Danny McG
Lid closed, monkey dead.
I read this UK paperback about six years ago but it could have been older than that. Can't recall anything about the cover.
The story began in a post apocalypse USA society now ruled by city states, still with advanced tech. They all had their own surroundings they could protect with 'badlands' in between.
A roving warparty from one city stumbles across an agricultural village way out in the badlands that had been set up by another city, so they charge in and take over for loot and rape and pillage.
Amongst the war band is an immortal Englishman whose inner body is some blue goo stuff. When injured he heals very quickly provided more blue goo is available, this can be obtained from tyres from high tech abandoned cars.
This man apparently had a close encounter back in our time and his body was changed by the aliens. After living through decades of apocalypse misery he is now the warlords plaything and often finds himself being tortured for entertainment because he heals quick but still feels full pain.
The war party put implants into the captured villagers to control them. There were gory descriptions of men punching each other to death and women screaming and running and getting gang raped, however the implants only let them run slowly in circles so they are easily recaptured.
(I think) airships eventually arrive to rescue these villagers and a battle begins
That's about all I got
Edit: a further snippet of this book has just came to me, there's a derelict mansion house in this badlands village, the war party use it as their base
The blue goo man is wandering around it and trying to think of a way to escape. He lifts a rusty tin box of a shelf and looks inside; he is mega delighted to find it's crammed with tea.
The outer leaves are mouldy but there's enough good stuff in the centre to make several pots of tea. Being a proper English bloke he immediately brews up because he hasn't had a cuppa in fifty or so years
Further edit: I want to say he somehow ends up on another planet (but this might be a different story) that is full of people who have had this "alien blue goo treatment" They are made to reenact different battles every day and then it resets ( like Groundhog Day) and I think he was always in a WW1 trench fight
. After thousands of days, from initially getting killed very rapidly, he'd become super expert at eliminating the threats around him so he could laze around and chill all day.
I think he eventually manages to contact and communicate with the aliens and negotiates a way out
The story began in a post apocalypse USA society now ruled by city states, still with advanced tech. They all had their own surroundings they could protect with 'badlands' in between.
A roving warparty from one city stumbles across an agricultural village way out in the badlands that had been set up by another city, so they charge in and take over for loot and rape and pillage.
Amongst the war band is an immortal Englishman whose inner body is some blue goo stuff. When injured he heals very quickly provided more blue goo is available, this can be obtained from tyres from high tech abandoned cars.
This man apparently had a close encounter back in our time and his body was changed by the aliens. After living through decades of apocalypse misery he is now the warlords plaything and often finds himself being tortured for entertainment because he heals quick but still feels full pain.
The war party put implants into the captured villagers to control them. There were gory descriptions of men punching each other to death and women screaming and running and getting gang raped, however the implants only let them run slowly in circles so they are easily recaptured.
(I think) airships eventually arrive to rescue these villagers and a battle begins
That's about all I got
Edit: a further snippet of this book has just came to me, there's a derelict mansion house in this badlands village, the war party use it as their base
The blue goo man is wandering around it and trying to think of a way to escape. He lifts a rusty tin box of a shelf and looks inside; he is mega delighted to find it's crammed with tea.
The outer leaves are mouldy but there's enough good stuff in the centre to make several pots of tea. Being a proper English bloke he immediately brews up because he hasn't had a cuppa in fifty or so years
Further edit: I want to say he somehow ends up on another planet (but this might be a different story) that is full of people who have had this "alien blue goo treatment" They are made to reenact different battles every day and then it resets ( like Groundhog Day) and I think he was always in a WW1 trench fight
. After thousands of days, from initially getting killed very rapidly, he'd become super expert at eliminating the threats around him so he could laze around and chill all day.
I think he eventually manages to contact and communicate with the aliens and negotiates a way out
