Body Shrine (Savage Erotica) (4 page)

The ghouls snapped out of their fugue and surged towards her, shouting battle cries and promises of vengeance. A shot rang out as Zara executed an unsuspecting ghoul with her revolver, then firing more shots as she shouted for the captives to fight back. Cassandra waited for the horde to meet her, ignoring the bullet that stung her abdomen as one of the ghouls fired at her as he ran. Raising her sword and springing forward she turned the gun aside and stepped forward and to the right as she swept her sword through the ghoul’s neck, cleanly decapitating him and rushing into a reverse strike to the ribcage of another ghoul before the headless corpse had hit the ground. Another rushed her with what appeared to be a spiked bat, only to find herself impaled as Cassandra ducked her strike and lunged with the blade. The male thirster, though weakened by her assault on his vitality, managed to advance and attempt to punch her with a claw knife. The young warrior spun on her heels and caught the attack mid-strike, her Power having tuned her senses to the point that she felt the attack coming before it arrived. She drew the sword from the body of the dying ghoul as she crushed the thirster’s hand in her own, the delicate finger bones popping one after another against the metal of the claw as she pushed the wailing thirster to his knees before thrusting the tip of her sword through his mouth and out the back of his skull. The thirster’s body went slack as the last of his life-force flowed into Cassandra, who then kicked him in the chest, sending the empty corpse skidding across the dome.

The young warrior could sense that a handful of the human captives were struggling to fight back, while most had been slaughtered or fled into the night. She could see Zara fire the last round of a shotgun into the chest of a charging ghoul, then reverse her grip on the firearm to finish him off by using it as a club. Cassandra gathered her Power to her, and with a deep inhale tore the last shreds of energy from the scattered chosen who yet lived, sending them flailing to the ground even as she surged with renewed strength. Several hard rounds struck her leg, others narrowly missed her head as she knelt down from the impact, eyes searching for the new threat. A ghoul with a semi-automatic assault rifle had started firing into the dome as he rushed to stand over the prone form of the female thirster, whose hand feebly reached out towards him. Cassandra grabbed the nearest prone body by the neck and hauled it in front of her and charged the shooter. The ghoul lost several precious moments being stunned by the bold tactic, then had no choice but to fire, most of the rounds sinking into the body shield, only one penetrating and striking Cassandra, who seemed not to notice. When she was close enough Cassandra dropped the body and hurled her sword at the ghoul, who dropped the rifle as he was knocked over by the impact of the sword penetrating his body. The young warrior cast a quick glance at the body she’d used as a shield and realized it was the guard who had been fucking her earlier, and smirked as she stalked over to the prone body of the female thirster.

Without the energy left to use the gaze, the thirster could only watch in impotent silence as Cassandra picked up the assault rifle and loaded a fresh magazine she looted from the shooter’s corpse. The young warrior then began aiming at the ghouls still fighting in the camp and began shooting them down one by one, the spent brass of the rounds falling like rain onto the paralyzed thirster. By the time the rifle went empty the fighting was over, with the surviving ghouls having fled into the night, and the three human captives who lived standing back to back just outside the dome. Cassandra dropped the rifle and pulled her sword from the dead ghoul, then promptly drove the point into the thirster’s heart, pinning her now twitching corpse to the ground. The young warrior leaned on the sword and drew upon her Power once more, sending tendrils of energy coursing through her body, re-knitting torn muscles, smoothing out bruised flesh, and mending her torn organs. Soon all that was left were several more scars for her collection. Zara approached her gingerly, and when Cassandra looked up they both could not help but to smile. “Let’s get you home.” The young warrior said as they embraced.

ACT III

It had been days since Cassandra had left the relative safety of Las Vegas to rescue Zara, and Rook had given up hope. His awareness passed in and out of wakefulness as his broken body struggled in vain to knit itself back together. The opiates of the medicae did nothing to heal him, as little was had in Las Vegas of the powerful medical knowledge of the old world, though at least they numbed him to most of the pain. He cursed his own weakness, raging silently against the bullets that had torn through his body, leaving him to die a slow and painful death. If he’d been more of a warrior than a farmer maybe he would have been able to protect her, though the work of earth and plant had always been more his trade than bullet and blade. The refugee road from Reno was never going to be easy, though neither he nor anyone else could have been prepared for that hell ride.

They had stayed too long in Reno, he thought to himself, so much had he wanted to make a life there for he and his daughter. A bountiful vegetable farm in the middle of what was once a great city, before it was bombed into oblivion. He had been a farmer his whole life, raised in the ruins of Old LA, where he made his home and married his wife. Times were good, that is before the Corrupted. As if the thirsters in the wilderness weren’t enough, the corrupted appeared in middle of the city and spread outwards like a plague. He’d lost his farm and his wife, and he and his daughter were forced to flee to Reno. He cursed his luck then, as it was only two years later that the corrupted appeared there, driving everyone out in a matter of days. Nobody had been prepared, and the exodus was like a feeding frenzy for the thirsters that ruled the wasteland.

He awoke to the sensation of someone on the cot with him, a delicate and questing hand stroking his cock into wakefulness. He opened his eyes and was greeted with the sight of Cassandra’s tongue encircling the tip, and then slowly taking all of him into her mouth. It felt too good to be true, he thought to himself as he watched her head bob up and down, her perfect lips pressing into his pelvis and she deep throated his throbbing member. This was impossible, he kept telling himself, this has to be a hallucination from the drugs. Despite the intense pleasure a wave of nausea crashed through his senses as the drugs continued to do their work, and he collapsed. He had so little strength left, yet he managed to force himself to sit up when he felt the pleasant warmth of her mouth disappear. Instantly his head was heavy and his arms quaked with the effort, and he fell back down as he closed his eyes. They were dead, he told himself, and soon he would be too. Zara, the daughter he should have protected, and Cassandra, the beautiful stranger who had emerged from the desert in a storm of twisted metal and shattered glass.

He had dreamed of Cassandra every night since the attack, terrible visions of the high speed battle on the road tempered with intimate fantasies about the warrior woman who helped fight off the thirsters. In his drug-fueled imagination Cassandra would return with Zara, unharmed and whole, then the young warrior would open herself to him. He knew lust when he was faced with it, and she was easily the most attractive woman he’d ever laid eyes on, yet there was something different about her. Some base animal level connection that he could not describe, even to himself, the articulation of it seeming to defy his best efforts. This alluring and mysterious woman who dragged him to safety and stood over him, fighting till the last of the ghouls had fled into the desert with their bloody masters. The woman who brought him to the medicae, and who, when she thought he wasn’t looking, wept as the medicae told her there was no hope for Rook.

This was a hard world, a world with little room for tears, especially for a stranger, yet there she was. Had his plight somehow struck a chord with this bounty killer? Such warriors were lone wolves, fighting only for profit or survival, never ideals or altruism. When she made the promise to find his daughter it shocked him more than her tears, and turned his desire for her body into something much deeper. He knew he was dying, but the kindness of this stranger had stoked the embers of his inner fire, and he fought for life, even if barely clinging to it.

Such were his dreams, and as he felt a lithe feminine body crawl on top of him, he kept his eyes closed, sure that he was hallucinating a more comforting end to his life than his brain slowly suffocating as his punctured lungs gave up the struggle. Yet the body felt so real, the hands that took hold of his manhood causing such vivid sensations, he began to question his sanity, and opened his eyes.

Cassandra had straddled Rook, and as he watched she lowered herself onto him, his erect cock disappearing into her beautiful body. He could not believe what he was seeing, or what he was feeling, and feebly raised himself up on his elbows as she began to move herself up and down on his thick shaft. Cassandra leaned forward and put a hand behind his head, moving his face to hers and kissing him deeply. She opened her Power to him even as she opened her body to him, and tendrils of energy began to entwine them both. She had expended everything she had siphoned from the thirsters and ghouls, yet had her own life-force to give, and it flowed into Rook. The pallor of his skin began to warm, and the bullet holes that had punctured his chest and abdomen began to close. Strength slowly returned to his limbs and Rook found himself moving his hands across Cassandra’s breasts and gripping her waist firmly. He began moving with her, thrusting his cock upwards as she brought her pussy gliding downwards upon it. Their eyes met and held each other’s gaze, their lips close but not touching, and sharing the same breath as their bodies collided passionately. Rook felt Cassandra’s pussy begin to quake, and her breaths became short and high pitched as she neared orgasm, the knowledge of which pushed him over the edge. Rook groaned as he came, fountaining deep inside her as she brought her lips to his ear, whispering, “Accept my sacrifice,” to him even as a quiet orgasm shuddered through her body before she collapsed upon his chest.

She was barely conscious when Rook lifted her from the cot, and took little notice of the strange sites to be seen in the streets of Las Vegas as he moved through the city. She had a brief glimpse of Zara, clothes and body recovered from her ordeal in the wilderness, though her eyes were clouded with storms of inner strife. Cassandra wanted to reach out to the girl, to comfort her, to tell her that even in this hard life there were good things. For all the blood, sweat, and tears there was also goodness, and though it had taken her a lifetime to find it, she knew she had. It seemed a cruel irony though, only now, as she lay helpless and fading, that she accept her feelings for a man she had only known for a few fleeting moments. She had first seen him standing there, on top of a rusted old truck, firing a shotgun at the raiders as he put himself between the enemy and the other refugees. They had fought together, lost Zara together, and it was only when he lay bleeding in her arms that he smiled and asked her name. Sex came easily to Cassandra, so fundamental to her being that it was as natural and shameless as breathing, yet to feel a genuine emotional connection with another person, however fleeting, had been alien to her. She had glimpses of her small living quarters, a modest makeshift apartment in the second story of what had once been a thriving casino of the old world. The faces of Zara and Rook would fade in and out as Cassandra was dimly aware of lying on her cot, sometimes being fed water or soup. She had turned her Power outwards, and poured her own life-force into Rook, in that moment seeing the man that he really was, and being thankful that the man she saw was the sort who was worth the gamble, who was worth the sacrifice. People had to cling to whatever rays of light this life presented them, she thought to herself, though it seemed that Rook’s face was in hers whispering the same thing.

She felt a comfortable teasing of her womanhood, and became aware that she was naked as hands rough from work began to caress her body. She felt the rough scratch of stubble on her inner thigh, and then the soft flick of a tongue on her awakening clit. Instinctively she opened her Power and tendrils of energy began to swirl around her. As the licking intensified she felt a surge of energy and sank her tendrils into whoever was pleasuring her. Instantly she knew it was Rook, his farmer’s hands massaging her breasts and caressing her stomach as he worked his tongue around her. He was giving himself to her freely, offering up what life-force he had to keep her from sinking into oblivion. She took all that she dared and broke the connection, pushing his face away from her with some of the small measure of strength she had gained before passing out again.

More dreams of battle and of loss plagued her sleep, and yet again she awoke to Rook’s tongue lapping at her pussy, coaxing her Power to take more from him. She was getting stronger, taking only small amounts of energy from him before stopping. She awoke once more to Rook’s tongue, and this time let him carry her away to a moaning orgasm with his talents, holding her Power in check as she savored him. She lifted his chin and pulled his body up and across hers, both of them gasping with pleasure as she guided his cock into her. They made love then, the slow and deep sort that only comes from mutual trust and passion, the kind made between gods and men.

EPILOGUE

The vultures and crows had come to the compound and begun to pick clean the corpses of the dead, though none approached the corpse of the fat man. Something about the body made them keep their distance. The body shuddered, and something alive squirmed its way out of the dead man’s mouth, falling to the ground with a wet smack. It had a reticulated body, and pushed itself along by sending ripples through its muscles to propel itself forward. A crow was caught unawares, and the thing snatched it with tentacles that suddenly sprouted from one of the puckered orifices on its slimy body. The crow cawed, and was no more. More birds screeched, and more birds died. At sunrise the next day no birds remained in the silent camp, and a lone figure walked into the desert, heading towards Las Vegas.

To be continued…