Bleed.
Elise Matherstone had never seen a dead body before. She had never experienced the smell of rotting meat, pushing its way up her nose as she eyed the ooze leaking from his ears. The clear liquid pooling onto the ground mixing with thick red crimson that trickled out of his nose.
The ground burned her feet. The sun was hot and it was barely mid-morning. The fighting had begun as the morning light had kissed the plains of the Outlands and the white walls of Naka. The sunlight began behind the Red Mountains behind the city, and would dip and slip away in the distance, behind the snowy mountains of ice and rock of Akaar.
The body was badly burnt, and she could hear the buzzing of hungry flies beginning to swarm. Some landed on the carcass, inside his gaping mouth, his teeth yellowed like gravestones bleached with lye. Some climbed down his scorched windpipe and Elise waited for him to cough and burst into life like she had done at the dinner table when she had drunk her juice too fast.
Elise didn’t feel that the flies would listen, their blue bellies swelling and disappearing down his gullet. When only one vanished, but three more crawled their way out, Elise tried hard to hold back the tears.
The sun rose higher, and she didn’t know how long she was standing there with her toes digging into the arid dirt. The grass under her feet long dead, cutting into her heals as it brushed in the slight wind, tickling her, reminding her that it was still there. Her skin began to pickle, and she saw nothing around her to ease the drenching of the rays other than a large boulder that jutted out of the landscape like a swollen cyst under cracked skin. She stepped away from the charred remains of the Flesh Breaker, afraid to take her eyes off him. She had heard stories, that they come when you’re not looking. That they are sneaky like ghosts, coming in the night to try and go over the wall and drag men and women out of bed and cut them into little pieces. Elise shook the thought from her head. She didn’t need to think of such horrible things.
She found relief behind the jutting rock, a slither of shadow giving her sweating body some cover. She eyed at the crows circling above in the blue sky. She hadn’t seen any wildlife in the Outlands for as long as she could remember. She had read of a time when these lands were bursting with life, a time before destruction rained from the sky. Before the Reckoning. The time before the world ended, and people didn’t live forever.
Then she heard the footsteps, and the familiar snatch of gunshots began. Elise closed her eyes. Just like it happened before, like it always did. Like she had a front row seat to the worst day in history.
Chapter One
Elise Matherstone, the youngest of the immortals, cried as she opened her eyes. Forcing back the mistakes of the night before, waking up once again in last night’s clothing, hungover and needing to pee. She stumbled out of her bunk, taking a few unsteady steps as the bubbling inside in her stomach tried to push its way up her throat.
She reached the bathroom, squinting through the pounding in her head and collapsed on her knees onto the cold vinyl. She thrust her head into the toilet and let all her decisions from the night before paint the porcelain with second hand red wine. She wretched and spluttered, coughed and hurled until she felt normal enough to call herself a fucking idiot. Her shaking fingers found the flusher and the noise bounced around her ears. She better get used to looking like shit, because sugar this is as good as it’s going to get. Today was her last birthday, and what a way to start the rest of eternity.
She crawled to her feet. She felt shaky. Woozy. She took a quick shower and towelled herself off. Elise wiped the bathroom mirror clear of mist and she studied her naked form. She was slender, toned. Her shoulders were defined and her abs solid. Her morning workouts and runs around the city were slowly paying off. The joys of modern nutrition. Everything you need at your fingertips in the form of a pill. If you needed to eat something real then you either had to have a lot of money in your pocket or be an Elder.
She dried her arms and neck and stopped as her fingers met the scar on her right arm. She studied the aged burn. Considering the marvels of modern medicine, she still had to wear it for the world to see. An injury from being a small girl, in the early days of the new world. It wasn’t enough to be known as the youngest New Breed in Naka, but she had the scars to prove it too. The result of curiosity mixed with a hot pan of water, so her Aunt had told her anyway. Sadly, she wasn’t around to ask about it, and Elise pushed the thought of her from her mind. It had gotten much easier to bury her memory. She had been doing it most of her life.
Elise ran her fingers through her damp hair. It was long and wavy. Thick and brunette. She liked to keep it simple. She had noticed the more ‘seasoned’ New Breeds change their hairstyles like the wind. Her best friend Florence had recently adopted a bright green Mohawk. Apparently it was the look these days. She said she had seen the idea from an old album cover. Elise just found it to be in bad taste.
Exiting the bathroom, Elise surveyed the carnage of last night’s antics. She had thrown an ‘Everlife’ party. It was customary when you reach the fruitful age of twenty-five forever. And what a party it had been. When you needn’t worry about consequences you can party just that little bit harder. Drink, dance and fuck until you drop. Every counter in Elise’s small apartment was covered in empty bottles: Beer, Vodka and everything in between.
She took out a bin bag from under her sink and began to put the empty bottles in one by one. After filling two bags, she was finally able to start cleaning up the mass of spillages and stains.
Elise turned on the television that was fixed into her light grey walls. A news reporter flashed on screen. An Elder. He was lightly wrinkled and had silvering hair. His eyes were a light brown and his teeth flawlessly white. He spoke about another skirmish that had occurred overnight with the Flesh Breakers. They had killed three and captured one for interrogation, of which had died during questioning.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“It’s getting more and more frequent.” Elise said to herself. She turned the TV off. The hangover was already kicking her ass and she didn’t need to make her day worse.
Elise hummed a song quietly whilst finishing the rest of her cleaning. When done, she opened up her kitchen cupboard and fished out a box of Everpills. She swallowed two of them and felt her strength returning to normal, like the old cartoon of a sailor she had seen on the Discovery Channel. The one that smokes a pipe and eats green slop. The shaking in her legs quickly went away and she felt good. Still hungry, but good. She needed to go and get something to eat soon. The Everlife was working its magic, but you couldn’t beat starting the morning with a nice hot coffee and some eggs down at Ego’s barista in the Citadel Square. She dressed into tight fitted gym clothes and moved into the front room.
The breeze crept from the window at the front of the room and goosebumps ran along her skin. She moved over to the large window at the front of her apartment and looked at the bustling city below her, and then in the distance, the Outlands. She pressed the button on the side of the wall and the blinds lowered until the world outside disappeared from view.
Elise unravelled a yoga mat and laid it flat on the ground and turned on the history channel. The screen showed a backdrop of deep orange light from the Red Mountains. A man, New Breed, had colourful ribbons wrapped around his head and his midsection was exposed, tanned and toned. His smile was warming, as he began a mantra, followed by a small meditation and set the intention of the practise. It always the same, to pray for a glorious day in the walls of Naka, and may Moore look fondly on us until the sun rises again. Blessed be the Mother, Unity, Loyalty and Progress. The Mantra made Elise feel ill, and she normally did some light stretching whilst it played out, until the Yogi of the New Age began the Yoga of the Forgotten Age. A practice brought from the jungle province of The Orcha, in a time when the Under Dark hadn’t fallen into the hands of murderers and thieves.
She stood rigid and followed the instructors’ movements. The soft ambient tones soothing in her ears. Pitching her fingers to the ceiling, she swooped back down to her feet. Her back and shoulders began to pop and creak as she twisted her waist. She winced a little at the strain but then corrected her pose. She threw one leg forward and put pressure on it in a morning warrior pose, before again turning her finger tips towards the sky. She looked up at the lamp shade and lost her balance at the sight. A pair of black laced underwear hanging from the lamp shade above her.
She queried the innocuous pair of discarded panties. They weren’t hers and Florence always swore she went commando, and the only other people at her place last night were some friends from work. All of them men. So whose underwear were these? She pondered her mind, and after coming up with a blank, she laughed to herself. She finished her routine under the watchful eye of the black knickers. A downward dog, a child’s pose and then to relax even further, an aptly named corpse pose. She shut the television off as the Yogi smiled at the camera and began the mantra again. She finished with some press ups, sit ups and then some squats to really get the blood flowing. Nothing says good morning to the world better than pulling your aching body out of its slumber by getting it to move a little.
Her sweat soaked into the rug and Elise thanked the forefathers of The Orcha for showing the rest of Ruma their ancient practice. Maybe that’s why they died out so quickly. Because they were already at peace with their lives, so when the raiders from the South invaded, they didn’t need to fight to live forever. It was just a thought. A thought she carried with her as she took a mop from the utility cupboard and fished the underwear from above her head. She pinched them between her fingers and then threw them in her washing basket. She would keep them until the owner decided to come forward. At the very least she could use them as a dish rag. After she had bleached them of course.
Elise quickly made some coffee, hoping the flush of caffeine would further tell her hangover to leave her alone, and continued to clean up some missed stains from the counters. Extra bleach. Elise moved into her bedroom and changed again, putting on some body spray and washing herself in the sink basin. Her room was small, nothing fancy. Minimal. The way she liked it. Calm environment for a chaotic mind. The dichotomy was frivolous. It was small, not much bigger than her living room/kitchen combo. A bunk which she needed to make up, next to a small bed side table with a reading light and a stack of old paper backs. She looked at them in a moment of awe. They were from the old world and had been brought back from the Outlands. Most of what the Marauders brought back was charred, destroyed. Not much of it left to be used in any way. Anything they did bring back that was in working order was sold at a high price, or given away to the Royal Guard as a form of reward. Elise had amassed several of them for her time on the wall. She had the memories of Flesh Breakers skulls departing from their necks with her light rifle to prove it. The missions weren’t always for salvaging. In fact most of the time they weren’t. The Outlands were a vast and empty waste land. The first few miles were nothing but cracked ground, scorched by the afternoon sun for over one hundred years. A little farther, one might find wreckages of The Graveyard that lay like old skeletons, remnants of their former glory before the Reckoning withered them to ash and dust. Pickings were slim for resources, and it was risky business, less one of The Flesh Breakers capture you and drag you into the mountains of Akaar, never to be seen again.
Most times, the Marauder’s came back with less soldiers than they set out with. Sometimes, they brought back a prisoner. Others came back shells of themselves, subjected to the savagery of those that lay beyond the wall.
The stack of paperbacks were in good condition considering their age. As a girl her Aunt read her stories of monsters and demons that ate children in the night and they had terrified her. She had read about huge Mariwales that swam under the Black Ocean of the Southern Provinces of Nothrad, and over turned giant ships and held sunken riches. She had never seen the sea and again she felt a ping of sorrow in her heart. Not for the tales in the books, but for those who had read them to her.
Her stomach began to ache again. She needed to eat something soon, and she thought about the taste of those fresh eggs from Ego’s. Most New Breeds only had the Everpills to make them feel fulfilled. The more the sustenance the food had, the higher the price. Everlife could satisfy your nutrient deficiency, but the hunger was still there, and Elise had seen it cripple people in the city to the point where she had seen New Breeds drowning in alcohol to quell the terrible aching in their bellies, or had resorted to eating mud, rock and even glass. Vegetables were the cheapest option. Root ones normally: potatoes, carrots and onions grown in a petri dish in the Citadel. Then more colourful ones such as broccoli, radishes and spinach. She had once eaten some fruit, a bundle of blackberries. Real blackberries, brought back from over the wall. They were so sweet she savoured every bite. Nearly everything that was eaten in Naka was made in laboratories. This was much safer and it could be modified for optimum nutrition, plus it meant you didn’t have to risk your life in the Outlands. But that still took time and resources, and if you didn’t work your ass off you wouldn’t ever get a bite. Hunger was still a very real thing. People ate out of comfort, not necessity, and you worked to stathe off the agony for a little longer. Only the Elders ever ate meat. Her and Florence once got some money together with the intention of getting completely shit faced on wine, but they managed to buy half a patty of beef between them, and it was the best thing either of them had ever eaten. Dripping fat and all.
A knock at the door came. Before she could respond, it came harder, more urgent. “I’m coming!” Elise said slightly annoyed. It was still only early. All the guests should still be hungover in their quarters. So who the hell could this be? Elise tied up her hair into a bun, more out of habit than of fashion. Alarm struck her. If it was her Captain coming to check in on her, she would be made to clean the toilets of the guard posts for the next month. He didn’t like mess, and he would not be happy with the state of her home, birthday girl or not. Her mouth ran dry as another knock at the door came. Elise hovered over the door handle. She took in a deep breath. “Who is it?”
“Wow you sound almost as bad as I feel!” A familiar voice said. It wasn’t the Captain. At least that was a good thing. She hoped. She opened the door and saw Florence standing there. Green Mohawk, tattooed arms, tight black top with ripped jeans. Bracelets around her wrists and metal poking out of her face. Black lipstick barked in a smile. “Are we going for coffee or what?”