Zero City

Stepping to the bed, Harold punched the man in the face as hard as he could. Blood sprayed from the impact, and the stranger flew off the bed, tumbling to the floor in a tangle of clothes.

Looking down at Laura, he saw she wasn’t really naked. Her clothes were undone and in wild disarray, her breasts fully visible and the tangle of ebony hair between her legs exposed.

A moist pink slit ran along the downy triangle, and it fueled a strange new hunger inside the hunchback.

“Don’t you move!” a cold voice said from the doorway.

Instincts honed in a hundred battles before his accident, Harold sensed real danger now and spun with his hands clenched for a fight.

Standing in the ruined doorway was a hugely overweight woman dressed in frilly clothes and holding a longblaster. Not a homemade model like the kid in the hall, but a proper shotgun. She worked the pump and pointed the muzzle not at him, but straight toward Laura. Harold moved between them to protect the girl.

“Smart move, Sarge,” Patrica stated. “But this is loaded with bent nails and glass, boy. Cut you open like a fish.”

“Mine,” he offered in simple explanation, pointing at the bound girl. “Mine!”

The gaudy house madam shook her head, never taking her eyes off the hunchbacked giant. “No, Harold,” Patrica said quietly. “Laura is mine. Her father sold her to me. I own her.”

Harold lowered his head and took a step forward.

Instantly, the madam triggered the blaster, blowing a hole in the plasterboard wall the size of a sewer grating. He stopped the advance as she worked the pump action again, but didn’t relax.

“Mine,” Harold repeated, his deadly hands still extended.

“Sergeant O’Malley, listen to me,” the madam said slowly. She was armed, but if the shotgun didn’t kill him on the spot, he’d rip her head off before dying.

“Harold, by the law of the ville, this was a legal transaction,” Patrica said in a motherly tone. Sex appeal wouldn’t work on the enraged idiot. She had to be nice. “The baron himself is a client here and encourages whoring. It’s a service to the ville. We forge treaties between families. Immigrants don’t get raped anymore. It’s a good thing. Sluts are special people. The ville needs sluts.”

“Gonna marry her!” he screamed, spittle coming from his slack lips. “Father said okay. Called me son!”

“She mine!” Harold repeated, glancing at the bound girl supine on the sweat-stained bed. “Mine.”

“Interesting.” Now the madam felt more in control. His tone was softening, and she was starting to understand. So old man Arnstein had sold his daughter cheap, knowing the ville hunchback was in love with her. That’s why nobody else wanted the girl, in spite of her incredible beauty. Well, she’d settle the score with the old cheat later. Right now, she had a brain-dead Hercules who wanted to walk off with her prize slut. No way Pat was going to let that happen. At least not without making a profit. Maybe the sarge could be of use to her in certain matters. Debts to be collected, break a few legs. She might have him under her control for years.

“Well, that’s too bad about her father, Sarge. I paid for her fair and square. Canned food and shoes. A good knife and two blankets without holes.”

“Me buy,” he mumbled, not sure of what to do. Things that had to be moved or broken, invaders or muties to kill—these he could fathom, real things you could touch. This was beyond him, and the voices were beginning to whisper terrible bloody suggestions.

Tucking the shotgun under her arm, Patrica laughed heartily, making her whole body jiggle. “Oh, my poor young fool. You work shoveling boiled crap in the greenhouses. You could never steal enough vegetables to pay for a beauty like this!”

Behind her, the skinny kid reappeared, the tiny blaster in his grip, a savage expression on his face. Harold looked directly at the boy the way he did with the desert wolves, and the teen went pale, backing into the corridor.

The package in his back pocket suddenly felt warm, and Harold removed it. “Got this,” he said, tossing the bundle to the woman. It landed on the floor between them.

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