Gord Zajac - Major Karnage

“Proximity alarm,” Karnage said. “Somethin’s invadin’ our airspace.”

Winds whipped up in the arena, throwing dust and debris everywhere. The Spragmites scattered in all directions. Karnage, Sydney, and the High Prophet stood in the midst of it all. Tristan had long disappeared.

“The coward!” the High Prophet cried. “She knew she lost, so she fled! Run, Tristan! Run! For when I find you, I won’t make the mistake of sparing you again! Oh no!”

The sky suddenly went pitch black. Karnage looked up, squinting through the sand and wind. Flashing lights littered the sky, illuminating mammoth panels running the length of the horizon. Something had blocked out the sun. Something that looked like…

Unidentified Flying Objects of Death!

Karnage grinned.

“You see?!” The High Prophet pointed at the darkened sky, shrieking to be heard above the wind. “Spragmos has come! He will not stand for this outrage! He will smite you! He will smite you all!”

A panel on the ship slid open. Something large and phallic descended towards them. Spragmites ran in all directions as green energy crackled along the shaft, collecting on its bulbous end. Sydney grabbed Karnage’s arm and screamed in his ear. “We have to get out of here!”

Karnage shook her off. He raised his arms towards the ship, and closed his eyes. “Come get me, you bastards.”

Karnage’s world filled with an intense painful green.

Karnage woke lying face up on a hospital gurney. Soft white light enveloped him. He sat up. Medals jangled against his chest. He looked down. He was wearing a full-dress uniform. Karnage looked around. The world was empty: nothing but soft white light gently warming his skin. He lay back on the gurney, and closed his eyes.

So, Karnage thought, this is death.

“Major?”

Karnage opened his eyes. Cookie stood before him. He was wearing a hospital gown. His bald head was smooth and free of scars. Glowing green squiggles danced up and down his forearms. “Major? Are you awake?” Cookie said.

“I dunno,” Karnage said. “Am I dead?”

Cookie shook his head. “No, sir.”

“You sure about that?”

Cookie smiled. “I’m sure.”

“Well that’s a relief.” Karnage sat up. “What with all this white shit everywhere and me bein’ decked out in full military dress and all, you could see why I might jump to that conclusion.”

“Nobody’s dead yet, Major.”

“Nobody? You mean Velasquez? Heckler? Koch?”

Cookie nodded. “All still alive, sir.”

“I knew it. I just knew they weren’t…” Karnage dropped his shoulders and let out a sigh of relief. “Good. That’s good.” He looked up at Cookie. “I found ’em, Cookie. I found ’em! It was just like you said. Comin’ in all squiggly and on an angle and shit. I don’t know what they done to me. Last thing I remember they opened up some monkeyfucker of a death ray on my ass. Next thing I know I’m here, talkin’ to you! And look at you.” Karnage grabbed Cookie by his arms. The squiggles squirmed hotly under Karnage’s grip. “You got no bandages on your head or nothin’. You’ve never looked better. Except those squiggles. Shit, they’re writhin’ and spreadin’ and dancin’ like… like some kinda… hell, I don’t even know! What’s it all mean, Cookie?”

“It means you still got a lot of work to do, Major. You found the aliens. Now you gotta find a way to stop ’em.”

“But how, Cookie? How?”

Cookie tapped his temple. “You just gotta use your head.”

“My head is fucked up,” Karnage said. “I still see things, Cookie. Things from—” Karnage cut himself short before he could finish the thought.

“It’s okay,” Cookie said. “You can say it here. The War.”

Karnage cringed, ready for the visions to explode in his head. But nothing happened. No fire. No chaos. No pain. Just peace. He nearly wept.

“You’re not crazy, Major,” Cookie said. “You got a good handle on things. Better than any of ’em would have thought. But you’re not done yet. You still got a ways to go.” The squiggles on Cookie’s arms grew brighter and hotter. They twined around Karnage’s fists, now so hot they burned his skin. He tried to pull away, but they wouldn’t let go. They twined up his arms.

“What’s happenin’, Cookie?”

“It’s time for you to go, Major.”

“Go where?”

“You’ll see.” The squiggles grew brighter. They washed everything out into a fierce, pulsing green. The squiggles pulled Karnage’s hands from Cookie’s arms, and Karnage tumbled backwards, falling through the ever thickening tangle of squiggles. As he fell, Cookie’s voice floated down to him through the distance:

“We’re with you, Major. Every one of us. We’re with you….”

Karnage slowly drifted up into consciousness.

His entire body felt weightless. He waited for the dream-like feeling to dissipate.

It didn’t.

The burning stench of pinkstink and hoverballs filled his nostrils. He opened his eyes. They were met with a stinging yellow mist. Karnage gasped and coughed, struggling to breathe the toxic air. He could barely see his hand in front of his face. He reached out. His fingers hit a smooth concave surface. He ran his hands across, feeling out how the surface arched and curved around him, enveloping him in a compact sphere. He felt like he was trapped inside a hoverball.

Karnage punched the walls of the sphere. His Sanity Patch buzzed “Frothy Cream” as the entire sphere rocked forward, tilting and listing. Karnage braced his hands and feet against the walls of the sphere, trying to right himself. The sphere stopped listing. Bracing with his other limbs, Karnage lifted a foot and kicked hard into the sphere. Cracks bloomed out under his boot and the sphere jerked down. His Sanity Patch crooned “Sandy Dreams.” He lifted his leg, and kicked into the cracks. His foot smashed through. The yellow smoke poured out through the hole, and the sphere plummeted.

It crashed into a hard surface, shattering everywhere. Karnage coughed as thick plumes of yellow smoke puffed out of his lungs. It tasted worse than it smelled. He retched and gagged until nothing but spit came out. Throat raw and nostrils burning, he felt like he’d been breathing hot ash. He lay against the floor trying to catch his breath and draw in clean air, but the stench lingered. Finally, he pulled himself to his feet.

He stood in a gleaming metal chamber that was all angles. Thick translucent tubes wound across the walls, creating squiggling patterns. Green light flowed through the tubes with the occasional blip of white streaked through the green. The lights pulsed and flowed like blood pumping through veins. Karnage touched one of the squiggles. The white bursts spun around his fingers a moment, as if scanning them, then sped off. He felt the heat of each green pulse. This is it, he thought. The belly of the beast.

The path of the squiggles was interrupted by an arched doorway large enough to fit a commuter train. The door looked to be made of a spiral of roughly hewn blades. The squiggles cut a path around the door, collecting around a nodule of translucent spheres that throbbed and fluttered in time with the light passing through it. Support beams in the shape of talons flowed up the walls into the curved ceiling. Pearl-coloured spheres hovered above him, nestled together in the apex of the ceiling’s curvature.

As light glowed fiercely around the door and collected in the nodule, the blades of the door spiralled open. Karnage pressed himself up against the wall. His heart beat in his chest. He was about to get his first glimpse of an alien. Another pearl-coloured sphere floated into the room, and the door closed behind it. The sphere began to rise towards the ceiling. As it did so, a dark shape floated down against the side of the sphere. It was human. Karnage awkwardly made a grab at the sphere, pulling it back down so he could peer inside. The human shape touched the side of the sphere, and Karnage saw the face of the person inside. It was Sydney. Her eyes were closed. Her knees were curled up to her chest, her arms gently wrapped around them. She looked like she was sleeping.