“Sir, yes, sir!”
“All right, let’s move out.”
CHAPTER SIX
They slipped through the front gates into the camp. Each of them had a row of goober grenades clipped to his belt and a goober rifle slung over his shoulder.
Karnage led Stumpy through the camp towards the massive crater that housed the Godmaster Array. As they approached, the strange desert foliage grew thicker and thicker. The entire outer surface of the crater was covered in orange creeper and pinkstink. As they climbed the surface of the crater, they crushed the vegetation. Brown juice squirted out that stank of gasoline and cigarettes. The smell reminded Karnage of the smoke from the hoverballs.
They pulled themselves onto the rough lip of the crater. Below them was the Godmaster Array. The mirrored dishes spiralled out from the centre of the crater in a pixelated whorl, reflecting the night sky.
“So far, so good.” Karnage pointed across the crater to a row of squat buildings glowing in the moonlight. “Control station’s over there.”
Another squiggling torrent of sound slammed into them, threatening to blow them off the lip of the crater and into the dishes below. The faint sound of cheering echoed in the distance. Stumpy froze in his tracks, staring out at the campfires, eyes wide with fear. Karnage grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. “Corporal? Corporal, look at me.”
Stumpy tore his gaze away from the campfires and looked at Karnage. His face was so white it glowed as brightly as the Godmaster Array.
“Corporal, we are within a hair’s breadth of our goal. Don’t go AWOL on me now. Are you still with me, soldier?”
Stumpy blinked, and swallowed hard. He nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s the spirit, soldier. Let’s move out.”
They skulked around the perimeter—laying low to avoid being backlit by moonlight—and approached the command centre. The orange creeper grew thick on its walls. Karnage brushed it aside and saw the windows underneath were still intact. Karnage grinned. “Tempered bullet-proof glass. None of that consumer-grade stuff like down below.”
Karnage felt along the wall until he found the door. Buried under a tangle of creeper was a rusted padlock that still held the door firmly shut. Karnage placed the butt of his rifle against the padlock and waited for another blast of squiggly noise. When the noise hit, Karnage broke off the lock with the butt of his rifle. The sound of the metal snapping and his Sanity Patch buzzing was drowned out by the squiggling and cheering. Karnage pushed open the door. He and Stumpy snuck in.
Their eyes took a moment to adjust to the deeper dark of the command centre. Papers were piled in crisp stacks on desks. Chairs were uniformly tucked in to workstations as if they were still on duty, patiently waiting for a command. Not a scrap of paper was out of place. Not a speck of dust anywhere.
Karnage grinned. “Whoever was the duty officer here ran a tight ship.”
“Couldn’t have been much tighter from the looks of things,” Stumpy said. “You wouldn’t guess this place was abandoned for twenty years.”
“He was full-on military, right to the end.” Karnage ran his fingers along the edge of a desk. Wonder if they locked him up in a padded cell, too?
Stumpy tried a switch. “No power,” he said.
“Can’t say I’m too surprised,” Karnage said. “If I get you power, can you get this system up and running?”
Stumpy ran his fingers over one of the consoles. “Running? Hell, I can probably get it to do backflips.”
“I’ll settle for a good steady jog,” Karnage replied. “I’ll try the emergency generators. See if they got any juice left in ’em. The second you get power, you get this thing up and running. Don’t wait for me. And Corporal?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Barricade this door when I leave. No matter what happens—no matter what you hear goin’ on outside—you stay put. Do not open that door for anyone ’less they give you the password.”
“What’s the password, sir?”
“Mayhem.”
Stumpy saluted. “Won’t open it until I hear the password.”
Karnage returned the salute. “Good luck, Corporal.”
“You, too, sir.”
Karnage slipped outside. He heard the scrape of desks being pushed up against the door as Stumpy barricaded himself in.
The Godmaster Array glowed brightly before him, returning diffused moonlight heavenward. Karnage unholstered his goober gun and stared fiercely at the orange fires burning brightly in the distance.
He hadn’t had the heart to tell Stumpy the generators were deep in the Spragmite encampment.
MK#5: PRAY FOR KARNAGE
CHAPTER ONE
Karnage crawled over a gnarled orange hedge at the base of the crater. The hedge contained the remains of a once mighty electrified fence topped with razor wire. It had long ago lost its battle against the invading onslaught of creeper. Karnage hoped he would fare better against the Spragmites.
He found himself facing a sea of cookie-cutter townhouses buried in orange creeper. He was on the outskirts of Camp Bailey’s housing district.
Karnage felt a momentary pang of yearning. He wanted to find his old barracks. To check out the dumpsters behind the Mess where he and his buddies used to hide from annoyed drill sergeants and furious MPs. The military had been a lark back then. Duty something to be shirked. Work to be skirted at all costs. That was before they had been shipped out. Before their first big foray into…
The War!
Fresh-faced recruits bein’ shoved into that meat grinder of death. Black smoke chokin’ your throat and burnin’ your eyes. Voices screamin’ all around you, prayin’ to gods of every stripe, shape, and colour. Nothin’ answerin’ those prayers but the hot spray of bullets and explosive death. And when the smoke cleared, the field was thick with charred, twisted bodies. Nothing moved. Nothing moaned. Nothing left alive. Nothing but a single, snivelling recruit hiding under his buddies’ corpses. A cowardly little bastard who hadn’t had the guts to fire one single shot.
And then the bodies were pulled away, and that recruit found himself staring into the face of Uncle Stanley himself! An enemy officer—with uniform so crisp, you could cut yourself on the crease of his pants—staring down at him through sightless, unseeing driving glasses. Big black pits of shine that reflected nothing but the gore around him, and the frightened face of that chickenshit little private. The officer aimed his pistol at the private’s face, and squeezed the trigger—
—and nothing happened! No roar. No searing flash followed by pain, coldness, and death. Nothing but the tiniest click. The officer looked at his pistol, then at the recruit. The officer’s lips parted, exposing jagged yellow teeth and a voice like crushed gravel poured out: “Looks like today’s your lucky day, kid.”
And he turned and walked away! Left that chickenshit little recruit to wallow in the rot and the filth, huggin’ his knees to his chest, gazing out at the churned mass of blackened, twisted corpses, vowin’ it would never be like this again never again never again never again—
The hallucination shattered as Karnage’s hands found a wall to slam his head into. His Sanity Patch buzzed.
“Warning. Sanity Level upgraded to Sandy Dreams. Please refrain from violent behaviour.”
Karnage scowled. He had barely begun, and was already burning through Sanity Levels. He had to keep a better handle on things. Too much was at stake. Too many lives were at risk. Cookie. Velasquez. Heckler. Koch. And now Stumpy, too. They were all counting on him. He wouldn’t let them down. Not this time.