Biohell (27 page)

“You stay here. I’ll go and find
whoever’s in charge. Cam?”

“Yes Keenan?”

“Keep an eye on these lovebirds,
will you?”

“Yes Keenan, although I fear the
surges and pulses which rearranged the planetary weather and night cycles have
damaged my scanners. I only see enemies a couple of seconds before you see them
yourselves.”

“Sometimes, that’s all we need,”
said Keenan quietly. “Just do your best lad.”

Keenan stalked ahead, down the
narrow trench between barrels, H-section girders and plinths of shattered
concrete. He soon heard voices, and keeping low, silent, he approached. The
barricade had been melded to the front of an office block, the foyer changed
into a CoP—a Centre of Operations. Keenan could see around thirty men and
women, all heavily armed, and several Slabs, clustered around a heavyset man
pointing at a digital map which glittered.

So, they’ve got power, thought
Keenan.

And a leader.

Then Keenan’s mouth dropped as
recognition bit him. The man by the digital map was...

“Keenan!” roared the bald,
black-bearded, short stocky warrior, and pushed past the gathered soldiers and
Slabs, a beam hijacking his face. “I don’t believe it!”

“The surprise is all mine,” said
Keenan, stepping forward. All eyes were locked on him. The stocky man
approached, and gave Keenan a powerful bear-hug.

“Lads! Lads! This is Keenan, the
one I was telling you about.”

“From your Adventures With
Leviathan That You’re Not Supposed To Discuss, sir?”

“Aye lad, from my Adventures With
Leviathan That I’m Not Supposed To Discuss.”

Keenan laughed, then, releasing
some of his tension. He eyed the savage Frankenstein-scars on Betezh’s face,
the small dark eyes, the predatory look of the shark. It was easy to
underestimate the man. However, Betezh had proved himself in many a fire-fight.

“It’s good to see you,” said
Keenan, at last.

“And you! Man, this city has gone
insane! It’s nice to get another gun on the parapet! We’re fighting a losing
battle here. Every single body helps, so to speak. Every gun another bullet in
the eye of fascist zombie oppression. You dig?”

“You’ve organised all this?”

“Well, I did my best.”

Keenan slapped Betezh on the
back. “You did well, mate.”

Betezh was former Combat K turned
Internal Affairs—and several years previous had been set up by his employer,
the politician Kotinevitch, to monitor Franco Haggis when the ginger-bearded
soldier had been incarcerated in Mount Pleasant—a mental institution for the
seriously unstable—after the military mission of Terminus5 had gone horribly
wrong. Keenan, Franco and Pippa now knew the Terminus5 debacle had been a
set-up, but it hadn’t stopped their subsequent imprisonment, and Franco’s
incarceration in a lunatic asylum. After a daring escape, Franco had gone on
the run—closely pursued by Betezh who wanted nothing more than Franco’s blood.
Via a bizarre series of twists, and the comedy of fate, Franco had first stapled
Betezh’s face with an industrial bone-stapler, then was in turn rescued by
Betezh from an organic lake on the bleak desolate planet of Teller’s World.
Betezh had, in the end, proved himself to be Combat K—proved himself true to
his roots. And, whilst they could not really ever consider themselves friends,
Keenan, Franco and Betezh could be considered brothers in adversity.

Now, here, Betezh had boosted
these nostalgic memories until he believed,
believed,
they had been the
best of buddies. Which went in some way to answer Keenan’s confusion at this
unexpected and over-friendly reunion.

“Listen,” said Keenan, keeping
his voice low. “You remember Franco?”

“Franco! Salt of the earth, a
bosom buddy, what a guy!”

“Well he’s having a few, shall we
say, pre-marital problems.”

“He’s getting married?” Betezh
cackled. “Is she a babe? A sex-monster? A lithe and buxom lap-dancer type? Is
she? Is she?”

“That would be
one
way of
describing her, yes. The thing is, we need to locate a lad who used to work the
markets around here. Went by the name of Knuckles.”

Betezh turned to his soldiers. He
preened, for here, and now, he was able to publicly aid his old war buddy—the
one about which he’d regaled his platoon in over-exaggerated tales highlighting
his own over-exaggerated bravado. “Listen up! Good buddy of mine is in the
shit, needs some help.”

“Is he Combat K?” asked one rangy
looking woman, her face unhealthy, hair like strings of barbed wire. And yet
her eyes shone with adoration for Betezh, her charismatic leader.

“He is. He is,” rumbled Betezh. “We
are
all
Combat K!” Betezh beamed foolishly.

Keenan coughed. “I, um, wouldn’t
be shouting that out too loud, if I was you.”

“Why not? I am proud of our
military heritage!”

Keenan looked into eyes twisted
from the path of sanity. “It’s a clandestine unit,” said Keenan, carefully. “Totally
covert. A secret organisation within a secret organisation. Combat K is
supposed to be a myth to the general population of Quad-Gal... so we can
continue
to carry out covert infiltrations, assassinations, detonations, that sort
of thing. Yes?”

“Ahh, poppycock! We should be
proud of our Combat K missions! We are the
elite of the elite!
Eh lads?”

The crowd of armed men and women
gave a cheer, waving their weapons in the air, grateful to be led by such a
wonderful military wartime hero,
and
given temporary honorary status in
such a secret organisation to boot. The Slabs grunted and groaned in
appreciation, like a bad aural rendition of horse sex. Keenan covered his face
with his hands and groaned.
What’s happened to the world? Am I truly
surrounded by idiots?

“I’ve heard of Knuckles,” said
one man, raising his hand.

“Good lad! Spill the beans, what
do you know?” Betezh’s shark eyes gleamed.

“He’s a bad lad, a
spaceship-thief, drugsmoke entrepreneur, wheeler and dealer and ducker and
diver. He’ll buy, sell and rob anything that isn’t nailed down. The
market-traders normally chase him with snap-sticks if they see the little
terrier.”

“And where might we find him now?”

The man shrugged bony shoulders. “I
think he’s part of a gang, one of the teeny bastards who infest this part of
The City. They call themselves The City Liberators, I assume because they try
to liberate cash from people.” He gave a bleak smile, looking at Keenan. “If you
find him, put a bullet in his head. He’s a maggot in need of a thrashing.”

“So, a nice guy,” said Keenan,
lighting a cigarette. “Anybody know where I can find these City Liberators?”

A woman pointed, across the
raging fires and burning cars, to a dark narrowing of city streets. “Over
there, Dregside, gangland. I think they eke out an existence on the edges of
the financial district; lots of rich people to mug down that way.”

Keenan nodded, staring out at
distant streets that looked completely impassable, thanks to collapsed
buildings, rubble, raging fires and plentiful zombies. “Shit.” He took a deep
toke on his Widow Maker. His PAD rattled and it clicked to his private
frequency. It was Cam. “Yeah?”

“Have you made contact with the
leader?”

“Yeah. Franco’s gonna get the
surprise of his life.”

“Well, whoever is in charge, tell
him we got trouble.”

“That Rappo Slab wake up?”

“Worse than that. The zombies are
coming.”

“Set Mel on them, she seems to be
adept at cutting heads from deviant bodies.”

“No, Keenan. Tell the Big Man he
needs to bring his troops. And fast. The zombies are coming. They’re armed.
Armoured. And dangerous.”

“How many?”

But his words were drowned by a
sudden deafening roar from across the barricades. Keenan and Betezh, followed
by the rag-tag band of makeshift soldiers, sprinted along the narrow trench to
where Franco was peering over a concrete balustrade. Betezh eyed Mel warily,
eyes following the collar and chain to Franco’s fist. Mel growled, but Franco
patted her disjointed muzzle affectionately and her growl switched instantly to
a
purr.

Beyond the barricade, the roaring
continued and Keenan leapt up, taking hold of rusted wire and hauling himself
to peer over the edge. The zombies had spread out into what could only be described
a
phalanx.
There were hundreds of them—
thousands
of them. They
stood in ranks, sagging grey flesh illuminated by fires. Many carried machine
guns and shotguns. The front ranks had...

Keenan blinked.

“They’ve got
shields,’”
he
snapped, and glanced over at Franco.

“I never said they were stupid,”
said Franco.

“Yeah, stupid is one thing, but
the bastards have organised themselves into a military unit. A battalion. An
army.”

“We’ve faced worse odds than
this,” grinned Franco.

“When?” snapped Keenan. “Tell me,
when the hell have we faced worse odds than a three-thousand strong
military-tooled zombie-army?”

“Ach, plenny of times Keenan, we’ll
be just fine. You’ll see. Or they don’t call me Franco ‘Jammy Bastard’ Haggis
for nothing, so they don’t!”

“They don’t call you Franco ‘Jammy
Bastard’ Haggis at all! Come on, Big Guy, what’s the plan?” Keenan eyed the
horde. It sent up another wailing roar, and the zombies started banging axes
and lengths of pipe against their makeshift shields.

“Did you find out where Knuckles
is?”

“A rough approximation.”

“Then it’s easy,” grinned Franco.
He waggled his eyebrows. “We’re going to run away.”

Franco wasn’t the only one with
the idea of fleeing, and as Betezh clapped Franco on the back with a booming
laugh and a cry of, “Well met, Franco, you old dog!”—much to Franco’s frowning
consternation—Betezh looked around at his small band of fellow troops. “Listen
up!” he bellowed. Below, the zombies had started a lumbering, staggered charge.
Their rotten feet thundered sloppily across the plaza, leaving many a toe
behind. “We can hold these walls, die, and become heroes! Or, as I now propose,
we can squeeze out the back way and hot-tail it away in order to fight another
day! That way, we will certainly come to face ever bigger odds on a more
glamorous battlefield! And become even bigger heroes! Hurrah!”

The vote was instant and
unanimous. As the zombies, screaming and frothing, clambered up the barricade
in search of fresh brains, Betezh led the group—nervous now that Mel was in
their midst— down through makeshift trenches and through the once opulent foyer
of the office building. They sprinted down dank concrete steps into a
half-flooded basement. Water and oil swirled about their legs, and with zombie
screams echoing behind, Betezh led the group past concrete support pillars to a
wide, low room, at the end of which squatted seven narrow tunnels guarded by
heavy mesh grilles of TitaniumIII.

“We’ll have to blast our way
inside,” said Betezh.

“I’m the man for
that
job,”
said Franco, puffing out his chest.

“This is just like the old days!”
beamed Betezh, slapping Franco on the back.

Franco eyed the crazy scarring on
Betezh’s face. “Not the old days I remember,” he muttered, and dragging his
pack from his back, started to rummage for hardcore explosives.