*** 9 Rust City ***
Among their loot had been a harddrive. The data on it boggled a few minds among the high ranking engineers of arcology 4.
"First of all," said the guy in a lab coat. "We were hoping to make the area safe enough to build a second branch of Big Daddy. You know what Big Daddy is?"
"Duh," Fucker said. "Everyone was born there. I still know my breeding tube ID and everything."
"Right. If we want to persist as a species we need more places to create people. As I said, we were hoping... But this changes everything. The data doesn't just tell us of a few occupied ruins. It's a full blow map of a growing city in that crater."
"And I assume you're not just telling us because you like having an audience?"
The man chuckled. "You have a keen mind, punk. We want you to infiltrate the city by posing as a gang wanting to join."
"Woah."
The city official produced a tiny handheld device – a metal disk that could easily be hidden in a hand, even a slender twink boy's hand. "Anyone you touch with this is tagged."
"Tagged?"
"We can track the nano particles as long as they don't get too far from the crater. Mark any gang leaders and we'll follow them once they leave for the outside. Then... bang. Area safe."
Prison had to wait a bit longer for the three captives. They would join the operation since their faces were already familiar to the people of Rust City – the secret hideout of dozens of gangs.
All trash punks, including Pisspig, got temporary flaming snake tattoos around their navels. Savage had used the opportunity of free tatts to get permanent ones. A fist on each chest to match the one on his back, with their middle fingers pointing toward his face.
The captives had been named by Fucker as Bitch One, Two and Three. Bitch One was the wannabe trash punk who had offered his services. He had signed the slave contract and wore a collar – so far unbound. Fucker wanted to see him in action before deciding what to do.
Hardass had insisted on getting Bitch One nipple rings with a connecting chain and an un-removable, transparent chastity cage – for consistency. With white jock-straps for Pisspig and the Bitches, their fake gang looked just professional enough to be taken seriously.
They didn't get any bikes, since they had to look like a simple group of outlaws.
To give them a surprise advantage, Fucker got lenses that changed his pitch black eyes to normal ones. Savage kept his black orbs since there was no way to veil his freak nature. Regardless, a single freak among eight boys was decently believable.
With Bitches Two and Three leading across the muddy terrain, the "blazing vermin gang" approached Rust City near the center of the fogged up crater beyond Death Mountain.
They traveled during midday, so there wouldn't be much activity in Rust City while they still found their bearings. The sun was hidden behind a layer of white, but the sweltering heat got through, soaking the punks and bitch boys with sweat.
Their path led through the crumbled walls of a long forgotten outpost. Left and right, one and a half levels of concrete blocked out the view.
"Yo," Bitch Two said and stopped. "I think I heard something."
"Like what?" Fucker asked. But in the same moment a humanoid broke through the fog, limping toward the group.
The greenish-gray walking corpse at the end of the narrow street stared at them with hollow eyes.
"Get down," Fucker said, calmly, and aimed his phaser at the infected. The creature let out a gargling, creaky scream before its neck was blown to dry, fleshy shreds.
A lot of groaning came from beyond both side walls. There were more infected and they had been alerted. Within seconds, their ugly, half decayed heads rose above the rim of the walls that now trapped the blazing vermin gang.
Fucker could trust his punks to know what to do, but the bitches were frozen in shock.
"Yo," Fucker said. "Have you never battled infected in the crater?"
"We..." Bitch One began. "Our leader always told us to just run."
"Well, can't do that now. Stay behind Pyro."
Whenever an infected crawled over the wall, Fucker picked them off. Pyro held his flame and made sure nothing advanced toward them along the narrow path. Savage stood in the middle of the tightly packed gang and lashed out at any undead daring to drop into their midst.
The rear end was unguarded. No, the flashing of a knife let Fucker know they had an invisible member working back there. Good.
The corpses kept mounting, with infected after infected dropping off the walls. There was no end in sight. It was a battle of attrition and those were usually won by the undead.
"Pyro?"
"Yeah," the red haired freak said. "I'm almost at the right heat."
"Okay, everyone get ready."
The fire conjurer let his orb go and it slammed into the first infected in the corridor. The flames engulfed it and kept traveling. Charred bodies fell over each other all the way to the exit.
"Now," Fucker shouted and rushed onward.
Hurrying over smoldering corpses, they made it to the end. The gang emerged on the other side and kept going, multiple infected in pursuit. The creatures weren't fast, but if they altered more of their kind, the gang could be flanked.
Phaser fire sizzled above their heads and tore infected apart by the dozen. It came from heavy artillery on towers left and right of a massive iron gate, fitted into a steel and stone wall.
They had reached Rust City.
The welcoming committee consisted of three people. Two were escaped convicts, as made obvious by the number IDs on their forehead. They carried a phaser each.
The third one was a muscular man in a blood red loincloth to match his mohawk. A scar ran diagonally across his whole face.
Once the gang was safely behind the walls, Fucker looked around to spot any immediate dangers. Rust City was as brown and dust-filled as the name implied. Low buildings, constantly reinforced and modified, had grown into an interconnected mess of multistory abominations.
The blood red haired guy stepped forward. "Yo, I'm Supreme Warden Gah. Why are there so many fresh faces? Where's your leader?"
Fucker raised his arm. "Yo Gah, that's me now. When we joined, it turned out the previous leader didn't take gang life as seriously as I'd have liked. You can find what's left of him at the old blazing vermin hideout."
Gah chuckled. "Fuck yeah, that guy was an idiot. Just drop your stuff off at the depo, your slaves at the pit, and join the market."
"Fuck yeah. Can't wait to see it for the first time."
Warden Gah gestured into the fog. "Later we have a gang leader meeting at Chaos Hall. Be there or fuck off."
"Got it."
The slave pit was a literal hole in the ground, surrounded by a barbwire fence – a quarry. Pisspig and Bitch One got to join seven other slaves, who were hauling rocks.
Then came the market, right at the center of Rust City. You could buy anything illegal or stolen you can imagine. From drugs to weapons, from slaves to jewelry.
The blazing vermin gang was satisfied with a delicious meal of veggie mix number 5 and canned pineapple (no peaches, unfortunately). Although they didn't have any business to do, they pretended to be interested in displayed wares until it was time for the meeting.
Chaos Hall was a dirty-black dome cut off from the main city by a river. Armed guards waited at the entrance. Fucker was only allowed to take one guy with him and it wasn't allowed to be a strength freak. He picked Pyro.
They both had to strip completely at the gate, as did every other gang leader who wanted to enter. Once fully nude, Gah himself checked for any hidden weapons on their skin and fingered their holes.
When Fucker and Pyro were inside the dome (dimly lit and heavy with sweat filled air) they were quickly ushered to the low ring table at the center.
A dozen gang leaders and their plus ones, ranging in age from 14 to 40, sat around the metal surface, kneeling naked on cushions. Five places to the right of Fucker's position was a throne of sorts, black pipes bend and soldiered into a back rest.
While most gang leaders had their own symbol tattooed on them somewhere, the most prominent sign was displayed on flags along the walls. A skull with a halo of long thorns was painted in white on blood red fabric.
Since Fucker didn't want to look like he had no idea what was going on, he let Pyro gather information. Meanwhile, he lowered his head and scratched his nose – but actually peeled the tag disk off the roof of his mouth and pressed it into his palm.
"Yo," Pyro said to another plus one. "You been here before? My first time."
The young man nodded. "Been to a meeting twice. But it's always been with Gah on the throne. This is the first time I'll get to see General Assbasher."
"He runs the place?"
"He's the king of kings. He was the guy who made Rust City possible. He's usually not here, though and leaves business to Gah."
"He built the city but doesn't live here?"
"No idea where he's going. Someone like Assbasher probably has all sorts of hideouts on both sides of Death Mountain."
Good to know. If anyone needed to be tagged, it was that guy.
Finally, the General entered. His company were four armed guards, all nude and with the thorn-halo-skull tattooed on their chests.
Assbasher was the only one wearing clothes. The about 30 year old man with perfect muscle definition wore a white hip scarf with the skull symbol on it in red.
His navy blue mohawk ended in a tail, which fell halfway down his back.
Most intriguing were his eyes. Pure black.
"He's a freak?" Pyro whispered.
The guy next to him whispered back, "No one knows what his power is. There are a million rumors."
General Assbasher placed himself on the throne and raised his arms. "Yo," he said. His voice was deep and booming. "My first message to you is that my chaos soldiers have secured the eastern front. We are the uncontested rulers of the chaos crater."
There was a general "Fuck yeah" from the crowd.
"Secondly, our plans to attack arcology 4 have moved one month ahead. With the influx of recruits to the chaos league, we have the manpower to overtake buggy station 19-F. It's a matter of days to mount cannons on them."
After those shocking news, Assbasher went through some more minute detail of recent operations. Then it was the other leader's turn to speak and a few had news or reports. Luckily Fucker got by without saying a word.
Then came the part he had been waiting for. Slaves served standard food gel 6b and Hydro-Cola, starting the unofficial, intermingle-y part of the meeting.
With his heart pounding in his ears, Fucker walked leisurely from one gang leader to the next and touched them each. Since he was new, it was a simple matter of introducing himself and patting them on the shoulder.
He worked his way around the table, until he reached the throne. A gang leader who couldn't be older than Fucker sucked Assbasher's dick.
Fucker simply joined in and licked the ball of the chaos soldier commander.
His hand rubbed along Assbasher's thighs and tagged him. A minute later, the overlord slipped from the sucker's mouth and shot into Fucker's face.
With a grunt, Assbasher dismissed them both.
"I think I got all thirteen," Fucker said once they were outside and back in their old clothes.
"Perfect," said Pyro. "Let's get out of here as fast as possible."
"No, we have to take our time. All the other leaders are still around, too. Let's look for the rest of our blazing vermins and see if there's anything about Rust City we should be aware of."
They found Hardass at the market where he was making out with a guard – or chaos soldier as Fucker now knew to call them.
The two bitches not in the pit had gambled in the arena. There you could bet a fixed amount to enter and fight a random opponent. Since the idiots had randomly gotten each other, it hadn't mattered who won. They had simply gotten their money back – minus entry fee. Fucker thought it was wise to take all remaining caps from their possession.
Savage had grabbed himself a new nose ring – pitch black. It fit him nicely.
Once evening fell over Rust City and a few gangs left, Fucker wanted them to get going, too.
Pisspig had news when they collected him from the pit. The sweat drenched boy whispered to Hardass, who got Fucker to listen in.
The slave hadn't spent all day in the pit but had been ordered to the river, while the meeting had been happening. Dragging garbage out of the riverbed for an hour, he had overheard chaos soldiers talking about vetting procedures.
Apparently, there had been too many new faces this time and Gah had become paranoid. The warden was going to screen for hidden freaks and check whether any gang tattoos weren't permanent.
They needed another way out.
Luckily, Pisspig knew just the place to be.
While all other gangs slowly drifted toward the main gate, the blazing vermins used the fog as cover to rush toward the black dome that dominated its portion of town.
The boys had to approach from the side to avoid being seen by the entrance guards. The river ran into a huge metal pipe in the wall, leaving just enough space above its surface to let someone breathe while wading into the darkness inside the tube.
The gang dropped into the river and swam. The water was icy, having flown down directly from Death Mountain. Just as bad was that they had to move upstream. With great exertion of physical strength, the boys entered the pipe.
Once hidden from sight, Pyro created a flame above his head to light up the space. The pipe led straight to a grate. Savage punched it out of its mounting. They continued to a second grate, did the same thing again and finally, arrived outside the city walls, emerging into swampland.
All punks and bitches had made it out alive and once they crawled onto firmed ground Fucker wanted to congratulate his boys, when three figured stepped out of the fog.
It was the old welcoming committee, their weapons aimed firmly at the gang.
"I see," warden Gah said. "I was right to sow those rumors. You're the only ones who have chosen to leave through the back door. Now... Where are your real loyalties?"
Fucker used telekinesis to smack one chaos soldier in the face with his own (weapon holding) hand. It didn't do much damage but caused the confusion Pyro needed to create an orb.
A small flame was flung into Gah's face and died out his eyes painfully. He'd get over it.
The final guard fired and Fucker threw himself to the side. Bitch Two fell over with a smoldering hole in his chest. The boy hadn't ducked in time.
Savage was upon the killer and a single hit broke the guy's neck. By then Fucker had retrieved his own phaser and... it was full of water. Of course it didn't work.
The first guard's throat was suddenly slit by a barely visible hand.
Gah bailed.
"Yo, after him," Fucker yelled. The warden still had a phaser but if they acted fast, it was possible he wouldn't get to fire. Pyro charged up a fireball while running.
The gang leader and Hardass fired phasers into the fog without aiming. It was a matter of luck now.
They almost ran face first into a wall. It popped up suddenly through the mist. Had Gah gone left or right?
A sound. Left!
Fucker entered a building with most of its roof still in place. The warden was climbing out through a window. He dropped before Fucker could take aim.
Gah screamed.
The punk rushed to the square hole in the wall and looked outside. Gah had fallen a little deeper than anticipated. He wasn't getting up. More importantly, he had fallen into a nest of infected.
The disfigured creatures took the problem off Fucker's hands.
"Is he dead?" Savage asked.
"He'll be in a moment," Fucker said.
"Great," Savage said. "I'm way too excited now. Get over here bitches."
Within seconds, the brute had his dick buried inside Bitch One's hole, while holding Bitch Three upside down and rimming his ass.
Fucker was worried the noise would alert infected, but a look out the window let him know the beasts were slow eaters and had their attention on their current meal.
Hardass was already busy with his slave, so Pyro and Fucker 69ed until Savage was satisfied and called them to leave.
Tune in next time to see what happens to Rust City now.