Amazon Apocalypse Extras: Book 2, Chapter 71 (Old version) (Patreon)

Before Terrance hauled Knuckles away, I asked him a bit about our next target. He seemed reluctant to speak at first, glancing up at the former police officer.

"Don't I get a lawyer or something?" Knuckles asked.

"Most of the city's former lawyers have switched to considerably more hands-on jobs," I replied. "Either that, or they were eaten by giant cockroach monsters."

"Well, I know the thing. Anything I say can be used against me blah blah legal bullshit..." Knuckles spat.

Terrance glared down at Knuckles. "Be glad the legal bullshit is back. It's the only thing keeping you alive. And cooperating now will look good at your trial."

“Woah, hold on a moment.” I cautioned Knuckles and Terrance. “Just because we’re bringing back law and order doesn’t mean we’re bringing back all the laws. Maybe I thought it was dumb that we couldn’t beat straight answers out of criminals?”

I shot a meaningful glance at Knuckles.

Knuckles went pale. Terrance leaned in and whispered something in his ear. I wasn't sure what he said, but Knuckles’ bronze skin went white as a sheet, and a moment later was telling me everything he knew.

"Caesar is a sketchy bastard. Kinda creepy. I kept away from him. Him and that sexy slave girl of his." Knuckles shook his head.

"Slave girl?" I asked curiously.

"Bought her from Cromwell, I think. A bunch of guys did. This one's a bit creepy though. I wouldn't talk to her if I were you."

"What's wrong with her?"

Knuckles shrugged. "She's good at talking to people. Too good. Very pretty too. I'd throw a paper bag over her head. Otherwise, you'll turn into a drooling simp."

That didn't seem too bad to me. In fact, I was impressed a lone woman managed to get by at all after getting captured and sold to someone in Crownhill County Prison.

"And what about Caesar himself? I've heard you and he were the only guys who could handle Cromwell's pain skill?"

"I could handle it because pain is just a feeling. I shrug it off thanks to my class. When Cromwell demanded I work for him I punched him in the face. Caesar though..." Knuckles shrugged. "It was like he didn't even feel it. Just stared right through Caesar and kept playing with that that girl of his. Super creepy. I feel bad for the chick. She gets more attention than is healthy."

"What about his powers? Abilities?" I asked.

Knuckles shrugged. "Super determination? I don't know man. He's just damn tough. Now can I please have my hands back?"

He gestured to his lightly-chewed stumps on the ground next to him.

I nodded to Terrance. "See that he checks in with Doctor Roswell."

After Knuckles and the prisoners departed and everyone had eaten and recovered their mana and stamina, I had us group up and prepare another strategy meeting. We got up and got moving with one goal. Crownhill County Prison.

The air was thick with anticipation as I led our crew through the wrecked streets. Humans had fought here, and the fighting had been far more intense than any battle against monsters.

If I hadn't just fought Knuckles, I might have figured this was a battle between trolls and ogres. Bricks littered the streets along side broken mortar and steel rebar. it took me a while to figure out what happened. Someone like Knuckles had intentionally demolished every building around the prison to keep a clear line of sight outside of it.

I saw the shredded remains of barbed wire and fencing, though now the wire pointed away from the prison rather than inward. I'd been skeptical before about why anyone would want to stick around somewhere they'd been a prisoner, but when I saw the tall brick walls and guard tower of the prison, I understood. This might very well be the most defensible building in Crownhill, after some modifications.

Unfortunately, the prisoners hadn't quite put in the effort to finish building those defenses. Whatever alliance had kept the Three Kings cooperating had broken down. Likely more so following the death of Cromwell at my hands.

"This is it." Rick hefted his axe as we approached the looming and half-fortified structure ahead. "Almost got a job here once, back in the times before the System. Feels like another life at this point."

"Agreed," Frank chuckled.

"Rick, you're going East. Frank, West. I want you two ready to go when the signal comes. You got it?" I gave Sharky at my side a pat.

The two of them glanced at the massive ghost shark at my side.

"Yeah, I think we know the signal this time," Frank said, keeping a wary eye on Sharky all the while.

There was little hope of a surprise attack this time, given word had no doubt come back from our fight with Knuckles. If we had scouts, Caesar probably did too. These weren't like the ogres, trolls, goblins, or wolfmen.

We eyed the rear gates. Unlike the front gates, these hadn't been well fortified at all. There were guards on the gates as well, both still wearing their ragged orange jumpsuits.

The prison's battle-scarred walls cast long shadows over us. I looked up and yelled.

"Tell Caesar to come out! It's past time we had peace in Crownhill. One way or another," I shouted up to the guards.

One of the men on the wall spat. "Go back to your little town and play pretend. The old world is gone! Might makes right now. The law is dead and gone."

I chuckled. "I agree. And so now we will build laws and order anew."

I flung my hand out, hitting the man with three Mana Bolts. The blows knocked him backward and he tripped over the side of the wall on the other side of the gates. The other guard raised his gun and got off one round before I hit him with spellfire as well.

"Break open the gates," I commanded.

Marcus, Kyle, Kerrie and a few others over level 25 stepped forward. Somewhere along the way they'd picked up a tree trunk, and now the pulled it back and rammed it into the gates like a battering ram. The rest of the building was tough, but the architects for this prison had never prepared for an entry this aggressive.

Steel rods bent, buckled, and finally gave way completely as the hinges snapped with the third blow. To either side of us I could hear Frank and Rick making their own entrances. Since I had the bulk of our forces, I wanted to approach first and draw most of the attention.

I led the way and stepped into the courtyard, preparing more Mana Bolts all the while in expectation of a fight.

Despite bracing myself, I hadn't been ready for the amount of bloodshed on the other side of those gates. The courtyard was now an open-air graveyard.

When the prisoners rebelled and killed both each other and the guards, nobody had bothered to bury the bodies. Human remains rotted on the ground. Some were torn open. Others beaten until their bodies bent in shapes barely recognizable as human.

The bodies had been left to rot without any attempt to burn or bury them. As we approached, a dozen giant cockroaches skittered out of the way.

"This is worse than the wolfmen..." Kyle's face went pale. Next to him, Marcus was pinching his nose.

"Take it in." I waved to the desecration around us. "This is what we came here to put a stop to."

Looking closer, there were a lot of cockroaches. The prisoners probably left the bodies here intentionally in the hopes of attracting them. Maybe even farming them. At low levels, these cockroaches provided great experience rewards.

Expressions grim, my people and I forged ahead over the bodies to the main doors of the prison. It was locked, but we brought the log forward again and persuaded the door to open for us. A bit of elbow-grease made short work of the half-assed barricade on the other side of the door.

The floors here were nearly as blood-splattered as the courtyard outside, but this was dried blood spilled weeks ago. It gave the air an iron-flavored edge.

Someone poked their head out of the corner in the distance. They were quick to pull it aside, but not quicker than Kerrie's bow. She'd had an arrow notched, drawn, and ready, and the moment she spotted a target she loosed it straight through a former-prisoners eye.

"They're trying to ambush us again," Kerrie said, jerking her head to the blind hallway off to our right.

I grimaced. "Agreed. Michael, work your magic."

Michael nodded, hefted the chemical tank strapped to his back, then activated whatever skill made it extra deadly in a magical sense. He pumped out a cloud of viscous purple gas that spread down the hall. The rest of us stayed near the door. The corpses smelled terrible, but at least the smell wasn't lethal.

Following Michael's wave of toxic gas, we heard a lot of coughing and spluttering. It grew louder and louder, and eventually people started running out of their hiding spots in ambush toward the door. Straight into ourambush.

Fighting through the hallway would have been tough. Holding our ground against a smaller number of enemies trickling through half-blinded and poisoned? That was much easier.

"This is a special blend," Michael explained. "It’s lethal, but excruciatingly painful. It does air out fairly quickly though. Doctor Roswell helped me cook it up. We’ll need to go in and finish people off by hand so they don’t haunt us for all the agony they suffered before dying. I’ve heard haunting is a thing now, and I’m kinda worried.”

“We’ll put anyone suffering out of their misery,” I agreed. “Now gas them!”

I nodded in approval. I'd heard about the prisoners here hunting down women to bring back with them. Cromwell had been the worst of them for that sort of thing, but from rumors Caesar took a few as well. I hadn't held much hope of being able to rescue them, but maybe it was still possible.

"This would have been a hell of a lot more dangerous without you, Michael." A few other people joined me in congratulating him.

Thanks to all the poison gas, we were able to thin out enemy numbers significantly before actually entering the building in force. Those that came out were often struggling for breath or one wrong step from face-planting on the ground and passing out, which our end of the fighting was relatively bloodless. It was just sticking a spear into a gasping, half-dead criminal. We only suffered a single injury during the whole fight, and we harvested a hell of a lot of experience points.

When Michael ran out of mana, we sat and waited a while for the gas to disperse. Rick and Frank's teams were just out of sight and standing by for our signal. When enough of the gas dispersed that it was no longer enough to do appreciable harm to Sharky, I sent him in to cause some chaos. He had specific orders only to eat people still on their feet.

There was a little screaming here and there, but all in all he was a swift and silent ghost. He let out a sad nom nom as he realized there were lots of helpless people, but precious few still alive enough to eat. It was devouring the souls he really enjoyed, after all. Not the flesh.

I checked Sharky's health bar all the way to make sure the air was safe for us. Rick and Frank took Sharky's entrance as the signal to attack rather than just waiting at the doors, and soon we were piling into the former prison from all three sides.

"I think... I think I know this place. We should go left. Caesar would have taken the Warden's office." Chuck pointed to the hallway to the left, and we followed his directions.

We were ambushed a few times by a couple of half-dead former prisoners who'd managed to stuff their heads in plastic bags, breathing the same air for thirty minutes straight for fear of Michael's poison gas. There were even quite a few people who’d clawed their own faces off from the agony of whatever they’d been breathing.

Whatever Michael and Doctor Roswell had cooked up, it was nasty stuff.

Kerrie, Chuck, and Kyle all had their moments to prove their worth. Kerrie's bow was as good as any gun down long hallways, and her perception build made her ears sensitive enough that she could hear someone breathing straight through a closed door.

Chuck had a much more straightforward way of checking for ambushes. He walked right into them and after he was shot or stabbed he just kept fighting.

Kyle was more cautious, but made up for it with additional boldness. He was quick with his spear and always near the front lines. Though he was young, he was quickly shaping up to be a proper warrior of the kind I'd only seen on Themyscira so far.

"This is it," Chuck said as we came across a large, double-wide door. "The Warden's office."

"I hear people on the other side. Get ready for a fight," Kerrie said.

"Behind me," I ordered everyone. Then, I kicked down the door.

The office was a large one. It was never luxurious, but someone had punched down a wall and made it a bit bigger.

From the clumsy renovations around the rest of the prison, I would have figured I'd see the broken bricks and scattered debris lying on the ground around the chamber, combined with a bit of blood splattered here and there. But the room beyond was surprisingly tidy. Someone had gone to the trouble of cleaning the room up and making it not just livable, but cozy.

"Pink curtains?" Kyle nodded at the window in surprise. I followed his gaze. Sure enough, the curtains were pink. Maybe they were left there by the warden, but the piles of pillows placed around the room gave me a distinctly girlish vibe to the office.

"I don't think these were the old warden's." Chuck shrugged.

"Maybe this Caesar ruthless killer with a feminine side?" Kerrie suggested.

It didn't quite fit my vision of Caesar. Based on what Knuckles and the other prisoners said, he was a crazy bastard. But more in the 'you'll never know how he's going to murder you' sort of way rather than the 'blood, slaughter, and embroidered hello kitten pillows' sort of way.

"I hear more voices behind this door!" Kerrie jerked her thumb at what might once have been a door to another office. She tried the knob, but it was locked.

We hadn't brought the log, but rather than going back for it I blasted the knob with a few Eldrich Blasts while pointing right at the keyhole. It probably wouldn't have worked on a sturdier lock, but for this time at least the spell snapped something inside the lock preventing the cylinder from rotating, letting the knob turn. We walked in.

The room within was a plush and well-outfitted bedroom. The pink curtains and decorative pillows we'd spotted outside were present in far greater number here than ever before. A massive bed filled most of the room. Beside the bed, there was also a couch, television, and a pile of steamy romance novels.

There was also one person in the room, passed out midway through an embroidery project. She lay on the couch looking very much the captive woman of a barbarian warlord. In fact, I was certain the outfit she was wearing was the slave Leia outfit one of the costume shops in town sold.

Kerrie approached the woman warily and gave her a nudge with the corner of her bow. "She's alive, I think. Guys? What's wrong?"

I blinked. I'd been studying the woman a little too long. Kyle, Marcus, and Chuck on the other hand all stood completely transfixed.

"Uh... guys?" Kerrie asked.

"Pretty..." Kyle drooled.

I glanced back at the unconscious woman. Now that I thought about it, she really was quite pretty in the traditional sense. Something about her really drew the eye. Something more than the fact that she was lying there mostly naked. Such smooth skin. She had a thin waist coupled with hips and breasts fit for a fertility goddess. Her proportions were probably impossible before the System.

She also seemed healthy for a prisoner. Remarkably so. We'd stumbled across a number of Cromwell's less-well-cared for women while searching his compounds, and I had expected the prison to have women in similar condition. But this woman here was the first we'd found. Presumably Rick and Frank's teams rescued some, but the low numbers seemed odd considering how many men were here.

I would have expected all of them to be roughed up as well, like the poorly treated of Cromwell's prisoners had been. This one though? She looked as comfortable as though she were sleeping on her own couch.

Something wasn't quite right with her though. I could sense it. Could this have been the woman Knuckles mentioned?

"Guys! We need to get her out of here. Hello?" Kerrie asked.

I shook myself out of the dazed confusion and Examined the sleeping woman.

Lisette Walton (Acrobat - Level 8)

Something about the feedback my skill gave me struck me as wrong though. Like the Examine hadn't gone through quite right. A notice appeared before me a moment later.

Your combined detection proficiencies have allowed you to sense deception in the target's stat readings.

I frowned, trying again. Something flashed across my vision. I tried to catch it, but it was gone again moments later.

I shook my head to clear my mind, then turned to my companions.

Chuck was the second to come to his senses, though Marcus and Kyle remained drooling where they were. It was a damn good thing we weren't up against any enemies full of beautiful women. If we'd been up against the Amazonian Empire, my eighteen year old fighters would probably be too distracted to fight back. I shook my head and left the two of them where they were.

I approached, and with Kerrie's help and some water from my bag of holding, we woke the woman.

"Hey, hey... it's alright, we're rescuing you," Kerrie began.

Slowly, the woman opened her eyes. She glanced around for only a moment before letting out a terrified scream that shot straight through the entire compound.

"Uh guys!" Michael shouted from outside the door. "I don't know what happened back there, but some of those guys we thought were dead came back to life, toxic gas or no! We’re up against some sort of living zombie!”