The Mantis Continuum - Book Four - 38. Epilogue

It was quiet at the isolated compound that lay hidden beyond the edge of the Infinite Waste to the west of the Ru River.

Several military men and a few medics were standing over the bodies of three unconscious children strapped to gurneys. One child looked very strange to them.

“I liked that the runaway twins used to call me the Voice,” the commander said to his officers. “Make these three call me that, too.” He turned and left the room.

“Wake up the 13 year old,” one of the men ordered the medics. He pointed at a little boy who looked completely normal. “Put him through the initiation ceremony and lock him in one of the black cells.”

Less than an hour later, the boy’s suffering was ended, but it was ended horribly.

Sobbing in the darkness, after having witnessed the brutal massacre of six bound and gagged prisoners, the little boy was now in a vile battle with countless hoards of insects he could not see. They crawled up his legs and buzzed into his ears, landing on his skin and causing him to scream. He swatted at himself, as their hideous tiny legs scurried all over him.

The boy’s punishment was meant to last for hours longer, but a terrible boom startled him momentarily from the onslaught of insects. There was a second louder crash, not like an explosion, but like a building being demolished. Then the wall of the black cell shattered, and concrete shrapnel pummeled the boy, as light suddenly shined into the darkness.

Something that looked like many naked women all squished together into one body came charging through the hole. The monster grabbed the incapacitated child and yanked in several directions with its multiple arms, ripping the boy’s body apart. One arm hurtled through the air, back out the hole behind the creature, and one of the child’s little legs flew farther into the dark of the cell. The slaughtered boy’s head was pulled from his torso, and as soon as the monster had what it needed, it smashed deeper into the building.

Lonklam and Ronging peered through the hole Riam had smashed in the wall, as her wicked senses pulled her toward more of what she craved.

She destroyed another wall and paused. There were two photonova glands beckoning her, but they were in different directions.

A door burst open and a battalion of soldiers rushed Riam. She pounced at them, and the group of warriors collided with her. Their attack was futile. The blades and bludgeons that struck her weird, twisted, and nearly invulnerable body were all bent or shattered. Riam’s retaliation against her would-be assailants was terrible.

With a single simultaneous attack of her many limbs, seven people died at once. In an instant, Riam grabbed one man and pulled off both his arms. She also yanked a man’s head so far back that the flesh of his throat opened like it had been slit with a jagged blade. Two soldiers were grabbed and slammed together with such force that their torsos burst in a repulsive explosion of guts. One of Riam’s legs kicked a man in the side of his hip with such power, his body folded sideways and fell convulsing to the stone floor. Another of her legs stomped, and a fallen soldier’s head popped beneath her foot.

In that same moment, with Riam lashing out at six men at once, she also leaned forward, and her vicious mouth, with its rows and rows of teeth, bit the seventh soldier in the face. He tried to scream as she chomped through his flesh and cartilage and bone. Riam spat the mess onto the pile of corpses, and blood sprayed into the air from all of her victims.

The remaining soldiers were stunned at seeing such an incomparable and instantaneous slaughter. A few tried to run, but they were running in the direction that Riam intended to go, there was a photonova gland beyond them.

Several soldiers tried to attack her, but it was like trying to attack a battering ram. Riam rushed forward, trampling two more and shoving another out of her way so hard that his body went through the wall she slammed him into. The fleeing men were overtaken, and she dismissively tossed them aside with such force that wherever they fell, there they remained.

Riam spared not a thought for the wake of death behind her as she approached the room that contained a photonova gland she could feel, held inside a Shift’s head. She kicked the door open and saw a girl.

The child gasped in horror, but then the little girl was gone. Riam felt the child go, long gone before the monster could even react.

A wave of rage exploded in Riam’s mind as she suddenly realized the other photonova glands she had felt a moment earlier had escaped and was now also far away. She could feel them getting farther and farther with each instant.

Riam roared. Her wicked toothy mouth let out a rumbling growl, and she smashed the head of the Shift boy she had ripped apart in the black cell still clutched in one of her many hands. Riam found what she needed and shoved the photonova gland past her many teeth. She swallowed hard and pain struck her like lightning. She relished the delicious agony.

Her disgusting body began to change yet again, as she made her way through the corpses and back out of the devastated compound.

Lonklam and Ronging were waiting for her.

“Perhaps this base can be our new Gunge,” Lonklam recommended.

“We are… close… to cities,” Riam managed to say. “Hunting… grounds are close.” Her twisted mouth formed the most violent of smiles, and she reiterated Lonklam’s words, “This is… New Gunge,” and her unearthly laughter sounded like a pack of hyenas, as it rang out across the Infinite Waste✪

Thank you for finishing yet another one of my books! The ongoing Mantis series will continue, with Book Five probably coming out early next year. I really appreciate the feedback and encouragement that you wonderful readers provide I am so grateful for the GayAuthors site and the opportunity to share my work for free!