The Warlord's Physician

The road was a lot smoother after the fall of the chopper. Or rather, Snake and Delilah noticed the bumps far less. A primal energy, fueled by the destructive power of a high-caliber rifle, rose within him. Violence was not as cathartic as it had once been, but sex still worked just fine. There had been a point in his life when this wrathful energy boiled up, and he had no idea what to do with it. Now he had a great many outlets.

His most recent outlet, Delilah, squealed so delightfully under his weight. He pulled her hands, but their chain, up above her head and pinned them to the top of the mattress. His legs tangled in hers, but her hands were trapped in a no-man's-land far from his cock, and she was at a loss for what to do. She could not do what she was trained to do: pleasure him. So, she just lied there and took what he gave her.

This was a far less tender affair than before, a consequence of battle and its hardiness. He did not kiss her, he did not cup her face in his hands, and he certainly did not whisper kind words in her ear. He simply spread her legs and pulled out his cock, hardened by adrenaline and fury, and jumped in.

They say that men should go slowly with their women, to ensure that they enjoy it and are not hurt by such harsh penetration. Snake had forgotten these lessons and became a bull, digging himself into a rut against her pelvis. Each thrust only made him harder. He grit his teeth and pushed down on her, not caring whether she liked it or not.

She recalled her training, slipping into those old habits. She moaned with pleasure as he pounded inside of her, knowing that men needed to hear their partners whine in heat to feel good about themselves. "Oh yeah," she moaned, leaning back and squeezing her eyelids shut.

"You like that?" Snake asked between gritted teeth and a locked jaw, pumping away like a jack-hammer. He was shaking the truck more than the engine was. "Yeah, you like that." He took great pleasure in knowing that his animal rut made women feel good, and did not wait for her to respond to his question.

Waves of pleasure ran up her spine as he pushed deeper inside her. She writhed in place and wrapped her legs around his, completely unsure of what to do with herself. Her instincts and experience told her to wrap her arms around his back and pull him tighter, but he held them in place above her head. She pushed forward to try and kiss him, her soft, supple lips, dying for skin-to-skin contact. But he was so far above her. All she could do was stare up at him, examining the cuts of his chest and the square of his jaw, and gasping for breath.

"Tell me you love me," he ordered her.

She was puzzled for a moment, as none of her previous owners had demanded this, at least not in bed. But she was an obedient girl, and obliged him. "I love you, sir," she said, and for all she knew it may have been true.

He finished inside of her as she said those words, then rolled over onto his back. While he certainly didn't take very long, Delilah couldn't recall any one of her previous masters lasting so long. He didn't object when her hands wandered down and she planted a few fingers inside herself, finishing the job he had started.

Snake was not a meditative person, but his body shuddered with exhaustion, so he closed his eyes. The vibrations of the engine, the smell of sweat and saliva and semen, and thin layer of perspiration on his skin. They flooded his senses, but the sound that prevailed over all was the sound of chains clanging as Delilah played with herself.

"Are you fertile?" he asked. It was not a common question to ask after a round, especially since she had been sold to him as a breeder.

"Yes, sir," she said after a moment of hesitancy. She didn't stop playing with herself, but all arousal had faded. She stared at him, lying naked beside her, and wondered why she wasn't turned on anymore.

"Any kids?"

She shook her head, but his eyes were still closed. "None that lasted."

"This one better take," he said. He didn't state the threat, but it was implicit. He had purchased a breeder. A woman who couldn't breed would be sent to the fields with the men, or maybe down a mineshaft.

His hand wandered onto her stomach. Her chains stopped rattling, and the only sound was the engine of the truck and tires rolling over asphalt.

"I've lost a few boys. They probably would've been brats anyway, like the one who's still kicking. But I'll make a man out of him yet. Or kill him trying. Whichever comes first, I guess."

Delilah knew what this was. She knew not to offer an opinion or insight. Her duty was to listen, and a few minutes ago her duty was to lie there. So she rubbed his chest and listened to his complaints and nodded to show that she was listening, but he didn't seem to care. He would probably say the exact same words whether he was with her or alone.

"Kid's always been a pussy. Even before the war. Now I gotta go find a doctor just to keep him breathing. Risk my neck fighting a damn chopper, and I don't even get to keep the damn thing. He should be fighting his own battles." He didn't expect a response and didn't ask for one. As long as she kept stroking his chest like she was, everything would be fine.

Snake didn't get this tender with most of his slaves. He didn't often let them touch his chest like this, and would usually throw them out of bed as soon as he was finished with them. Maybe he was going soft in his old age. While he was not very wrinkled, he knew that his hair would be grey if it hadn't been shaved off.

"I need an heir, and it has to be him." He'd gotten dozens of women pregnant. Most often, they lost the child before labor came. Sometimes they died while being born. More than one, he had come to care for an even name the child before it wasted away. Radiation, the silent curse of the wasteland, had taken his descendants and likely most of his mind. "No other way."

His meaty palm rested on her smooth, silky belly, and he couldn't help but hope the pulsing beneath his fingers was from a second heartbeat. But he knew it didn't work that fast. Still, there was hope.

The driver of the truck, who had spent most of that day all alone, listening to the noise of his boss having sex, opened the back window that poked into the tented cargo. "Ya decent? Five minutes out, boss."

"Close the damn window," Snake snarled. "I'm resting."

The great fortress of steel and concrete rose before them, in what once was a thriving factory town. Sometime between its founding and the final world war, it fell into decrepit poverty. Now that Overdog Enterprises had taken control, it was back to its former glory. Electric lights and forge fires and smoke columns decorated the night, as slaves fueled the great war machine of the wasteland. Three great pillars rose from the top of the factory, breathing noxious smoke into the wasted sky.

The highway cut right through it, so the Overdogs constructed massive iron gates to keep intruders out and captives in. Great gilded bars of rust, held up on tires and pulled apart by slaves, slid open at the command of the guards who saw their leader's carmada returning. The steel screeched as slaves tugged on ropes, and the gateway to civilization and progress was opened.

A thick air of dust and heat and hate filled the air inside the armored compound. Even the highest ranking of highwaymen were still covered in dirt and grim. Slaves were kept shackled, hunched over from the weight of their chains, skin made rough and thick from years of heavy labor. The women were in no better shape. Most were left naked or topless, paraded through the streets by their proud owners. The smart ones smiled and clung to their masters.

Snake, pants finally back on, stood atop his pickup truck and waved to his great supporters as he was paraded to the palace. There were crowds on either side of the road, slaves and highwaymen alike. They cheered for him amid the bitter smell of smoke and ash. Even the slaves did, and the roar was deafening.

A town sprawled out before him, old homes and shacks from before the war, repaired and fortified with the same sort of metal forged in the factory. Much of it had rusted, just as the armor on the cars had, but could be replaced with ease. It would have been a small town by older standards, with just a few hundred occupants, but was a thriving metropolis under the Overdog regime.

The factory was the largest building. Scrap scavenged by any number of outposts made its way into the forge and emerged as useable ammunition or armor or auto-parts. The greatest industry the wasteland had ever seen, under the control of a single gang.

Not too far from the factory, build atop what was once city hall, was the palace that Snake called home. Two stories and a basement, great improvements had to be made before it was a suitable place to live in. Metal spikes lined the edge of the rooftop and steel bars guarded the windows. Only the front exit remained as the rest had been collapsed during its renovation. One way in, one way out, and a dozen guards keeping watch.

The parade of armored cars came to a halt in the asphalt circle before the palace, forming a wall around the well from which the whole town's water came from.

Snake stepped down and took a big breath of that factory-burned air. A slave cried out distantly, a woman likely being punished for some egregious misdemeanor. The highwaymen and slaves alike looked at him with fear, knowing he could kill any of them at any given moment.

He held out a gentle hand, as Delilah stepped out of the truck, returned to rags. "Smell that? That's steel and progress. Manifest Destiny."

She indulged him and took a sniff of the air, soaking in the rust and smoke and certainly blood that hung in the air.

Before she could say anything, he fixated his attention on something else. "Men, bring me my chained doctor."

The eighteen-wheeler had been blessed with a tire change, at the cost of two of their vehicles. They had to leave four of them behind, but would send a few tow-trucks out to retrieve them, if they hadn't been claimed by other gangs already.

Needle and the other slaves stepped into the light once again, but the sun was closer to setting now. They walked forward meekly, heads kept low before their master. Each one was bruised and battered by the truck ride, by the crash, and by the cruel recklessness of their driver. After the highwaymen had sacrificed their other cars, cargo had been tossed in with them as well. None of them had anything to eat or drink the entire ride, but their stomachs were too racked with pain to rumble.

"Ah, there he is!" Snake said, dragging Needle forward by the chain around his neck and wrapping a meaty arm around his shoulder. They were quite a juxtaposition: massive warlord and scrawny slave. "Welcome to your new home, the headquarters of Overdog Enterprises. Impressive, I know. Tell me, what is your medical opinion of this place."

Needle had seen some pretty filthy places in his time, but never like this. A city full of slaves and none of them were made to sweep the streets or bathe the highwaymen. "Medically speaking, it needs a sponge and some soap."

"Bah! Waste of water!" Snake laughed at his silly remark, so the other Overdogs chuckled along with him, as if it was the funniest thing in the world. "If anyone ever doubts my negotiation skills, I just bought a doctor-slave-comedian. Come on, kid, let me show you the new digs."

A small set of wide stairs, chipped and blackened and worn, led up to the fortified palace. Highwaymen flanked either side of the wooden double doors. Other highwaymen pushed barefoot slaves up the steps, encouraged by the rifle-butts and idle threats of the sadistic.

Snake kept his arm around Needle as if giving an honored guest the grand tour. Highwaymen pushed the doors open for him, and he gestured to the lobby before them as if it was some grand feat. In fact, the grandest thing inside of that checker-floored lobby was the amount of dirt that stained it and the number of slaves that were chained in it. A set of stairs on either side led to upstairs offices, with pillars holding up the lofted area. The slaves were chained to those pillars, some in rags and some naked, mostly women, waiting in their filth for a use. The whole place smelled of dry dirt, but not sweet like soil. Just dirt.

Electric lights buzzed above and on wall fixtures. They were not especially bright, but the windows allowed for sunlight to slip through, in spite of the layer of dirt that covered them. The slaves did not seem to notice their master's return. Their heads were already bowed, defeated, humbled. Some of them trembled with the cold. Others stood tall, not yet broken by use and punishment.

"Welcome to my crib," said Snake, referencing a show he had watched as a child that Needle could not possibly know about. There wasn't a working television in all the world, and certainly not one with a recording of an old MTV show. "Presidential quarters are upstairs. Barracks and banquet hall are here. Basement is where you go when you've misbehaved. But you won't do that, will you, boy?" Snake smacked his face gently, as if to incite his anger and get him to do something stupid.

But Needle was smart, and knew to accept any hands placed on him. "Of course not, sir," Needle said. "I'm here to heal, not get in trouble."

"That's right, slave," Snake said, twisted grin on his face. "Come, it's time for you to meet your primary patient."

The stairs creaked beneath the warlord's massive weight. Needle's legs strained to climb up such a steep height, as he had not eaten in a day. The other slaves were lucky, as they were taken to the well to be watered before being shown their new quarters.

They passed a number of closed doors to the right, with railing that looked over the lobby to the left. On the far end of the hall was a door left slightly open. Snake did not knock before entering, leaving the wooden door ajar for Needle.

It was probably the only clean room in the whole compound. While the floors were that ugly checkered pattern on linoleum, the white squares were actually white, with hardly a speck of dirt or dust anywhere.

A king-sized bed, fully made, sat in the corner beneath a wide window, barred like the rest. Bookshelves lined the walls, messy and disorganized, but still cleaned. A few desks were pushed together in another corner, with laptops and computers and even some old smartphones, gutted with wires stabbing out, resting on top of them. There were technical manuals beside them, and a few wall outlets that had been burned black from some kind of electric issue.

Decorations were sparse. Needle had seen where most highwaymen slept, and while this was luxurious, it was not typical. There were no torches, no barbed wire, no weapons, and not a single skull on a spike. Just blank walls, aside from an old artistic print, unframed beside the bed. It was a landscape, colorful and vibrant, green grass and cypress trees and the ocean. It was probably a world better than the one outside the window, though Needle scarcely remembered it.

"Warcry!" Snake shouted. Needle thought it was an awfully odd warcry, but didn't question it.

"Coming," called out a soft voice, a young man's. He hopped forward, crutch under his arm, thick black hair tied back in a ponytail. He had a small frame, almost as small as Needle, but far from malnourished.

"Needle, Warcry. Warcry, Needle. I love introducing new friends," Snake said overly enthusiastically. "I've got affairs to tend to, you show Needle the ropes and we can chat at dinner. Don't be a disappointment, okay?"

Needle had been trained to keep his eyes low, but he couldn't help but look at Warcry. He scanned the young man from his boots to his eyes, such a deep shade of brown, and felt a little weak in the knees. He might have thought that it was from the hunger, but he knew better. "Good evening, sir," was all he could muster.