Savior with Expiration Date

Cole's canines stabbed into Luna's wrist as she was prying open the 47th can with his ribs.

"I hope it's an anal stage maggot." The ex-Marine's blood dripped into the green bean gumbo, "The way you're hoarding it... It's fucking nasty."

Luna's pupils dilated behind her night vision. This man had shielded her from a radiation vole with his chest, and now the bullet-hole riddled body was pressed against her, wounds oozing nicotine-scented tissue fluid-he'd stolen a smoke from her treasured Marlboro.

Rule #44: All wounds must yield equivalent intelligence.

"What did the East End give you?" She let Cole suck the blood from her wrist, "The last time I worked this hard was the accountant sent from convenience store headquarters."

The man's palm suddenly pinched the side of her waist where a scar from Jax's knife had been. As his thumb pressed into the old wound, Luna heard the sound of a microtransmitter's electric current emanating from her uterus-the contraceptive device Cole had implanted three weeks ago.

"They gave me the truth." Cole ripped at the seams of her radiation suit, "Like the teddy bear you cuddle to sleep with every night..."

His dagger picks through the doll's abdomen, and half a baby leg bone falls out of the lint.Luna's period suddenly rages, and blood penetrates the cracks in the warehouse floor tiles, activating the drones buried in the convenience store headquarters.

Cole's prosthetic eye rolls off during the shock. luna picks up the glass prosthetic eye and finds microfilm on the back of the iris - the very coordinates of the bunker where the rich man was switched before his death. The moment the projection reveals itself, she sees Cole's military registration plate hanging above the canning assembly line where her mother was imprisoned.

"You've been their watchdog since day one." She shoved the prosthetic eye into Cole's anus, "Even Jax is my half-brother?"

The men suddenly stormed off, strangling her with their legs and breaking two of her ribs. They tumbled over the dumped pile of corn cans, Cole's genitals rubbing over the gun calluses on her inner thighs, a maneuver that reminded Luna of the first rule of survival he'd taught her:

"Pleasure is a more efficient weapon than bullets."

As Cole's teeth closed in on the throat again, Luna bit open the cyanide capsule hidden in her molars. The poison traveled down his saliva into the tip of his tongue as the man's spasming cock traced blood across the small of her back:

"Sister."

The drone's roar ripped through the air.

Cole rips off her entire right earlobe before gagging and swallows it into his esophagus, along with the teddy bear lint.When Luna uses a nail gun to slice open his stomach pouch, she discovers that it contains, in addition to her own ear bones, a group photo of convenience store employees-Cole standing behind his mother in the store manager's uniform, his fingers cupping a bottle of her milk from what was then still a baby.

"Rule number 45." She made Cole's spine into a whip:

"When someone calls you family, check their duodenum first."

The warehouse suddenly loses power.

During the 3-second gap between backup power activations, Luna sees Cole's body sit up in the fluorescent light. His vocal cords vibrated to emit Jax's voice: "Mom said you stole her nipple rings..."

The diesel generator roars.

After the visions dissipate, the only thing left on the floor is a road map corroded with stomach acid, and Luna follows the directions to the bottom floor of the freezer, where she discovers what Cole calls "hope"-three thousand jars of pâté labeled "Beef," which show human body lines under ultraviolet light, and each barcode corresponds to the social security number of one of the convenience store's missing employees. Each jar's barcode corresponded to the social security number of a missing convenience store employee.

When she pried open can number 001, the baby's footprints on the inside of the metal lid matched those on her birth certificate. Nestled deep in the rotting flesh was a diamond ring with Cole's wedding date to her mother engraved on the band-a full eleven months before she was born.

The vibration of tapping Morse code came from the ventilation ducts.

Luna raised her shotgun to the source, only to see Cole's license plate stuck between the fan blades. The new engravings on the back still bore blood rust:

"They built you too perfect."

The sound of an explosion outside the warehouse shook the earth.

The entire wasteland was collapsing as she rushed out the door. A swarm of drones from the convenience store's headquarters circled like vultures, air-dropped containers blowing countless craters. In the center of the nearest crater, Cole's dog tags were stuck in half of a teddy bear's skull, and embedded in the bear's eyeballs was a holographic projection of an open letter from the convenience store's president:

"Dear daughter, it's time to come home and inherit the canning empire."

As Luna's menstrual blood drips onto the letterhead, the hidden writing reveals itself:

"Every man you kill is your stray brother."

The radiant clouds cracked open at the seam.

Illuminated by the blood moon, she swallows Cole's rib powder and bolts a necklace made of her mother's nipple rings to her throat. The instant the drones scanned the convenience store gene sequence in her, all guns drooped in salute.

"Rule number 46." Luna held up the diamond ring to the HQ security camera:

"Patricide is the only recognized menstrual cycle."

A baby cries in the distance.

She finds the final secret in Cole's military boots: the footbed compartment hides her real birth certificate. The father's name is written in the father's field as the president of the convenience store, and the mother's signature is fingerprinted in blood-a mixture of Jax's, Cole's, and 47 other "brothers'" blood.

Luna ignites the certificate, and the ashes drift toward a giant uterus totem formed by a swarm of drones. As the flames engulf the center of the totem, all the cans begin to vibrate in sync, emitting a newborn cry.

As the cries reached their peak, she reached into her disemboweled abdomen and ripped out the transmitter and crushed it.

"Now," she whispered to the roar of the collapsing world, "I am my own mother."