sack of stoats.