Not ever again.
“You all right, buddy?”
Karnage looked up. Two men stood before him. The one who spoke was moving towards him. He wore a tuxedo jacket over a flower print dress. The other wore a shirt made of orange creeper with a pinkstink boutonniere. He held a thin slab of smooth plastic in his hands. Images flickered across its back, lighting the man’s frightened, bulbous eyes. “Carlos!”
The one moving towards Karnage turned and looked at his companion. He pointed at the plastic slab. “Why are you shooting my feet?”
“Carlos, look at—”
Carlos pointed to his face. “Here, Simon. Shoot here. I can’t use this if all you get is my ass.”
“But—”
Carlos moved back to Simon and grabbed his hands. He lifted the tablet so it pointed at Karnage. There was a lens on its front in the shape of a D.
Carlos moved back beside Karnage. “Am I in the shot?”
“Yes, but—”
“Good. Now shut up.” Carlos turned towards Karnage, but kept his face pointed at the camera. This meant he was only looking at Karnage with one eye. “Are you all right? You sounded like you needed help.”
“Carlos!” Simon hissed.
Carlos kept his grinning face on Karnage. He hissed at Simon through his teeth. “What?”
Simon pointed at Karnage. “His clothes, Carlos. Look at his clothes!”
Carlos looked at the open jacket of Karnage’s police uniform, the leather straps of his straitjacket just visible underneath. Before Carlos could register the string of goober grenades on his belt, Karnage struck out with his fist and caught Carlos across the jaw. Carlos staggered backwards and fell to the ground and stayed there. Karnage’s neck buzzed.
“Warning. Sanity Patch upgraded to Lemon Breeze. Please refrain from violent behaviour.”
Karnage turned his attention to Simon. Simon stood frozen in place, his eyes glued to the tablet’s screen. The lens still pointed at Karnage, albeit shakily. Karnage walked towards Simon. Simon stared at the screen, his hands shaking more and more violently with Karnage’s every step. Karnage pulled the tablet out of Simon’s hands. Simon looked up into Karnage’s face. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he fell to the ground.
Karnage dragged the two men into the nearest townhouse. He stripped Carlos of his clothes, stuffed the unconscious men into a closet, and barricaded the door. Karnage threw the police jacket aside. He pulled the dress over his head. It neatly covered his belt of goober grenades. He slipped on the tuxedo jacket. It just covered his goober rifle. He took another look at Simon’s camera. The glossy plastic was covered in smudges and scratches. There was a Dabney Corporation logo engraved into its side. He flipped it over, and was greeted with a shot of his feet. A tiny red dot flashed in the corner. He couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. He tucked the tablet into his jacket, and headed into the Spragmite compound.
CHAPTER TWO
Creeper and pinkstink hung between lampposts like garlands. Hand-cranked lanterns hung from the creeper, their blue LED glow bobbed and swayed in the wind like drunken fireflies. Pink and orange topiary worms dotted the front yards of the derelict houses.
People stood around bonfires in the streets, talking and laughing. Some toasted skewered lizards and bits of squiggly root over the fires. Everyone was dressed in the same haphazard improvised fashion as Carlos and Simon. Many of them carried D tablets similar to Simon’s. They were unabashedly recording any and all of the festivities. Seeing this, Karnage fished his D tablet out of his pocket, and used it to observe his surroundings. Occasionally someone would wave to him through the viewfinder, but beyond that, he was invisible.
A squiggly screech pierced the air. Everyone stopped what they were doing, except those with cameras. Their lenses searched back and forth, as if looking for the source of the noise. Karnage found himself doing the same.
A young boy came running down the street. “The Worm is coming! The Worm is coming!”
The hairs on Karnage’s neck stood up. He turned his camera towards the end of the street.
Another screech poured across the compound. It was followed by a chorus of drums. Their deep, pulsing beat throbbed through the air. People thronged to the edges of the street, staring eagerly into the distance. Karnage joined the throng. People happily moved out of his way when they saw his camera. He joined the other shooters at the front of the pack.
Flickering lights and dancing shadows played across the street in the distance. An enormous shadow writhed into view, making giant squiggling patterns against the surrounding houses. Dancers twirling flaming batons moved in time with the drums and the wriggling shadows on the walls. Their writhing caused the flames to write in huge, angled squiggles. The shadows grew closer, and finally, the beast emerged from the darkness.
The Worm was the size of a bus, writhing and wriggling as it squiggled down the street. A single horn protruded from its head, wobbling erratically with each thrust. The light from the flames reflected off the body in long, fluid sparkles. It was as if the beast was covered in tinsel. And as it grew closer, Karnage realized that it was.
Dark shadows of human feet could be seen just under The Worm’s body. A whorl of cardboard teeth spun inside the worm’s open mouth as if on casters. Circling the beast was a man on a bicycle that looked like the bastard child of a tuba and slide whistle. A giant piston bolted to the rear tire ran into what looked like a bagpipe bag attached to the end of a giant tuba bell. The rider blew into a mouthpiece mounted above the handlebars. An oscillating squeal blasted out of the tuba belclass="underline" the same damn noise Karnage had heard earlier.
Karnage nearly spat in disgust. Is this what it was all about? No aliens? No worms? Just a giant parade float and a mutant slide whistle?
A jagged noise tore through the crowd that threatened to rip the pavement from the road. The worm dancers lost their balance. The slide whistle cycle went crashing to the ground. A hushed silence fell over the crowd. Even the crackle of the bonfires seemed to die down.
A voice from the crowd shouted, “Spragmos has come!”
The crowd broke out into a cheer. The dancers jumped back into their dance, more energized than before. The parade picked up its pace, and the crowd fell in behind and followed them. Karnage stayed with the throng. For better or worse, they were heading in the right direction: toward the emergency generators.
CHAPTER THREE
At the heart of Camp Bailey was the Weapons Testing Facility: an exact replica of the Godmaster Crater. This artificial canyon was the military’s testing facility for the latest in Spragmos Industries’s military-grade weapons, hardware, and explosives. It had led to the facility being known as the WTF or the What-The-Fuck, as in “What the fuck was that?!”
Orange creeper now grew from the top of the WTF. It had been neatly trimmed back to expose the mile-high SPRAGMOS lettering etched into the mountain’s side. Giant bonfires illuminated the lettering from below. Karnage was overwhelmed by its primal majesty. If he hadn’t known about the WTF’s history, he would have sworn it was built to be a temple.
As they approached the WTF, people broke out into spontaneous song. To Karnage’s ears, the lyrics sounded like gibberish, punctuated with repetitive chants of “The Worm is the word! The Worm is the word!” followed with more gibberish. It had all the annoying catchiness of an ad jingle. Karnage caught himself humming along at one point. He vowed in that moment to track down whoever wrote it and knock out every one of their teeth before breaking a number of specially selected bones in their body. He stopped himself from determining exactly how many and which ones before he set off his Sanity Patch.