Major Karnage by Zajac Gord

Author:Zajac, Gord
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Satire
ISBN: 9780981374666
Publisher: ChiZine Publications
Published: 2010-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

MK#7: LESSONS IN KARNAGE

CHAPTER ONE

Karnage dreamed of squiggly beasts and black-clad men with pistols for hands. The beasts lashed out with tentacles that sucked him down and wrapped him in their grip. The man in black stood behind the fray, at one moment wearing a chauffeur’s outfit, the next a charcoal grey medal-laden Uncle Stanley uniform. Always smiling, always the teeth flashing, telling him it’s his lucky day. Gloved fingers pointed at him, the end of the fingers open and hollow like a gun barrel. White hot muzzle flashes burst from the leatherclad digits. Squiggles shot out from the fingers, stabbing into his shoulder, poking and prodding, searching and burrowing, leaving a fiery trail of absolute agony in their wake.

The pain became more focused in his shoulder, and the squiggles finally pulled away, leaving him alone in the darkness.

Karnage opened his eyes. A silvery sphere floated above him. A giant lens sprouted from the ball, pointing down at his shoulder, as long metal tendrils quivered below the lens, poking at bandages. Karnage tried to scramble away, but he couldn’t move anything below his neck.

“Get the fuck away from me, you squiggly bastard!”

The lens swivelled up and looked at Karnage. Its inner aperture quickly irised shut and open again, as if it were blinking. A mechanical voice crackled over a speaker. “Sydney, it seems your comrade is awake.”

The sphere pulled up and away, and Sydney moved into Karnage’s field of vision.

“Hello, Major,” she said.

“Captain, what the fuck is going on here?! What the hell was that thing?! Where are we? Why the hell can’t I move?!”

“You were shot,” Sydney said. “You were in danger of bleeding to death. So I brought you here.”

“Where the hell is here?!”

The sphere floated down again, and blinked its lens at Karnage. “Here is home.”

Karnage craned his neck. He was lying in a rescue basket, a thin sheet draped over him, the basket suspended from a complex grid of scaffolding running across the arched ceiling. Floodlights dotted the scaffolding. Just visible beyond the lights were more hoverballs fixed with lenses and tentacles. They stared down at Karnage, the lenses zooming in and out, changing focus as the spheres hovered closer or farther away.

A pair of oval bay windows projected out from the wall, filtering sunlight through the grime-streaked glass. Various bits of medical equipment were pushed up against the walls.

“Home? Whose home? It sure as hell ain’t mine! And you still haven’t told me why the hell I can’t move!”

“You can’t move because you’re a very uncooperative patient,” Sydney replied. “I don’t need you pulling your stitches out. Not after all of Uncle’s hard work. As for whose home this is, it belongs to Uncle.”

One of the spheres dropped down from above. It placed a tentacle on Sydney’s shoulder. “Don’t be so modest, dear. You know this home is just as much yours as it is mine. If only you would visit more often. And in less brutish company.”

Karnage’s eyes goggled. “That thing is your uncle?!”

The sphere blinked its lens at Karnage.

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