Toxicity by Andy Remic Read Free Book Online Page B

Jenny had first suspected, because of her age; but because
of her supposed resemblance to a goat.
     
    Finally, there was Sick Note. A
small, skinny, gangly-looking man, completely bald, with thick veins crossing
his polished dome. He was never to be seen without either a cigarette or a
quarter bottle of whiskey. He constantly moaned (he was moaning now, about
losing his hand in the game) and was a hypochondriac. Jenny had questioned this
fact when she’d first read it, only to be told, with a wide grin, “Wait till
you meet him!” They had, of course, been correct; Sick Note earned his name for
good reason. Not a day went by without him developing some new cancer, deadly
virus, genetic mutation or terminal illness.
     
    More drinks were drunk, and a
feeling of euphoria washed over Jenny. The group were completely at ease with
one another. They oozed not just confidence, but... the ability to mesh. Like
gear cogs interlocking. They were a team, a unit. And that was good...
     
    Except for Jones.
     
    Had she misjudged?
     
    Zanzibar gestured to her, and she
stood, and stretched, and followed him outside into the cool night air. A light
rain was falling. It tasted bad on Jenny’s tongue, like ash. Like toxic
rainfall. Which, surely, it was.
     
    “Don’t worry,” said Zanzibar.
     
    “About?”
     
    “So coy, mistress,” he grinned. “About
Jones. I know how the human mind works. You can see us all as a unit, and you’re
wondering if you fucked up. Trust me, you didn’t. What you’re witnessing in our
behaviour is the absence of Jones. He is a fly in our butter. A maggot in our
collective sweet, juicy apple pie. There is a deep prejudice in him, a deep bad
strand. Nobody here thinks less of you.”
     
    Jenny shrugged. “It’s good of you
to say, Zanz.” She clasped his hand, wrist to wrist. “Internal bitching and fighting
is a pointless excursion; we have a common enemy. A common enemy we need to
bring down and fuck up with extreme prejudice.”
     
    “You’ve come to the right place,”
smiled Zanzibar.
     
    Jenny nodded. “Well. We’re going
to make a difference. I promise you that.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    JENNY
SAT ON her bunk, in a tiny 8x6 bunker, and checked over her weapons. She had a
Browning 13mm, an SMKK standard-issue machine gun, and a variety of weird and
ingenious grenades, everything from smoke and white phos, to DetX and Detox
pills.
     
    Happy everything was in order,
she kicked off her boots (in need of a polish) and lay back with a creak of
springs. She wriggled around for a few moments, trying to get comfy, but
resigned herself, as a bad-bed professional experienced in the art of shitty
military springs, never to get comfy. She closed her eyes anyway and
grasped for strands of sleep, but it wouldn’t come. As was usual when she drank
enough to mess with her mindset, she thought about the drink, the alcohol, and
drifted back through time.
     
    Sleep tugged at her like a dying
man on a rope, and she drifted in and out of consciousness. She felt bad about
the fight earlier; in an ideal world, a true world where only good things
happened, the fight wouldn’t have happened. But the problem was, there were too
many arseholes with too big an ego floating around. Yes. Ha. Even in her unit.
Her eyes flickered, and she licked dry lips, and for some reason she was
thinking about her dad, Old Tom. She smiled grimly, for although there were
many, many nice thoughts of Old Tom - snippets of early childhood, of laughing,
being carried high on strong broad shoulders, of wallowing in warm oceans, of
building castles in the sand - there were also other memories, more recent
memories. Bad memories.
     
    Jenny blinked, and for a moment
he was standing there, long hair tangled and unkempt, a bottle in one hand
filled with colourless piss, swaying, staring at her with that vacant stare he
always had when hammered.
     
    “Please stop, Daddy.”
     
    “Ach, don’t be silly, little Jen.
I’ve only had a