Bedlam by Christopher Brookmyre Read Free Book Online Page B

decibels to the north of the Brian Blessed register. ‘Cut off
     a couple of limbs and they just keep scuttling.’
    He was the size of Kamnor, albeit with a greater proportion of flesh on display, though whereas it had looked like Kamnor’s
     augmentations were designed with specific purposes in mind, Gortoss’s appeared to have been carried out by someone havinga tilt at the Turner Prize. Ross could have sworn there was even a steam iron in there somewhere, which had presumably been
     embedded after being used to blister extensive areas of Gortoss’s remaining skin.
    As with the cowering marine, Ross had happened upon him all of a sudden, having come over the brow of a crater. Unlike the
     marine, however, Gortoss gave him no option to withdraw unseen.
    ‘Recruit! Where in a swamp-slug’s suppurating ring-piece have you been?’ he demanded. ‘I had already decided to cite you for
     desertion. Your punishment was to have your own guts syphoned out through a liquefaction tube and then fed back down your
     throat. I was going to carry it out myself. I was really looking forward to that,’ he added, sounding genuinely hurt. ‘But
     then you have to show up and ruin it. Bloody new recruits they keep sending me. You’re
my
punishment, that’s what you are.’
    ‘Lieutenant Kamnor told me where to find you, sergeant, sir,’ Ross blurted, trying to contextualise himself in a way that
     subtly threw in the chain of command. ‘I was a bit out of sorts, to do with the virus.’
    ‘What virus?’
    ‘Sent by the invaders. It’s making people think they’re, er, not themselves.’
    ‘Never heard of it. Too bad there isn’t one that makes useless sewage pipes like yourself think they’re fucking soldiers.
     Anyway, Kamnor you say? How is the effete bastard? Still swanning around like his arse wouldn’t rust?’
    ‘He was, er, looking grand when I left him, sir.’
    ‘I’ll bet he was. All image and politics with that one. Do anything to avoid losing face.’
    Ross tried to retain eye contact with Gortoss in case anything less was considered insubordinate, but his focus kept being
     drawn to the twitching and possibly not-quite-dead marine still pinned to the ground by his spike. He wasn’t paying maximum
     attention to the sergeant’s words either, his focus latching immediately on to Gortoss’s dismissal of the virus. He’d never
     heard of it, he said. What if Kamnor was lying, or mistaken, Ross wondered, glimpsing a host of new possibilities.
    Then Ross once again glimpsed what Gortoss was almost absently doing with his lethal appendage and reasoned that, given he
     was the most dangerously insane individual he’d ever met, perhaps he shouldn’t place too much stock in his testimony.
    Gortoss glanced away, over the rim of the next crater, where something had pleasingly taken his eye. He barked a greeting
     to a Sergeant Zorlak and requested that he stand fast a moment. When he looked back at Ross, he was wearing a grin so steeped
     in malicious intent, it made Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
look like Barney the dinosaur.
    ‘Recruit, we’ve got just the job for you. Get your carcass over here.’
    Ross proceeded down the first crater and towards the next with the light step and gaiety of a death row inmate who’d just
     had his head shaved. He didn’t know what this ‘job’ entailed, but he suspected that if offered the choice, sight unseen, between
     whatever it was and cleaning John McCririck’s toilet with his tongue, he’d take the latter without even asking for a peek
     over that next rim.
    ‘Get a bloody move on. These bastards aren’t going to kill
themselves
, you know.’
    Oh no
.
    It was as horrible as he’d suspected. Zorlak and several members of his unit, Dagger squad, were standing over two prisoners.
     The marines were on their knees, hands restrained behind their backs by orange-glowing devices, their heads bowed in resignation
     and fear. Why were these guys being held, he