Part 5
Jovan, tall and imposing, paced with cat-like grace toward his two new comrades. Cuthlain embraced him, bringing Gutfried into the circle as well in a hug of camaraderie. They touched foreheads together and at last sealed the new union between them in a heated kiss.
Gutfried felt a confused passion, a longing for this descendant of his that nearly matched that for his ancestor. Could he love them both equally?
But those thoughts were interrupted by Cuthlain, who came back to business: "Comrades, we have a quest to complete. The spirits will draw us back into the void, taking us into a future time two-hundred years hence. It will again be a savage time. Are we prepared?"
The three warriors grunted their approval, and they turned toward the portal, which again became visible. The unfocused light from deep within the tunnel flared with many colors. Cuthlain took the hands of his comrades tenderly and guided them into the void...
Moments later, their bare feet stepped into another world. Gutfried felt his feet landing in swampy wetness, and he looked down to find they were in some marshland of shallow pools. Grasses and tropical trees that the northern youth wouldn't recognize looked into the new morning sky. The air was warm and sticky with humid heat. The sound of roaring waves, however, still crashed in the distance. Cuthlain, their leader, held his sword before him cautiously as he stepped carefully through the pools....
But Jovan gasped suddenly, as he explored among the grasses. "I don't think we've gone anywhere, dudes," he yelped in a voice suddenly returned to Josh's surfer slang, to Gutfried's great surprise. But, of course, he was still Josh as well as Jovan incarnate. They looked where Jovan pointed. Among the plant life were ruins of some building long deteriorated to its foundations. The two medieval warriors didn't notice, but the other youth recognized the outline of his own apartment building, down to the same metal mailboxes rusting away as they sank into the mire. "We're still in my home, at the beach, but everything's gone!"
Cuthlain nodded grimly. He already knew the story: "As I said, your civilization destroyed itself. What we find will be more similar to the world both Gutfried and I came from."
It then occurred to Jovan this must be true, the very reason they seemed to be in the tropics rather the Mediterranean climate Josh was used to. "Global warming, what my parents were fighting when they died..." he mused. "We knew it was happening, the sea levels were rising; that's why we're closer to the ocean, and it's all turning into swamp."...
"But there are tribespeople nearby..." Cuthlain stated. "We will need their help to find the hero who needs our aid. Come..." He broke into a vigorous jog on his big, bare feet, splashing through the swamp toward the sound of the waves. Gutfried and Jovan nodded at each other and followed at a jaunty pace as well....
Soon, they had come through the trees and were on the beach, which to wild Jovan's eyes had become more beautiful, returned to its natural state. Josh had known a touristy, littered strip of sand thronged with surfers in wetsuits, skaters, bikers and knick-knack sellers. All that was gone, only white sand stretching into sea-blue. But off in the distance there seemed a village ﾐ really just a collection of shacks ﾐ situated right on the sand. Jovan made out figures meandering back and forth and drawing nets out of the ocean. They jogged toward these signs of life....
As they approached, Jovan ﾐ or rather Josh ﾐ realized the shacks were made up of remnants of the previous civilization: worn-down billboards, store signage, husks of old furniture... He sighed, disheartened to see everything he once cherished gone to this ruin. ...A few laughing children, entirely naked and deeply tanned, ran past them in a game of tag. A few women in nothing but what looked like long sarongs, their breasts bare to the sun, were preparing food over fires within the village center. The fishermen seen earlier, casting nets into the sea, were also entirely naked, with lithe, toned bodies and deeply tanned skin under their wild, mostly long hair....
A couple of teenage boys, naked as well except for shark-tooth necklaces and bead bracelets and anklets, were happily wrestling and laughing at play near the cookout. They saw the warriors approach and abruptly stopped, dusting themselves off as they loped toward the strangers. Gutfried saw they were as tall as he, probably nearly the same age, but nudity seemed to be the rule in this beach community. The boys displayed no embarrassment but stood proudly gazing on the strangers....
"Wassup, brahs?" one of the boys slurred. "My name Ray, this here Bando. You new here, right-right? You brothahs?"
Cuthlain nodded, again pounding his chest and announcing himself, the other two warriors doing the same. "We search for an elder, with much knowledge of the past. You have one here?"
The boys looked at each other, confused. Bando, who had a long braid tied with feathers, much like Cuthlain's, but with hair of dark brown, scratched at his head and said, "Past? There no past here... But we have grampa; he named Mendez. We take you to him!"
The boys skipped toward a nearby shack, Gutfried admiring their bare buttocks flexing with each step, making him hard in his loincloth again, but he fought to keep his passions in check. He knew from Cuthlain's serious attitude that their quest in this far-future world was of utmost importance....
Within the shack sat an elder in nothing but a loincloth, his wild gray beard covering his chest. He dined upon a meal of recently caught cod as he reclined on a woven mat on the sand. He looked upon the powerfully built warriors and knew they had been sent by spirits. "Mendez!" Bando piped up in his unusally high voice for one his age. "These here come to see you. They not from seashore."
"I see that...yes..." Mendez grumbled, his blue eyes narrowing. "Hiro Mendez," he announced himself to the strangers. "I am just an old fisherman, waiting upon death. The youths of your age usually go about natural, like Bando and Ray here," Mendez commented. "But you wear clothes like the interior folk, so I know you not from here!" he chuckled....
Gutfried found it astonishing how mores kept changing: In his own time his loincloth would have been considered scandalous, just as it might have been in Josh's time, although the surferboy seemed to get away with nothing but boardshorts. And yet in this future time youths not entirely naked could be mocked for their "elderly" sense of fashion. Bando and Ray, sitting cross-legged and nude in the corner, did giggle and look at each other, glancing at the clothed warriors with lopsided grins....
"Forgiveness, great one..." Cuthlain apologized. "Our customs are different, yes, but we do not come from the interior either, but from much further still. We seek one who may be a fighter such as ourselves, perhaps one who leads his people to restore order out of this chaos..."
Mendez shook his head. "We don't have such wars anymore, not since the time of my own great-grandparents. All is peaceful among us seashore folk. One you seek would come from the interior, just up the coast and toward the rising sun. All is still wasteland there, and the ravagers fight each other for scraps."...
For some time, while village women brought the strange visitors meals of fresh fish, Mendez went on to relate as much as he knew of the dim past, as much legend to people of this era as the sagas of Cuthlain were to Geoffrey's age. Apparently what followed after the Collapse, as it was commonly known, when great governments ceased to exist and anarchy reigned upon the land, was horrific: Cities burned, bands of thugs fought each other over food, those who would survive left the cities and towns and founded new primitive communities, such as the seacoast folk. And so the Dark Ages had returned to the world. But some had heard of leaders who tried to band together warriors under their wing, although usually they were slaughtered quickly by the vicious thugs of competing factions....
The three warriors conferred and decided that they would set out in the morning to find this hero of their own blood. Mendez invited them to sleep around the fire outside, and Bando and Ray, adventurous boys, eagerly volunteered to join them as scouts. Gutfried and Jovan looked at each other, smiling, each knowing they would enjoy looking upon their bare rumps as they traveled. Mendez also gave Jovan as a gift his old bow and arrows, which he himself had used to hunt in the swamplands as a youth. Jovan accepted the gift heartily, knowing this kit was exactly what he had been missing. He was also a proud hunter as well now, transformed from a hunter of waves and thrills to a hunter of wild game. They doffed their loincloths and joined the native way, stretching out naked before the evening fire. Both Gutfried and Jovan rested their head upon Cuthlain's broad chest, as their mentor placed his muscular young arms around them. After a bit, Bando and Ray shyly joined in, snuggling in close on the outside flank. Gutfried went instantly hard feeling Bando's bare manhood pressed against his buttocks, but he fell asleep peacefully, with no incident worth mentioning...
When Gutfried felt the morning sun again upon his face, peeking over the wooded mountains east, he saw the fire had burnt out, but before the smoky chars Jovan was mounting blonde Ray slowly, both boys moaning deeply. Jovan grunted and thrust suddenly, violently, as he must have released into his newest lover. Ray stretched like a cat, a content grin on his cute, sun-bronzed face. Gutfried massaged his own manhood upon the sight, thinking he would have liked to do that with braided brunette Bando, but that boy had woken much earlier to put together some essentials for the journey along with Cuthlain....
Gutfried stretched as well, digging his bare feet into the sand, and Ray sauntered by, wishing the warrior a good morning as he cupped Gutfried's bare buttocks and kissed him lightly. Ray, like Bando and the others of this village, had a very attractive multi-ethnic look, the result of many generations of interbreeding among all the races that had dwelt in this land, with high cheekbones framing almond-shaped eyes, wildly kinked hair in many cases, full lips and golden-caramel skin. Both boys had pert, upturned noses, bright green narrow eyes and sun-splashed highlights in their brown and blonde hair. Gutfried hoped it wouldn't ruin his new relationship with his warrior ancestor if he could bed either of these boys sometime during their quest....
As both Gutfried and Jovan stretched, Cuthlain returned with Bando skipping ahead of him with his usual youthful exuberance. He brought with him a jar of pitch they had gathered by the swamplands. "Here, goes on your walkers," Bando explained, smearing the thick substance onto his tough, well-formed feet, the "walkers" to which he referred. Footwear had become unknown among the seashore folk; Jovan smirked to think it already was becoming quite forgettable in his own time. There simply was no need to dress up living on the sand, but if one wished to leave for the interior, which no sane person ever did, you used the pitch as a protective surface against the rougher terrain. The others spent a good amount of time liberally applying the substance to their feet, after which Jovan strung his new bow tightly, finding he knew exactly how to use it as if he had been a primitive hunter his entire life. "I will find us a good meal as we trek," Jovan mentioned....
The two naked scouts needed very little, only a pair of knives hanging among their shark-tooth necklaces, and the warriors donned their loincloths, all now ready to move up the coast. The band of savages left the village, wandering up the shore until the collection of shacks was only a small dot.
By afternoon, the boys had turned east, away from the beach and just north of the swamps, finding themselves among groves of palms and tropical foliage. Jovan shot at a few large parrots and unfamiliar mammals scurrying up the trees and vine canopy. ...He managed to score enough to roast over a fire for their mid-day meal. Occasionally he would see ruins of the civilization he had known sinking into the ground among all the vegetation. He recognized the outlines of a few restaurants and stores. A faded sign spelled out "Starbucks," another "Pizzeria".
Eventually, the trees cleared away to reveal a larger concentration of ruins, the new forest still reclaiming the terrain. Skeletal houses, their paint peeled away ages ago, poked out of the dense growth, covering the hills leading to the jagged spires of collapsed skyscrapers, the ancient city center in the distance. From here had come the "ravagers" as the scouts mentioned in furtive whispers. The warriors noticed many spraypainted layers on ruined, vine-covered walls, the tags of the ravaging gangs going back almost two centuries. As one gang had taken over from the next, they had marked their territory directly over the tags of previous lords, so that it was all a messy, colorful garble by now....
Still they hadn't come upon a soul. Bando and Ray told them most had left well before their time, migrating east to potential farmland or toward the seashore. The violent gangs hid out in their underground lairs during the day. At night they might have visitors. Cuthlain nodded, holding his sword at the ready. They would be prepared....
The sun was setting toward the ocean. "We make camp here," Cuthlain announced, sending the scouts to gather tinder for a fire. The metal hulls of abandoned cars stood around them like fallen sentinels. An ancient stop sign jutted out of the ground near where they built the fire, and Jovan roasted the last of the small game they had caught....
Lithe, tall-for-his-age Bando of the long, brown braid paced toward Gutfried, whimpering slightly as he gently stroked his stiff manhood, already over six inches long. "You help me out with this, brothah? Been a long day with no time to get off..."...
Gutfried had been hoping for this, but he glanced at Cuthlain, who just smiled in amusement and nodded. Jovan already was pairing up with Ray again, the two youths fiercely making out as they stroked each other's bare chests. Gutfried undid his loincloth and pressed against Bando, stroking his braided vine as he brushed his lips against the boy's smooth, brown cheeks, making him breathe heavily. ...It did feel good to finally be with this boy of the future, one who probably never had known the confining feel of clothing upon his perfect body, nor boots upon his wide, well-muscled feet. Bando groaned hotly, swinging his legs onto the warrior's as Gutfried wrapped his hand around the stiff pole and jacked him slowly. Precum oozed all along its length. Suddenly Gutfried felt the warmth and smelled the musk of another behind him, as soft lips brushed against his neck. Cuthlain had silently situated himself against Gutfried's back and licked and sucked at his lover's neck, all of them releasing passions of the day.
All of the questing band were now engaged in lovemaking, Gutfried just beginning to lick along Bando's lengthy member when they heard a shuffling from behind the wrecked metallic frames. Cuthlain responded first, jumping to his bare feet in a second and grasping his sword before him....
From out of the darkness leapt about fifteen youths in rags, all of them barechested and mostly barefoot as well, the remains of trousers and shorts around their slim hips. All of them were tattooed and pierced, images of crosses and faces of an uncharacteristically enraged Jesus hurling lightning bolts spread across their chest. Wild, punkish hair, some with long hair to their shoulders, others shorn to their scalp, the boys branded axes, staffs stuck with razor blades and a variety of other homemade, sharp weapons. "Well, well, what do we have here..." one of the shorn punks laughed with venom, "looks like a bunch of naked homos, an abomination before the Lord..."
"Oh no!" Ray shrieked, cowering into Jovan's hunky embrace. "Those the Lord's Boys, fierce they be and take no prisoners!"
Like a pack of snarling wolves, the zealot gang slowly closed in on the warriors, though they still had caution against Cuthlain, so tall and imposing and holding his sword to fend them off. But they truly were outnumbered, and the warriors doubted they could get out of this fight without coming to some harm....
Suddenly Cuthlain roared, his teenage voice struggling to maintain a deep, threatening tone, but his warpainted face contorted into something horrible. He swooped his sword through the air, swiping left and right, while Jovan jumped to his feet and grabbed for his axe, roaring out his own rage....
Gutfried took the rear, swinging his sword against the wiry attackers, but a few managed to get past him and grabbed for Bando and Ray, smacking them in the face with their staffs. Bando cried out in pain, but Gutfried could not hold back his attackers long enough to come to his comrade's defense....
In the midst of the panicked scene, suddenly a new voice roared out, and a spray of bullets rained against the discarded hulls of ancient cars. The cacophony spooked the attacking bigots. Then the bullets turned on them, a few aggressors plugged in the chest and taken to the ground before the rest thought it wise to abandon their quarry. "The Lord will have his vengeance!" one cried as he skulked back into the darkness....
And now the familiar sound of bare feet hitting the ground caught the naked warriors' attention. They turned to face their savior; Cuthlain's face glowed, for though this new youth was a stranger, the ancient warrior could tell he was of his blood.
The tall, wiry-muscled youth paced toward the glow of the fire, the orange flames illuminating him from head to bare feet. Toned, lithely muscled arms carried his weapon, a tarnished submachine gun. He was caked in dirt and sweat, his arms covered in tattoos of flames and unrecognizable symbols. He wore what appeared to Jovan- through Josh's eyes ﾐ to be the remains of a pair of blue jeans, ragged at the ankles, and a sleeveless T-shirt with the faded logo of a surf company. Both were so tattered and torn with so many gaping holes, with his chest so exposed he might as well have been shirtless, his flat, tight pecs and chiseled eight-pack exposed under glistening sweat. Jovan knew these probably had been hand-me-downs for several generations since the Collapse....
Wild, long yellow hair, yellow except the strands that had been dyed blue, pink and purple, hung in dreadlocks down past his slender shoulders, framing a face of the same typical pleasing proportions as the warriors he had saved: flashing blue eyes, dainty nose, red lips parted to reveal white teeth still bright and even. He pushed a pair of goggles off his face and pulled it back against the thick dreads, saying, "Cover your cocks, guys. The Lord's Boys claimed this area a few days ago, and you're all just asking to be killed!"...
Cuthlain nodded toward his prot使市. They donned their loincloths, although nude Bando and Ray had nothing to wear, and so those boys crouched on their haunches to cover their sex....
"I'm Phoenix," the dreadlocked youth continued as he paced toward them on his calloused bare feet. He laid his weapon to rest so that it hung from a leather strap against his leanly muscled obliques. "You guys look familiar, but I'm sure you're not from the wildlands." He studied each face, admiring the warpaint and tattoos....
Gutfried only thought how fun it would be to turn this one. He had so much potential, but he clearly had no proper nutrition to build the thick muscle of a warrior in this ravaged wasteland. However, Gutfried didn't think it would be up to him to turn this hero; probably Jovan would have to bed him as next in the family line....
Cuthlain approached and pounded his chest, introducing himself and the others. "We have been searching for you, young comrade," Cuthlain stated, "for you, Phoenix of the wildlands, are of our own blood. The seed of many warriors run through you. You have felt it, for you took up the defense of others..."
Phoenix backed away. "What the fuck is this? I'm trying to save my own ass from those idiots. For generations they claim turning away from some dude named Christ brought on the great Collapse, and so they fight to conquer as much territory as they can in his name. I don't know who this Christ is or where his headquarters lie, but they slaughter all the unbelievers. And I'm not ready to give myself and my liberty to their kind!"
Cuthlain nodded. "Good. That is exactly the spirit we need." He clamped his hand on Phoenix's firm shoulder, but the stunned youth wouldn't jerk away. He glanced into the darkness, trying to make out any other figures, perhaps other gangs, but it was all silent, for now....
"Come on," Phoenix said, waving his submachine gun at them. "We should get you all back to the base camp, where it will be safe for the night..."