“Uhhh. What say you?” She eyed Mo. “Though purple would look good. Any purple available?”
“Sure.”
“I will accept purple. Also red or black also, please. If I may.”
Was it her imagination or were Mo’s speech patterns changing? “Done.”
Mo totally demanded a ladybug pattern because he was more than a bit spidery as he was now. Camouflage should be dark though. Black spots on purple. Yes, that would be it. She could do this tonight. Sleeping had become arduous anyway, ever since the day she killed the Ghoul Lord.
34
There’d beena few mutinous Ghoul Lords, but Avidex had them under his tentacle now.
They feared to lose half their bodies as he had, knowing they might never reach for the stars again if their genetic material was insufficient.
The Queens would scream for the last of them sometime in the next few human-world months. Yet he’d persuaded them, cajoled them, given them slightly false information. Brainless, they were brainless, whereas he had nine brains now. The power was only limited by how many brains he could keep functioning cradled in his body jelly. It taxed him.
A new problem for them—how to make it possible. The smarter he was the easier it would be to track, catch this Cyn… then eat her slowly after tentacle fucking her, over and over, and dissecting her. Or the other way around. Or all of them. Every combination was possible given time and allowance for healing. Mmm-hmmm.
The pleasures of the future. He tore himself away from such delicious fantasies. Not yet.
But soon.Yeah, baby.His mojo was firing on all cylinders today. He wiped one of his triangular-toothed mouths with a tentacle.
He paced among them, shambled a little, still connected by a tentacle to his main-mind. This human skin-suit wasn’t going below with them but he already knew his fellows were too stupid to see that.
He’d send them once he had a place pinpointed. The rippers were below already, sectioning the below stories into neat co-ordinates so no area would be missed. Already he knew Cyn had moved on.
He had to find her before he could take her back.
Abduct, one of his grammar-obsessed human brains suggested.
Yes, yes. Abduct. Abduct, tentacle fuck, dissect it while absorbing the screams. Let it heal. Do it all again. Eat. Good enough?
Well, I do prefer consume rather than eat. And love-making also is more elegant.
Avidex thought a while before he reached into his body jelly and plucked out that brain then he tossed it to the floor. He watched it expire…die… kick the friggin’ bucket. Shed its mortal coil. That one had clearly had a bug.
35
They assembled before the bridge,the foot and wing-solders, Willow, their one biotechie, the two weaponsmiths, Maura the token human, and her, Cyn, she was the unknown—not forgetting Toother and Little Mo, of course, with his newly painted shell. The route onto the bridge was restricted to one entry point that Rutger and a few others had widened by brute force.
Cars were not easy to shift, and nothing, Cyn decided… nothing emphasized how different the world was now better than her feeling safe among these weird people.
“Let’s go.” Rutger waved them forward before heading to the gap beside a crushed car. Beginning at the car, a pile of motorbikes curved upward into a striking, spoked-wheel and chrome arch, with the other side of the arch coming to rest on the battered cab of a semi.
It brought to mind the trellised gateway into an English country garden, only this garden was dark and leafless, and the litter underfoot was spark plugs and screws, rotted tire rubber and other lost bits of random humanity, and the occasional bone. If you could drill through the floor to what lay beneath,you’d fall into a chasm and drop for a couple of miles before you hit the ground. It was not very quaint, delightful, or English.
As she passed through, Cyn trailed her fingers over the leather of a bike seat where it had lodged at waist-height.
This space continued for many yards, weaving left and right as cunningly as a snake, and she knew someone had designed this. It had to be so. This many cars and trucks jig-sawed together could not be a natural post-apocalyptic barricade.
Which gave rise to a question. Her man-beast was ahead of her. “Hey, Rutger. Are we post-apocalyptic or are we like… in the middle of an apocalypse?”
He chuckled, his broad shoulders shaking under his satin-grey shirt. “Tell me when you have it figured.”
Someone had been clothes foraging last night. She approved. Dress for success and all that. He looked handsome, rugged, and deadly, with his horns, bulk, backpack, and the rifle slung over his shoulder.Everyonelooked deadly. Weapons were as common as canned food, and every beaster carried a pack stuffed full of such necessities.
The cars had been left mostly empty.
