The Drowned Fear No Sea

2

The whole area stank of omegas. The heavy, unhealthy reek smothered every other smell — even the stench of stagnant water and sewage.

This “pack,” a gathering of something no longer human but sick primates, had long crossed the line Cael had set for their kind. Cleaner Cael Zen didn’t waste time on common bandits — there were too many of those after the flood. He couldn’t care less about the “holy men” with their cursed Ark, or the fanatical militarists. The first had once saved his hide; the second supplied him with homemade, banned explosives.

But “packs” were his specialty. At the head of every pack was an alpha. Around him — several omegas of both sexes, and up to ten betas, always male. No ideology, no purpose. Only extreme cruelty. Packs existed solely for violence.

“f*****g betas wanted to destroy the beast in people. Well, we’ll show them — there’s a beast in every human. You just have to let it out…” an alpha from one of the first-wave packs had told him once. Those packs had simply been lashing out at everyone, taking revenge for the loved ones they’d lost in the flood. Cael had killed that alpha, but the words stuck in his head.

Then came the “sick ones.” A mutated, pale spirochete w***e-virus infected alphas and omegas, spreading to betas as well. Betas could be treated — old-fashioned penicillin still worked — but for alphas and omegas, it only prolonged the agony. That was how infected packs appeared: not seeking death, but revenge for the little time they had left. They no longer aimed to kill — no, they left their victims alive but maimed, and almost certainly infected. Most couldn’t afford treatment.

It was a humanitarian disaster: pills and injections only for the “worthy,” the rest told to wait their turn — even if they never lived to see it.

Zen checked his weapons again. He was crouched on the roof of a flooded five-story near the infected nest, watching as the pack returned from a hunt — with captives. Two kids — for amusement… and for meat.

He spat into the rancid water. He wasn’t a rescuer. He was a cleaner. He would wait. The alpha hadn’t returned with the pack — maybe dead, more likely delayed. The others didn’t wait for their leader; almost immediately, female screams tore through the nest. The victim screamed for a long time. Zen clenched his jaw and gave himself an hour after the cries stopped. Another hour, and he’d slaughter them all and blow the nest. The alpha too, even if it meant pushing his schedule.

Cael had become a cleaner back in the army. He’d returned from Hell — the kind no living man knew — and when the world collapsed, he simply kept doing what he’d been trained to do. Right after the dam was blown, Cael led a team of volunteers who fished corpses from the flood zones. Air-filter masks, black hazmat suits, and a huge boat that could carry at most one living passenger. People called them “Charons,” “knights of death,” even “plague doctors” for some reason — but the name that stuck was the contemptuous “cleaners.” People crossed themselves when they saw them, though there was nothing supernatural about the work. Collect the dead. Burn the dead. Tell the rescuers — the “Knights of Light” — where the living were. Cleaners took only corpses.

Only once had Cael broken that rule — and lost all his men for it. They’d been hurrying back from a raid — the government in the upper city had changed yet again, demonstrations were raging. They were called for backup, though it wasn’t even clear whose side they’d be on. Drifting through a flooded new-build district with high-rises, they’d heard shouts from about the fifth floor. A beta female, almost a teenager, was crying for help.

“Let’s take her,” one of the beta men had suggested. “With all this s**t going on in the city, she’ll starve here before anyone comes for her. And we’ve got plenty of room in the boats.”

Cael had agreed, though his instincts screamed danger. Gangs didn’t settle here, and looters didn’t mess with cleaners…

His boat drifted while he tried to pinpoint the source of his unease — sniffing the air — and that saved his life. With a wild scream, the girl blew herself up the moment he stepped onto the nearest boat from the building. The monstrous blast crushed every vessel; Cael was concussed and thrown into the water.

Deaf, choking on foul muck, he surfaced to see the building tilting like a candle about to fall. If it had collapsed then, he’d have been finished. Instead, he was left alive — and fell in with the lunatics of the Ark. They eventually dumped him on “dry land.”

Gunfire from the nest snapped him back from memories — like the time he’d nearly killed a checkpoint commander who’d called him a traitor: “Why didn’t you die with your own?” the i***t alpha had yelled in his face, and Cael had dropped him with one punch. That had sparked a brawl, ended only when the post got a call from “up top”…

Cael shook his head and silently slipped into the boat tied under the roof awning. The pack was making enough noise that he could have motored straight in. Instead, he paddled without a sound: two strokes with the special oar, and he was at the floating house.

The base was a barge, but the pack had ringed it with floating platforms — micro-rafts on plastic barrels. Two sentries were smoking on one. Betas, and drunk, Cael noted as he came in from downwind. They didn’t even turn when his boat bumped their raft. Then they died, choking on the blood from their slit throats. Cael’s iron “claws” had done the job perfectly. He held the bodies to stop them falling into the water. He’d burn everything later — the fewer corpses that surfaced, the better.

Cael jumped from the raft onto a decking of scavenged junk — the pack had worked on their den, though more likely they’d taken it from others. He looked inside, grimacing: the omega stench drowned everything else. Two omegas, he knew. One clearly in heat.

Male betas were bunched around something, standing with their backs to him. A captive groaned — sounded like they’d gotten to the second kid. The omegas played; the betas watched — perverts. They weren’t allowed to touch the pack’s omegas. Let them jerk off — easier to kill them.

Cael stepped into the room openly. No one noticed. Seconds later, he saw why.

An omega had her heat-drunk packmate sprawled on the filthy floor — and was f*****g her with a kid’s arm severed up to the elbow. Both were covered in blood and slick, moaning, growling, showing off. The betas were frantically jerking off, eyes glued to the spectacle.

Cael ended it with one perfect shot. The explosive round from his personal caliber nearly tore the top omega in half, while the one beneath screamed — her guts churned to pulp, though she seemed to have climaxed anyway. Omega stink, s**t, and blood — perfect.

He didn’t waste time. As the omega screamed, the pistol was already back in its pocket and Cael was moving through the room with claws and hunting knife. Start the blades at one throat, finish in another’s eye. Send the knife into the farthest, fastest — freezing him mid-step with a blade in his skull. Open a belly here, crush a spine there.

He spun, drew the pistol again — three shots, three unrecognizable corpses. These bastards were only dangerous to civilians. Sick-headed sadists, dead too quickly. It didn’t satisfy him. Adrenaline boiled; he needed a death fight with an alpha to burn it off. He snarled in frustration and kicked the head of a crippled one still whining on the floor.

Noise came from the next room. Through the stench, he couldn’t tell who it was. It didn’t repeat. A glance confirmed all the pack were dead or dying. Blood covered the floor. No captives visible — alive or dead. No alpha scent.

Cael returned to the boat, took a can of gasoline and a bundle of explosives. He’d give the freaks a bright funeral pyre — and wait a little longer for the alpha by the flames. He doused the bodies, tossed in the “banned stuff” from the militarists. They’d sworn it would blow hard enough to scare people across the border. Tonight, he’d find out.

From the closed room came scraping, a muffled groan. In two strides he was at the door.

The tiny, dark cubby held only an iron cot. Dim light revealed two bodies on the sagging mesh, and a pool of blood beneath.

His mind drew a parallel from another life: a rough sacrificial stone, black with blood, young goats laid upon it. White fur soaked red… Here, kids. One missing an arm and an eye, with nothing between her legs but a torn, semen-soaked wound. The betas had had their fun while the alpha was gone — breaking even her thigh bones.

Cael had seen plenty, but this was over the line. He forced his eyes from the ruin. The second kid was breathing. Alive — and apparently unharmed, except for the stink of infected omega and the fear rolling off him.

That fear hit Cael hard — to this kid, he was the embodiment of every horror done to his friend. Fear greater than death. Cael pushed it further — too shaken to be rational. Even on the edge of death, the kid feared him more than the blade at his throat.

“I’m not an omega,” he whispered, eyes wide with terror.

“I know,” Cael said, lifting him to carry him from the cot. But the kid cried out in pain, jerking away. Cael set him down quickly; he collapsed onto his friend’s corpse, clutching bound hands to his chest. Ragged breath, eyes rolling with pain.

Cael grabbed his wrists, sliced through the wire with a single swipe of a claw, pulled him to the floor. Lifting the filthy hoodie, he found a dark bruise on his bony ribs. Cael growled — more lost time. The kid froze. Cael set him upright.

“You know who I am?” he asked, locking eyes. A sharp nod.

“Say it.”

“Alpha,” he rasped, defiant as a cornered rat.

“You know what I can do to you?”

“Rape and kill me,” came the reply — less fear, more defiance.

Cael leaned forward, palm on the sticky floor. “I could. If I wanted to.” The kid flinched and looked away. Cael smirked.

“You one of those who hate beasts?”

A headshake, then a bitter look. “We’re all beasts. The ones who killed Jess were betas.”

Cael dug in his pocket, hiding the tremor in his hands. Again with the ‘we’re all beasts’… “Here. Wash up.” He tossed over a flat flask — half water, half alcohol.

Instead of washing, the kid unscrewed the cap with trembling hands and took a deep swallow. i***t. He coughed, doubled over, spilling the precious liquid. Cael snatched the flask back, cursing, stripped off the clawed glove, and scrubbed the omega stink off him himself, none too gently. The kid grunted and gasped, already tipsy.

“Name?” Cael barked.

“R-Ray…” tongue thick.

“I’m going to cut your clothes into strips and bind your ribs. Got it, Ray?” He shook him for emphasis.

“Sit straight. Arms out.”

Ray stared into his eyes; Cael met the gaze until he obeyed.

Unhooking one claw from the glove, Cael sliced away the clothes. Ray flinched at the tear. Then Cael caught his scent — faint at first, then stronger. Herbal, bitter… far too strong for a beta.

“I’ll bind on the inhale — hold your breath,” Cael said roughly. Ray nodded, and Cael forced away the unwanted thoughts. He’d get him to shore today, let him run. Ray inhaled; Cael bound the torso fast, tying a cut-off sleeve across his chest.

“Show me your hands.”

Ray obeyed. The wrist wounds bled freely. Cael met his eyes. “If you’re not an omega, nothing will happen. My saliva—”

“I know!” he jerked his hands away. “Alpha saliva heals. But you should know…”

Ray clenched his teeth, exhaled.

“That omega, she… she was sick, and she got on me…”

“I know,” Cael pulled Ray’s wrists back toward him. “I have medicine. Later I’ll inject both of us.”

Ignoring the protest, Cael licked the wounds once, twice, cleaning the blood — and suddenly wanted more skin in his mouth, to taste him whole…

Fuck. What the hell?

Cael snapped his head away, eyes falling on the mutilated corpse of the other kid. A sharp reminder. He couldn’t be near Ray — not without leaving only bones.

He licked the other wrist, cut the remaining sleeve into strips, and wrapped the wounds, avoiding Ray’s gaze.

“Th-thanks,” Ray stammered, trembling now.

Cael hauled him up, stayed crouched, and turned his back, kneeling. “Climb on.” Trusting fool of an alpha. But thin, hot arms locked around his neck, the slight body pressed to his back. Euphoria stirred in Cael’s chest as he rose. When Ray hooked his legs around Cael’s waist and held on, he almost laughed — here, in the middle of all this filth and death.

“Hold tight,” Cael growled, maybe too softly. “Close your eyes. Until I say, don’t open them. Got it, Ray?”

Instead of answering, Ray brushed his nose against Cael’s ear.

It was barely conscious, but he’d taken a deep swig all the same.

“Well, fine,” Cael decided. He’d think about it later. Picking up his weapon from the floor, he walked out of the hellish room.