Hellscapes, Volume III Hellscapes, #3 by Stephen Zimmer

Author:Stephen Zimmer
Format: epub

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Seeing the Keepers stepping over the sides of the pen, Mason roused himself for another feeding. Heaving his bulk up, he eyed the incoming creatures lethargically.

He had eaten so much at the last feeding, he had little hunger at the present moment, but he knew he would gorge himself nonetheless. Around him, the others in the pen worked to get upright, moving slowly with their enormous girth.

Then, a look of confusion came over Mason.

The Keepers carried no buckets with them, nor did any of the creatures have a bone-club in their grip. Before Mason could speculate on the anomaly, the Keepers started snatching up the severely fattened individuals in the pen.

Screams and cries broke out among the stunned occupants of the pen, and there was a surge toward the other side, as many tried to keep a distance from the Keepers.

To Mason’s growing dismay, it became clear that the Keepers were not culling from the group. Rather, they were harvesting everyone.

Mason could barely move, and he could do nothing to get away when one of the Keepers turned its attention to him.

Screaming, and seized in two pincers, Mason carved a deep furrow through the muck as the Keeper dragged him over toward the side of the pen. All around him, others were being pulled through the stinking mire.

After reaching the sides, they were all unceremoniously lifted out of the pens. Then, they were shoved into large, black iron cages, like those enclosing them when they first arrived.

The severe obesity of the men and women rendered them all immobile within the congested interior of the cages. Mason gasped and wheezed in the pressing mass of flesh, hemmed in tight from all sides.

Once again, Mason had a position in the cage that afforded him a view of the things taking place outside of it. He looked outward, as one of the hulks with the crocodilian heads heaved the cage up.

The creature lugged it down the length of the building, passing several other pens where many other cages were in the process of being loaded. With the detached view of an observer, Mason watched Keepers grabbing onto other men and women, as they rounded up the hefty occupants.

After exiting the building, the cage bearer took the enclosure across a short stretch of ground, to where one of the strange, three-headed beasts of burden awaited. Once the cage was set atop the back of the massive beast, the bearer turned and trod back towards the building entrance.

His thoughts swirling, and taken out from his place of internment for the first time in ages, Mason struggled to focus his mind.

Peering through the iron bars, he espied some other movements taking place within the open ground. To his astonishment, he saw a few humans wobbling through the shadows, near to a few smaller outbuildings.

From their fattened condition, he knew them at once to be fellow captives, but somehow they had slipped away from their diabolic incarcerators. They could not move fast, but they were much smaller than the Keepers and other beings involved in the gruesome enterprise.

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