Hardcore - 03 (39 page)

Wow, he thought. I have been a blind man!

Just... look at those!

Think of the... incredible fun!

Think of the
fumbling!
Think of the
wobbling!
Think of the
nipples!

After all. He smiled, lost in his reverie. In an infinite universe, nothing's nice as tits.

Olga saw the stare, and frowned in confusion. She had been pursuing Franco - and Franco's arse - for many a month now, and hanging upside down from a Zeppelin3 seemed an unlikely place for his libido to come alive.

Franco slammed controls, and the Zeppelin flipped around like a whale changing direction, engines growling. Everybody hit the deck, but Franco was sprinting before anybody could move, his single sandal slapping forlornly across the deck. A right smash broke a doctor's jaw, a right side-kick with a stumpy leg left another deformed GP rolling in the aisles clutching testicles compressed to lemon pips. The third three-legged doctor squaddie, sporting an external kidney and five grafted ears, backed away, hands held up. Franco grinned, a gleam of teeth, showing a dark gap where one had been knocked free in a pub brawl.

Franco stomped forward.

"No!"

There came a ripping sound, and Franco stared at the kidney pulsating and wobbling in his hand. The three-legged doctor reared back on his back leg, and tried to kick Franco - who danced back, turned, and hurled the kidney over the side of the aircraft.

"I
neeeeeeeeeed
that, youse bastards!" The doc ran, and dived over the side after his precious, spinning kidney.

And that just left -

Paddy, who sat, slumped in the aisle, nose-teeth clacking quietly in agitation. He looked up, vertical eyes blinking. "Don't kill me," he whimpered. "I'm a coward, really, honestly, I don't want to fight, I never wanted to fight, I shout and abuse and offer my opinion, but I don't want to fight no matter what insults I give... I'm just in charge. I have ideas, you see, clever ideas, and I think I'm really clever, and everyone thinks I'm really clever and funny and bright, but we all know here that I'm not very clever." He pulled out his lower lip. Franco stared, without emotion, wiping his kidney-smeared hands on his skimpy PVC uniform. "You see," continued Pudson, lips wobbling, fifteen fingers kneading his velvet clothing, "I'm a very creative person, honest, I mean look at my clothes! I made them! And my arms! I grafted them! And my nasal teeth! A product of my cheap science fiction! But I've got a bit carried away with myself, haven't I? Please don't kill me. Please please please."

"Pudson?"

"Yes?" Pleading.

"Shut the fuck up. And you damn well stay fucking shut up, if you know what's good for you. Capiche?"

"Yes sir! Thank you sir! I'll do anything sir! Thank you sir!"

"PUDSON!"

"Yessir?"

Franco gestured to Fizzy, who was panting, sweat-streaked, but had the ghost of a smile on her lips. "Fizzy, if this misogynistic misplaced bastard son-of-a-bitch moves..." he smiled. "Blow his fucking head clean off."

Fizzy grinned. "My pleasure, Franco." She grabbed a long, sleek weapon and cocked it, analysing the hypodermic gun's flanks with a military interest. "Although it might take a while."

"Take your time, babe."

Franco moved back to the control panel and glanced down through glass-floor panels. Below, the battle raged. Even at this high altitude they could hear the clash of the medically deformed armies engaging in battle.

"What now?" Olga moved close, and placed her hand experimentally on Franco's arse. He did not complain, so she did not move her fingers.

Franco frowned, brows knitted, and fished out his PAD. It was still dead. As dead as a dodo burger. He shook it vainly, in the hope that some miracle of motion would spark the tiny device back into life. It did not.

"Pippa's down there," he said, softly.

Olga shook her head. "No, she was placed ze thousand kilometres away on a different continent. Remember?"

"Hmm. No. She's down there. I can feel it in my blood. In my bones." He stared hard at Olga. "She's Combat K. I can
sense
her."

Olga nodded. "If you say so, Big Boy. We should go and have ze look?"

"Yes. Hold on, everyone! We're going down."

Franco dropped the Zeppelin3 through layers of cloud towards the rampaging armies beneath. Huge swathes of nurses battled doctors, dragging their legless and machine-melded torsos through the blood-churned snow, hacking at one another with sharpened stethoscopes and throwing quad-scalpel shurikens with unerring accuracy. Many of the deformed combatants resembled porcupines, with all manner of medical implements protruding from faces and heads and torsos. It made for extremely grim viewing.

"It is horrible," said Olga.

"Savage," agreed Shazza. "Like the BBC Quad-Gal News. What can we do?"

"Very little, I think," said Franco. "These battles have been raging for a thousand years. We are temporary interlopers. Only God knows what these poor bastards are searching for. An end to war, I would suspect?"

"Or an end to medical experimentation," said Fizzy, moving closer to watch the rampaging thousands. An explosion roared, throwing up chunks of ice and bodies. A lower torso with four waggling penises arced past the windshield, and the nurse-clad squaddies exchanged worried glances as the Zeppelin3 rocked on concussions of energy.

"We're too low," said Shazza. "We could detonate."

"I'm looking for Pippa," said Franco, quietly.

"You're insane! What do you hope to see in
that?"
She pointed with her own weapon, towards the smash and thrash of battle insanity. Nothing was clear. Smoke rolled across the ice. Bullets whizzed and whined. Explosions spat icefall in arcs. Everything was a madness. The world had turned a deep arterial red.

"Take us up higher," said Fizzy, shuddering as a missile fashioned from three oxygen cylinders tied together with straightjackets went wild, howling and spinning through the air, to explode only feet away. Fire roared, heat washing over Zeppelin3's lower flanks.

"No." Franco set his jaw. He turned, suddenly, bent and removed his remaining sandal, and launched it at the crawling, whimpering Paddy who was making a break for the edge of the airship. The sandal cracked the back of Pudson's weirdly-shaped head, and he slapped the floor, unconscious. "Fucking cardboard tough-guy. What a creep! What a creepy sexist bastard!" Franco brushed down his nurse uniform, face in a frown. "It makes one feel quite abused." He turned back to the battle, and banked the Zeppelin to the right. They drifted through smoke.

"There!" he screeched, as he spied Pippa crouching behind an overturned truck. Fire licked along the chassis. Beside her was... Franco groaned. Betezh. But still, it was another set of hands to hold a machine gun!

"Pippa!" he yelled. "Pippa!" But she couldn't hear him over the roar of battle, and the whine and slap of bullets. He turned to Fizzy and Shazza and Olga. "We're going in!" The three women nodded. They could recognise an obsessive lunatic when they saw one; but understood his motivations. Franco was going in... to rescue his friends.

He dropped the airship, and saw Pippa glance up, lifting her weapon. He waved frantically, and saw her face, smeared with dirt and gun-oil, suddenly soften. Shazza tossed a ladder over the side, which unravelled to the ground, and Franco, with Olga holding his ankles, hung over the side with a Sick World machine gun in each fist, covering Pippa and Betezh as they ran for the ladder and clambered up like monkeys on mescaline.

Panting, they dropped to the deck and there came a brief succession of embraces. Another explosion rocked the Zeppelin3, and Fizzy grabbed the controls, lifting them into the air with the roars of a powerful engine.

"Wait!" snapped Franco. "What about Mel? And Miller?"

Pippa glanced at Betezh, then back to Franco. Something in her face made him go cold. "Miller betrayed us," said Pippa, slowly, placing a hand on Franco's arm. "He did one, when we were in a bad situation. We tried to take him down, but he was too quick. He escaped."

"And Mel?"

Pippa's cold grey eyes, usually full of an emotionless calculation, were full of tears and she realised, realised for the first time how incredibly fond of Melanie she had become - zombie or no. Her hand squeezed Franco's flesh, hard. "I'm sorry, Franco," she heard herself say, detached, a million miles away. "Melanie is dead."

Franco closed his eyes. He swooned.

He hit the deck, and remembered no more.

Franco swam in a murky wilderness inside his own head. He stepped from dream to dream, always an observer, unable to interact with his own self as he watched through another person's eyes. He watched himself, the bad decisions of his life, the violent choices he made, the sexual perversions he endured. He watched himself tortured at the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, then watched him eke out a pitiful revenge on Betezh. And finally, he saw himself married to the monster known as Melanie, and their wedding night (he watched, detached, in stunned disbelief; he even appeared to enjoy some of it). And finally, ultimately, came their divorce. Franco sat stiff in a nylon suit, as the lawyers outlined his list of misdemeanours and Mel stood in the witness dock, drooling drool that melted 1,300-year-old hardwood timber, and staring at him with frustration and annoyance. And yes, Franco had to admit, he was not the easiest dude to live with... but when you were divorced by an eight-foot mutation with body-odour problems that would make a skunk weep, you had to start taking a good hard long look at yourself. However, despite the animosity Franco had always nurtured a dream, a small pebble of hope clutched in the sweaty fist of improbability. That one day, Mel would regenerate into her beautiful original self, and come running, falling into his arms, giggling, her fresh hair like flowers in his face, her tongue like honey in his mouth.

Franco grunted. Shit. Life wasn't like that. Bad things happened to good people. The evil weren't always punished. And it was fucking rare there was a happy-ever-after ending. Not in this world, not in this life. Well. Not in Franco's world, anyway.

Franco opened his eyes from beyond his pounding head, and found he was lying on his back, staring at thick hairy legs sporting huge tufts of black spider-hair like coagulated rugs. Franco looked up, weakly. Olga sat beside him, holding his hand.

"Hi," he said.
Bum budda bum budda bum budda bum
went his headache. But hey. It was better than a sermon from Callaghan.

"There there," Olga said.

"What happened?"

"You found out about ze Melanie." Olga patted his head, as if he was nine years old, which was exactly what he didn't need when the drummer from drumming band
Bang Da Drum
seemed to be playing a solo in his skull. Franco struggled up onto his elbows, and realised they were moving, or rather, the Zeppelin3 was moving, at speed. He stood, shaking his hand free of Olga's bear-like grip, and padded over to the control section. On a bench to one side was Pudson, head hung low, wearing defeat like a cloak. Franco kicked him on the shin, and he squawked with his nose teeth.

"Hey Pippa? Where we going?"

Pippa turned. Gave a brief smile. "We've had a signal. Must be from Keenan."

"What kind of signal? I thought all comms were down? Are the PADs working, then?"

"Use your head," smiled Pippa.

Bum budda bum budda bum badda bam bam bam
went Franco's pounding skull. "What d'ya mean?" he frowned, and looked around, searching for his single sandal which had been used as a weapon against Pudson's deformed head.

"Can't you hear it? Keenan is one crafty motherfucker."

"You mean my headache?" said Franco, eyes wide, realisation dawning.

"Yep," said Pippa. "We three have spinal logic-cubes that detonate if we betray one another. Right?"

"
Yee
-arse?"

"So? How do they communicate?"

"I see where you're going," said Franco. "Somehow Keenan's tapped into the frequency and is giving us a banging headache with a message. Why, that crafty crafty bastard. I suppose he must be in trouble, then?"

"According to the maps, he's beneath a vast glacier."

"How'd he get there then? I thought he was in the desert?"

Pippa shrugged. "We've all been on the move, Franco. Sick World is far from a normal place. Soil samples? Hah. I hope to God I'm the first one to get my hands on Steinhauer if we ever get off this diseased hardcore rock alive!"

Franco deflated, and moved to the low edges of the Zeppelin3's platform. Below, the landscape sped by icy mountains and frozen lakes. A cold wind whipped Franco's beard, and a hand touched his arm.

"Not now, Olga."

"It's me again," said Pippa, and Franco breathed her scent. He gazed into her cold grey eyes and realised he was in love with Pippa, had always been in love with Pippa, and would love her until the day he died. He knew, however, his love was unreciprocated and a dream to which he must aspire, and ultimately, never achieve. He shrugged. It didn't matter. One day, he might catch her off guard - when she was drunk.

"This game's getting serious," said Franco, morosely.