James Axler – Cold Asylum

“Good to be here, thank”

For a mind-freezing moment, Doc thought that he was facing a saffron-robed Buddhist monk.

But what would a monk be doing in Del Marco’s eatery in upper-crust New York?

The man stared at Doc as though he were equally amazed at his appearance. He was barely five feet tall, with a pale complexion and a puckered scar that ran from the corner of his mouth down into his neck, vanishing beneath the yellow-orange sheet wrapped around his scrawny body. His head was totally bald and his sunken eyes were grossly bloodshot.

Though Doc was six feet away from the bizarre apparition, he recoiled at the appalling stench that was exuded through its sagging mouth, like an open sewer.

Why in the name of the Almighty would a Buddhist monk be carrying three severed and bloodless human hands strung around his waist?

And why would he be slowly drawing a rusted saber from his belt?

Doc’s brain was in frantic overdrive, trying to rationalize what he was seeing and what was happening.

It wasn’t a Buddhist monk in Del Marco’s, it was a murderous mutie in a redoubt! Doc staggered away, until he was trapped at the back of the elevator, just dodging the ponderous swing of the sword.

“Fuck’n outland,” the ghoul snarled, struggling to stop the weapon from carrying him off his bare feet.

Doc had his own sword stick in his right hand, which made it difficult for him to get at the Le Mat in its holster. But it only took a moment to twist the lion’s head and cast aside the ebony case, freeing the blade.

“Have at you, damn your insolence, you verminous cur,” he yelled, swishing the glittering steel in a dazzling maze of death.

But the mutie didn’t even seem aware that its potential prey was miraculously armed. It had regained control over its own brass-hilted saber and was readying it for another haymaker slash at Doc’s head.

Doc, at six foot three, was vastly taller than his opponent, with a vastly superior reach, which he immediately used to its full advantage.

He dropped one knee slightly, his left hand lifted to shoulder height, like a lithographic illustration from a nineteenth-century manual on the proper use of the foil. His right arm was held straight so that the slender rapier became an extension of his body, and he lunged beneath the clumsy attack of the slobbering mutie.

” Touche, mon brave !” he exclaimed.

The needle tip of the slim sword drove into the creature’s neck, splitting the Adam’s apple. Doc’s timing was so perfect that the point slid off the cervical vertebrae and emerged three inches out of the back of the ghoul’s neck. A twist of the wrist at precisely the correct moment ripped the sides of the throat apart, sending a cascade of choking blood into the lungs.

The saber fell with a clatter, and the mutie started to lift its hands to the penetrating rapier.

But Doc had already withdrawn it, standing and watching, knowing that the wound was fatal.

“Tapped your claret, you evil-looking piece of near-human ordure,” he said, finding that he was not even panting from the brief fight.

“Fuck’n outland,” it spluttered, falling to its knees, its white severed hands trailing on the floor.

“So you said before,” Doc observed, delighted at his successful duel.

Blood was pooling on the metal floor of the elevator as the mutie slithered facedown and died.

Doc stooped and wiped his scarlet-smeared blade on the saffron robe then straightened, picking up the ebony shell that surrounded and hid the Toledo steel.

He stepped confidently out of the elevator, finding himself in an open area with a number of corridors opening off. In dying, the mutie had lost control of bowels and bladder. But Doc was aware of a different, more sickly smell.

“Like an operating room. Or”

Doc’s train of thought was interrupted as he emerged in the upper level of the redoubt, to find himself surrounded by dozens of the muties. Many had portions of partly devoured human bodies in their hands or strung about them, and all held knives, axes or spears.

“Fuck’n outland” came from one throat.