by Will Lemen
"Derek, see if you can find something to start a fire with, matches or butane lighter would be good," I said, while pinching off the blood flow from the bleeding stump. "And check the windows; somehow these god damn flies are getting in here."
"What do you need matches for?" Jolene asked, pulling the second lace from the boot.
"To cauterize the wounds, just like I did to that bitch that tried to kill me down by the Wolf River in Tennessee," I answered without the slightest sense of guilt. "I'm still keeping a breast of the situation for her."
Beth and I tied off the bleeding stub that replaced the Sarge's trigger finger, and waited for Derek to return.
It wasn't long before Derek returned with what he'd found.
"Somebody left the bedroom window open," Derek accused, knowingly looking at Beth.
"Sorry, I was concentrating more on trying to save your sorry ass than worrying about a couple of insects getting in here," Beth teased, crinkling up her nose.
"I found this propane torch out in the garage, will it do?" Derek asked, waving the torch from side to side.
"Perfect, if you brought the flint mechanism to light it?" I answered, reaching for the torch.
"Of course I did, my mama didn't raise no fool," Derek stated proudly.
"That would be your mother the nun, right?" Jolene laughed.
Derek started to respond with some of his homemade horseshit, but when he saw all of us grinning and waiting to hear his concocted answer, he just handed the flint to me and said nothing.
I lit the torch and adjusted the flame to full. Then I held the yellow portion of the fire at the end of the blue flame to the Sarge's newly formed stump and charred it until the blood turned black.
"Loosen the tourniquet slightly, and let's move on to this bastard's left hand," I ordered, setting down the torch and retrieving the meat cleaver once more.
Beth and I repeated the amputation process on the Sarge's other hand, and cauterized that wound too.
"It's about my turn isn't it?" Beth inquired, smiling. "You promised that you'd leave some of him for me."
"Okay, as long as you don't kill him," I insisted. "What do you have in mind?"
Beth picked up the propane torch and began to heat up the blade of her pocketknife.
"This will not only sterilize it, but it should cauterize each side of the cut as I go."
The operation so far had taken the better part of an hour, and we started to hear moans coming from the Sarge.
"The bastard is waking up, I'd better get started," Beth uttered, as she climbed between the Sarge's legs.
"Holy shit in a sack, what are you going to do?" Derek screeched out.
"This fucker never tried to fuck me after I made it clear to him that I didn't want a sexual relationship with him. He never raped me or anything like that, he just beat the shit out of me constantly and stuck me in the communal housing unit," Beth admitted. "Nevertheless, I saw him sexually abuse a lot of other bitches along the way, some of which his actions took by surprise, others deserved what they got, some thought they needed it, and some even begged for it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't really give a shit about any of them, but he enjoyed their company whether they liked his crude advances or not, and I'm going to make damn sure that he never gets to enjoy the pleasure of a woman's company ever again! Even if he can find some whore that can stand to get naked with the freak!"
With her knife blade now glowing red hot, Beth proceeded to make a cut along the bottom of the Sarge's scrotum.
"She's cutting his nard sack!" Derek bellowed, grabbing his own nut satchel, as the scent of singed bag hair filled the room.
Beth continued to slice the underside of the testicle hammock, cauterizing the open cut as she went, until both of the Sarge's balls were peeking out the slit.
"That should do it," Beth said, as she laid her knife on the floor and reached for the left ball.
"Do you think that you might be going a little overboard?" I asked, cringing at the sight of the exposed nards.
"No more overboard than you hacking off some woman's tit and tying it on to your belt," she answered. "The only difference that I can see is that I'm not going to castrate him and wear his nut pouch as a fashionable accessory like you're doing with that boob. Though, I probably should."
"Oh, you noticed my titty bag?" I asked proudly, lifting Cassandra's leather tit for all to see.
"I wondered what that was," Jolene admitted, as she grimaced at the thought of a severed breast and crossed her arms over her own. "Now I get it, you're going to keep a breast of the situation for her."
"Indeed he is!" Derek laughed, until he saw what Beth did next.
As the redheaded ex-Marine began to regain consciousness and feel the pain of our revenge, Beth wormed her thumb and index finger into his the gap in his scrotum and carefully slide out one of his testicles.
"First one, and then the other," she said, as she gently pinched the remaining gonad between her fingers.
"I think I'm going to puke!" Derek announced softly, as his face turned almost as pale as the Caucasians.
"Grow a spine," Beth ordered, as she began to reheat her knife. "And quit squeezing your nuts or I'll make you take a couple of swigs of this hooch."
While the Sarge's groans increased in regularity and volume as he continued to come to, my new girlfriend applied the red-hot blade of her knife to his rocky mountain oyster sack once more, this time to close the incision around the stems of his dangling nards to prevent them from being sucked back inside the bag.
"All done!" Beth exclaimed proudly, as she stood up and wiped some of the seared skin from the crinkled nard sling off her knife and onto the Sarge's bare thigh.
By now, the Sarge had awoken enough to begin screaming in agony. The pain was so overwhelming that he would slide back into an unconscious state for some time, then regain consciousness and begin screaming again, and then he would repeat the process repeatedly.
"If he keeps this shit up, he's going to lather up any eaters that are close to the house, and we'll never get out of here," Beth warned.
"I noticed you called them Eaters, I have taught you well Sweetie," I jested.
"If you say so," Beth responded. "I say we shut this guy up before he gets us all killed."
"I agree."
"Me too," Jolene chimed in.
"Me too," Derek repeated, his face back to its normal color again, and his own prairie oyster pouch now hanging free.
I ripped a piece off the dining room tablecloth, wadded it up and stuffed it into the Sarge's temporarily unconscious and quiet mouth.
Then I walked into the living room and looking out the front window.
"His child like howling brought us to the attention of several eaters outside," I informed the group. "It looks like the dogs are gone, but there's a lot of eaters out in the yard munching on the carrion."
"What are we going to do?" Jolene asked, again draping herself over Derek's shoulders.
"Well I don't know what you and Derek are going to do, but if we can keep this piece of shit that's tied to that table quiet for awhile, me and Jack are going to get properly reacquainted," Beth answered, pulling me toward the bedroom she had been sniping from when we arrived at the house.
The flies that were inadvertently allowed inside the bedroom after Beth had left the window partially open were still there when she shoved me onto the bed. I would have preferred to peel my duds while standing, but I did the best I could in the prone position while lying on the bed watching her peel hers.
I soon found out that no professional bronco rider still alive in the country or for that matter that ever lived, had anything on Beth.
Right out of the chute, Beth impressed me with her ability to maintain a steady rolling motion while she balanced with one hand in the air and shooed away some of the menacing flies that were attracted to the smell of fish.
As I lay on the bed beneath her fulfilling my manly obligation, I felt that with
her expertise in the saddle, she was more than capable of extending her 8-second ride indefinitely.
I'm not sure what Derek and Jolene were doing while Beth was busy performing at her own personal rodeo, but when we emerged from the coral, my manly duties had been performed to Beth's complete satisfaction.
"It's about time you two got back out here, Red here has been awake for awhile now, and he finally shut the hell up," Jolene said, still hanging on Derek.
"I think the coast is clear, most of the undead have moved on to greener pastures," Derek added, as he casually groped at Jolene's boobs.
"Get a room you two," I joked. "I'm going to talk to my old buddy Sarge."
The Sarge was in shock from the righteous carving that had been done on him, and we hadn't even let him see himself in a mirror yet.
A stream of urine flowed onto the floor as his tortured and confused brain tried to discern which muscles to tension and which ones to relax.
"I am not as warm and fuzzy as I was in Iraq and Afghanistan Sarge," I told him while pulling the torn tablecloth out of his mouth. "I might have been able to forgive you if you'd just run out on me, but you left my family to suffer at the hands... well the mouths of hundreds of eaters, and there is no forgiving that. You might as well have put a gun to their heads and pulled the trigger."
"Beth left with me, she left them too," the Sarge mumbled, as he pleaded with me.
"Well Beth wasn't driving, you were, she was just a passenger in your getaway bus," I explained, turning and winking at Beth.
The Sarge strained to lift his head up and looked down between his legs to see the cause of the immense pain emanating from that area of his body.
"What the fuck did you do to me?" he yelled as loud as he could given his circumstances.
"Well like they used to say in the ancient Near East harems, tough tunics said the eunuchs," I answered, smiling. "And if you keep shouting, I'll cram this rag back in your mouth."
"I'll kill you for this," the tied down former military man promised with a groan.
"Calm down Sarge, technically you're not a eunuch, your balls are still intact, they have just been relocated slightly," I assured him. "And besides, I didn't do that to you, my girlfriend Beth did."
Beth leaned down and looked the Sarge directly in the eye.
"That's right, I did that to you, tough shit for you," she said, glaring at him.
Even though it was difficult for Ron to see through the intense pain he was suffering, he managed to muster enough strength, and saliva, to attempt to spit in Beth's face.
As the sputum left his mouth, I raised my right hand and blocked the spittle's path.
"Nice stop Jack," Derek blurted out.
"Yes, a very nice stop," Beth agreed, kissing me on the cheek. "And that makes me think, if he can see me well enough to spit in my face, I think he's carrying around one too many eyeballs."
"No don't let her do that Jack, please don't let her do that," the Sarge begged, as he began to weep.
"You've got to learn to eat the pain like candy Sarge," I consoled him, as I wiped his goober off my hand onto his face. "I thought I taught you that in Iraq?"
The Sarge screamed in pain and once more passed out as Beth plunged the first two inches of her pocketknife blade into the his dominant eye socket, which severed some of the muscles and allowed her to pluck the eyeball out and lay it onto his cheek.
"No need to tear it all of the way out, it's damaged enough that he'll never see out of it again," Beth assured, as she cleaned the juices off the blade with one of the Sarge's socks.
"If you two are done playing around, do you think we might want to get the hell out of here before those feral dogs get a wild hair up their ass and decide to return to the scene of the crime?" Derek asked, picking up his gear.
I turned to Beth and whispered in her ear.
"He's right; we had better get going before the dogs come back, anyway if we keep cutting and piercing him, we're going to end up killing him, and I really don't want to do that."
Beth agreed and we all picked up our stuff and prepared to leave the house.
"You guys go first, I'm going to release this shit-hook back into the wild," I ordered, as I pulled my tomahawk from my tactical vest and chopped the cords in two that were binding the ex-sergeant's feet to the table.
With another swift blow of my blade to the cord holding his left wrist tightly to the table leg, the cord snapped and let his arm drop to the floor.
I was not completely satisfied with the results of heinous acts that Beth and I had perpetrated on the Sarge (he hadn't suffered enough), and even knowing that with the injuries that he had sustained, it would take a miracle for this man to ever have the means to catch up to me and Beth. Even if by some strange quirk of fate, he was somehow able to follow us into the zombie wastelands without being eaten; his mutilated body would only pose a minimal threat to us.
In fact, he reminded me of a joke that I once heard about a dog. It went something like this.
Lost one brown and white male dog, he is missing his left ear, which was chewed off in a fight. He had to have his right hind leg amputated due to being hit by a speeding automobile. Sometime ago my dog developed a dreadful infestation of flees which he has been unable to shake, and an incurable case of mange which the vet says is terminal. He is friendly and won't bite because his previous owner knocked out his teeth with a crowbar. He answers to the name Lucky.
So, with that old joke fresh in my mind.
As I lifted my tomahawk to cut the last cord, and the sergeant began to stir once more.
I quickly changed the direction that I was going to swing my small ax, and instead of clipping the last tie that bound the man to the table, I sliced off one half inch of the end of his nose. You know, cut off his nose to spite his face.
While I was at it, I decided to carve off both of the Sarge's ears too, you know, give him that complete Frankenstein look that biker chicks dig.
Only one cord held him to that dining room table, and even with his index fingers missing, I assured him that he would have no trouble loosening his bond and freeing himself.
"I've got to go now Sarge! See ya, wouldn't want to be ya," I told him, thinking that he most likely didn't hear a word that I said over his girlish screaming.
Satisfied that my work there was done, and my vendetta against the Sarge was now complete, I left the house and found that Beth and the others had waited for me just outside the door near a pile of twitching rejects that couldn't cut the mustard in the Indiana Badlands.
"Where to now Jack?" Derek asked, shrugging his shoulders the best he could with Jolene hanging on them.
"Well, the Caucasian's men are north and I doubt that they will be too happy to see us if we show up back at the fortress." I answered. "Anyway, who in the hell wants to stay in the Indiana Badlands, I certainly don't. I'm going to head back down south and see if our Chevy is still where we left it. I'm falling behind on my weekly quota of felony hit and runs you know."
"You mean we're going to head back down south don't you?" Beth asked, smiling and raising her eyebrows.
Hoping that Beth would ask that exact question, I responded with a smile and a wink.
"Indeed I do honey, indeed I do."
You see back then I used to call her honey, of course that was before she found out that it was bee shit. Since then I have chosen my words a little more wisely.
We scurried out of the neighborhood as fast as we could, fearing that the pack of feral dogs might still be in the area, only hesitating momentarily on occasion, to alleviate any cannibalistic threats that tried to encumber our trek south.
Approximately 10 hours after we left the Sarge wishing that he'd never met me or Beth, the hue and saturation of the daylight began to change rapidly.
"What's happening?" Beth asked. "Everything is getting brighter and turning white.
"I see that," I answered.
Derek yelled. "What the fuck!"
Th
en we all heard Jolene scream.
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CAPTAIN XARR TO THE RESCUE
"Captain Xarr, all of the successful conscripts have been taken aboard the ship, and the pre-extinction bipedal carnivorous creatures have been released to destroy the remaining control groups left on the planet as per your orders," Lieutenant Zeem reported.
"Lieutenant Zeem, what determination have you made to cope with the remaining test subject groups that our research on this planet have found to be unsuitable for use in the Anunnaki military cause that has brought us to this world?" Captain Xarr asked.
"Captain Xarr, I have ordered that the genetic differentiation chips which were inserted into the pre-extinction bipedal carnivorous beasts prior to their initial release and properly readjusted after Lieutenant Jol's debacle to insure the proper result for our mission, to be again readjusted to reflect our needs concerning the remaining test subject groups." Lieutenant Zeem explained.
"Elaborate Lieutenant Zeem," Captain Xarr ordered.
With the fate of Private Jol, formally Lieutenant Jol fresh in his mind the replacement officer answered his captain.
"Captain Xarr!" Lieutenant Zeem shouted, as he snapped to attention for effect. "The latest adjustments made to the genetic differentiation chips will ensure through attrition, that the remaining test subject groups will no longer be able to travel unencumbered on the planet's surface or in their man-made subterranean caverns. All test subject groups or individual test subjects still existing on any one of the seven continents of this planet will be looked at as a main food source for the planet's prehistoric beasts we have released, and be devoured by them on sight."
"Excellent Lieutenant Zeem!" the Captain barked, indicating his approval. "You may not need to join Private Jol in the indoctrinating persecution chamber in Bay 5 after all.
"Yes Captain Xarr, I mean, No Captain Xarr," Lieutenant Zeem replied, as he again felt his over exerted sphincter muscle strain as it put a strangle hold on his overly exercised alimentary canal.
"Now bring me the sole survivor of the test subject group 32452013, the one that the earthers call Jack Doom," the commander ordered. "And see to it that no harm comes to the rest of his newly formed group, or any of the other test subject groups that were brought from the planet's surface."