Gord Zajac - Major Karnage

“Alive?!”

“Now here’s what we’ll do. You go round the back—”

The mop made a loud clatter on the floor. Karnage turned to look. The doors to the kitchen were swinging violently on their hinges. Charlie was gone. Karnage shook his head. “Civilians.”

He grabbed the mop and a chrome napkin dispenser from under the counter. He jammed the dispenser onto the mop handle and lifted it above the counter. He rotated the finely polished surface until he had a clear view of the front window.

The cops had parked their hoverbikes and cruisers in a line across the lot. Cat ears peeked over the vehicles, angry black gun barrels held before them. A pair of cops had run forward and were dragging the limp bodies of Harvey and Princess behind the cruisers.

Karnage swivelled the dispenser, trying to gauge the number of cops. He stopped counting after ten. He couldn’t handle more than that. Not alone. He pulled out Harvey’s pistol. He didn’t recognize the make. It was a revolver of some kind. He popped open the cylinder. The rounds looked like pill-shaped pink bubble gumballs. What the hell kinda ammo is this?

A shout came from outside: “Officers clear!”

A megaphone squawked: “Break out the Sudsy!”

Karnage heard the beep-beep-beep of a vehicle reversing. He raised the napkin dispenser to get a look. A giant gun turret rose into view. Something slick and oily dripped from the barrel.

“Chemical warfare! You bastards!” Karnage dove behind the counter and swept stacks of napkins out from the bottom shelf.

There was a shout from outside: “Sudsy in position!”

Karnage rolled into the bottom shelf and pressed his body into the corner.

The megaphone squawked: “Fire!”

There was a torrential whoosh, followed by an explosion of glass and tables. The liquid blast slammed into the counter. Karnage felt the cheap particleboard shudder under the impact. He prayed it would hold. Sudsy gurgled and rioted over everything, like white water rapids on steroids. Tables tumbled. Dishes shattered. Electrical circuits shorted out. Dollops of Sudsy splattered Karnage’s back.

The torrent stopped. A steady drip-drip-drip filled the gaping silence. Karnage felt bits of Sudsy run down his straitjacket. Karnage rolled away from the corner to survey the damage. Sudsy flowed across the floor in great foamy blobs. He could hear the floor drains struggling to suck it all down.

Wet footsteps—like galoshes wading through mud—approached the diner. They stopped. A voice barked out, “Clear!” The footsteps started forward again. They’re comin’ for me , Karnage thought. They think I’m done for and they’re comin’ for me! Well I ain’t goin’ down without a fight!

Karnage slid out from under the counter and crouched on the—

—his feet slipped out from under him. Karnage fell hard on his ass. Sudsy soaked through his pants.

“Sonofabitch!” Karnage wiped his Sudsy covered hands on his straitjacket. His hands shot straight down his jacket, near frictionless. What the hell kind of chemical shit did these bastards dump on me?!

Karnage grabbed the counter and pulled—

His hands slipped off. Karnage flopped down on his back.

“What the GODDAMN HELL!”

The footsteps squished closer.

Karnage grabbed and yanked and pulled at anything within reach. He slipped off everything. The footsteps grew closer. Karnage braced his hands and feet against the walls. He slipped off, and spun into the middle of the room, like a turtle on its back.

“If I gotta make my last stand from here, then so be it.” Karnage pulled the gun from his pants and—

—the gun popped out of his fingers. It shot across the Sudsydrenched floor, ricocheted off a table leg, and disappeared from sight.

The doors burst open. A pair of Dabneycops marched in. The soles of their boots were covered in a pink goo that sucked and pulled at the floor with loud, wet, sloshing noises. The cops wore large tanks strapped to their backs. Hoses ran from the tanks to large, oversized nozzles in the cops’s hands. The nozzles were caked in pink goo.

“Subject has been incapacitated,” the first one said.

“Goober him.”

Pink stringy goop slammed Karnage in the chest, propelled him across the room, and slammed him into the wall. The goober solidified instantly.

“You may think you got me,” Karnage struggled against the goober, “But I ain’t that easy to—”

They fired again. Long strings of goober licked up and down Karnage’s body, enveloping him in a pink cocoon of darkness.

They got him.

“You know what’s wrong with this world?” Charlie asked.

“What, Charlie?” Darla was on her knees, scrubbing Sudsy off the floor. Charlie was supposed to be scrubbing the walls. Instead he stood in the middle of the diner, gesturing wildly with his brush.

“A lack of respect for the working man, that’s what! We were just getting by as it was, and now—well, just look at this place!” Charlie threw his arm out in a sweeping arc.

Soap splattered across Darla’s clean floor. Darla moved to wipe it up. “I can see it just fine, Charlie.”

They had cleared up as well as they could manage. What furniture and stock that remained was stacked neatly on the counter. The rest lay in a jumbled pile of broken wood and glass in the middle of the parking lot.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Charlie shook his head, “that lunatic throwing around my tables, or those damn pigs sprayin’ chemical gunk all over the place trying to arrest him. I mean, he was just one man!”

“They did what they had to do.”

“They could have done it a little more carefully! Hell, even I could have done better than that!”

“Really? I seem to recall somebody marching out there with a mop mumbling something about putting an end to this, then running back with his tail between his legs.”

“And what exactly was I supposed to have done? He was armed then. He could have killed me, you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you hear what I said? I said he could have killed me!”

“You want to maybe put a little more effort into those walls?”

“Well, how do you like that. I stare death full in the face, live to tell the tale, and all you can think about is your damn—”

A noisy shriek came from the radio resting on the counter. Charlie jumped and stepped in a pool of Sudsy, nearly falling on his ass in the process. “Sonofabitch!” He half-slipped, half-stormed across the room and grabbed the radio. “Would you look at that? It ain’t even on!” Charlie yanked the plug out of the wall. The radio squawked in protest, then went silent. “Guess we’re gonna have to add this to the… well, what the hell’s gotten in to you?”

Darla’s face was white. She stared intently at the radio, then looked at Charlie. “Did that sound… squiggly to you?”

“Squiggly?!” Charlie curled his lip. “Oh hell. You’re as crazy as that—”

The radio screeched again. The lights in the diner went out. A solid wall of pitch black slid over the sky, as the world descended into darkness. Flickering panels of light shot back and forth across the sky.

“Wow, would you look at that?” Charlie moved over to the window. “Looks like it’s gonna rain something fierce!”

Darla went pale. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I don’t think those are clouds….”

“Well, what the hell else—”

Their world was consumed by an intense painful green.

Karnage’s arms and legs were strapped to his chair. He was sitting at one end of a long table, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. His scowling reflection stared back at him from the two-way mirror in the far wall.