Author Information: Website: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/books.html Email: kavrik@hotmail.com Twitter: @MichaelOffutt Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Slipstream/164452693676933
Author's Note: On my website, I have included a picture of Jordan in the gif image. Please validate me if you agree that he's cute :). You'll also find a link to a blog post I wrote on Kolin and killsuits right under the blurb for the novel. That blog post contains a picture of Kolin modeling in his armor and looking rather sexy.
"Wraith" uses the main characters featured in the science-fiction novel "Slipstream", but is its own story to be featured entirely on Nifty. Both of these tales are based on the events established in the short story, "The Insanity of Zero".
Chapter Nine
Undead.
Monsters.
Horrors.
They were all of these things. Of this, Jordan was certain. But he also suspected that they could not change shape. He decided right when he saw them that whatever had caused their transformation from human to monster had also left them misshapen and permanently deformed.
Of course, he conceded that he could always be wrong.
Jordan's blood froze in his veins when the vile creature stared in his direction. He held his breath and hoped that they did not see in infrared. When its head turned away from him, he felt a trickle of sweat slide between nervous shoulder blades, and his nostrils flared.
The doors on the truck swung open at the same time, and two women clothed in camouflage fatigues exited the vehicle. They carried rifles. The one on the passenger side walked along the length of the truck bed and when she got to the back, pulled the pin from the tailgate to make it drop. The other reached inside and pulled a scared woman out of the hold and tossed her to the ground. The four beasts turned their heads cautiously to each other; naked obsidian skin glistened coolly in the moon's surreal glow.
Protruding veins crisscrossed their flesh. They glowed incandescent in the darkness, illuminating their gross frames to such a degree that he found it unsettling. They possessed too many ghastly lumps in places that should be without them. A few seconds later, the pungent mixture of unwashed body and bat guano finally reached Jordan's nose. He vomited into his mouth and with control, managed to swallow it.
These had to be the camazotz as Kolin had named them.
Jordan observed everything he could.
They varied in height. The largest one launched itself forward on its haunches and grasped the woman on the top of the head. Horrified, the twins watched from the seclusion of their hiding space as the monster broke her neck. It snapped her whole skull back with such force that a loud audible crack reverberated off the pavement. The cervical bones of her upper spine shattered like dry kindling. The skin along her throat caved-in and ripped, sending forth a fountain of blood. It bit down onto her flesh while the other three cackled like hyenas. From inside the truck, Jordan heard screams. The captives could see the fate that awaited them. All hope of life had ended.
When the body had no blood remaining, the camazotz released the corpse to the earth. Then it reached forth and dropped something into her open mouth that looked like a larva. To Jordan's disgust, the body twitched and jerked as if wracked by spasms. It rose to its feet, dangling a head by a sheaf of skin. The walking corpse fell-in beside the monster, moaning in its freshly born state, eyes rolled back into the skull, and lips pulled back from the teeth in a horrible grimace of death.
The two women with rifles took one step forward, brandishing their firearms.
"That one was free," the guard on the left said, "The rest will cost you the usual payment. And by usual payment, I mean that we want spare parts for our vehicles, radiation serum from Kilvarough City, and any organic food that you've managed to pillage--all in the agreed upon amounts. For this, we will give you a truckload of fresh food, and the supply will keep coming. But we have something else, something your master is going to want to take a look at."
One of the camazotz opened its mouth in a wide yawn and a foot long tongue hung loosely there amidst a mouthful of sharpened teeth. Blood dribbled from its maw. When it hit the pavement, Jordan saw little tendrils of smoke waft upward.
"How would you know what Wraith is interested in?" the monster asked.
The other guard temporarily holstered her rifle by swinging it onto her back using a shoulder strap. She reached inside the truck to pull Kolin out onto the ground. Jordan saw that Kolin's face and hair had become a grisly mess. The Brit's blond locks lay matted to his skull in what could only be blood. It had hardened into a sticky consistency that reminded Jordan of thick honey. Additionally, someone had bound his feet and arms. His legs had been immobilized across the knees, so tightly in fact that he probably lost all circulation in his limbs.
Blood streaked down the front of Kolin's killsuit and drew a trail across his chest, abdomen, and to his groin. It dripped from the end of his codpiece, making a black line down one leg and onto his size ten metal boots.
Jordan wanted to run to his side and protect him, but he restrained the impulse and choked on his growing anger. Kolin briefly struggled against his bonds. It didn't end up well. However, he managed to turn his head and open startling blue eyes to stare in silent terror at the monster that drooled at his feet.
"He has a bounty on his head--a big bounty. We're not stupid. The amount of money being offered with credit sticks for this bastard means he did something pretty awful. On top of that though...he's a man. Blood breeding can only be done to males, right?" the guard on the left asked. "His flesh could host many larva once eggs are laid inside him. Males are so rare in The Waste that he should be worth twice what's being offered. We want to negotiate a deal."
The four Camazotz hissed and stepped backward. They cautiously eyed Kolin as he lay motionless at their feet, a thing barely conscious, and looking quite small and piteous.
Next to Jordan, Kathy covered her own mouth to stifle a scream. Jordan knew that he couldn't save Kolin right now. Their enemies outnumbered them, and they'd just get caught along with Kolin and accomplish nothing. Jordan didn't know exactly how blood breeding occurred and truthfully, he didn't want to know. His imagination told him that it could involve being raped by one of those things as a means to get eggs inside the body cavity.
The thought terrified Jordan and made him sick to the stomach.
One of the monsters spoke in a chilling voice. "You'll drive into the city to the slave market at the Millennium Hotel. Unload the food and put the boy on ice. We'll carry your message to Wraith. It'll be up to him if he wishes to renegotiate the bounty for this assassin."
The two women easily hoisted Kolin between them. They placed him in the back of the truck, still bound and curled into a fetal position. Then they closed the tailgate, locked it with a lynch pin, and drew closed the canvas curtain. They walked forward, got into the truck, and drove off, leaving a black cloud of diesel smoke hovering in the middle of the road.
The four monsters spread their arms, and Jordan saw a thin membrane of skin that stretched along the line of their bodies. It formed makeshift wings similar to those of a bat. They moved their powerful, heavily muscled arms and lifted up into the air. Then, they sailed away into the black sky.
Jordan turned his gaze back to the red tail lights quickly receding into the distance. They drove slowly to avoid the wreckage of cars and trucks that had been left on the road where they had come to rest decades ago.
On the hour when the Big Death had struck.
In the hour that had changed the world.
Without further hesitation, Jordan took off on foot, racing after the truck at breakneck speed. Kathy followed him into the night.
Chapter Ten coming soon.