“I’ve lost my fucking appetite. I need to find the Father anyway.”
Alexis’ face drops down to the floor, and she pulls the sheet tighter around herself. The man, cloaked in nothing but shadow, reaches up and pulls one of the thin strands of hair away from Alexis’s face and places it behind her ear.
“You have no reason to search anymore, my child,” the Father says.
He slides off the bed and steps into the candlelight. Not a piece of fabric is on the man, and he still carries with him a raging hard-on that would impress her if she didn’t want to vomit at the site of him.
“What the fuck are you doing, Alexis?” Elizabeth demands.
She slides her way behind a bed that puts a little distance between her and the man she did not expect to be pounding her one and only friend.
“Our beloved daughter, Alexis, has been chosen to be the first in this world to carry the seed of the father that will bring humanity back from the brink of destruction. She is blessed and soon will bring a child into this life that will change the world.”
Elizabeth eyes her friend who still stares at the floor. One delicate hand rests across her belly.
“Alexis, don’t tell me you believe this piece of shit?” Elizabeth asks.
Her friend does not answer, but the Father takes a few steps forward, circling the bed.
“Be nice, Elizabeth. Alexis knows the truth because she is a believer. If you took a moment to think and open your mind, you’d see the possibilities right in front of you.”
Elizabeth glares at the man whose eyes flicker down to his pecker, and then back to her face. His smile cannot possibly grow any larger.
“What I see is a lunatic pointing his fucking cock at any pair of legs he can get in between.”
Elizabeth shuffles until the bed is between her and the bastard. Alexis has not moved, and Elizabeth finds herself between him and her friend.
“Let’s forget the unfortunate circumstances before us then. Why don’t you tell Alexis and I why you have come looking for me?”
The smile on the Father’s face broadens to impossible lengths, and she is certain his cock throbs with whatever perverted thought runs through the asshole’s head.
“The man you have locked up in the judging circle. Let him free. He means no one any harm,” Elizabeth says.
“And why would we believe that? The man is covered in gore and reeks of death.”
“I know him,” she answers.
Alexis gasps, and Elizabeth spares a quick glance at her friend, who now has her hands covering her lips. The sheet that wrapped her has fallen to the bed beside her. Bruises and cuts line her belly and chest as well. Dark purple circles spread over egg white skin.
“What do you know of this man?” the Father demands.
Before Elizabeth can turn, the man is up against her and grips like iron lock down on her wrists. The man’s cock pokes her in the stomach.
“I…” Elizabeth starts, and her stomach spasms where he touches her. “I met him before I was brought here. He tried to save me when those infected attacked us. He’s traveling west and, by some luck, found his way here. Let him go. I swear he is of no harm to anyone.”
“Elizabeth…” Alexis says but does not finish.
“Well, we have something here, don’t we?” the Father says through a smile.
Dread washes over Elizabeth, and she recoils, but the man’s grip tightens.
“It looks like you need something from me if you want this friend of yours released. I care for my people and would do anything to protect them. Now, I can see into the heart of men like him, and deep down, I see nothing but darkness. But, I have you telling me otherwise, and yet I’m not sure what you have deep inside of you do I?”
“You know exactly who I am, you bastard. I’ve told you from the day you met me.”
“And yet, I’ve done everything in my power to help you recover from what this world has taken from you. Don’t I get any kind of thanks for the gifts I give my children?”
The Father gives Alexis a small wink.
“Maybe a good swift kick in the balls. Now, let me go!”
Fingers tighten, and the bones in Elizabeth’s arms grind together. Pain explodes beneath her skin, and she falls to her knees. The tip of the man’s penis is inches from her face. Light reflects off the moisture that glistens across its skin.
“Again with such violent talk, Elizabeth. If only you learned to do something other than swear and hurt people with that mouth of yours.”
Alexis gasps but remains on the bed.
“Put that thing near my mouth, and I swear to whatever gods there are that I’ll bite the god-damn thing off. We’ll see if you’re so powerful that you grow it back.”
Lightning explodes behind her eyes as the man wrenches her arms to the side, and her head cracks against the metal framing of the hospital bed.
“More threats. I am growing very tired of you, Elizabeth. Day by day, I wonder why I allow you to stay within my community of cherished people. I’m beginning to think I should let you trade places with your friend down in the arena. See if you can prove yourself worthy of staying.”
“No!” Alexis shrieks.
Elizabeth growls and snaps her teeth like a dog. Blood trickles from her temple, warm and sticky against her burning skin.
“Don’t like the idea of seeing your friend die in the arena? Maybe you should come over here and convince her it would be better to join us than fight us. She can even start tonight, if she wants, my blessed. You might be finished, but I was a long way from being done,” the Father says.
He glares at Elizabeth and squeezes again. Pain sears its way down the bones of her arms. A thrust of his hip puts his cock dangerously close to her face again.
Another growl. Animalistic and primal. She can feel fire flaring from her eyes and smoke rolling from her ears.
Soft, naked feet are gently placed on the floor.
“Stay right where you are!” Elizabeth screams. The asshole twists her wrists more, and she bites on her lip to stop herself from screaming. “Don’t you get off that fucking bed. There is nothing you can do to make me give myself to you, fucker. You’ll either have to force yourself on me and hope I don’t tear you apart in the process, or let me go.”
“Please, Father,” Alexis begs.
“Shut up!” the man demands.
He squats down and meets Elizabeth eye to eye. A moment of silence hangs between them.
“I can tell you are going to be defiant until the end, no matter how much I try to smack that stubborn streak out of you. But I’m forgiving of my children no matter how bad they seem. I’ll make you a deal. Join your friend and I willingly, and I’ll let your caged friend go. He can leave, and we’ll all forget he was even here. It is the best choice for us all, and I promise it’ll be the most pleasing decision you have ever made.”
His face is so close Elizabeth can taste the bitter stink of his damp breath.
“And if I still refuse?”
“Please. No, Elizabeth,” Alexis says.
Neither the Father or Elizabeth turn to look at her.
“Then your friend will find himself in the judging arena at sundown. We’ll make him prove how worthy he is. Even if it takes every infected in this world, he’ll show us the darkness he has inside of him.”
“He hasn’t done anything to you!” Elizabeth snaps.
“No? But you have a chance to save him, Elizabeth. Join us. Climb up beside our dear Alexis and your friend can go. We’ll forget all of this mess and never speak of it again.”
“Just say yes,” Alexis whimpers.
Elizabeth looks over at her friend. Tears stain her skin red and bones poke out of her slender frame as she sobs. The bruises, the cuts, all the damage to her body burns brightly in the candlelight.
“Go fuck yourself, you fake bastard,” Elizabeth answers.
The Father rages and throws her to the side. Her ribs crack as she hits the tile and skids across t
he floor.
“Up, you bitch. Pick another bed to sleep on tonight because it’s going to be a long night knowing your caged man down there is going to die because of you.”
Elizabeth coughs, and the pain across her chest is so intense she begins to go numb. Arms trembling, she rolls herself over and begins to crawl back to the door.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Elizabeth,” he says stepping in front of her.
She looks up and his dark eyes burn down at her. The shadow of his cock, raging larger than ever, crosses over her eyes.
“You may not join us tonight, but you sure as well aren’t going anywhere. Get your ass up in one of these other beds. Alexis here is going to be blessed with her Father’s first child born to this hellhole, and you are going to be her people’s witness to the miracle.”
Alexis whimpers between gasps. Fear drives the skin of her face pale, and her eyes are swollen with tears.
“Fuck…” Elizabeth starts.
The side of her face rocks to the side as his open hand connects with her cheek.
“Just shut the fuck up and don’t make this any harder on yourself than it is. One death is already on your hands. Don’t make it any more than it has to be.”
Elizabeth looks at her friend, who openly weeps. Fire sears a hole in Elizabeth’s stomach as the man strides to where Alexis cowers. Looking out the windows high upon the wall, all she sees is darkness. What has she done to the only hope she ever had of getting out of this place?
Twenty
Five Years Ago
Hell has risen to the Earth. The fiery pits of torment and damnation themselves are broken from the ground and consuming them all.
Automatic gunfire rages into the night, and the fires of three new explosions light the evening sky. The sirens of police cars and fire trucks moan before being silenced with another detonation. Lead slugs tear aluminum and plastic into shrapnel, and men scream for help and cry for their wives and families.
Thunder rolls overhead. Rain chatters on the roof, water runs in rivers down the window frames and drips from shards of broken glass that promise a grueling cut for the first person who touches them.
Inside the sanctuary of their oasis from the hell fire, the room smells of sweat and death. Blood leaks from Merchant’s wrists and searing pain lances up his arms as the wires tying him to the chair cut through his skin. The taste of iron pollutes his mouth, leaking between his teeth and drowning his swollen tongue.
Bells ring in his ears, and the lids of his eyes are swollen like a boxer who won’t give up.
He can still see.
For the moment.
Paper and other trash lays scattered among broken ceiling tiles and spent shell casings. Opening like a gaping maw, the window at the far corner lets in smoke and the smell of burning fuel where a desk has been pushed out to shatter on the ground below. A mounted fifty caliber rifle, silent for the moment, sits with a box of shells waiting to be fired. The cold and uncaring lid lays open and ready beside the messenger of death’s bolted tripod.
Sounding like a mad man, the Dog Breaker hums a children’s lullaby as he walks in circles around Merchant.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
“You remember how this one goes?” the Dog Breaker whispers.
His lips brush the back of Merchant’s ear, and he pats him on the shoulder.
“Fuck you,” Merchant answers.
The man slaps him across the back of his head. Merchant can feel the skin of his scalp welt. Blood pools beneath his skull and fire spreads through his brain.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.
“See, this is the part that gets interesting,” the Dog Breaker says. He twirls a knife in his hand as he stands at the broken window, the opening reaching from the floor to ceiling. With a smile of pure exhilaration, he looks down at the war below. “None of them could put Humpty back together again.”
Merchant spits a wad of bloody phlegm on the floor and stays silent.
His torturer turns and smiles, the lights of fires below glinting off his eyes.
“But here you sit in front of me. Right in front of my very eyes you are all back together again. Bleeding out, but in once piece. How can that be? I left you split in half on top of that hill. I’ve been sloppy and careless before, but no one survives having their guts spilled on the ground and left for dead.”
“My family,” Merchant whispers and blood drips from his lips.
“I cut you in half, yet here you are. A fucking ghost in my own fucking house!”
The man punches Merchant across the face, and then backhands him with the pommel of his knife. The tip catches across the cheek and opens skin an inch long and down to the bone. More pain to add to the tally.
“My family,” Merchant says again.
“There you go, crying for your fucking family. Tell me how the fuck you show up again, and this time you kill more than half my men. Guns blazing, you walk in like death itself and kill anyone who steps in your way. No one is this fucking good.”
Merchant shakes his head, and the pain swims from one side of his skull to the other. He can feel the bleeding that drips from his ears.
“My family.”
The words choke from lips that are beginning to stiffen.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, what about your family?”
The Dog Breaker squats down in front of Merchant who doesn’t lift his head.
“Why? My family.”
A grin marks Breaker’s face.
“Had to know if you told them anything. Couldn’t let our little secret get out. Oh, don’t you worry. That fucking whore of yours put up a fight almost as good as yours. I brought four with me. Told them I was from the VA and wanted to check on their wellbeing. Bitch killed all my men until I trapped her in the basement. Fucking fought like I was her pimp, and she’d finally grown enough balls to try and get free. Damn bitch had claws, too,” Breaker says. He scratches at three pink scars that reach from his left ear around the corner of his jaw. You know what did her in? Those fucking brats of hers. Took down her guard to make sure they were okay. Gets them every fucking time. Stupid cunt.”
Merchant lifts his head, one eye closed and the other half open.
“She wouldn’t let them go, and when I finally got a hold of one, she was mine. Still wouldn’t stop until I set fire to the house. I’m beginning to believe this stubborn streak runs in the family.”
The Dog Breaker stands up and walks back to the window.
“You should have left them out of it,” Merchant mutters between bloody bubbles of saliva.
“Should have? You want to know what I should have done? Made sure you were dead the first time. That is a mistake I plan to rectify right here tonight. No more cutting you until you bleed out. I’m not going to leave you to die here alone. Tiny fucking little unidentifiable pieces. That is what I’m going to do. Starting with your fucking toes, I’m going to cut you inch by inch until there is nothing left. Even if I have to saw at your bones all fucking night long, you will be nothing but a stain on the fucking carpet. Then you know what?”
Breaker turns away from the window and points his knife at Merchant who doesn’t say anything.
“You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to burn this whole fucking place to the ground. That way the stain you leave on the damn carpet won’t even be around to remember you. Done, Merchant. That is what you are. After tonight, history won’t even remember who you are. Unlike us who will forever go down as the ones who saved this country. We’ll be remembered, Merchant. And you’ll be just a name forgotten long before any of this is finished.”
Merchant mutters a couple of words, but they are lost between coughs and pooling blood.
“Oh, no you don’t, you bastard. You aren’t going to die until I let you,” Breaker demands as he stomps his way across the room.
Merchant doesn’t move.
Breaker lifts his bloody chi
n.
“What are you trying to say, you maggot?”
More muttered words.
“Speak, god-damnit!”
Breaker slaps him across the face and kneels until they are face to face.
Merchant opens his eyes. There is strength there. A fire brighter than the pits of hell that have been opened.
“Fuck you!” Merchant screams.
Forehead meets nose and blood spurts across the floor. Dog Breaker tumbles backward, and Merchant drives his heels into the ground. Lifting his chair, he backpedals as fast as he can.
Wooden chair crashes into the wall. White hot fire erupts through lacerations in wrists, but the chair holds. Stepping forward, another rush backward punches holes through the wall, but finally the chair cracks and falls apart.
Merchant tumbles to the ground, his boots slipping in his own blood.
Breaker is back on his feet. Knife held tight in his bloody grip, he screams but the words are lost behind the explosion of thunder and gunfire.
Merchant roars and charges forward.
Breaker tries to sidestep but Merchant jams his shoulder into the man’s abdomen.
Knife is driven into his back, but legs do not stop pumping.
Blade is ripped from skin. Blood sprays and the window draws closer.
Breaker stabs again. Weapon cuts flesh and hits bone. Pushes through the side and slices free.
Jagged pieces of glass shred both men deep.
Smoke and ash filled air takes hold of both.
Gravity is not their friend.
Both men plunge from the top floor.
This tastes a lot like a last meal.
Warm chicken. Stewed winter vegetables. Freshly seasoned with salt to taste and not to preserve.
The food sits like a comforting pillow in Merchant’s stomach. A blanket remains folded by his side. Soft wool. Sewn into an attractive pattern of white and off-white with spots of gray. It smells of musty water, but is soft enough to tell him it is at least clean.
Traveling Merchant (Book 1): Merchant Page 19
