MonuMental: The Hack's Back

Chapter 1: Here come we pigs, fifty shades of pink

Chapter 1: Here come we pigs, fifty shades of pink

Willis had been playing an open-world military v’game for hours. Pig Army, it was called. It was a part of the ever-popular Mean Pig v’game series, featuring a seemingly limitless number of ill-mannered pigs in varying shapes, sizes and shades of pink.

And he was growing bored. He hadn’t seen Zeb in some time. And Arizona not at all.

He was lying flat in a trench, clad in army commando gear, gray and green in color and the pattern of broken fried eggs. When he heard a scuffling sound ­– at last! something! ­– he raised his head slightly over the trench’s rim to see.

And looked straight into Zeb’s muddy face. Zeb was wearing a metal helmet decorated with leaves and twigs, and otherwise was similarly dressed to Willis, and also lay on his stomach. Behind him lay a stretch of land pocked with blasted trees and the wrecks of combat vehicles – ziptanks mostly, their cannons pointing upward as if they were giving the world the big finger.

 ‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Willis. ‘A whole battalion of militia pigs has dug in just over the rise behind you. And they’ve been getting pretty active with their jumbo mortar-guns. Didn’t you hear the booming? Real super-surround stuff. We need to work out a plan before they gain the upper hand. Or whatever it is in the case of pigs. Hoof? Forequarter?’

Before either could say another word, a sheet of sound hit them, knocking Willis backward and almost dragging Zeb over the edge of the trench. Willis lay face up, gawking at the columns of dirt with flames at their hearts coiling upward.

‘Trotter,’ Zeb said.

‘Oh yeah. Thanks.’

Zeb scrambled to his feet and gazed up at the sight, legs apart, hands on his hips, godlike.

‘Was that your doing?’Willis asked.

Zeb looked down at him, his eyes wide. ‘I crept around right under their unsuspecting noses. I didn’t even need a v’game weapon.’

‘Unsuspecting snouts,’ corrected Willis.

‘Oh yeah. Thanks.’

‘Score,’ said a bodiless male v’voice in the air over them. ‘ZoominAudaciousZeb – fifty points, and earning him a reward weapon: the ba-ba-ba-boom-bazooka.’

An oversized weapon with an arrangement of levers along its thick cylinder and rear end, looking like some alien tuba, snapped into existence. It pulsated with a blue glow, as if hovering next to Zeb’s right shoulder wasn’t enough to bring it to his attention.

Willis laughed. ‘You and that new v’name of yours – ZoominAudaciousZeb. I still can’t get over it.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘It’s long, for a start.’

Zeb looked affronted. ‘I came up with it in a hurry. And anyway, you can talk, WillisTheDragonslayer. What the hell’s that all about?’

Willis shrugged. The first time they entered the new Plush Plus v’space they had to identify themselves in the v’gaming community’s live zone, the Plush Orbital. Anxious to get straight into the v’play, they were perhaps a little hasty over their v’names.

‘It sounded good at the time,’ Willis said feebly.

‘Please collect your weapon,’ the v’voice reminded Zeb.

‘Forget it, game,’ Zeb said. ‘I don’t need it.’ The large weapon by his shoulder wobbled, then vanished.

Willis sat up straight in the trench. ‘You’re knocking back a ba-ba-ba-boom-bazooka?’