A Warrior's Return (7 page)

Her voice was garbled as she said, “You’ve
killed me!”

“You were dead a long time ago. You just
didn’t know it and I didn’t kill you. You killed yourself. You had
what, five hundred years, eight hundred years or more to repent and
ask your Creator for forgiveness and all you did was increase in
your excesses and rebellion so much so that God wiped out an entire
planet just to purge the likes of you from it! You of all people
call the people of today decrepit! They often make the right
choices every day, something you utterly failed to do with much
more time than they have! Who’s decrepit? The answer is we both
are; only you’re more without excuse!”

Clark took a hunk of plastic explosive out
of his left pocket and a timer out of his right pocket. She watched
him closely, “Your weapons are too primitive for you to be who you
claim to be. The last part was meant to lead me on to. You’re after
the weapon! Why? Because it no longer casts out its disrupting beam
and you want to find a way to reactivate it, because you want to
chain us here once again! You are of Vallian blood, I can see that
now, but obviously not all has gone well for the Vallians for you
to have to employ such primitive devices to halt what is our
destiny. Let me tell you something brave but misguided warrior, you
may kill all trace of advanced technology in this place, but there
are other places like this that still persist. We will attract
Earth people not so zealous as you to our underground tombs and we
will open the gates of our knowledge up to them. Knowledge is so
corrupting isn’t it? In fact it has already begun! You’re too late
to stop us and it is worse than you know. We know your ancestors
returned many hundred years ago. When they came back to Earth we
were able to pick up on their presence and monitor them. We tracked
them when they left and we know where it was that they settled. We
will give our knowledge to the people of this world and our ways of
rebellion we will instill and encourage to grow within them just as
before! We will tell them that the Vallians are there worst enemy
and our new converts will destroy you and your people down to the
last child! We will have our revenge! There is nothing you can do
to stop our destiny!” She finished warbly.

Clark simply shook his head, “You talk too
much, but thank you anyway for the heads up.”

He abruptly stuck a gob of C4 to the corner
of the room’s main console and walked out not bothering to look
back. With fingers that couldn’t touch matter but simply passed
through it digitally she tried to halt the progression of the
ticking red numbered countdown clock.

She screamed in frustration and fear as her
physical form must have when she had died gasping for air during
the great flood so long ago.

Clark pulled the tablet out of midair and
quickly tapped a message out and sent it. All the tablet’s
considerable power drained away in mere seconds as it sent a
transmission into space. He hoped the message got there in time and
then that someone would be there to read it, but he couldn’t worry
about that now. He had a lot of work to do.

It would probably take the signal several
months to reach his homeworld, if it reached it at all. It was
safer to assume that the message didn’t reach his homeworld and
that everything depended on him to keep the resurgent Orlandians
from destroying his world. God help him!

He tossed the tablet towards the open hole
in the ground and then grabbing his pack he ran.

Clark was well into the jungle when the C4
explosion ripped through the humid air. The aftermath explosions
were worse than the first one and Clark tumbled to the ground at
the shock of the secondary explosions.

After five minutes the explosions died down
to muffled rumbles and Clark got up and moved swiftly down through
the rain forest that had been shocked into silence from its usual
daily uproar.

I was careful not to spend too much money. I
kept my and Rafael’s meager diets much the same as they had been
before the advent of Clark.

I would give Clark a couple more days to
return. If he didn’t show, then I and Rafael were leaving. I would
find someplace else to live, where no one knew me and perhaps get a
job. A good job, if I couldn’t find a job than I would leave Rafael
with as good a family that I could find, while I would starve to
death if need be.

One thing had become clear over the past
week. I was never going to be a whore again!

It wasn’t worth it for any amount of money
and life wasn’t worth holding on to, if it came at the cost of
little chunks of my soul being eaten away every day.

I headed back towards the apartment with a
small bag of groceries in one arm, it was already late afternoon
and I wanted to get home before it grew any darker. I managed to
get out half a scream before a hand clamped down over my mouth and
crushing arms enveloped me from behind.

I was being mugged!

Then I got a glimpse of one of the two men
restraining me.

Oh no! Came the horror stricken thought, as
I recognized the men as being some of Victor’s men.

The crushing blow to the back of my head
sent my consciousness reeling. I didn’t need to worry about
starving to death now; rather it would be how long death would be
in the coming.

I woke up from my induced unconsciousness
and gradually came to an awareness of my surroundings. Where else,
but Victor’s study. I was handcuffed to a chair and surrounded by
Victor’s ever present henchmen. Some openly sneered at me, while
others I didn’t think had anything upstairs to think one way or the
other.

The doors opened behind me and I knew it had
to be Victor from the nervous energy that suddenly filled the room
with tension. My head was wrenched backward abruptly by a savage
grip on my hair and I stared full into the demented eyes of Victor
above me.

I knew that I was going to die, but it was
up to me to determine how I went out. I spit full into his face and
he reeled backward in shocked surprise. I turned my neck slightly
to watch him wipe my spit off his face disgustedly.

I’d gotten into his personal space and he
didn’t like it. He recovered from his disgusted surprise and
screaming he charged me with a raised fist. I was mad and madness
gave me courage. I pushed up with my feet lifting the front legs of
the chair, I then abruptly leaned to one side putting the chair
onto one leg and I spun it with one foot.

Unbelievably the chair didn’t fall over
backwards with me in it. The straps to one of my sandals had
finally worn out and I’d had no choice other than to go grocery
shopping in my stripper stilettos. They were sharply pointed on the
ends and I let Victor have both of them as hard as I could, one in
either shin.

He screamed shrilly and dropped to his knees
before me. Big mistake! I had the chair back on two legs as I
thrust out with both of my legs. The points of the stilettos sank
satisfyingly into Victor beneath each of his shoulders. He screamed
like a stuck pig and threw himself backward before I had a chance
to kick at him again. He had gotten to his feet and had backed away
even further from me.

“What’s the matter Victor? Cat got your
tongue, you limp noodled excuse of human garbage not big enough to
have sex with a rabbit, even if it would have you!”

So trash talking wasn’t my thing, but at
least it got the point across. He grabbed a gun and pointed it at
my head shaking uncontrollably, as sweat flowed off of his forehead
and mingled with the bloody stains at the front of his shirt.

“Go on you coward shoot me before you’ve
even questioned me, as to what was stolen from you and show us all
what a fish brained half crazed rabid squirrel you are!”

I swear I could feel his finger’s pressure
on the trigger.

“You don’t even bother to hide your part in
this conspiracy! You realize what you’ve done? I’ve promised
something of great value to a client and I’ve already received half
payment for it, but I don’t have the purchased item, because of you
and the stranger that no one knows anything about! You’re going to
tell me everything you know about this man and help me get my item
of interest back! If you don’t I’ll have you tortured until you beg
for death.”

“I wouldn’t tell you how many keys he has
let alone where he was! You know why Victor? Why I won’t tell you
anything about him no matter how you torture or molest me? I’ll
tell you why Victor! Because he’s a man, which is something you’ve
never been, you crazed mongrel son of a coyote that should’ve been
drowned in your first bathwater! I’d do anything for him including
die!” I screamed it all into Victor’s face.

Victor looked absolutely apoplectic and for
a moment I wondered if he was having a heart attack. No such
luck.

Like a little boy having a temper tantrum he
yelled, while slapping his leg with his free hand and stomping his
feet, “Hit her! Hit her! Make her scream or I’ll shoot all of
you!”

In mass his henchmen rushed toward me five
of them in all, but I wasn’t giving in yet. I picked the chair up
by bending over forwards and I launched myself backwards. I felt
the legs of the chair connect and sink into one of my assailants
coming up behind me.

He screamed and fell away, even as I spun
around to the side smashing another bodyguard broad ways with the
chair legs, effectively cutting his legs out from underneath him. I
half turned and sat down hard. I felt one chair leg sink deeply and
somehow I knew I had just killed the man.

Another onrushing bodyguard caught both of
my heels to the chest just as Victor had and I pushed off hard
sending him crashing backwards into a wall.

The force of my push off sent the chair over
backwards and it shattered on impact with the floor. I stumbled to
my feet. The ropes that had bound me dangled from my wrists along
with the chair arms.

Another bodyguard was in front of me and I
swung one of the arms of the chair at his face, which he blocked
with an arm, but he was unprepared for the other chair arm I
brought up between his legs. He howled and clutched at himself and
I brought both chair arms as hard as I could to either side of his
head.

He dropped to the floor with a sightless
vacant expression across his face. Then all I could see was Victor
and I launched myself towards him with a scream of fury. He was
shaking and the pistol in his hand fired. I felt the hot trace of
the bullet whiz past my face and then I was smashing his hand aside
with one of the chair arms.

The gun fell to the floor and all I focused
on was smashing the little crazed weasel of a man into the ground,
until he was as flat as a pancake. He wailed and screamed pitifully
trying to protect his face and head with his arms, as I drove him
down to his knees.

I felt myself abruptly pulled back and
slammed to the floor by the remaining two bodyguards. I screamed in
frustration at the interruption of me beating Victor senseless and
flailed away at their feet and legs. I got kicked in the head and I
saw nothing but stars in front of my eyeballs for a moment and then
the pain of more kicks to my stomach, back, and hips.

It was hard to get a breath and I curled
into a ball trying to escape from the kicks at least partially.
Through the fog of pain and the struggle to breathe I heard Victor
yelling for them to stop.

“Pull her out flat!”

I was yanked flat out on my back and oh the
pain!

I wheezed for breath. My eyes flickered to
stay open, as I struggled to keep from blacking out. Victor was
standing over me clutching his pistol. I relished the facial
swelling and the blood that I saw Victor embellished with and only
wished that I could have had the time needed to finish the job. He
was saying something.

“I’m going to blow off your feet and then
your knees and then your hands working my way up to your
heart!”

Flinging his hand wide he intoned, “You are
about to find out what pain is all about!”

A knife that could have doubled as a small
sword shot through the air and pierced through Victor’s arm and
nailed it to the wooden paneling behind him. Victor dropped the
pistol and clutched at the knife’s handle wailing in pain and
fright, as he tried to free himself.

I saw the knife and I knew that Clark had
come back for me. The bodyguard to my left was hauled off his feet
and up into the air and then down sideways to be smashed backward
across Clark’s knee. The sound of his spine being shattered was as
loud as a gunshot in the room. The other guard leaped on Clark’s
back trying to get a stranglehold, but Clark literally just reached
back and caught a hold of him with one hand and pulled him up and
over his shoulder to fall in front of him.

Clark snapped the man’s neck in one easy
motion. The bodyguard done away with, Clark got to his feet and
moved toward Victor, who shrunk back from him in fear. Clark yanked
the knife free and with one swift slice of the knife disemboweled
Victor. Victor sank to his knees trying to pull back inside the
life that would never be his again and within moments he slumped
forward in death.

Seeing Clark had given me energy from
somewhere and the will to act. I started to push myself up and then
he was there helping me. I couldn’t help the tears that spilled out
as I clutched at his shirt and pressed my face into his neck loving
the comfort of his warm presence.

His arms held me and his voice was a
reassuring whisper against my ear, “See I told you that you would
make a great warrior, if I hadn’t stepped in and intervened I
shudder to think what you would’ve done to the rest of these
rats.”

A slightly hysterical sounding laugh escaped
me at his ridiculous words and I cringed from the pain that the
laugh caused me.