by Jake Bible
Not to say his right fist was slacking. It held a Scorcher by the throat and was squeezing, squeezing, squeezing…
Squish!
Rage tossed the throatless Scorcher aside and quickly snatched a fresh one out of the mob. The new Scorcher still owned a nice, full throat. For about one second.
Rage’s boots were working overtime too. They sure as shit didn’t want to be left out of the fun.
The left boot had two Snorpas pinned to the ground while the right boot was putting the finishing touches on crushing a Gray’s skull. Grays were the classic aliens that were depicted in every Earth abduction story, the ones with the big heads, oval black eyes, and skinny bodies. Rage was more than happy to crush that little fucker’s skull. He felt it was only right for all the anal probing that race had done to Earthlings over the centuries.
Rage pressed down extra hard.
“Probe this, bitch!” Rage shouted.
For a brief flash, he was not too happy to be sounding like Grandmaster Scunge. But he got over it by stomping on the back of a blue-skinned human trying to crawl by without being noticed. He was noticed by the sole of Rage’s boot.
A barbed tail whipped across Rage’s left cheek and he snarled as he turned to face…he had no idea. The owner of the tail was from a race that Rage didn’t know. About four feet tall with more tail than actual body, the alien was thick in the hips and legs and skinny in the torso. It had three arms and one of those arms was busy wielding its whip tail.
SNAP!
Rage’s right cheek was split open and blood poured down and over his jawline. He sneered at the feel of the warmth as it soaked into his T-shirt.
Keeping his eyes locked on the whip tail, Rage crushed two more alien skulls, broke a human’s back over his knee, then knocked cold a charging Qitnit, which was quite the feat since Qitnits were aliens made from living metal.
Most of the Scorcher mob had streamed by Rage, moving on to find less dangerous prey. Rage had a feeling they could sniff out the trail of his team. What was left of the mob around Rage were the truly insane, which wasn’t exactly a small number, and the whip tail dude smirking at Rage.
“You’re gonna want to reel that tail in and move along, freak!” Rage shouted.
He ducked his shoulder as a Donkerpils leapt at him. The alien flew over Rage’s back, but not before Rage threw his hand in the air and grabbed the edge of the alien’s segmented armor. Plate by plate, the Donkerpils was peeled naked, its agonized screams lost in the chaos of the roaring mob.
Rage tossed the peeled armor plating at the whip tail alien. The whip came out a crackin’ and snapped the plating in half, right down the middle.
“Okay, that’s impressive,” Rage said and pointed at his cheeks which were already healed. “But so is this.”
A few Terbelians, a slug-like race, slithered along past the two combatants. Rage gave them a curious look and one shrugged its slug shoulders. They neither had bloody foam nor a homicidal look in their stalk eyes. What was strange wasn’t that the Terbelians didn’t seem to be afflicted so much as no one liked Terbelians, so how the hell were they not ripped to shreds?
“Might want to get a move on,” Rage said to the Terbelians. “Bit of a mob happening right now.”
The same Terbelian shrugged again and the pair continued slithering past, leaving a nasty slime trail in their wake.
“You’re Max Rage,” whip tail said.
“What gave me away?” Rage asked. “Was it me shouting TASTE THE RAGE? Or was it when I yelled GETTIN’ MY RAGE ON?”
“No, it was when you shouted YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE RAGE,” whip tail said. “That and I’ve memorized your face.”
“You better not have memorized my face for your special alone time sessions,” Rage said. “While I’m flattered if a chick does that, you don’t give off the chick vibe. Dude, right?”
“Yes, you are exactly as they said you’d be,” whip tail responded. “Crass. Disgusting. Brutal. Egotistical. Sarcastic.”
“You forgot toxic,” Rage said. “I get the whole toxically masculine thing thrown at me all the time. Not sure why. I don’t promote any type of behavior, I just live how I live and follow my own rules.”
“I’m not sure you understand what toxic masculinity is,” whip tail said.
“Huh. Really?” Rage said. “You gonna be the one to teach me?”
Whip tail frowned. “Uh, no. I’m not here to teach.”
“What ya here for?” Rage asked. “Sounds to me like you were sent by someone specifically to seek my unbelievably tone ass out. What’s the sitch, whippy?”
“Do not call me that,” whip tail responded.
“Everyone thinks they can tell me what to call them,” Rage said as he slammed his fist into a human that got just a little too close.
His fist got stuck in the guy’s skull and Rage had to spend a few seconds shaking, shaking, shaking to dislodge the corpse.
“There we go,” Rage said. Another human came at him and Rage sighed. He held up a finger. “Give me a sec, whippy.”
The human shrieked and leapt high into the air. Rage nut punched the guy then side-stepped as vomit spewed from the suddenly crotchless man’s mouth.
“Crotch shots always bleed so damn much,” Rage said as the guy hit the ground, gasped, then bled out in less than a second. The nanites in the water had beings’ adrenaline pumping hard, so the blood was a-flowin’ fast.
“Okay, where were we, whippy?” Rage asked.
“I was telling you not to call me whippy,” whip tail said.
“Right. That. Tough shit.”
Rage watched the three-armed weirdo closely. The guy had a rhythm to how he was flipping the whip tail around. Rage assumed it was a he, but being an alien without any obvious external genitalia, there was no way to tell. Unless the tail was its genitalia. Rage cringed and had to keep himself from reaching up to touch his cheeks where he’d been sliced by the possible dick whip.
“That’s a tail, right?” Rage asked.
Whip tail frowned, which was easy to see since the alien had the usual two eyes, one nose, one mouth facial setup.
“Yes, this is a tail,” whip tail replied. “What did you think it was?”
“Never mind,” Rage said and ripped the spine out of an oncoming Clickelack that luckily looked nothing like Grup or that would have been weird. “Alright. Can we get this moving? Why are you after me?”
“Bounty,” whip tail said.
“Really? How much?”
“Two million credits.”
“Jesus Christ! What’s with everyone getting two million credits out of my hide except for me? That’s some bullshit right there, pal!”
“What?” whip tail asked. “I don’t know—”
“Doesn’t matter. Who hired you?” Rage asked.
“Can’t tell you that. Confidential.”
“Oh, come on. You’re taking me head on when you know my rep. You obviously think you’ll live through this. What’s it matter if you tell me? I’m gonna be dead soon anyway, right?”
“Signed a DNTR,” whip tail said.
Rage tried to figure out the acronym, but it had really been a long day.
“DNTR?” he asked.
“Do not tell Rage,” whip tail said and the smirk was back.
“Okay. That’s funny,” Rage said. “So, you’re not going to tell me who put the bounty out on me. Got it. Can you tell me why you think you’ll beat me?”
“Because, despite your superior strength, you’ll never get close enough to touch me,” whip tail said. “I’ll pluck out both of your eyes and slit your throat before you take four steps.”
“What happens if I take two steps?” Rage asked.
“What?”
“What happens if I take two steps?” Rage repeated.
“You’ll probably lose an eye,” whip tail said.
“Which eye?”
“Does it matter? Losing an eye is pretty damn bad, Rage.”
“Oh
, yeah, that’ll suck, but I’d like to know which eye.”
“Your right eye. From the way you are standing, and the fact you’re shifting your weight to your right foot, I can calculate the angle in which you—”
Rage took one step, hooked his boot under his rifle, flipped it up into the air, caught it, and shot whip tail between the eyes. The alien stood there briefly then collapsed backward, dead. The tail floated lazily to the ground and coiled over whip tail’s corpse.
“Bounty hunters. Always with the fucking talking,” Rage said. “Bunch of jabbering pussies.”
The mob had passed by and Rage was standing with nothing but corpses around him. He started to walk off then reached down and snagged a full water bottle, tucking it into a loop on his belt. Might come in handy later.
Rage surveyed his surroundings, calculated the angle of the mob’s trajectory, then took off running at an angle to see if he could cut them off and get back to his team.
He really hoped Junior wasn’t dead. He also really hoped he never had to have that hope again.
Twenty-Five
Rage’s choice to try to skirt the mob and get back to his team was problematic to say the least. Mainly because all he ended up doing was running directly into a different mob. He’d been so preoccupied trying to figure out who hired whip tail that he didn’t factor in multiple mobs.
Mars was really fucking annoying.
He soon found himself standing atop a massive pile of bodies. Which wasn’t horrible since he got to kill a bunch of assholes and also got a sweet vantage point where he could see over the stalls and tents that separated him from his team. Although, one of the corpses was giving off a stink that was about to make Rage throw up. Probably a hairy Boopernit. Could be tufted, could be not tufted. Rage didn’t care. The thing stank to high heaven and that was all that mattered.
“Jesus,” he said. He covered his nose with the crook of his left arm as he tried to scan the area for signs of his team. “Come on, come on, come on…”
Nothing.
He spotted sixteen more mobs, but no sign of his people. He doubted they’d been taken out. Scutter was too good for that. Grup and Detective Labous were simply too much of a pain in Rage’s ass for the universe to take them out. Bill seemed like a survivor. Rasco was obviously a survivor since he could sprint faster than any one of them even without a head. Nice trick, that. Junior was Junior. Lord Sahndle was probably offended at the prospect of dying. Grandmaster Scunge was just so fucking weird that Rage wasn’t sure the alien worm could die.
Plus, the way the mobs were acting, Rage didn’t think they’d found fresh, non-crazy victims. They looked too chaotic to be doing anything other than ripping each other apart.
Rage activated his ocular implant, closed his opposite eye, and tried to dial in closer, but that wasn’t happening. All his implant did was give him a screaming headache. He switched it off and returned to normal vision.
“Damn it,” Rage snarled.
He put the rifle to his shoulder and zoomed in with the scope. That was a little better, but even that bit of tech was glitchy. Whatever Nargle Boof had done to the comms, he’d done to all surveillance oriented tech too. If Rage zoomed in too close to a Scorcher’s head, the face rec protocol shorted out and he was left with just a blurry image.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
There was movement down below and Rage lowered his rifle. He glanced down to see a mini-mob trying to climb the pile of corpses.
“Go away!” he shouted. “Get now, you ugly sons of bitches!”
The various aliens and humans hissed and screeched at him. Rage put his rifle to work and took care of the distraction. He even managed to kill all thirty-one of the beings with only twenty-six shots. Not his personal best, but pretty darn good for a crap ass day.
Then something caught his eye on the horizon. Rage dialed in the scope once more.
There was a cluster of party barges hovering a few kilometers off. He didn’t know if his people were safely up on any of the barges, but it gave him a destination to start with. That had been the plan before the rocket attack brought down the party barge they’d been on.
“It’s a link up, bitch,” he said out loud then silently chastised himself. He had let way too much Grandmaster Scunge rub off on him.
Rage climbed down the corpse hill and headed off in the direction of the party barge link up. He made it past three tents and one stall before he was tackled by a Charbeshun in a stealth suit. The stealth suit wasn’t working, so Rage got a good look at the Charbeshun before the back of his head hit the hard pack of the Martian soil. Then all he saw for a couple seconds were stars. Not that it mattered since all Charbeshuns looked the same.
“You!” the Charbeshun snarled in that smoke monster way that Charbeshuns spoke. It was like everything they said was an accusation. Or it could have been because every Charbeshun that Rage ever spoke to was pretty much accusing him of doing something awful. There was that.
“Me!” Rage shouted and punched the smoke alien in its smoke alien face.
The thing about Charbeshuns, other than their across-the-board distaste for Rage, was that they could become dense as iron when they wanted to. It made for a very dangerous opponent. One second you punch through smoke, the next second you shatter every bone in your hand, not to mention break your wrist and fracture your ulna and possibly your radius.
That was what happened to Rage.
“Motherfucker!” Rage snarled.
He pulled his hand back and watched it swell to twice its normal size. Then the healing began and the pain turned to irritation as the bone bits became solid bone once more.
“You did not give her the proper burial!” the Charbeshun screeched in Rage’s face. “You left her to rot in open space!”
“Pal, nothing can rot in open space,” Rage said and tried to shove the alien off him, but the Charbeshun was incredibly dense and kept Rage pinned to the ground. “Everything freezes. It’s, you know, how space works.”
“The goddess rots!” the Charbeshun screeched.
So much screeching…
“She is not mortal like you and I! Her remains are out there putrefying! Her atoms are not becoming one with creation as they are supposed to! You! YOU!”
“ME!” Rage said and shoved with all his strength.
The Charbeshun was lifted up just enough for Rage to roll to the side before the smoke alien could land back on him. Instead, the Charbeshun did a serious faceplant.
Rage chuckled then scrambled up onto his feet. His rifle had been knocked from his grip and was only a few feet away. Rage dove, snagged the rifle, and came up onto a knee, ready to fire.
But the Charbeshun was gone.
There was, however, quite the angry Scorcher mob running right at Rage.
“You know what?” Rage shouted as he stood up to face the mob. “Maybe I should see what this crazy juice is all about. My system will short out the nanites in, what? An hour? Two hours? Nanites can’t handle the rage! And maybe Rage needs a little rage juice boost too!”
Rage pulled the water bottle from his belt, considered what he was about to do, knew it was completely insane, and did it anyway.
He downed the water, crushed the bottle against his forehead, tossed the crushed bottle to the side, then ran straight at the mob.
More than a few of the insane Scorchers skidded to a halt as Rage came for them. And a few of those even turned tail and ran in the opposite direction.
Those were the ones that lived.
In the moment before Rage’s mind went completely bonkers with nanite-induced psychosis, he realized that despite all of the stupidity he’d been dealing with, he was actually having fun. Scorching Dude sucked, but it was a good suck. A very good suck, indeed.
Of course, just after that thought, Rage did go completely bonkers. Like full on, holy shit, who set the hornet’s nest on fire, bonkers.
He leapt high into the air, his legs taking him up at least ten met
ers above the mob, did a quick, midair jig as his body reached its apex, then clapped his hands together, bent in half, and swan dived directly into the center of the mob.
Now, if the remaining Scorchers had had any of their faculties intact, or had the lizard brain foresight to turn tail and run like some already had, they would have given Rage’s landing a very wide birth. But intact faculties were few and far between. Emphasis on the few.
What the mob did instead was to slam into each other, every Scorcher reaching up, hands clawed, bloody, foamy drool spilling from the corners of their mouths, all screaming and shouting to get a piece of the falling madman.
By coming together, they increased their density. This gave Rage’s collision with the mob about ten times the impact it would have had if they’d stayed a little more spread out.
Rage hit and it was like a bomb went off. A RAGE BOMB!
Scorcher limbs went this way and that. The majority no longer attached to their owners.
Heads flew into the air like a grenade had detonated in a children’s ball pit.
Intestines became party streamers and eyeballs were confetti.
Blood geysered high, piss sprayed low, and shit exploded in all the directions.
And Rage was right in the middle of it.
“MOOKA LOOKA BUGGER FUNGA TOOP!” Rage roared.
He shoved his fists deep inside the belly of a hollering Boopernit. If Rage had been cognizant of his surroundings other than EVERYTHING MUST BE KILLED, then he would have noticed that that particular Boopernit was, in fact, tufted. But the Boopernit was no longer living since its guts were being yanked, meter by meter, out of its abdomen by Rage, so being tufted or not did not really matter much in the grand scheme of things.
“OSAK BUM BUM WHUBBA POONTALLA POONTALLA!” Rage bellowed before yanking as many spines as possible free from the backs, or wherever spines were located in some beings, and sending them sailing through the mob like wobbly javelins.
Wobbly or not, the spine javelins did their jobs and pierced Scorcher after Scorcher after Scorcher.
With heads falling all around him, Rage decided he’d learn to juggle. He took to it immediately. If, by took to it, that meant crushing the heads into pulpy gunk every time he grabbed one, then yes, he took to it. Rage was an excellent juggler of head squish gunk. Again, if the definition of juggling was slightly askew and meant not really juggling so much as laughing manically as the gunk ran through his fingers.
