No Flesh Shall Be Spared

She was a smart woman.

'So, what are you going to do about it?'

'Honestly?' he said as he pulled her body even closer. 'I plan to bounce.'

'What, really?' Her eyes again went wide.

He nodded and continued, 'I figure I’ll gather up as much as I can on the financial end and hit the bricks as soon as possible, some time when no one will notice me gone… until it’s too late. I mean, it’s not like we’re prisoners here, right? They may think they own my soul, but they don’t. And as for my body… Hell, that’s always been up for grabs.'

He gently pinched her bare butt cheek and laughed.

'Not anymore, Baby,' she said punching at him, but missing. 'You have my scent on you. No other woman is gonna dare come near you,' she said as she laughed along with him.

She lay there for a long time then as if in great thought. Finally, she pulled back from him slightly and her face took on a look of bound determination.

'I’m going with you.'

'What?' Now it was his turn to go wide-eyed. 'Are you sure? You don’t want to take a minute and think it over? You know, once the post-coital euphoria wears off?'

 'I am,' she replied as if it were an admission of guilt. 'Before this…' she motioned her head toward the bed, 'I didn’t much care whether I lived or I died here. It was the thing that gave me freedom; gave me my edge. But this… this is somehow different. Now… Now, I want to have a life. Now, I want to find some kind of solace… some kind of happiness and live the rest of my life someplace safe. Someplace…' and she burrowed deeper into his arms, 'like here. After everything that’s happened, we of all people, deserve at least that, don’t we?'

She drifted off and seemed to become lost in her thoughts. He stared at her and, even before he had a chance to think it over, he knew he’d agree to take her along. How could he not? She was beautiful and his equal both intellectually and on the sand.

If anyone deserved to get away from this Hellhole, it was she.

In the silence of the room, he heard her whisper softly into his chest, 'God… I’m just so tired. Tired of the death, of the loss, of the… fighting.' The sound of slight sniffling came next. 'Where’s my refuge? Where’s my happy ending?'

 'Chikara…'

'Cleese, I once had people… people I cared about; people who relied on me. I had a life.' She stared up at him. 'Then, the whole world went… crazy… and I lost them. I lost them all. After they were gone, I swore I’d never love anything ever again. Yes, I’d taken lovers before… Creed, for one, but that was just scratching an itch, y’know?'

He looked her in the eye and nodded.

Yeah, he knew all about itch scratchin’.

'I knew I’d never have that kind of life again,' she continued. 'So, I gave myself to the League and killed hundreds—hell, thousands—of UDs. It all stopped… mattering to me.'

She lowered her gaze and stared back into his chest, slowly running a finger through the hair there.

'Then, you came along,' she continued, sounding almost embarrassed, 'and now, everything seems to have changed. I don’t want to die, Cleese. I want to try to live again. I want to spend whatever life I have left away from this place… with you. Now, I only want to get away from all of this…' and her voice abruptly cut off.

He hugged her and felt the wetness of her tears on his neck.

'Besides, I’ve gotten kind of used to having you around,' she whispered as if betraying a confidence and pulled him still closer. She wrapped her arms around him and ran the inside of her lower leg up his thigh. As she drew lazy circles across his back with a fingernail, she kissed him again, deep and soul-stirring.

Grinning shyly up at him, almost as if she’d just given away some part of her that she thought long concealed. She wriggled up deeper into his arms and buried her head into the well of his neck, this time making his skin wet with her kisses. She giggled nervously and slowly looked back up into his eyes.

It was in that moment that he caught a glimpse of the bright-eyed girl she’d been once. He saw her as she was, back when her days were long and full of hope and her life seemed to stretch out forever like an unchallenged vista. He saw her as she’d been when she was a child; once upon a time. Back when she could drink up a summer’s day like sweet cream, relishing its exhilarating taste of exploration.

For a second, he regretted not ever having had the chance to know her when she was younger. He silently wondered how, if he’d only met her years earlier, how things might have been different.

For him.

For her.

For them.

He leaned in, lowering his lips to hers, and once more felt the heart stopping spark of intimacy. He drank deeply from her mouth and savored the taste of her essence. With a full heart, he drew her body still closer to his own. Primal stirrings took hold and they gave themselves over to their rapture.

Afterward, Cleese lay in the dark as Chikara slept beside him. And in that cold silence, he began planning what he was going to do next.

… and to who.

Dead Rising

The UD opened its eyes and stared into the surrounding blackness of the Holding Pen. Its eyelids, still painted with the viscous fluid of corruption, were gooey and stuck together as if covered in paste. A thick, gummy liquid coated the lashes and made them difficult to open. Blinking, it rolled its eyes and looked around. The orbs grated in their sockets, feeling like they were martini olives dropped onto beach sand.

The thing had awoken lying on the ground, coiled in a fetal position. Its clothing, spattered with a kaleidoscopic array of mud, blood, bile and excrement, clung to its flesh like a moist second skin. Body torn and twisted, the thing returned to consciousness with no recollection of who it had been or from where it had come.

It only knew that it lived.

Raising its head from the soft, pliant ground, pain roughly wrapped its unforgiving arms about its torso and swept it into an embrace that was bereft of any solace, devoid of any peace. A raw agony twisted like a blade deep in its guts and blood pulsed like syrup within its necrotic veins. Its limbs felt stiff and its muscles were as taut as harp strings.

Overhead, fixtures suspended by cables from the ceiling cast columns of dull yellow light; pools of illumination splashed across the wet, uneven ground. The soft glow was quickly swallowed up by the icy black. Steam rose from the expansive enclosure and swirled lazily in the air only to evaporate into puffs of nothingness. A low moaning droned in a despondent chorus and imbued the Pen with a palpable sense of foreboding. Dreadful things were afoot in this profanatory place. It was as if even God himself had turned His eye away from it in disgust.

Circling about in the emptiness, other things such as itself walked. The things shambled back and forth, in and out of the sparse light, moving like schizophrenics in ever widening circles. Having lost their chance at salvation, their overriding instinct now was to hunt.

To hunt and to consume.

To find and to eat.

A woman clad in a blood-sodden medical scrub blouse stumbled drunkenly into one of the circles of light. Naked from the waist down, deep gashes had been torn into the meat of her legs. Nodules of bright, yellow fat erupted from deep within the gashes. Spaghetti-like blood vessels bobbed and dribbled globs of coagulated plasma within the folds of the lacerations. Bite marks, red and inflamed, were evident in the meaty folds of her labia.

A man stepped into view—dressed in a flight suit and covered with a black, inky substance—and clumsily bumped into the woman. His lower jaw was missing, the skin beneath his eye torn roughly away. As he turned in the light, a limbless sleeve swayed from the motion.

The two beings moved about one another in a macabre two-step, neither of them seeming to be aware of the