CHAPTER 7 Riddick sat in a bar totally misnamed Paradise. Misnamed because it was one the most hellish places he had ever seen. It was the fifth night in a row and he was beginning to feel the slime of the place was wearing off on him. Dark and dirty, it pulsed with strobe lighting and piped in techno music. The lighting and music themselves weren’t the problem, it was the patrons of the joint that made the establishment a pit. Only three floors from the bottom of Polaris Station, it housed the lowliest of the lowlifes. Along with its sister bars, massage parlors, dope peddlers, flop houses and pawn shops. While the top floors of the station had the take-off/departure platforms where Zar worked, the loading docks where he was stationed and the housing and market places for the workers. As the floors went down, so did the type of people who patronized them. It had only taken him two days on the job to learn about these places. And he would’ve been a bare faced liar if he didn’t admit to a certain yen for them. In a place like the Paradise he was in his element. He was much more comfortable in a place where you were just as likely to be shivved as you were to get a drink. It was the warm and sheltered environments such as in Zar’s apartment that he felt out of place. There was little danger of being killed in the rarefied air of a “family” scene, but there were other types of dangers that came into play. Dangers such as having the cold core of steel that was his heart melt. He knew the hazard first hand of that danger. Because it had happened to him. He felt something suspiciously like love for Zarifa Cholena. Every stubborn, caring, giving bone in her body. And it scared him more than any other situation he’d been in. Facing down death was easy shit compared to loving someone. At least with death you knew the torment would eventually end. But when you loved someone, you were in constant danger of them disappointing you, or worse, you disappointing them. Richard B. Riddick was a strong man. He knew he wouldn’t be alive if the description didn’t fit mentally as well as physically. But, in his more introspective moments, he found doubts assailing him concerning his strength in loving someone. Could he stand his ground when the going got tough? Because the going always got tough sooner or later. Shit! Probably why he didn’t let himself get too introspective too often. Because he ended up doing things like this. Sitting in a horse-shit bar, watching degenerates dance and maul and drink and do every other kind of act the human race could do. Waiting for his mark, Elson Brenner to show up. So that he could learn his habits and ghost his mother fucking ass. He didn’t believe Zar when she told him that Brenner hadn’t recognized her. Oh, he had no doubt that she had believed it. But he knew men like Elson Brenner. He had, after all, been one of them not so very long ago. When you orchestrated a very messy, premeditated murderous rampage like the one Brenner had done on Zar’s family, you didn’t forget faces. They had a tendency to haunt you in your dreams. He had no doubt that Brenner had dreamed of Beth, Zar, Lloyd and Tollis at some time in his sorry ass life. Felt guilt about them? No...not by a long shot. But worry definitely entered the picture when you let yourself think about answering for your deeds at the moment of your death. It might be easy to affect nonchalance when you were on top, but everyone fell to death’s hand sooner or later. And that was when the shit hit the fan. You remembered the ones that would exact the highest price, the ones that would make Hell’s flames that much hotter, that much excruciating. The Arnett family and Tollis were those ones for Elson Brenner. Riddick had no doubt. It would’ve been the same for him. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Carolyn Fry, Jack, Imam and finally Zar, it would’ve definitely been him. And even if Brenner hadn’t been a threat to the woman he loved, he would’ve hated him for being a mirror of his own future. The mirror that Zar had finally shattered with one gentle kiss on his forehead. They’d been lovers for four weeks since that night. Sometimes he let himself dream that it would last. Then the reality that was Richard B. Riddick would intrude. Nothing good lasted in his life. He didn’t even believe he deserved it after the life he’d led. The best he could do was enjoy it while it lasted. They hadn’t left her room all that first day except for him using the com screen to let both their bosses know they weren’t coming in and a few trips to the bathroom. The first time he’d come out he’d been surprised that Jack and Imam had left the apartment. But then he realized they had probably heard he and Zar having very loud sex and decided discretion was the better part of valor. He was grateful for Zar’s sake. He would’ve been able to bluff out any awkwardness, but he didn’t think Zar would. Lying in bed, Zar’s head on his chest, warm and content for the first time in his life, he answered the many questions she asked about his life prior to knowing her. He told her his real name and his origins. At least what he knew of them. She cried when told how he was found, hours old, in liquor store trash bin with the umbilical cord around his neck. Named for the cop that had found him, he’d been in foster care all of his life. Never finding a family that wanted to keep him. At 16, big for his age, he had run away and joined the Alliance Security Forces. The family would only miss the money he brought in and the Alliance Security Forces. didn’t get too picky about its fodder. He excelled in hand to hand combat, demolitions and piloting. Transferred to the base at Triton Prime, he was sure he had found a home and living in the ASF. He even excelled in the “jobs” the ASF sent him on. Usually involving difficult miners or colonists, they were called missions just to cover up their true nature. To enforce the ASF’s wishes. Already hardened by his tough early life, the missions and their violence further alienated him from his fellow man. He soon lost the ability to care about his actions or those of others. Every now and then though, he would fight back for his humanity. He always had a soft spot for kids. So when he caught the base commander in bed with a girl younger than Jack, instead of playing dumb like his brain was telling him too, he beat the shit out of him and sent the girl to her relatives. He knew the commander would have it out for him, but the type of attack that came at him surprised even him. Awaking hours after being rendered unconscious by a Mickey slipped into his drink, he found himself in a strange room with an officer (that “witnesses” claimed he had a grudge against) hacked to pieces. It had been horrific. Pieces of body and brain and limbs and internal organs littered all around. And him with blood all over his clothes, on his face, dripping from his mouth. Still in shock, trying to remember what happened, the base security goons burst in and proceeded to beat the shit out of him. Thrown in a lightless cell, he hadn’t even been allowed to attend his own trial. An “advocate” instead had represented his not guilty plea. That was of course soundly rejected by the tribunal. Sentenced to life in prison, he was sent to the Hubble Bay Penal Facility. It was the first of many. Damned if he was going to stay in a slam like a good little boy! HubFac underestimated him. It would be the last penal institution to  do so. He had escaped with in five months. But freedom only lasted two. There had been a good size reward put on his head and every greedy cocksucker in the quadrant came sniffing after him.  He hadn’t gone back without a fight and guards had been killed. In very ugly ways. This was his life he was playing for and he played for keeps. Being deemed too incorrigible for Hubble, he’d been sent to Ribald S. Correctional Facility. Supposedly a more secure facility. There he learned of his reputation proceeding him and the value of being known as a cold blooded killer. Soon the other inmates were either pissing at the sight of him, or challenging him for death matches. Matches the corrupt guards (were there any other kind?) organized and bet heavily on. That was when the recountings of his murder’s became more and more embellished. It made for good press and encouraged the bettor’s to up the ante. Soon he hadn’t just killed a guard by slitting his throat, he’d carve his initials into the man’s flesh. His personality also underwent a public relations transformation at the hands of the fight organizers. No longer a guy who was just the victim of his upbringing like so many of the other prisoners, he became a psychopath with almost superhuman strength, guile and cruelty. It had taken almost two years to break out of that place. He was watched particularly well due to his value as a money making venture. But he just bided his time, knowing a guard would get careless. They always did. But again an enormous bounty had been put on his head. And even worse, he’d been injured and hadn’t been able to cover his tracks as well as he might have if healthy. After his recapture it had been bye-bye to Ribald and hello to Tangiers Penal Colony – Slam City.  The closest you could get to Hell and still be technically alive. A place where the cells were in permanent darkness to help keep the prisoners from plotting. Or maybe they were dark just so that the administrators could get their jollies off the fear that pervaded the place. Whatever the reason, there was only the occasional flashlight of the guard or a red-lighted hallway to provide relief. Every sick, twisted, depraved criminal that the ASF had captured was in that place. And he was fresh meat. It had only taken one rape and one near death beating for him to learn that survival required he become a totally different man. So he did. He worked on strengthening his body, his ability to withstand pain, his mind and it’s ability to allow him to do things that would let him survive. And let himself descend to the soul killing depths of a cold-blooded killer. He became what he had been branded. A psychopathic killer. He knew the darkness was his enemy and heard of a doctor in his section that had sodomized some little boy. He calculatedly saved the doctor from his third rape that day in exchange for the shine job on his eyes and twenty menthol cools. The darkness now became his ally. Soon he gained a reputation for quick reflexes, brutality and other more intangible abilities that seemed not quite human. He became an expert on feeding on the fears of those weaker than him. He had especially profound effect of the many psychologists they had examine him. Particularly on the women doctors. Mixing a warped kind of charm with menace, the women’s reaction ranged from outright fear to disgust. But always with tinge of “what if” showing in their eyes. Like pulling the tail of the tiger, they all seemed to want to experience the thrill of fucking a man who would as soon as kill them as bring them sexual pleasure. Some he even let have that thrill. Though intercourse is hardly what you’d call it. More like mating between two animals. Other cons, thinking to cement their own position within the prison hierarchy, challenged him. And died for it. Each death added years to his sentence. And he came to yearn only for the outside world and all of its transient pleasures. Life to him involved only surviving day to day. And getting out of Slam City. An almost impossible act. For years he bided his time. Waiting for the tiniest opening in the security. It finally came, but it almost killed him. He managed to overpower a pilot on one of the supply ships that made weekly stops in Slam. He only planned on throwing the unconscious body out the door and down the step. But the pilot had only playing dead, and struck out at Riddick with a knife when he leaned down. The knife had struck home and imbedded itself in Riddick’s chest muscle. So close to his heart. But not close enough. Instead of killing him, or even slowing him down, it just pissed him off big time. Enraged he pulled the knife out of his body and buried in the eye socket of the pilot. He was badly injured, but he’d done it! And had almost 1 year of freedom (if you call hiding and running all the time freedom) before the bounty hunter ? William J. Johns first caught up with him. He had got the best of Johns in their hit and run confrontations till Johns let his true nature start to show. Almost killed him a time or two. But still Johns kept coming. He ambushed Riddick on some grubby mining asteroid as he was having sex with two girls in a bordello. Bursting in on the trio he blasted the girl giving Riddick the blow job right off the bed. Her head, or what was left of it, a glob of bone and flesh with no distinguishing features after the lips. Riddick, blinded by the blast of the gun, dove for the floor. He made it but was soon on his feet when he heard Johns threat to kill the other woman. That in itself probably wouldn’t have brought him up, but the threat to kill the woman’s kid, who had run in at the sound of the blast, had. Naked, rising with his hands up he saw the terrified face of the woman on one side of Johns, and the kid on the other. Johns just slowly smiled and beckoned him forward. He let him dress and then had the woman tie him up. And then calmly pointed the rifle and blew the kid to hell.  Just for the fucking joy of it. Right there he knew Johns was ten times the psycho “they” had made Riddick out to be. He told Zar how till his dying day, he would never forget the screams of the mother as she attacked Johns, who just as calmly pistol-whipped her unconscious. But he gave Johns credit. The bounty hunter had found Riddick’s weak spot. Kids. And then he was on his way back to Slam on the transport ship Hunter-Gratzner. He explained how he came to know Jack and Imam. The nightmare that had been Taurus 2 and it’s murderous and cannibalistic inhabitants. The forty some people that had been on the ship at takeoff. The twelve who had survived the crash. The 3 sunned planet and the eclipse that only happened every twenty-two years, when it just happened to be twenty-two years since the last one. How the number kept dwindling from first an accidental shooting, then the creatures that only came out in the dark. Their razor sharp claws and teeth. Their lack of sight that was made up by their echo location skills. And finally the fight between he and Johns. The bounty hunter taking him back to Slam City at the time of the crash was a morphine addict with an ability to kill that rivaled Riddick’s. Only his crimes were excused under the guise of bounty hunter. He and Riddick had been hunter and prey for so long there was even a sort of respect and admiration between the two. But when Johns had recommended sacrificing Jack to the creatures, Riddick drew the line and took him on. He knew it was either Johns or him at that point. He hadn’t killed him, just wounded him and let the creatures do the rest.   He left nothing out. Including his attraction to Carolyn Fry, and his gratitude and grief at her sacrifice. She, who was so scared of dying on that planet, who had convinced him to go back for Jack and Imam when his own self-survival instinct told him to steal the flyer and leave them, had come back for him when the creature’s had rushed him. There were almost tears in his silvery eyes as he told Zar about Carolyn being ripped from his arms. Her face a mask of shock as she was sped through the air to a certain death. When he had finished, they made love again. The horror of his life seeming to bringing out unbeknownst depth’s of tenderness in Zar. She wouldn’t let him do a thing. But rather kissed, licked, sucked, bit and loved his body from her perch atop his hips. He felt the hot tears of her sympathetic pain fall on his chest as she rode him.  And marveled at the woman who could go through so much hell, and still have the capacity to love a man most would run from. He vowed the moment before his climax, that she would never be subjected to that kind of hell ever again. He, Richard B. Riddick, would make sure of it. So he sat in the dive, waiting for Brenner to show up. Knowing Brenner would be looking for Zar sooner or later. But the surprise would be on him, for Zar had a “Brenner” of her own. One who had done a damn sight more brutal killing than the original. He laughed to himself as he thought of a saying from a play by Shakespeare, only he added a twist of his own. Hell hath no fury like a reformed killer. He had asked questions around the area earlier in the week. It had been easy to find out about him. A man like Brenner had a reputation. And was too smug of a son of a bitch to be discreet about his activities. Riddick had learned what Brenner looked like and also that he was here waiting for an incoming of shipment of gypsomnite for a “consortium.” Must be the same bastard’s that sic’d Brenner on Zar’s place on Jessup 3. He found out which dive Brenner was staying in. He also learned that Paradise was one of Brenner’s favorite hangouts. He’d been there a little over an hour when Brenner showed up. Six inches shorter than Riddick and about fifty pounds lighter, he never the less exuded an aura of similar menace. He had long, dishwater blond hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in months. He wore it proudly, as if it was an anti-fashion statement. Pale skinned with a serious five o’clock shadow, his eyes glowed blue fire with a essence of evil easily seen. He gave off an odor that to a man like Riddick, was as much a challenge to fight as a fist in the face would’ve been. And Riddick wanted to fight him at that moment. He felt his muscle’s tensing in reaction. Warring with his common sense to not, a)  bringing attention to himself for Jack, Imam and Zar’s sake, and b) taking on an opponent unprepared. So he settled back down in his corner seat and watched his quarry instead. He learned several very important things as he watched Brenner over the next two hours. First, he had a good sense of self-control. He might be a brutal bastard, but he didn’t act out his inclinations unless he was sure of a win. The bad asses that tried to start something with him went away unhappy. He wouldn’t be easy to jerk around mentally. Second, he didn’t seem to have any amigos there with him. He sat alone the whole time. Just watching the action around him. That was a good thing. When Riddick went to do the deed, it meant less interference from any other assholes. The men who Zar had seen offload with him must’ve been business associates only. Third, Brenner seemed to have the sixth sense most killers had. That he was being watched. He obviously felt Riddick’s goggle hidden stare because he would jerk his head up from his drink occasionally and scan the surrounding scum intensely. But Riddick also knew how to blend in with scum, and Brenner never made him. Fourth, he had perverse sexual tastes. The women gave him the eye aplenty alright. He had an aura of power and sensuality. But the few who had worked up the nerve to sit down with him usually left within minutes of any conversation. The emotions on their faces showing everything from disgust to downright terror. And the fifth thing Riddick learned as he sat there watching the man who had murdered Beth Arnett was that he really, really, wanted to be the one to ghost him. But he tempered his impatience with the knowledge that soon he would be able to act. He learned as much as he could about Brenner and it was time to leave. Time to go back to the sweeter atmosphere he had somehow become addicted to. Making sure Brenner’s attention was otherwise occupied, he slowly got up from his seat. Flowing like black smoke over the filthy floor, his animal grace and air of sexual danger attracting a number of inviting glances from the female populace of the bar as he passed. None of them even slowed his pace. What did stop him cold was the sight of Jack standing in the doorway. Looking for all intents and purposes like a Thanksgiving turkey ready for the plucking. Fuck! Slipping behind a pole he quietly made his around until he was behind her. Grabbing her arm he yanked, with none to gentle pressure, and she flew with him out of the doorway and against the outside wall. “Hey!!! What the fuck...Let go you fucking cock Su.....” “Yeah...get real quiet kid. Get fucking silent if you know what’s smart. “ He had kept his voice at the lowest possible decibel that could still be heard. “Riddick I just... OUCH! Where we going?!” She received no response and wouldn’t have been able to hear even if she had. She was to busy trying to keep up with his long strides. They had almost reached the doors to the lift when he pulled her into a side alley. “Explain.” Just the one word and she shivered in unease. She knew he was really pissed. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she lifted her eyes to his goggles. “I came to meet you when you got off work. But you didn’t see me and started going somewhere away from the apartment. I was...I was...afraid you were...leaving. That maybe me or Zar had pissed you off. So I followed you here. You’ve been in there over three hours and I was starting to get worried. I just thought I’d take a look around for you.” She had finished off the story almost in tears. “First of all, neither you or Zar pissed me off. Second, I’m grown man. I don’t need no kid keeper. Stay out of my shit. Third! Do you know what kind of scum is in there?! Do you know what they would’ve of done to you?! Fourth, I’m not leaving you. You’re staying with me and Zar permanently. Unless you want to go with Imam when he leaves for New Mecca in a few days. But that’s up to you. If you stay, remember this,  Don’t pull this shit again Jack or so help me......” The relief that he wasn’t abandoning her and Zar was only slightly tempered by his threat. “Sorry. Zar’s probably having kitten’s by now huh?” “Shit...I didn’t even think of that. You know if she decides to punish you, it’s deserved don’t you?” Her sigh of regret almost made him feel sorry for her. Almost. “Yeah, but couldn’t you...?” “Hell no! After the crap you put me through back there?! You’re lucky I don’t slap the shit out of you right here. Be glad Zar’s the one you have to answer to. You’ll get a sight more sympathy from her than me brat.” The more she saw how angry he was, a real quiet, scary angry at that, the more she was grateful it was Zar who would dish out the punishment. “Let’s go.” But Jack dug her heels in and glared at him. “You cheating on Zar?!” For a moment he was almost tempted to smile. This little piss ant was trying to take him to task for hurting her friend! She had guts, this one did. He only hoped he’d be around each time she put them on the line with some harebrained idea. Good thing he shaved his head bald because the little wench was turning him into an old man before his time. The old Riddick would of read her the riot act, instead he settled for a sigh. “No. I’m not messing around on Zar.” “Then what are...” “None of your business kid. Zar trusts me. You could at least do the same.” “Oh sure, she trusts you. That’s why she started crying when she smelled the perfume on your clothes last night.” Shit...the drunken whore who jumped uninvited onto his lap last night! He pushed her right off, but she had reeked of cheap cologne. “Leave it go kid. I’ll take care of Zar. Let’s go.” Acquiescent now, Jack led the way. Riddick watching her back, both physically and emotionally. He could see the worry and tension in the set of her shoulders. She thinks I’m going to fuck it up. Let’s hope I didn’t. Gotta find someway of reassuring Zar without tipping her off. Damn, it was so much easier dealing with women when all you wanted to do was fuck’em. “When we get home, go straight to your room. No eavesdropping. Understand? You got school tomorrow anyway don’t you?” “Yeah. It sucks.” Actually her return to a classroom two weeks previously had been relatively easy. She had a really quick mind and the kids were easy to bullshit. “Welcome to the real world brat.”

HOME

CHAPTER 8