September 27
th
Year 1 A.Z.
morning
Another nightly visit from my deceased pal Elder, this time back at the billabong. The Bunyip’s carcass sat still, stinking between the two of us. His smile glowed in his dark-skinned face as he welcomed me.
“Found a Bunyip, I see, mate.” He greeted me in my dream. “Not too many of these left. Your journey is only just beginning. You’re going to find out that you’re not safe where you are, you’re likely going to need to leave, and
soon
.” His salt-and-pepper shock of hair surrounding his face glowed as the sun shone through it. “The Dreaming is going to change, and soon.” With that, he disappeared into a puff of smoke, vanishing as did my dream as I sat up, Apocalypse Girl still snoring softly at my side.
A moment later, the alarm sounded. Footsteps pounded outside the door to our quarters, as soldiers ran past in a hurry. I was pulling my pants on as someone pounded on the door, opening it just a crack. Viking put his head into the narrow space, telling me that The Righteous had been sighted, near enough to spit on just about, then disappeared, banging on other doors, awakening other soldiers.
In the briefing room this morning, German Doctor argued loudly with The Boss. Whatever it was that they had been discussing was causing a great deal of tension between them. As I entered, German Doctor stormed off, snarling in her native language. She sounded more than a little annoyed.
“Nothing for you to be concerned about,” Apocalypse Mum told her daughter and I as we greeted her. “She’s just got a couple of projects that require my attention right now, but with this group of Ghouls at our gates…”
“Anyway, enough about her. We have an army of Righteous Ghouls to deal with. More keep arriving every minute, as you can plainly see…” She turned to the computer screen. Sure enough, a massive horde had begun thronging around the circumference of the Rock. “This is a siege, make no mistake about it. They have the numbers to overpower us, they are stronger and faster than we are. The only real advantages that we have are our weaponry and our training. Even then, we may not prevail.”
The rest of my squad awaited me just outside, looking fairly glum at the prospects of an unpleasant demise at the hands or teeth of these Righteous fuckers. Only Giant had a smile on her face. She was looking forward to gutting a few of these Ghouls, I could see it in her eyes.
noon
A short while later, my squad found themselves atop Uluru, waiting for the bastards to arrive. I looked down, off the edge, to see them clambering up atop one another, forming a kind of Ghoulish Pyramid in order to reach their victims. As one of their prospective meals, I felt that it might be a wise idea to start throwing grenades and other explosives at them, but Apocalypse Mum forbade any such action, as it might ‘compromise the structural integrity of the facility’ or some such bullshit. Gunfire erupted all around me as the soldiers defending AR-18 opened up on the climbing Ghouls, but despite the numbers that our group dropped, more and more began taking their place, climbing higher and higher.
It wasn’t too long before Ghoulish faces began appearing over the edge before being blown apart, then they were up. Hundreds of them suddenly seemed to just fly up from the edges, all around us. The clamour of gunfire drowned out the screams of the occasional soldier that was dragged down by these most dangerous of foes.
evening
The number of dead Ghouls piled up around the outsides of Ayers’ Rock were able to be rearranged by The Righteous such that they formed a nice little ramp up to the top, from which their leader, The Righteous Reverend preached. Ranted, more like. Most of the Ghouls from his group were hideous to behold, to be sure, but he took the cake. His face was scarred and scabbed and pitted from where he was picking little bits of flesh out to nibble on, his bare chest bore the marks of teeth, Dead and Ghoul both by the looks of things. Some of the Ghoul bites looked very fresh indeed.
His rant consisted mainly of telling those of us trapped beneath the surface that, should we choose to join with him, we would be spared. Should we resist, however, then we would find ourselves feeling pain more intense than we can imagine, and we would end up joining him regardless.
We listened to his words from the safety of the computer lab deep within the complex, Apocalypse Mum’s face grim. The Mech-Techs had taken The Elephant’s trunk up, denying The Righteous any access, and were holding out far more successfully than we were, at least at present. Viking was in constant contact with Static, who wanted us to just bust through The Righteous’ ranks, pile up in The Elephant and fuck off somewhere more or less safe-ish. To be fair, I wanted nothing more. On the other hand, there were a fuck-ton of the bastards up there. The entire surface of Uluru was covered with Ghouls. The only vaguely mitigating factor was that we were able to see a few falling off the edge, presumably to their deaths, giving us something to at least laugh about for the time being.
I walked with Apocalypse Girl to our quarters, wondering how, or if, I was going to sleep tonight with an army clamouring to get inside our nice, safe place. She was very quiet. We had already had a close call with Ghouls once before, in Adelaide. She didn’t like to say anything, but I knew that they scared her more than pretty much anything else we had encountered.
Nearing our corridor, Mutter and Clutter came running up to us. The pair seemed almost totally out of breath, Clutter doubled over, leaning heavily against the wall.
“We found something,” Mutter mumbled, Clutter translated. “You guys need to come with us,
now
.”
I didn’t hesitate, just whistled for the Dog, who trotted along quite happily, oblivious to the impending demise of us all. We followed the two techs deeper into the base, deeper than I had been before.
Clutter led the way at a trot, running along a darkened corridor to a door at the far end. “The other day, when you guys were dealing with the cloning facility,” He told us. “Another team brought this thing in.”
At the end of a long, dimly lit corridor, lay a door, bars covering a small opening. I told the others to stay behind as I examined further. The bars were spaced maybe two centimetres apart, thicker than the distance between them. Through the bars I saw something large huddled into a ball in the centre of the room, large chains stretching out from either side of the room.
As I stared, it lifted its head and looked into my eyes. As I looked into those blue orbs, a sense of familiarity washed over me. Sat before me, huddled in a pile of filth and rags was The Kid. I didn’t know if he’d recognise my voice or even if he’d register that I was there at all, but I told him that we’d be back to get him the fuck out of this place. We just had a tiny matter of a large army of Ghouls to contend with first.
September 28
th
Year 1 A.Z.
morning
Apocalypse Girl was, if anything, more pissed off at her mother than I was. We’d told her about The Kid, his plans to head to Mount Newman to collect Archer’s Daughter, Dead or alive. We’d informed her that his assimilation of the Dead Plague was responsible for our own immunity, had given her all of the records that we had salvaged from The Major and his bizarre experiments. She didn’t need to send soldiers out to capture him. However, we couldn’t say anything to her, at least not yet. Too many of The Righteous awaited outside, hungry for our flesh.
Somehow we needed to get him out of here. This much we had decided upon, on the way back to our quarters. The Kid needed his freedom, and it seemed, we needed ours as well. Overnight we conferred with Viking and Valkyrie, they were in full agreement. The Elephant would be used to make our escape, provided we could fight our way through the horde of Righteous that were currently occupying the top of Uluru. The entrances to AR-18 were closed, locked down completely, The Elephant’s trunk raised to prevent any Ghouls from accessing it. We were at a standstill, we couldn’t get out, they were unable to get in.
What we needed, as far as I could tell, was The Kid and his prodigious strength. I had no doubt that he’d be happy to help us assist in his departure, provided he remembered who we all were. He seemed to be in a bad way, from the minute or so that I spent observing him. If he could plough his way through their ranks, we could follow in his footsteps easily enough.
noon
Alarms signalled an intrusion deeper in the facility. My squad was tasked with finding and sealing the breach, so down into the depths we went, gathering as many weapons as we could carry. I wondered just how they had managed to find their way into the complex beneath, the truly ancient one; all huge stone buildings amidst an underground city built, it seemed, by giants.
There was a modicum of light down here, just enough to see by, though none of us could find the source. There seemed almost no shadows cast by the structures around us, indeed, faint though they were, even our own seemed fainter than they should; indistinct blobs of mild darkness that smeared across the floor at our feet.
“Nice that we can see, but it’d be good if we could make the light brighter,” Giant whispered, and the light did indeed brighten, significantly. Now that we could see everything around us, we stood staring, amazed. The structures formed a much larger complex than I had first thought… it seemed as if the city, more a megalopolis, went on almost forever. The entrance from the AR-18 facility was but a narrow terrace that led to a ledge overlooking the ruins.
“Find the intruders,” I said, on an impulse, when the initial shock of the enormity of the place had worn off a little. Sure enough, a pale blue ball of light rose from the floor at my feet, turned into a holographic arrow that spun around slightly, then pointed into the heart of the Uluru City’s centre. I ordered my squad to advance down the slope towards the abandoned megalopolis and whoever it was that awaited us.
evening
Several hours of walking later, my legs were fucked. We had seen no sign of any kind of intrusion thus far, and the pale blue arrow kept steadily pulsing away, still pointing us further, deeper into Uluru City’s enormous streets. Our shadows still seemed all penumbra, their darkest parts removed, even with the brighter light seeming to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
A few moments after I called a halt for a water break, I heard a scrabble of something, stone on stone it sounded like. Drawing my katana as swiftly and silently as I was able, I barely held back from slicing into the Klee-vics commander as he tic-ticked his way carefully around the corner behind which I was waiting.
“My thanks, for not killing me,” He greeted me. His voice, odd sounding though it was, sounded amused. “If we are to share this world it occurred to me that we should fight for it together.”
I slid my blade back into its sheath, welcoming him with an outstretched hand. He looked at it for a moment, then awkwardly extended his own forelimb, grasping my fleshy fingers in his own chitinous claws. He whistled sharply and a dozen of his soldiers clambered down from the buildings around us.
They were smaller than the commander, every one identical save for wounds that must have been received in combat. One had a criss-cross pattern on his thorax and abdomen, another seemed to have suffered a nasty wound to his skull plating. Several more seemed to have suffered some pretty nasty burns, either from flame or acid of some kind.
“My best warriors, veterans of a dozen campaigns, every last one of them.” The Commander puffed up with pride. “I’d trust any one of them with my life, and therefore all of yours as well.”
At that moment the radio crackled. Scar listened for a moment, then broke the news to us all. “They’ve breached the helicopter hangar roof. Apparently, at this moment there are hundreds of Ghouls pouring into the fucking base.” His face was fixed in his customary scowl, warped around his visage ruining wound, but his voice was filled with despair. “We’ve gotta get back there, ASAP!”
“Clamber up onto our backs.” The Commander told us. I would have been hesitant to do so, except that I was shitting my pants with concern over what fate may be about to befall Apocalypse Girl. I immediately got up on his abdomen, Scar mounting Criss-Cross. Viking climbed aboard The Brained and the rest chose various Burn Victims. Then, we were off, at a velocity that I had never before experienced.
I had Scar radio in, telling them that we were bringing in outside assistance. Before we knew it, we were back in the human-made section, though this area had been abandoned. All of the non-combat staff would have been moved into a secure location deeper within the base. We moved in the direction of the hangars, hearing gunfire as we approached. The Commander was incredibly intuitive, moving where I wanted him at the simple nudge of a knee.
Suddenly, a group of Ghouls appeared before us, pouring out of a hallway, all snarls and slavering, calling out that they were going to eat us while fucking us, or something disturbing like that. The Commander charged. I barely had time to get my sword out before he hit them, and when he did, he hit them fucking hard. The first Righteous Ghoul ended up as a smear of reddish brown glorp that slid down the wall, the second found a Klee-Vics spine through his temple. The rest of them suffered similar fates as the rest of the Klee-Vics caught up to us.
In almost no time, they cleaned up the intruding Ghoul presence, scouring the hallways and impaling the fuckers that dared intrude on us. The Commander stayed with us, but his warriors spread out in insectoid fashion, cleaning up the base as swiftly as they were able.
I spotted Apocalypse Girl, standing with her mother in the hangar amidst the remains of several dozen dead Ghouls. A hundred other soldiers stood guard as the pair argued, loudly. The same hundred soldiers raised their voices in a great roaring cheer as the Klee-Vics skittered their way in, all of them reporting that the Ghoulish presence had been eradicated from inside the base.
Apocalypse Mum did not look pleased that I had enlisted outside help, or maybe her daughter had said something unpleasant to her. In any case, she shook The Commander’s claw and thanked him graciously enough for his assistance, then requested politely that he remove his warriors from the base.
I pointed out to her that the only easy way out was through the rest of The Righteous. The Klee-Vics had come to help, and they had done so incredibly well, but I didn’t see them surviving the throng of sickness, wrong and evil that currently occupied the top of the facility. Not if they went alone.
“Fine! They can stay. For now. Once the Righteous are dealt with, I want your warriors out of here. I don’t mind you staying, honestly, I’d like a chance to converse with you. However, I’m a little uneasy about having fighters from an unknown source in the deepest most secret parts of my facility.” The Boss told us after staring at me for a long while. I wondered how many ways of killing me she was imagining. I had heard of girlfriends’ mothers being problematic before, but Apocalypse Mum was starting to get more than ridiculous.