Apocalypse: The Ice King Returned

Chapter 7: Overnight Stay

Then a scream came. It was the woman laying beside Richard. The blonde man grabbed the woman's hair and dragged her to the couch in front of the bed for the older man to see. "You can watch me use your girl however I like before you die.” He laughed to himself crazily.

He pressed down on the woman and began to tear apart her clothes. The woman struggled and screamed while the other man slashed at Richard with his ax, slicing Richard's body into ribbons. The wounds kept growing bigger as his blood soaked into the bed.

"You killed my brothers. Go to hell, you son of a b***h!" He continued to chop at him, and the blonde one desperately tried to overpower the beautiful woman. Neither of them noticed the man standing behind them.

Just as the man tore the woman’s top off, she escaped and ran to the other side of the room. She fell to the ground, faint 

"What the hell? Was she stronger than you?!" The man with the ax mocked his brother.

But his brother had fallen to the ground, bleeding red foam from his mouth. He then saw a clear icicle protruding from his brother’s neck.

He gasped as the sight, bewildered.

Luther walked toward him. "I didn’t want to kill you. But you hurt people. You betrayed us and now you have to pay."

His face had turned a deep red in anger, and it only seemed to glow more under the light of the one lamp. He jumped out at him from the edge of the bed and tackled Luther.

The man was trained. He hit Luther in the ribs with the back of the ax, which should have knocked him down and broken his ribs.

But Luther's face was calm. He had seen fighter’s far worse and far more dangerous with an ax than this man.

Luther's right hand grabbed the second ax beside the couch and transferred it to his left hand behind his back. The ax had a sharp edge, which Luther used to swing at the other man’s ax.

A sharp ringing echoed in the room as the axes made contact. Luther’s swing was so strong, it broke the other ax from the man’s grip.

The man squeezed his wrist in pain and realized it had been broken, his hand already swelling. His eyes widened in horror. "Who are you?"

Luther didn't answer. Instead, he ran at him and swung his ax. The man screamed a resounding, “No!” He put up his hands in defense, but this did nothing to stop the inevitable.

His hands were both sliced off, and as he screamed in pain from the major blood loss, Luther swung the ax at his neck a final time to end it. The screaming was suddenly replaced by the gurgling of air being released by the body’s lungs.

Luther looked down at the body and dropped to his knees. Luther found no joy in what he just did, but he knew it was necessary. He would not survive doomsday if he was not willing to do what had to be done.

Luther looked at the bloody fire ax in his hand and sighed. "I’m only a survivor."

Luther wiped the ax on the dead man's clothes and looked around the room. The scene was bloody. Three people died in one night.

There was one person in the room besides Luther and Constance. She was the woman that came with Richard, but her clothes were torn, and her hair was messy. Her eyes were wide open, and she muttered to herself in horror, "no, no..."

She was going to need to get over the events of the evening. Luther simply ignored her, got back on the couch, and closed his eyes to rest.

-----

The next morning, the sunlight from the window shone brightly into the room. The light landed on Constance’s face. She woke up and stretched. A strong smell of blood startled her, and she jumped to her feet. A scream rose from her chest, but she held it down as best she could.

almost half of the room was completely spattered and soaked in blood and the bodies of the two young men and Richard lay there, lifeless. The worst sight was Richard’s body, slaughtered like a pig.

Luther quickly spoke up, trying to keep his sister calm, "Those two lied to us. I had to stop them before they had the chance to cross us."

"You..."

Luther could see the fear in his sister’s face, and he spoke up further, already knowing what she was about to say. "I didn't kill Richard. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. Do you know why you didn't wake up at all last night?"

"No... I don't know."

"I guess that makes sense.” Constance blushed, almost embarrassed. But her forehead broke into a cold sweat after Luther explained why she slept so deeply.

"They were smoking heroin, and you breathed a lot of it in. Even if they tried to hurt you, you wouldn’t have felt a thing. From now on I’m going to need you to watch out for yourself better. I can’t have your back all the time."

Constance nodded. "Thanks."

"Now come look at this. I think I found a way for us to escape." Luther pointed up to the ceiling at an air vent. "Let’s eat first, then we have to leave."

-----

They entered the air vent, and Constance reassured Luther that it was unobstructed and it led down to the ground floor.

Luther and Constance now both had fire axes, and while Constance's had a large chip in it, it was safer to keep with her.

They crept down the vents as quietly as they could, checking their location every time they passed an opening to the next floor.

There was nothing out of the ordinary on their way down until they reached the fifth floor, where Luther heard something in the pipe behind him.

Luther looked back and turned on his flashlight. His hands were already forming water in the shape of arrows.

The sound seemed to rumble and echo louder as it got closer to them.

At last, a figure made its way around the corner into their field of view. It was a little girl, disheveled and bloody. Her face was clean but pale, clearly in shock.

Once she was exposed to the bright light, the girl raised her hand to cover her eyes and cried, "Don't kill me, just let me follow you out, please!"

Luther squinted at her. He turned away and ignored her plea. He looked at Constance and spoke softly to her, "Don’t think about her. Let's just go."

Constance nodded and continued to climb toward the ground floor.

In about ten minutes, the three of them had reached a small room on the ground floor, and Luther peered through the grate. There was nothing below them except for a bed and a desk. So, he kicked out the vent and jumped to the floor, and his sister followed. The little girl was the last one out.