Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands

by Carlton Mellick III

  So I was in the Eraserhead office a year and a half ago sitting next to Cameron Pierce, trying to come up with the title for a story I was going to write for a werewolf-themed anthology. I was thinking it would be good to return to the world I created in my werewolf novel Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, but I wasn’t going to do it unless I could come up with a similar title with a similarly cheesy alliteration. Cameron heard me laughing as I came up with one.

  I turned to him and said, “How about Barbarian Beast Babes of the Badlands?”

  I wasn’t serious. It sounded like the title a stupid trashy USA Up All Night kind of T and A sci-fi movie staring softcore porn actresses, something like Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity or Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. But Cameron turned to me and said, “You have to go with that title.”

  So I decided to go with it. Most of my books usually start out as jokes. The Faggiest Vampire, Cybernetrix, Zombies and Shit, Kobold Wizard’s Dildo of Enlightenment +2. All of these books were ideas I tossed out to friends as jokes. On every occasion somebody said “You have to write that book.” And I usually do.

  My intention was to write Barbarian Beast Babes of the Badlands in the vein of a comic from Heavy Metal magazine, full of sex and violence and scantily clad warrior women with huge bouncing breasts. It was just supposed to be a fun side story for fans of the Warrior Wolf Women universe. Nothing serious.

  But I really got in to writing Barbarian Beast Babes and the short story ended up too long for the anthology. It was a novella. So I decided to write two more novellas and get them published together as a sequel.

  Because Barbarian Beast Babes centered on Apple, a background character in Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, I decided all three of the stories would focus on characters I didn’t fully explore in the first book.

  The second novella in this collection mostly revolves around The Hamburglar, who was one of my favorite characters in Warrior Wolf Women yet wasn’t in the book much. I had an idea for a book called Hamburglar of the Dead about Hamburglar fighting zombies. This is basically what I decided to do for the second novella, Horrendous Horror of the Hateful Hamburglar, though the mutant creatures aren’t exactly zombies.

  The third novella takes up the bulk of this book. While the other two novellas are prequels to Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, this novella is a direct sequel. It revolves around Hyena, who was one of my favorite minor characters in Warrior Wolf Women. I always regretted not doing anything with her character, so I put her in the foreground.

  The three novellas all fit together into one story. Although they take place at three different times and feature different characters, they all revolve around the same conflict.

  I decided to call the collection Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands instead of Barbarian Beast Babes of the Badlands, to differentiate the title of the book with the title of the novella. Plus, I have a real problem with the word babe. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because only douchebags use the word babe. But bitch works for me. A girl who prefers to be called a bitch over being called a babe is the kind of girl I’d rather hang out with.

  So here it is. I hope you enjoy my return to the wasteland. If this book is successful I might return to it again with Pippi of the Apocalypse and/or Dog Destroyers of the Deadlands.

  —Carlton Mellick III 6/22/2011

  CONTENTS

  Barbarian Beast Babes of the Badlands

  Horrendous Horror of the Hateful Hamburglar

  Ferocious Female Furries in the Forbidden Zone

  The wolf girl held her boyfriend’s face in the palm of her hand, gazing into his gentle human eyes, curling her furry ears back into the locks of her licorice-black hair, hoping that he doesn’t realize the lower half of his body is missing.

  “You’re going to become one of them someday,” he said, tears running down his cheeks.

  He wanted to look away, but the wolf girl’s claw dug deep into his chin to keep his head in place.

  She didn’t want him to see his severed legs dangling from the wrecked vehicle beside them; the feet still kicking back and forth like an impatient toddler at the dinner table.

  “I’ll never be like them,” she whimpered. “Those things weren’t human at all anymore. I won’t allow myself to lose all of my humanity as they did.”

  Brown gore oozed out of his lips as he said, “But you become more and more like them every day. Every time we have sex you turn more and more into an animal . . .”

  The wolf girl put a finger to his bloody mouth and hushed him while flicking away a strip of his intestines with her black fluffy tail.

  “It doesn’t matter what happens to me,” she said, crying. “All I care about is you, Sam. I love you.”

  She smiled, flashing her long wolf fangs through black lips.

  “I’m scared of you . . .” he told her.

  Her ears lowered in shame. Then his body went limp in her arms as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. The wolf girl cried into his ripped-open torso, digging her black nose into his guts to snuggle her face within his wet fading warmth.

  “I’m not that much of a monster, am I?” she asked his internal organs. “I’ve hardly turned into a wolf at all.” Then she grabbed her tail to stop it from wagging.

  The wolf girl stood and wiped her boyfriend’s blood from her mini-skirt and frilly corset. She removed her yellow coat and draped it over her boyfriend’s face.

  “Oh, Sam . . .” she said, her eyes tearing up again.

  The vehicles were in pieces all around her. Dead bodies littered the road. Smoke filled the air. She went from vehicle to vehicle, inspecting the large claw and teeth marks in the metal. There wasn’t anyone else left alive. Several bodies were missing from the scene of the crash, most likely dragged away by the giant beasts that had attacked them.

  The wolf girl didn’t know what to do all on her own. She meandered through the smoking wreckage and picked a yellow apple from a fallen tree, where one of the vehicles had crashed. She bit into it and relished the sweet flavor. They didn’t have apples like this back in the walled city from where she came. The apples there were pre-packaged and didn’t have as much flavor. This yellow apple made her fuzzy ears perk up with joy.

  She scratched her round itchy breasts through a mesh tank top. The see-through mesh shirt was worn so that her breasts would be completely visible, in order to seduce her boyfriend into having more sex with her. He was always timid when it came to sex, always worried they were going to get caught. So she always made sure to wear seductive clothing. Unfortunately, when the mesh shirt rubbed against the peach fuzz growing on her chest it caused her breasts to itch. This was problematic to her, because she knew her boyfriend wasn’t attracted to her scratching her breasts all the time.

  The wolf girl liked to have sex as much as possible, even though the act of having an orgasm was permanently turning her into a werewolf. Sex was the main reason she left the walled city with her boyfriend, since sex in the city was considered an illegal act by the oppressive government. Out in the wasteland, it might be complete chaos and hardship, but at least they could be together and be free to make love whenever they wanted. But she never would have forced them to leave had she known her boyfriend was going to be torn in half by a wolf the size of fifty nu-cows.

  She heard the sound of motorcycles roaring down the road toward her and darted behind an overturned van. The engine roars stopped near the wreckage. The wolf girl peeked out from behind the van to see three motorcycles and two metal-plated vehicles armed with heavy machine guns. Six wasteland raiders emerged from the vehicles and went straight for the dead bodies, digging
for ammunition and supplies.

  “Dirty scavengers,” the wolf girl grumbled to herself.

  She then noticed that all six of the raiders were women and all of them were even further along in their transformation into beasts than she was. Many of them were coated in hair, with full muzzles and elongated claw-like hands. They wore armor that was a combination of leather clothing and plates of rusted metal taken from old cars. They were armed with shotguns, swords, and axes. The wolf girl squinted her eyes and saw each and every one of them as savage barbarians who wouldn’t hesitate killing her if she made her presence known.

  “Which way did they go?” one of the raiders said. She was the largest of them and the most wolf-like. She looked to be the alpha of the group.

  “North, through the woods,” said another wolf woman. This one was hairier than the alpha, but she was very petite. Her body was not that of a warrior. This one seemed to be some kind of engineer. She had a rumbling clockwork helmet on her head and some kind of black metal engine strapped to her back.

  Not all of the beast women seemed to be wolves. There was also a rabbit girl, a skunk girl, and a hyena girl. In the walled city, nobody had ever heard of women turning into animals other than werewolves. These women must have been something different, something special.

  The wolf girl bit into her apple and examined the hyena girl as she broke from the others and headed toward the overturned van. The hyena was not wearing armor like the other beast women, but she was covered with fur so it wasn’t as if she needed to wear any clothes. Perhaps she preferred to travel light.

  The wolf girl peeped out from behind the van with the apple sticking out of her mouth like a pig on a platter, examining the hyena girl as she removed food and weapons from the back of the van. Before the wolf girl could duck her head, the hyena looked over and saw her staring back. They locked eyes for a moment.

  “Hey, Apple,” the hyena girl said. “Come help me with this.”

  The girl with the apple in her mouth didn’t realize it was she who was addressed as Apple. She pointed at herself questioningly.

  “Yeah, you,” said Hyena.

  Apple pulled the fruit from her mouth and came out from behind the vehicle to see that Hyena needed assistance removing a crate from the back of the van. She held the apple in her armpit as she helped pull the crate into the street. Hyena cracked it open to reveal an arsenal of weaponry.

  “Now that’s what I call loot,” Hyena said.

  Machine guns, grenades, knives, and handguns. All of them were manufactured in the walled city. It was a great score for these bandits. Apple bit into the apple and nodded her head.

  “Here,” Hyena said, handing Apple a submachine gun. “You’re going to need this.”

  “Okay . . .” Apple held the gun like a scorpion by its tail.

  “Who’s this?” the alpha wolf growled as Hyena and Apple approached.

  “Apple,” Hyena said, nodding her head.

  Hyena didn’t think she needed to explain any more than that and walked away to load the new weapons into one of the raider vehicles.

  The alpha wolf, the petite wolf in the helmet, and the rabbit girl circled Apple with their weapons aimed at her face.

  “Were you part of this caravan?” the alpha wolf asked.

  Apple nodded her head.

  “Are you the only survivor?” she asked.

  “Yeah, those giant wolves attacked us and killed everyone. Even my boyfriend.”

  “How long ago?”

  “About twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago.”

  “Damn.” The alpha kicked a clawed-up car bumper across the street. “They’re further ahead than I thought.”

  The alpha yelled at the other barbarian girls. “Hurry it up, Warriors. We need to pick up the pace if we’re ever going to catch up to those rogues.”

  Then she turned to the young girl. “Apple is it?”

  “No, actually . . .” the wolf girl began.

  “You’re coming with us,” the alpha said. “My name is Talon.”

  The alpha then pointed to the rabbit girl. “That’s Bunny.” The rabbit girl snarled at her.

  Talon then pointed to the petite wolf girl with the engine on her back. “That’s Kockwick.” Kockwick removed goggles from her face and saluted Apple.

  Then she pointed to a scraggly-looking wolf girl with an eyepatch standing over by the vehicles, assisting Hyena. “Wax is over there, and you’ve already met Hyena next to her.”

  Talon pointed to the last girl, the one who looked like a skunk, who was across the street just above Apple’s dead boyfriend. “That’s Skunky, but she prefers to be called Bat Girl.”

  Skunky jumped up and down, waving excitedly at Apple. Her cartoonishly large breasts bounced like jello as she jumped. “Hiya!” she said. While jumping, the skunk girl stomped clumsily down on Sam’s spilled guts and slipped, landing right on his torso, causing gore to explode out of him like a popped balloon.

  Apple nearly collapsed at the sight of her boyfriend’s guts spraying into the air, but then something caught her by surprise. After Skunky landed on him, Sam moaned loudly. At first Apple thought it was just air being released from his lungs, but he moaned a second time. Then a third.

  “What’s going on?” Sam cried.

  The skunk girl’s mouth widened with joy as if she had just found a bag full of candy. She pulled the coat from his face, giggled, then looked up at Talon.

  “This one’s still alive!” Skunky said.

  The others rushed over, Apple leading the pack. When they came to him, he didn’t look very alive outside of his moaning. Most of the raiders seemed confused that he was still alive even though he had been cut in half with most of his guts spilled out all over the road.

  “Why the fuck is he still alive?” Bunny said.

  Talon elbowed the rabbit girl. Apple kneeled down and held her boyfriend’s hand. Then looked up at the others.

  “Is there anything you can do?” she asked.

  The wolf women looked at each other.

  “Yeah, we can put him out of his misery,” Bunny said.

  Talon elbowed her again.

  Kockwick kneeled down and examined him. “There might be something I can do,” she said. “I need my tools.”

  “Are you a doctor?” Apple said.

  Kockwick looked up at her with her furry smiling face. “No, I’m a mechanic.”

  While Kockwick tried to fix up the mangled man, Talon took Apple aside so she wouldn’t have to see the procedure.

  “If anyone can help him, Kockwick can,” Talon said.

  Apple nodded.

  “So is it true what they say?” Apple asked Talon. “Did those giant wolves that attacked our caravan used to be normal women like us?”

  “Yes,” Talon said. “You’re new to the wasteland, so you probably don’t know. The more you have orgasms the larger and more wolf-like you’ll become. If you don’t stop, eventually you’ll no longer be human. You’ll turn completely into an animal, a great beautiful creature of the wild, and you’ll only get larger from there.”

  “Great beautiful creatures? But those things tried to kill me.”

  “The pack that attacked your caravan were rogues. Our big sisters have never attacked us in the past. They attack our enemies of the walled city, but they have never attacked us before. We are tracking down this pack to learn why they have developed this violent abnormal behavior. If we can’t correct it then we must kill them.”

  Apple clenched her fists. “If Sam doesn’t survive, I’ll kill them either way.”

  “We could use your help,” Talon said. “You might not be a warrior yet, but we need all the help we can get. Our hunting party started with fourteen. Now there are only six of us. If you join our tribe and fight with us we’ll be seven.”

  “You want me to join your tribe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Save Sam and I’ll join.”

  Talon nodded her head. “I guess we’ll have to wait a
nd see then . . .”

  Kockwick did save Sam, but not in the way Apple had imagined. Kockwick was at one time an engineer and inventor in the walled city. She was considered a rare genius, who designed machines that could replace organs and prolong human life. She could also design vehicles that would run on sunlight. Even though she was such an important asset to their society, they didn’t make an exception of her after she began having sex illegally. She was exiled, just like all the other deviants.

  When Apple saw her boyfriend walking toward her on two mechanical frog-shaped legs, she nearly screamed. She ran to him but was afraid to touch him. His insides were missing and replaced by pumps and gears. The lower half of his body was all machine. A black metal engine similar to the one strapped on Kockwick’s back was connected to his waist, rumbling against his belly.

  “Hey, look at me,” Sam said. “I’m going to be okay.”

  Apple frowned at him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She blinked a couple of times. “You look . . . kind of . . . scary.”

  “Scary!” he cried. “But I would have died without these changes!”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Still scary.”

  There was an awkward moment between them, then it was broken by Talon calling out. “Okay, Warriors, let’s move out.”

  Apple and Sam wandered toward the vehicles. Sam’s machine legs made a whir-chunk sound with every step. Whir-chunk, whir-chunk. Whir-chunk, whir-chunk. Apple found the noise irritating and rather creepy.

  There were two cars for them to choose from. One was Kockwick’s, the other was Skunky’s. Both of the vehicles were once small dune-buggies that had been modified with more powerful engines, reinforced with steel plating and heavy artillery. They decided to go for Skunky’s vehicle because the skunk girl was waving them over.

  “Ride with me!” she said.

  But before they could enter the vehicle, Bunny shoved herself between them.