“I know who you are,” he whispers as he nibbles on my ear. “You and your friends helped bring down that bitch Klaxton. Thanks to you, her replacement, LeBeau, reopened the Amazon for deforestation. These past few months I’ve made a killing selling limber and rare, exotic animals. You wouldn’t believe what people will pay for a bird of paradise, or an anaconda.”
“Please… stop this…” I whimper.
“Shhh, don’t worry, my love,” Ramirez says. “I won’t hurt you. In fact, I plan on making you my prized mistress. I mean, sure I’ll have to share you with the other guys from time to time, but I plan on mostly keeping you for myself. Sorry I can’t say the same about your friends, especially the boys. River will be used as bait to lure her tribesmen out of hiding, as I mentioned before, and that fat black friend of yours might make a useful sex slave. There are some men who like that sort of thing. But that brash friend of yours… Lance is his name? Yes, I will personally gut him like a pig. We’ll also have to dispose of that other good-looking kid, the one who was wearing those cool laser beam goggles. Although some of my bisexual men might want to have a little erotic fun with him first. And that cyborg friend of yours… he definitely has to go. He snapped the necks of three of my most loyal men when you all were being brought to your cells. He was playing opossum and decided to strike when my men were least expecting it. I was tempted to put a bullet in his skull right then and there, but where’s the fun in that? I like to play with my prey a while… keep them alive long enough so they can sit there and think… wonder when the end is coming. If it’s coming. Maybe even get them to beg for their lives. I always enjoy seeing grown men grovel. I’ve learned over the years that it’s the unknown that troubles most men. Needless to say, I enjoy psychological warfare. Almost as much as I love gorgeous redheads like yourself.”
Ramirez shoves his lips against mine and thrusts his tongue down my throat.
That disgusting, revolting act is what jolts me into action. It’s almost like Ramirez turned on a switch. The entire time he was lying on top of me, all I could think about was how fearful I was as a child. That made me fearful now, in the present day. But I now remember how I felt shortly after Lance’s uncle rescued me from my life on the streets. I remember feeling empowered… defiant… victorious. I survived. And I made a promise to myself that I would never become a victim… ever, EVER again. Ramirez has awakened a sleeping giant, and she is pissed the fuck off.
I spit out Ramirez’s tongue and growl, “Remember what I told you would happen if you so much as laid a finger on me?”
“Yeah, something about killing me,” Ramirez chortles. “I’d like to see you try.”
“If you say so.”
With lightning-fast speed, I jerk my head forward and sink my teeth into Ramirez’s throat. Ramirez screams in unfathomable agony as my teeth rip deep into his jugular. Blood gushes out of his gaping neck wound and trickles into my mouth, but I don’t care. My only concern at the moment is killing this sick son of a bitch in the most painful, horrifying way imaginable.
Ramirez starts punching me in the face. I open my mouth for a split-second, but before Ramirez can move away, I lunge forward and chomp back onto his neck. This bite sinks even deeper than the first one. I’m like a rabid pitbull who just won’t let go. (The dog, not the psychotic cyborg.)
Once I have a good chunk of Ramirez’s flesh clenched between my teeth, I yank my head back, tearing out a significant portion of his throat. Ramirez’s eyes widen in horror as he topples off of his bed and thrashes around on the floor. Gallons of blood pour out of the massive hole in his neck. It’s really disgusting, to be honest. I spit out the hunk of flesh still in my mouth and walk around his hemorraghing body. Ramirez is good as dead now. Hopefully he takes a long time to die. I truly want him to suffer. Not just for what he tried to do to me, but for the violence he has undoubtedly perpetrated against dozens, perhaps hundreds, of women. People like Ramirez deserve to die the most horrifying deaths possible. They deserve no mercy whatsoever.
I make my way over to the door and attempt to grab the doorknob with my handcuffed hands. I just start to turn it when the door suddenly swings open, nearly knocking me over in the process. I manage to keep my balance and spin around to find Ramirez’s massive bodyguards bursting into the room.
“You okay, boss?” the first bodyguard asks, glancing around the room. “We heard some commotion and thought… what the fuck???”
The bodyguard looks down and catches sight of Ramirez sprawled out on the floor, blood gushing out of his neck like water from a burst fire hydrant.
“Oh God!” the bodyguard screams, his cheeks bulging out as he tries not to vomit.
I don’t waste any time taking action. I leap into the air and dropkick the guard in the back of his head. He stumbles forward and falls right on top of Ramirez. The bodyguard screams even louder as he gets covered in Ramirez’s blood.
Without my hands available to break my fall, I slam face-first onto the floor. Thankfully it’s covered in a soft carpet that prevents my nose from breaking in half. I roll onto my back and swing my legs underneath the other bodyguard, who is still shell-shocked by the grisly scene he’s stumbled upon. The bodyguard wildly waves his arms in a desperate attempt to keep his balance, but it’s a losing battle. The massive, bulging bodyguard falls flat on his face, causing the entire room to shake.
While Ramirez’s dimwitted bodyguards struggle to get to their feet, I dash out of the room and make my way back to the prison ward. I dash down the stairs Ramirez’s goons carried me up and skid to a halt in front of the sliding steel door to the prison. I take a quivering deep breath and kick the door with my right foot.
One of the mercenaries inside shouts, “Just a minute!”
I hear some movement behind the door. I also hear Lance and the gang hollering violent death threats at our captors. Little do they realize they are about to get the opportunity to make those ‘threats’ a reality. At least, I hope.
The door finally slides open and one of the mercenaries stares at me.
“What are you… AGGGHHH!!!”
In the blink of an eye I lunge forward and bite out a chunk of the mercenary’s throat. The mercenary gags and staggers backwards as I sprint inside and deliver a spinning roundhouse kick to the skull of the other mercenary, who was still digging through our pile of crap. The mercenary falls sideways, knocked out cold by my brutal kick.
The entire cell block erupts in cheers. I spit out the hunk of flesh I tore out of the first mercenary’s neck and flash a bloodied smile at Lance.
“Happy to see me?”
“More than you’ll ever know!” Lance says with a giant grin, rattling his steel bars like crazy. He then cocks an eyebrow and says, “Wait, did you just bite out that guy’s throat?”
I turn around, showing him my cuffed wrists. “Sometimes you have to improvise.”
I hear Lance mutter, “Sick,” but I don’t pay him any attention. I lean over the mercenary I just knocked out and use my toes to grab the ring of keys hanging from his belt. I then kick the keys over to Lance. Lance snatches them off the floor and starts shoving the various keys into his door’s keyhole. The first five don’t fit, but the sixth one is the charm.
“Sweet!” Lance shouts over the growing roar of the other prisoners, deliriously awaiting their own emancipation from evil.
Lance swings open his cell door and rushes over to me, giving me a crushing bearhug.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Firecracker,” he gushes, holding my face in his trembling hands.
“I’m glad you’re okay, too, Lance,” I say, slightly taken aback by his outpouring of affection. “Er, would you mind unlocking my cuffs? They’re digging into my wrists.”
“Of course!”
Lance goes to work shoving several different keys into the keyhole on my handcuffs. After seven or eight failed attempts, he finally finds the right one. I hear a glorious clicking sound, followed by the cuffs slipping off of my wrists. I
swing my arms in front of me and massage my bruised wrists, relishing the liberating feeling one has after being released from their manacles. Not only do my wrists feel a lot better now that cold, hard steel isn’t cutting into my skin, but it’s also psychologically liberating. Only people who have been in shackles can relate to the sense of relief I’m feeling.
Ramirez’s burly bodyguards suddenly burst into the room, huffing and puffing from all the running they had to do.
“Freeze bitch, or we’ll shoot!” one of the bodyguards shouts, holding his handgun sideways like he’s some sort of gangster. “You nasty vampire! Biting out people’s throats! That’s not natural!”
Lance shouts behind me, “Boom Boom, get down!”
I drop to my knees just as Lance leaps over me and tackles the bodyguard who called me a ‘vampire’. They both end up crashing to the floor. Lance knocks away the bodyguard’s gun and starts viciously punching him in the face.
The other bodyguard aims his gun at Lance. Before he can pull the trigger, I rush over and sweep my legs underneath him, sending the giant oaf crashing onto the concrete floor. The back of his skull makes a sick cracking sound, and a puddle of blood oozes out from beneath him. I quickly snatch up the fallen bodyguard’s pistol and point it at his forehead.
The bodyguard raises his hands and begs, “Please don’t kill me! I have a wife and kids! It was nothing personal, I was just following orders! Doing my job! Please, let me go and I promise I won’t ever bother you again!”
I cock the gun and reply, “You’re right about one thing. You won’t ever bother me again.”
BLAM!
The bodyguard’s head snaps back as blood and brain matter explode out of the back of his skull. The goon’s eyes bulge out for a few seconds before his quivering eyelids close for the last time. I used to feel remorseful whenever I executed someone, but not this time. This asshole deserved it, just like Ramirez deserved having his throat ripped out.
I hear another thunderous BANG! and spin around to find Lance standing over the other bodyguard, holding a handgun.
“This was easier than I thought it would be,” Lance says before rushing over to Alex’s cell door and unlocking it.
As Lance moves on to River’s cell, Alex wraps me up in his arms. Kissing me on the cheek, he says, “I was worried sick when they took you away. I was afraid I’d never….”
Alex trails off as he hugs me even tighter. I appreciate his warm embrace more than he’ll ever know. After nearly getting raped, I could really use a hug from a friend.
Lance is in the process of freeing Krystal when two more mercenaries burst into the room, clutching machine guns. I quickly take them down with gunshots to the head. The floor is now completely covered in blood.
“Let’s get everyone out of their cells and armed with weapons!” I shout, taking control of a rapidly escalating situation. “We don’t want to be standing here twiddling our thumbs when the alert goes out that a prison break is underway!”
Lance hands the keychain to one of the native women he freed and directs her to start opening the other cell doors. Then he and Krystal dash over to the giant pile of guns, ammunition, and body armor Alex and I are already digging through.
Krystal gives me a crushing bear hug and lifts me into the air, swinging me around like a rag doll. “Ohh Boom Boom, I was so scared when they took you away! Did you take care of that asshole Ramirez?”
“Yes, I bit his throat out,” I groan as Krystal continues swinging me around.
Krystal suddenly drops me and says, “You did what now?!”
We all grab our body armor and put it on. Lance retrieves his robotic glove and slides it onto his right hand.
“Ahh, much better,” Lance says, wriggling his gloved fingers. “I just don’t feel right when I’m not wearing this.”
“I feel the same way about my goggles,” Alex says, picking his visor out of the pile and sliding them over his eyes.
Grenade bangs on his steel door and hollers, “Will you nitwits shut up and bust me out of here?! I’m getting claustrophobic!”
“Grenade, I’m sorry!” I say in horror. “We completely forgot about you!”
“I’ll get him out,” Alex says, firing two laser beams at the left side of the door. He moves his head in a rectangular motion, blasting through all the hinges. When his lasers finally make it all the way around, the steel door collapses onto the concrete floor with a resounding thud.
Grenade storms out of his cell with a big sadistic smile. “Now this is what I’m talking about! An old-fashioned prison break! Stuff like this makes me feel young again!”
“Ooookay,” Lance says as he pops an ammunition cartridge into a machine gun and hands it to River.
I glance around the room and notice only half of the prisoners have been released. It’s taking far too long going cell to cell, trying all the keys until we find the right one. To speed things up, Grenade marches around the room, snapping the bars with his bionic hand. That certainly expedites the process. Less than a minute later, all 30-plus freed natives are gathered around us, murmuring excitedly as we pass out machine guns, daggers, electric swords, tasers, and any other weapon we can find.
Lance just hands out the last handgun to a small boy (no older than 13) when sirens start blaring and red lights flash from the ceiling. A voice over the intercom proclaims, “This is a red alert! I repeat, this is a red alert! We have a security breach in the prison ward! I repeat, we have a security breach in the prison ward! All available units report to the prison! Use any and all means necessary to quell the uprising!”
“Let’s roll!” Grenade growls, heading toward the door. “Everyone make your way to the jungle!”
Before Grenade can step out the door, two mercenaries run up to him, their guns a-blazing. Several bullets slam into Grenade’s Kevlar vest and bounce off his bionic arm. Grenade responds with a brutal assault the likes of which most of the kids in the room will have nightmares about for years to come.
The first thing Grenade does is sock one of the mercenaries in the mouth with his steel fist, knocking out most of the goon’s teeth. Grenade follows up that act of shocking violence by grabbing the goon’s neck and snapping it with one rigid twist of his arm. The sickening crack that rings out through the prison is something I won’t soon forget.
The second mercenary stares at Grenade in stunned horror, shell-shocked by the brutal demise of his good buddy. Grenade wastes no time whipping out a dagger and plunging it into the mercenary’s belly. The mercenary screams in terrific agony as Grenade yanks the dagger upwards, all the way up to his chest. The mercenary’s body splits open and his guts spill onto the floor.
“Jesus Christ, Grenade,” I say, looking away and struggling not to vomit. Most of the women and children watching do vomit.
Krystal apparently finds Grenade’s inhumane methods of butchery admirable because she cackles and gives him a high five. “Now that’s what I’m talking about, Grenade! Show them sons of bitches who’s boss!”
Grenade scowls and tosses his bloodied dagger to the ground. “Sorry kids,” he says gruffly to the traumatized native children in the room. “Sometimes Uncle Grenade gets very angry and does very violent things.”
“Uncle Grenade?” Lance says, amused.
“Did you not hear the part about what happens when I get angry?” Grenade snarls. “Now everyone shut your traps and follow me!”
“Who’s idea was it to invite him along again?” Lance whispers.
“Shut up and move,” I say, shoving him toward the door.
We all cautiously side-step the bloodied, bullet-riddled, disemboweled bodies littering the floor and dash down the lengthy hallway just outside the cell block. The piercing alarm continues to blare and red security lights continue to flash incessantly.
Lance, Grenade and I run ahead of the massive group of jailbirds, our machine guns at the ready. Krystal, Alex, and River bring up the rear, keeping an eye out for cowardly mercenaries attempting
to sneak up on us. All of the natives stay in the middle, with the women and older boys on the exterior so the girls and young boys are safe and sound in the center. (Well, as safe and sound as you can get when you’re on the run from mass-murderers and serial rapists.)
We make it about 100 yards before we run into our first roadblock. Three mercenaries explode out of a side door and open fire. Lance blasts one of the mercenaries with his robotic glove. Grenade follows that up by grabbing one of the other mercenaries and snapping his neck. (Apparently that’s his new favorite method of murder.) Not to be outdone by ‘the boys’, I aim my machine gun at the last mercenary and splatter his brains against the wall.
We run into a few more mercenaries during our exodus from the compound, but we dispatch of them even more easily than we did the first group. A lot of times we see them before they see us, meaning they don’t see the bullets and lightning bolts coming. Every now and then I hear a burst of gunfire behind us, causing me to turn my head to make sure everyone is okay. All I ever end up seeing is eviscerated, blood-soaked bodies sprawled out on the floor, victims of Krystal’s machine gun and Alex’s scorching lasers.
World War Forever (Highway To Armageddon Book 2) Page 35