Gassers: Randall's Raiders

By Tony Monchinski

The Earth isn't what it used to be.

 

Years after the Shower--a devastating meteor strike that wiped out much of life--the planet is an inhospitable wasteland. Much of humankind has migrated to other solar systems in other galaxies.

 

A troop of battle-hardened Intergalactic Marines under the command of Lieutenant Randall, and his right-hand man, Gunnery Sergeant Gaddie, must return to the devastated planet to save one of their own from the clutches of Kodjoe, a ruthless African warlord. The threats they face are numerous: a continent overrun by Creepers, arachnid-like beasts with a taste for human flesh; Gassers, virus-infected, mutated men and women who represent a new stage in evolution; and Kodjoe's own private army of blood-thirsty killers and cutthroats. 

 

But Randall's Raiders are going back to Earth, back to Africa, and back into battle.

Because they know one thing: you don't leave a warrior behind.

And they'll raze a continent to rescue one of their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Monchinski
• Release date: Jul 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393836278

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Gassers (Randall's Raiders)

Gassers

by Tony Monchinski

AND IF I DON'T MEET you no more in this world

Then I'll...meet you in the next one

—Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

For Lieutenant First Class Ellen Louise Ripley...

...and Jonesy

1

This is a rescue mission...

Gaddie sat cool and calm in his Sergeant stripes, surrounded by a room full of other Intergalactic Marines. Lieutenant Randall up in front looking serious and gruff, laying out the coming job to the IMs. The lieutenant always looked serious and gruff when his people's lives were on the line.

...They've got Ulrich. And we're going in and bringing him out.

Gaddie worked the charm he wore on his neck between his thumb and forefinger, taking comfort from its presence. A gift from others not here, those absent like Ulrich, who’d been held prisoner these last two weeks.

...his vitals confirm he's still alive... Snippets of what the Lieutenant was saying going in one ear, out the other. Gunnery Sergeant Gaddie felt old, felt his age. Sure, all those times in cryo-sleep put him at a number out of whack with his physical appearance, but nonetheless, he felt the years creeping up on him. Felt them in his bones. In his soul.  

The others in the room were restless, waiting to get back into the thick of things. Whatever the particulars, the mission objective was fairly simple: rescue one of their own, kill a lot of bad guys. A dozen of the IM men and women were decked out in black fatigues. Some sat up straight, attentive. Others sunk in their chairs, bored. They were all Randall's Raiders.

The twelfth man among them was not one of the tribe, so to speak. Chagall sat in front of and slightly across from him, where Sergeant Gaddie could get a good look at the man, at how he reacted to the briefing and the images onscreen. Chagall was younger than Gaddie, age-wise, but somehow appeared older. Circumstance had a way of doing that to you. The gunnery sergeant knew firsthand.

This is Kodjoe, the Lieutenant announced.

Nice hat, someone quipped.

A video clip on the screen: a large black man smiling and waving. There was no sound. A colorful Ghanaian smock covered the girth of his upper body, triangular fur Karakul on his enormous head. In one hand a carved wooden walking stick. Western educated warlord. Oxford and the London School of Economics, when those places still existed.

The on-screen Kodjoe continued to emote silently, face effusive, arms open, welcoming all to him.

...given to long winded rants and pontificating, harangues on the end of the world, the wretched of the earth, fallen idols and his own eschatological religious beliefs... 

A Marine in front of Gaddie feigned ignorance, saying to another, Eschata-what?

The room small enough that Lieutenant Randall heard them and clarified: The end of the world.

"Aww, someone else said. He looks like a teddy bear."

Don't let his urbane veneer and educational background fool you, warned the Lieutenant. Silver-tongued, yes, but the beast is alive and well within this one. Kodjoe’s men are loyal to him to the point of death. The people living in his compound worship him as a god. It’s an image he goes to great ends to perpetuate.

Gaddie absently thumbed the charm his wife and son had given him, intent on the screen, aware of those around him, especially Chagall, the survivor. Gaddie knew Chagall was acquainted with Kodjoe and his clan, personally. The Gunnery Sergeant wondered what kind of hell this man Chagall had gone through at their hands. He lacked details, but he knew none of it could have been any good.

Chagall hadn't moved during the entire briefing.

SOMETHING HAPPENED when he was a prisoner, something Chagall could not comprehend at the time, and would not for a long while after. Everything else he processed and understood: the hours of interrogation, the mind games and physical tortures. Dibbs' curses and cries, his screams and sobs. And it all made a kind of sense to Chagall, in a way that things like that, things that shouldn't make any kind of sense, often could and often did.

It was their final morning in captivity. His and Dibbs'. Keita's too. Keita was their interpreter. There'd been six of them total when they'd been taken. Three of them had opened their eyes that last day, but only Chagall would open his the next. In hindsight, that in itself—the fact that he survived—was bewildering enough. He shouldn't have. Not with the collection of bloodthirsty torturers and killers—sadists all—in Kodjoe's camp. Not with the millions of creatures outside the compound walls.

But he had survived and Chagall knew why. Because they wanted him to live. Kodjoe wanted him to live. And whatever their plans, that had been their biggest mistake.

It hadn’t been obvious at first, though, that they'd wanted him to survive, to bring word of their compound and the horrors perpetrated there to the greater universe. When Maalouf came into their room in the stockade, Chagall awakened. Unlike most of the rest of their captors, Maalouf was of serious demeanor, less talkative than the others. Maalouf who had stood by and watched their torments these past ninety-six hours, yet hadn't actively lent a hand.

Chagall woke to Maalouf kneeling down beside Dibbs', his hands probing Dibbs’ many wounds, examining him. Dibbs protested groggily, already so badly hurt. Perhaps Dibbs’ African-American heritage had singled him out for especially cruel treatment at the hand of their captors; perhaps his size—Dibbs was the tallest and broadest of the three remaining—drew their ill attentions. Keita sat across from them, watching through his one eye that wasn't swollen shut.

What are you doing to him? Chagall asked between engorged, cracked lips. What he would do for a drink.

Seated with their backs to the mud wall, their hands manacled, arms stretched above them, the manacles chained to the wall. Chagall knew if they were left in this position long enough, their lungs would collapse. They'd be effectively crucified.

Maalouf ignored his question, turning Dibbs' face in his hand. Kodjoe's soldier shook his head, seemingly dissatisfied. Then he moved over to look at Chagall.

If it had been any of the others—the man with the rock on the chain; the woman with the ghastly smile and hair tightly braided to her scalp with her tool belt of phalluses; any of the others—Chagall would have clenched his eyes and turned his head, as though doing so could protect himself from their evil. But Maalouf had not laid a hand on them during their imprisonment. True, he'd done nothing to stop the depravations visited upon them, but he hadn't participated in their debasment either.

Chagall watched as the man knelt and extended his hands, probing his injuries. Chagall was hurt, but he also knew he would live if he could escape this place. He'd taken his beatings but held his tongue. He'd shaken and sweated when the chimps were in his face hooting and screaming, pitching their own feces, opening their mouths impossibly wide and threatening to tear his face off his skull. Through it all he'd maintained what composure he could, not breaking once, not giving them anything. No information, no satisfaction. Chagall hadn't begged, hadn't cried.

Maalouf looked into his eyes and Chagall met the man's gaze. Maalouf nodded.

He produced a key and held it up between them for Chagall to clearly see. A key. Chagall did not understand. Maalouf looked over his shoulder, hearing something, and quickly pressed the key into Chagall's hand, closing his fingers over it. Then, just as abruptly, he stood and strode across the room to Keita, Keita beginning to plead in English and his own tongue as Maalouf delivered the first of several vicious kicks to the interpretor’s torso.

As Maalouf beat Keita they came into the room, the female and the would-be woman. The feint outdoor glow that passed for daylight backlit them momentarily. Their appearance was like beasts that had clawed their way up into civilization from the bottommost pit of hell. They stood there in the dim light, the door closed now, watching Maalouf pummel the African translator, both lauding their comrade and laughing appreciatively at the spectacle.

When Maalouf stepped away from Keita’s chained form he was sweating and breathing heavily. He said something to the two and spit on the slumped Keita. Keita coughed, blood from this and a dozen other beatings drooled from his mouth to his lap. With that, Maalouf left the room, leaving them there with the two craziest human beings on the planet.

Kodjoe’s killers spoke amongst themselves for a few moments, their words punctuated by more laughter. The deeper, throaty cackles of the not-quite woman. It reached to the belt of phalluses its braided companion wore and moved one from the waist band, a wicked ebony number the length of Chagall's forearm. Razored studs jutted along its shaft. The woman-woman had something in her hands that glinted in the low light, something Chagall couldn't quite make out.

They conferred together again, their words lost to Chagall, English or not. They looked over at him and laughed. Chagall remained extremely conscious of the key in his palm, beginning to understand what it might do, what it might be for.

None of it made sense.

Something inside Keita rattled as the man wheezed.

The two said something else about Chagall before turning their attention to Dibbs and got down to their task. The razor-studded dildo was put to his neck, forcing Dibb's head against the wall. A splayed palm to his forehead pinned it there. The one with the braided hair tugged at Dibbs' fatigue pants, yanking them down and off, his boots and socks long lost. He wore nothing underneath. Dibbs protested, his cries weak and flat, dispirited.

More laughter and then the one bending over Dibbs' lap drew her lips back, less a smile than a showing of her diamond encrusted teeth. As she did, she held the item in her hand up for Dibbs to see, for Kodjoe's transgender soldier pinning Dibbs in place to see, for Chagall to see. A pair of wire cutters. Chagall, who couldn't help but look, froze from the sheer horror of the unfolding spectacle. There was a crazed look in the woman's eyes as she lowered the clippers to Dibbs' lap. Dibbs began to scream, screams that became bellows the likes of which Chagall had never heard before.

He jerked his head in the other direction and clenched his eyes, refusing to watch, forced to listen. For the next several minutes Chagall forgot about the key in his palm, though his hand clasped it involuntarily, shielding it from the monsters in the room.

THESE ARE HIS MEN, the Lieutenant was saying. His inner circle. First up on the screen was another black man, this guy large like Kodjoe, but younger and powerfully built. In the screenshot, the man wore a multi-colored dashiki and gripped a maul in both hands. Achebe Beyeke, Lieutenant Randall named him. He's not African. Claims Northern African heritage, but intel suggests his lineage actually traces to the former France.

Gaddie glanced over at Chagall. Was Chagall French? Chagall sounded like a French name. For his part, Chagall wasn't saying a word, and his face revealed nothing. He'd been a captive of these people for several days a year back, and somehow he'd escaped. That was all Gaddie knew.

The Gunnery Sergeant figured his Lieutenant knew more. He saw that Chagall had raised a hand to his other arm, that Chagall was caressing the limb as he stared at the man onscreen, the man with the hammer.

This is Kwame Enum. Another rough-looking character appeared, this one wielding what looked like a piece of space rock on a chain. Gaddie watched as Chagall's hand reached down from his arm to his leg. The Sergeant was suddenly aware of his own chain and the charm he wore on it, the charm between his fingers even now. His wife's. Come home to me, she'd told him when she'd given it to him. Safe. He was trying. Gaddie tucked the charm back under his black fatigues, his attention one hundred and ten percent back in the room, in the here and now.

Another black face on the screen. Well, Gaddie thought, it was Africa...

Ebo Nkron is this boyscout’s name.

Gaddie couldn't make out much of one Ebo Nkron. An indigo garment veiled his head and face, hanging down over his neck. You could only see the man’s eyes and the upper part of his nose.

We don't know the names of his chimps, the Lieutenant remarked. Ebo Nkron had three of them in the picture, each leashed and muzzled. The simians were actually wearing straight jackets. That black glove on his hand covers nothing. You want to know why? He's only got one hand because his own chimps ate it.

Hey, Vu, someone in the room called. He's got one hand like you.

Vu raised his prosthetic arm, extended his prosthetic middle finger, waggled it.

Nkron? Another Marine asked the Lieutenant. There’s not going to be a quiz on these guys and their names, is there?

"Nkron means nine in Twi. Enum is five. Traditional Ghanaian names are modeled after ethnic Akan names."

He lost me, another person grumbled.

People in Ghana, continued Lieutenant Randall, "which is where Kodjoe originally was from—" Was from is about right, thought Gaddie. Ghana, like most of the other two hundred countries that once existed on the planet, ceased to do so when the shower came —people in Ghana name their kids after the day of the week on which they're born, the Lieutenant was explaining, and the order in which they were born. So, our guy here with the wildlife—Ebo Nkrun—was presumably born on a Tuesday, the ninth child of his mister and misses.

And Kodjoe? a voice called.

"Kodjoe means Monday."

I always hated Mondays, muttered Vu.

Where was he in the birth order?

"We don't know and it doesn't matter. For our purposes Kodjoe is Baako, number one."

Hey Lieutenant, Nagant had a French accent. I'm impressed with your language skills.

Appreciated, Nagant.

What a tongue, huh Kassia? Gaddie heard Nagant ask his fellow sniper. Katarzyna snapped back that Nagant should ask his sister.

The turban kind of hides his features, L.T., Lowry had a thick southern drawl. "But this guy, Ebo nah-crum here, he don't look African to me."

He's not. He's another one originally from Europe. Kodjoe adopted him into the clan. And the thing he's wearing is called a tagelmust.

Someone else: You’re sure there isn’t going to be a quiz on indigenous couture or something after this?

THE NEXT PICTURE CAME up and one of the guys remarked, "I thought he said men."

Kassia whistled. Nagant, sitting beside her, chuckled that she did.

These days she goes by the name Na'weh, Lieutenant Randall said of the woman on screen, who wore a traditional head scarf. And don't let her good looks fool you. She's got more downstairs than any of you, even you Kells. Titters and the Marine named Kells held his palms up, a foot apart, nodding his head exaggerateldy. She goes by Chinua Na'weh, but she was born one Leon Peterson in Newark, New Jersey. Converted from a God-fearing Christian boy to a God-fearing Islamic one, changing his name to Yusuf Alam. Had a history of violent felonies and spent a few years before the shower incarcerated. Then dropped all pretense at organized religion and decided, a la Lou Rawls, that he, was really a she.

Fuck is Low Rawls? someone asked.

Language, someone else reprimanded.

"Hey Captain. What's Na'weh mean?"

It means one who's walked before.

Yeah, she walked before, somebody noted sardonically. With three legs.

The comment elicited laughter around the room. Gunnery Sergeant Gaddie, who wasn't laughing, noticed that Chagall wasn't either.

NOW THIS ONE HERE THOUGH, The picture had changed again. This one's a real female. Name of Layla. A white woman with corn rows. The corners of her mouth pulled up and back in something that could have passed for a growl or demonic smile. She had diamond grillz in her mouth.

Kassia whistled again.

Is that a strap-on she's wearing? One of the Marines asked in near disbelief. Then, in a lower tone, in full comprehension: She's wearing a strap on.

"Ewww. I don’t know. She looks like your type of woman, Black Rob."

I'm a let you have her, Kells.

By all accounts she's the meanest, most sadistic of the bunch... As the Lieutenant spoke, Gaddie looked over at Chagall, who'd been dead quiet this whole time, intent on the screen and those upon it. The man’s eyes said it all. His gaze looked like it could burn a hole through the screen. ...you'll notice Kodjoe's soldiers are a multi-national, multi-ethnic bunch.

Like us.

And not just a bunch of skinny little African guys, Lowry hastened to append the Lieutenant's sentence. No offense, Kells. Kelley wasn't the only dark skinned Marine there, but he and Lowry enjoyed their give-and-take.

...the majority of his soldiers are armed with Kalashnikovs and PKTs, RPGs and other Soviet-era weapons left over from before the Shower.

Someone made a comment about antiques, to which the Lieutenant replied, Yeah, maybe. But a well placed seven-seventy two can still ruin your day. And then he added: Kodjoe has a fifteen-hundred man army, to which there were a few intakes of breath and another whistle from Katarzyna the sniper.

"Men this time?"

The good news is that the majority of those troops are off in-land at the moment, Lieutenant Randall told them. The compound where Kodjoe's got Ulrich only has a garrison of two hundred, max.

"Only two hundred. No sweat."

But Kodjoe's soldiers won't be our only concern when we hit the beach...

CHAGALL, LISTEN TO me... Dibb's voice was weak, scared. ...don't run.

They'd been moved to some kind of vast open area in the corner of the compound, an arena. Wooden bleachers several tiers high were crammed with hundreds of people, the men and women and children who lived here. Kodjoe Clan soldiers stood around with their assault rifles, riling the crowd up with hand gestures and cries, the mass answering back, cheering.

...don't leave me here, Chagall.

There was a platform built into the middle of the arena, a great hole cut into it over a pit dug into the earth. A wooden scaffold ringed the platform. Chains ran from each beam to a wooden frame, an inverted stocks from which Keita's bloodied head and shoulders jutted. The interpreter's wrists were secured by shackles, his skull pulled back by a metallic collar around his forehead, the fear and pain evident on his face. Naked, Keita's lower body dangled from the stocks, the entire frame suspended above the platform in the center of the arena, above the gaping hole.

There were things in the hole.

...you can't leave me here, Chagall.

I'll get help, Chagall whispered to Dibbs. They'd been deposited together near the bleachers, Chagall on his knees with his hands behind his back, Dibbs seated flat, his torso hanging forward over his lower legs, little left in the broken man. Chagall spied two potential areas of escape: a passage between the bleachers that led into the compound, and the catwalk above. I'll be back, Chagall told him. It's our only chance.

They'll catch you, Dibbs said with certainty. They'll fuck you up worse than me... Chagall winced: this from a castrated man. ...he's going to let us live...he wants to rub our noses in it.

Layla stood there with her belt of dildos, trimming her nails with the wire cutters. The rest of Kodjoe's people were present as well. The one-handed man with his trio of chimpanzees; the primates muzzled, stalking back and forth at the end of their leashes. The large one with his war hammer, the other dangling a rock the size of Chagall's head from a chain. Maalouf was there as well. Why he'd given Chagall the key this morning the soldier didn't know. Maalouf avoided any eye contact with Chagall, refusing to acknowledge the captive.

Only Kodjoe himself had yet to make an appearance.

The bristled tip of an appendage raised up out of the pit below Keita's bare feet, the feeler pawing the air before withdrawing back into the earth. A shrill grating sound rose from the pit.

Beyeke raised his war hammer and bellowed, the audience roaring back.

The epidural will have kicked in now. Chagall hadn't noticed when Na'weh came over. At his side