Keenan laughed, and Pippa smiled. It was the first time she'd heard Keenan laugh in a long, long time; offset slightly by the fact he held onto his damaged ribs, and finished the laugh with a bout of painful coughing.
"Come on. Let's roll. The ice is beginning to close in on my brain. I'm starting to feel like I need one of those Rainbow Pills. Franco lad?"
"Yeah boss," said Franco, miserably, as he wrestled two-fisted with Olga's great, spade-like hand.
"Put some boots on, there's a good lad. The tight tits I can live with, but we can't have you hobbling around the place like a leper on ecstasy, can we?"
"Sure thing boss."
"What shall we do with him?" Pippa pointed at Paddy Pudson, who cringed back, cowering, face contorted in raw fear unlike any show of cowardice Combat-K had witnessed in a
very
long time.
"Slot him," said Franco, pulling on some thick-soled army boots. "Put a gun up his chuff and give him ten rounds."
"I implore thee," whined Paddy.
"For fuck's sake," muttered Keenan. "Tie him to the rail with some acid-rope. Good and tight. I doubt there's much he can get up to out here on his lonesome. We good to go, people?"
Everyone gave Keenan a nod, and Pippa unrolled the airship's ladder, which clacked to the rocky cavern floor. With only the whine of the wind moaning through the giant archway, they descended and walked across rock, guns primed, to stand behind Keenan at the doors to Ward 1. A ragtag band of miscreants and cutthroats, they looked more like a hardy crew of mutinied pirates than a professional group of elite special force soldiers.
Keenan placed his hand against the double doors, and pushed.
Bright white light greeted them.
Like lambs to the slaughter, they trooped inside the Asylum.
"Wow," said Franco.
They all stared about. The corridor was long, and wide, and brightly lit. The floor tiles, an alternating chequered pattern of green and white, gleamed. Everything was quiet. Still. Motionless. No breeze, no noise; a hiatus in time.
"It's so... clean," said Pippa.
"It's too clean," growled Keenan, MPK muzzle pressed against his cheek. "I don't like it. Get ready for something bad to happen... I can smell it on the breeze."
Franco gave a deep sigh, and Keenan looked sideways at him.
"What?" said Franco. "
What?
It's just this place mate, it's so, so, so reassuringly
clinical.
Not like those other bad places we visited with all the demented nurses and stuff. This is better. This is what a hospital
should
be like. I have spent a long time in hospitals and I know these things!"
"Stop talking."
"Yeah boss."
They eased forward, boots squeaking on immaculate tiles. They passed trolleys which gleamed, chrome shining like a waxed automobile. They passed wheelchairs, motionless, PVC buffed to a shine, tyre-rubbers a perfect gleaming grey, axles smeared with a dab of grease. They passed a wheeled stretcher, and Keenan reached out slowly, as if afraid the apparition might vanish. He touched crisp white cotton. He leant forward, and sniffed it.
"Well?" said Franco.
"It has a hint of lemon," said Keenan, frowning.
"This is a cool joint," said Franco, beaming a smile.
"How can it be a cool joint, dickweed?" said Pippa. "It's a damn hospital corridor!"
"You don't understand." Franco looked almost dreamy. "I had some reet good times at the Mount Pleasant."
"I thought they electrocuted your testicles?"
"Hey," Franco nudged Pippa, grinning, and looking quite delirious in his tight nurse uniform. "You could always give it a try, if you like."
Olga muscled forward, and didn't quite push between Franco and Pippa. She smiled, a broad smile that reminded Franco of an alligator yawning.
"Olga uneasy," said Olga, and cracked her tattooed knuckles. She hoisted her D5 and stared around. "This place, it smell like... like a lunatic place."
"How would you know that?" said Franco.
Olga shrugged her huge shoulders. "She just does! Stop asking ze questions. You get Olga all confused."
The woolly silence was broken by the sound of distant footsteps, and a bristle of weapons crackled through the corridor, too many muzzles pointing at the distant set of double swing doors.
Keenan eased the team forward, their movements fluid now with the promise of further combat, their faces streaked with dirt, and sweat, and blood, and droplets of pus. They looked worse than any deranged combat squad had a right to look; and against the pristine and immaculate surroundings of this virginal hospital corridor, there seemed to be a curious visual reversal.
The footsteps grew louder, ponderous in their measured pendulum. They stopped just beyond the double doors, and Keenan moved forward, gun before him, eyes hardened and face a mask. His weapon lowered, jaw muscles tightening, and Pippa read his intention... to put rounds through the wood.
"No," she said, her words drifting down the sterile avenue.
The double doors swung open and, stooping to fit his bulk through the wide expanse, a huge,
huge
man pushed himself through the portal, like a turtle's head emerging from its shell. He was big. No. He was
big.
He didn't walk into the stretch of corridor, he rolled into it, his layers of fat falling over themselves in an eagerness to obey gravity. The man's head was like a potato, with a thick shaggy mane of brown hair, huge laughter lines, and deep brown eyes, each as big as a man's fist. He had a huge shaggy beard which reached almost down to his waist, and was not so much a singular entity as a continuation of the mane of hair he wore on his head, giving him the look of a huge potato-lion.
In terms of fashion, there was no sign of the recurrent medical theme here. He wore what could only be described as a baggy smock, rainbow-striped, thick-knitted, loose and, one presumed, easy to move in. It was a dress. It was a tent. However, it could not disguise the battle of the flab, currently lost. His arms and legs were thick, powerful, and naked. He wore boots that had seen better days, and laced with bright colourful tassels. Overall, he gave the impression of a fat hippy grizzly bear.
"Holy bat shit!" said Franco, his tongue lolling out.
Keenan simply cocked his weapon with a single, echoing, determined
click.
The bear-man beamed down at them, as if they were his newly-found best friends. He roared with laughter, suddenly, a blast of hot mirth that made Keenan cringe, and the giant rolled forward a few steps and placed his hands on his hips, head touching the ceiling.
"Welcome!" he boomed. "I am Lunatrick, and you have entered my domain!" He laughed again, a great bubbling geyser outpouring of sound that welled from his considerable belly and emerged like a flow of comedy lava.
Franco eased forward. He coughed. "Um, Lunatic?" he said.
"No no!" The huge bear waggled a finger, and Franco found himself momentarily hypnotised by that gesticulating digit. "I am Lunatrick! I am the king! This is my Ward! My Asylum! The Mad Morgue! The Looney Bin! The Chamber of Comedy Conniption!"
"Um," began Franco, who could be a pedant.
"And yes," roared the giant, Lunatrick, "you are
very welcome!
We don't get visitors often and I'm not sure why! Yes you are, we had those visitors the other decade and you crushed them in the Randy Rollers! No, I don't remember that, what are you talking about? Actually, you're both wrong because there
were
visitors but they had guns and tried to shoot us, me, him, all of us, and we ended up putting them in the Boiling Pot of Horrors where they, um, boiled to death, remember? I remember no I don't!"
Lunatrick beamed at the stunned gathering. Weapons bristled uneasily. Franco toyed with the pin on a BABE grenade. It would be so easy... one pluck, one twist, roll it under the fat man's practically immobile body and
boom!
Lunatrick, specialist organic wallpaper.
"Actually," said Pippa, forcing a smile, "what you said, just then, didn't actually really make any sense."
"Yes it did no it didn't it's because they don't know but should we tell them because if we tell 'em they might get scared and think we're... mad." Lunatrick beamed again, and something scuttled through the shaggy mane of hair, surfaced, tiny little beady eyes staring, and then disappeared like an otter in a pond. "Sorry. It's complicated."
Keenan pulled out his silver cigarette case, shouldered his weapon, and rolled himself a smoke. Lunatrick watched Keenan, a huge smile on his broad chops. Keenan lit the weed, took a deep puff, and blew smoke in Lunatrick's face.
Lunatrick gave a little cough.
"Why don't you explain it," said Keenan, with a tight smile.
"YES!" boomed Lunatrick. "I might but it could get complicated so listen very careful! Especially those at the back!" Lunatrick beamed at Fizzy, Shazza and Snake. They scowled at him as one, guns not quite pointing away from him and his big beard.
Lunatrick settled himself on the ground, his colourful rasta-robes spreading out around him, like a chicken settling on a batch of eggs. "You are in my Kingdom, my World," he began. "I am the Asylum King, and Ward 1 was the original ward of Sick World, of Krakken IV. I have been here from the beginning. Yes. That is so."
"But..." said Franco.
"Yes?"
"That'd make you over a thousand years old!" blurted the little ginger squaddie.
"Yes. It has been a long hard struggle, often backwards. Here, we are a thousand
looonies
. We are the maniacs, the greebos, the vagabonds, the freaks, the gypsies, the deviated, the frankies, and we number more than five thousand now, an incredible feat, for coming by extra body parts is a real bitch."
He smiled again.
"You said looonies," said Franco, again, the pedant.
"Yes. Looonies."
"Don't you mean loonies?"
"No. We have extra
oo
mph. You'll see. When you meet them shall we show them? Yes, that would be wise. But only after we've told them. That makes sense. Not to me it doesn't. Don't be such an idjit. Now then, back to business, telling you about my army. The Army of the Mad. That's me, Lunatrick, and my droogs, the Army of the Mad."
He paused.
"You are
insane,"
hissed Pippa.
"Exactly," said Lunatrick.
"But he's blocking the way," whispered Keenan, "and it'd take more than an elephant gun to shift the bastard. So let's hear him out; maybe the looony can help us."
"I was the Ward Manager," said Lunatrick. "In the beginning. I was human. Once. Sort of." He giggled, and rocked back and forth. Long pools of saliva drooled, pooling in his lap, but he seemed not to notice. "But things changed, the luna went ding-dong, and topworld cut us off, cut the chain, pulled the plug, cast us out and down and twisted into downside, madworld, luna, but they called it luna meaning
lunatic
, not the moon, the green moon. Why don't you tell them about the Upsamid? Yes. That would make sense, for we've been waiting for the Keenan for a thousand years. Ever since boy-o told us about him. Yes. He did, didn't he? Yes. He sure did glad we got that all sorted out and straightened away."
"What the hell's wrong with you, lad?" snapped Franco. "Can't you speak proper like what I does?"
"I am tri-polar," said Lunatrick smugly, playing with his strings of drool.
"You mean bi-polar," said Franco, a self-appointed expert on all things mental. "I knows about that, so I do."
"Tri-polar," said Lunatrick. "I am home to three personalities. Unfortunately, we never get on we fucking well do, no we don't you two muppets are always arguing and I'm the only sane one anyway looonies why are you two arguing when we should be discussing the Upsamid? Yes, the Upsamid, tell Keenan about what the Junkala King said about showing him to the Upsamid."
"The Junkala King said I would come?" Keenan's eyes were shining.
"He saw you. In a fast-forward dream. A twisted prophecy, no less. I we us have to take you to the Upsamid, show you how to reach the Elysium Casket and that will point you in the direction of VOLOS will it? Yes it shure nuff will and that's what these dudes want a way of finding VOLOS to sort out this godforsaken cursed ball of mango." Lunatrick's look suddenly shifted, in a way very reminiscent of Franco; Pippa and Keenan exchanged knowing glances.
"What's that mean?" scowled Franco.
"It's the crafty witch-look of the mad," said Pippa.
"Conniption," said Keenan, tapping his nose conspiratorially.
"Yeah, conniption," smiled Pippa.
Keenan took several steps closer, and the huge bloated Lunatrick looked up at the soldier. "You want something, don't you?" said Keenan. It wasn't really intuition, because Lunatrick observed a kind of genetically-modified Arthur-Daley-ducking-diving-fucking-skiving aura that befitted every used car, buggy and shuttle salesman Quad-Gal wide. "What is it? What do you want?"
"I want a new world," said Lunatrick, eyes gleaming.
"Meaning?"