Wasteland
by Becca Abbott
Part 13
Late afternoon light trickled in through the boarded-up windows. Raoul sat on the edge of his bed, numb with exhaustion and dull regret. He'd slept badly. On the other bed, within arm's reach, the mongrel lay asleep, the marks of Raoul's insanity vivid on his pale skin. The boy was a mess, mouth cut and blackened, wrists lacerated by the strap. His hips had been badly bruised by Raoul's heedless strength and his rectum was torn. Raoul wondered if Guy could even walk, much less sit. Damn it!
Rising, the Blondie stalked to the other room and stared at the bike. What the hell was wrong with him? Guy had done nothing to deserve that brutality. Where had the madness come from? Raoul himself could barely remember. The fight he remembered vividly, the surge of primitive rage and bloodlust that had come in the ring. It wasn't entirely unexpected, although he'd not thought himself, as a Blondie, capable of it. When the bloodlust had gone, something else had remained.
Jupiter! he thought suddenly, desperately. What is happening to me? He went back to the bedroom. Pulling out his locator he switched it on, but the screen remained dark.
Guy stirred, groaning, and opened his eyes. He saw Raoul and his nude, battered body stiffened. Then, slowly and awkwardly, he rose to his knees. Pale as death, he would not look at Raoul, fear stark in his bruised face. Raoul had seen fear there before, of course, but nothing like this. This seemed to come straight from Guy's soul.
Raoul started toward him and stopped when the mongrel literally cringed, lifting his hands before his face, eyes wide, pupils nearly swallowed in black. Then Guy seemed to regain some semblance of control. The hands fell.
"Stay where you are," said Raoul. "I hurt you badly. I – I'm sorry."
Guy stared up at him and blinked.
"I don't know what happened," Raoul went on, voice dropping. Shame was a cold lump in his gut.
"What did I do?" Guy's voice was barely audible. "You were angry."
"No." Raoul again recalled the rich, black tide of triumph and lust. "You were – in the wrong place at the wrong time." He approached Guy, moving slowly, hating the way the man shivered at his approach. He handed Guy their canteen. "Drink."
Raoul tried not to see the angry cuts circling the mongrel's wrists. Guy took the canteen warily. When Raoul didn't move, he drank.
"Keep it," said Raoul when Guy would hand it back. "Lie back down."
"What time is it?"
"It will be night soon. Rest."
"We should go to that bar, Grogs – find out about Juno, about Iason and Riki."
"You're in no shape to do that, thanks to me," sighed Raoul. Without thinking, he reached out and touched Guy's cheek. The mongrel became very still, losing what little color he had. Quickly, Raoul drew his hand away. "Lie down," he said harshly.
Guy obeyed. Rising, Raoul stripped off his leather coat and lay it over the mongrel. Guy blinked and his eyes got wide. Raoul stood. "I'll go and ask around. I doubt if anyone will give me any trouble now."
There was, incredibly, a ghost of a laugh from the mongrel. "Probably not. Just be careful. Not all your enemies will face you in the arena."
Raoul left Guy asleep. Out in the old city's ruined streets, he found that word of the fight had spread like wildfire. People gave him wide berth. Some nodded respectfully. When he stopped for directions to Grog's, they were promptly forthcoming. He wondered if anyone even suspected that he was an Elite.
Grog's was a dingy, run-down bar near an empty canal. It was filled with smoke and the fumes of cheap liquor. Raoul discovered that in exchange for his hand-torch, he could have all the stout he could drink and his pick of the whores. It sounded like a good place to start.
He chose a table in the far corner of the poorly lit room and sat with his back against the wall, bottle of stout untouched in front of him. The whores came round and he picked one, a slim, redhaired boy with a painted face. The boy accepted his offer of a drink eagerly.
"I'm looking for something," Raoul said bluntly.
"I'll bet you are," the boy said, licking his thin lips lasciviously. "And I got it."
"I doubt that. I'm looking for information on something or someone called Juno."
The boy blinked.
"Have you heard of it?"
"Yeah." The boy took a swig of the stout and wiped his mouth with the back of a filthy hand. Raoul managed to repress the automatic shudder. "I heard he was leader of some kinda cult called Olympus. They live up the coast a ways. Once in a while, some of 'em come to Midnight, looking for components and machine parts."
"Cult?"
"Yeah. Leastways, that's what I've heard." The other small hand crept down between Raoul's legs. He knocked it away carelessly. The boy pouted.
"Where down the coast?"
"Dunno. You're awful pretty. I hear you killed Mauler. Must be a lot stronger then you look."
Raoul lifted an eyebrow. The boy squirmed in his lap, but Raoul felt nothing at all. "What does the cult do?"
"I don't know. They think Jupiter is evil."
"Are there very many of them?"
"I don't know," whined the boy, squirming harder, grinding his narrow buttocks against Raoul's crotch. Losing patience, the Blondie took the brat by the scruff of his neck and lifted him off.
"Thanks," he said. The boy stared, disappointed. Raoul walked over to bar. "Give the kid as much stout as he wants. I liked him."
"B-but you didn't even touch him!"
"I've got a man," replied Raoul. "One much better than anything you offer." And leaving the bartender gaping, he left the bar.
"Joe?"
Riki looked up from the hand-held computer game. Jelly stood in the door of the commons, hand on her hip. She was talking to the soldier on the far side of the room. The man was crouched, painting a portion of the wall that had recently been repaired when one of their number, in an excess of jolliness, kicked it in. Seeing Riki looking at her, Jelly winked. To the soldier, she asked: "Gotta minute?"
Setting down his paint can, the soldier trotted off with her, leaving Riki alone in the room. It was a sign of how much they trusted him, he thought, that they would leave him unsupervised for a few minutes. Not that he could get out of the main complex, of course. That was secured by Minton's men at all times. Nor could he get to the corridor where they were keeping Iason, although he'd tried. But he'd been working hard on telling them what they wanted to hear and, little by little, they were relaxing their guard around him.
Part of Riki felt badly about the deception he was so carefully developing. Minton, Jelly and the other soldiers weren't bad people. With their rough-and-ready humor and steadfast loyalty, they reminded him of his own gang. They'd even been hinting that he could come back to Earth with them when they'd brought down Jupiter.
"Because let's face it," Jelly had said. "The laws will change, but there will still be assholes who'll treat you like a dog. It won't be like that back on Earth."
Riki did like the sound of earth. Amoi, they told him, had been changed to resemble the home world, but the result hadn't been all that successful. Earth had jungles, for instance, and they'd shown him pictures of the trees, millions of them, all shapes and sizes and covering thousands of miles.
"And best of all," Minton had told him, "no Blondies."
"Why not?" Riki had wanted to say. "It's not Iason's fault he's a Blondie! He didn't ask to be one. He's as much Jupiter's pawn as I am." But Riki hadn't said it. He'd only grinned and pretended that it sounded great.
Now he sat and stared blindly at the wall. They had started giving Iason drugs – he'd overheard Crane and Hiroshi talking about it in the canteen. He sensed an urgency in their manner that had not been there before. Whatever they needed from Iason, they were running out of patience. There was a growing knot of dread in his gut.
Do what they want, Iason. Jupiter isn't worth your life.
But Riki knew Iason, knew the implacable core of resolve that was part of the Blondie's personality. If only he could get his hands on a weapon – if only he knew exactly where they imprisoned Iason.
Setting aside the game, he got up and walked over to the shelf where more game cartridges lay in disorganized piles. As he did, his eye was caught by a dull gleam on the floor nearby. He caught his breath, hand freezing over a cart. Near the paint can, next to a roll of painter's tape, was a box cutter.
Riki's heart slammed into his throat. For a second, he was paralyzed. Then, with a quick glance toward the door, he snatched it up. The knife was one of those with breakaway blade inserts. It had a full one in it. Quickly, with shaking fingers and frequent looks toward the door, he took the blade from the holder, broke off all but one section. He quickly wrapped tape around the largest portion and put it into his pocket, replacing the single section in the holder. Setting the cutter back down, he took the cartridge and returned to the sofa. He played for another half hour and didn't win a single game.