Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse Read Online Free

reserves of power, I still have a comfortable margin of blood sugar left, thanks to my nearly superhuman stamina.  This is, in fact, my ace-in-the-hole in any given fight.
    As his body struggles to engage its fat-burning systems to convert the lipid in his tissues to blood sugar and then energy, I lay into my opponent with a will.  Like a cyclone of legs, knees, arms, elbows, fists and feet, I work him back and forth across the cage, against its mesh barricades and off again, down to the mat and up again, and then repeat this routine of assaults relentlessly.
    Once more, The Priest’s incredible durability shocks me.  On the verge of exhausting my own supplies of blood sugar and confronted with the looming likelihood that his own body has begun burning reserves of fat, just at the point where the light of renewed vitality begins to sparkle within his mean, deeply set eyes, he makes a tactical error and I land a winning jab at the dimpled tip of the bigger man’s chin.
    This powerful and precise strike drives The Priest’s lower jaw bone backward into its two-sided joint, flexing the tendons attaching it to the skull and, in turn, driving the skull backwards across its base and the top of the spine.  There, this savage movement jars The Priest’s vulnerable cerebrum, that double-golf-ball mass of nerves and brain cells empowering every aspect of my opponent’s body.  I watch the ripples of my strike wash back and forth through the man’s stunned face, across his scalp to the rear of his head, and then back again, even as that sparkle of vital light flares and then extinguishes deep within his shocked gaze.  Limp, lax, and lifeless, his limbs flail loosely, as though his bones are fashioned of rubber and his flesh cast in gelatin.
    Then his eyes roll back, his mouth drops open, and The Priest collapses to the deck like a marionette with cut cords.  Nearing exhaustion, weak and trembling, I then rock backwards on my heels, tottering sickly from side-to-side for several interminable seconds while the crowd leaps to its collective feet demanding The Priest’s violent death.  Uninspired by their bloodthirsty demands, but driven by the threat of leaving a vanquished enemy alive behind me, I stumble forward to stand over my fallen opponent, who lies sprawled on his back, arms and legs tossed wide.  Morbidly triumphant yet unmoved to glee or satisfaction and without smiling, I gaze down into the dazed confusion of his bulging eyes.
    Weakly, the movements of his arms, hands and fingers uncoordinated but improving from moment to moment as the big man struggles to recover, The Priest desperately attempts to grapple my lower legs and pull me down on top of him.  Before that sinister glimmer of vitality can return to the big man’s rolling eyes, I lift force into my shoulders with a massive inhalation and then, through my spine, let the full weight of my body descend into my right knee.
    As forcefully as I can manage, I drop decisively, driving this knobby joint directly into the soft spot between the man’s chin and his heaving chest.  I feel something stiff and plastic crush beneath my kneecap, and then The Priest’s breath comes rasping and gargling.  Blood wells up from the corners of his lips to pour across his cheeks and into his ears.
    Rolling from side to side, once I rise to let him die, the big man struggles to catch his breath, which he can never do again given the smashed and mangled state of his larynx.  Choking on his own blood and suffocated by his own collapsed windpipe, the false prophet of that tumble-down cathedral gargles one last time.  The he expires at my feet.
    Unlike pre-Terminus crowds, the spectators of that contest do not dance and chant gleefully before the spectacle of the much-hated man’s murder.  Instead, they all fall silent, exchange a series of guilty, mournful glances, and then they simply sidle along the pews, turn into the aisles, waddle through the fallen cathedral’s