“Thank you! A thousand times, thank you!” the boy sobbed and knelt down at his feet.
Jake felt dirty, having the kid treat him like that. Under the filth he looked pretty normal except the color. Jake took a moment to realise this is the first real human he’d met. An honest-to-goodness human from the 25th century. At a glance this bunch all looked between 12 and 30, and in good shape, if a little thin.
He urged the teenager to stand up. “You don’t have to bow to me,” he said.
The boy looked confused. Stunned even. For a moment he just stared at Jake.
“You understand my words?” Jake finally asked.
“You speak the holy tongue. My cousin, Tesla, and I were grandchildren of the chieftain, and we were forced to learn it. Before… before we were taken to go to this beast’s larder!”
“Yeah, not much of a paradise, is it? I think the priests are running a scam, selling meat to the wylers in exchange for technology. Sorry… uh, what’s your name?”
“My name? My name is Bool, son of Chow, of the house of Starshine, the royal family of the two-tailed mermaid.”
Once Jake figured out what the kid was describing, he tried very hard not to laugh. Back in his day you couldn’t throw a stick without hitting a Starshine’s coffee shop, or someone drinking an $10 cup of organic, fair trade, gmo-free coffee. Apparently after the apocalypse people were using it as the coat-of-arms for their cave-man nobility like the Brits used dragons on their royal crest.
“Well Bool, son of Chow, my name is Jacob of the house of Mortimer, from the Emerald City, last lord of time, ranger of blue power, heir to the throne of swords. Pleased to meet you. I’m looking for a woman. Dark hair. Speaks like I do. Stuck up attitude. Great ass though.”
“I… I do not know. Perhaps, yes.”
“You’ve seen her? Where did she go?” Jake demanded, angrier than he intended.
The kid took a long time to answer. Maybe he was uncertain about Jake’s intentions, or maybe he was terrified. But he finally made up his mind and answered. “The wylers took her. I fear the worst.”
“So, tell me where the wylers went!”
“They healed themselves, then retreated, to their lair,” Bool pointed to another set of doors.
“Time for these dog bastards to get a machete castration,” Jake muttered and followed his directions.
He was out the doors and into a main hallway. The corridor had a half-dozen doors leading from it but only one of them had human screams and dog howls coming from behind it
The room was a long rectangle and judging from the worn and filthy bunkbeds covered in decades of grime and primitive decorations it had been the duty-shift dormitory. Down the long center aisle, near the far end of the room, were the two wylers. And arranged along the floor leading to them were a half-dozen dried-out corpses like the one he’d just seen.
Jake drew the X-26 and started firing from extreme range. The paralysis field it could emit dissipated almost entirely after ten meters, and the first shot did nothing but make the dogmen sneeze, shaking themselves like a hound fresh from a bath. One of the wounded wylers dragged a screaming child of no more than fourteen out from under a bed and gripping the boy in both hands a putrescent green glow began to spread from its throat.
Jake watched in horror as the boy shrivelled, flesh receding from bones, going grey and finally leaving nothing but another dried husk. But it wasn’t just an act of animal cruelty; as the flesh melted from the boy’s body and he went limp and dead, the wounded wyler’s body began to churn like soap bubbles from a sink full of dishes and reform, whole again.
Somehow it was draining the life from the blue-skinned humans to heal itself.
“Fuuuuuuck me,” Jake breathed.
How? What kind of… technology run amok could do that?
The biggest wyler, now fully healed, mowf-growf rowfed something in primitive dog language cuffing the littler one. The smallest wyler drew a pair of crude knives – each the size of a cavalry saber – and lumbered forward at Jake. The smallest dog was obviously terrified, tail between its legs, but teeth bared and snarling. Jake waited until it was in range, drew aim, and gave it a full blast of the X-26 at point blank.
The gun flash and effect on the wyler were almost instantaneous. The dog gave a quiet ‘woof’ of surprise, eyes rolled up and it tumbled face-first to the ground at Jake’s feet, tongue lolling from the side of its mouth, completely knocked out. The thud and clatter of knives as they skittered away seemed extra loud in the silence. Jake grinned relief at the sight.
Right up until the missile thrown by the other wyler smashed him to the floor.
The alpha dog had sacrificed the smaller one to distract Jake, and it had worked. Trying to keep its distance, it had thrown one of the mummified blue corpses at him. Bits of bone with flesh like crackling beef jerky exploded from the impact. Jake went down, X-26 knocked flying from his grip, and he coughed out the cloud of corpse-dust that flew up from the crumbling flesh.
Jake managed to sit up, groping to find the X-26 in the dusty human remains. Then he ducked and dove for cover as a blade of ground-down metal halfway between a knife and a hatchet slammed quivering into the bedframe beside him. The wyler howled.
Thumping footsteps, nails clicking on the floor, told him the beastman was charging. Jake had barely enough time to retrieve the e-hammer and placing it under the frame of the weighty bunkbed, he slammed it upwards.
The flying bunkbed – mattresses, decorations and all – jumped upwards like it was launched from a catapult, slamming the wyler and staggering it to a halt. Jake got to his feet, hammer in one hand and machete in the other.
“Let’s do the man-dance, you son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted and charged it.
The wyler might not have been expecting it. Armed with a ten-pound hammer the dog blinked surprise at Jake then tried to crush him with the sledgehammer. On medium power the e-hammer batted the heavier weapon aside and Jake swung wildly with the machete, leaving three shallow wounds across the dogman. The wyler was quick, and deadly. It swung the sledge low, sweeping Jake’s legs out from under him with the handle. Then brought it up overhead before swinging a blow down in both hands, with enough force to crush Jake to paste.
Knowing he would regret it Jake slid the power selector to MAX and as the sledge came down he met it with the hammer.
Unlike the first wyler’s weapon made from wood, this one was some sort of metal pipe. It didn’t explode on impact, although it did deform with a bend, but the force-field flung it directly back up and into the wyler’s snout, crushing its skull into a canoe.
The numbing pain tore the e-hammer from Jake’s grip and he barely avoided it spinning back into his chest. It took a full twenty seconds for it to stop bouncing and smashing its way around the room.
Jake lay on his back a minute longer, unused to the sudden violence despite the modified combat reflexes his body had been given. Eventually he climbed to his feet and retrieved the machete to perform a coup de grace on the smaller, stunned, wyler. No more taking chances. These canine cock-gobblers were too fucking dangerous to take on in a fair fight. The cowering blue-skinned survivors gave out a gasp of shock as he chopped through the helpless foe’s neck.
“Oh shut it,” he said to them giddily. “Bad dogs get put down.”
***
Only then, when he’d taken out the wylers, did the strings holding Jacob up let go. He felt the giddiness rapidly change to a wave of vertigo and lowered the machete. He stumbled sideways to a filthy bed and settled onto it. There were shrieks of terror from the other rooms around him, excited yelling, and moans of the wounded from everywhere.
He was sitting in the crumbling mummified remains of a human who had been alive a few minutes ago. First some sort of telekinesis and now what? Fucking life-force vampirism? It didn’t track. This wasn’t happening. How did the future suddenly end up this utterly unreal?
Looking around the room he saw a crowd of the blue-skinned humans h
ad gathered to stare at him, and the downed wylers.
“Who are you people?” he asked, hoping someone understood the language.
He was answered by murmured whispers among the tribesmen. There was a commotion at the back of the room and the young boy – Bool – he’d talked to earlier emerged from the group.
“You speak the holy words, but I do not understand all,” the kid said in confusion.
“No shit, Sherlock,”
The boy looked confused. “The waterclosets are down the hall,” he said.
“Sorry, that’s not what I meant. Are all of you… all you people… Where do you come from?”
“We were brought here. As a gift. To be reborn.”
Jake didn’t like the sound of that.
“And where, exactly, do you get, uh, reborn?”
The boy pointed to the far door. “It is forbidden for us to go there. Only the chosen of the Vox may…”
Jake had been whispering to the wrist-buddy and it recited back his words in a loud voice, “I am the mighty wrist-buddy! Do the bidding of my servant, Jake!”
And while the primitives were cowering, he pushed open the heavy wooden door that had been fitted where a futuristic one had been torn free and walked into the forbidden room.
At first, he thought it might just be the den for the three huge dog-ogres, but then the smell hit him. The chamber beyond did seem to be the wyler’s chamber, with a huge nest made of old fabric and cushions scavenged from bunker furniture. Stacked against the walls were all manner of junk and machinery, everything from jars of tiny parts to machines the size of a couch. Like the dog-beasts had torn everything from the entire Bravo module and stashed it here.
But no sign of Milan. He rushed on, down a hallway, hoping he wouldn’t find the real horrors he was imagining. It looked like a cell block, with walls of clear plastec instead of bars, gridded with small holes for airflow. Inside the first two cells he found several of the primitives, stripped naked, bound and gagged. And in the two at the end he found two cells had been converted to a kitchen… and a larder.
Human body parts were stacked in buckets and crates in the latter, and the body of yet another blue tribe member was tied down spread-eagled onto a butcher block in the kitchen.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jake gagged to himself, hit by the sight and the smell.
But at his words the woman tied onto the cutting block opened her eyes, spotted him, and began struggling against her bonds.
It wasn’t Milan.
Too afraid to look closely he poked in the body parts, but all of them were blue-skinned. No Milan. Despite the disappointment this had all been for nothing, Jake felt a surge of relief that he wouldn’t have to search any more rooms of horrific mutants. But the truth lay closer to being genuinely thankful that Milan wasn’t being spit-roasted alive. At least he’d saved one girl from being carved up.
In a moment Jake had sliced the leather restraints away with the machete and half-carried the girl away from the horrible abattoir. Like the other primitives her skin was blue, and she was coated in so much filth it was hard to see the woman underneath. Despite being scared half to death and being covered in dirt she was all sleek muscle. Of course; the wylers wanted fresh, young cuts of meat without too much fat.
She was sobbing by the time they got to the wyler’s bedchamber. He just held her close until the traumatised girl worked her way through it and sat up. The tears had cut paths in the blue on her face.
“Are they gone?” she asked.
She spoke English too. This must be the kid’s missing cousin. What had he called her? Tesla.
“The dog things are very dead. You don’t have to worry about them,” he reassured her. “Did they… hurt you?”
“It was a lie,” was all she said.
“What was?”
“Paradise. What the priests told us. That eternal bliss awaited. There was nothing but murder. And meat.”
“How did you get here? What priest?”
“His name was Yanco. A regarded priest of the Sentrak.”
Jake again felt a stab of fury that he’d let the freaky wizard get away. He handed the girl his machete and she seemed to grow straighter and calmer with a yard of edged weapon in her hand.
“I, Tesla, chieftain’s daughter, thank you,” she said solemnly, studying his face. “For saving all of us. They were sacrificed to the Vox,” she said bitterly. “Only now I see there was no god, only being the wyler’s dinner.”
Fucking hell. These people made the kool-aid drinkers at Jonestown look like kids bored at Sunday school. “What do you mean?”
“The priests of the Voice guided us in our holy duty to the wylers. We were tribute. To tend the vats and to tend the wylers so they would send us to paradise.”
“So the Wyler’s…?”
“Ate them. Yes.”
Hearing it was different from assuming. Jacob wanted to puke. He really did. But his new body seemed determined to retain the calories.
Without another word the girl moved to free the other captives. He had to admire it. He tried to imagine the kind of will it took to think of others when you’d been that close to being butchered alive.
Now that he had a moment to consider his plan, he suddenly realised how screwed he was. The entire mission had hinged on his ability to quietly slip through Bravo module to get to Cool Breeze’s memory core in Alpha, but first he’d had to rescue Milan, and now an entire tribe of primitive humans being kept like cattle. Was he just supposed to leave them here? And where was Milan? Maybe the girl knew.
The cousin of the slim blue girl was already in the improvised cells with her, armed with one of the wyler’s sword-length blades and hacking at the ropes to free the rest of the dogmen’s larder.
“Lord Jacob,” Bool called, pleased to see him. “You have rescued my cousin! I owe you great thanks!”
Jake had a nasty suspicion. “You knew the woman I was looking for wasn’t back here, didn’t you? You just wanted me to free your cousin.”
The boy looked defiant but overhearing Jake’s words; the chieftain’s daughter looked appalled. In rapid-fire language he couldn’t understand she had a harsh argument with the boy. When she was done, they were both crying, but she slapped him hard in the face before hugging him.
“Lord Jacob, power of the blue ranger, I am dishonored that my cousin misled you in such a way. His love for me is great but is was not right to put your life in danger.”
“Just tell me, was there a woman really here? Yanco would have brought her, today.” He described Milan.
The girl’s face grew grim listening. “I know such a woman. Yanco did bring here and try to sell her to the wylers. But they would not meet the price he demanded, so he left, saying he would send her to the great Temple where high priest Rizaractar would want to see her.”
“Why? Why was she so valuable?” Jake asked.
The girl just shook her head. “She was different. Like you. She knew of ancient things. They would want all that she knew.”
Jake put his face in his hands. Dammit! How far would he need to go to rescue the troublesome debutante from the 23rd century?
Maybe she’s dead already? He thought hopefully. Already being resurrected.
No… it sounded like Yanco wanted her alive and would grind everything she knew out of her. Even for a small-minded fuckup from the 23rd century, Milan could tell them far too many secrets about the Nevermore bunker. Every mutant and psycho in the world would be down here, trying to get in.
Tesla smiled in a friendly way. “You have defeated the priests who misled us, killed the beasts that used us as cattle, and freed us from a terrible fate. How might we ever repay you?” she asked sincerely.
Jake was unsure he deserved that much credit. He hadn’t even known the blue primitives would be there. “Tesla… you don’t need to repay me. I’m just on a – um – quest. To save a…“
What would these people think if he tried to explain Cool Breez
e?
“I’m on a quest to secure this place from the monsters who got in.”
There was a sudden burst of activity at the other cells as more prisoners were discovered and Tesla bowed uncertainly and went to take care of it.
Now that he said it out loud, Jake had no idea how he was going to finish the mission. For all he knew it was too late already, and Cool Breeze had been destroyed by whatever got to his main computer banks. Jake had no idea what the rest of the clones would do without the guidance of the computer brain, but it was guaranteed to be batshit crazy and a disaster. And that was even assuming Circe could bring the other clones all back without the main AI. Losing Cool Breeze might mean Jake was going to end up living like these primitive screwheads the rest of his life, trapped among savages.
Before he could ponder his choices much longer, Tesla was back.
“I have spoken to the others, and they agree. We are ready to follow you on your quest. I, Tesla daughter of Hemi pledge my loyalty and service to you, ranger of the blue power.”
Now it was his turn to be stunned. “You what?”
“We follow where you lead,” she said proudly.
He was still trying to think how he could answer her when shouts and screams arose from the dormitory. E-hammer in hand Jake raced towards it, ready to take on more mutants.
Instead he came face to face with an armored figure. They wore the standard-issue blue coveralls, a full suit of splat armor and had what looked like a high-powered laser pistol in one hand and a back-pack sized Krisis-Kit in the other. The blue primitives were hiding, bowing and making weird motions with their hands from chest and forehead.
The figure lowered the goggles and Jake breathed a sigh of relief.
“I thought you might need some help,” Synthetica said.
***
Chapter 8
: Job Stress
He was astonished that the android nurse had taken the initiative to help him, let alone make her way through the chaos of the Bravo module to find him. She’d somehow got a hold of armor, the laser and a life-force detector, which almost certainly had helped. It was also possible that whatever was hunting in Bravo module had no taste for synthetics.
The Apocalypse Watch Page 9
