As he played, Willem listened to the music as he created it and realized that he couldn’t help but agree with the tutor. His delivery was flawed. It was mechanical and lacked emotion. He couldn’t fathom how a genius such as himself could not have recognized this sooner.
The soldiers heard the elevator vibrate into life, then a metallic squealing noise as it slowly descended toward them. They backed away from the shaft as it arrived. When the doors opened, a thick mildew smell filled the air. The elevator was made of rotting wood, covered in black mold. They were surprised to see it empty. The Hamburglar did not come down with it.
“Where is he?” Greggy asked.
They listened, but could not hear any noises from the floors above.
“He’s got to be up there somewhere,” Tomahawk said. “Let’s catch up.”
The three of them boarded and hit the button for the second floor. The light in the elevator flickered on and off, creating a loud humming noise. As the elevator made its ascent, Tomahawk looked down at Greggy.
“You better not get in my way,” Tomahawk said to him.
Greggy stepped back.
“He’s a coward,” Horatio said, getting between them. “But he’s not completely useless. At least we have another man to back us up.”
Tomahawk spit. “Lockjaw and Poppy are the only two I trust to back me up. Otherwise, I’d rather go solo.”
“How far do you think you’d get without my help?” Horatio asked.
Tomahawk chuckled. “Far enough. I’ll admit you’re a good shot from a distance, but you’re worthless in close combat.”
“When you’re a good shot from a distance, you don’t need to worry about close combat.”
Tomahawk smiled, then nodded. “We’ll see how long you can keep that up in the corridors up there. Not all fights are from afar. Eventually, relying on long-range weapons is going to get you killed.”
Horatio laughed. “Relying on short-range weapons is going to get you killed.”
“We’ll see.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.”
When they arrived on the second floor, they could hardly see anything in the dim lighting. The hallways were lit by only a few light bulbs hanging from the ceiling spread nearly thirty feet apart, and the light was so faint it was as if the generator was working at half-power. All they could see was a pile of dead bodies littered across the floor and blood dripping from the walls.
“He’s been through here,” Tomahawk said, almost disappointed he didn’t get to kill them himself.
They walked through the hall, following the Hamburglar’s trail of bodies. As they passed the dead flesh, they saw metal worms squirming in the shadows. If he could see them clearly, Horatio would crush them with the butt of his rifle. Otherwise, he steered clear.
“Watch out for them,” Horatio said to Greggy. “I believe those snake-things are what caused the psychotic behavior in these soldiers.”
Tomahawk ignored the worms, too busy trying to catch up to the Hamburglar. One of the parasites was able to creep up to his ankle, but before it could attack, the large man crushed it under his boot without even realizing it.
“Be more careful,” Horatio said, but Tomahawk wasn’t paying attention to him either.
Around the corner, furry claws lunged out of the wall at Greggy and caught him by the throat. He cried out in a choking gasp as a claw squeezed his larynx. Tomahawk reached up and grabbed one of the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, then pointed it at Greggy. Behind the bars of a jail cell were two wolf women. They shrieked out, grabbing at the struggling soldier, trying to pull him through the bars. Horatio tugged at his arm, trying to get him free but the wolf women were too strong.
“Get her off!” Greggy choked.
Tomahawk did nothing to help. He pointed the light at one wolf woman to get a better look, discovering metal worms crawling out of her mouth and forehead. Both women were infected. They were nude, their fur dread-locked with blood and urine. The beast shoved her muzzle through the bars to get closer to Greggy, drool leaking down his shoulder, his cries hit a higher octave.
Horatio let go of his arm and raised his rifle at the wolf woman’s head. Then fired. Her skull popped like a balloon and she went down. Greggy tumbled away from the cell as the other woman clawed at his uniform. Horatio aimed at the second woman and shot her through the eye. She didn’t go down, even with her eyeball blown out the back of her head, but her shrieks deepened into a drunken manly tone. With the next shot, Horatio aimed for her forehead. The bullet cracked her skull open and her corpse slid down the bars to the floor. When the only sound left was the trickling of their blood and the gasping of Greggy’s breath, Tomahawk pointed the light bulb at Horatio.
“I guess we don’t have to worry about the Bitches,” Tomahawk said.
Greggy looked up at him and said, “Why did you just stand there?”
Tomahawk shrugged. “Saving you wasn’t worth the bullets.”
Before Greggy could further complain, Horatio changed the subject. “Where did Hamburglar go? These two were still alive, so he must not have gone this way.”
“He’s probably headed for the roof,” Tomahawk said. “We should go after him.”
Horatio shook his head. “We should clear this floor before going up. Hamburglar can take care of himself.”
They went from room to room, but most of them were empty. The only living mutants were in a locked supply closet. They must have barricaded themselves within before they became infected. These men were so full of metal worms that their faces had mutated into scaly blobs. Horatio let Tomahawk take care of them, smashing in their skulls with his sledgehammers.
When the floor was clear, Tomahawk told Greggy to go downstairs and bring the others up. The frightened soldier just nodded and fled for the elevator without protest.
“It’ll be safer for them up here,” Tomahawk said.
Horatio was surprised to hear that. “It almost sounds like you’re worried about them.”
Tomahawk spit. “Well, I don’t give a fuck about Richards, but I’ve been through a lot with Sun, Lockjaw, and Poppy. I’d hate to lose those assholes.”
Horatio nodded. He said, “I hope Sun and Poppy pull through,” but that was the wrong thing to say. Tomahawk’s face became fuming, as if he was in denial about the condition of his two wounded friends. He looked at Horatio like he was considering breaking his skull between his two hammers.
“They’ll be fine,” Tomahawk said. “My men are nearly impossible to kill.”
Then they went upstairs. The third floor was mostly barracks, with enough beds for three hundred men. It was important to keep the Outpost well-manned, because otherwise it would have been a prime target for wolf women raids. Without the supplies coming in from Texas, the Outlander army was at the mercy of McDonaldland, which was something the Mayor would not stand for.
The Hamburglar was just finishing off the last of the infected men, when Horatio and Tomahawk arrived. He was holding the head of the Captain of the Outpost, studying the fat worm dangling from its mouth.
“Robble-robble-robble,” Hamburglar said, and tossed the head over his shoulder as he continued on his way.
They followed the Hamburglar to the roof access. The three of them looked up the stepladder to the hatch. It had been barricaded on both sides, but was now broken open.
“Think she’s still alive up there?” Tomahawk asked.
“I shot her square in the chest,” Horatio said. “She’s dead.”
“Well, you shot the one in the cage square in the face and she was still moving.”
“But the one in the cage was infected,” Horatio said. “The one on the roof could have still been alright.”
“I’m sure she’s just like the rest of them,” Tomahawk said. “None of these poor bastards could have escaped infection.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Well, why don’t I go find out for myself.”
Tomahawk climbed the st
epladder and crawled out onto the roof. “Wait here.”
The Hamburglar ignored the Lieutenant and climbed up after him. Horatio stayed behind, pointing his rifle at the hatch, waiting for one of the infected to poke its head through. After a few minutes, he heard Tomahawk say, “There’s no one up here. Just some empty cans of food.”
Horatio called up, “She’s got to still be up there somewhere.”
A few more minutes of silence. Then Tomahawk’s voice: “There’s a trail of blood leading from the hatch to the edge of the roof. Maybe she fell off.”
“From the hatch?” Horatio knew then that the trail wasn’t leading from the hatch to the edge, but from the edge to the hatch. The wolf woman wasn’t on the roof anymore, she was on the third floor, with him.
Before Horatio could turn around, something behind him grabbed onto his third leg and pulled him back. His feet fell out from under him as a furry woman pulled him into a back room, spun him around by his leg-tail and threw him against a blood-splattered wall. His face hit the bricks hard, bloody snot splashing from his nose, his gun sliding across the room. Then he crumbled to the floor.
“Hi there, Meat,” she said as she closed and barricaded the door behind her.
Before Horatio could crawl to his rifle, the woman flipped him over and dropped her weight down in his lap, pinning him. She grabbed him by the throat and brought his face close to her eyes as if she was looking for something inside of him.
“Did any of those snakes bite you?” she asked.
Horatio shook his head, but while in her grip he could only move it centimeters. The woman didn’t look much like a wolf. She was covered in scruffy dark brown fur, but her ears and tail were like that of a rabbit’s.
“What’s your name, Meat?” asked the rabbit/wolf woman, loosening her grip on his neck.
“Lieutenant Horatio Caras,” he said.
“How many of you are there?”
“Eight of us, originally,” he said. “But you killed one and severely wounded another. Oh, and one guy lost his legs trying to escape from those things out there, so there’s really just five left standing.”
The wolf woman squinted her eyes at him. She couldn’t understand why he was being so cooperative.
“Are you lying?” she asked.
“No.” He smiled.
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t matter how many men are in our group,” he said. “All you should concern yourself with is who we brought with us.”
“Who’s that?”
“The Hamburglar.”
“Who?”
“You haven’t heard of the Hamburglar? The assassin of the wasteland?”
She shook her head.
He chuckled. “Well, you’ll meet him soon. By the time he’s done with you I promise you’ll fear his name.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “I fear no man. Men are just pieces of Meat to me. They are fat little piggies that I eat for dinner.”
She licked her fangs as if to intimidate him, sniffing at his neck and growling, but her rabbit features looked more cute to him than frightening. After inhaling his scent, her eyes lit up with surprise, and then she sniffed some more.
“Wait a minute . . .” she said, then sniffed again.
She pulled a bullet out of her pocket and sniffed that, then him again. “Your scent is on this bullet.” She squeezed his hips between her thighs and raised her voice. “You’re the Meat who fucking shot me, aren’t you?”
That’s when Horatio noticed the wound on her chest, just below the shoulder. He could smell the burnt hair on her chest where she cauterized her own wound.
“Sorry about that,” Horatio said.
She bared her teeth at him as if she was about to bite his face off, but then she said. “How the hell did you do that? I had to have been nearly seven hundred yards away from you.”
“I’m good,” Horatio said.
She squeezed his throat tightly. “Well, it fucking hurt like hell.” She put her other hand around his neck and slowly crushed his esophagus.
“No piece of Meat shoots me and lives to talk about it,” she said, enjoying the satisfaction of watching him struggle as she squeezed the life out of him.
But, before she could kill him, she felt something move. Between her legs, something hard was poking her in the crotch. She looked down, then back up at the man.
“Do you have a fucking erection?” she screamed.
Horatio blushed. “I’m sorry, but this kind of thing really turns me on.”
Her mouth dropped and she jumped off of him.
“Men are so disgusting,” she said, wiping his smell from her as she paced the room. “I fucking hate them all.”
Horatio rubbed his neck and said, “What’s your name?” Acting as if she hadn’t just tried to kill him.
She stopped pacing and glared at him. “They call me Bunny.”
“Cute name.”
“Fuck you.”
Horatio crossed his legs and casually said, “Tell me, Bunny, how the heck are you the only one here who’s not full of those worms?”
She kneeled down near him. “I’m immune. I was infected with them before, about two years ago, but I was saved by my friends. All you have to do is kill the creature that controls the worms.”
“What creature?”
“I don’t know. We killed the one that infected me. I had no idea there were more of them out there.”
“So we can still save all those men out there?”
“If you can find the creature and kill it, yeah. Unfortunately, the thing lives in the ocean. Good luck finding it.”
“But your friends found it.”
“A pack of Warriors would be able to track down such a creature, but not Meat like you. I plan to find the creature and kill it myself.”
“I thought you hated men,” he said. “Why would you kill that creature to save all those men outside?”
“I wouldn’t do it for those men. I want to save my infected sisters that are locked up downstairs.”
Horatio broke eye contact. Bunny knew something was wrong and her eyebrows curled with rage.
“You assholes didn’t kill them did you?”
Horatio didn’t move.
“Did you?”
He nodded. She screamed and punched him in the face so hard that the back of his head slammed against the wall behind him.
“I could have saved them!”
She stood up and kicked him in the stomach.
“Which one of you did it?” she yelled. Then she grabbed him by the throat and lifted him into the air. “If it was you I am going to rip your guts out.”
Then the door broke open. Bunny turned around as the Hamburglar stepped inside, his fingers tapping on the handles of his sheathed katana.
“What the fuck are you?” she yelled, dropping the soldier from her claws.
As he hit the ground, Horatio rolled over, retrieved his rifle and pointed it up at the wolf woman.
“He’s the fucking Hamburglar,” Horatio said.
Bunny groaned and raised her hands in surrender, staring at the Hamburglar’s gigantic cartoon-like head. The Hamburglar looked back at her. He took his hands off of the handles of his swords and wiggled his fingers in the air as if he was playing an invisible piano. Both Bunny and Horatio could almost hear the music that was going through the mutant’s freakish head.
In order to fill his music with passion, young Hamburglar decided that he would need to fall in love. It was an emotion that he was unfamiliar with. The only thing he came close to loving was himself, but that was more of a deep respect than love.
As a teenager, Willem didn’t interact with his classmates. He thought they were poor, immature, annoying, lazy fat asses. Some of the girls liked him, because of his class status in the community, so with his father’s influence he was set up on a few dates.
The first girl he went on a date with was a very large blonde girl with green braces and a red dress. They went f
or burgers by the park. Because Willem wanted to walk rather than take the bus, the girl was exhausted by the time they arrived at the restaurant, even though it had only been five blocks. She needed to sit down at the table for over ten minutes to catch her breath, sweat pouring down her pasty yellow-freckled skin.
Willem went to get the food.
The girl said, “You’re buying? Good. Get me three Big Macs.”
Willem nodded and turned to go order.
“I’m not finished yet!” she yelled, pounding her fist against the table.
Then Willem waited a couple more minutes for her to catch her breath again. She said, “I also want a 10 piece chicken McNuggets with cran-peary dipping sauce, two apple pies, a premium bacon ranch salad with crispy chicken strips, large fries, and large Coke.”
Willem didn’t think she was serious at first, but the way she held her head as if she was having a mild stroke he could tell she wasn’t in the joking mood. He ordered all of her food, writing it all down on paper for the cashier. He ordered for himself his usual meal: one Big N’ Tasty, no meat.
After getting the food and sitting down, the fat girl, who was actually only average weight for a McDonaldlandian, ripped the entire food tray out of his hand and started eating. Willem watched as orange secret sauce dribbled down her chin as she gorged on two Big Macs at once. Willem couldn’t even look at her. Her saggy flesh, her greasy fingers, the corners of her mouth covered in mayo; he found her completely repulsive.
“So what’s your deal?” the girl asked. “Why don’t you ever talk?”
Hamburglar wanted to fall in love with a girl, but he didn’t want to talk to one. He just nodded at her when she spoke.
“Jeri says you’re like really rich and she’s like the richest person I know so if she thinks you’re rich then you must be like the richest kid in our class.”
Willem just watched her swallowing the greasy food whole. He didn’t bother grabbing his burger from the pile of food on the tray. He no longer had an appetite.
“You seem really skinny for such a rich kid and you dress like an idiot and you never talk and why aren’t you eating?”
Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands Page 8
