Badlands: An Underground Science Fiction Novel

The female joined the conversation as she pulled back the bed sheets. "No you haven't, Dale." Paris realized that it was April, the girl who showed him around the city a month ago. April felt on the bed. "Shit, people, he's not on the bed. He's not here. He's fucking gone, okay?"

Paris skulked from the corner and silently closed the door. He locked it.

"Who closed the door?" Dale asked in a panicked voice.

Paris turned on the light. The small mob was startled. He put away his sword and quickly drew his dagger. "It's too many of you in here for me to use the blade. Not enough room."

They were speechless.

"Look, we can make this go easy or I can kill all of you, your choice. Just answer a few questions and I won't say anything about where I got my info. I'm really not in the mood for killing anybody tonight. Besides, it's against my code for me to kill humans," Paris reasoned.

"Fuck you!" April yelled. "There's no way in hell you can kill all of us."

Dale raised his stick and walked towards Paris. "There's no way in hell you could kill me!"

Dale took a few steps towards Paris and swung his club. Paris dodged it and made a motion with the knife that was too fast to be seen. He popped up behind Dale and threw him back into the group. Paris stood with his back facing the corner. He pulled out his laser pistol with is free hand.

"Stay back, I'm warning you."

Dale started screaming at him. "Ha! I don't care if have a gun. There's no way in hell anybody could--ack! ack!" Dale started coughing up blood. He put his hand to his neck and realized that his throat was cut. He looked at Paris' knife and saw that he'd been cut so fast that the blood didn't even have time to settle on the weapon. His eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed face first on the floor, dead.

Shock waves of fear shot through the rest of the group. They all looked to each other for support.

"Anybody else want to end their life span?" Paris threatened.

They all rushed him at once.

Paris had a hard time dodging the blows unscathed. He took a blow to his ribs, a knife grazed his left leg, and one person's stick brushed his left jaw. His left side had always been his weaker one, he noticed through the skirmish. But after about two minutes of a blinding, bloody, howling melee, Paris was standing in a room full of dead people. Their bodies were hacked and burned by his knife and laser gun. He went after everyone in the group with the frenzy and speed of a crazed cheetah. There was blood all over his clothes, the bed, the walls, the mirrors, the furniture, everything. The only person left alive, besides he was April. That was a matter of choice--on his part. Paris had decided to show mercy on her by letting her get by with only a few broken ribs.

She was curled up next to Earl's body. She held her sides and cried in pain.

"Why'd you come here? To kill me? To sacrifice me? What? WHAT! Is this some kind of pleasure kill? How many of you are outside? Answer me!" He kicked her in the stomach.

She coughed up blood. "There're three people outside, Leah, John and Tom. Leah and John are the only other darkies--I mean colored--I mean, people like you left in the dome."

"Why's that?" Paris yelled. "Huh!" He bent down and shook her.

"We've been sacrificing you people to the carnivores. Once word got out about what was going on, most of the non-whites fled the dome. They said that there was another dome further north, a place called New York. It's supposed to be a lot bigger than this one." April was starting to pass out.

Paris knelt down and slapped her face to revive her. "Why are you feeding people to the carnies? Why?"

April recovered for a second. "They are gods. We believe that once the grays help us leave the dome, the carnivores are going to rid the world of the weak races and allow the white people to restore the earth. They said that they get strength from the flesh of weak races and that they'd make us gods too if we helped them."

"Oh yeah?" Paris laughed. "So why did one of them try to eat your dead buddy Earl over there?"

Earl's lifeless eyes stared over at them. In a sinister way, it was as if they were being spied on by a dead man.