“What about Case?”
“No! Stay away from him! I hear he’s a total slut!”
“Yeah! I heard he’s done it with both fake tits Amy and real tits Amy.”
“Plus, like, half the tri-delts freshman pledge class!”
“Okay… then what about Solomon? Him and Jess broke up, right?”
“Fuck him for that, by the way.!And no. We have to support Jess!”
“Well, Bayley, I need a date for the formal and I’m running out of time.”
“Plenty of non-assholes you can fucking try first instead of a literal man slut and the king of the assholes.”
“I can’t believe he cheated on Jess on the day of their anniversary!”
“Wait? How long have they been going out?”
“Officially official? Like, 2 months.”
“You won’t believe this, but I heard from Kingston that Solomon’s saying that he didn’t know that him and Jess were supposed to be exclusive.”
“Can we get him banned? I think it’ll be good for Jess if we get him banned. Right, bitches?”
“I’m, like, fuck him, you know. Where’s the loyalty? If I was Jess I’d—”
The lights flickered in the dorm common room.
“Oh my god! What the fuck is going on?”
The lights kept flickering.
Much longer than normal flickering as far as the coeds were familiar with.
Screams erupted.
Animal pain.
All throughout their dorm.
Then in the common room.
“Help! Something’s biting me!”
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck—”
***
Bayley smashed the empty beer bottle over the tiny gremlin’s head even as it ripped Solomon’s throat out.
Contrary to what she had seen in movies and TV shows, the bottle didn’t instantly shatter, which was good for her because she used it to bludgeon another tiny monster as it savaged Jess’ back.
“Jess? Jess? C’mon, you have to get up. Don’t look at Sol—” she noticed the ivory peeking out of the wet red ribbons on her sorority sister’s back. “C’mon, Jess… it doesn’t look that bad…” she rolled Jess over and instantly regretted staring into sightless eyes and all the liquids dripping from a slack mouth.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuck!”
She gagged at the stench.
Another thing those liars failed to show in the movies.
People pissed and shit themselves when they died.
Before, during, after.
She had seen and smelled enough of it to consider herself an expert.
Had done it herself on several occasions.
She remembered that sweet nerd, Thomas, mention it was because of adrenaline and the flight or fight response. Something about the human body making itself lighter. He had even showed her a clip of two bears fighting and shitting as they fought. Had it saved on his phone for some reason.
Fuck!
That was one of the last things she watched before the phones and computers had stopped working.
“Fuck you, spires!” She shot a 1-fingered salute at the gleaming, spindle dick jutting from the social ecology building. “Fuck, guys. I’m sorry.” She gathered the backpacks Solomon and Jess had been carrying. “We’ll be back for you.”
It was a lie, but what did that matter to the dead.
Fact was that people needed the supplies.
They were out of antibiotics for all the claw slashes and bites.
Trinity could maybe heal one bad bite every 2 hours and she was definitely not going to be able to keep doing that for much longer based on how much she was puking.
She truly wanted to be able to return for Jess, at least.
To burn her body.
They had learned that the monsters just dug up the bodies they had buried in the lawn in front of their dorm.
Maybe, Solomon too?
He had stepped up since that night and she guessed he had made the ultimate sacrifice.
“Fuck!”
It was all too serious.
The apocalypse was like a stupid nerd game, but so many people had already died and she had no idea how her family was doing.
***
The cops came in blasting.
Gremlins screeched and snarled in their death throes.
Addisyn screamed.
Bayley glanced over.
Her friend was covering Genesis, who wasn’t moving.
She closed her eyes when she noticed the red pool rapidly spreading beneath Genesis’ unmoving form.
The cops swaggered in.
They were talking, but Bayley didn’t care.
She tried to pull Addisyn off Genesis.
A sudden gunshot rang out.
“Geez! We just saved you! Stop crying! Show some goddamn gratitude!” a baby-faced cop with a terrible attempt at a beard snapped.
“Shut the fuck up!” she fired back before she realized. “You shot our friend!”
“Aww, man… it’s not like we did it on purpose—”
“Shut it! Go outside, secure the perimeter.” An older cop approached. “What’s your name, girl?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“To build rapport. I’m Sgt. Bradley, John Bradley. You can call me John. I’m sorry about your friend.” The older cop held out a bloody hand. “But it’s not safe here. Come with us. We have a safe space for you and your friends.”
***
The other shoe dropped a week later.
Sgt. Bradley gathered her and her handful of friends, along with other women and children they had picked up in other parts of the city.
The police station conference room was almost full.
“Here’s the deal. Everyone needs to contribute. Me and my boys fight the monsters, collect supplies and generally keep you all safe, right?”
No one could argue that, but Bayley’s gut didn’t like were this was headed.
The cops had been eyeing her and the others like they were at a party all dressed up at their best even though they had been living rough for months.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had washed her hair or shaved her legs.
“I’d been fucking saying that we can fight too.” She spoke before she realized it. “We weren’t doing too bad a job of it back at our dorm.”
“You were starving before we rescued you, girl.” Sgt. Bradley silenced her with a look.
“We cook and clean. We do the laundry.” One of the older women said.
She was probably over 30 judging by the ages of her two daughters.
“And your housekeeping efforts are appreciated, but one has to see that’s sort of the minimum level of contribution.”
Bayley opened her mouth, but a sharp pain in her side turned her retort into a hiss.
“Stop it! You’ll get us all in trouble,” Addisyn hissed.
“We’re already in trouble!”
Sgt. Bradley continued as if he hadn’t heard the exchange.
“The point is that the minimum is no longer acceptable. My boys need more in exchange for risking their lives every hour of every day.”
“We can fight.”
“I never said you can’t, but can you look me in the eye and say that you can fight just as good as my boys?” Sgt. Bradley held her gaze. “You can’t because that’s not what you are meant to do. Women and girls aren’t meant to fight. You just lack the strength. It’s just natural biology. Men are superior in terms of muscle mass, density and so on. Sure, we can let you fight with us, but it wouldn’t be optimal. Our natural protective instincts will just mean that we’ll put ourselves at risk to pick up your slack.”
“Fuck it!” she snapped. “All I’m hearing is that you’re going to rape us.”
“Now, now… that isn’t what I’m saying at all. Consent is important to me. Think of it as an exchange of goods and services, if that’s easier to understand. You get food, water, medicine and safety. All you have to do is continue cooking and cleaning. And occasionally provide stress relief for my boys. We’ll work out a schedule so that the division of labor is fair and equitable.”
The smile on the cop’s face couldn’t have been any more evil to Bayley.
It reminded her of a saying from one of her classes.
Months ago felt like an eternity away.
Made even more distant by the sinking feeling that a return to that normalcy was no longer possible.
“Now, like I said, I value consent. So, anyone that doesn’t wish to participate may leave with your things, of course, and a backpack of supplies. We aren’t the bad guys.”
“Fine. I’m out then.”
Bayley packed quickly and failing to convince anyone else to go with her was escorted to the rear exit of the police station.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?” She gestured at the barricaded door. “Am I supposed to open it?”
“Nope,” the baby-faced cop said.
A thick arm closed around her neck.
She tried to scream but a damp cloth was slapped over her mouth.
She kicked and tried to draw her knife, but they were too strong and darkness claimed her.
***
Sgt. Bradley sighed.
“Fuck you for pretending to be sad!” She spat through the bars.
“We’d all rather you be willing, but with how the world is now… you’re too valuable to just let wander off and get eaten by monsters. America needs both of us. Men to fight. And women to repopulate.”
***
Sgt. Bradley slammed into the bars of Bayley’s cell.
“Wait— please—”
“Shut it, rapist! You want mercy? You want consideration? I’ll give you the same you gave them. You can call them underage women all you want, that doesn’t make them anything other than children. Die like you lived… a piece of shit on the ground!”
The scream was drowned out by the snap, crackle and pop of Sgt. Bradley’s bones as his entire body was compressed into roughly the size and shape of a basketball.
“What the fuck!”
The words slipped from her mouth before she realized.
It had always been a bad habit.
“Oh— crap! I’m— sorry. I didn’t know anyone was down here.”
The woman looked young-ish, college-aged like Bayley.
Straight black hair in a ponytail.
Brown skin so fresh and clean, aside from the blood splatters, that Bayley was instantly jealous.
She missed the days she had the products and time to take care of herself like a proper young woman should.
Instead, she felt at her lank and stringy hair.
She hadn’t seen a mirror in awhile, but she was certain that her skin was pale and sickly looking.
The lack of sun did that to a person, this she knew.
She regarded the woman’s body armor.
The woman followed her gaze.
“I’m not a cop. I just took this from other cops.”
The woman reached for the bars.
Bayley flinched away.
Too fast.
The woman moved too fast.
“Easy. I’m not going to hurt you. No one here can hurt you ever again. I’m just going to get you out of there. Then you can decide what you want to do, but I hope you’ll let us help.”
“That’s what they said.” She spat on the Sgt. Bradley basketball.
“You have no reason to believe me right now, but if you give me a chance…”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Bayley shrugged.
“Don’t have much of a fucking choice, do I? It’s either you or I die in here. Was looking forward to that.”
“Here.” The woman pulled out a gun and slowly extended it grip-first through the bars. “Will this help you feel safer?”
“I want to say yes, but you handing me a gun makes me think it’s a trick. It’s either not loaded or its fake bullets.”
“Why would I carry around a fake or unloaded gun?”
“I dunno, but fuck it… you did that to that piece of shit without it, so…”
“That’s fair. Feel free to check.”
“I think I fucking will.”
The gun turned out to be real and loaded with real bullets, as far as she knew how such things worked.
The rapist cops hadn’t let her or the others near their guns.
In hindsight that had been a pretty big warning sign she had missed in those first few days before they had revealed their true selves.
“So, I’m going to get you out of there now.”
“Fuck it,” she shrugged.
“What’s your name?”
The woman pulled the cell door open with a snap and squeal.
Bayley took satisfaction in that it reminded her of how Sgt. Bradley went to his deserved fate.
“It’s Bayley. What’s yours?”
“My name is Rayna. Come on, Bayley, let’s get out of this shit hole.”
The woman turned her back and walked down the dimly-lit corridor.
“Wait. One second.”
Rayna stopped and regarded her with a questioning look.
Bayley eyed the Sgt. Bradley basketball for a moment before kicking him into the dark depths of the cell corridor.
“Motherfucker! That hurt!”
A loud chime rang out.
***
The doorbell incessantly rang like some dumb kid was pressing on it as if he had fire ants in his underwear and the doorbell was an anti-ant sound.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuck! Alright! I’m awake, you dumb fucking fuck!”
Mouthy ripped her sheets from her damp body.
She had been doing way too much laundry for her tastes lately.
Too many damn old nightmares she had thought were way back there barely visible in the rear view mirror.
She didn’t bother with clothes.
If shorts and sports bra were good enough for her, then it was good enough for everyone else.
She slammed the door open.
Yup.
Dumb kid alright.
“Fuck you want?” She squinted against the morning glare reflected off the kid’s faceplate. “Junior ranger? Messenger?”
The dumb kid’s faceplate slid open with a salute to reveal wide eyes.
“Jes Morningstar, sir, yessir!”
“What? You never see a six-pack on a 50 year old before.”
“No, sir, I mean, yessir.”
The kid’s eyes darted every which way before deciding to settle on the ground.
“Morningstar, Morningstar, Morningstar? The kid. I know your parents, kid. Your brother and sister too. You better have a goddamn good reason for bother me at this ungodly hour.”
“It’s after 10, sir.”
“Like I said.”
The kid pulled out a wrapped package from his bag of holding.
“Aw… fuck.”
She had hoped the Halloween thing had been forgotten.
“Sign here, sir.”
She stabbed her signature into the tablet the kid held up.
“Get the fuck out of here and watch the skies. I figure you don’t want to get picked up by a harpy. The pervy shit you youths talk about? Yeah, don’t think that’s likely. They’d sooner drop you from a few hundred feet up rather than give you that bird pussy. The fuck you want some birdussy anyways?”
“I— uh—”
“Don’t be a weird perv. Think of how that’d disappoint your parents. Well, maybe not your dad so much. He pissed and shit himself more than once when we were fighting all those undead down in SD. As for you mom? Nah… she’s a bad bitch. No notes, she’s a real one. You’d be a fucking twatter not to ask her how to not piss and shit yourself.”
She shooed him away and slammed the door.
There.
Her day was ruined, so hopefully she ruined a semi-retired ranger’s day in return.
Morningstar Sr. Had always been a bit of a cocky asshole.
Probably, still one in his old age like her.
Always good to remind those types every once in a while that they, too, had shit their pants once or thrice.
The package went flying into her living room.
She had more important things to take care of first.
Namely, her work out.
Her home gym was one of those rubber mats from an actual gym she had stolen a long time ago.
Blood, sweat and tears.
It had seen plenty of hers.
No weights required when she had her Skill.
There were none that could be as heavy or heavier than her collective grief at each ranger death over the years.
Levels and practice meant she could wield it as she willed.
Grief became a tangible burden across her back and shoulders as she did her squats.
Push ups followed with the weight distributed across her back.
Deadlifts with the weight at her hands, in the imaginary barbell at her feet with its invisible plates filled with her dead brothers, sisters… children.
On to the pull up bar with them dragging her down as she grunted reps and sets out.
She didn’t stop for almost an hour, moving from exercise to exercise with barely a minute break in between.
Strengthen the mind, body and the Skill.
Failure to do that meant that the weight of her grief would grow even faster.
These days she wondered if it’d ever get to a point that it would be too heavy for her to carry.
“Fuck that!” she muttered. “Never. I’ll put it down when I’m dead.”
The stupid package awaited her, but first, breakfast and her protein shake.
----------------------------------------
Mouthy glanced from the hallway of fairly certain doom to the witch.
Damn bitch was still all shadowy and shit.
The whole time and she hadn’t slipped an inch.
Back and forth.
She used it to help her keep count.
Aims had been gone about 30 seconds, give or take a few minutes.
God damn it!
Sometimes she really hated magic.
Well, not all magic.
She was cool with fireballs, lightning bolts and what not.
The kind that blew up her enemies.
Now, the stuff that messed with her fixed view of reality?
That sort of bullshit belonged in a toilet with her massive, steak-empowered logs.
She almost said as much to the witch, but got a sudden shiver up her spine that seemed to say that the witch already knew what she was about to say.
Her foot tapped a rapid beat against the wood, so she clamped down on her leg and forced it to still.
The 6 on her white card glared at her like a black spotlight.
For some reason the simple number bothered her more than the other card and its Death-whatever.
“You been giving me bad dreams?” she bit out. “Cause I’ve been having them lately for awhile now.”
The witch made a noise of noncommittal.
Mouthy took it as an admission.
She considered jumping over the table.
Sending nightmares was a legitimate hostile action.
It was in the ranger handbook and was an actual law.
“Captain.”
One word from Captain Butcher and she forced herself to plant her butt in her chair even harder than she already had.
“Black and motherfucking gold,” she muttered.
The witch just regarded her with predatory eyes.
“Lost count of how many ways I’ve died. Every night.”
Well, almost every night, but fuck the witch. She didn’t need to know that and she should be made to feel guilty.
From where she sat, Mouthy didn’t much care if the witch was supposedly doing all of this as some sort of benefit to the rangers.
“Dubious-fucking-ly.”
She stood abruptly.
“Mouthy!” Spiritwalker reached for her arm.
“Touch me and I will smack a bitch… you too, Spiritwalker. I’m done playing along. Don’t matter anyways. None of them came out. Probably, swallowed by a void beast. Figure, Creepy and Hardhat are a good ways down to its asshole. Aim’s probably still getting chewed up.” She eyed the witch. “Got anything to say.”
“Fate is like a witch. We both presume to arrive exactly when we mean to.”
“Thanks… for nothing. Just for that I’m not gonna watch my mouth around your kids. You’re gonna have to explain to their parents— they ain’t yours, right?”
The witch merely looked at her.
“Whatever, they’re going to learn some creative ways to cuss. All thanks to you.”
“Curse words. Words of curse. A witch can make use of both.”
“Great. I’ll bill you later.”
She forged into the abyss and stumbled into a small home gym.
“What the fuck?”
“Some lack the imagination or the willingness to be served.”
Seems that the home was actually owned by a gym bro or sis.
Only someone like that would’ve turned a bedroom into this.
Power rack. Bench. A full set of dumbbells against the longest wall, which had a mirror across the whole space.
The teen witch sat on the bench in incline mode.
Matrix-looking fucker had the gall to look at her like she was the disappointing one.
“I’d rather lick the blubber juice from the taint of a gonorrhea-infected seal.”
He looked at her expectantly.
“You want an explanation? It’ll cost you.”
“No. That’s okay. I am here for a purpose.”
“Which is me.”
She scowled down at him with her looming-est best.
To his credit he didn’t flinch.
“Yes and for myself.”
“Oh yeah? What do you get out of it? Quest rewards? A level?”
“If my teacher is correct, more than one. Possibly several.”
“No shit?”
“Everyone seems to agree that my actions here represent just a small part of a momentous portion of history. Possibly.”
“Got to hedge those future bets, huh? You witches and your leaky cloacas. It’s cause you use frogs and shit. And they got cloacas.”
“Yes. That is what I thought you must’ve been crudely referring to. If you have expended your supply of bile, shall we begin.”
“It’s your show, teenage boy that looks to be struggling with an exceptionally late onset of puberty. What with your voice breaking like a tiny gremlin when I’m stepping on its chest.” She figured the teen could use some of that smug getting wiped off his face. “Levels will be good for you not getting eaten ass first by the first fae fucker your run into out in your witch bitches fucked up wonderland.” That bunch of softies probably babied the punk. He looked like he could do with some verbal face-in-dirt rubbing.
“My teacher warned me about you.”
“No shit? Cloaca leaking yet?”
“I do not have a cloaca. And if I did, it wouldn’t be leaking from something so simple as crude verbiage.”
“Well, fuck me! Look who reads the dictionary! That’s good! You like to see the youths expanding their vocabulary!”
“Let’s start, shall we.”
“Sure thing, teen witch. Can’t wait to see what bullshit you’re going to shit out! You can do it! Fight on!”
He stood and went to the closet.
The door slid open at a touch.
“That’s—”
That wasn’t the kind of closet that could do that.
It wasn’t magical or technologically advanced.
It was a plain, wooden closet with peeling paint and what sounded like metal and plastic runners that needed oiling or replacing.
Inside were several cans of paint.
Mouthy zeroed in on those.
“Did you prep all th—”
She read the labels.
A lot of pastels.
Several shades of pink.
And two that pulled her gaze with forceful gravity.
Black.
Gold.
“Oh, no. I see where this shit is going—”
She turned to leave and found the door just gone.
“You have accepted of your own will. Consent freely given without coercion. We must attempt to see down the ends of your paths ere you may depart.”
“Well… slap a syphilitic seal in its dangly bits… ain’t no good shit when they start talking Shakespeare-style.”
The teen witch opened a paint can and hurled its contents.
Despite being inside the arc, no a single drop landed on Mouthy.
“One.”
The teen witch reached for a second can.
“Jesus damn it! I hope the others had it stupider than me.”
Mouthy grabbed a folding chair leaning against the wall and sat to watch paint fly around her without ever touching her.
----------------------------------------
Mouthy eyed the teen witch dubiously.
“Looks like some weirdass bukkake shit.”
He regarded her through narrowed eyes.
“I don’t know the words you are using.”
“No shitting me?”
He shook his head.
To corrupt or not corrupt?
It would serve the witches right for raising up creepy ass witch kids.
Who the fuck does that?
On purpose?
The paint he had splattered all over the place just looked like a mess to her.
She wasn’t that much of a magic-blind idiot to not understand that this future-reading thing was probably like one of those ink splatter tests the therapists occasionally made her do.
One big difference was she wasn’t getting any sort of easing of her mental and emotional trauma looking at the bright pastels and random bits of black and gold.
“Well, shit, kid, don’t keep me in suspense. What’s my future looking like?”
Black and gold.
Yeah… she sorta saw what was looming across her proverbial road to the future.
Might be one big ass, chiseled road block that’d stop her dead in her tracks, so to speak.
“I don’t know.” The teen witch shrugged. “I have completed my part. The burden is on your shoulders to glean your fate.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Man, fuck! Ain’t you being all cryptic and knowing and shit.” She spat.
Why the fuck not?
It wasn’t like her spit wouldn’t just get mixed up in the paint.
“I give up. Don’t see shit.”
The teen witch frowned before grabbing her wrist and tugging.
She didn’t budge.
“Ask first or you might get some teeth punched in. Lucky for you I’m full of patience for idiot youths in my old age.”
“I’ve come to a sudden, but inevitable— I think— understanding.” His spoke oddly.
Like he was far away and she was just getting a loud echo.
“Weird witch magic shit.” She nodded. “Got it. Lead on, weirdo.”
He pulled her around the room, past the dumbbells, under the power cage and from corner to corner.
She let her boots drag through the paint.
The original owner was going to come back to a horrible mess and she, in the fullness of her petty heart, smiled at that.
“Behold!” The teen witch manhandled her roughly by the shoulders, turning her body this way and that. Well, he tried. Despite the sudden strength belied by his scrawny form, he still couldn’t have moved her without her willing participation.
“Jesus damn! Why are the youths so fucking weird these days?”
“See the fate painted by my brush!”
“What brush? You just threw up paint like—”
“Behold!”
“Fine! Stop grabbing my face, weirdass kid!”
The canvas was some small-dicked dude’s home gym.
Only they’d turn a perfectly normal bedroom into one.
Proper home gyms belonged in the garage or in a shed in the backyard.
The paint was, well, paint.
Bright pastels and black and gold.
She saw—
“Nah. Fuck this.”
What did knowing her fate matter?
Whatever it was she’d meet it like she always did.
With her weapons and rangers at her side.
Worst case scenario?
She died.
Nah.
They died.
Best case scenario?
She died.
No more grief burden.
She could finally rest.
The hamster gears in her head turned.
There was a way to turn this into fates for her friends that didn’t suck.
She had her Skills, after all.
Maybe only one needed to pay the price in whatever dire shit these witches thought the rangers were going to step in.
She clapped her hands in the teen witch’s face, snapping him back to himself.
“Um?” He blinked at her like the dumbest fish in the school.
“You did great back there! Read my paint fate like a champ! Truly a witch among witches! I’ll tell your teacher that.” She regarded him a moment. “So, I owe you some kind of trauma story for you to suck up into your craft, like some kind of deviant vampire? No problem. I’ve got so many. But, I’ve got one I think you’ll find just fan-fucking-tastic! Let me tell you about the first time I got my period.”
Her day had been ruined.
And now her night had been immeasurably ruined.
It was only fair to pass that forward.