by M. K. Gibson
“Pleasure doing business then, fuck-face. I’ll be in touch.”
Reynolds switched off the monitor and relaxed back on his couch. Gh’aliss, who’d been sitting behind him off camera, wrapped her arms and legs around him.
“You should have blown his head off.”
“What, with this?” Reynolds asked as he flicked the top of the device open, revealing an old-fashioned silver Zippo lighter. He sparked the steel and flint wheel and lit another smoke.
“You are quite devious for a human.”
“Mmm,” Reynolds grunted as puffed on his cigarette and closed his eyes.
He was almost there. Almost in the place he wanted to be.
Alone.
************************
Now . . .
Alone sucks.
Alone means that no one has your back.
I used to want nothing more than to be alone. Grimm changed that for me. Reminded me that we humans need one another. For more than just survival. So much more.
Alone in Flotsam meant no one gave me any aid. Those I met usually tried to kill me. I scavenged for food. I ate garbage. I ate snow and drank rainwater puddles to stave off dehydration. At least, I hope it was rainwater.
After the arena, I spent the first couple of days running naked and hiding, looking for something useful. Anything. Food, a weapon, fuck, even a scrap of cloth and a rope for a belt. I felt like Stallone in First Blood when he was hiding out in the woods being hunted by the sheriff’s department. At least Rambo had a knife and his pants. I was naked and had nothing but my dick. Impressive as it was (to me at least), it wasn’t going to help me in a fight or find food.
Flotsam was over a thousand acres. A big place for sure. But for several hundred prisoners, it wasn’t that big. People were everywhere, and most, if not all, were not your friend.
When the island was a floating fortress, a human resistance stronghold was here, complete with high duracrete walls, guard towers, and permanent barracks. After the wars were over, a lot of the demon aristocracy wanted to tear the place down. But some prick’s sense of irony thought it would be better to turn this one-time fortress into a prison. Like an East Coast Alcatraz. And it worked. The infrastructure was already in place and the walls were just as good at keeping people in as out.
The gangs, or clans, as they were called here, ruled various territories of the island. From what I gathered, there were the Makers, the Fixers, the Growers, and the Brutes. As their names described, it was how the island was run under Mastema’s watchful eyes.
The Makers created many simple items needed on the island, like tools, bottles, furniture, buildings, and the like. The Fixers took care of the tech that was beyond the crafting abilities of the Makers, to include the upkeep of the cyborg population. The Growers were, in many ways, the most powerful and the smallest of the gangs. They controlled the food and medicine. They kept their number smaller on purpose.
Should a rival clan hurt or kill one of the Growers, then they hurt Flotsam as a whole. Smart. The island was laid out simply: The outer rim was the property of the Growers, where they set up fields and animal pens. The interior was split between the Fixers and the Makers.
These three groups worked in relative harmony. The problem was the fourth clan. The one no one wanted but all needed. The Brutes. The Brutes were mostly demon-based, so having no souls themselves, they had no inspiration to grow food, create items, or fix tech. They were good for strong, backbreaking manual labor that all the other clans needed. They were also good at fucking up whatever they wanted because they could. And ironically, the same Brutes were the ones used in proxy wars against the other clans as hired muscle.
Last was the unofficial clan, the Nomads. We few had no clan to protect us. We could get assistance from one of the others, like food, clothing, a weapon, or a bed for the night. But only if we were valuable. But they could not claim us, no matter how valuable we were. If attacked, we were on our own.
On my third night I was foraging in a dumpster in a makeshift alley behind a three-story barracks in Fixer territory when I heard a scream. Animal-like, I snapped my eyes up, looking for what could come and take my food. I lowered myself and hid, peering around the dumpster.
At the end of the ally I saw a cyborg woman with augmentation tech along her head. She ran into the alley, away from something. A couple of hellion Brutes followed her. When they caught up to her, they grabbed her and she screamed again.
Most inmates moved in groups, at least in pairs, to help reduce being jumped. She screamed over and over and no aid came to her.
Aww, hell.
Chivalry had been dead for a long time, and it was about to get me killed as well.
I came out from my hiding spot and charged the two Brutes. Prior to being tortured and starved and forced to hide in the cold naked and alone, I was well over 220 pounds. Now I was much leaner, living off my own body fat for energy to fuel my cybernetics. So when I slammed into the two Brutes, I didn’t do much more than surprise them.
The alley was somewhat narrow, which made normal fighting difficult. Good. As a lightrunner in the city, a lot of fights happened in cramped quarters, and I had gotten good at dirty alley fights.
The first of the hellion Brutes, a big brown mottled bruiser who looked like a ram/man hybrid complete with horns and fur, got to his feet and swung hard at my jaw. I batted his fist away with my left hand. Reaching out with my right, I grabbed his rough homespun cloth shirt and pulled him off balance. Shifting fast to my left, I grabbed the back of hellion’s head and slammed his face into the alley wall behind me. The Brute hit so hard, it broke his teeth.
The second hellion came up behind me, wrapping me in a bear hug so hard it took the air right out of me. The hellion shook me hard, like a dog with a rat. Damn me. I was so busy focusing on the first one’s dentistry, I’d lost sight of the second Brute.
The toothless hellion got up with a mouth full of blood and eyes full of hate. He pulled a homemade shiv created from scrap metal and wire and charged me while his buddy held me off my feet.
I tried to bring my legs up to kick him away. In my exhausted, weakened state, my kicking legs weren’t much more than a toddler’s tantrum. Toothless stabbed me high in my thigh with the jagged metal weapon. I screamed in pain while Toothless roared in triumph. He yanked hard, ripping a deep gouge along my leg from hip to knee.
I screamed again and again while the hellion holding me laughed. Still naked, I felt his erection grind against the small of my back.
“I hope you wiggle and fight the whole time. It gets me off,” the Brute whispered in my ear.
Fuck this guy.
I threw my head back. Hard. And I felt the hellion’s nose break. I threw it back again and again and again until I felt his face flatten and his teeth break against the back of my skull. His grip loosened and I broke free, dropping to the ground. I hit the ground and my leg buckled. The wound tore wider as my leg flexed.
“Argh!” I grunted through gritted teeth as I fell on my side. I had to squint against the pain. Reflexively both hands went to my thigh, trying to hold the wound closed. If I was at the top of my game, I would have finished these punks in no time. But I wasn’t at the top of my game and I was hurting in a bad way.
Toothless came in again with his knife. I had to let go of my thigh and roll to the side of the alley wall. I was too low to stab, so he tried to kick me. I took the first blow to the ribs and I grabbed his leg on the second. Like I did against the hellion in the fighting pits, I rolled while I had his leg, taking Toothless to the ground. With a last ditch surge of adrenaline, I hoped on top of Toothless, slipped inside his arms, and threw a quick jab at his windpipe.
He reeled, reflexively guarding his injured throat. Grabbing his weapon arm by the wrist, I used my body weight and pushed the jagged knife down hard into his eye.
It was Toothless’s turn to howl in puncture-wound pain and my turn to laugh.
“Ha, fucker!”
&n
bsp; I pulled the blade out of the demon’s eye as he rolled away, grabbing his face, no longer interested in me. So I turned on my would-be rapist. I never gave the fucker the chance. High on adrenaline and moving fast, I lunged for the downed demon, grabbed him by his balls, and squeezed until I felt his testicles rupture. As he screamed, I buried my newly-acquired knife into his throat. With a twist, I wrenched the weapon free and watched the hellion die in that alley.
A bit of motion caught the corner of my eye. Instead of an attack, I saw Toothless run off, holding his eye.
“That’s right fucker, run!” I screamed.
Oh, shit.
Even though I was new to prison life, I did know one thing: no witnesses.
I started to chase after him and my leg gave out. Hell, I was surprised it lasted that long. I collapsed to the ground before I took the second step. Damn it. The gash was deep and bleeding bad and I could see muscle. There was a stink coming off the wound.
I held my leg and tried to close the wound with my hands, but blood poured out. Shit shit shit! I looked for the female cyborg Fixer I’d saved. She stared wide-eyed at me, backing away down the opposite alley mouth. “Little help here?” I asked with gritted teeth.
The cyborg pulled out a knife of her own and brandished it at me.
“Are you fucking nuts?!” I asked in shock. “I just saved you.”
“No one asked you to, Nomad,” she said, holding her weapon and continuing to back away.
“You know, if you had a knife the whole time you could have used it earlier,” I told her as I pulled myself over to Nutless’s corpse. She didn’t even bother with a response. She backed away slowly, turned, and ran, leaving me there in that alley.
Prison sucks.
I looked Nutless over. He was a typical hellion. Big, brutish, and over six and a half feet tall. But the big hellions were oftentimes like the jock-frat, dude-bro weightlifters who crowded the gyms back in the day. The ones who skipped leg day, who gave off a gorilla vibe with their huge upper bodies and tiny legs.
Stripping off his shirt, I cut off the sleeves and began slicing them into strips. The coarse brown cloth was filthy, but I needed some kind bandage to hold my wound closed. I had to hope the Collective would take care of the healing. God knows what kind of infection was trying to get into my system.
I cannibalized the huge shirt and turned it into makeshift bandages, a vest, and wraps for my feet. The Hellion’s tiny legs were slightly larger than human-sized and the pants fit fairly well. With my last scrap of cloth, I made a belt. I pulled myself up to my feet and hobbled away as best as I could. When Toothless found his Brute pals, no doubt they would come looking for me, so I had to get the hell out of there.
I limped painfully and slowly down the alley and back into the night, hoping to find a place to hide. Of course I got about a whole whopping eight steps before Toothless and five more of his pals came running at me.
“Him!” Toothless yelled, pointing at me with one hand while holding his empty eye socket in the other. The three big bruisers turned on me and began to slowly advance on me with horned, muscled, toothy, clawed glee.
I couldn’t run. My leg was too torn up. I was starving and tired and I’d spent the last bit of my energy in the fight.
Shit.
I backed slowly into the alley. I had no escape, but it was tactically smart. Those six bastards would have to come at me one at a time and they couldn’t flank me. I gripped my shiv and steadied myself on my good leg and waited.
The first one lunged at me and I stepped aside as best I could and jabbed the knife into the hellion’s neck. But I wasn’t fast enough to totally avoid him. His weight carried through, taking the blade from my hand and dragging me to the ground.
Toothless and his remaining buddies advanced on me. I tried to crab walk and backpedal down the alley, but I slipped on the pooling blood of the dying hellion. Flat on my back covered in hellion blood was not how I thought I would die.
I had always hoped it would be in bed, from a heart attack during post-coital bliss with a pair of nude, buxom women.
Suddenly a shadow blocked out the light coming from the mouth of the alley. A shadow cast by something large.
The two big hellions in the rear were dwarfed by this . . . thing. It looked like a human, but humans didn’t stand near ten feet tall. The giant man-thing came out of the shadows and grabbed the two hellions by their necks in his giant hands and shook them until their necks snapped with an audible snap.
Two more Brutes turned on the giant. They charged him fast, but the giant thing snapped out his massive hands, catching the Brutes in the faces. His fingers gripped the hellions so tight, both of them dropped to their knees, crying out in pain. The giant laughed and bore down on them until both their skulls shattered in his hands. Brain and blood sprayed out between his fingers as if he simply crushed eggs in his hands instead of bone.
Toothless took no time in getting away. He turned and ran away as fast as he could. The giant shadow-man swung his head, watching Toothless sprint away.
Then he turned his gaze on me.
The giant was shirtless and pale, almost pure white. His musculature reminded me of some Greek marble statue. He had long hair that hung past his chest, and it was so black the highlights were blue. He wore homemade patchwork leather pants, stitched together from what appeared to be the flesh of humans and demons alike. As he turned his massive face towards me I was shocked at how he beautiful he was. In form and face, he was cut planes and angles that made you stare in awe of him. But his eyes . . . his eyes were a pure dead, milky white.
The giant stood over me and smiled. When he spoke, his voice had the same raspy gravel of The Kurgan from Highlander. “You, you smell pretty.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A Win for Good Manners
“Thank you?” was all I could think of to say at the moment.
“Have you ever seen inside the black of night? Knowing the Heart of Hate stares back, seeing the true you?”
“Uh . . . no? Hey man, are you going to kill or rape me? I only ask because this has been a shitty day so far and I just need to plan the rest of it out.”
The giant knelt down and got almost nose-to-nose with me. “Not today. But if you like, we could plan a trip together. One where screams cease to be joyous noise and transform into melting pictures of the mind.”
“Are you like, insane?”
“Very possibly,” the monstrous man said, nodding. He suddenly snatched his face and body away from me. “Let’s go home.”
Now, normally, I don’t go home with strange, half-naked, giant insane men.
Normally.
Parental teachings of “stranger danger” and all that. But going with him sure as shit beat hanging in that alley. Plus, with what he just did to the hellions, I didn’t want to piss him off.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“Call Darkness Light and see the very reaction which began the war.”
“Is that a no?”
“Chael,” the giant said. “Call me Chael.”
Chael turned and began walking away, beckoning for me to follow. I limped the best I could, trying to keep up. We walked across the island into the fringes of Grower territory. Chael wasn’t the giant silent type. Far from it. His name was about the only coherent thing I could get him to say. He mostly babbled about darkness, the need to see beyond the veil of primordial death, the pulsating bleak white heart of the planet . . . and kittens.
You know, crazy people talk.
As we moved through the camps, people got out of his way. And I don’t mean they gave the tough guy look and nod; I mean they freaking scrammed. I guess my new hulking companion was known for maiming anything, or anyone, that stood in his path. I just followed in his wake, like a lamprey on a great white shark.
Chael led us to a spot on the northeast corner of the island, which I assumed was where he called home. I deduced this fact because of the subtle clues. Like the inve
rted crucified bodies of hellions, humans, and flesh golems spitted onto driftwood pikes.
Chael walked through them as if he didn’t notice. As I got closer, I saw that their eyes were torn out and their bellies were ripped open.
Not cut, but literally ripped open.
“So, what did these guys do?” I asked weakly, trying to lighten the mood.
“Avon ladies,” Chael giddily rumbled.
“Yeah, they suck all right,” I agreed, hoping I wasn’t Chael’s next victim.
Past the field of crucified scarecrows, we reached one of the island prison’s perimeter walls near what used to be a guard tower. The tower and wall were both in a state of decay, with a decent-sized hole where the tower and the wall met. The hole gave access to the tower as well as a small stretch of beach.
Shouldn’t this have been fixed by now? I thought to myself. But I doubted anyone would come out this way. Those that did might end up as one of Chael’s lawn ornaments.
Chael had to crouch down to fit through the seven-foot hole, and he walked onto the small private beach. I followed him through and stared out over the bay. It was disgusting and smelled worse than the bodies that marked his territory, but it was the closet thing to freedom I had seen since being brought here. Chael plopped down onto a bed of seaweed he had made and stared up into the cold night sky. For a moment I was fairly sure he had forgotten I was there.
Now might have been a good time to run. But my leg still burned like hell from the giant slice in it and all the walking had ripped open what the Collective had put back together. I sat down myself next to Chael, wincing, and nursed my leg.
“So, this is home?”
“My home. You will live in the tower. You watch for unwanted people and let me know. I let you live.”
Holy shit. A coherent string of words that made up a complete thought. I guess Chael had his lucid moments.
“Sure thing. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but why me?”
“A horse is horse of course of course and no one can talk to a horse of course.”
