Biohell (36 page)

“That way!” screamed Knuckles,
pointing—

As another horde of zombies
flooded, like a rampant evil enema, into the street before them, hands bearing
weapons which flexed and opened fire. Bullets whined and zipped everywhere as
Keenan dragged on the steering wheel, and tyres squealed, squirming on warped
rims. The arse of the Corvette slammed a wall sending a shower of sparks over
the thumping Franco. Franco squawked, almost tossed free. Only Olga saved him.
He glanced back into her wide, brutal, flat face. He could see sweat gleaming
on the stubble of her upper lip. “Thanks!” he breathed. She winked at him, and
his insides lurched like a lard-fried breakfast on a hungover wedding morn.

Keenan fought the Corvette
Scrambler as it thundered down another alleyway. The huge bumper smashed
through barrels and crates, then slapped the flesh of a zombie, tossing the
body into the air like a broken ragdoll. More zombies stumbled into view,
several opening fire. Keenan hunkered down behind the wheel as the Corvette’s
bumper whacked and smacked, crushed and tossed. Zombie bodies were hurled into
the sky, crunched against dirt-smeared brick walls; were flung up and over the
thundering Corvette. One flipped, caught a foot in the front bumper, and
slammed onto the bonnet, inverting metal, its head cracking the windscreen. Keenan
watched, heart in his mouth, as the skull gaped like a piranha’s mouth and
black brains oozed free, dribbling. The zombie looked up, grinning a
long-fanged grin at Keenan and he felt it, his sanity, teetering on the brink
of an abyss. “Hold the wheel,” he growled at Knuckles, stood in his seat, and
slammed five bullets into the grinning face. The body flipped to one side, leg
torn free and slapping like a heavy rag against the front of the Corvette.
Keenan tried to ignore it, but it nagged at his peripheral vision like an
obtuse drunk in a posh restaurant.

“Not far now,” said Knuckles. “Around
the next bend.”

Keenan nodded. “How you doing
back there, Franco?”

“The bastards...” he slammed his
Kekra against the last of the fingers, which finally parted with a soft
squelching of necrotic flesh, “just don’t know when to let go.” He turned,
panting, cheeks flushed red. “Shit Keenan, this ain’t a fun gig by any stretch
of the imagination.”

Keenan glanced in his mirror. He
tapped his chin. “Better see to the beard, Franco.”

“What? Why?” Franco frowned, and
combed fingers through the ginger monster. He knocked free a grey severed
finger which tumbled into the footwell. “Aiiee!” he screamed. “A finger! A
finger!”

“Let me soothe you,” rumbled
Olga, and took Franco in a bear hug.

Keenan grinned sombrely, and
focused on driving. Clouds of heavy smoke were filtering into the street. He
slowed his speed, veering suddenly to thud over another zombie. Tyres crushed
flesh, and Keenan blinked, trying hard not to think that these devourers of
flesh had once been human.

The smoke thickened.

“OK, up ahead,” said Knuckles, “be
ready!”

The Corvette slammed round a
tightening bend, rear tyres squirming, and Keenan almost hit the brakes in
shock. Ahead, stood a massive ornately carved stone edifice, a circular
building filled with pillars and wide buttresses of stone. It sat on a raised
plinth at the head of broad sweeping steps of finest gold and white marble.
High long windows looked down over a plaza of manicured lawns and trees, an
extravagant luxury in a place where every square inch was worth billions to
developers. It just went to underline how affluent The Great Malkovitch Library
really was, but then, it was an addendum to The Great Malkovitch University,
and that was renowned as being academically elite to the point of farce through
the Quad-Gal in its entirety.

And... the library burned.

The sculpted, tree-lined plaza
before the library was filled from edge to edge with thousands upon thousands
of zombies. Every creed, colour, shape and size was catered for. Every wound,
deformation, amputation and decapitation was on show. It was a fairground of
freaks. A party for the forcibly deformed. A unity of unwilling undead.

“Hell,” breathed Keenan, lost in
awe. Already his foot was lifting from the accelerator...

“Keep driving!” howled Knuckles.
Keenan glanced in the rear view mirror to see a charging wall of snarling,
growling, hate-filled faces only inches from the Corvette’s rear bumper. He
slammed his foot, and the bonnet lifted, engine surging, the Scrambler slamming
towards the massive gathering of zombies filling the street, the plaza and the
whole
world
before them.

Closer, they saw a pyramid of
flammable materials had been stacked against the front wall of The Great
Malkovitch Library—a bonfire of terrible proportions spanning perhaps two or
three hundred metres. Flames roared, and the zombies cheered, waving guns and
chainsaws at the sky as fire scorched stone and ornate pillars.

Knuckles grabbed Keenan’s arm.
Pointed. “Down the side. There. I know a way in.”

“You been a busy boy, here?”

“I was a busy boy everywhere,”
smiled Knuckles, face grim.

The Corvette approached the wall
of zombie flesh, and Keenan saw where a few over-eager, partying zombies had
got too close to the flames and self-ignited. Still they danced and jiggled,
waving flaming hands above flaming, blackened heads. Engulfed in fire, and
seemingly celebrating some unrecognisable victory, this sight of denial and
sub-animal stupidity chilled Keenan to the core and cemented in his mind that
these were nothing like the zombies of fiction. Whatever these creatures were,
they were different, the product of some terrible experiment perhaps, some
disfiguring virus, or even the deviated biomods blamed by the press; whatever,
the results were very, very dangerous.

The Corvette skidded at speed,
rearing on two wheels like some unstoppable juggernaut. Tyres squealed and
deformed to the brink of detonation. The zombies close by, those that had
spotted the Corvette, roared and waved weapons, many opening fire. Bullets
pinged and zipped from heavy calibre guns. Keenan prayed, keeping the motor
revving high, as the Corvette touched down, ramming the necrotic wall with its
front left bumper and sending figures toppling like skittles. For a moment
Combat K ploughed through ranks of zombies, bodies falling and bouncing from
the charging Corvette. Then they were free, rear wheels skidding and squirming
in blood and pulped flesh, and sending the groundcar slewing on aged
suspension.

They shot down the side street,
the library rearing to their left, pillars
thum thrum thrumming;
they
were level with a high windowless wall which formed the library’s bulk. “Stop!”
screamed Knuckles, and Keenan slammed the brakes, pitching the group forward in
seats. Franco grunted, engulfed for a moment by Olga’s flesh.

“Why here?” Keenan was loathe to
leave the vehicle. It was sanctuary.

“We’ve got to climb,” said
Knuckles, rubbing at his skull. “I was going to take us in by the front door,
but twenty thousand zombies kind of put me off the idea.”

Keenan nodded, and watched
Knuckles leap free, search for a moment, then locate a practically invisible
handhold. He started to scale the building, hand over hand, red gloss boots
digging into narrow horizontal slots which, due to their angle of cut, blended
nearly perfectly with the wall. To Keenan, it looked like they had been
expertly chiselled. A professional job.

“You don’t like heights,” said
Keenan, glancing at Franco.

“I’ll be fine. But what about
Olga?”

“Olga climb!” boomed the huge
woman. “Olga strong! Olga fit! Olga triumph!”

“OK,” said Franco. “But... no
offence meant, you can go last. I wouldn’t want you on my head on the way down.”

Olga smiled slinkily. “Yes,
little man, but on
my
way down on
your
head I make
sure
you
come last! Har! You do make sexy chit chat with Olga, you naughty little man!
Har har!”

Franco paled, then glanced up to
where Keenan was scaling swiftly after Knuckles, who had stopped, shouting down
instructions on how best to climb. Franco dug in fingers, and began his ascent.
Within seconds his fingers were sore, his sandals finding scant purchase on the
sheer stone wall. Olga followed close below him, not quite blocking out the
ever-expanding view of the flood of zombies making their way down the alley. A
few errant bullets whined past the climbers and Franco ducked, feeling
suddenly, incredibly, vulnerable. The zombies seemed to be sniffing around the
Corvette Scrambler, and glancing about—but not, most importantly,
up.
Franco
kept this keen in his mind as he ascended and used it as a mental helve to urge
him to extra speed. Amazingly, Olga stayed with him.

Keenan, halfway up now, gazed
down—and out—over the darkened city streets spread beneath. His stomach
lurched, and he glanced down at the hard concrete six storeys below. To fall
now would be instant death, despite his WarSuit. And even if the fall didn’t
splatter him into component atoms, the deviants would converge on his wounded
frame and eat his brains. He shivered; then grinned a wild grin. Shit, he
thought, but wasn’t this what life was all about? If you never experienced
danger, then you never had anything by which to grade safety, and security, and
happiness.

Half way. Another six storeys.
And Knuckles was already leaping ahead, monkey-like in his agility and
sure-footedness. You could tell he’d done this sort of thing before; probably
many times.

Franco, on the other hand, was
suffering badly. His fingers felt like blocks of lead. His toes and feet were
rigid with cramp which made him want to cry out, but he didn’t dare, for fear
of a rapid hail of bullets from below. And, worst of all, he needed a shit.
Shit, he thought as he climbed, I don’t bloody believe it. Of all the times the
human body can dump on you, halfway up a building with a horde of flesh-eating
zombies below armed with Uzis and D5s has to take the chocolate biscuit. Hot
diggity dog. Cabbage and bloody bollocks! He surged on, body screaming, bowel
pummelling, thinking about the drugs in the canvas sack stashed in his pack. He
would gorge himself at the top, yes! And the thought of a drug-induced heaven
pushed him on...

Olga, also, was struggling. She
was incredibly strong, with fingers that could crush any windpipe. But her huge
bulk and weight were conspiring against her. And despite being surprisingly
manoeuvrable for her size and girth, she was tiring. She glanced down. The
zombies held little fear for her, despite her earlier protestation. Neither did
the drop. Never a woman blessed with an incredible imagination, Olga had
achieved most of her goals in life and, when push came to shove, accepted what
fate had to deliver. Her main motivation, as she glanced up at Franco’s
surprisingly muscular arse, was where this sudden impromptu meeting of boy and
girl would conclude. Yes, he had spoken of another woman—his ‘girlfriend’. But
Olga merely smiled at that, her huge, multi-poundage mam-maries wobbling with
an almost innate and frightening AI. In Olga’s experience, there were few men
who, when drunk enough, could refuse her charms. Like a Venus flytrap, once you
were inside her powerful muscular embrace...

Well hell, there was no getting
out.

The group climbed.

Below, the zombies worked
diligently at detonating the Corvette.

~ * ~

Keenan
reached the summit of the library a few minutes after Knuckles, and with a
groan he crawled over the edge and slumped to rain-slick organo-glass. His
stomach lurched again, for as he peered down he could see through
every
single
internal floor and he felt like he was toppling forward and down,
down and falling...

Knuckles grabbed him. “It helps
if you close your eyes. Orientate yourself gradually.”

Keenan tried it, and felt
stability return. He breathed deep. Steadied himself against the stone to his
left, which was rough, textured, grainy under his glove. “I didn’t expect that.
Twelve storeys, straight down. Shit. Glass floors. What a stupid
idea.”

“I think it’s a security feature,”
said Knuckles.