Bloodboots: A Breadcrumbs For The Nasties Short (5 page)

My free hand grabbed his gun and pressed it under his chin so hard I thought I’d pop the head from his neck. “Say my name! Say my name!”

I don’t know what I was screaming, nonsense mostly. It didn’t matter. It was coming out, couldn’t stop it. The soldiers moving in our direction, could hear them, weapons ready, barking orders. There were other voices too, soldiers pointing weapons at soldiers, tired of Walker, sensing an opportunity. 

I moved my face close to Walker, hunched over him like a howler, spitting blood. “Say my fucking name! Say it!”

Walker spit back, broken teeth bouncing off my cheek. “Fuck you! Fuck you youpieceofshit!”

I shifted my weight to his arm. “Travis, Sir, yes Sir! Travis, Sir, yes Sir! Say it! Say it!”

The crowd around us had grown, screaming and cheering, insane nonsense born of an insane world, incomprehensible. Someone threw a punch. Someone else fired a gun. They were a mob, men turned animal, angry children of the new world. All my numbers, the things I’d spent years relying on, were meaningless now. They wouldn’t save me. There was nothing to play them against, no normal against which to compare and draw conclusions. Everything I trusted was pointless. Everything I knew was gone. Walker wouldn’t say my name because I hadn’t earned it. I was relic, technology in need of an upgrade, last year’s model. 

Instead, he grinned. “Do it! Do it, you pampered piece of shit! Do it! You don’t have the fucking guts! You’re the reason we’re in this shit, you fuck! You did this! You and your motherfucking friends did th—”

Walker was the first man I killed. 

I just pulled the trigger and he went away. 

It was that simple.

I figured the soldiers would shoot me. I expected to be riddled with bullets right then and there, choke on my own blood and die atop the asshole beneath me. They didn’t and I wasn’t. The soldiers siding with Walker had already been taken care of. The rest were happy to see him go. When I stood the air felt different, clearer. Soot felt normal, supposed to be there, where it should have been all along. Corpses never smelled so good. 

Behind me something stumbled from the ashes of the hangar; steel shifted, fell to the dirt and cracked. It was a gimp, bloody arms reaching forward, fingers like dead branches. Its blank eyes moved to me, stopped, and settled. 

It was my brother.

One of the soldiers moved in his direction, weapon raised. “Gimp! We’ve got a live one!” 

I put a bullet in his back, another in his head. 

“No! Nobody touches him!” 

No one shot me. No one even moved. 

“He’s with me.”

I was back where I belonged, back on top, a beautiful golden god. I grinned, tasted blood in my mouth, and swallowed. If there had been a beautiful ass nearby I would have slapped it.

I’m not proud of it.

I’m not proud of a lot of things.

Steven Novak is a writer, illustrator, graphic designer and lover of all things full-blown nerdy and vaguely nerd-related. He has designed over two hundred covers for independent authors across the globe and currently resides in southern California with his wife. Megan is the first novel in the Breadcrumbs For The Nasties series. More of his work can be found at
www.novakillustration.com