Deadman

I regained consciousness ravenous and disoriented, a bright light shining directly into my eyes. I went to sit up, and felt metal dig into me, I was chained to a table. I went to speak and realized that my jaw was propped open by some kind of metal device. I strained to close my mouth, and the metal strained, but I wasn’t able to break it. I tested the chains again, and wasn’t able to create any give, only managing to cut myself on them as I pushed. I was midway through another try when I heard a door open, and footsteps slowly making their way toward me.

A woman leaned into the light, dimming it slightly, she was lean and tan, with a clear bullet wound scar on the right side of her forehead, and a tattoo of a black-widow on her arm. She was smiling, and I was disconcerted to see something I’d never seen before, perfect white teeth curved in a smile. She left my sight and I heard her drag a stool loudly over to me, the begin rifling through what sounded like a metal tray next to me. I heard a number of items picked up gently, tested, then placed down. There was the sound of pliers snapping, a drill whirring, and a blade being sharpened. Eventually the woman reappeared briefly, before yanking my head back and removing her from my sight. She then leaned down and started to look at my teeth. When she got particularly close, I strained, trying to bite her, but she just chuckled as my jaw strained to close despite the metal holding my mouth open.

“I was hoping to wait until I could get a hold of Carmilla’s pregnant bastard before I did something like this, but the Khan seems to have a fondness for you so I’ll just have to make the best of things!” Her voice was several octaves higher than I expected it to be and had a slightly unhinged quality to it. “Don’t worry, this isn’t an interrogation or anything. Just a slow mutilation followed by me leaving your corpse visible and tortured in the middle of an abandoned camp.”

I took a deep breath. She thought she had a way out, which meant either Deux and the Rens were never found out or they were and were dead.

I heard a drill and she started whistling an upbeat tune, occasionally adding a bit of rhythm with the sound of the drill. “Marshall is an interesting job I bet. Lots of unique abilities and a real edge over things in the wastes.” She put the drill in my mouth, right against one of my canines. “I have kind of an interesting job too. Dentist isn’t usually a lot of people’s first choice, but I’ve found it’s got a surprising amount of utility.” She turned the drill and pressed it down into the center of the tooth.

I’d been shot, beaten, whipped, stabbed, crushed, and lit on fire, but the pain I experienced in that moment was worse than anything I’d ever experienced before. I let out an involuntary scream, and tried to freeze her, but the light in my eyes was too bright, and I couldn’t turn my head to actually see her once she’d moved out of my field of vision. The smell was the worst part of it, it was oddly clean and I could tell I was inhaling the dust the drill tore from my tooth.

She paused for a moment and let out a whistle. “Wow, you’ve got some real impressive chompers… you could probably chew through metal with these things. Shame you don’t floss though.” She drilled for a few more moments, and I could feel the drill actually pierce through the tooth onto the other side, all while I screamed.

She stopped, and I heard a door open.

“Jantai, we were preparing to load the buses for our retreat, but all of the tires have been slashed, and the engines damaged.”

There was a clattering of tools on a metal tray. “This one was found outside the garage?”

“Yes”

“He wasn’t alone then. Sweep the compound, try to get at least one of the buses ready to go.”

“What about everyone else?”

“They’ll likely die or be captured, but the Widows will live...and have less loot they need to share.”

I heard more footsteps and then I heard the drill whirr again. “Guess you’ve got some friends here with you?” She punctuated with another whirring of the drill. “Perhaps I should’ve tortured you for information. Though given how you haven’t even begged yet I’m inclined to think that wouldn’t have mattered anyway. “ She sighed dramatically. “Shame I’m going to lose some of my people, but hey, they’re the ones that decided to follow a woman with part of her brain missing on a mission of revenge just because they thought they’d get some loot out of it, not really my fault if some of them die.” I heard a few footsteps, and felt Jantai approach. “We still have some work to do, looks like I may have to speed things up if I want you tortured and dying on time.”

I heard several gunshots, and Jantai paused. “Huh, guess they found whoever you had with you.”

Everything went red for a moment. The hunger pangs from my recovery, the pain of my tooth, and the stakes of the situation all brought something out in me I wasn’t expecting. I felt a kind of raw energy I hadn’t felt before in my chest surging outward into my limbs. For a moment, I actually felt my flesh expanding, even in spite of my restraints, but I pushed that change down. It hurt enormously, but I didn’t want to be like the butcher, like Pete. Eventually the energy stopped trying to explode out, and started circulating inside me, building a kind of heat that felt overpowering.

I made another push against my restraints, and this time they began to give. The chain links slowly bending out of place and the mouth guard getting slowly crushed between my jaws.

I managed to sit up far enough to see Jantai looking at me with fear and madness on her face. Before I could fully break free, she ran out the door, away from me, dragging something in the way of the door even as the first few links of chain began to snap and fly across the room. The last several lengths of the chain broke all at once, and I was free.

I launched myself off the table and toward the door, slamming into it with enough force to blow it off its hinges, and throw a table that had been dragged in front of it. A cadre of raiders with machine guns was waiting for me, but due to their surprise at my swift exit they weren’t quick enough to act before I did. I lunged for the nearest one, ripping out her throat with my teeth and using her body as a shield as the others opened fire. I threw her body at the furthest one, freezing the closest as I picked up the already dead one’s machine gun and fired on each of them, killing them. The sight of blood and smell of meat made the red haze in my vision creep in further, but I fought it off, I wasn’t sure of where Deux and the Rens were and if I let myself lose too much control I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from hurting them.

I took a deep breath, and started collecting the rifles that had been dropped. I had no clue where my own kit had been taken, and needed to take what I could get. As I picked up the last gun, more Widows rounded the corner and started firing on me. I placed them under arrest, and froze one of them, all while firing the rifle I had until it was empty, before dropping it to the ground, and slinging the next one into my hands to keep laying down fire.

I dove behind cover, only peeking over to freeze and pick off a single Widow at a time. I could hear other firefights occurring nearby, and could tell that the widows were frantic to end things quickly. Taking stock, I was close to the garage. I ran out of cover, laying down fire until I reached the door. There was no point in being subtle and taking a window at this point. I came into a firefight. There were already a half dozen dead widows around me, and several alive with their backs to me. I unloaded on them, putting several of them down before I was forced to dive back into cover as the Widows I’d just ran passed, moved in behind me and opened fire.

I stood up to fire, but missed as the pain in my tooth caused me to flinch. I ducked back down behind cover. I brought my hand up to my tooth, gripped it by the painful, but convenient hold Jantai’s drill had made, and yanked as hard as I could, ripping the tooth from my head. I had a brief flash of pain, but that was followed by relief. Able to focus again, I peeked out from cover, and took a few pot shots. That’s when one of the buses roared to life.