Max Rage: Twelve Punches To Mars!

by Jake Bible

  “Nah, they gonna be fine, yo,” Grandmaster Scunge said. “Sphuncters ain’t gonna go down like that. Not when they can go down. Like all the way down, yo. Sphuncters have a safe room in the core of the planet.”

  “How wise,” Lord Sahndle said. “Now, if you would be so kind as to drop me at the nearest diplomatic outpost on Earth before you all head your separate ways, that would be wonderful.”

  “Nope,” Rage said and pointed at the invoice Scutter still clutched in her hands. “You’re gonna pay that first.”

  “I’m going to what? How preposterous!” Lord Sahndle said. “Why would you think I would pay that?”

  It took Rage all of thirty seconds to drag Lord Sahndle to the nearest airlock. Everyone followed and watched without interfering.

  “You pay the bill or you get thrown off the ship,” Rage said.

  “But I do not have that amount in my accounts!” Lord Sahndle said. “I stated previously that I am a bit strapped for funds!”

  “Then make some calls,” Rage said, opening the airlock and throwing Lord Sahndle inside. “Use the comms unit on the wall.”

  “I’ll tell them what you are doing to me!” Lord Sahndle screeched.

  “Do you think that will help or harm your case?” Rage asked.

  Lord Sahndle glared then started making some calls. They were almost to Earth when he finished.

  “It is done,” Lord Sahndle said. “I cannot possibly explain what I had to sacrifice to make it happen, but the debt is wiped clean. However, none of you can be employed by a Ghej or by any subsidiary that a Ghej owns. That is the penalty for treating me so poorly.”

  “Anyone have a problem with that?” Rage asked the others.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m good, dude.”

  “I wouldn’t work for a Ghej, bitch.”

  “I already have a job.”

  “A king does not work.”

  “Scutter?” Rage asked.

  “It’ll cut into my new life some, but I can live without Ghej work,” Scutter replied. “We probably are blacklisted by Earth Corp too.”

  “That goes without saying,” Lord Sahndle said. “Now will you let me out of the airlock?”

  “Nah,” Rage said and walked away. “You can ride in there the rest of the way.”

  “Where are you going, Max?” Scutter asked.

  “There is booze on this ship and I aim to find it,” Rage said. “Feel free to join me.”

  Everyone felt free to join him.

  Forty-Four

  Rage rolled off Mascholine, his chest heaving from the exertion of two hours straight of sweet, sweet sex. He had no idea what Mascholine had taken to keep up with him, but he wasn’t going to ask and ruin the gift.

  “That was exactly what I needed,” Rage said.

  “Better than that naked spider lady?” Mascholine asked.

  “Is telling you about her gonna bite me in the ass every time we screw?” Rage asked.

  “No, but I might bite your ass every time we screw,” Mascholine said. “Not that I was chaste while you were gone. Had a foursome with some lonely housewives that stumbled into the bar even though we were closed for repairs.”

  “You break out the toy chest?” Rage asked.

  “And used every vibrator in there,” Mascholine said.

  “Good for you,” Rage said and sighed.

  He lay there, staring up at the ceiling of his apartment.

  “What’s wrong?” Mascholine asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rage said and sat up.

  He rubbed his forehead then shook his head, got off the bed, and got dressed.

  “We done?” Mascholine asked.

  “I feel like a drink,” Rage said. “You?”

  “Of course,” Mascholine said and snatched up a skimpy robe before following Rage out of his apartment.

  They made their way down to the bar and Mascholine poured them two tall tumblers of bourbon. They downed those then she poured two more. Rage went to grab his and knocked it off the bar. The glass shattered and the liquor went everywhere.

  “Do not fear, Maximillian Rage!” a voice called from the corner. “Jack Connor, King of Mops shall clean that up for you!”

  Jack Connor, King of Mops raced to the backroom.

  “It’s too bad they couldn’t repair the bot,” Mascholine said, getting Rage another drink. “But that guy is going to work out fine as a replacement.”

  “He really takes the job seriously,” Rage said.

  “I have returned!” Jack Connor, King of Mops said with a mop bucket and mop in hand. “If you shall pardon me, I will clean the floor by your feet.”

  Rage hopped up onto the bar and sat there smiling as Jack Connor, King of Mops cleaned the broken glass and spilled liquor until the floor gleamed. Then the man hurried to the backroom again to clean up his mop and mop bucket.

  “Still got a ways to go,” Mascholine said and gestured to the almost-repaired bar. The stage was still being rebuilt, but most everything else was back to its grungy self. “I need to throw a coat of grease on the booths or people will think we’ve lost our dive bar cred.”

  “Can’t have that,” Rage said and finished his second drink.

  He sighed and shook his head.

  “I swear I’m forgetting something,” Rage said.

  “Labous already said you’re cleared with Greenville PD,” Mascholine said. “So don’t worry about that.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Rage said. “And Labous had better made sure that happened after I saved his ass.”

  “Nast and Zell said Earth Corp would rather the incident was forgotten so that the appraisal price of Mars doesn’t go down,” Mascholine said. “So what is the problem? Is it your ex-wife being alive out there?”

  “Scutter? Shit no,” Rage said. “More power to her. I doubt we’ll ever cross paths again. She avoided me when she was first alive. After all this? She’s gotta be six galaxies over by now.”

  “Then what?” Mascholine asked, exasperated. “Do we need another two hours of crotch-pounding sex to get your mind right? Because I am going to need to soak my twat in a bath before we go again.”

  “No,” Rage said. “I mean, yes, we should do that, but because it’s fun. Not because my head’s messed up.”

  Then it hit Rage. At the exact same time, the front door opened.

  “Rage!” Grup said as he raced into the bar.

  “That!” Rage said and pointed at the Clickelack. “We forgot Grup!” Rage sighed and relaxed. “Phew. Glad that’s off my mind. It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch.”

  “Glad to know you were worried about me, Rage,” Grup said. “I’m touched.”

  ‘What? I wasn’t worried about you,” Rage responded. “I’d forgotten about you and that forgetting was bugging the shit out of me.”

  “You forgot about me?” Grup said. “Wow…”

  “Grup?” Mascholine asked.

  “Yeah?” Grup replied.

  “How did you get off Mars?”

  “Oh. Right. That’s why I’m here!” Grup said and moved away from the door. “This guy saved me.”

  In walked one ugly-ass alien. Or pig. It was an ugly-ass pig. A pig alien?

  “Nargle Boof,” Rage snarled.

  “That’s me,” Nargle Boof replied. “Bet you never thought you’d see me.”

  Rage moved toward the pig man, cracking his knuckles as he went. “But I’m glad I get to. This is gonna be fun.”

  “Hold on, muscles,” Nargle Boof said. “How would you like to make a few trillion credits?”

  “Wait up, Rage,” Mascholine said. “Let the pig man talk.”

  “What? No!” Rage exclaimed. “He was the guy that programmed all the nanites that started all the shit on Mars!”

  “Because of Earth Corp,” Nargle Boof said.

  “So? You think being an Earth Corp stooge protects you?” Rage laughed. “Think again, porky.”

  “No, what is going to protect me is that
I also managed to plant a backdoor into Earth Corp’s main systems,” Nargle Boof said. “I have an army of nanites waiting for my command.”

  “Your command to do what?” Mascholine asked.

  “Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it,” Nargle Boof said. “It’s going to be worth it, trust me.”

  “No one should trust you,” Rage said.

  “I’ve heard some of the plan, Rage,” Grup said. “You should listen.”

  “Your endorsement does not make me want to do it more, Grup,” Rage said.

  “Rage, we still have the issue of the Punches’ parents,” Mascholine said. “They haven’t sued us yet, but they will. We’re gonna need to take a job soon. How about we hear the pig man out?”

  She was right, and Rage hated that she was right. He also hated that this conversation was going to postpone Mascholine’s twat-soaking bath which would postpone the next round of hours-long screwing.

  But as soon as the Punches’ parents got their shit together and began filing lawsuits, which they will, Mascholine would probably lose Crater Ray’s. Not to mention the cost of Junior’s love bug removal which was not covered by health insurance. And Jack Connor, King of Mops’ dental work.

  “Fine,” Rage said. “One drink on the house. If you get boring, then you buy your own.”

  “Rage?” Mascholine said.

  “What?”

  “I’m the owner. I tell the pig man what drinks he does or does not buy.”

  “Was I wrong?”

  Mascholine turned her attention from Rage to Nargle Boof. “No, Rage, you were not wrong. Better make this good, pug man, or our new King of Mops is going to have a really big mess to clean up.”

  “Did someone call Jack Connor, King of Mops?” Jack Connor, King of Mops shouted from the back room. “I shall be there shortly!”

  The End

  Read on for a free samlple of Asylum

  Author Bio:

  Jake Bible, Bram Stoker Award nominated-novelist, short story writer, independent screenwriter, podcaster, and inventor of the Drabble Novel, has entertained thousands with his horror, sci/fi, thriller, and adventure tales. He reaches audiences of all ages with his uncanny ability to write a wide range of characters and genres.

  Jake is the author of the bestselling Z-Burbia series set in Asheville, NC, the bestselling Salvage Merc One, the Apex Trilogy (DEAD MECH, The Americans, Metal and Ash) and the Roak: Galactic Bounty Hunter series for Severed Press. He is also the author of the YA zombie novel, Little Dead Man, the Bram Stoker Award nominated Teen horror novel, Intentional Haunting, the ScareScapes series, and the Reign of Four series for Permuted Press, as well as Stone Cold Bastards and the Black Box, Inc. series for Bell Bridge Books.

  Find Jake at jakebible.com. Join him on Twitter @jakebible and find him on Facebook.

  Prologue:

  Folter

  Hate. Rage. War. The relentlessly desired instinct to hunt down his enemies and exterminate their existence was the first concept to enter his mind when his proud, battle-scarred, warrior-like brown eyes flashed open. An irresistible rage burned his soul, demanding to release genocide of biblical proportions as it sweltered to the surface temperatures of hell. He couldn’t possibly yield the demon that yearned to condemn his bastard opposition to the mercy of his sadistic urges. The atrocities they had performed on his fellow Marines were unforgivable, and to formulate his response, he’d introduce the scum to Fear himself.

  Corporal Alabama Fear had only just begun to regain consciousness after enduring a state of hibernation in what he could only presume was stasis based on the thin, chilly, transparent fluid his naked, titanic bulk was submerged in, gently bobbing up and down, and calmly side to side. His vision beginning to clear somewhat, Alabama peered down at his nude, muscular body—an abnormal specimen of gargantuan muscle, bulking from his behemoth, skull-sized biceps to his monstrous quadriceps that could easily pass for the size of an average man’s waistline, all of which took several years worth of punishment to perfect—and observed the series of chords and sensors connected to his body, some of which dipped beneath the flesh, or unpleasantly entered his orifices. These cables and tubes were what had supplied his body nutrients in his cycle of stasis, and he had only just begun to vaguely recall the ominous faces peering through the glass at him, and the monotone, almost robotically emotionless voices he had heard speaking in languages using scientific vocabulary that he couldn’t even possibly begin to comprehend.

  “I see that the specimen has substantially recovered from its injuries. I have noticed its healing has occurred much more rapidly than I had anticipated,” Alabama recalled in one of the more clearer conversations he had heard, but he could not see the faces in his level of consciousness at that time.

  “Yes, it’s only necessary as the parasite will require his body to be fully functional once it has been revived,” chimed in a second voice almost excitedly, unlike the cold, sinister, analytic tone of the first speaker. “Because of this, I have made some alterations to the healing process.”

  “Alterations?” the first voice questioned in a menacing manner. “We agreed upon only the most strict and natural treatment for the specimen, Lenard. Do not forget that this specimen is extremely valuable to me, and an alteration as minor as a change in the chemical composition of the fluids being pumped into its veins could cause defects. Defects that you would be held responsible for.”

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take in order for you to jump-start phase two,” responded the second voice—presumably Lenard. “We are running out of time, Dallas, and—"

  “—Do not perform such a reckless action again, Lenard,” the second voice—Dallas—interrupted. “You were wise not to alter the experiment further, else I would not let you off without much more than a mere warning.”

  Lenard proceeded to snicker impudently in the presence of his superior before embittering his final comment.

  “You are a very somber man, Dallas…”

  Lenard and Dallas…

  Finally, Alabama began to feel the sore, achiness that engulfed his bones and muscles. Then, beginning to observe his body more, he began to notice the arrays of staples bolted into the layers of mammoth muscle that encased his bones, arranged in grid-like patterns of surgical scars. Based on the disastrous amount of bullet holes that had permeated his flesh these staples had been surgically implanted into his flesh to seal, his body looked like one gigantic slab of stitched-together muscle. However, the excessive and quickly repaired mutilation of his body didn’t capture his attention for as long as the thick, oozing sheet of crimson smeared sloppily across the exterior of his glass prison. His eyes widening with astonishment at the grotesque abnormality, Alabama began to notice small chunks of fractured vertebrae and ribcage rippling out of the tenderly raw nerve-endings exposed in the red meaty mass that besmeared the transparent surface.

  Alabama couldn’t see beyond the gory muck oozing down the sides of his test-tube-like chamber, nor could he really move his freshly enlivening limbs. Instead, he could only helplessly bob in his liquid containment knowing that something on the other side of that glass had awakened him from his slumber. Feeling adrenaline begin to streak thunder and lightning throughout his blood vessels, Alabama grew uncomfortably sober with his surroundings, and was alarmed by the blood-soaked hand that suddenly penetrated the gore smothered on his cell, the ensanguined palm then proceeding to drag down the glass wall, tearing layers of carnage—

  --Exposing the mutilated man—presumably a scientist based on his tattered, blood-doused lab coat—who managed to make eye contact with Alabama as he sunk to his belly, against the cell, too overwhelmed in pain to stand. Alabama simply gazed back into the man’s horrified, wide-eyed, blood-caked face, quickly observing the hundreds of glass shards embezzled in his scalp, and followed the trail of embroidered pieces down the man’s back to his--

  --Alabama gasped, immensely startled when the man’s legs entirely disappeared, replaced by a
fleshy, blood-sputtering stub at the waistline, which oozed various organs and leaked entrails, which Alabama followed halfway across the gore-suffused room that had been transformed into a sea of littered glass and dismembered limbs, and tracked the internals to where they literally rose out of the carnage, and stretched towards the ceiling, where he discovered several streaks of pulsating, worm-like viscera tangled throughout the rafters in the fashion of a toilet-paper rolled house. Just glancing below the macabre of entrails, Alabama saw where the other half of the man’s body was, dangling just a couple feet off the ground, still attached to the intestines wrapped in the rafters above, rotating slowly like a neglected piñata would.

  Gazing beyond the mercilessly bisected halves of the still squirming man, Alabama discovered several more gore-battered corpses beaten into pulpy chunks that were only recognizable based on the torn white cloth plastered to their decimated remains, some of these victims literally smashed into some of the sophisticated machinery relevant to Alabama’s stasis tube, the panels and consoles dented and rapidly bursting in explosions of sparks due to the colossal damage they had received. In a corner of the room, propped against one of the consoles was a corpse that was mostly intact except for a gargantuan chunk of glass skived into the scientist’s face just above the lower teeth, severing his head in half, and lodging into the machinery behind him. The upper portion of the man’s skull was nestled in his lap, smothered in gore, eyes wide with terror and begrimed in blood. Just beyond so much overwhelming carnage, Alabama located the exit to the room—a massive, blast-proof sliding door that had literally been ripped apart like a piece of paper, massive metal chunks littered throughout the room amongst the glass and gore. However, not only was the door dislodged from the wall, but most of the wall had been invalidated as well, debris and rebar surrounding the doorway, overall suggesting that a bulldozer had barged into the room… But where was that bulldozer?

  Alabama couldn’t turn around in his stasis, but based on the shattered glass surrounding him, he couldn’t have been the only one enduring stasis in that room, meaning…