Every day at 5 p.m., find a new episode of Mortal Derby X on 20 Minutes , Rocambole's soap opera, the app for reading differently. This series of SF projects us into a post-collapse world, the king sport of which is Quad Derby, a confrontation halfway between Roller derby and Rollerball. Its author, Michael Roch, is not an unknown. He has already published science fiction novels and hosts the YouTube book brigade.
Summary of previous episodes: During a Quad Derby match, Molly Pop, star of this sport, is violently kicked off the track by another competitor. She wakes up in the hospital with prosthetics in place of the legs and hatred deep in the heart. What is not tolerated in the Cocoon, the only protector of the human species since the Great Collapse of 2030 .. Molly is condemned to exile.
EPISODE IV - Ratigeurs
The man who lifts Molly from the ground reeks of filth and alcohol. He presses the jammer's head into his filthy neck, forcing him to back away from the Reclaimer. Molly Pop struggles, plays elbows and fists in the flanks of the lousy, ends up sending a knee in his crotch. The guy loosens his grip and his head explodes.
Five meters behind, the confined guards opened fire. On either side of the gangway spring other types, alive as rats. They use low quality holograms to hide in the background. Disturbance of the field of vision betrayed by dead pixels. Molly Pop spots them and starts running.
Bullets burst in his ears. The guards do not shoot at her, they shoot down these vermin masked by dirty and torn shutters. Several try to catch it, but it slides between their claws, its dodges increased tenfold by the anarchic swaying of its new body. No one can put a hand on her anymore. As soon as their feet touch the catwalk, they are lowered, perforated chest, torn hand, lint head.
In its weighted and metallic race, it sees only their eyes, wide open, and this mixture of fear, excitement and hope. Some hardly look at her. They jump on the corpses of their comrades and use them as a human shield to go up the bridge, but end up dying with a precise shot.
Then it touches the earth, the cold and sterile earth. The crackling of arms ceases, the groans too. It is dark, but no stars are visible. The lights of the abyss project their luminous veil onto ghostly infrastructures. From the outside, the Cocoon is a huge tower that is lost in the vertigo of the dark sky. A monumental keep, planted in the ground, streaked with lights that stretch out to the undetectable summit. A beacon, in short, like a call in the apocalyptic night. Molly Pop, lost in contemplation, forgets the danger. We put it on the ground.
They are two. Then five, suddenly, to fight over and against it. We grab it, we pull on its package, we push back, we hit each other, we bite. One of the men draws a tamper and grills a few arms, hooking at full speed. In the spurts of blood and drool, the clouds of dust and the tufts of hair pierces the reflection of a blade. The knife tears a canvas like lightning tears the sky. We offload Molly Pop from the weight of her bag. She's screaming. We trample on it. We throw ourselves in pursuit of the thief. She finds herself alone.
Run, the other had said. At the end of the bridge, the doors of the Reclusionneur have closed. The cage, of which only the red light can be distinguished, goes up along the tower, bringing the two guards back to the last paradise on Earth.
Molly Pop is alone. Alone in the middle of a hell populated by rats, an immense and unknown world, where her only landmarks are her hands flayed in the stain of the ground and the locks of her hair which whip her face.
A voice hails her from afar. On the roof of a nearby building, the bag thief shows him his booty. Hooded and dressed in a loden, he taunts her.
- Come and get him!
Molly Pop gets up. Rushes towards him. Collects, head on concrete, the sound of metallic claves echoing behind it. The rods of the frame of his new thighs protrude from his torn pants. The hood did not move a bit. He watches her behind his filthy brace.
- Come on, come on!
Molly wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. She straightens up again and follows the directions of the perched crow. A succession of small alleys leads her to him. He is waiting for her between two old containers half dismantled. The boy is a little younger than her. He stares at her while laughing. Molly slaps him.
- Give me my bag.
- Mollo, my beautiful! I keep it by the elbow until you are able to gambol right. You're Molly Pop, right?
- What the hell do you care?
- I am a fan. I saw when you got meaty.
He squats and feels the calf of the jammer. She strikes him a new kick which sends him to the ground. The kid gasps.
- Fuck, ok! I got it, shit.
He gets back on his feet, spits a mollard, checks that no tooth has broken and pulls the package he kept behind him. He hands it to her without giving it to her.
- I have the thing you eat. Except that if I give it to you, you're going to get it pinched as easily as I got it from you. As I need the guns in there and you need mezigue to make your sardines out of the Cocoon, you're going to follow Papi.
Molly hesitates. His brain struggles to grasp the meaning of the boy's sentences. She understands that he is trying to barter his tools and that he asks her to follow him. A noise crosses the alley behind her.
- I'm going to hit your head, there, right now, in this hole in r -
- I run faster than you. And the zigues of earlier, the suicidal ones, there: they are ratigeurs. They tap the sole until recluses like you lock up the Cocoon and prefer to die by feeling the ascent than mold here below. They make their living in the area, eat everything that moves, rat or human, and wait their turn. So if you swallow that you can last without me, it rolls. I leave you, but I keep the package.
- And why do you want to help me?
The boy gives him a sly smile while taking from his pocket a tamper which he tests twice and keeps in hand.
- My name is Tob. Follow me.
To be continued…
Discover the next episode on our site on May 1 at 5 p.m. or on the Rocambole app for iOS or Android.
- Literature
- Books
- Science fiction