Gord Zajac - Major Karnage

Sydney pinched at her nose and sniffed. “I’m gonna blow pink snot for a few days, but other than that I’m fine. How about you?”

“I’m not dead.”

“Sounds like you’re doing pretty good, then. What happened to Patrick?”

Karnage jerked a thumb out the broken window. “He’s dead.”

Sydney blinked. “You killed him?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

“With my fists,” Karnage said. “And a gun.”

“And the Sanity Patch didn’t go off?”

Karnage shrugged. “It went off a little.”

“But not enough to kill you.”

Karnage grinned. “Nope.”

Sydney looked out the window. “Where’s his body?”

“What do you mean where? He should be right—” Karnage looked down at the square. There was a smear of blood at the base of the water tower, but otherwise the square was empty.

Patrick was gone.

“No,” Karnage shook his head. “That’s not possible. I got him square in the chest. Right in the heart. He couldn’t have stood up and walked away from that!”

“Looks like he did,” Sydney said.

Karnage heard a buzzing behind him. He started. He had a moment where he thought it was the Sanity Patch finally realizing he had indeed been violent these last twenty minutes, and was enacting retroactive retribution. But it wasn’t.

A cell phone vibrated around on the floor behind them, its display flashing. Karnage picked it up. The name on the display read STEVE DABNEY. A picture of a strapping young man with closecropped hair and glasses smiled out of the screen. A list of details ran down the screen, including “Employer: Dabney Corporation. Job Title: CEO.” Karnage showed the name to Sydney. She whistled.

“Does that mean it is who it looks like it is?”

“It does,” Sydney said. “You gonna answer it?”

“Be rude not to.” Karnage answered it. Steve Dabney appeared on the screen, smiling broadly. “Patrick, how—”

The smile left his face. He blinked.

“You’re not Patrick,” he said.

“Nope,” Karnage said.

Steve stared blankly at Karnage. Karnage stared back.

“I take it Patrick can’t come to the phone right now?” Steve said.

“Nope,” Karnage said.

“Can I expect him to ever come to the phone again?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Karnage said.

“I see,” Steve said. He looked at something offscreen, then back at Karnage. The congenial smile was back in place. “Well, I’m afraid I’m rather busy here, so… so long.”

The screen went black.

“Be seeing you.” Karnage said. He tossed the phone out the window.

The phone had shattered on impact. Its shrapnel lay splayed in a wide dispersal pattern around the bloody splotch on the cobblestones. Sydney pointed to a spotty trail of blood leading through the park’s main gates. “See? He walked.”

“Or he was carried,” Karnage said.

“You think he had help?”

“There’s no way he could have survived that.”

“He could have been wearing a bulletproof vest,” Sydney said. Karnage shook his head. “I would have felt it when I was beating the crap out of him.”

“Good to know you’re so thorough about these things.”

“I try.”

They followed the blood trail out to the parking lot. Sydney pointed to a pair of swooping crescents carved into the gravel shoulder of the road.

“Skid marks,” Sydney said. “You’ve got to be leaving in one hell of a hurry to make hoverballs do that.”

Karnage squinted down the road. “Looks like he’s long gone, then.”

A drone flew down in front of Sydney. Its lens zoomed towards her. “Oh, thank Darwin! I am thrilled—nay, ecstatic to see that you are unharmed.” The drone tentatively poked at Sydney’s head with its tentacles. “You are unharmed, aren’t you?”

Sydney swatted the drone away, rolling her eyes. “Yes, Uncle.”

“Excellent! That is such a relief!”

“I’m good,” Karnage said. “Thanks for asking.”

The drone spun and flashed its lens at Karnage. “Indeed you are! Well, this is most surprising. Does this mean you were able to defeat the marksman?”

Karnage looked down the highway. “Mostly,” he said.

“Wonderful! I am pleased to see that your ‘crash course’ in the Eleven Senses has provided you with such stellar results. I must admit, I am completely flummoxed. It should not have been possible for that gentleman to have breached the perimeter. I am at a loss to explain why his presence went undetected.”

“There’s a lot about this guy that isn’t possible,” Karnage said.

“So it would seem. As a result of this puzzling bit of data, I am afraid I must now ask you to leave. I am instigating a security lockdown until I can pinpoint the faults in my system. It’s nothing personal, I assure you. I simply must make my personal safety my highest priority. Despite a complete understanding behind the theory of all martial arts, I am compelled to admit I have no skill in their execution myself. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Karnage said. “We were just leaving, anyway.”

“Excellent! Well, I must see to my diagnostics. Bon aventure!” The drone sailed back into the compound.

“And just where are we going?” Sydney said.

“To talk to our buddy Steve, of course,” Karnage said.

“Steve? As in Steve Dabney?”

“Yep.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Why?”

“He’s in Dabneyville.”

“So?”

“You can’t go to Dabneyville!”

“Why not?”

“Do you have any idea what Dabneyville’s like? It’s a fortress. Cameras everywhere. Dabneycops crawling all over the place. You’ll never get in. And even if you did, he probably already figures that you’re coming. He’ll be expecting us.”

“Good,” Karnage said. “That’ll give him time to get good and scared.”

Sydney shook her head. “Steve Dabney’s not afraid of anything.”

“Maybe he should be.”

“Maybe you should be.”

“Does that mean you’re not coming?”

Sydney stared off down the highway. She hung her head and sighed. “No. No, it doesn’t. If I don’t come with you, you’ll just end up getting yourself killed. And where the hell will that leave us?”

“Squidbugged,” Karnage said.

“Squidbugged?”

“Yeah.” Karnage knocked on the metal band under his shin. “Squidbugged.”

“You just love inventing new words, don’t you?”

“Yep. I’m a regular wordicologist.”

Sydney and Karnage drove to Dabneyville in a black limousine. Sydney explained that she had “borrowed” it from Patrick after he had shot Karnage at Camp Bailey. The biometric scanner on the dashboard had been ripped off and the red and green wires had been twisted together.

“Tampering with security systems is a criminal offence under the Dabney Intellectual Property Ordinance,” Karnage had reminded her.

“You want me to go and turn myself in?” she had said. Karnage had told her not to bother.

They brought the only weapons they had: Sydney’s goober pistol and stun stick, and Patrick’s pistol that Karnage had “liberated” from its holster. The goober gun had three rounds left, and the pistol had seven. While not the kind of heavy artillery Karnage would have liked for taking on the Dabney Corporation, it would have to do.

They took off down the highway in the same direction as Patrick’s skid marks, following him towards Dabneyville.

“Anything I need to know before we get to the city?” Karnage said.

“If we can help it, we’re not going to be seen. But if we are, you’re going to have to work hard to blend in. Look happy all the time. If you go around frowning and scowling at everything like that, Dabneycops will assume you’re up to something.”