Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands

by Carlton Mellick III

  She lands with such force that Hyena’s entire body goes through the shark man’s torso. She slides out of his back and pulls her leader out of his limp jaw. Slayer is barely conscious, blood leaking from the teeth marks in her leather coat. Hyena puts Slayer down next to Nova, then stands between the two wounded wolf women and the oncoming sharks.

  The four sharks come at her at once. She swings her spear at them and all four bend back, dodging the attack. One of them strikes quick and hard, jabbing a claw into her side. The taste of blood mixed with stomach acid fills her mouth. She wheezes and steps back. Then swings at her attacker, leaving her back open. A sound like fabric ripping echoes in her ear as a shark’s claw tears through her flesh down her spine. She drops to one knee. The sharks hover over her.

  Hyena acts more wounded than she is. She squats down, rolling her eyes back, shivering as if the pain is pulling her into unconsciousness.

  When the shark men move closer to finisher her off, she lunges into the air, spinning her spear like a windmill at them. Blood gushes into the street as two fall back, not sure what has just happened to them, not aware their throats have just been cut.

  As one of them comes up behind her she leans backward—her head nearly touching the back of her ankles—and drives the spear into the shark’s chest. Then she flips over his corpse to get back on her feet.

  As Hyena returns to her fighting stance, pointing her spear at the last of the shark men, she feels an intense and sudden pain in her stomach. She notices the shark man holding something in his claw. A red, dripping bundle of rope. She follows the rope with her eyes and notices that it’s connected to her. It takes her a moment to notice her torn-open stomach.

  Due to the adrenalin, she hadn’t realized when it happened. The shark man ripped her intestines out while she was flipping through the air, and now holds them out in front of her.

  Hyena suddenly goes weak and can no longer hold herself up, watching the shark man as he opens his jaws wide to eat her ropey guts. As she falls, Hyena puts all of her strength into one final attack. Like a javelin, she launches her spear at the mutant. It enters his mouth and explodes out the back of his head.

  Their lifeless bodies hit the ground at the same time.

  When Hyena awakes, she is in a bed.

  “You’re going to be alright,” says a gentle, whispering voice.

  She opens her eyes to a young man’s face, blue scales grow across his neck and chest. His face bobs slowly up and down in her vision.

  “You’ll survive,” he says.

  He’s naked on top of her. They are pressed against each other between sealskin sheets. His penis moving tenderly inside of her.

  Hyena sits up when she realizes the man is having sex with her. He’s small, almost half her size. Like a thin child with the eyes of an adult.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m a doctor.”

  Before she can react, the fish man wraps his tentacle arms around her voluptuous hips, presses his lips against her spotted fur, and ejaculates inside of her.

  As he looks up into her yellow eyes, she snarls at him and throws him across the room. She jumps out of the bed, looking around for an exit. There is furniture made of coral and fish skin, but no sign of an exit.

  “What’s the matter?” asks the small man with the tentacle arms. “What did I do wrong?”

  “You were fucking me,” she says, upset but trying to remain calm. “I almost came, asshole.”

  His face is confused. He doesn’t know what the problem is. “I saved your life,” he says.

  “And you thought that gave you the right to fuck me in my sleep?”

  As Hyena growls downward at the tiny man, her fur standing up on her head and back, she has the sudden urge to jump on him and fuck him to death. At first she thinks the desire comes from wanting to get him back for what he did to her, but then she realizes it is something else. Her body craves the man. Something about him drives a strong urge through her flesh.

  “You didn’t want me to have sex with you?” the man asks.

  “Of course not,” she says, as she imagines pinning him to the ground and swallowing his dick deep inside of her.

  “Hmmm…” He rubs his scaly chin with a tentacle. “Your culture must be different from ours. I know very little of your kind. You’re the first Furry I’ve ever met. I assume sex isn’t very common for you?”

  Hyena ignores the question, rubbing at the fishy bandage wrapped tightly around her stomach. “What am I doing here? Where are my sisters?”

  The man leans back in a casual way. Hyena can’t keep her eyes off of the thing between his legs.

  “I found you out in the street and rescued you,” he says. “The Rashers won’t be able to find you here.”

  “What about my friends?”

  “I could only save two of them,” he says. “The other two were beyond saving. The living ones are in the other room. You were in the worst shape so I had to heal you first. I was just about to get to them.”

  “Where?” Hyena says.

  “Follow me.”

  Hyena rubs her wound as she walks. Her insides aren’t in much pain, but she feels nauseous, as if her stomach is doing flips inside of her. The next room is filled with tables and workbenches. Nova and Slayer are sleeping on them. Slayer has been stripped naked. Lying on her back, she is just a blob of black fur with a fluffy tail. The only area that is not coated in fur is a spot on her front, just below her breasts.

  “That one is fine,” the man says while pointing at Nova. “But this one needs my help,” pointing at Slayer.

  He climbs up on the table and wraps his tentacles around Slayer’s hips, lifts her tail, and then aims his erect wiggling worm-like penis at her the fluffy mound below her asshole. Hyena shoves him off of her, using the balls of her foot.

  “What are you doing?” he asks. “I need to have sex with her.”

  “I thought you were going to help her.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do. There’s a good chance that she’s going to die. The only way to ensure her survival is to put the sea worms in her.”

  “Sea worms?”

  “The males of my people have these metal worms that grow in our semen. If I ejaculate inside of her the worms will keep her body alive even after her heart stops beating. It is the only way.”

  “Metal worms? Like the parasites that cause animals to go rabid?”

  “Yes,” he says. “But—”

  Hyena grabs him by the throat. “If you even try to put those in her I will break your neck.”

  His words choke out of him, “But it is how I saved you . . .”

  Hyena drops him and looks down at her belly. She rips open the bandage to reveal an open hole. Her intestines have been scooped out and replaced with hundreds of metal worms, swimming around each other in her belly.

  “The worms are dormant,” the man says. “They will keep you alive, but they won’t take over your mind. My worms are not connected to the sea mothers.”

  Hyena assumes sea mothers is their term for the giant creatures that live in the ocean.

  As she wraps herself back up so that she doesn’t have to look at the worms anymore, she says, “So I’ll be okay? The worms will keep me alive?”

  “You’re not quite as alive as you were,” he says. “Some parts of your body won’t function properly. But you will live as long as the worms are in your body. Your mind will remain your own.”

  Hyena feels her flesh. Her body is still warm. She still feels alive. The only difference is the movement under her skin.

  “So please,” he says, “I need to have sex with your friend.”

  Hyena grabs his arm/tentacle. “No, you can’t. You have to try to save her without having sex with her.”

  “There is only a small chance she will live without the worms,” he says. “You’re willing to risk her life for that?”

  Hyena looks down at Slayer’s body. “I don’t want you to infect her until we have no other ch
oice.”

  The small fish man groans.

  “Very well,” he says. “I’ll need your help. We need to stop the bleeding.”

  Hyena nods and the two of them get right to work.

  After the surgery, they carry Slayer into the bedroom and wrap her in sealskin sheets.

  “She’s going to need a lot of rest,” the man says. “It’s going to take her a long time to recover.”

  “But she’ll live?” Hyena asks. “You won’t have to put worms in her?”

  “She seems strong enough to make it,” says the doctor.

  “Wolf women are always strong,” Hyena says. “But she is one of the strongest. She’ll heal quickly.”

  The doctor finally puts on some clothing. He wears a green robe, but stays completely naked beneath it. He offers her another green robe.

  “You should wear it,” he says.

  “I don’t like to wear clothes,” she says. “Especially in this heat.”

  “It will cover all of your fur,” he says. “Wearing this, you could walk around the village and nobody would suspect that you’re an outsider.”

  She looks at the green robe, but she doesn’t put it on. The tentacled man takes her up a blue coral spiral staircase to the next floor and sits her down at a table made of driftwood.

  “Tea?” he asks.

  Hyena nods. He returns a few minutes later with a tray of white rose-shaped porcelain glasses filled with a steaming green fluid. When Hyena takes a sip, her whiskers point upward at the salty flavor.

  “What is this?” Hyena says, as she pulls a thin slimy green strip out of her tea.

  “Seaweed,” he says.

  “More like a soup broth than tea,” she says, drinking more of it. “It’s sort of okay.”

  The man doesn’t realize that this was Hyena’s way of giving a compliment.

  “So what’s your name?” the man asks.

  “They call me Hyena,” she says, “for the obvious reason.”

  “And what reason is that?”

  “Because I look like a hyena.”

  “Oh,” the man says, as if he has no idea what a hyena is. “My name is Swaggat.”

  While they talk and drink tea, Hyena stares at the man’s legs sticking out from under his robe. She wants to lick his ankle and bite his inner thigh.

  “Why did you rescue me?” Hyena asks. “Do you know how many of your people I killed outside?”

  The man spits angrily. “The Rashers are not my people. They are oppressive monsters. I rescued you because you killed so many of them.”

  He stands up and goes to the window, looking down at the shark blood in the streets.

  He continues, “My people don’t stand up to the Rashers anymore. They used to, a long time ago. But the last group to resist them was massacred. There were fifty men against just three Rashers. Just three. My people don’t stand a chance against them.”

  He turns to her. “But I saw you kill six of them all on your own. That’s never been done before.”

  “It cost me too many of my friends,” Hyena says. “I don’t even know how many of them are still alive.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You still beat them. Not just one, but six. You’re a hero to our people. We need your help.”

  “My help?”

  “I want you to lead our people against Vinson and the Rashers.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “But my people are practically enslaved by Vinson and his clerics. You have the power to free us from his tyranny.”

  “I only care about freeing my sisters who are infected with your disgusting sea worms. I came here to kill the monster who controls them.”

  “I can help you free them,” he says. “There are other ways to free them. I will help you if you help me defeat Vinson.”

  Hyena decides to hear him out. Swaggat tells her a little about his society. It is split into four classes; each class wears a different color robe representing their class. The working class, which Swaggat belongs to, wears green robes. They are called Green Fish. The military class, which consists exclusively of the mutant shark men, wears blue robes. They are called Blue Fish, or Big Fish. The religious class, which consists of the clerics who Hyena saw on the beach worshipping the sea monsters, wears the red robes. Vinson, and those of the ruling class, are the Yellow Fish.

  Their culture revolves around the religious class. The Red Fish, as they are called, are served by the working class Green Fish. And they are protected by the militaristic Blue Fish.

  “Why do you want to kill Vinson?” Hyena asks. “What will it solve?”

  “It will allow us to create a new society out of the ashes of the old one,” he says. “We don’t need the other classes. The Red Fish spend their time praying to the sea mothers or they waste their time in the creative arts. They live in luxury while the rest of us are worked half to death to support them. My people are farmers and builders, yet we aren’t allowed to keep what we produce. We grow their food and build their homes, yet we hardly get any of the food we grow, we have to live in dilapidated houses a tenth the size of the ones we build for them.”

  “I guess you would find that unfair,” Hyena says.

  “You don’t sound like you find it unfair.”

  Hyena shrugs. “I agree that it isn’t fair. It’s just . . .” She finishes her tea. “Isn’t that the way all societies work?”

  Swaggat wraps a tentacle around his tea and drinks.

  He says, “Who says societies have to be that way? If we can overthrow the Yellow Fish we can create a new society. A better one, where there is only one class. Where everyone is equal. Wouldn’t you want that in a society?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me.” Hyena holds her stomach, feeling the worms inside of her. “I’m not interested in any type of society.”

  “But you don’t really mean that. You have to—”

  Before the man can debate his point any further, Hyena cuts him off. “If you can save my infected sisters I’ll help you kill whoever you want me to kill. That’s all that matters to me.”

  The man pouts the suckers on his lips, then he nods. “Very well. We have a deal.”

  When they go downstairs, Nova has regained consciousness and appears to be getting ready to masturbate again. As the doctor goes into the next room to check on Slayer, Hyena confronts the dark-skinned wolf girl.

  “You nearly got Slayer killed,” she tells Nova.

  “Where is she?” Nova asks.

  “Recovering. She’s really messed up. If you had followed orders she wouldn’t be in the state she’s in now.”

  Nova looks down at her moist fingers, but says nothing.

  “She nearly got herself killed saving you, I nearly got killed saving the both of you, and without Slayer the others went into a panic.” She walks around to Nova’s face so the girl will look at her while she’s talking. “Baretta was killed. Zizzy’s arm was ripped off. She’s probably dead now. I have no idea if Vermin or Bunny escaped. It could just be the three of us left for all I know. ”

  Nova has nothing to say for her actions.

  “You fucked up the whole mission,” Hyena says.

  As Hyena storms out of the room to check on Slayer, Nova finally speaks.

  She says, “You’re the one who wanted me to come on this mission. I’m not the one at fault. You are.”

  As Hyena looks down at Slayer’s black furry face, Nova’s words ring through her mind.

  Hyena realizes that it really was her own fault that all of this happened. Slayer didn’t want to bring Nova. She knew her head wasn’t in the right place. Slayer said the same thing about Marrow. Although she was obviously a strong warrior, Marrow was the first to get killed. And Slayer was also right that Baretta was the most cowardice of the young warriors. If Baretta didn’t panic and run away she might not have been killed, Zizzy might not have been wounded.

  Nova isn’t the one responsible for fucking up the whole mission. Hyena is. She should
have had more confidence in her leader. Talon had confidence in Slayer as a leader, so why didn’t Hyena? Perhaps it would have been different had Vyra and Toy come instead of Nova and Marrow. Those two might not have been strong warriors, but they might not have gotten everyone killed.

  “I promise I’ll do better, Slayer,” Hyena tells the unconscious woman. “I won’t doubt you ever again.”

  There is a loud knocking at the door.

  Swaggat runs to the window.

  “It’s the Rashers,” he says. “You’ve got to hide.”

  When Hyena goes to the window, she sees the blue-robed shark men running frantically through the streets, going house to house, searching for the outsiders who killed their brethren. A Rasher had never been murdered before, and now at least eight of them lay dead in the street. Hyena can tell that this has caused a massive panic among the Blue Fish.

  Swaggat tries to pick Slayer from the bed.

  “What are you doing?” Hyena asks. “You’ll rip open her stitches.”

  Swaggat doesn’t stop. “If they find her you’re all dead.”

  Hyena helps him carry Slayer to a storage closet.

  “Wait here with her,” Swaggat says, closing the closet door on her.

  But Hyena has no intention of trapping herself in a small room. She looks down at her leader, folded up in the corner of the closet. Slayer is still in a deep sleep.

  Hyena grabs her spear and goes into the front room, hiding behind a wall. She can see Nova across the room, hidden behind the spiral staircase.

  When Swaggat opens the door, three Rashers shove him out of the way and enter the room, led by a man in a red robe.

  “Where are they?” the Red Fish hisses.

  Swaggat reacts calmly. “What’s the problem?”

  “There are outsiders here,” says the Red Fish, his voice rough and whispery. “They’ve murdered ten of our Rashers. An eye witness has said the Outsiders had help from a Green Fish. We believe they are being hidden in one of the houses on this block.”