Brink of Extinction

by Nicholas Ryan

  “A matched pair to begin with,” Gideon Silver paused and stared down at his audience, arranged in a semi-circle before the stage. He threw his arms wide theatrically. “Two strapping men, with good teeth and strong backbones. Perfect for farm labor, ideal for long days in the fields working the earth with their hands.”

  He glanced to the side door and one of the guards disappeared for an instant. When he came back, he was prodding two bedraggled wretches at the point of his gun, jabbing them up the steps and onto the stage, into the circle of firelight.

  The prisoners were cowered, their shoulders hunched, their eyes full of agony and the emptiness of desolation. Their hands were bound behind their backs, their feet tied together with thick lengths of hemp rope so that they tottered and shuffled with bovine expressions. They stood side-by-side facing the audience, the filthy rags of their clothes hanging from their gaunt frames.

  “A little underfed,” Gideon conceded, “but consider the potential of two prime specimens such as these, working your land, making you more money than you could dream of. They represent an outstanding investment, I am sure you will agree.”

  For a long moment there was silence in the audience. Then, finally, a bidder at one end raised his hand languidly. “I’ll give you fifty,” he said.

  “Sixty,” another voice countered.

  Gideon Silver looked stunned into effrontery. He glowered at the speaker, the dark flint of his eyes glittering.

  “Sixty dollars?” his voice was obscenely soft and oily with menace. He shook his head. “They’re worth more than that each.”

  At the opposite end of the group sat another man with dark Middle-Eastern features. He had huge brown eyes, a narrow face and a pencil-thin moustache. A woman perched on the armrest of his chair, a slim blonde girl wearing a skintight white dress. Her hair was piled into a glowing golden cascade atop her head, her eyes shiny like bright little gems. She leaned close to the Middle-Eastern man and whispered in his ear, the pink tip of her tongue licking around her lips in a feline gesture of avarice.

  The man leaned towards her and the two spoke in hushed tones for several seconds. Then the man leaned away, his expression intrigued as he studied the woman’s expression minutely. He turned back to Gideon Silver and lifted his voice.

  “I would like to see them more… clearly,” he said. His voice purred soft and syrupy as honey.

  The crude slash of Gideon’s mouth twitched. He nodded to one of the guards and he came up onto the stage. The guard cut away at the rags the two captives were wearing until they stood bare-chested. The woman leaned forward and her expression became wide-eyed and dreamy.

  “More,” she said in a husky voice. “I want to see more.”

  The guard snickered mirthlessly and drew down each of the prisoner’s trousers until they were bunched around their ankles. The two prisoners stood pale and naked. All eyes focused on the sullen sight of their shriveled genitals amidst the dark scruffy nests of pubic hair. There was a mocking ripple of laughter from the crowd and the woman sat back, suddenly cold.

  Gideon chortled good-naturedly along with his audience for a moment before finally thrusting up his hands in a plea for quiet. “It is cold,” he said lightly. And remember, they don’t dig the ground with their dicks. They’re workhorses, not show ponies.”

  “Which is a good thing,” someone murmured blithely.

  In the end, the pair of prisoners sold for eighty-five dollars to a scowling shifty-eyed bidder who sat in the middle of the audience. They were shuffled off the platform and led away, through the loading dock doors. Gideon Silver let out a sigh of breath and then straightened and brightened.

  “Next, we have something a little different for you…” he teased.

  In the shadow struck darkness the man watched the auction with macabre fascination, his eyes drawn by the mesmeric presence of the hideous figure that commanded the stage. Carefully he crept closer, working with patient stealth until he was crouched behind an old wooden serving counter that was thick with cobwebs. He leaned his shoulder against the rotting wood and could see some of the faces of the audience, almost in profile. He watched their expressions as the side door opened and another prisoner appeared. It was a woman and she was limping badly, each step a hobbled grimace of dreadful pain. One of her legs was braced by crude wooden splints, tied tightly to her lower leg with tattered strips of rag. Rough hands drove her cruelly up onto the platform and she slumped, something wild and almost insane in her haunted eyes. She had been badly beaten. There was stiff blood matted in her hair and her face was purpled with livid bruises. The woman’s lips were red-raw as if her teeth had chewed them into shreds. She cowered like a cornered animal, her dirty hair falling forward over her face, on her knees as though awaiting the executioner’s axe.

  The man watched on grimly.

  “She’s not pretty,” Gideon admitted in a voice that carried to every corner of the room, calm, authoritative and commanding. He took a fistful of hair and lifted the woman’s bruised face to the audience. “And in truth, a broken leg means she is of no value on a farm,” he lowered his head as if this news filled him with great sorrow, but then his voice came alive again. “But so what?” He prowled across the stage, leaning forward and making eye contact with the assembled group individually. “You all have compounds with dozens, even hundreds of men working your land. But what about entertainment?” he let that thought hang in the air for a telling moment, then waggled his finger in admonishment. “All work and no play makes laborers discontented and unruly. Do you want that? No.”

  Gideon gestured back to the woman on the stage and prodded her with the toe of his shoe. “Throw her into the compound. Let her earn her life on her back. The labor force needs something to rut into… and you have my solemn word that she is good for that.”

  There was a ripple of murmurs and movement from the audience, but not the enthusiasm Gideon had been expecting. He glowered at them. “There will be no bidding,” he decided with a loud sigh of frustration. “And no auction. A simple price, instead,” he said. “I want fifteen dollars for her. Now, tell me – who wants the bitch?”

  “I’ll give you eight dollars,” someone offered.

  Gideon hissed his scorn. “Twelve.”

  “Ten.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Eleven dollars – and that’s my final offer.”

  The woman who lay slumped on the stage let out a gibberish mumble of something unintelligible and then suddenly started screaming. Her eyes became crazed with her madness, sightless, her face running with rivulets of tears and terror. Her mouth hung wide open, her head thrown back. She screamed herself hoarse until two guards carried her quickly away, out through the loading dock doors.

  The man watched on with rising horror as a dozen more wretched prisoners were dragged, tightly bound, up onto the auction block where they were stripped naked and idly inspected before being sold off to the highest bidder. They were the detritus of humanity; waifs and wasted skeletons, grim and disheveled, all with the harried frantic eyes of the hunted – while those with the money bickered over the meager pickings like vultures gathered round a carcass.

  When the last of the filthy prisoners had been led away through the double doors, Gideon Silver took up an imperious pose and propped his hands on his hips. He rocked on the balls of his feet and peered down into the faces of the audience. A subdued hush fell over the group and Gideon let them wait until at last they were all utterly silent, leaning forward in their seats expectantly as though hanging on his next words, holding their breath.

  “Once in a lifetime a man makes a discovery that is so profound, so wondrous that he lifts his face to the heavens and thanks God,” Gideon began at last in a low rumble, his gestures mirroring the inflection and sudden passion that he allowed into his voice. “I am such a man, for in my travels I have found a gem – a priceless, dazzling diamond so exquisite that for many days I have wondered whether it is right to sell such a beauty. Fortunat
ely, for one of you, I have weighed my conscience and decided that the gift given to me can best be appreciated only if it is shared…”

  He flung out his arm and all eyes turned, mesmerized to the side door. They waited for long theatrical seconds of anticipation, and then slowly the door came ajar, and a gorgeous young woman came wide-eyed and terrified to the bottom of the steps.

  There was a tight strained gasp from the men in the audience and their eyes became glittering and cunning. Gideon gave a little hiss of triumphant breath. The girl was perhaps sixteen, her body fully formed and perfectly proportioned; long of leg and with the flare of hip and narrow nip of waist that was accentuated by the long gossamer gown he had dressed her in. The fabric was so sheer that under the glowing warm light of the fires, the secret shadows of her body and the hard little nubs of her nipples were accentuated and made alluringly mysterious. One of the bidders came slowly to his feet, like walking in a dream, his eyes wide and leering, and his mouth hanging hungrily open.

  “Come to me,” Gideon extended his hand. The girl was blonde, her hair recently washed and combed, hanging to her shoulders in a golden veil that caught the glinting light from the fires and shone like a halo about her face. Her skin was freshly scrubbed and seemed to glow with good health and the silky energy of her youth. She wore gaudy splashes of make-up – the lips too red, the shadow above her eyes too bold, but they were insignificant heavy-handed touches that did little to distract from her natural allure and beauty.

  The girl was barefooted. She came up the steps reluctantly, clutching the long skirts of her gown into one hand. She stood, clearly afraid of Gideon’s menacing presence, with her shoulders hunched as if she could somehow disguise and hide those parts of her body the gathered watchers most greedily sought to see.

  Gideon watched her with a gloating relish, and his eyes crawled across her body like loathsome insects, lingering insolently over the thin material that covered her breasts. The girl shuddered.

  “Show her to us,” a voice that was thick with lust called out from the circle of flames and Gideon turned to the girl.

  “Take off the gown,” he said brusquely.

  The girl shook her head, her lower lip trembling with fear and defiance. “Not until I see my mother. Not until I know you have set her free.”

  Gideon’s eyes snapped and his temper reached flash-point in an instant. He crossed to the girl in two quick strides. Coldly he slapped her face with open handed blows, snapping her head back and forth from side to side and leaving the bruised imprints of his fingers on her cheeks. He hooked a finger into the collar of the sheer fabric and ripped it down to the level of the girl’s waist. The gown fell away like a morning mist and the girl bent herself forward, covering her upper body with her cupped palms. Gideon glowered, enraged. He snatched the girl’s hands aside and pinioned them painfully behind her back.

  The circle of men watching growled and moved restlessly in their chairs, the atmosphere instantly charged.

  With Gideon’s huge bulk behind her, pulling back her shoulders and exposing her so utterly, the young woman looked almost child-like in his shadow. The watchers leered at her with hooded wolfish eyes and she felt her flesh crawl.

  “How much am I bid?” Gideon’s eyes swept across the faces in the audience.

  “Five hundred,” the man who had come to his feet spoke out urgently.

  Gideon threw back his head and roared with a crazed contemptuous laughter. “She’s not some bitch you’re buying to work your vegetable crops, Dangmer! This little beauty is a luxury item – the kind of pleasure that a man of quality and money buys for long lust-filled nights.”

  “Six hundred.”

  “Seven hundred and fifty,” the Middle Eastern bidder threw up his hand and it was stuffed with banknotes.

  Gideon shook his head. “Gentlemen, you insult me,” he said. He held the struggling girl’s wrists clamped together easily with one hand, and with the other he slowly began to draw his sweaty fingers down over the flawless skin of her shoulders, over her gulping throat, and down between her breasts. The girl’s face turned white with her revulsion. She made a soft whimpering sound in the back of her throat and her eyes cast about the far reaches of the room as though desperately seeking an escape. Gideon chuckled and stilled his hand when it was pressed flat against the warm flesh of the girl’s abdomen, his fingers pointed down as if at any moment they might continue…

  “Any serious bids?” the tone of his voice had changed, thickening.

  “One thousand dollars,” a watcher at one end of the row of chairs declared suddenly. “Cash money.”

  “Eleven hundred.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Twelve hundred and fifty.”

  Gideon dragged his hand possessively across the girl’s abdomen and then reached down and pinched the flesh of her upper thigh between his fingers. The girl winced and let out a little hiss of pain. The sound of it aroused him. He pushed the girl forward until she was teetering on the edge of the raised dais. “Come and take a good look,” he dangled the girl there. “Feel her skin.” He buried the mangled slits of his nostrils in her hair and inhaled deeply. “Smell her!”

  They came forward, hands extended like religious pilgrims before something sacred and holy, and the girl squealed as their fingers slithered roughly up her legs, over her knees and forced themselves between the pale flesh of her thighs. She screwed her eyes shut, her face filled with loathing. The watchers eyes turned red with lust.

  “Fourteen hundred.”

  “Fifteen!”

  “Sold!” Gideon snapped, and pulled the girl away, back out of their clawing reach. The girl was dry retching and Gideon let her go. She hunched, bent over and shivering, as if in the grips of fever. He picked up the shreds of the white gown and wrapped her in it, then a guard came up the stairs and led her away.

  The crowd sank back, deflated.

  With the timing of a cunning showman, Gideon Silver waited until the watchers were back in their seats. He had turned away to watch the pretty girl being dragged out through the double doors with a tinge of regret. Now he cast a mischievous glance back over his shoulder, feigning surprise that the gathered audience was still there, waiting for him.

  “There is one other specimen for auction…” he said slowly, drawing out the words. “A young man. A very special young man who is a late inclusion. Some of you might be interested…” he directed his attention to the woman in the tight white dress, reclined and feline on the arm of the chair, and Gideon leered at her with a look fraught with significance. “Too good for working on a farm, but perhaps suitable for more sophisticated, exotic tastes, yes? I’ll let you decide for yourselves.”

  He beckoned to the guard at the side door and the boy came into the circle of firelight. His hands were tied behind his back, legs restrained by just a couple of feet of thick rope. He had a long scrap of cloth tied around his forehead like a bandana, the material stained red, and there was a trickle of dried blood that ran like a dribble of paint down to the corner of his eye and then along the planes of his cheek, seeped from the same head wound.

  The guard thrust the muzzle of his weapon hard into the middle of the boy’s back and he went up the stairs awkwardly, the anger in his face and in the tight set of his jaw.

  Gideon stood back and the woman came slowly off her perch like a cobra, slinking to the foot of the stage, her back arched, one hand propped on her hip, and the lips of her mouth moist and slightly parted. She stared up at the boy like she was seeing some young god, and a delicious sexual thrill shuddered down to the tight knot of arousal deep in the pit of her belly.

  The boy’s eyes were cold. He glanced down into the woman’s face and his gaze was level and filled with contempt. Then he thrust out his jaw, lifted his eyes to the far dark shadows of the distance and stood resolute and unmoving as a statue, seething with impotence.

  The woman beckoned Gideon closer and her voice was tight with a breathless strain. “I want to se
e him naked,” she insisted. “Before I make a bid.”

  Gideon’s smile was oily. “Of course you do,” he said.

  He stood up, caught the eye of the guard at the bottom of the steps and waved him forward. “The lady wants to see him stripped,” Gideon’s voice barked with command. “Let’s give her what she wants.”

  The guard had a short-bladed knife in his belt. He cut at the fabric of the boy’s shirt, slicing upwards the way a man might gut a fish, peeling back the thin ripped fabric in a slow reveal. The woman clasped her hands tightly together and stood back, watching with lecherous, glittering eyes. Her face became flushed, her breathing suddenly hectic. She turned her head and glanced back at the Middle Eastern bidder, and something erotic and taboo flashed between them. The gentleman shifted awkwardly in his chair…

  And then suddenly an object blurred and flashed between the couple, glittering a reflection of the firelight, before the area erupted into a ball of flame.

  From the deep shadows, the man threw the Molotov cocktail, not lobbing the explosive in a high drifting parabola, but rather hurling it like a heavy skimming rock across a still pond – so that the glass bottle landed in the small space between where the woman stood in front of the stage, and where the row of seats were arranged. The glass shattered and the fuel spread in a line of fire like a dragon’s breath, engulfing those who were seated in a soft whoosh of flame and a concussive thump of air. Splashed fuel splattered the legs of the wide-eyed screaming woman, and licked hungrily at the framework of the platform.

  The man rose up to his feet in the stunned instant of silence that followed, and as the fuel erupted in a rumbling drumming beat, he took aim and fired the first barrel of the shotgun at the closest guard who was standing by the side door. The heavy charge struck the figure full in the chest. At such close range there was no spread of shot – and the guard was hurled backwards, arms flailing with a hole the size of a dinner-plate torn clear through his guts.