Gord Zajac - Major Karnage

“I’ll settle for a good steady jog,” Karnage replied. “I’ll try the emergency generators. See if they got any juice left in ’em. The second you get power, you get this thing up and running. Don’t wait for me. And Corporal?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Barricade this door when I leave. No matter what happens—no matter what you hear goin’ on outside—you stay put. Do not open that door for anyone ’less they give you the password.”

“What’s the password, sir?”

“Mayhem.”

Stumpy saluted. “Won’t open it until I hear the password.”

Karnage returned the salute. “Good luck, Corporal.”

“You, too, sir.”

Karnage slipped outside. He heard the scrape of desks being pushed up against the door as Stumpy barricaded himself in.

The Godmaster Array glowed brightly before him, returning diffused moonlight heavenward. Karnage unholstered his goober gun and stared fiercely at the orange fires burning brightly in the distance.

He hadn’t had the heart to tell Stumpy the generators were deep in the Spragmite encampment.

Karnage crawled over a gnarled orange hedge at the base of the crater. The hedge contained the remains of a once mighty electrified fence topped with razor wire. It had long ago lost its battle against the invading onslaught of creeper. Karnage hoped he would fare better against the Spragmites.

He found himself facing a sea of cookie-cutter townhouses buried in orange creeper. He was on the outskirts of Camp Bailey’s housing district.

Karnage felt a momentary pang of yearning. He wanted to find his old barracks. To check out the dumpsters behind the Mess where he and his buddies used to hide from annoyed drill sergeants and furious MPs. The military had been a lark back then. Duty something to be shirked. Work to be skirted at all costs. That was before they had been shipped out. Before their first big foray into…

The War!

Fresh-faced recruits bein’ shoved into that meat grinder of death. Black smoke chokin’ your throat and burnin’ your eyes. Voices screamin’ all around you, prayin’ to gods of every stripe, shape, and colour. Nothin’ answerin’ those prayers but the hot spray of bullets and explosive death. And when the smoke cleared, the field was thick with charred, twisted bodies. Nothing moved. Nothing moaned. Nothing left alive. Nothing but a single, snivelling recruit hiding under his buddies’ corpses. A cowardly little bastard who hadn’t had the guts to fire one single shot.

And then the bodies were pulled away, and that recruit found himself staring into the face of Uncle Stanley himself! An enemy officer—with uniform so crisp, you could cut yourself on the crease of his pants—staring down at him through sightless, unseeing driving glasses. Big black pits of shine that reflected nothing but the gore around him, and the frightened face of that chickenshit little private. The officer aimed his pistol at the private’s face, and squeezed the trigger—

—and nothing happened! No roar. No searing flash followed by pain, coldness, and death. Nothing but the tiniest click. The officer looked at his pistol, then at the recruit. The officer’s lips parted, exposing jagged yellow teeth and a voice like crushed gravel poured out: “Looks like today’s your lucky day, kid.”

And he turned and walked away! Left that chickenshit little recruit to wallow in the rot and the filth, huggin’ his knees to his chest, gazing out at the churned mass of blackened, twisted corpses, vowin’ it would never be like this again never again never again never again—

The hallucination shattered as Karnage’s hands found a wall to slam his head into. His Sanity Patch buzzed.

“Warning. Sanity Level upgraded to Sandy Dreams. Please refrain from violent behaviour.”

Karnage scowled. He had barely begun, and was already burning through Sanity Levels. He had to keep a better handle on things. Too much was at stake. Too many lives were at risk. Cookie. Velasquez. Heckler. Koch. And now Stumpy, too. They were all counting on him. He wouldn’t let them down. Not this time.

Not ever again.

“You all right, buddy?”

Karnage looked up. Two men stood before him. The one who spoke was moving towards him. He wore a tuxedo jacket over a flower print dress. The other wore a shirt made of orange creeper with a pinkstink boutonniere. He held a thin slab of smooth plastic in his hands. Images flickered across its back, lighting the man’s frightened, bulbous eyes. “Carlos!”

The one moving towards Karnage turned and looked at his companion. He pointed at the plastic slab. “Why are you shooting my feet?”

“Carlos, look at—”

Carlos pointed to his face. “Here, Simon. Shoot here. I can’t use this if all you get is my ass.”

“But—”

Carlos moved back to Simon and grabbed his hands. He lifted the tablet so it pointed at Karnage. There was a lens on its front in the shape of a D.

Carlos moved back beside Karnage. “Am I in the shot?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good. Now shut up.” Carlos turned towards Karnage, but kept his face pointed at the camera. This meant he was only looking at Karnage with one eye. “Are you all right? You sounded like you needed help.”

“Carlos!” Simon hissed.

Carlos kept his grinning face on Karnage. He hissed at Simon through his teeth. “What?”

Simon pointed at Karnage. “His clothes, Carlos. Look at his clothes!”

Carlos looked at the open jacket of Karnage’s police uniform, the leather straps of his straitjacket just visible underneath. Before Carlos could register the string of goober grenades on his belt, Karnage struck out with his fist and caught Carlos across the jaw. Carlos staggered backwards and fell to the ground and stayed there. Karnage’s neck buzzed.

“Warning. Sanity Patch upgraded to Lemon Breeze. Please refrain from violent behaviour.”

Karnage turned his attention to Simon. Simon stood frozen in place, his eyes glued to the tablet’s screen. The lens still pointed at Karnage, albeit shakily. Karnage walked towards Simon. Simon stared at the screen, his hands shaking more and more violently with Karnage’s every step. Karnage pulled the tablet out of Simon’s hands. Simon looked up into Karnage’s face. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he fell to the ground.

Karnage dragged the two men into the nearest townhouse. He stripped Carlos of his clothes, stuffed the unconscious men into a closet, and barricaded the door. Karnage threw the police jacket aside. He pulled the dress over his head. It neatly covered his belt of goober grenades. He slipped on the tuxedo jacket. It just covered his goober rifle. He took another look at Simon’s camera. The glossy plastic was covered in smudges and scratches. There was a Dabney Corporation logo engraved into its side. He flipped it over, and was greeted with a shot of his feet. A tiny red dot flashed in the corner. He couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. He tucked the tablet into his jacket, and headed into the Spragmite compound.

Creeper and pinkstink hung between lampposts like garlands. Hand-cranked lanterns hung from the creeper, their blue LED glow bobbed and swayed in the wind like drunken fireflies. Pink and orange topiary worms dotted the front yards of the derelict houses.

People stood around bonfires in the streets, talking and laughing. Some toasted skewered lizards and bits of squiggly root over the fires. Everyone was dressed in the same haphazard improvised fashion as Carlos and Simon. Many of them carried D tablets similar to Simon’s. They were unabashedly recording any and all of the festivities. Seeing this, Karnage fished his D tablet out of his pocket, and used it to observe his surroundings. Occasionally someone would wave to him through the viewfinder, but beyond that, he was invisible.