
Inspired by the photos featured here, I've developed The Chaos Halo series. Each edition of their eZine will include regular "Alpha Beta Gamma Kill" stories and the occasional stand-alone adventure in the world of the Chaos Halo.
The first story can be read here, or on the Future Chronicles website, and is written to introduce the series.
I'd love to hear your comments on this story.
Thanks.
Alpha Beta Gamma Kill
A Chaos Halo Story
(1,500 words)
Abigale gripped the man’s neck and pressed the
triple-barrels against his temple. She’d recently referred to the weapon as Toothpick but had no idea how that came
about. His perspiration collected around the metal and trickled downwards
through stubble. His breath stank like he’d been eating from the refuse. Who’s
to say he hadn’t? They were in the compactor room where they brought the dead.
When she’d found him he was tagging ankles while eating something. She doubted
people were that desperate. Rationing was enforced out in the free zones, not
inside the main provinces. And especially not within the Complex itself.
Red lights flashed from the
ceiling as an alarm erupted around them. It drilled into the room, into her
brain. They knew she was there.
“ABG One?” The piercing noise
almost drowned his croak. “I recognize you.”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m Abigale
now.”
His chin quivered. He was
pathetic, useless to her. She had to hurry. “I’ll ask again, where is she?”
His eyes focused on something
above her head. “What’s that?”
“Shut up.” She slammed him
against the wall and stepped back, dragging the cannon muzzles across his
forehead. Dirt streaked and the skin reddened. “That’s my Halo. You’ve upset
it.”
A crease wrinkled his brow. “What?”
“Answer me.” She thrust the
cannon forward and his head smacked the wall. The sound cracked through that
maddening alarm. There was no time for this.
The man grimaced. Most of his
teeth were black. “The Cleaners took her body to the tech lab. There…”
“Yes?”
“There are parts they can
recycle.”
“Of course.” She pulled the
trigger.
His head burst in a blur of red.
Pieces of skull and brain clung to the wall. The echo of Toothpick’s roar died
as the body collapsed. Vapour fogged the room. She knew where the tech lab was.
It was where she’d taken her first steps. Perhaps she’d meet some of her in-vitro
sisters. She’d heard rumours of tech having been cranked up and they’d begun
the Second Generation already. They were more machine than organism.
Abigale sprinted from the room
and the alarm roared along the corridors with her. She tightened her grip on
the cannon, ready for the Second Gens.
The tech lab was up ahead, behind
a pair of double-doors. Rust patterned the dented panels. She kicked one and it
swung inwards, creaking as it settled on tortured hinges. The alarm wasn’t as
loud in there.
She stepped further into the room.
It was deserted and smelled of damp, body odour and grease. Spotlights illuminated
the dull bulk of machines hidden in a tangle of conduits and cables. Standing
tall and empty were a dozen glass cylinders. In-vitro gel oozed from the open
vents in all but the one Abigale had escaped from—it still hadn’t been
repaired. Curved shards of glass were heaped at its base and the coils of fertilisation
tubes and monitor wire lay severed in a mound of crusted gel. Mould clung to it
and climbed a short way up the chamber wall.
From the maze of pipes overhead
water—or something else—dripped, echoing louder than the raging alarms.
It must’ve been a year ago now.
Perhaps more. For Abigale, so much had happened.
Her Halo throbbed and those
familiar glyphs stabbed her peripheral. That only proved her adrenaline was up.
Nothing else, she hoped. The glyphs were yet to be explained…and she hated
that. She didn’t want to admit they looked alien.
Her only faith was in Toothpick.
Especially now she’d stolen those upgrades from the armoury.
Half in
shadow and pushed into a corner, a table sat between a pair of rusted canisters.
A sheet draped over it, touching the floor, and failed to hide the unmistakable
form of a body. Shouldering her weapon, she rushed over to it. The sheet stuck
to her hand, and when she snatched it away blood-caked hair flopped sideways. Dead
eyes stared back and Abigale recalled when those eyes smiled. It had been only
yesterday…
* * *
In the free zones, Abigale had
been sheltering beneath a viaduct as the rain pummelled the broken pavement. The
girl came from the shadows and was hunched into her greatcoat. From the raised
collar her hair was like a bright pink bubble.
The girl lifted her head. “Got
any mutrients?” A dark tattoo curled down her cheek like a skinny finger. She
was a Triber, probably from a part of the outlands bled dry for its minerals.
The minerals that were a key ingredient to the pill she now asked for. That was
what people survived on these days. There was no organic food; only
manufactured nutrient pills. Mutrients,
nicknamed in respect for the mutant genocide a decade ago. The Hilt—the New World
Authorities—were behind that.
“I’m not a dealer.” Abigale dropped
her hand from the cannon. This girl was harmless.
“Yea, but you must have some.”
“Maybe.”
“Swap?”
Abigale leaned back against a
girder. The girl’s boots were laceless and the greatcoat was a patchwork of
worn-leather. She smelled of the grime she no doubt lived in, but her face and
hair defied the otherwise-lack of hygiene. “What do you have that I may need?”
“These?” She pulled out a pair of
goggles. They had a thick strap and molded rims, and the eyepieces were attached
by an adjustable rod. Perfect if you wanted to fly a tiltpod, though such
contraptions were no longer commonplace. Because of the spore-clouds most
fliers were decked with proper cockpits and wraparound windshields.
Abigale curled her lip. “Why
would I want them?”
“You look like you need them.”
She stood straighter. “What?”
“You’re squinting.” The girl
shrugged. “It’s like you see something no one else can.”
Perhaps this girl wasn’t your
average Triber. Was she a mutant with psych-perception? She spoke of the glyphs.
As Abigale thought of them, those flickering symbols pressed into her vision.
Yes, she knew she sometimes squinted.
“So,” said the girl whose grin
almost split her face in two, “you are interested?”
“How will they help?”
“Here.” She pushed them into
Abigale’s hand.
Water specked the glass but they were
otherwise clean. She hooked them over her head and pulled them down. No need
for adjustment.
Those alien glyphs shrank.
After a moment, Abigale whispered,
“How did you know?”
“I see stuff.”
Abigale looked past the girl and
into the rain, into the blackness of dead buildings. The glyphs were still
there yet somehow subdued. A welcome relief. “Okay, how many mutrients?”
“How many you got?”
“Enough.” She pushed the goggles
up to her forehead. “Two weeks?”
“Four.”
“Three, no more.”
“You think four is—” A roar of laser
pulses echoed and the girl’s greatcoat billowed in shreds of leather and flesh
and bone. Red mist blended with the rain as her body slid across the pavement.
Both legs, from the knees down, spun out into the shadows. One boot fell off
and splashed a puddle.
Abigale crouched behind a stone
block. Sprayed across the area near her head were the words, Resist the Hilt—a common slogan in the
free zones. She clutched her cannon and stretched for a view of the gunners. The
smell of cauterised flesh and burnt leather clawed up her nose.
Beyond the girl’s body and the smouldering
upheaval of what once served as a loading bay, two jets hovered above the
twists of a chain-link fence. It was the Hilt—bored militants out for
late-night target practice. Below them, the fence rattled as energy spheres
spat lightning downwards, holding the vehicles aloft. Their front-mounted guns
whirred and cranked, seeking a target. The muzzles glowed and beams tore
through the ground, reaching for her. The stone shook as Abigale pressed
against it.
She sprang to her feet and
charged for the derelict darkness.
The sewer network beneath the old
city proved an easy route to evade the Hilt. A lot of people lived down there,
and a lot of people had died down there. The Hilt cared little for anything or
anyone outside the Complex.
They did, however, care for those
who escaped.
* * *
Now,
inside the Complex, Abigale looked at the remains of the girl. Broken arms hung
from a legless torso, little more than a mess of coat-folds and flesh. The skin
around her neck had fused with her clothes in a web of blisters. One cheek had
melted and lengthened her mouth into a twisted grimace. Dried blood peppered
her forehead and her eyes stared past Abigale, above her head as if she still
saw the Halo. What else could the girl’s psych-perception have revealed?
She tugged
a packet of mutrients from a jacket pocket and placed it beside that matted, dull-pink
hair.
“Four
weeks’ worth,” Abigale murmured.
Thundering
feet echoed from a distant stairwell.
She
pulled her goggles down and thumbed Toothpick. It vibrated as the upgrades kicked
in.
This
time she was ready for them.
All photos (c)John Burrell Photography
Visit the Future Chronicles website.
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Author photo (c)Christopher Shoebridge |
Mark Cassell lives in a rural part of the UK with his wife and a number of animals. He often dreams of dystopian futures, peculiar creatures, and flitting shadows. Primarily a horror writer, his steampunk, fantasy, and SF stories have featured in several anthologies and ezines.
His debut novel, The Shadow Fabric, is a supernatural story and is available from Amazon.
Twitter: @Mark_Cassell ~ Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorMarkCassell
His debut novel, The Shadow Fabric, is a supernatural story and is available from Amazon.
Twitter: @Mark_Cassell ~ Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorMarkCassell
Really enjoyed that.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Part two will be available soon. And I've just finished the first draft of part three. Abigale is beginning to really get her hands dirty.
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