Suck the Savage Beast

by James Cox

  His gaze slid to the entrance of the prison. What was he remembering? Beast moved to stand beside me and tensed when Lily flicked the switch back on, basically trapping us in the area.

  “Hello, Beast is it?” Lily extended her hand. “Thank you so much for saving my brother. I know he can be a handful but we love him anyway.” She smiled wide.

  Beast stared down at her hand but remained motionless.

  “Twenty years alone, Lily,” I muttered.

  “Oh.” She dropped her arm. “Are you hungry?”

  That’s my sister, always the sweet one. “I’m starved.” I answered with a wide grin. We walked to where the fire was dancing in the breeze. Everyone was staring at the shirtless, shoeless, six foot four beast behind me. With his dreadlocks and that scowl I’d see why they would. He sat next to me on the same log, staring around like he was about to bolt or go crazy and kill us all. I grabbed a plate and handed it to Beast before snatching one for myself. I was surprised when Deviant continued standing, staring at our guest like he was a bug clinging onto the spaceship windshield. Lily sat on the log beside me, her smile firmly in place. It took a lot to get her down and being snubbed by an uncivilized beast wasn’t one of them. Surprisingly, Kurt and Peter took the last log.

  “I’d appreciate if you’d not kidnap my son. Ever. Again.” Deviant spoke quietly but firmly. He had his father voice going on. The kind he used when Lily and I were in serious shit, like when we decided to “upgrade” his bike. It took weeks to get it fixed the correct way. I’d only been twelve at the time.

  Beast grunted and dug into his plate of food like he was starving. I guess after twenty years of vegetables and octopus meat, he was enjoying the cubed protein and fruit.

  “How did you survive so long out here on your own?” Peter asked, not eating. “The chances are…”

  “One percent but it goes up every year.” I finished for him. “He created a home at the top of a building in the city, garden, backup escapes.” I assumed that last part.

  Peter frowned. “I was talking to him, Welliver. His survival could very well be ours.”

  “Already did the math.” I grinned. “We’ll be scouting out the city tomorrow.”

  “And it’s a fantastic plan,” Lily added.

  Did I mention how amazing she was?

  Peter’s lips downturned every more. “Really. I wasn’t told.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. That guy constantly annoyed me and honestly, I was too tired to go toe to toe with him. Even if it was only late afternoon. “According to Beast the creatures can’t climb high because of their weight. If we focus on building homes in the structurally sound buildings in the city—”

  “Your name is Beast?” Peter interrupted.

  “Yes, his parents were very unimaginative,” I answered dryly. “He doesn’t know his real name. I’m going to look it up in our database.” I snapped my fingers. “The old prison files may not have the data anymore but I could check the departure schedule from the peacekeepers on Mars. They’d have the name and stats of those leaving for Earth prison back them.” I nodded, pleased with myself. “As I was saying. If we build high the octopus creatures will be rendered only dangerous when we’re on the ground.”

  “And maybe we can rig something around the city,” Lily said, her gaze drifting as her mind worked on the problem.

  “I’ve come up with a name for them as well,” Peter said, food forgotten. “I think we should call them Octopussy.”

  I nearly chocked on a piece of fruit, after some coughing I managed to get it swallowed.

  “Octopussy, octopus and pussy because they’re both the scariest things in the universe.” He grinned.

  Lily instantly stood, walking off. She didn’t want to confront the fucker.

  “You piece of—”

  “Shit.” Deviant finished for me. “If you ever talk like that in front of my kid again, I’ll squeeze your tiny balls into a pulp.” He shook his head before going after Lily.

  “While I run over you dick with my hover bike.”

  Peter scoffed. “You don’t scare me, Welliver. If your daddy wasn’t there to protect you I’d—”

  He never got to finish his threat. The quiet Beast stood, shoved him to the grown and wrapped his hand around Peter’s neck. “You touch, you die,” Beast whispered.

  It gave me the chills. “Beast, let him go. Please.”

  He jerked his gaze to me, those dark eyes looked disturbing in the falling sun.

  “Despite the jokes I can take care of myself.” I took a squat beside them. “You see, Peter, I may not be all muscle and abs like Beast here. What I am is smart, actually, I’m a fucking genius.” I ran a finger along the gun at his hip. “I could easily rig your weapon to backfire the next time you use it or make your chair electrify you the next time you sit in it. Don’t back me into a corner. And don’t you dare ever insult my sister again.”

  Beast nodded and let go. He shifted back into a low crouch and growled.

  “Peter.” Kurt who was also forgotten in the melee helped the asshole up but the second he found his feet, Kurt knocked him on his ass again. “I may not be able to do all that fancy stuff but a bullet through the balls will still hurt. You upset Lily again … I’ll throw you over that motherfucking fence at night. You understand me?”

  Kurt was getting all crazy protective of my sister? I frowned but Peter chose that moment to get to his feet. “Whatever. Worst decision I ever made coming on this trip.”

  “We’re all thinking that,” I said.

  He mumbled something but walked off toward the spaceship.

  “I don’t like him.” Beast spoke quietly, returning to his half-filled plate of food.

  “Nobody does,” Kurt answered, standing there with his hands on his hips.

  I snorted because no truer words had been spoken in the history of mankind.

  Peter sulked in the spaceship the next few hours. We finished eating. I showed Beast where he could take a shower which took longer than I thought it would. Apparently, the man liked to take long showers. Afterward I found him boots that would fit but he wouldn’t wear them. He said bare feet were better. I don’t know how he functioned bare foot at all. The shirt was ignored too, not that anyone minded staring at him. Lily returned, albeit annoyed but she wasn’t one to hold a grudge. She already talked to Peter and accepted his apology. Nobody else did. And as this all happened the sun began to set on another day of Earth. The fence glowed slightly from the current running through it. Stars brightened up the sky along with a sliver of moon.

  “Safe?” Beast asked with a lifted eyebrow. He pointed to the fence as we sat around the fire, the only two still awake.

  Everyone else had made a bed where they could and slept, most of us on our hover bikes. “Yes.” I yawned. “Lily’s monitoring the fence ship connection on first watch. Peter had second and I’m taking third in case there is a glitch. You should sleep.” I leaned against the log, my ass resting on the hard dirt as the flames slowly died down.

  Beast grunted.

  Was that his answer for everything? “Nothing’s getting in.” I yawned again, wide and long. This time he snorted and I felt like I missed some kind of joke. I wanted to lie next to him. Sleeping with him had been much more relaxing than I expected but there were a bunch of people around including my father and sister. Talk about awkward. So I worked on Lily and Peter’s calculations for the fence on my handheld for a bit and now my eyelids were drooping. My head lolled forward and I was just about to block out everything when Lily’s shout brought me erect.

  “Well? Oh, by the stars. Welliver!”

  “I’m up. What’s wrong?” I leapt onto my feet, half jogging, half stumbling groggily up the ramp.

  “The glitch. It’s getting worse. It’s going to break in areas.” She stared at me wide-eyed.

  “Shit.” I plugged my handheld into the ship’s power generator which was below the pilot area. She was right. “It’s skipping. The power
isn’t flowing evenly to such a large area. The calculations aren’t right.” I quickly did the math, replacing wrong numbers in their coding as fast as my chubby fingers could.

  Lily wisely remained silent, squeezing her hands together as she shifted from foot to foot.

  “I can fix this.” I was halfway done. It was just a few codes that had to be recalculated to fit the perimeters of the fence. And then a loud roar echoed through the night, followed by the zap of the fence in action. “Shit. Fuck. Shit.” They were out there. I couldn’t stop the machine to input the new coding without turning it off and if we did that those things would break through the fence before it could upload. “Beast!”

  “Not safe.” He shouted from the end of the ramp.

  “No. I need time.”

  “How much?” Deviant and Kurt asked at the same time. They were standing beside Beast with their weapons drawn.

  “Ideally an hour.” I mumbled, still working on the code. “When the fence goes down I need … ten minutes to reboot.” In ten minutes we’d all be octopus food.

  There. I sent the new coding to the generator and shoved my handheld to Lily. “Reboot the system.” I pulled my gun out. “It’ll take ten minutes to reset then the fences will come online and we’ll be safe.”

  “No problem.” Kurt faced the sporadically glowing fence. “Just keep giant beasts from eating us for ten whole minutes. With nothing but our guns.”

  “We’ve got something better than guns. We’ve got our own beast.”

  Beast smiled, showing teeth as he pulled out two knifes from the tangle of his dreadlocks. Not knives, fangs. Holy shit, they were sharp octopus teeth! The end was filed down and fitted with some kind of makeshift handle. He was fucking hiding that in his hair?

  “Everybody in the spaceship!” Deviant yelled.

  Lily yelled to us as the last person sprang for the false safety of the ship. “It’s going to reboot in … three, two, one…”

  Chapter Seven

  Beast let out a roar that made goosebumps crawl up my arms. He charged at the octopus that waited just beyond the tall fences. What the hell was he doing? I watched, stunned as he leapt atop a rock, clung to the fence, flipped over the top and landed on the other side. It happened in moments and my mouth hung open. Then the fear kicked in. Beast was on the other side of the fence with those things! I grabbed my gun and ran toward the fence. There were footsteps beside me and when I stuck the barrel of my weapon through the fence links, I saw Deviant and Kurt do the same.

  “He’s crazy!” Kurt shouted.

  I had to agree. His chance of survival was minimal. There were three of those creatures out there, that we could see and they all seemed to be converging on his position. “Beast!”

  He didn’t even glance at me. Beast showed his teeth as the octopus like he was the threat and then that big bastard flung two tentacles outward. He jumped between them, front flipping to land on his feet rather gracefully. He ducked to avoid another slimy advance and then he fucking leapt at the creature. Just jumped toward it. I think I may have stopped breathing as Beast latched on using the teeth blades. He sunk each one into its oddly shaped face, used his feet to flip backwards and landed behind the thing. Before I could even sputter, Beast spun around and sliced it twice in the back of its head, where it met its wiggly body. The octopus instantly collapsed, sending horrid smelling blood everywhere. Its limbs went still as the other two creatures roared in outrage.

  Beast ran toward a tree, using those teeth blades to climb the thick trunk.

  I lost sight of him under the vibrant, moon lit foliage. One octopus charged at the tree, its tentacles reaching up for him. I fired twice, hitting the one limb both times. The thing cringed backward as Kurt and Deviant started shooting at it. We got a couple good shots in before it charged at the fence. The barrier creaked but held.

  “Five minutes!” Lily shouted.

  In five minutes we’d be dead.

  Beast leaped on the injured octopus. His teeth blades slicing at its face as it grabbed for him. He managed to hit it, slide down its back, and land with a roll. Beast struck the back of this one’s head and it collapsed to the ground, going motionless. There must be a main artery or perhaps a spine-like bone there. I had no idea and couldn’t think as the last octopus pressed against the fence and it groaned. “Watch out!” I knew it was going to fall. Based on the weight of pressure versus its age and ability, we had seconds. I gasped as Kurt pushed me. We both tumbled out of the way as my father simply stepped back, out of the fence’s path. It fell with a loud screech and a plume of dirt puffing into the air. Deviant fired twice, three times, four. I fumbled for my weapon, realizing it wasn’t anywhere near me. I must have lost it when Kurt tackled me. He was unconscious beside me. “Wake up!” I grabbed his weapon and fired at the backside of the octopus.

  Beast leaped on the thing’s fucking head. He yelled, sinking his teeth blades into the things face, breaking an eye and sending indescribable liquid all over. I was going to hurl. My stomach gurgled in disgust as it arched backward to dislodge Beast. He was ready. He held on, loosening his grip only when he would land without breaking anything. At least, that’s the way it looked. He landed beside my father, who shot at the creature’s face, hitting the mark every time. The octopus flung a limb, hitting him in the midsection. Beast leapt upward, then rolled under another tentacle. He did a frog hop over another before bounding onto its back. He stabbed it, over and over. It roared, one last cry before it collapsed into the dirt.

  And there stood Beast.

  He was covered in their blood, looking like the savage beast he was.

  “That was crazy! Did you see that?” I wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular.

  Kurt shook his head. “Your boyfriend is a badass.” He rubbed the back of his head and winced.

  He was my boyfriend, wasn’t he? I felt like foolishly wrapping myself around him as he posed and sending the image to all the guys that rejected me. Being that it was dark, we were on Earth and there could be more of them out there, I got back on track. “Lily?” I yelled then turned to the others. “We have to get this fence back up to complete the circuit.”

  Kurt groaned but helped Beast and Deviant push the foul smelling creature off the panel of fence. Once it was off and rolled into the woods, we worked together with two guys from the ship. I was streaked with dirt, slime, and blood by the time it was securely erect. “When it’s ready, start at five percent.” I told Lily from the bottom of the ramp. We didn’t need full power just yet and I wanted to make sure there were no more glitches.

  “Starting at five percent,” she shouted.

  I stepped forward, glancing at Beast who was watching the dark woods, big hands still wrapped around the hilts of those teeth blades. The fence crackled as the power shot through it. One by one the panels began a soft glow. “Ten percent.” They brightened momentarily then faded back to a soft light like the moon above. There were no electrical discharges. “Okay, crank it to fifty percent. Only increase to one hundred if we’re attacked again.”

  “You okay?” Beast asked from beside me.

  “I wasn’t the one fighting those things. That was incredible!”

  Beast glanced away. “Practice.”

  Right, he had twenty years to perfect killing them.

  “That was impressive.” Kurt stood beside the fence with his hands on his hips. “You took three down before we could drop one.”

  Cause my boyfriend was a badass, I added silently and had to force myself not to grin.

  “You kept anyone from getting killed and I respect that. Do you think you could show us some of those skills? Why the back of the neck? How do you know where the limbs are going to land?”

  Beast took his eyes off the darkness, glanced at me and then slowly answered, “Okay.”

  “Good.” Kurt gave one of his erection inducing smiles.

  Surprisingly, my cock could care less. Maybe it was the smell of dead octopus and blood. Yeah, that w
as it. We walked away from the glowing fence together. My father was still standing there, staring out, but it wasn’t long before he joined us back at the spaceship.

  We survived another day on Earth. Yay us.

  Chapter Eight

  The night passed peacefully and the first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon. I sat on the spaceship ramp with my handheld trying to hack into the old satellite that was still orbiting Earth. If even one of them still functioned I’d be able to use that to take an aerial image of the city. Once I had specs I’d be able to calculate the best, most stable buildings for us to create our new camp. One big enough for everyone on Mars. I’d take a few days to set up sleeping quarters, gardens, and more efficient ways to get fresh water besides rain like Beast does. It was just a matter of breaking through completely outdated protection. Ah, there. The satellite popped up on my screen along with all the analog data. I just started to make the new code to redirect it toward the city when I heard the clash of wood. I jerked my head up to see Kurt and Beast facing off with branches in each hand.

  Beast swung his left stick, spinning, clipping Kurt on the elbow and then smacking the makeshift weapon into the back of his legs.

  “Ow.” Kurt rubbed his calf.

  “Speed.” Beast spun in quick circle as he spoke. “They’re big but slow.” He slapped the left stick outward and caught Kurt in the hand.

  “Motherfucker!” He cradled the injured fingers a moment then straightened to confront Beast.

  “Limbs too heavy to hold up. They go down or to the side, not both.” He slammed the right stick out but Kurt leaped back to avoid it. Beast tried again, left, right, right, left. He caught Kurt in the crack of his arm then swept his feet out from under him. Beast stood victorious as Kurt sputtered out dirt. “Faster.”

  Kurt front flipped to his feet.

  “Eyes weak.” Beast struck left and missed. “Stay on side of head. Go faster.” He quickly aimed for Kurt’s midsection, left then right. He hit true both times.