Gord Zajac - Major Karnage

There was nothing left of the asylum. It looked as if it had been scooped out of the ground, leaving a perfectly spherical hole. All that was left was a single car in the parking lot, shimmering and floating in the desert heat, and three quarters of a sign welcoming people to Steve Dabney Veteran’s Home: Support Our Troo—.

Karnage took a closer look at the edge of the crater. Its edge was sharp and clean. There were no blast marks. No signs of thrown debris anywhere. He’d never seen anything like it. Nothing leaves a blast radius that clean. A tingle ran down Karnage’s spine. Nothing human, anyway.

The aliens! It must have been. It was the only explanation that made sense. Karnage looked up to the sky. A pair of vultures circled over a backdrop of wispy clouds. There had to be a way to find those aliens. Had to be a way to stop them. If only there was some way to detect them—

Of course! Camp Bailey! Camp Bailey was home to the Godmaster Array, the world’s largest radio communications array. If anything could help him find those aliens, it would be that array.

Karnage’s foot kicked something solid in the sand. It was an arm. The shoulder had been charred to blackness. The hand still held a set of keys in its soft, manicured fingers. Karnage grinned. He knew that hand. Flaherty.

“Looks like you got yours, didn’t you, you bastard?” Karnage bent down and pulled the car keys out of the fingers with his teeth.

As he approached the car, he realized that it wasn’t just shimmering and floating in the heat. The car was actually hovering a few inches above the ground. Giant silver spheres glimmered in the wheel wells. Karnage gave the car a gentle poke with his boot. It pushed to one side for a second before drifting lazily back into place. The miracles of modern science.

Karnage suddenly felt old. The world had changed a lot in the years he’d been in the asylum. How much had he missed out on? What else had changed?

There was only one way to find out.

He bit down on the key fob in his mouth. The trunk popped open. Inside, Karnage found a first aid kit and a bag of golf clubs. He fumbled open the first aid kit with his teeth and found a small pair of scissors. He kicked off his slippers and sat on the edge of the trunk. He looped his baby toes into the scissors handle, and with much fumbling and cursing, he was finally able to snip open the ends of the straitjacket’s sleeves. His fingers free, Karnage trimmed the sleeves of the straitjacket down to wrist length and cut off the excess restraining straps. He put the straitjacket on backwards, so the straps ran up the front of his chest.

Next, he fished through Flaherty’s golf bag for a weapon. He settled for a wedge with a head the size of a medicine ball. DBSANDSTORM 5000 had been engraved into its face. Karnage gave it a practice swing. The golf club beeped, and a cheery voice said, “Slice! Relax those wrists.” He swung it back the other way. “Hook! Check your stance.” The club may not have been happy with how Karnage was handling it, but it felt good and heavy, and the shaft was short enough to be effective in close quarters. He slung the club over his shoulder like a rifle and looked at himself in the side-view mirror.

The buckles up the front of his straitjacket and the high-necked collar had the look of a uniform. He saluted his reflection, tossed the golf club onto the rear seat, and hopped into Flaherty’s car.

The dashboard was a smooth contour of white. There was no steering wheel. No pedals. No instrument panel. Just a single blank screen in the middle of the dashboard. A tinkly melody oozed from the car’s surround sound speakers, and a series of hieroglyphs appeared on the screen. They depicted a cartoon cat showing various emotions: Happy, Sad, Angry, Embarrassed, and Petulant. A female voice wafted from the speakers: “Please enter your password now.”

Karnage scowled. “Shit.”

A question mark appeared on the screen. “Have you forgotten your password?”

“Yes,” Karnage said.

A hand print appeared on the screen. “Please place your palm on the scanner for biometric identification.”

“One sec.” Karnage got out of the car, and scooped up Flaherty’s severed arm. He hopped back into the car and mashed the palm of the severed arm against the screen. The car sang a happy chime. “Thank you, Dr. Flaherty. Please enter your new password now.”

Karnage punched in a new password— Angry-Angry-HappyHappy— and the engine whined to life. There was another chime, and the screen showed a cartoon cat in a bright red convertible driving off into the sunset. “Password reset. Thank you, Dr. Flaherty. Welcome to the Dabney Motors X-500. Where would you like to go today?”

“Can’t I drive this thing myself?”

“Please re-state your destination.”

“Take me to Camp Bailey.”

“Checking… your search for Camp Bailey did not match any locations. Did you mean Campbell Dabney Hospital? Dabby Tabby Summer Camp?”

“How can you not know where Camp Bailey is? It’s the largest military base on the continent!”

“Your search for Camp Bailey did not match—”

“Is there some kinda manual override on this thing?”

“Please restate your destination.”

“Goddammit!” Karnage punched the dashboard. His neck buzzed.

“Warning. Sanity Level upgraded to—”

“Shut up!” Karnage banged on the screen. “You know Globesat coordinates?”

“Please enter Globesat coordinates now.”

“3-2-5-3-8-2-7. You think you can find that you lousy piece of…”

“Destination set. Globesat coordinates 3-2-5-3-8-2-7. Current charge level is adequate for this trip. Would you like to relieve yourself before—”

“No!”

“Please fasten your seat belt, and thank you for choosing Dabney Motors.”

The car wound its way along bends and twists in the road, slowly descending from the asylum’s rocky plateau to the main highway. Flaherty’s car rode like a dream. Karnage hated it. He liked to feel the terrain he travelled over. Every bump. Every pothole. Every bend and dip in the road. But Flaherty’s car would have none of that. It sailed across the pock-marked road like it was a sea of freshly churned butter. The smooth ride made Karnage want to puke. As if to urge his churning stomach onward, the centre console assaulted Karnage’s eyes and ears with an endless stream of commercials.

“Nothing beats the smooth cool taste of a Dabney Cola….”

“…tonight on DABNEYCOPS, law enforcement officers crack a dangerous piracy ring….”

“Hey.” Karnage knocked on the console. “Do you do anything else in there besides play commercials?”

A question mark appeared on the screen. “Would you like to watch a film?”

“No.”

“Would you like to hear some music?”

“No!”

“Would you like to play a game?”

“How ’bout I start askin’ the questions around here?”

A giant DiN logo filled the screen.

“The Dabney Information Network provides access to all the latest sports and entertainment news, celebrity gossip—”

“You can start by tellin’ me why everything’s called Dabney.”

The monitor cleared itself, and a giant DC logo appeared on the screen. “The Dabney Corporation, an advanced technology company, was started in the basement of its founder, Galt Dabney, where he created the first Dabby Tabby video game, Dabby Stays Home . We’ve come a long way since Dabby first bopped across Galt’s computer screen. Hard work, imagination, and a commitment to bringing happiness and cheer to the world have helped us grow into a company that touches more than ten billion people across the globe. Headquartered in Dabneyville, the Dabney Corporation employs 1.3 billion employees in its various sectors and—”