“In your tardiness you seem to have missed a few things,” Gavin continued. “Mostly meaningless small talk. How’s the weather today? It’s fucking hot. Just like always. That sort of thing.” He leaned forward on his elbows, propping his head up with both hands locked just below his chin. He shifted his gaze from Reiji back to the farmer squirming on the table.
“But some of it actually was of interest,” Gavin said. “For example,” he leaned back and waived towards a boy, fourteen or so being restrained on the other end of the table. “This one mentioned, in a roundabout way, that there are women somewhere in this farmhouse.” Gavin spoke the words as if he were a judge passing down a death sentence on the most contemptible scum he’d ever laid eyes on.
“Women in this very house that were not offered to us. We men so desperately in need of comfort after so long on the trail.” Grumblings of agreement rose from around the room. Men angry that the farmer hadn’t offered to whore out his wife and daughters to them. Ridiculous, Reiji thought.
But no matter his own thoughts on the subject, the farmer was in for a world of shit. And Reiji was not inclined to raise a single finger to help him.
“He didn’t offer his women up to be used as seen fit by a gang of murderers and cutthroats? So he’s a bad host,” Reiji spoke flatly in an attempt at humor. “Where’s dinner?”
Gavin looked back to Reiji and one of his eyebrows twitched, making the sun-darkened skin dance around the pale white skin protected from the sun by his sunglasses.
“A bad host indeed.” Gavin’s voice was low, causing Varg and Virgil to take a step forwards, glaring at Reiji from behind large, dark sunglasses of their own. Still worn despite being indoors, and at night. For an instant Reiji swore he saw a dull-red light glowing there. A blink of the eye and it was gone.
Gavin began to laugh, a deep and slow noise that was awkward. As though the man wasn’t sure how to do it. Varg and Virgil relaxed, almost imperceptibly and took a half step back. Their leader’s mirth spread to the rest of the crew and the room was filled with laughter.
Reiji drew the robe a little tighter about him, adjusting the belt so that Kai and Little Brother would be in easy reach. Something about all of this just seemed strange, he thought as he moved to sit at the far end of the table. Men gave him hard stares as he passed, which he returned until they looked back to Gavin.
“And so the question remains,” Gavin stood and drew his own blade, a long broadsword that had clearly seen much use over the years. “Where are your women?” The farmer glared up at him, but remained silent.
“Fair enough.” Gavin hefted the blade as he spoke. “We’ll have to entertain ourselves some other way then.” With a quickness Reiji would not have guessed the man possessed, he turned and swung the broadsword down in a lightning arc that ended with half of its length embedded in the thick wood of the dining table. The dishes and silverware arrayed on the table clinged and clanged in protest as the farmer’s right hand sailed through the air.
The man holding the farmer’s right arm in place on the table blinked as blood hit his face and he flinched belatedly as though he just then realized what had happened. There was a moment of silence until the farmer began to scream. A wretched wailing sound of pain and disbelief, joined a fraction of a second later by the rage-filled screams from his son.
“Where are they?” Gavin screamed into the farmer’s face, venom dripping from every word. Without waiting for an answer, he chopped the farmer’s left hand off at the wrist and turned to walk towards the boy. Still restrained by other members of the crew.
The boy’s face of rage turned to fear in the blink of an eye as Gavin approached with the bloody sword held at the ready. “Pin him next to his father.” The men holding the boy moved to obey without hesitation.
The farmer continued to scream, but his voice began to fail. Likely from loss of blood, Reiji thought as he took in the pools of dark crimson spreading across the table from the stumps of the man’s hands.
The boy began to scream as he was forced down onto the table.
“Enough.” The word was spoken by a new voice. Reiji turned to look over his shoulder, seeing its source.
A hidden door in the wall had opened just enough for a middle aged woman to show her face, framed by dark hair shot through with a few strands of gray, and a single hand, gripping the edge of the door with white-knuckle intensity. Gavin turned to her and lowered his blade, held aloft as he prepared to take the boy’s right hand.
“I’ll do whatever you want, just leave my son alone. Please.” Her voice was a whisper, impeded by tears barely held in check. “Just don’t hurt my boy.”
Gavin nodded towards the woman and Varg and Virgil strode to her, parting the crowd of men like Moses in the Red Sea. She stepped forward as the two men approached and began to close the door behind her. Reiji saw instantly what her game was. Likely Gavin would as well, he thought.
Brave, but it was likely far too late for anyone in this house that wasn’t part of Gavin’s crew.
Varg, or was it Virgil, Reiji still couldn’t tell them apart, grabbed the woman by the hair. The other of the twin monstrosities caught the door just before it closed and stepped into it. The woman began protesting loudly that there was nothing in there, but the huge man paid her no heed.
There was a muffled shout from within and the man emerged a moment later dragging two figures behind him. He threw them to the floor for the inspection of the assembled men, and most importantly, Gavin.
A young woman, no more than a girl really, stared up in terror at the men around her. Another, looked up with eyes full of tears. Reiji was struck by her beauty. Flawless skin and fine features. Almond shaped eyes, bright green behind the curtain of her hair and wide with fear. A woman, but just barely. As bad as the night had turned for the farmer, Reiji suspected it would be worse for this girl.
“Look at that.” Gavin walked towards the two forms huddled together on the floor and then back up to their mother. “Put them all to use. Draw straws to see who gets to go first. I’ll have no violence amongst my crew. The first man to draw steel against another here will answer to me.” He looked back at the boy and the farmer. “Tie them up.”
“Boss?” A man Reiji knew only as Rashid spoke. Average height, dark brown hair, brown eyes, and a deep tan. He carried an oddly shaped sword with a name that eluded Reiji’s memory. Gavin turned towards him, arching one eyebrow inquisitively.
“Yes?”
The man looked around nervously for a moment and began licking his lips. “Well, it’s just that I’d prefer the boy. If you don’t mind.” A chorus of raucous laughter erupted in the room, men whistling and laughing at their comrade’s candor. Gavin whistled himself for a few seconds and then took a deep breath.
“Let it not be said that I don’t take care of the men in my employ.” He bowed deeply and motioned to the boy, eyes now wide with disbelief. “Have him as you will. But if another man wants him, then you draw straws.”
Men rushed about the room, jockeying for position and producing various items to draw places with. Reiji ignored them and instead reached for a pot filled with meat in some type of sauce that looked to be made from tomatoes. He had a mind to draw straws for each, and instead of having a turn with the unfortunate boy, girl, or woman, give them the mercy of a blade across the throat.
That might not stop all of the men in this crew from having their way with them, but at least they’d not have to experience it. And it was bound to be their fate sooner rather than later. A bad death, that.
He suspected as much awaited them by daybreak. If it was inevitable, then better they get it now than after this bunch had run a train through them. But that would put him at odds with fourteen armed men in the middle of the desert. And he was beginning to suspect that at least two of them weren’t actually human.
That might be too much of a fight, even for him.
Let them have their fun, and keep to yourself, he thought. If the retard has ha
lf a brain, which might actually be the case, he’ll be well hidden and stay out of sight until this group decides to hit the road. And then? Well, then, he would be on his own. Probably dead within a week.
For now, Reiji would eat and drink his fill. Better than letting it go to waste. He ate in silence as men rushed around him and the women began to scream and cry.
J.J. won the draw of straws for the young woman and he advanced on her with a knife clenched tightly in his right hand. As he approached she opened her mouth, likely to beg for mercy, and he slapped her hard enough to knock her flat on the ground. He knelt over her and began cutting at her clothes with the knife and ripping at the pieces with his teeth.
The man who’d won the young girl, Lasky if Reiji remembered correctly, fell upon her as well with a cuff to the back of the head that levelled her.
“In the next room, please.” Gavin’s voice called out. “After all, we’re not savages.”
Men took their prizes into adjoining rooms to do what they would with them. The others joined them to queue up, watch, and shout encouragement. In a few moments only Reiji, Gavin, Varg, and Virgil remained. Reiji and Gavin looked at one another across the table for a silent minute or so. Reiji eating and Gavin simply sitting and staring.
“Do you not find my gift to your liking?” Gavin asked.
“That’s not it,” Reiji began, speaking around a hunk of food. That was far from the issue. The young woman J.J. had set upon had been a true beauty. Reiji would have loved to take her. But not in that manner. He’d forced himself on more than a few women in his youth, and always found it far less pleasurable than if they were willing partners.
Fear in a man’s eyes as Reiji closed on him with blade in hand was a drug sent from the God’s themselves. A narcotic high rivaling any that could be attained by smoking, snorting, or injecting anything manmade. But fear in a woman’s eyes as he closed on her with a very different weapon? That did nothing for him. He greatly preferred anticipation. Invitation.
“I just prefer when they’re into it as well.” Reiji put words to his thoughts. Gavin shrugged his shoulders and reached for a glass of water. “What about you?” Reiji asked around another bite of food. “Are they not your type?”
“Quite the opposite,” Gavin answered. “I find that virtually all are my type.” He produced a cigarette from his jacket and lit it. The farmer, now dead from blood loss, slumped from the table and onto the floor. “But my tastes run to the less conventional side of things.” Gavin took a great gasp of cigarette smoke and blew it straight up into the air.
“I’ll take my turn, sure enough,” Gavin began as he took another puff. “But when I’m done I don’t think anyone coming after me will be happy with what I’ve left behind.” He left the statement hanging in the air between himself and Reiji for several moments of silence.
“I’ll go last,” Gavin finally said with a lopsided grin. “To keep my men happy.”
DESPITE logic, they burned the farm when they left late in the next afternoon. The men of Gavin’s crew, sans Reiji, had their way with the farmer’s family, using them as they saw fit for what seemed to be several days on end. Thought it had in reality been less than 24 hours before Gavin had taken his turn.
The screams that had arisen from the chambers that held the unfortunate family members had died down with their hopes as each successive man violated them. The boy and young girl had screamed the loudest. So loud that it had woken Reiji from a sound slumber several times. The screams died down over time though. Until Gavin went into the room, sending the others out.
What torment he inflicted on them was difficult to say. The remains hardly seemed human to those that saw them. Silence had instantly fallen upon the group when they saw. It remained until Gavin had called them together again and told them to grab whatever they wanted, because they were marching back into the desert and wouldn’t be coming back this way.
Reiji had seen men die in myriad ways in his life. He’d seen men tortured. Hell, he thought, he’d tortured men himself. But he’d never seen anything like this before. It was as if Gavin had taken a whole person and sliced them down into nothing but bloody strands of skin and tissue, thin layer by thin layer. The man had painted the inside of one of the rooms, a child’s room by the looks of it, with what remained of one of his victims.
Then he’d set the farmhouse on fire.
The fire had been asinine, in Reiji’s mind. The farm had been a veritable oasis in the desert. Food and water, and electricity and comfort with them. Water, for fuck’s sake, he thought. If something went wrong out there in the stony wastes, then this farmhouse might be the only thing that kept them alive. But Gavin had ordered it burned anyways. Reiji began to suspect that it would not be easy to find a way out of this group.
And so they stood watching the flames rise for several minutes before the man led his crew into the desert once more. Like some mythical figure seated on his steed of steel, leading a band of warrior-poets to their destiny somewhere ahead. Somehow, Reiji doubted any of the men gathered there had any talent for poetry.
They spent the night marching, under strictly enforced silence, peering through night-vision goggles that tinted the world green. Reiji had used night-vision gear only a few times in the past before joining Gavin’s crew. What he remembered of it was that it was extremely expensive, and provided a far better picture than what he used now. Real color and high definition. Gavin must have bought older gear out of necessity. Spending enough to buy the best available for this many men would have amounted to the GDP of most cities on Lexington.
So they carried on in relative silence. The only sound being the scraping of boots against the wind-blasted stone beneath their feet. At daybreak they threw up tents and camped in a rocky canyon whipped by savage winds that drowned out all other sounds and sucked the moisture right out of a man’s skin. His lips. His eyes, even.
Reiji reclined in the dark of the tent, replaying the events of the previous day in his mind. For the first time in a long time, something seemed to bother him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He’d cut down men in the past for little more than money. Rape and murder? He was no stranger to them.
But he couldn’t remember ever having committed such acts after being taken into a man’s home as a guest. After breaking in, sure, but never after being invited in. Was that it? Reiji wondered if the violation of such a basic tenant was what bothered him. If Gavin and his twins, looking less and less human by the second, would do that to someone who offered them water and shelter in the desert, what would they be capable of doing to men they had promised a great deal of money?
Men like Reiji.
The amount owed him upon the successful completion of this expedition was no small amount by any means. Based on what he had already been paid, it seemed that Gavin would be good for it, but what if he decided he didn’t need to pay up?
Reiji’s hand fell to Kai’s handle. Then he would answer for it. And Reiji would carve his payment out of the man’s flesh…If he could. He felt that he would best Gavin easily enough if they were to fight. But the twins, Varg and Virgil, gave him pause. There was a word for things like that. Things that looked like men but were actually machines. The word was on the tip of his tongue, but eluded him when he tried to find it.
Unimportant, he thought as he sifted through his pack and found his data plug. He brushed aside the short growth of hair that now obscured the neural interface implant behind his ear and snapped the data plug into place.
The dim interior of his tent faded and was replaced once more by the tatami mats of the training hall. There was no line up of ancestors waiting for him this time. No venerable old men twisted with age waited to berate him before finally sharing their wisdom with him.
The training hall grew dark and heavy footsteps sounded on both sides of him. Kai and Little Brother were in his hands in an instant and he spun, looking for his foes. Two armored monstrosities sprinted towards him, their nodachi blades scrap
ing the ceiling and trailing flames behind them as they did so. Reiji rolled out of the way at the last possible second as the blades bit deeply into the floor, threatening to cleave him in half from multiple angles simultaneously. It was as if the program had read his thoughts and had immediately given him a fight against two superhuman warriors at once.
As he rolled, another blade struck out at him, drawn from one warrior’s belt and cutting deeply into the back of his leg. Hamstringing him. Reiji spun and struck back, connecting solidly with the warrior’s wrist. The blow bounced harmlessly from the thick plates of armor there and Reiji was sent sprawling by a hard push-kick planted firmly between his shoulder blades.
Despite the world spinning around him he held onto the matched blades, almost regaining his feet before his enemy was upon him again. The next blow descended upon him like the fist of an angry god, swatting aside his defenses and cutting him in half from collar-bone to groin. The pain of it was very real and he roared in agony before the simulation put him back together.
The fight began again, two monstrous warriors clad in thick armor closing on him from either side, fully intent on dismembering him. Reiji charged the warrior to his right, lunging under a sweeping attack and impaling his enemy with a powerful thrust. The feel of the blade sliding through the heavy armor was satisfying, but there was no flesh to be found beneath.
The huge warrior laughed as he smashed the pommel of his heavy blade down into Reiji’s jaw, sending teeth flying and flattening him. The other warrior’s blade wasn’t far behind and pinned Reiji to the floor through his back and out of his chest. The first warrior swung his blade around and cut Reiji’s head from his shoulders.
Three more times he faced the pair of armored warriors, and three times he died. Without even taking one of his foes with him. The room reset once more, but this time it was much darker. Near lightless.
The Way of Death Page 11
