Friday, September 22, 2017

Released! Adrift Homeless Ch 4 "Trash Waiting to be Compacted" Free Patreon Sneak Peak

A new chapter has been released on my patreon www.patreon.com/99geek For only a dollar you can get access to nearly a thousand pages of content with more added every month. Below are two exclusive new scenes from the latest premium chapter. They are not the first two, nor are they right after each other. For the full experience, subscribe! If you can't, at the very least follow me on twitter @AndrewGeczy and comment below for a chance to get all the thousand pages of content free for one month. I'll just email you the PDF's, but you have to be willing to read it and let me know what you think. Anyway, without further ado

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Tameka groaned, the pain coming back to her before her sight. She rolled over, her cheek unsticking with a loud splorch from the pool of blood on the floor where it had lain. She released a groan that was almost a sob as she couldn’t bring herself to even sit up.

She felt like tenderized steak, and seemed to have been abandoned by her mother’s men in a dirty empty cell to rot until her mother had decided on the most satisfying way to murder her. Tameka had no illusion that her mother held no compassion for her. Not with the glee in which her mother had set her best friend on her.

The memory of each punch came back with striking intensity, and she winced despite herself.

“You’re awake,” a familiar voice said from the shadows outside her cell. A hand reached in through the rusted metal bars and she cowered away from it. She saw the bloody shredded knuckles and knew that that hand had only hours previously inflicted upon her all the pain she was feeling now.

It didn’t seem as threatening for the time being, however. Instead of being balled into a fist, his hand seemed to be clenching a white towel.

Tameka looked up at Jack’s face, and then away with another wince. The sympathy and guilt on his face was too much for her to handle right now. It made her sick to her stomach, but then again she easily might have just swallowed too much blood.

“No thanks to you,” Tameka said at last, using all kinds of strength she didn’t think she had to crawl away from him.

“Here,” Jack insisted, brandishing the towel through the bars at her. “Just take it.” His dark black skin seemed to be wet and shimmering around his eyes, and she wondered if he’d been crying before she woke up.

“How long?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“How long have you been her fakking puppet?” Tameka asked with disgust, taking his towel if for no other reason than so he’d pull his arm away. It was cold and damp, and when she dabbed it on her face it felt soothing.

“I said I dunno,” Jack insisted quietly. He looked down at his hands. “I’ve always taken my responsibilities seriously,” he said, seeming to be trying to think. Trying to remember. “It must have been some time after you left for school, but when you left I just buried myself in my work. It seemed the natural thing to do.”

There was a quiet between them, one Tameka didn’t feel too keen to break.
“I’d never tried to question one of mother’s orders before,” Jack said at last.

“Don’t call her that.”

Jack swallowed loudly.

Tameka inched towards Jack, sitting cross legged in the middle of her cell. “What did it feel like?”
“I tried so hard to say no. To tell my body not to move. I kept telling my fists to stop hitting you. But it seemed like the more I wanted to fight against your mother’s orders -- the more I tried to tell myself I disagreed with her, the fuzzier my mind got. The less control I seemed to have over my own body.” He seemed to be visibly trembling. “I’ve never felt anything like that.”

He reached through the bars for her again. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you,” he insisted, “not even for a second. You have to believe it wasn’t me.” He sobbed, his tears falling with muffled splashes against the dusty floor of the cell. Reaching out, Tameka gently touched his hand with her fingers, tracing them along his dry pale palm. He grasped her hand tight and she tried to smile at him.

The far door in the room opened. “Pathetic,” Suma said as she stepped into the cellar with them. She closed the wooden door behind her, and picked up a pistol from one of many crates that lined the walls. Apparently they were filled with weapons.

“What do you want?” Tameka asked her mother with a groan, refusing to let go of Jack’s hand in defiance. “Came to gloat?”

Suma raised the gun and pointed it at Jack. His hand tensed against Tameka’s but he didn’t move.

“Leave him alone,” Tameka insisted at her.

“If you don’t let go of her hand I’ll shoot you dead,” Suma said to Jack, he still refused to move.

“That’s dedication,” Suma said with a whistle. “I’m told he hasn’t left your side this whole time.” She lifted the gun, examining it with a bored curiosity.

“Let go of her and step away from the cell,” Suma told Jack in a much steadier voice. Releasing Tameka’s hand, he got up and did as she told him to do.

“So you did come to gloat,” Tameka muttered wrapping her arms around her chest, and inching as far from her mother as she could get in her tight cell.

“I have to admit,” Suma said with a smile. “It feels good. How are you appreciating your new accommodations?”

“I’m glad there’s no mirror,” Tameka said with a defiant chuckle. “I imagine I don’t look so good.”

“Oh honey,” Suma said with an obviously false concern. “You look terrible. But you’re so good at this back and forth thing. Where did you get that wit?”

“From my father?” Tameka suggested.

“Your father was a bore,” Suma said with a shrug. “So I killed him.”

Tameka rolled her eyes. “You’re lying,” she insisted.

“Maybe,” Suma said. “It is fun to see your pretty face twist in anguish like that.”

“So you’re gonna do it then?” Tameka asked her mother. “Did my grandparents not give you enough toys or something? Now you’re really gonna play war games with the most powerful nation in the world? You’re really going to kill your own child?”

“My child is this entire rebellion,” Suma said with a frown, sliding the pistol into her belt and spreading her arms wide. “My sons and daughters are the very soldiers that man this facility. Every single one of them would sling themselves on a sword for me. Your boyfriend included.”

“Leave him alone,” Tameka said, thrusting her arm through the bars at her mother.

Her mother swatted her arm away. “I’ll do with him whatever I like. They’re all just toys to me.”

“You’re mad.” Tameka growled at her mother.

“I know,” her mother said with a giggle. “I didn’t think it was possible to be this mad and this happy at the same time.” Tameka wondered how spot on her analysis of her mother’s damage might be. It was like she’d been denied a childhood and was reliving it now.

“This has to stop,” Tameka tried to plea to any reason hidden within her mother’s insanity. “There’s still time to make an agreement with Hymalious City that can benefit all our peoples. I promise you they can’t be as unreasonable as you are.”

“But I don’t want peace,” Suma insisted. “Scratch that. What I mean is I don’t want a piece of the pie. I want the whole pie. Or, if I can’t have it, I’ll turn up the oven and burn it to a crisp.”

Tameka sighed. “Your hyperbole is getting old. And disjointed”

There was a knock at the door.

“Lucky for you then,” Suma said with a frown. “Come in.”

The door creaked open, and a large soldier stood in the doorway, nodding at Tameka’s mother.

“What is it Belmont?” The rebellious leader asked her soldier.

“The men say they found something,” he told Suma swiftly, turning to lead the way.

“Excellent,” Suma said. Her gaze landed on Jack. “You do know you’re not to let her out, right?”

She didn’t wait for him to respond, the large soldier disappearing into the corridor. “He’s one of my best men,” she told Tameka, grabbing the door with one hand. “I think I might bed him tonight.” She started to leave, then paused again in the doorway to add, “If it pleases me.”

With that she was gone, and the door closed with a loud bang, making Tameka jump. “Yuck,” she said to no one in particular, feeling sick to her stomach again.

Jack dropped to his knees.

“I guess you can’t let me out,” Tameka said roughly. Jack didn’t move. “Or grab a weapon and shoot the lock or something. Anything.” Still there was nothing from him.

She threw the towel at him, now red as it was from her blood. “Then what good are you?” she said with a frustrated snarl, and in the silence that followed she heard the pad of something. It was his tears hitting the dusty floor of the cell.

“Pathetic,” Tameka said, accidentally mimicking her mother quite despite herself. She rolled her eyes and looked away. “Just leave me then,” she told him, ashamed no longer with him but instead with herself. “Go do her bidding anywhere but here.”

“I’m not leaving your side,” Jack told her studiously.

“Then you’ll be the one to kill me,” Tameka said coldly in return, and she could tell her words rocked him to his core. She could feel her heart twist in her chest.

And still he didn’t move.

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“It’s like they’re coming out of the sand,” Thalia commented from the cockpit of her G32. “Are you seeing this Tania?” Thalia held her fighter low to the sand as they soared above their charging troops. She could see their troop transports from up there, and their machine gun jeeps, and shock tanks.

But she could also see Suma’s men, far outnumbering the forces approaching them. Suma’s forces were also clearly organized with formations, and automated sentry guns in key defensive positions. It was as if the Blazkor had been planning for this moment the whole time they’d gone into hiding.

“Their base must be somewhere below the sand,” Thalia told her twin sister through the radio, confident her observations would make it back to op central.

“Eight has a visual,” Tania said through the radio. “Forming up on your wing, flight leader.” Tania was being extra formal it seemed, even though they were the only people flying in the wing today. It was just the way she liked it.

“Eight requesting permission to commence strafe run,” her sister said into the radio.

“Permission granted,” Thalia responded. “Seven has your wing.” She referred to herself as her squadron designation instead of flight leader, even though her seniority on the field gave every right to claim the higher rank. She just didn’t feel like she’d earned it yet.

Thalia followed her sister’s G32 over a sand dune and then down over an emplacement of men that were rising from the sand. The two of them open fired with the heavy impact machine guns, ripping up the entire sand dune and making short work of about twenty guys there. Thalia was also pretty sure she’d hit a gun emplacement, though she wasn’t sure if she’d done enough damage to take it offline.

They pulled up, and Thalia followed her sister over another rise of dunes. She didn’t mind giving her sister the lead. They were, after all, born only minutes apart.

“Holy nebulous hells,” Thalia heard her sister exclaim over the radio as she came over a hill ahead of her. “You seeing this Thalia?”

“What happened to being formal?” Thalia asked Tania with a sly smile. She hit the afterburner and flew over the hilltop after her sister, only to almost collide with a mark one Blazkor Gunship.

“Shit!” Thalia swore into her headset. She yanked her yolk to the left as the gunship’s turrets swivelled to follow her. The upper turret fired a deadly swath of fire at her and she spun her ship, only just avoiding a collision to sweep up higher into the sky where she saw her sister was pushing.

“We’ve got mark one gunships,” she yelled into her radio. Machine gun fire from a different gunship collided with Tania’s wing, causing thankfully minimal damage. “They seem to be rising from the desert.” There was a hole opening up in the sand beneath Thalia’s ship, and she craned her neck to try and see behind her fighter down into it.

A blinding white streaking light only barely missed colliding with her craft. “We have Mark twos as well,” she warned anyone who was listening. “We request immediate re-enforcements. This is her entire army. I repeat she was hiding her entire military forces out here.”

There was an alarm klaxon that went off on her dashboard. Someone on the ground had targeted her with a ground to air guided missile. The screeching whine in her ears was the alarm informing her the warhead was enroute.

“I’ve got one on my tail,” Thalia screamed into her radio. “I’m climbing too slowly, I don’t have time to swing around!” She cut her engine in the hope the missile would soar past her but it wasn’t going to happen.

Suddenly the missile exploded, moments from colliding with the rear of her fighter. Her canopy rocked with the shockwave, and Thalia looked around for her savior.

“I got your back,” her sister said. “Forming on your wing.” Thalia began to swing them around.

“We should fall back,” her sister insisted. “There’s too many of them for just two of us.”

She was right of course. Thalia’s sensors were already picking up eight blips in the air, now nine, and there seemed to only be more coming. And the blips on the ground were innumerable to count.

“We have to make another run,” Thalia told her sister. “If we leave now those gunships are only going to make short work of our ground forces.” She brought her fighter into a tight u-turn, her sister still holding tight to her tail. “We have to give those gunships something else to shoot. Give em a couple things a little harder to hit.”

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