Little Dead Monsters Read online

  LITTLE DEAD MONSTERS

  A NOVEL

  BY

  KIERAN SONG

  BEYOND INFINITY

  PUBLISHING

  BOOK JUNKIES REJOICE!

  Just so we can get to know each other better, I’m giving away FREE e-books on my website.

  http://www.mygeekmind.com/free-science-fiction-fantasy-ebooks/

  Free books for your friendship, it’s a good trade.

  I’m also tired of the one-way conversations I’m having with my sock puppet.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Interlude One

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Interlude Two

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Interlude Three

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Interlude Four

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Liked the Book?

  Preview of Lore

  About Kieran Song

  “And wrath has left its scar — that fire of hell

  Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.”

  - William Cullen Bryant

  BOOK ONE: CAGED

  Chapter One.

  The strange men in suits had a ravenous look in their eyes that the boy found unsettling. They were like wolves in human skin and the boy had lived long enough on the streets to know when he was being hunted.

  “What’s your name?” one of the men asked sweetly. The boy took a step back into the alleyway, where he had slept earlier in the day. He never trusted a man whose smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Come on, you must be hungry,” the smiling man said as he pressed forward while the other four strangers trailed behind him; a pack on the heels of their leader. “I’m here to help you son. What’s your name?”

  “I don’t have one,” the boy replied. It was the truth.

  He lived with nothing, not even a name.

  They backed him further into the alleyway, cornering him against the brick wall layered with graffiti.

  “There’s no need to run. In fact, there’s nowhere to run,” the smiling man said. “Why don’t you come with us and we’ll take you somewhere safe? You can have a hot meal and a nice bed. I promise. I always keep my promises.”

  The nameless boy scoured the alleyway for any potential weapons: a rock, a couple of broken beer bottles, and some garbage cans. They would do.

  “Get him into the van,” the smiling man ordered.

  They converged on him like vultures on carrion, but the boy fought back savagely. There was only one thing on his mind.

  Survival.

  The boy drove a rock against one man’s cheekbone, crushing it. With a broken beer bottle, he sheared off the ear of another of his attackers, yet they were relentless. His fighting spirit only served to provoke the strangers into an adrenaline-fuelled rage. The boy screamed for help while fighting off the four men while the smiling man disappeared from sight.

  “Help me, anybody please!” he shouted. All the pedestrians that walked by the alleyway ignored him, like they always did.

  Baroque city. It was that kind of place he lived in; that is, if you could call his existence living.

  The boy armed himself with a trash can and was about to use it when the smiling man reappeared with a paper bag in his hands, the bottom translucent from grease. He pulled out a hamburger smothered in melted cheese and sauce. The smell of meat was intoxicating and the nameless boy felt the hollow rumble in his stomach that ached for some food.

  The last meal he had was a few days ago; a half-eaten sandwich that someone had tossed on the ground just outside the alleyway. Since then the boy had found nothing else to eat and the smell of grease and cooked meat was enough to subdue him.

  “Take it,” the smiling man said. “If you come with us, there will be a lot more food waiting for you.”

  He was so tired and on the brink of starvation. With the fight in him extinguished, he dropped the trash can and desperately grabbed the burger out of the smiling man’s hands and devoured it like a starved animal.

  “Kid freakin’ took off my ear,” one of the men said as he pressed his hand against it to stop the bleeding. “I’m going to kill the little prick myself.”

  The smiling man shook his head. “Touch him and I’ll open you up from your navel to your neck. That goes for all of you. This kid is a diamond for us. Ryker shells out extra money for street kids.”

  They ushered the boy into the silver van and he entered without a struggle. He no longer cared. The taste of grease from the meat and the sudden intake of high calories had the effects of a drug. Nothing else mattered except for chewing.

  They eventually brought him back to a dingy building and the smiling man fed him again—this time boiled pasta and tomato sauce—and he ate until he was about to burst. After he was done, he was led to a bedroom where fresh clothes lay on a made bed. A full belly and a warm bed to sleep in, the boy couldn’t think of anything more wonderful. Perhaps he was wrong about the smiling man.

  “I promised you food and a warm bed. I didn’t lie to you,” the man said. The boy didn’t know what to make of it. It was a kindness that the street boy wasn’t used to. Perhaps his luck was finally changing? After all no one in this world was meant to suffer for as long as he had, right?

  After the boy crawled under the warm covers, he fell asleep almost instantly. When he woke from his unconscious sleep, he found himself a prisoner in a rough, moldy dungeon.

  The pasta he had eaten — they had drugged him. He vowed never to trust anyone again.

  The boy wondered how many hours had passed since he sat alone behind the bars. Just beyond the wooden doors of the dungeon, he heard all sorts of sounds that stirred his emotions into one giant mess. There were screams, and then silence, followed by a crescendo of cheers.

  He was mystified.

  Finally two men armed with guns came for him. They unlocked his cell door and dragged him through a dark, narrow corridor. He wanted to fight, but the heavy chains that bound his hands and feet prevented him from doing so. At gunpoint, he had no choice but to follow them.

  At the end of the tunnels was an iron gate. It was there that they released him from his shackles. They opened the gate and a light emerged through it and he saw a sandy earth marked with blood. Boisterous sounds of cheering flooded his ears.


  “Get in there,” one of the men said as he jammed the barrel of the gun into the boy’s spine and nudged him towards the entrance.

  “Where am I?” the boy demanded.

  The guard grinned, and shoved him fully through the entranceway. “Welcome to the fighting pit.”

  The other kid in the pit with him looked shaken and was crying.

  It took a while for the boy to recognize the horrific situation he was in but the loud voice from the crackling speakers spelled it out for him.

  “One of these boys will die,” the voice announced to the frenzied audience there to witness the fight. “Who will survive? The Dog from the streets or Sunny, the boy from Beverly Hills?”

  They had given him the name Dog. He figured it was as good of a name as any and he accepted it. If he were to die here tonight, at least he was not nameless.

  Dog looked around his environment and frowned.

  The crude pit was a circular quarry filled with hard sand stained a reddish brown from dried blood. Two-storey high concrete walls encased the fighting pit and prevented the combatants from escaping into the crowd. They were sealed in, like scorpions in a cement vivarium.

  He wrinkled his nose at the pungent smell that assaulted his nostrils. It stank of blood, sweat, and urine.

  The other boy, Sunny, reeked of fear. Piss ran down the side of his leg, and he shivered as a skinned animal would in a frozen winter. Dog guessed that Sunny was no older than twelve, maybe thirteen at most. Dog had a good couple of inches on the boy, despite being average in size.

  Dog had lost track of his own age long ago. Surviving day-to-day had made him oblivious to many things, the number of years alive being one of them.

  Sunny’s voice quivered as he spoke. “Are we going to fight?”

  Dog was cold in his response. “Yes.” He was resigned to the fact that he would most likely die in this place.

  “We don’t have to do this,” Sunny said. “We can try to escape.”

  Dog looked at the high cement walls encasing the pit and knew it was foolish thinking. He shook his head.

  “We’ll only leave this place when we’re in a body bag,” Dog said. He pointed to the iron gates that they had entered from. A man with hungry eyes and an automatic assault rifle guarded it from behind the rusty metal bars. His wicked grin was telling of his desires. He wanted violence and if he didn’t get it, Dog was certain he wouldn’t hesitate putting a bullet into their skulls.

  The crowd roared above them, screaming obscenities and cheering for the fight to begin. Dog realized that they were a part of some sadistic game. When he was younger, he heard stories about ancient fighting arenas and warriors that were forced to fight to the death in front of live audiences. Gladiators they were called. It looked like he had just become one.

  Sunny began to cry.

  “Don’t do this,” he pleaded. Dog ignored him. He had already accepted the harsh reality of this twisted event — another thing gone wrong in his life. It was nothing new. Perhaps it was all those years of living in a harsh environment that made him callous to the situation, but it all boiled down to one single thing for Dog.

  Survival. It was his natural instincts, despite death staring him in the eye constantly.

  From the static of the crude speakers that lined the building’s ceilings, Dog made out one single word.

  “Fight.”

  The guard behind the gate tossed something through the gap of the iron bars and it landed on the sand. The metallic object reflected the lurid yellow lights that rained from the ceiling of the grimy building. Dog immediately knew what it was.

  Before Sunny had time to understand what was happening, Dog lunged for the bowie knife.

  Chapter Two.

  Allegra turned away and did her best to hide her contempt. It was a difficult thing to do. The balcony view she had of the pits was the best seat in the house, and she loathed being up there.

  Two more lives, Allegra thought as she watched the boys, no older than she, lunge at the knife on the ground. For her, the loudest aspect of this fight was not the roaring of the crowd, but the silence of the two boys, looks of desperation on their faces.

  For almost a decade she had been subjected to these fights and one would think that she was desensitized to them by now, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t.

  The sight of their bloody wounds always tore at her heart but what completely broke it were their tears, that moment when they realized that their lives were forfeit. No more loving families, no more laughter with their friends, no more hope and no more future. All that remained was the fight…and death.

  She hated it.

  Ryker on the other hand was in love with it.

  He watched the violence with money on his mind and whisky on his breath. The bloodier the fight was, the better mood he was in because it meant more customers and more customers meant more green. On the nights where he made a lot of money from the seats and the bets, he allowed Allegra to leave with most of her dignity in tact. She was his top medic after all and it was her task to make sure that the “winners” survived long enough for their next fight.

  On the flipside, when the fights didn’t please him or the crowd, he slugged her in the stomach and slapped her as hard as possible on the backside. But he never touched her face. It was far too valuable.

  “Your looks will fetch me a good price one day,” he always said and it was in his best interest to keep his investment in perfect condition. “When you become of age, I can retire from the goldmine between your legs,” he sneered, stroking her caramel-coloured hair that flowed, like satin, down to her shoulders. She was only fourteen.

  She had developed a maturer body than others her age with elegant curves that drew the attention of all the perverted guards. What entranced them was her rosy face that displayed full-red lips and powder-blue eyes filled with innocence. Her movements were fluid and delicate, though she walked with her head down, shielding those soft eyes from all the horrible sites of the Arena, as if trying to preserve its innocence.

  By nature, Allegra was a gentle soul who prayed a lot. She prayed for strength (for her and for the other slaves), for happiness and peace (which seemed a miracle in her eyes from where she stood), and for Ryker to die. Allegra had always tried to find the good in all people, but when it came to Ryker, she found nothing redeeming about the man.

  She hated his guts. She hated his long greasy hair that dangled around his chin, she hated his narrow slanted eyes, she hated his crooked pointy nose, she hated his indecent smile, and most of all she hated him for forcing her to watch the gruesome matches at his side, which he ran every week. Allegra found him physically repulsive as well. Ryker had the pale complexion of a maggot and his diet of whiskey made him wiry thin. He slouched as if he had weights tied around his neck and often walked with his oily hands in the pockets of his faded pants.

  “Another drink,” he ordered as his eyes remained glued to the fight down below. He licked his lips like a hungry jackal and stuck out his tongue with anticipation as he sensed that a deathblow was moments away. It was barbaric.

  Allegra reluctantly obeyed him and poured him another shot of whiskey while doing her best to avoid any glimpses into the pit.

  “That dog that we brought in is a savage,” Ryker laughed as he sipped from his glass. “He fights as if he were a wild animal. The street kids are always like that. They’re like primitive apes. Do you see it Allegra?”

  “Yes,” she lied.

  Ryker stared at her with his narrow eyes and frowned as disdain seized his face and distorted it.

  “You’re a liar,” Ryker said. “A filthy, contemptuous liar. What do you know about the fighting pits? You’re just a whore.”

  Allegra had grown numb to his verbal attacks. “Yes,” she said. She had learned long ago not to disagree with Ryker, unless she wanted to be on the receiving end of a vicious beating.

  “Watch them fight,” Ryker ordered and Allegra obeyed. That tiny glimpse made her shiver.
She swallowed hard and did her best to keep her emotions, and the bile, down in the trenches of her stomach.

  The two boys were covered in blood. Whether it was their own or each other’s, Allegra couldn’t tell. One of the boys, Sunny, clumsily clutched a knife in his hand while tears streamed down his dirt stained face. The other one that Ryker referred to as “Dog” was barely standing, but he was surprisingly calm. And there was his stare. It was fierce, as if he were watching the world catch fire, burning into ashes before him.

  “Which warrior do you think will win?” Ryker asked, as he pointed down at them. Allegra saw no warriors in the pit, only two young boys robbed of their innocence and their lives.

  “The one with the knife,” Allegra answered. Ryker laughed and finished off the rest of his drink and slammed the glass on the mahogany table. He hollered at the fighters.

  “End it,” Ryker shouted down into the pit, his voice adjoining to the chorus of cheers from the violence-hungry patrons that watched. The crowds that gathered for these fights were unsavoury individuals that frequently consisted of gambling addicts, gang-bangers, bikers, mafia of all sorts, and the occasional rich guy in a suit, which always surprised Allegra. They were almost always men, though she saw the rare female wander in here as accompaniment. She watched these women closely from the distance of Ryker’s balcony pavilion, and was amazed when they didn’t flinch at the sight of gore. Were the women just as heartless and cruel inside as the men?

  Ryker turned his attention back to Allegra and flashed her a devilish grin. He looked like a Goblin.

  A couple of years ago, while scavenging through a freshly kidnapped boy’s belongings, Ryker found a comic book, which he thought useless and discarded it into the trash. Allegra took the comic when he wasn’t looking and secretly brought it back to her cramped quarters. The comic book was beautiful. It had been so long since she saw any new artwork come through this place.

  Allegra had flipped through the pages of the fantasy comic and stumbled upon a drawing filled with goblins and was astounded by the resemblance that those frightening looking creatures had with Ryker. Henceforth, when Allegra was alone and praying aloud, she whispered for death to come for the “Goblin.” She dared not use Ryker’s name, just in case he, or one of his men, were listening. Why she prayed aloud, she didn’t know, but it became a habit. Maybe subconsciously she believed that the power of her voice could carry her prayers through the thick walls of the Arena, past the infinite sky and space, and reach into the heavens.