by M. K. Gibson
My fellow new fish were making their way to their feet as well. The three Lust demon females were the next on their feet. They huddled together, trying to cover themselves with their wings and each other. My guess was they were what Lust demons usually were, sexual predators with a penchant for knowing too much information and brokering said information. Which probably got them here. And now, exposed before the other prisoners, their nudity was more than they could bear.
The lavender one was closest to me. I could see her bare ass and twitching tail as she nudged in closer to a taller one, almost seven feet in height with four arms. She had more black coloration mixed with lavender. She too had speckles of orange in her. From their similar body shape and facial similarities, I assumed they were sisters. I couldn’t see the third one well, only she had a dark blue skin tone and she was older. That must have been the one I saw with the burned face. Their other sister, perhaps? Mother?
I shook my head. Simply by being Lust demons, they would be sought out by the other prisoners for many reasons.
The two cyborgs were next up. They were both male and they looked pretty rough. The torture session had not been kind to them. Both of them had implants along their arms and legs that looked like speed and strength augmentations, along with tech regulators in their chests and external sensor amplifiers.
The anti-rejection implants most cyborgs required offered some healing abilities in an attempt to keep the artificial tech from killing them, but not at the superhuman level. Their legs were still broken, but each of them had used pieces of their tech to create makeshift splints. They were resourceful. Probably mercs for hire.
They would be sought out also.
Last were the two humans. And they looked like they were on death’s door. They were still broken. A man and a woman, but you could barely tell. Hell, they barely looked human anymore. They looked like starved and abused third-world refugees. They couldn’t even stand. The wounds to their bodies were too severe, the torture too much. Even if they were given immediate aid right then, I gave them less than a five percent chance of living.
Their wounds oozed with pus. Red track lines went up and down their bodies, signs of deadly infection. Their skin was waxy and the compound breaks of their legs were gangrenous. I stood corrected. They had less than a one percent chance of survival.
They were less than prey. They were the walking dead. I could smell the blood and infection from here. The crowd damn sure saw it. Poor bastards. Looking around the prisoners in the stands, there were very few plain humans I could see. If everyone here got some kind of similar indoctrination, it was no surprise they didn’t make it.
“Prisoners of Flotsam,” an electronically amplified voice boomed throughout the stadium.
It was Mastema’s.
At the far end of the field, the end closest to what I assumed was where we were first airdropped in, was a raised platform that was encased in bulletproof glass. I used my telescopic eyes to get a better look.
Inside was the warden, the spider-like angel Mastema. From his posture and tone, he knew he was king of his domain and we were nothing.
Beside him was a human male. He was tall, with short, well-groomed hair. He wore what looked like part Nazi uniform, part Russian greatcoat. The clothes were impeccable. Perfectly tailored by the best modern designers and woven in the highest-quality fabrics. I instantly hated him. He looked warm and content and I stood buck-ass naked out there in the sleeting cold night air.
Mastema surveyed the crowd and then looked at us new prisoners. He took his time looking at each of us.
“Tonight,” Mastema continued, “we have a new group of scum to join the rest of you wretched, worthless beings.” The crowd began to boo. Mastema crossed his arms and the air around him seemed to darken. The crowd stopped immediately. I guess there was a line not to cross that the rest of the prisoners already knew about.
“You, newcomers. You have a chance to impress the denizens of my domain. There are precisely five open slots here. We could accommodate more, or course, but I choose not to. There are three too many of you standing there. Eliminate whom you choose. The remaining may find protections in one of the clans. Know that no help will come from the outside of any kind. Not medical. Not favors. Nothing. What you eat, build, and live in is up to you to create, or take, and protect. Now, on with the show.” A loud buzzer went off and the crowd began roaring with excitement.
Instinct took over. I crouched into a bent-knee fighting stance, weight evenly distributed and up on balls of my feet, hands up, head on a swivel, eyes searching. Both my old karate teacher and football coach from high school would have been proud. I quickly scanned the field.
The humans were still lying in the dirt. The cyborg males looked at each other, nodded and stood back to back, whispering. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, not with the crowd noise. But it was clear they had worked together before and they were picking their targets.
The Lust demons huddled in a similar manner. There were three of them, so they had an advantage over the cyborgs. Plus, they were healthier and in better shape. They eyed the cyborgs, then the humans, then me. I was alone, but I was in better shape than they were, so they were hesitant. They didn’t know what I was for sure.
Same thing with the cyborgs. I caught them looking at me, but their posture said they weren’t ready to commit to attacking me, alone as I was. I was healthier than they were and I looked combat ready. This was a dogfight, pure and simple. Sniffing out the weak to attack first.
Then, there was a moment—a single clear moment—when I read the eyes of the prisoners. It was a simple fact. The weakest were the most vulnerable and most expendable. And the weakest had to be the first to go.
But a quick death would not suffice. Not for this crowd.
If the survivors were indeed going to be released into the prison populace, then a show of strength and viciousness was needed. Which meant one thing.
The humans.
Oh shit.
The Lust demons hissed at the cyborg mercs. They made a mad dash at the humans just as the mercs painfully limped for the crippled humans at the same time. It was only a matter of fifty feet or so that separated the humans from the closing two groups. The humans would be flayed alive in front of the Flotsam prisoners. They were near death already, but they would literally be torn apart so their broken bones and bloody limbs could be used as weapons. Most likely against me. A five-on-one scenario was not what I wanted, even if I was at full health.
I had a decision to make. A hard one. So I made it.
Head down, I sprinted, kicking up sand and dirt as I pumped my arms and got my body moving as a missile for one purpose. At the last second I launched myself at the Lust demons in a wide-arm flying tackle. The trio and I went down in a rolling heap of fangs, wings, claws, and excessive nudity.
I popped up first and dodged a clawed swipe of the first of the demonesses, who got to her feet. It was Lavender’s four-armed sister, and man, did she look pissed. With her added height, musculature, and appendages, she was more of a physical threat.
She swiped wide with her clawed right hands. On her back swing attempt at clawing my eyes, I caught her wrists in my hands, dropped my weight, and rolled to the ground before she could lash out with her remaining clawed hands.
No stranger to a fight, she rolled with the attack. Releasing my left hand’s grip, I slammed an open palm to her forearm, breaking it. She screamed, and in that quick second of distraction, I shifted behind her, grabbed her wings at their base, and swung her around like a living flail, heaving her at the now oncoming cyborg mercs. The mercs and the four-armed demon went down in a tangle while the crowd roared in bloodthirsty excitement.
The other two Lust demons got to their feet and came at me. Lavender snapped a lovely, long-legged kick at my bare balls. Reacting, I hopped back half a step, bent at the knees and brought my left elbow point down hard to meet the instep of the demon’s foot, fracturing it. She dropped in
stantly, clutching at her foot.
She was out of commission for the moment, but I threw a textbook sidekick into her face anyway, knocking her out. Asshole tried to kick me in the dick, after all. Not cool.
I swung my head around, looking for the third with the dark blue skin and burned face, but I only saw the cyborg mercs advancing on me after untangling themselves from Four-Arms. Their eyes kept drifting to the humans. The downed demonesses also kept eyeing the humans, like scavenger predators with their eyes on the weak, feeble, or infants. They wanted their prize. They needed it. To survive past this night, they couldn’t appear to be deadly. They had to be deadly.
Goddamn it, so did I.
“Back. The FUCK. Off,” I growled. And they did. There were two of them, but they saw me in action and they didn’t think they could take me. And right then, in that rage-filled moment, they couldn’t. I was full of hate and rage, ready to bleed acid. Not because of these miserable fucks, but because of what I had to do.
I turned my back on the Lust demons and the merc cyborgs and looked at the humans. The man and woman. They were holding one another, scared.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Quickly, cleanly, and efficiently, I approached the humans and snapped their necks.
When it was done, I sat with my back to the retaining wall, my elbows on my knees, and hung my head. To the prisoners looking at me, I was just another convict, basking in the kill.
What I was was a broken man, hiding his face in case the tears came.
I didn’t want to kill them. Damn it, I didn’t want to do that.
But at least they died quick and clean.
They would have drawn it out. The demons, the mercs, they would have made them suffer. Made a gory spectacle out them for the prisoners. I might have been able to fight the others off and save them, but I would not have been able to guarantee safety or survival. Fuck, their injuries alone would have killed them in a day or two.
I did what had to be done, I told myself, as if that would make it better.
The crowd was half cheering and half booing. They applauded the death, but they wanted more. More blood. More pain. More killing. Fuck what they wanted. I was done.
Out of nowhere, a bottle smashed over my head, shattering. I rolled over to my side, clutching my head and wishing above all heavenly shit that the Collective wasn’t under the protocol. A force field would have been nice right about then. The glass bottle had cut my scalp fairly deep and blood ran down my face. Head wounds did that. Not life-threatening, but damn things bled like a stuck pig.
Where the shit did that come from?
After a moment, I stood up and saw a fairly large hellion reaching through the inferium barbed razor wire that ran along the bleacher seats and the retaining wall. He was screaming at me. It took a few seconds, my head still dizzy from the impact, but I could begin to make out his ranting.
“He said three! THREE, you stupid fucking meat sack!” the hellion yelled as he chucked another bottle at me. This time I just got out of the way while the rest of the inmates near him cheered this prick’s antics.
The hellion resembled a minotaur. He had a bullish face with long curved horns and smaller horns along his nose and jawline. Other inmates began throwing bottles and cans and whatever else they had with them at me.
“Silence!” Mastema announced over the loudspeaker, and the prisoners obeyed almost immediately. “The fight continues. My decree stands. I will allow five, not six, to enter Flotsam.”
The prisoners began to stomp their feet and slap the bleachers in excited anticipation of more death. The beat was primal. This place, Flotsam, was where any shred of humanity, or empathy for life, went to die.
“If you live, I am going to make you my fuck-toy!” the same hellion roared from his perch above me as he grabbed his penis through his ragged clothing. Once more, the minotaur hellion reached through the wire and hurled more bottles at me. I dodged the first two but a third hit me in the forehead, but didn’t break. I briefly saw stars and my knees buckled.
“Fight!” Mastema commanded over the speakers and the crowd erupted into a screaming frenzy.
It might be the slight concussion talking, but an idiotic plan formed in my head. These fuckers wanted blood? Fine.
Before the cyborg mercs or the Lust demons could advance on each other or me, I bent down and snatched up the unbroken beer bottle by the neck in my right hand, turned and sprinted right at the retaining wall. As I reached the wall, I jumped and did a one-two long step up the wall and grabbed that minotaur-hellion by his horn in my left hand, while his friends held him before he fell into the pit.
I smashed the bottle against the concrete retaining wall and jammed the makeshift shiv into the hellion’s neck one, two, three times until blood sprayed.
The hellion’s buddies tried to pull him back through the razor wire into his seat, but I just dropped what was left of the blood-soaked bottle, grabbed his other horn in my now-free hand and planted my feet against the wall. As they tugged to pull him back, I pulled just as hard but slightly side-to-side, using his horns as a guide handle. Back and forth I sawed the fucker’s throat along the inferium razor wire. The crowd cheered as I roared in anger.
In a matter of seconds the razor wire had done its job, sawing through flesh, muscle and bone. The hellion’s head came off with wet pop and I jumped back down into the arena with my trophy in hand.
“That’s THREE!” I yelled holding the decapitated head above me. The demon’s blood ran down my arms and onto my naked body, but I didn’t give a shit. I reached back and threw the head as hard as I could at Mastema’s glass enclosure. I knew it wouldn’t break it, but the blood and brain decoupage it left behind carried my message just as effectively.
“The fight is now over. Flotsam, claim your newest members. But that one”—Mastema pointed right at me—“is Nomad.”
I had no idea what he meant, but something told me it wasn’t good.
The Flesh Golem guards returned, opening the huge gates opposite from where we first came in. The open gates led into the island, into Flotsam Jail itself and into a new world of pain.
With the gate now open, some of the island’s prisoners came in and began evaluating the Lust demons and the cyborg mercs. I sat back down with my back to the retaining wall and waited for the next attack.
None came. And neither did anything else. Most of the prisoners ignored me and kept a wide berth. Many even refused to make eye contact. Which I guess was a good thing. Prison life was like life in the wild. Eye contact with an unknown was an invitation to a fight. A challenge.
Before too long, the arena emptied. The surviving prisoners were taken in by one group or another, except me. I was left behind. Flesh golem guards stood their posts at the entrances and exits, but other than their silent watch, I was alone.
I wasn’t sure what a “nomad” was, but I was getting the impression this was a taste of what was to come. So they left me alone? Fine. I couldn’t think of a better way to serve time in a prison than to be left alone. Hell, before Grimm came along, I preferred to be alone. Couldn’t be that bad, could it?
Over the next couple of days, I came to learn what alone meant.
Chapter Twenty-Two
You Smell Pretty
A long time ago . . .
“You should have warned me you were going to pull a gun,” Reynolds said to the video screen.
Walker shrugged. “It had to look real. I needed the people to see me as a strong leader. One who was ready in the heat of the moment.”
Reynolds smoked his cigarette and then took a sip of his whiskey. “I’m honestly surprised they went for it.”
“They almost didn’t,” Walker said. “I had to play both sides of the argument, weighing the pros and cons. But my one guard spoke out against you.”
“Which one?”
“The kid you head butted on your way out. RM. He said you were responsible for the Catoctin Massacre.”
“I am.”
Walker’s eyes widened, unsure of how to respond to the confession. “Well, yes, but anyway, RM said you were the reason his entire regiment of militia fighters died and that we shouldn’t trust you.”
“What swayed their mind?”
“That information, and your display at the town hall, reminded them that people could be just as vicious as demons. And that the human world was all but gone. So, we could either live or die. But no matter what we did, the demons would eventually win. What’s the old expression? Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven? Well, I’d rather serve in hell than die for nothing.”
“Smart move. I’ll inform the nobility of your decision. They’ll send out plans for how they want the rail line run. Stick to your guns. Don’t cheat them too much and you’ll be fine. But, speaking of the town hall, that little job is going to cost you extra,” Reynolds said as he took another sip of his drink.
“I didn’t think you had an issue with killing people.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why extra pay?”
“That one kill saved your people. With him out of the way, and you in charge, they’ll get to live. They get to run the transportation lines for the city. In time, you all could become a very powerful force. You should have killed him yourself, but you were too chicken shit. I don’t like cowards.”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from the man who hides with demons. The one who has militia commanders assassinated and watches from afar. Who’s the coward now?”
Reynolds held up a small silver device. “Whatever you want to call me is fine. But I’m the motherfucker who’s holding the long-range detonator to the bomb I hid in your private quarters. So, are you going to pay me my fucking money?”
“It’s already been transferred,” Walker said, unable to look at Reynolds.
“Pleasure doing business then, fuck-face. I’ll be in touch.”
Reynolds switched off the monitor and relaxed back on his couch. Gh’aliss, who’d been sitting behind him off camera, wrapped her arms and legs around him.