the aberration

chapter eleven

Three weeks earlier...

They had conducted a full sweep of the area, save for the structure they were now heading quickly and quietly towards: a big, old warehouse, situated in the middle of an industrial nowhere surrounded by a dozen more buildings of the same description.

The marines moved in the twin lights of the half-waxed moon and the police cars that smouldered orangely nearby. All else was perfectly silent.

Sam Dulman crept around the edge of the warehouse and halted by the rusted metal door, his rifle ready. Sarge flanked the door on the other side. Behind him, as he signalled, the remainder of the squadron assumed their positions; Sarge nodded, signalled again, and Sam kicked open the door.

Their searchlights swept the dark interior as they moved in. The warehouse was wide and spacious and almost bare.

Sam looked up. Above him dangled at least a dozen pairs of ghostly white legs, several metres from the ground and half-hidden in the shadows of the ceiling. They were white sculptures or models, human-shaped and human-sized, suspended in some kind of rack. They were probably part of some obscure trade, Sam thought, legal or otherwise, being stored there. He wondered vaguely how much they were worth, and who would buy them.

The marines had examined the interior completely and declared it clear.

'We sure this is the right one?' asked Pete.

'This is the one with the burning cars outside,' said Jameson.

Sarge peered around some more. 'Looks like they cleared out.'

One of the others was gazing up at the sculptures. As he turned away, one of them detached and swooped down. Hearing movement, the marine turned in time to meet two painted nipples, which at first he mistook for a bizarre pair of eyes, closing in on his face. He cried out as they knocked him over.

'What the--'

The other marines span around, clutching their weapons as the naked porcelain women, with their sinister painted faces, began to descend upon them from above.

* * *

The sky was paling as Mike trudged numbly after the microwave. The two had not exchanged a word since their pointless excursion down the hole. Mike had begun to feel resentful towards the kitchen appliance, his fatigue long having reduced his capability to be awed by or curious about anything that was happening to him. His base, biological concerns were more pressing.

He sulked.

His tired eyes ached as they rose to find that he had fallen behind the radius of the microwave's harsh illumination. The utter darkness around him was slowly giving way to greyer shapes. Everything seemed as dead as yesterday.

'Aha!' declared the microwave, suddenly jolting Mike from his quiet moroseness.

'What?'

'Sustenance! Although it appears,' it said, 'that somebody else has already been here.'

When the microwave moved forward to reveal a large, wooden crate, its lid thrown aside, Mike walked up to it. As the light of the microwave circled the crate from above, Mike placed his hands on the rim and leaned to look in awe at the shifting miracle inside. It was food, a lot of it, all pristinely wrapped as if taken straight from a supermarket shelf, save for a few empty packets of biscuits and a torn box of cereal which had, as the microwave had implied, already been attacked.

'Is it safe to eat?' Mike asked, looking up at the microwave.

'I cannot be certain,' the microwave replied, 'but I suspect so. Please, restore your energies. You may sleep here for a few hours. We are not in a very hidden spot, but I will watch over you and alert you of imminent danger if necessary. Meanwhile, I shall contemplate our next course of action.'

'Great,' Mike said, already delving into the crate's selection and unsealing and swigging a carton of orange juice.

* * *

The marines dug out graves in the earth of the clearing, right next to the steep concrete wall. Sam had paused, leaning on his shovel and gazing down into the rectangular excavation. His eyes were unfocused. These were not the first graves.

Beef had scrubbed the blood off his pink-grey fur as best he could. Even now he carried a freshly reloaded rifle with him. He walked down the curving steps and stood beside Sam as they laid the bodies to rest. Neither said a word.

Beef was stirred by a sudden physical chill; he had not felt anything yet like it in the stale atmosphere of the place. He looked up at the sky. Day was arriving, but dark clouds were forming, keeping everything grim and lifeless.

They began shovelling the dirt back in over the bodies.

'We were called out,' Sam said, and Beef turned. 'To some urban industrial shithole. Our squadron was told there'd been some kind of firefight. Struck me as a bit one-sided when we got there and found the police cars burning. Only one of the poor bastards escaped to tell us.'

The other marines shovelled mechanically. They said not one word, each man lost in his own thoughts. Sam continued:

'When we got there, there was nothing. Just a warehouse full of old art and crap. Only then, o' course, soon as we were all inside,' he recounted bitterly, 'that old art decided to come alive and bloody attack us. Porcelain women,' he added, nodding in acknowledgement of Beef's earlier reference. 'We shot at them and kept on shooting, none of us having a fucking clue what was going on. They kept on coming. An endless supply of naked women; I wouldn't have been complaining, only it was the creepiest thing I ever saw.

'Jameson, Harris and Sarge...they managed to smash through a few and get to the door and open it.' Sam swallowed. His voice broke as he said, 'They were just outside. The fat men in tweed. We tried to escape, but some of us were knocked out by the porcelain things, and then the guys in tweed were circling the warehouse and closing in on us. They...they stomped on Harris.' Sam shook his head. 'It wasn't real. None of it. The way their...their flab--'

'And then you were here,' said Beef.

Sam looked up at him, then down at the mounds of earth. 'Yeah,' he whispered.

'We found this place,' he said, collecting his voice and gesturing half-heartedly to the concrete walls, 'full of food and weapons. Empty of people. It's been like a fucking prison. We've tried to venture out, explore, figure out where the hell we are. That's what I was doing when you hit me in the back of the head and tied me to that tree.' He shot a resentful glare at Beef, who remained impassive. 'I was scouting. We have to look for food every once in a while, but we have to...avoid things. Fat, mechanical spider things.

'And then every now and then,' he narrated with ironic incidence, 'we get attacked by zombie soldiers.' He gave Beef a forced casual smile. Dark circles had set in under his eyes. 'They've slowly been picking us off, one by one. Last night was the first time they broke into the fort. If you can call it that.' He sighed. 'I don't think we're gonna last much longer,' he said.

* * *

'We should move on,' said Simon Hyde, as Amelia wrung her hair again. 'It's obviously not safe to stay near the water.'

'That thing,' Amelia said, 'was watching me. If only I could have gotten hold of it...' She hitched her coat over her shoulders and straightened it. 'Where to next, then?'

'Strike south. Back the way we came, as I was doing before you got yourself stuck. We'll follow your previous intuition to head for higher ground, and maybe we'll get ourselves a better vantage point of this godforsaken place. I don't know how long the journey'll be, so if you want to have one last drink before we set off...'

Amelia glared at him. He smiled and knelt by the water.

* * *

Sam picked at a sandwich. He and Beef were sat in the poorly lit mess hall, the only ones in there.

'Did you get something to eat?' Sam asked Beef.

Beef nodded. The fort had a big pantry of sorts, although it had been nearly empty. Beef had filled himself with shortbread biscuits and a flask of water.

Sam was the only one who had spoken to Beef since the incident with the soldiers. The others kept their distance, casting him suspicious looks, but doing no more harm than that.

The light in the corridor flickered.

'So what now?' Sam said, his eyes travelling from his half-eaten sandwich to his own reflection in Beef's visor. He lowered his gaze again.

Beef leaned back in his collapsible metal chair and exhaled. His rifle was propped against the chair leg. 'Well, we could try asking them what exactly it is they want, but they don't seem the type for diplomacy. I'm not staying here, though.'

Sam looked up at him in astonishment. 'What? You're seriously thinking of going back out there? But--'

'The alternative is for us to wait here to get slaughtered again. Besides,' said Beef, 'I have to find the people I came with. I'm not going to do that sitting here.'

* * *

'So what is it you do, microwave?' Mike asked, tucking in to a slightly stale bread roll. He was feeling more talkative now, slouched against the crate. 'You're not just here to save me from danger, are you? Although good job on that, I suppose,' he said. 'I haven't seen a single dangerous thing the whole time I've been here. What is it you need me for, exactly? All I've done is followed you around and pulled levers.'

Then it struck him that in all his disorientation and only passive acceptance of the microwave's existence (as if he had been hoping that he might come to his senses eventually), he had neglected to ask the obvious question: 'Microwave, did you bring me here?'

'Yes,' replied the microwave. 'You persistently asked me to.'

'No, I mean to this place in general. I woke up and you were just there.'

The microwave hovered lazily. 'No,' it said.

'Do you know who did? Do you know where the others are?'

The microwave inclined. 'Which others?' it queried. 'Do you mean the men with guns? They are dreadfully impolite. I assume that they would want answers just as we do, but they insist on embarking in such needlessly aggressive responses. You are the first I have found who has not done so.'

Mike wondered if that would have been the case had he too been in possession of a weapon.

'You keep talking about answers,' he said accusingly, 'but they don't seem to be very forthcoming. I mean, what was that thing on the track all about?'

'The big answers you are looking for are never immediate,' the microwave replied. 'But they shall no doubt be revealed in due course. You must be patient.'

Mike grunted. He felt bloated from eating too fast. He shifted onto his side and attempted to make himself comfortable.

The microwave watched him fall asleep.

* * *

'We have beds,' Sam offered, 'if you feel like having a nap before you go off again. Probably won't be too hard to find an empty bunk.'

Beef nodded. 'Thanks,' he said. 'I'll do that.'

'I guess I'll let it fly, all the stuff you did,' Sam said. 'The tree, the hostage-taking and the headaches, I mean.'

'You're too kind,' said Beef, not one ounce of apology in his voice. 'For what it's worth, you did your best to make it difficult.'

Sam grinned and turned to leave. 'Whatever you say, Freak Ears,' he called back.

'Dulman?' shouted a voice. 'Dulman!'

'What?' Jameson bolted around the corner and ran into him. The marine grabbed him by the shoulders to support himself. His face was white and panick-stricken; he was perspiring.

'The soldiers,' he gasped. 'They're back. We just sighted them headed this way.'

'Oh God...'

'What is it?' demanded Beef, who had heard their panicked tones.

Jameson glared at Beef, but said, 'The soldiers. The fucking indestructible soldiers are back, and they're going to fucking kill us, that's what!'

'We have to get out of here,' said Sam, running to get his weapon.

An unpleasant prickling sensation made its way down Beef's spine. He gripped his rifle. 'How far away are they?' he asked Jameson, heading for the stairwell.

'Now?' said Jameson. 'They're probably already here.'

Beef skipped the stairs and launched himself from stairhead to stairhead, running down the corridor to the exit. His feet pounded up the concrete wall's inner flight of steps and he looked out across the clearing.

The clouds overhead were dark and angry and obliterated the sky. Amongst the trees, flashes of red were moving, making their way slowly but surely towards the fort. Beef stepped back and gazed around. More began to emerge from every direction. He could see each ridiculous belltop hat. He and the marines had been unable to kill even one; here, now, were many.

Beef steadied himself.

The clouds broke. It began to rain.