Mort

by Rod Redux

  “Pete,” Mort whispered, his voice cracking.

  Pete jerked his shoulders in an odd way, and Mort realized that his friend was bound to the chair he was sitting in. Bands of gray duct tape encircled his chest, his wrists, his ankles.

  Coming more fully awake, Mort looked for Dao-ming. She was nodding in another chair in the corner of the room, similarly bound. Her cheek was resting against her shoulder. Her silken black hair hung half in her face.

  Mort tried to rise and found that he was also restrained. He pulled against the bindings but could not break them. His efforts did little but make his head throb. The wound in his lower thigh, however, was numb. Pete’s tourniquet had stopped the bleeding, but it had also made his entire right leg go to sleep.

  Mort surveyed the room in which they were being held captive. It was some kind of storage area, judging by the metal shelves and filing cabinets. The chrome shelving units were stocked with neatly organized shipping supplies: rolls of bubble wrap, boxes of tape and padded envelopes, labels, markers. The room was about twenty feet wide and twenty feet long. There was only one door. A Coleman lantern hissed in the corner, its glow hard and white, without glamour.

  “Where… where’s the gunman?” Mort croaked.

  Pete shrugged. “I dunno. He made us tape you to that chair, then he made Dao-ming tape me, then he did her and took off. He’s been gone about an hour, I think.

  “How many are there?” Mort asked.

  Pete shook his head. “I only seen the one guy.”

  Mort’s speculation was that they had been ambushed by a survivalist group. Bandits. If it was just the one guy, then they might have a better chance of escape.

  “How’s Dao-ming?”

  Pete looked toward their sleeping companion. He made a pained expression, cut his eyes toward Mort. He didn’t have to say anything. His look was enough. Dongmei’s murder had broken her spirit. She’d given up. That’s why she was sleeping when she should be trying to come up with some plan to win their freedom.

  “We need to figure out what the guy wants,” Mort started, but then they heard footfalls and Mort clammed up. A moment later, the door opened. The sniper strolled in, pushing a metal cart in front of him.

  “The city is burning,” the man said cheerily. “It’s beautiful. The skyline is orange and red like a sunset.” He paused, looking at Mort. “Oh! You’re awake.”

  Dao-ming roused. She caught sight of her sister’s killer and began to struggle against her bindings, cursing. Mort realized he had been wrong about her. She hadn’t given up. She’d merely been resting until her enemy returned.

  The killer glanced at her and smiled. He looked like he was trying to keep from laughing. “I’m impressed. Who would think a pretty little thing like you could know so many nasty curse words,” he taunted.

  Dao-ming grew even more furious. “I want to kill you!” she screeched, making her chair hop. “If I get loose from here--!”

  “Shut up,” the gunman said mildly, and he leveled a kick into Dao-ming’s breast, knocking her, and the chair, on their backs.

  Dao-ming’s mouth worked like a fish out of water. The blow had knocked the wind out of her. She stared at the ceiling, gasping, her hair fanned out on the floor in a glossy black corona.

  “Fuck!” Mort cried. “Listen, dude—please! -- don’t hurt her! What do you want? Maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement. We don’t even know why you’re holding us. We don’t have anything you can take. We’re just trying to get out of the city before it’s too late.”

  The sniper said casually, “It’s probably too late already. I’m sure we’re being dosed with gamma rays and neutron radiation even as we speak. That explosion earlier was the nuclear power plant blowing up. The whole city’s in flames.” He lifted an odd-looking instrument from the wheeled cart he’d pushed into the room. It was strangely phallic. With a lascivious grin, the man purred, “That don’t mean we can’t have some fun first!”

  The big man strolled across the room toward Mort. Though he was mountainous, his gait was smooth and cat-like. The muscles in his thick arms twitched and jerked as he stroked the cock-like barrel of his weapon, tool, whatever it was. Mort realized the man was sporting an erection. The gunman’s cock bulged in the front of his jeans angled up and to the left, looking very large and very hard. The sight of the man’s erection and the excited look in his face made Mort’s optimism crumble quickly. Their captor was no bandit. He was a lunatic.

  Straddling Mort’s thighs like a lover, the madman whispered into his ear: “My name’s Richard Rourke. The people I used to work for called me DaVinci. I used to kill people for a living, but now that the world’s ended, I’m just doing it for fun.”

  Mort tried to draw back from the terrible unwanted intimacy, but the lunatic, DaVinci, pushed his face back toward him with the cold steel barrel of the weapon.

  “Your name is Mort,” he murmured, looking intensely in Mort’s eyes. “I heard your friends call you that. I think it’s important we know each other by name.”

  “Get off him, you big fag!” Pete hectored. “Leave him alone!”

  DaVinci glanced toward Pete and smiled. “Relax, pretty boy. You’ll get your turn.” He returned his attention to Mort. His eyes were gray, empty. Though emotion played across the madman’s face, those same emotions did not touch his eyes. His gaze reminded Mort of cold, desolate plains, covered in snow. Secret groves locked in ice. Places where it would be a simple thing to hide a body. Maybe even a lot of bodies.

  “I normally like to take my time, get to know the people I kill. Sometimes we even become friends. The way the city’s burning, though, I don’t think we have the time. It’s a shame, really. I’ve been so lonely these past few weeks. I haven’t had anyone to play with except the zombies, and they’re no fun at all.”

  Mort sensed that the man’s words belied a deeper, darker sentiment. He needed something from Mort—but what? If he could figure out what that need was, could it win their lives?

  The man leaned in. His lips brushed Mort’s ear as he whispered: “When I was a little boy, my mother dragged me to church every Sunday morning. I hated church, all those phonies in their fancy Sunday clothes, pretending they believed in God. Even as a kid, I know they didn’t believe in anything. They were just there for show. When we got home after church, my father usually took me to the forest to chop wood. Do you know what my father did to me in the forest?”

  Mort shook his head no.

  DaVinci licked his lips. He leaned in even closer, putting the barrel of the weapon to Mort’s skull. “My father took me to the woods so he could fuck me. He’d pull his dick out of his zipper and make me kneel down on the ground in front of him. Then he’d grab my ears and fuck me in the mouth. He called me his little girl as he did it, his dirty little girl, and when he was bored of skullfucking me, he made me bend over a stump so he could put it in my ass.”

  Mort’s head was pounding. The metal barrel of the weapon felt very cold and slick against his head.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Mort said.

  The killer reared back, looking angry for a moment. Maybe even a little confused. He put his lips to Mort’s ear once more. “The thing that makes me feel the most ashamed, Mort, that nobody seems to understand, is that I liked it. It felt good. It turned me on. I liked sucking his dick, and I liked feeling him pumping away in my ass. The problem is, he made me promise to never tell. ‘You can never ever tell, Richie. Never tell anyone. Never.’”

  “You just told me,” Mort said.

  “I know,” the madman replied slyly.

  “Oh, God.”

  Whispering fiercely, DaVinci confessed: “All that dirty fucking in the woods… ahh… his big, nasty cock in me. When I was twelve, he laid me down in the bed of the truck when he was done fucking me and he sucked me off. It was the first time I came.” The killer was breathing hard and fast now in Mort’s ear. His big body was trembling. As he talked, he ground the barrel of the
weapon into Mort’s scalp. “His mouth was so warm and wet and I remember his stubble scratching my balls, and it felt… so… fucking… good! I came in his nasty pervert mouth, so, so hard. Felt like a gallon of cum. We were studying Greek mythology in school that week, and I looked at the sky and thought, Cronus, devouring his son. The French have a word for orgasm. La petite mort. You know what that means? It means ‘the little death’.”

  On that last word, he pulled the trigger.

  Mort’s body stiffened as the bolt punctured his skull. The rod plunged into his brain, then withdrew into the barrel with a sharp report, a sound like a firecracker.

  DaVinci orgasmed as Mort twitched between his powerful thighs. He held Mort tight between his legs, his buttocks clenching, his eyes squeezed shut, blood and cranial fluid spattering his face.

  “Mort!” Pete cried in horror. “Oh, you fucker! You killed my best friend!”

  DaVinci straddled Mort’s thighs until Mort’s body finished quivering. He sat there panting, orgasmic bliss, his cock throbbing, the intensity of release, relief. His tense muscles uncoiled. He exhaled slowly. Opening his eyes, he smiled. He stood and turned toward Pete. There was a broad wet circle on the front of his pants. The chunky guy’s redneck friend was next, and after that, the chink. Oh, he was going to enjoy himself tonight! Just like Nero, who had played the fiddle while Rome burned.

  The redneck was crying for his dead friend. His raw emotion was enticing. DaVinci wanted to lick those tears from his face. Taste his pain. Eat it. Have it inside him.

  “I wish you’d let me out of this fuckin’ chair so I could kill you,” the redneck seethed, tears running down his cheeks.

  DaVinci chortled.

  He dropped his captive bolt pistol on the cart and perused his other instruments. His eyes lit upon a particularly cruel looking blade and his cock began to stiffen again. He lifted the scalpel delicately. It gleamed, a dull gold color in the lantern light. It had rear-facing barbs below the blade. Went in like a hot knife in butter, but when it was pulled out…Yes, this would do just fine…!

  The assassin put his fingers to his forehead. He frowned. It felt like someone was poking him in the brain with little hot needles.

  The redneck stiffened in his seat then, mouth twisting in discomfort. “The fuh…?”

  Behind the killer, Mort stirred. He had a hole in his head and blood and cranial fluid was trickling down his cheek and neck, but somehow, amazingly, he wasn’t dead. Mort blinked around, eyes dim with pain and confusion. He was drooling, urine trickled onto the floor, but he was alive. “What? Where?” he couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought, but he wasn’t dead. Somehow he wasn’t dead. And he knew…! He knew DaVinci’s secret! The one he’d sworn to his daddy he’d never ever tell!

  Richard Rourke turned back toward Mort, scalpel in hand, ready to finish him off. The hot needles were still digging into his brain, but it was more important he kill his confessor. No one could know and live!

  The door of the storage room blew off its hinges then.

  It opened with such force that it shot across the room and clapped off the far wall, narrowly missing Mort and the assassin.

  Rourke and Pete gaped at the man who stepped into the room. Mort just continued to drool.

  “Here you are!” the stranger said mildly.

  He was tall, lanky, dressed in black. His skin was pale, his eyes dark. He had long, silky black hair that flowed down from a high widow’s peak. Pete squeezed his eyes shut, opened them wide. Looking at the newcomer made his head hurt. The tall, pale man seemed to shimmer as he strode into the room. His image doubled, wavered, like he was more mirage than man.

  “We had a little trouble finding you all,” the pale man said. “For a moment or two, I was afraid we would have to abandon you to your fates.”

  Two others followed him into the room, a male and a female. Like their leader, the newcomers were tall and thin and pale, dressed in black leather garments with large dark eyes and narrow, angular faces.

  DaVinci charged at them with a roar, brandishing his weapon.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” The one at the fore of the trio spoke in a gentle voice. He held out a white hand with long thin fingers. DaVinci froze in mid-charge with a grunt of surprise. Narrowing his eyes, the newcomer murmured, “That’s better. Now, let’s have a look in there and see what we can see…”

  DaVinci’s face twisted. He mewled in pain. “Stop it! That hurts!”

  “Goodness, you’re a rotten one,” the pale man said softly, as if to himself. “You’ve been a very, very naughty boy, haven’t you, Richard?” He tittered sadly. “I’m afraid we can’t take you with us. You wouldn’t be able to get along with the others. No… as much as it pains me to say it, there’s no way you could be trusted to behave yourself. Not one bit.”

  He looked over his shoulder to his companions. “HaMerkavah, Gabriel, could I trouble you to dispose of this one? I’m afraid he’s far too dangerous to take with us to New Jerusalem.”

  As Pete watched in mute astonishment, the two pale newcomers took DaVinci by the arms and led him from the room. Mort tried to follow the exchange, but he was having trouble just staying conscious. His head was pounding. Warm fluid trickled down his neck and chest. Dao-ming lay on the floor on her back, trying to see what was happening. “What is it? Who’s here?” she asked. “What’s going on, guys?” It was almost funny, their threesome’s sad state.

  DaVinci objected as the two pale beings led him through the doorway and into the hallway outside, but he did not struggle. A moment later, out of sight, there was a brief scuffle, a cry and then soft slurping sounds.

  “My name is Metatron,” their rescuer said as he approached Mort, looking sympathetic. “We’ve come to save you.”

  Mort sucked his drool back into his mouth and tried to speak. “What are you?” he croaked.

  “What do you think I am?” Metatron asked.

  Mort stared him in the eyes. His brain prickled vaguely, but no glamour swept across his thoughts to blind him to the reality of the thing. The creature standing before him was sallow and gaunt. Chalky skin stretched taut across bone, eyes sunken and too large and black to be human. It had red lips and rows of sharp, shark-like teeth. Mort could see blue veins wriggling beneath its thin chalky skin like worms. He opened his mouth to name the creature, but found that he could no longer remember the word. He brain was not working right for some reason.

  Metatron leaned close and sniffed Mort. He raised up, a smile of satisfaction on his lips. “You’re a little worse for wear, but don’t worry. We’ll nurse you back to health in no time, Mort. You—and your companions—are so very precious to us. More than you can know. So very… very… precious.”

  The others had returned to the room, smiling in satisfaction. Of DaVinci, there was no sight or sound.

  The one called Metatron turned then toward DaVinci’s cart and selected a blade from its surface. He examined the instrument’s keen edge, a thoughtful smile on his face, then cut away the bands of tape binding Mort to his seat.

  Despite his bulk, Metatron lifted Mort into his arms and carried him from the room. It was as if he weighed no more than a child.

  Mort did not resist.

  The others were helping Pete and Dao-ming to their feet. Both of his friends looked wobbly and confused, but for some reason, Mort knew they would be safe in the care of these strange, horrid things. Though he could not recall their name, not even the shape of the word, he knew the one carrying him had spoken the truth. We are precious to them, Mort thought. Of course we are. It’s a no-brainer.

  Outside, the city burned. Mort gaped in wonder as the being called Metatron floated with him into the air. It was like they’d suddenly become buoyant, a helium balloon, unshackled from gravity.

  DuChamp receded beneath them. Mort watched his hometown diminish. The city streets were stitched in orange flame. The wind whipped and gusted around them, making whooshing sounds in his ear. They passed through a billow
of smoke, its warmth and acrid stink enveloping them for just a moment, and then Metatron wheeled slowly in the air, pointed west.

  The moon at their shoulder, the city below.

  They flew.

  Part Two

  City of the Archons

  13

  The Infirmary

  “Good morning, Mort. Remember me? I’m Marilyn Beecher. I came to see you last Thursday. I was hoping you felt well enough to talk to me for a little while today. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Mort woke from a dream of flying and looked at the woman who’d just walked into his room. He pushed himself up in his bed and smiled. His cheek was creased from his pillow and his hair was tousled—what little hair the surgical team hadn’t shaved off when they treated his head injury, which wasn’t much. Although his eyes were swollen and still a little bruised, he felt good. He’d recovered speedily in the last three weeks.

  Marilyn Beecher was a nice-looking woman. A psychologist by profession, she was blonde, fit. She had a narrow nose and a smattering of freckles on her cheeks: a girlish face she tried to disguise with rectangular granny glasses set low on the bridge of her nose. She was dressed in a white lab coat and skirt, and carried a clipboard and a stack of square white cards. The cards were about eight inches by eight inches.

  “Good morning,” Mort said hoarsely. He winced and touched his throat. He hadn’t done too much talking lately. “Come on in.”

  Mort had spent two weeks in the critical care unit of the infirmary, here in the sprawling complex called New Jerusalem. He’d been a patient in the infirmary since the flying things rescued Mort and his companions from the psycho who called himself DaVinci. Mort’s caregivers—and Mort himself, to be honest—were not too sure he’d pull through. DaVinci had wounded him grievously. Mort had lost a lot of blood, and the captive bolt pistol the killer had used on him had done quite a bit of damage. Yet, somehow Mort had survived. He’d come back from the brink. He was on the mends. The medical staff had moved him from CCU to the unskilled ward a few days ago.