Dead Weight by Casamassina Matt

Author:Casamassina, Matt [Casamassina, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Post-Apocalyptic | Dystopian
Published: 2016-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

31

Cowboy’s description of the space was accurate. What Zephyr didn’t anticipate, though, was the smell, which was pungent. It reeked of food, sweat, sex, and above all else, rot. A few lamps shone, revealing messy accumulations of goods, as well as an array of cheap furniture and wiry electronics. Several big beds littered the premises. There were dressers, microwaves, and a row of behemoth refrigerators. Not one, but four big-screen flat-panel televisions waited at each side of the square perimeter and towering stacks of Blu-rays threatened to topple over a couple of the adjacent sets.

So this is what kings do with their spare time, he thought, and there was movement in his periphery. Gun drawn, his arm shot out and he was ready to fire before he realized what he was looking at. Not what, but who. It was one of the girls. She was cuffed to an enormous oven, and naked. He glanced away, blushing, and yet he’d seen enough to know that it was the older and consequently most unfortunate of the captives. In her thirties. Dirty blonde hair curled at her shoulders. There were bruises on her face and body. Something else, too— were they bite marks?

“Oh my God, are you OK?” he asked and moved to her.

When she flinched away, he stopped, tossed his weapon on the nearest bed, raised his hands and stared at the ground before her feet. She seemed oblivious to her nakedness, but he wasn’t, so he balled up a sheet and tossed it her way while he trained his eyes on some invisible object to her side.

“Ma’am, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m one of the good guys, I swear,” he said. “The men who did this to you are dead.” After a moment, he added, “It’s over.”

She didn’t respond as she wrapped herself up.

“I’m gonna get you out of here. My name’s Zephyr, by the way.” She nodded but made no reply to this. After he surveyed the area, he noted, “I was told there’s another person here.”

“That’d be me,” a girl’s voice said and a hand waved out to him from behind the same oven.

“Show yourself, please.”

“You think we’re going to get the jump on you?” the voice asked.

“Please just do as I say.”

A slender figure rose and turned to him, one hand still cuffed to the oven. Long, straight, brunette hair fell over her shoulders as she considered him. She was still dressed in a tank top and shorts, which was a good sign. On her face she wore a peppering of light freckles. She was, even in the dim light, unmistakably beautiful, but he had no time to dwell on it.

“We good?” she asked, waving her free hand as proof that she wasn’t concealing anything.

“Yeah. All good. Let me get you guys out of here.”

Naturally, Dick, presently a corpse, had the keys to their cuffs, so Zephyr spent the next five minutes digging through the blood-soaked pants of the man he’d just killed. With a shotgun, too.

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