Toxicity (26 page)

Horace had parked up on the
outskirts of the city and headed in on foot. The city - and indeed, the resort
- was only a kilometre wide, a stretch of tourist-based hotels and restaurants
that flanked the Biohazard Ocean like a bad case of genital herpes. As Horace
approached, despite the late hour, the streets were serpents of hedonistic
flesh. He shook his head in wonder, “Who in the name of hell comes to Amaranth
for a holiday?”

Silka, tucked inside Horace’s
suit jacket, said, “It takes all sorts, Horace my dear. I would expect many are
inhabitants of the planet, possibly Greenstar employees who feel their chemical
and biological protection tablets give them enough immunity to brave the air
and soil and waters. Others are probably alien-based life-forms with a natural
resistance to toxicity. And yet others are lunatic humans drawn to what they
consider a danger-holiday; an adventure-fest.”

“Hmm,” said Horace.

He walked along the pavement,
ignored by the partying revellers. As Silka had predicted, there were a wide
range of humans and aliens alike, everything from single-sex stag parties to
tentacled couples with children. It boggled Horace’s mind. Assassination was a
much simpler concept. Life and death. A monetary transaction. No emotion. No
empathy. But this... this
wanton self-destruction
was much harder to
comprehend.

At least I am built this way.

At least I understand.

At least I have a singular
function.

Horace walked. To his right, lit
by a million fluorescent tubes, the ocean crashed on the sandy shore. The beach
was a jungle of scrap, as was to be expected for a junk world. Everything from
half-submerged, rusting motorbikes, to old tyres, boxes, plastic bags and
bottles, and even an old half-beached nuclear submarine, its vast, matt-black
hull pitted and corroded in blotches as if it had been subjected to the world’s
largest acid bath -which, in fact, it probably had.

“A nuke sub,” said Horace,
shaking his head.

“You’re beginning to sound like a
grumpy old man,” chided Silka.

“Sometimes, I’m fucking glad I’m
an android. Life is much simpler this way. Humans are so... damaged.”

The incessant party noise pounded
and thumped, screamed and chattered. Music spilled from ten thousand bars. The
ocean crashed, a rhythmical percussion of poison. Horace located the hotel and
bought himself a hot-dog (With Cheeze and Chillees!!!) from a shop-front vendor
he’d normally execute rather than look at. However, trying to remain
inconspicuous, he held the hot-dog (With Cheeze and Chillees!!!) and nibbled at
it without enthusiasm as his eyes took in the cubescraper where Juliette
JohNagle was supposedly a guest. Horace even had a room number, gibbered on a
stream of phlegm and blood by Chris the Helpful Special Forces Victim, in an
attempt to not be brutally executed. Unfortunately, Horace did not take
prisoners.

“Looks good to me,” said Silka.

“We’ll hang back. Wait awhile.
See what happens.”

Horace followed his unwanted
hot-dog (With Cheeze and Chillees!!!) with a coffee, then a sugary donut. A PUF
car pulled up and two fat cops waddled over, buying a bucket of donuts each. “Go
easy on the sugar, darling,” one said through his rolls of fat, six chins
wobbling, “I’m on a diet” - before making eye contact with Horace.

For a long thrilling second
Horace thought he’d been bubbled, and would have to fight his way free of
Meltflesh City, the worst holiday resort he’d ever encountered. But then the
fat cop waddled back to his groundcar, squeezed his bulk through the door,
setting the suspension rocking wildly, and cruised off, face crusted in sugar.

“Close,” said Silka.

“Lucky for them,” said Horace.

After an hour, Horace could take
the party atmosphere no longer, with the drunks and the vomiting (was that down
to alcohol, or toxic kidney poisoning?), and muttering to himself that if he
died, then he fucking died, he strode down the pavement, Silka warm against his
chest, hearing one another’s heartbeats and sharing the pleasure, and he
approached the steps and foyer of the Grand Meltflesh Hotel.

The front of the hotel, a massive
blocky cubescraper with fancy plastic graphics, overlooked the Biohazard Ocean
from a raised platform and had its own section of private beach, patrolled by
guards with hefty wooden peacemakers.

Horace strode confidently up the
steps and into a foyer with low-level lighting. Plastic shrubs littered the
space like tumbleweed, and leather sofas in a hundred different styles lay
seemingly at random; Horace wondered if they were actually junk salvage put to
an interesting new life.

Horace moved across thick sticky
carpets, boots pressing softly, and smiled at the two girls behind reception, who
returned his smile in a pleasant fashion, then lowered their heads back to
work. Horace crossed to the lifts and pressed the CALL button, listening to a
grinding of gears, then stepped inside the compartment. One wall had a window
overlooking the Biohazard Ocean, and as the lift climbed he got a brilliant
bird’s eye view of the ocean in all its terrible poisonous monstrosity. At
least twenty ships lay wrecked in what must have been a modestly shallow bay,
some of them on their sides, all rotted and holed by the acidic ocean. They
formed a jagged set of teeth on the horizon, giving the ocean jaws. A wind
whipped yellow and purple froth across the waves, and the puke-coloured ocean
lapped at beaches where even now, at this late hour, people were happily paddling
and swimming under the onslaught of so many powerful beach lights.

“What a shit-hole,” murmured
Horace.

“Your people made it this way,”
said Silka.

“Well, they should be
exterminated for the sacrilege,” said Horace.

“You’re hardly honouring your
employers,” laughed Silka.

“Honour? What’s that?”

Suddenly, the lift stopped with a
grinding clang. Horace frowned. They were between floors: a ridge crossed the
window at eye level. Horace pulled out his T5 and, with a punch, destroyed the
in-lift camera.

“Trouble?”

“Always,” said The Dentist.

Horace punched the keys on the
console, but it had gone dead. No power. He moved to the doors and started to
lever them open, his powerful fingers hacking into the gap and exerting a force
far greater than any human could ever administer. There came a screeching
sound, a grinding of gears, a tearing of steel bolts. Horace gritted his teeth
and pulled harder. The doors opened several inches, along with more sounds of
tearing steel.

There came a
click.

Horace’s head snapped up, his
eyes searching the roof. There were holes. Lots of holes. Horace frowned. From
the holes spat a sudden spaghetti of long white worms, but these weren’t normal
white worms, these were something far more terrible and dangerous and
alien...

They landed on Horace’s shoulders
and head, each one about ten inches long and slightly metallic. They were
silent, and squirming, and Horace caught a sight of their tiny metal jaws,
chomping, chewing, searching for flesh. He brushed frantically at his
shoulders, felt a piercing pain at the top of his skull and he grabbed its tail
as it began to burrow into his flesh. He pulled it free, feeling it slither
from his own skin, and crushed his hand into a fist, destroying the worm. But
more fell. And more. It was snowing worms... killer worms...

Trapped, Horace stamped on the
worms on the floor, crushing their bodies into pulpy white paste. But still
more poured from the ceiling holes and he felt one go down his shirt collar,
and tried to grab it but missed. It started to burrow between his shoulder
blades and Silka was there in an instant, chewing a path through his shirt and
suit and biting through the worm.

“You have to get out of here!”
cried Silka, crawling up onto his shoulder. Her jaws snapped left and right,
pulping the wriggling worm creatures, which, Horace suspected, once inside him
would make a swift burrowing towards his internal organs. And God only knew
what damage they would cause when they arrived.

With Silka’s jaws chewing and
biting and spitting, Horace leant into the lift doors with a growl, and feeling
his fingers ready to snap under the intense pressure, he slowly, inch by inch,
dragged the doors open, to a soundtrack of singing, screaming steel...

“Get out,” growled Silka, and
leapt, landing in the mass of writhing white worms. Their teeth snapped at her
now, trying to burrow into her flesh. Horace jumped, caught the lips of the
floor and heaved himself out onto a foul-smelling carpet. He lay there for a
moment, then felt wriggling inside his clothing and began to roll, hands
thumping at himself, tearing at his clothes, as in at least five places he felt
tiny jaws burrow into his skin, eat under his flesh and begin to worm through
the muscle...

Horace grunted. It was rare for
pain to bring out any sound from him, so high were his tolerances, but this was
more
than pain; this was an invasion. A rape of the flesh.

Horace caught a worm by the tail
and pulled it out, a long quivering worm turned pink by his flesh and supped
blood. It squirmed under his fingers, jaws snapping at him, and savagely he put
it in his mouth and tore it in two. He grabbed another, but a sudden wave of
weakness struck him. He felt like he’d been hit by a sledgehammer, but it was
something different, something internal. As if he’d been...

drugged.

They’d poisoned him.

Horace tried to crawl down the
corridor, but within a few short seconds his hands lost their strength and he
slumped to the carpet on his face. He felt the four remaining worms burrowing
inside him, eating his flesh, gnawing their way to victory and a horrible,
bubbling, impending death.

Arrogance, he thought.

Arrogance has brought you to his.

And as his eyes flickered and the
lights started to dim, a door opened and a pair of feet walked towards him.
They wore red high-heels. Red high-heels, containing fat, hairy feet.

“Bring him this way,” said a
gruff voice, and for Horace, it was a short hard blow to oblivion.

~ * ~

SEVEN

“THERE
ARE SOME riders approaching,” said Lumar softly. She was stroking the green
scaled skin of her arm. Her tongue flickered as her green eyes fixed on distant
figures.

“Eh?” Svool looked up from where
he’d been polishing the silver star sheriff’s badge. “It’s kinda pretty, don’t
you think? The way it catches the green sunlight and sparkles like that. One of
the prettiest baubles I ever did see. I know you will probably laugh, but I
feel like it’s an inspiration for
another new poem.”

Lumar said, “I think you should
put it away.” She had already moved, picking up her sharpened stick from where
it leant against one of the battered, bullet-holed cars.

Svool stared at her. “What?”

“These dudes look like mean
dudes.”

“What dudes?”

Now, the hoofbeats from their
horses rattled from the stone buildings. Svool whirled about, and his mouth
dropped open. For there were seven riders, mounted atop tall metal horses. Each
rider wore thick cotton and tweed, and long leather coats. Each face was a
barrage of stubble and scars and mean eyes and ugliness. They all wore
wide-brimmed hats, and high boots, with spurs that jangled.

“They’re...” he said.

“They’re cowboys,” said Zoot,
spinning slowly, black lights glittering. The PopBot hovered to a halt before
Lumar and Svoolzard. “Or they think they are. Their mounts are homebuilt metal
horses, built on a ripped-out chassis subframe from a DumbMutt special robotic
friend. They’ve been twisted beyond all recognition - not that that’s a bad
thing if you’ve ever met a DumbMutt before.”