The Apocalypse Watch

by J Foster Ward

  He collected anything with a sharp edge and dumped it far outside the room. The worn slugthrower and the tubular device that had blown his arm off he kept. He also found another of those green-striped battery-looking things with 4GJ printed on it.

  The nosebleed had stopped by the time he was done and the backs of both his hands were smeared with dry blood from wiping it away. He probably looked like a serial killer; drenched in blood, wearing a bulletproof vest and a towel.

  Satisfied he’d thoroughly disarmed his captives, Jake dragged each of them to a separate room and sat outside in the hall and waited.

  ***

  Chapter 6

  : Taming of the Voxer

  The redheaded bodybuilder woke up first. Moaning and murmuring before she thrashed awake, trying to free her bound wrists and ankles. Jake let her see she was unharmed – or at least no less harmed than she had been – and when she spotted him she froze, gathering her legs under her and pulling her hands in protectively over her chest.

  “Water?” Jake asked and held up a dipper carved from a gourd.

  The woman looked at him suspiciously. Nodded. One hand with the stunner ready Jake entered the room and held the gourd up to her lips. She drank, liquid running over her chin and chest.

  “Understand me?” he asked.

  She stared.

  “Talk?” he tried.

  “Me talk.” Her voice was deep and she spoke the words uncertainly.

  “Who are you? What is your name?”

  “Me Krill.”

  At least it wasn’t Tarzan.

  She looked around and nodded at the empty room. “All dead?” she asked.

  “You mean the orange bastard who tried to explode my skull? No.”

  “Yanco,” she said. “Bad,” she shook her head. “Bad man.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “I must obey him.”

  “Why?”

  “Must,” she repeated. She used both hands to point to her head. “Inside. Must obey.”

  Well now, that orange bastard was full of surprises. Was she saying he also had some sort of magic control over her? Or maybe just that he could cause that brain torture if she didn’t do what he wanted.

  “Drak? Mirt?”

  It took a moment to understand those were names. “The others? All dead.”

  She nodded sadly. “How? How you do? You basic.”

  “Well it wasn’t luck.”

  She shook her head, showing she didn’t understand.

  “We fight, I better. I kill,” he used simpler words.

  He halfway expected she would get angry. Bragging about killing her friends should provoke her. But instead the woman regarded him calmly with his blood-spattered clothes and weapons. She nodded. And a moment later she started to get up.

  “Hold it!” he yelled, pointing the acid revolver at her.

  Krill froze. “No fight.”

  Very slowly she got to her knees, then awkwardly with hands and ankles tied she bowed her forehead to the floor. “I give,” she said.

  “Give what?”

  “Give me you. You kill others, spare Krill. Krill yours.”

  “That’s very sweet of you,” Jake said, with a smile. “But not necessary.”

  “Krill must be yours. Is way.” And with that the massively muscled warrior shuffled so her backside was facing him.

  Jake was strangely intrigued by the naked, muscled woman. She was quite shapely, in her way. Even if she could probably bench-press a motorcycle. This was too strange. When he didn’t approach her, the bodybuilder turned and glared.

  “No?”

  “No,” Jake agreed.

  “Then fight!”

  She turned to face him, doing her best to get into a fighting stance.

  “Krill, that’s suicide.” He pointed the gun at her. “You die. No reason. Think about it.”

  But as he was trying to think his way out of it, she snarled, obviously insulted by his lack of respect for her traditions, and made claws with her fingers, ready to lunge for him.

  Uncoiling like a spring she leapt up at him. The woman was a mountain of muscles and even with wrists and ankles bound she cleared the space between them in one leap. Jakes programmed combat skills saw the attack coming and he ducked aside, letting her land hard on the floor. But she swung her legs and slammed him behind the knees.

  It was like being kicked by a horse.

  Jake was flung sideways into the wall and climbing to his feet he tasted blood. He had a moment to stare at the furious redheaded mountain of muscles as she dive-rolled towards him and came up launching a two-legged kick that had enough force to snap his spine.

  If he’d still been standing there.

  He was already moving and slammed the butt of the revolver into the side of her head.

  She barely felt it, swinging her fists. And slammed him hard enough in the splat-armor chest plate that he had to gasp twice to drag air back in his lungs. Geezus! She was going to kill him! He dodged her next attack and retreated out of the room, levelling the gun at her but reluctant to shoot an unarmed captive bound hand and foot.

  Krill didn’t seem to know she was an unarmed captive. She got onto her feet and hopped out of the room growling, charging him. If he hadn’t been absolutely sure she would tear his head off if she caught him, Jake would have found the sight of a behemoth naked bodybuilder bunny-hopping to the attack absolutely hilarious.

  Why are you fucking around, shoot her! His inner voice demanded.

  “Fucksakes,” Jake sighed, and retreating up the corridor her snatched up his prybar and waded back into battle.

  He was still more mobile than Krill, and as she came at him he slid under her guard and tripped her, so she fell flat on her face. Jake brought the blunt end of the prybar down hard on the back of her thick skull and she let out a bark of pain and seemed to be momentarily stunned.

  She reached for one of the pile of knives he’d left in the corridor and Jake hooked the prybar around the bindings on her ankles and hauled back with all his might, dragging her back into the room.

  The overmuscled ginger snarled, twisted and rolled, knocking Jake to the floor. For a horrifying moment he was grappling with her on the ground, trying not to get pinned by her weight, then he clubbed her in the forehead again and in the moment before she recovered Jake was on top of her, pinning her face down. He got the prybar under her chin and pulled. Hard. If he could choke her to unconsciousness he still might not have to kill her.

  “You die or me die!” she demanded in a splutter. She barely had the air to speak. “Or you must take me! Krill yours!”

  Jake had lost his towel kilt in the fight, and suddenly realized he was wrestling on top of her with his half-stiff cock against her ass. What the actual hell? Then it dawned on him what had been buried in his memories of highschool science class; it wasn’t just a fight or flight instinct. It was – as they had so joyfully called it at the time – the fight or flight or fuck instinct. When Nevermore had altered his chemistry to enhance his aggressive qualities, they’d also turned the dial on his instinct to fuck, all the way up to eleven.

  As she struggled he couldn’t help but get harder. And when she couldn’t help but notice. There was a moment of panic when she almost bucked him off and then an even greater moment of panic when he knew she wasn’t; she was trying to back up onto his cock.

  Jake was beginning to get weirded out. What kind of crazy honor system did these savages have? He wasn’t about to kill her in cold blood but neither did he want to ritually own her that way. He tried to think of some other solution. He could hit her with the neural stunner but that was a temporary fix at best.

  It was a strange, savage world and he had to use every option at his disposal to survive. If he wanted to end this peacefully and maybe even come out with an ally, he’d have to start thinking like a 25th century man.

  He couldn’t let her go or she’d smash his head open. He couldn’t choke her to death because it wa
sn’t right. That left him a single option.

  He could feel his cock against her cunt. Warm and somehow wet for him. As the tip of him parted her lips the over warrior froze, the fight going out of her and Jake eased of on her windpipe enough she drew a breath, choking.

  “I’ll take you. If it means you don’t attack me anymore. If you do what I say.”

  “You champion. Is way. You take what you defeat,” she agreed.

  The neanderthal woman met his eyes, something softening in her expression, before again taking the position on all fours. This time she demurely looked back over her shoulder.

  “Take. Please,” she said quietly.

  Whatever hesitation Jake might have felt, his body had none. He was hard already. When in Rome, and all that, right?

  He slid inside her and Krill gave a shiver of satisfaction under him. Tossing the prybar aside he kept her pinned flat as he slowly eased in and out of her, both of them moaning at the intensity of it, mixed with the adrenalin of what had been a deadly combat a moment before. As he fucked her Jake ran his hands over her body and she shivered at his touch. Kneading her ponderous breasts, she gave a groan of satisfaction. Her arms were as big around as his thighs. Her shoulders like a horse. It was a strange sensation, having a woman so physically powerful submit to him. Jake felt a genuine desire start to build.

  He stroked the ginger mound between her legs and was surprised to find her swollen and wet. His fingers sank into her folds easily and Krill let out a throaty gasp, making demanding sounds as she pushed herself back on him. When he circled her big, swollen clit she gave a series of truncated gasps, almost like an animal sneezing, and came right away, shivering.

  “Take! Please!” she moaned louder.

  Jake gripped her by the shoulder, positioned himself, and began riding her with stronger thrusts. The female warrior became a machine of pure muscle as he took her. Krill moaned and arched, slamming back into him with every pounding blow into the hard grip of her cunt. She was muscled even there, rhythmically clenching him as he drove into her. She began to buck, harder and harder and Jake could tell she was approaching her climax as fast as he was. It was like riding a wild horse, her rippling oversized muscles like an animal racing at top speed, and it was all Jake could do to stay in the saddle.

  Together they approached a frantic rhythm and Jake could feel her orgasm wet and tight and threatening to bruise his cock with its force. But as she came he knew he had more to give her. He pounded harder, making her submit to his mastery as she bowed under him. She pleaded and cried out and shook as he continued to take her and when he finally did pour himself inside her she cried like a wounded animal as he pushed her flat to the ground, pinning her under his weight and delivering his thick load inside her tamed cunt.

  He lay on top of her a long moment, catching his breath, and felt her body quivering beneath him as she took in ragged breaths. Rolling off her, he left the female behemoth laying there as he collected his gear. What had just happened? How had he gone from nearly being killed by this strange woman to having her submit to his cock?

  “Krill yours now,” she said, red hair half concealing her face where she lay, flushed.

  “We’ll see,” Jake answered. “Stay here.”

  He returned to the hallway and leaned against the wall in the red glow of the grub lanterns. Retrieving the bucket of water as Krill watched curiously, he sluiced off the grime and blood off himself. Was it his imagination or was she giving him a look of adoration? In that moment she looked her true age and Jake saw she couldn’t have been older than twenty-one. Finished, and feeling mostly human, Jake returned to the muscled behemoth. She seemed confused when he began to wash her off. Under the grime she was cute, in a thick-nosed, heavy browed kindof way. There was a hot redhead under there. When he’d finished cleaning her with a rag – everywhere – he set the bucket aside and hurriedly getting dressed.

  His first warning the wizard was conscious and only faking it was another sudden nose-bleed inducing headache. Yowling in pain, Jacob stumbled to the hallway and into the other room. Before the pain began to blur his vision he pressed the barrel of the slugthrower against the wizard’s nose. The mutant’s eyes crossed comically, trying to focus on it.

  “Try that again,” Jacob winced, “And I will blow off the top of your skull. You understand me?” He realized he was talking to a mutant barbarian and actually might not be able to understand him. But hoped the gun got the point across.

  “Ai yinnerstand,” the wizard replied. The voice was nasal, weirdly lisping, but understandably speaking English.

  “You speak my words?”

  “The old holy tongue. Yes, I Do-good man, learn the words. To praise the Vox.”

  The thing made Jacob’s skin crawl, but he spoke better English than krill. “Fucking hell, you are an atrocity of mutations. What the fuck are you?”

  “I Yanco. Do-good man of the Vox. First among Voxers.” It paused. “Who you?”

  Jake throttled the urge to curb stomp the fucker to death. This was going in circles.

  “Stay here, don’t move,” Jake told the naked orange man and returned a moment later leading Krill. He’d sliced the restraints at her ankles but left the ones on her wrists. He sty her down and stood over the two captives. The Orange man was staring at Jake in confusion.

  “We… we kill you!” the wizard said, more as an uncertain statement, not a promise. “How you alive? Where you come from?”

  Ha! Little shit certainly didn’t know what he was messing with. They clearly had no idea what clones were. They probably thought he’d magically been reborn.

  “That’s right. You can’t kill me. I never die. Whatever voodoo shit you were doing, stay out of my head, because I come back. You’ll just make me angrier. Now, who are you? Who are you assholes?”

  “Voxers. We Voxers of the Voice. Killmen. You come from here? From where?”

  Jacob stepped back; gun still trained at Yanco’s face. “Never mind about me. What are you doing here?”

  “Holy place. Holy place of the Vox. Rizaractar, reverend high obeyer Rizaractar send here. For holy artefacts. With pilgrims, for the wylers.”

  “Wylers? What’s a wyler?”

  Yanco blinked his eyes. “In the holy tongue, say ‘hound’.”

  “Can you show me where this wyler is?” Maybe if this thing knew his way around, he could be helpful. “Buddy, I need the map.”

  “What kind of map?”

  The wrist-buddy responded in its normal, annoyingly cheerful voice but the effect on the mutant startled Jake to silence. It trembled and rocked back and forth, muttering some sort of nonsense words rapidly to itself over and over.

  “Uh, a map of this module,” Jake told the wrist-computer once he stopped being distracted.

  “Sure thing, ganz. I’ve got you covered,” the wrist-buddy chirped.

  Again the wizard shivered and tried to squirm his face to the floor. Krill started talking in some language that hovered on the edge of being understandable. The wizard spoke back in the same tongue and Jacob waved the gun at them until they stopped.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s asking if you are a holy servant from Vox,” Yanco said.

  “Oh. What do you think?”

  Yanco narrowed his eyes. “May be. You talk the holy language. But you’re not holy. Maybe a god’s legs. Legs for the Vox on your arm.”

  Interesting. Yanco spoke English because it was the language of speaking machines from the past. If he had to guess, these primitives treated computers like gods; maybe Yanco was some sort of priest for primitive screwheads. A whole cult worshipping cars like natives on some pacific island in World War Two.

  That was very informative about the world on the surface. That meant these guys were from a barbaric tribe or religious zealots who had lost all concept of history and technology.

  “Yanco, you call yourselves voxers. What does that mean?”

  “We hear the voice of th
e god, and make the voice pleased by making its will be done.”

  “Okay then, I totally am an emissary from one of your god voices.”

  “May be.”

  “You need proof?”

  “The Voice is truth. The Voice must be obeyed. Only the god of the Vox survives the centuries. From before the Dark. Before the blood time.”

  Jacob thought it over. He left the room and stood in the hallway before returning and holding up the wrist computer. A twirling graphic of the Nevermore bird appeared holographically in the air. The tiny speaker on the wrist buddy recited the memo he’d dictated into it a moment earlier.

  “Hear me Yanco! I, the Go-pad Wrist-buddy model 3E, speak to you with the voice of the gods! Hear the will of my command through my prophet, the Walkman Jacob! Hear and obey HIM. Hear and OBEY! Say it now!”

  “I hear and I obey,” Yanco’s face had gone slack with wonder. “Jay-cobb the Walkman, forgive my doubt in you. Forgive the presumption of this one. You have punished all but one of offending killmen. I offer you my service in Go-pad’s name. And this worthless female. Slit her throat. Take her soul to the Upload.”

  Was he just… offering up Krill as a sacrifice?

  “No,” Jacob tried to be diplomatic about not killing the muscled woman. The idea of cutting a helpless captive’s throat, especially one he’d just, uh, tamed, made his stomach turn.

  “I spare her life and yours that you may serve Go-pad and serve me. Do you accept?”

  “I obey,” both mutants bowed their heads as much as they could and spoke simultaneously.

  “Okay, so first thing’s first: you took my woman. And I want her back. Where is she?”

  Yanco gave a curious shiver and hesitated to reply. Krill muttered something and the priest hissed angrily. It went on back and forth before Jake clubbed the orange man across the bridge of the nose with the butt of the slugthrower.