James Axler – Judas Strike

With the engine roaring, the Hummer smashed aside the sign and rolled over the gate as if the posts were no more than leaves on the road. The predark machine raced directly to the front door, and the three occupants stepped out, two much more quickly than the third.

Lord Baron Kinnison, ruler of the Thousand Islands, hoisted his tremendous bulk from the vehicle, grunting constantly. He was becoming weaker every day and knew that the end was near. He was wrapped in thick layers of protective cloth, the material spotted with dried blood and moist yellow patches from fresh skin eruptions. The ends had been cut off his boots to allow his toes to breathe. Circulation was very bad in his feet, and he feared gangrene daily. His face a mass of open sores, and the fingers of both hands were wrapped in strips of cloth stained black and yellow from the dried blood and pus.

Some half-mutie slut from one of the western islands had given him the Red Death during sex. The disease was incurable, and the baron had tortured the girl for a moon before allowing her to finally die.

The leprosy was eating him alive, faster all the time; the flash was no longer working. His end was near. But the baron had already prepared for that eventuality.

The slim driver and the young slave girl waited patiently as the gigantic man squeezed his bulk from the military vehicle and finally stood. Briefly, Kinnison checked the array of predark blasters hidden about his bulk. Impatiently, the driver started to speak and Kinnison silenced him with a raised hand. The soft cry of a newborn child could be heard from within the cottage.

“Boy or girl?” he demanded, staring at the slave.

She bowed her head and said, “A boy, master. A healthy boy.”

“No mutations at all?” Kinnison insisted, brandishing a fist. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes, my lord. He is a norm. Big, but a gene-pure norm.”

“And you can smell them, little one,” he rumbled, scratching inside his rags. “That’s why I keep you alive, for that one special trait. You can smell the mutie on a man or woman as if it was the stink from a swamp.”

She bowed. “Yes, master.”

Kinnison grunted. “You have served me well this day. But I cannot allow any to know of the child’s real parents. Goodbye.”

The girl stared in astonishment as the baron drew a silenced pistol from inside his clothing and fired. The blaster only coughed, but the slave violently staggered backward and sat down, blood trickling from the black hole in her face. In slow stages she toppled over, as if only laying herself down for a long nap.

Holstering the piece, Baron Kinnison stared at the house. The baron had given it to a faithful servant who saved his life from an assassin’s blade. He had even given the man the most beautiful wife he could find, and made sure all of the food delivered to the couple was as clean as his own meals. Everything had been done to make the idiots breed him an heir, and two years later the bitch finally whelped. Two years! He wanted to tear them apart for that, but the man had saved his life once. The reward would be a clean chill.

“Here,” Kinnison said, passing the silenced weapon to the doctor. “Ace the parents as painlessly as possible, and get the child. Do not let it touch me! If it gets my disease, your punishment will last for years after my own death.”

Dr. Glassman nodded, holding the weapon awkwardly as if unfamiliar with how to use it.

Kinnison continued. “Then take the newborn to my rooms and kill the pregnant woman in my bed. Burn the unborn girl, and rub the boy with the woman’s blood so they smell alike. Then send the news that I have a son.”

“Of course, my lord, only…”

“What?” the baron raged, his piggy eyes glaring with fury.

“Afterward you’ll have to chill me to keep the secret,” Glassman said bluntly. “This I know. So I refuse to do as you command.”

Kinnison stared at the man in disbelief.