Biohell (51 page)

“Yeah, well, you’re just pissed
because of the ‘pub incident’.”

“No. I’m just pissed because that’s
the way I
am,
it’s hardwired into my motherboard, and you’re the way
you
are, an annoying little midget with a comedy ginger beard, because you’re a
natural born muppet.”

“Sticks and stones will break my
bones.”

“Hopefully,” said Cam.

Keenan dropped some gears, and
eased the HTank forward. Matrix drives hissed cold fusion and the machine crept
through towering, darkened streets. Occasionally they passed groups of zombies,
but none made a move to attack the HTank.

“Can’t they smell us?” said
Keenan. “Something’s changed. The others were hell-for-leather bent on our
extermination, HTank or no.”

“Things are changing.” Cam buzzed
close to his ear. “These are the weak. The stragglers. The ones left behind.”

Keenan stared at the PopBot. “Behind...
from what?”

“The deviants seemed to have
formed hierarchies. Groups. Armies. Maybe this is just a natural zombie
selection, Kee. A kind of zombie evolution. Maybe these are simply the weak.
Those left to die. Cannon fodder, yeah?”

“I know the feeling,” said
Keenan, who on several occasions had been abandoned by army ‘officials’.
Expendable
was a word that tasted bad on his tongue. “So if we see a larger group of
deviants, then they’re the strong ones? The... selected?”

“It certainly looks that way.”

“Shit. It’s as if they’re
developing military habits.”

“Freaky, isn’t it?”

Keenan ploughed on, travelling
several miles through deserted city streets filled with nothing more than
corpses and debris. Black snow still tumbled, interjected by occasional rants
of sleet and rain. The whole world, The City, seemed to be holding its breath.
Waiting for something. Waiting for something
bad.

As they closed on The Hammer
Syndicate, they came upon a street of staggered, scattered, burning cars. The
HTank eased through the fire, nosing blackened vehicles out of the way and
grinding along, for another mile or so, before—following Franco’s PAD
directions—they entered a long, narrow, dark alleyway. Some kind of barricade
had been erected at the far end. It was twenty feet high, made up of a
teetering wall of cars interspersed with what appeared to be heavy industrial
machinery.

Keenan’s eyes flickered to his
scanners... nothing. But then he
saw
them, a horde, silent and
motionless, waiting beyond the jagged wall of steel and wood and iron and
concrete.

“I see them, too,” breathed
Franco, leaning forward in his seat.

“They’re not on the scanners,
Cam.” Keenan clicked in annoyance. “How the hell can that be?”

“I bet it’s because they’re dead,”
said Franco.

“Yes. No heat,” said Cam. “They’re
the living dead. An HTank works on thermals.”

“See!” beamed Franco. “I was
right, I was. Bloody right! They don’t call me Franco ‘Mr Intuitive’ Haggis for
nothing, you know.”

Keenan revved the HTank’s
engines. Fumes hissed from exhaust. “They don’t call you that at all,” he said
quietly. “Cam, can you make out how many?”

“About...” the machine scanned
with tiny clicks. “A thousand.”

“Yeah? That many? Well, we need
to get through. This is going to be damn messy.”

“Let’s hope they’ve no heavy
artillery!” beamed Franco optimistically.

Beyond, the silence had risen
through moans, risen in rapid steps to screams and howls and flames flickered
leaping fast along the barricade in a sudden roar of ignition. Fifty foot
sheets of fire
whooshed
into the air, orange and yellow and green,
smashing windows in skyscrapers four storeys above. Glass tinkled down like
crystal snow.

“What are they protecting?”
muttered Keenan, revving the HTank again. Matrix engines hissed.

Several bullets whined through
the dark, sending showers up the HTank’s hull.

Cam spun for a few moments,
clicking as he scanned. Then he said, voice low, “You’re right, Keenan. They
seem to be
protecting
an area. The zombies have formed a barricade in
all the streets leading towards The Hammer Syndicate HQ.”

“Why the hell would they do that?
Why would they want to protect a
Syndicate,
of all things? They’re the
bloody criminals, aren’t they? The bad guys!”

“I don’t know,” bubbled Franco,
eyes rolling wild, “but I reckon we’ll have some fun finding out!”

“Are you
insane?”

Franco winked. And growled, “Better
believe it.”

“Hold on tight. We’re going in.”

“Be careful, Keenan.” Cam’s voice
was a digital whisper, a bad feeling creeping over the machine. His scanners
raged, sweeping back and forth over the barricade, the thousands of zombies and
the heavy plant machinery embedded in the burning, roaring wall. Something was
wrong. He could feel it in his silicon.

“We have no choice, my friend.”

Keenan revved the HTank hard and
with a grinding of teeth, slammed the massive, brutal twin-gun tank in a
belching charging advance, forward... a screaming push towards the burning
barricade and the thousands of howling, chanting, gun-toting deviants beyond.

At the last moment, Cam’s
scanners slammed him. His digital soul paled. And Cam
saw it..
.

Death.

Waiting for them.

“No!” screamed Cam, but his voice
was lost in the roar of the HTank’s charge.

~ * ~

CHAPTER 12

DETONATION BOULEVARD

The
HTank slewed at the last moment, turning sideways with a shower of sparks and
showering concrete, to cannon into the wall of burning cars and metal. Deep
clangs sang. The wall rocked, teetering dangerously. Fire rained down like
burning hail.

Beyond, the zombies let out a
massive roar, deep and reverberating and impossibly choreographed. It was as if
they had a hive mind.

Through the HTank’s thick,
armoured walls, Keenan, Franco and Xakus felt the terrible heat of the raging
inferno.

“What is it, dickhead?” snapped
Franco, scowling at the bobbing machine. Sweat rolled down his face and dripped
from his ginger beard. “We was about to have us a slurry when you went all screamy
like a little girl!”

“Well, let me think,” snapped
back Cam. “Maybe it’s two things. Maybe on the one hand it’s the fact I’ve just
located the old disused tunnel system that will lead us
beneath
the
zombies without having to crush hundreds of potential humans under heavy HTank
tracks. After all, they were once
like you,
and loathe as I am to admit
it,
related
to you in a deviated and evolutionary kind of way.”

“And the second reason?”

Despite the dark interior of the
HTank, despite the confined space and despite the smell from Franco’s sandals,
it seemed as if Cam was grinning. “Ahh. That would be the modest yield atomic
weapon I’ve just pin-pointed at the centre of the barricade. Which would,
no-doubt, be triggered into detonation by something heavy, for the sake of
argument shall we say an
HTank,
attempting to ram its way through.”

“Good reason,” said Franco,
beaming. “Well done that PopBot. Congratulations. Seriously!”

“Well, they don’t call me Cam ‘Clever
Bastard’ PopBot for nothing, you know.”

“Hey hey! I see what you did
there! You clever little bugger.”

“Charming, Franco. You are a true
gentleman.”

Keenan tore a hole in the nearest
wall turning the HTank about, and powered back down the alleyway trailing
bricks and with howling zombies roaring after them and sending bullets
screaming from juddering hot-barrels. They seemed disappointed.

Cam directed Keenan, and with
difficulty he negotiated the thumping, grinding HTank towards a nearby
underground subway entrance. The HTank, squealing and sparking, dropped its
nose and squeezed down a set of steep narrow steps amidst dust and a shower of
rubble, and to the tinkling soundtrack of ceramic wall-tiles, bashed free to
shatter against steelconcrete.

The HTank descended, entered a
wall of darkness, turned left, then right, bright lights slashing out to cut a
hole from the night sky. It descended, warily, down yet more steps with tracks
grinding and squealing and concrete crumbling all around. They came to a set of
aero-escalators, and the HTank ploughed on through, and down, destroying
bubbles and rubber and grinding a huge curl of safety rail before it emerged in
a shower of dragging sparks and flapping rubber.

In the confines of the cab,
Franco hunkered down, peering at the control screens. “Watch that wall, Keenan,”
he said. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “And that escalator there
don’t hit
it!
Shit man, you bloody buggering well hit it. Just watch where you’re
going
I said watch where you’re going
shit man you nearly took out a
cooling tower and that could have drowned us
and
you keep smacking into
brick walls and that’s just sloppy driving that is.
Watch out!”

“What?”

“That, there.”

“What, where?”

“That!”
squeaked Franco.

Keenan halted, easing free of the
accelerator, the HTank rumbling around him, and turned in his chair. He stared
hard at Franco’s innocent face.

“What?”

“Shut up, dickhead.”

“I was just trying to help.”

“Well, you’re not.”

“You
do
keep hitting
things.”

“The fucking HTank is wider than
the fucking tunnel. What do you expect?”

“I bet
Pippa
wouldn’t hit
anything.”

“Just shut up, you damn dribbling
backseat driver.”

Franco, ruffled, scratched his
beard. “Well,” he huffed, “I know when
I’m
not wanted.”

“Really? Well you never take the
hint.”

The HTank ground on, lower and
lower beneath the city streets. Eventually it levelled onto a platform and
Keenan pulled a lever, drawing the ponderous vehicle to a shuddering halt. He
slipped the hatch, popped his head into the stale, musty air of the deserted
train system. He shivered as a super-chilled breeze flooded him. The place
felt... ancient; desecrated, like a violated tomb.

He gazed around in the
stagnation, looking carefully at moss-infested tiled walls, damp-blackened
peeling posters, rotting, sagging timber benches; the place was a ghost shell,
a relic of an ancient abandoned world. There were old posters for books, films,
concerts, all caught in the stark glow of the HTank’s lights. It was like
stepping into the past. Keenan shivered again, dropping back into the relative
comfort of the HTank.

“It’s a dead world out there,”
said Franco.

Keenan nodded. “The whole city’s
dead. Well, undead.”

Franco shivered. “Gives me the
heebie jeebies.”

“Franco,
everything
gives
you the heebie jeebies.”