by Shade Owens
This couldn’t be happening. How the hell was this happening? Why the fuck had Ellie come out onto the battlefield? Why would she jump in front of an arrow for me? I wanted to scream and cry at the same time, but I couldn’t move. Instead, I stared in horror as Ellie’s lips curled up at one corner.
“It’s… it’s okay,” she said, her eyelids fluttering.
No, it wasn’t okay. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I needed her. I wouldn’t survive this island without her. A sickening sensation filled my stomach, making me want to vomit out my organs.
This couldn’t be real. Any second now, I’d wake up in Rainer’s lair with only a few hours left to live. I’d have chosen that over losing Ellie.
Ellie’s head rolled forward and I shook her hard. “Don’t you fucking dare. You hang on! There’s a doctor over there.” I pointed toward the mountain, but Ellie shook her head and smirked again—an angelic smile intended to provide comfort.
“I… I love you,” she breathed, before collapsing into my arms.
CHAPTER 8
I screamed so loud I thought my vocal cords might rip apart, but I didn’t care. Marching straight toward Zsasz, I shot an arrow, and then another, and another. It was almost as if everyone on the battlefield had spread apart like the ocean for Moses as I charged at her. And although I was certain everyone was still fighting, for a moment it seemed like Zsasz and I were the only two on the battlefield.
No one intervened, which was smart of them. The rage inside me was so intense I was prepared to tear someone’s throat out with my teeth.
I’d never experienced so much fucking anger in my life—not even when I was first sentenced to serve time on this island.
Zsasz didn’t appear threatened by my head-on approach. In fact, it looked like she was having a blast, swinging her sword and dicing my arrows into little bits as they flew straight for her. How did she manage to move so fast? It was clear, she’d spent her whole life training on how to fight.
Zsasz was a trained killer.
But I didn’t care how good she was. All I cared about was that she’d killed Ellie. At this point, I’d die trying to kill her, and even after death, I’d come back time and time again to haunt her for all of fucking eternity.
I let out another loud cry and launched my fifth arrow, my few remaining arrows rattling in my nearly empty quiver. This time, her swing was a bit off and although she managed to hit my arrow, she stumbled backward, the smile on her face melting into a confused frown.
What’s wrong, Zsasz? Think you’re invincible? You ugly, mutilated fucking zebra bitch.
I took the opportunity to fire another arrow straight into her lower abdomen, right beneath the shiny metal plate covering her chest. Her bright eyes rolled up at me as if to say, How is this possible?
Where her smile had been only seconds ago, an ugly grimace took its place, making her look more hideous than she already was. The mutilated skin of her face loosened, resembling grated cheese left over on a cheese grater. Desperately clutching at the arrow’s protruding shaft, she fell to one knee.
Although I didn’t hear it with the sounds of battle surrounding me—the shouting, wood snapping, flesh ripping, throats being torn open—it was easy to imagine a loud thump as she fell. Leaning her body against her sword, she rested her forehead on its steel handle.
Her round, plate-covered back moved up and down as she breathed. Although silent, she was likely trying to figure out how to miraculously come out of this fight victorious.
By the time she looked up at me, I’d reached her side. With as much force as I could find within me, I kicked her in the face and something cracked against the pad of my foot. She swayed sideways but caught herself with a flat palm in the dirt. The kick had likely hurt me as much as it hurt her, and when my aching bare foot came down, I hopped sideways to catch myself.
I grabbed the handle of her sword right above her grip and side-kicked her in the face as hard as I could. Her head shot back, blood and saliva splattering onto my heel, the high bun on her head wiggling like a pom-pom, and she fell to her side. There was only one problem: she hadn’t let go of her sword as I had hoped. Even with her one-handed grip, she was much stronger than me.
Trying to catch my footing, I stumbled on top of her. With a tight grip, I grabbed the arrow sticking out of her lower abdomen and pushed it in even deeper, causing her to yelp out in pain.
Her screaming was like music to my ears. After everything she’d done… after everyone she’d tortured and killed, Zsasz deserved pain more than anyone on this planet.
Warm blood poured over my fingers like running soap in a hot shower, weakening my grip around the arrow’s shaft. It slipped and made squishing noises like the gutting of a Halloween pumpkin.
Without warning, her enormous sword came swinging at me, its long blade aimed right at my neck. I ducked in time to feel the cold metal graze the skin of my head, and little bits of dark hair sprinkled down onto her chest plate.
Great… a haircut, when all I wanted was for my hair to grow back.
The sword fell hard into the dirt on the other side of her. She was too weak to use it properly. In a panic, I lunged for her sword and bashed my fists against her fingers, trying to break her grip.
This did nothing—she held onto it as if her palms were superglued to the handle.
Instead, I stood up and stomped down as hard as I could. Something snapped, and a loud bellow came blasting out of her lungs.
“What’s wrong, Zsasz?” I spat out like venom. “You can break fingers, but you can’t take it?”
I stomped down again, feeling another snap under the pad of my foot.
She dropped the sword, but I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was hurt her. When I went to stomp again, she pulled away and my foot landed in the dirt, a brown cloud of dust exploding up and around my calf.
In a hurry, I bent down to grab her sword, but something hard kicked me in the legs, and I fell flat on my face. Little rocks rubbed against my lips and scraped the front of my teeth; I held my breath, not wanting to fill my lungs with dust.
Shit. Where was the sword?
I reached around me, searching through the soft soil, when an awful sound warned me it was too late—the sound of metal being dragged through dirt.
My stomach sank.
The instant I rolled over to face my attacker, Zsasz climbed on top of me as if straddling a horse. She grinned—a look that said, Thought you had me, didn’t you?
Although I managed to land a few good hits on her face, she didn’t seem bothered by this. In fact, her smile spread even wider as if she were enjoying it.
I swung tight fists at her face, and still, she smiled.
The weight of her immense body was so overpowering that despite my squirming, I couldn’t move. She held her broken hand up against her chest and with the other one, snatched me by the throat.
The second she did, I stopped breathing. Her grip was so strong that for a moment, I wondered if she was holding some sort of choking device—a metal clamp built by Smith.
Yet the warmth that spread across my neck told me it was her fingers doing the strangling, which was even more unnerving. I slapped her scarred, lumpy forearms, but she didn’t budge.
My face swelled as if my skull were being pumped with fluid, and my peripheral vision began to darken.
Don’t let her win.
Don’t let her win.
Don’t let her win.
“Get off ’er, ya fuckin’ nasty wax face!” came a familiar voice.
In an instant, Zsasz let go of my neck and leaned her body backward in time to dodge the point of a spear. It slipped right in front of her neck, grazing her throat, and with the hand she’d been using to strangle me, she tore the weapon out of Flander’s grasp.
As Flander stumbled forward, Zsasz spun the spear around as if she’d practiced that move a thousand times before and launched it straight into Flander’s chest. The blow had been so mighty that it tore straight thr
ough, the point of the spear sticking out through Flander’s back.
I tried to scream, but nothing came out.
Flander fell to the ground like a stringless puppet.
In a fit of rage, I growled out and swung a fist at Zsasz’s face; a satisfying crack filled the air and her lower jaw wiggled slightly, but the next thing I knew, she was choking me again. As she strangled me and watched the life drain out of my body with her evil gaze, I wondered if there was even a soul in there.
My surroundings began to fade, and I thought of Ellie and wondered if it would be so bad to simply give up. What was the point of all this fighting? If I allowed Zsasz to kill me, it would all be over. And death by strangling was far better than being torn to shreds by some steel blade.
She can’t get away with everything she’s done.
She killed Ellie.
That’s when I remembered something—I had a knife.
Without a second thought, I tore it out of my belt and with a stiff arm, swung its point straight toward Zsasz’s unprotected neck. Her reflexes, however, were like a cat’s. She raised her injured arm to block the blow, released my neck with her good hand, and reached for the knife in my fist.
But as she did that, I grabbed the arrow inside her stomach and tore it right out. She let out a shout but didn’t have time to stop me from continuing my attack. Holding the arrow’s staff near its fletching, I jabbed it straight up into her neck.
Fuck.
It didn’t penetrate.
The arrowhead must have detached inside her body. Despite the lack of penetration, the blow had been hard enough to throw her into a coughing fit. Reaching for her injured throat, she gagged and coughed up a glob of blood.
If I didn’t act fast, she’d finish me once and for all.
My arrows.
Shooting an arm straight above my head, I stretched as much as I could, grasping around for my crushed quiver, when my fingers touched the fletching of a loose arrow. It must have slipped out. I grabbed it near its sharp head, and when Zsasz turned back to face me, I swung the point right into her eye.
She let out a disturbing cry as a gooey fluid squirted out into my palm. Being that Zsasz was a goddamn cockroach, I didn’t waste any time wondering if the blow had been enough to kill her.
As I tore the arrow out, she reached for her punctured eye, her disfigured face warping entirely. I’d never seen Zsasz like this before—for the first time, she was the victim.
Sucking in a deep breath of air to muster strength, I stabbed the arrowhead into her jugular as hard as I could. The point wasn’t long enough to puncture deeply, but it was sharp enough to penetrate skin and cause damage to her throat. She was so preoccupied freaking out about her eye that I had time to do this over and over again until her throat looked like the bark of a birch tree.
Finally, she threw herself off and landed on her back, desperately clawing at her throat.
She was suffering, and she deserved every fucking second of it.
Weak and drained of all energy, I forced myself up and pulled her sword out from the dirt. As I approached her with it, she stared up at with primitive eyes, her torn nostrils flaring so fast they looked like damaged butterfly wings.
Her jaw, square and clenched, didn’t open as I moved toward her.
I’d have expected her to maybe plead for her life, but she didn’t. There was so much hatred in her eyes it was as if she were trying to murder me telepathically.
Finally, this was it.
Gripping the sword’s handle as tight as I could, I raised it up over my head.
“If hell exists,” I said, “you’ll be spending the rest of your life cleaning up Lucifer’s shit.”
I took in a deep breath, prepared to deliver the last blow right into her throat, when a better idea struck me.
Why give her mercy?
Why end her pain and suffering after all the pain she’d caused to countless people?
Instead of stabbing her sword down into her throat, I stabbed it into her leg, her femur bone causing the blade to shift. She screamed out so loud I didn’t hear her flesh tear when I ripped it out and did the same thing to the other leg.
As she lay there, moaning and crying out in agony, I kicked her right arm away from her body and planted my foot down on her wrist. She was so weak she couldn’t pull away, and I enjoyed it.
Did that make me sick? All I wanted was for her to suffer.
With a growl, I stabbed the sword down through her bicep, and as she screamed, her mouth opened so wide I saw her tonsils. Without removing the sword, I knelt to stare her in her one eye, allowing the weight of my body to shift the blade inside her arm.
Her breath was heavy and bubbly. How had she not passed out? How was she still even alive?
Then, I spat a glob of spit in her face and she winced. “Have fun bleeding to death, you fucking monster.”
CHAPTER 9
I grimaced as a line of blood shot out of the Norther’s chest and straight into my face.
“Got your back, Brone,” Jack said. “Keep goin’!”
She looked like a demon pulled right out of hell. Her mouth, vivid red with blood spilling through the cracks of her teeth, opened and closed as she spoke, though I couldn’t understand much of what she was saying.
Had she ingested drugs?
A long cut, probably as deep as mine, ran across her collarbone and her left shoulder. Her face was covered in dirt, so much so that it looked like she’d rolled face-first into it. Maybe she had. Her short, spiky hair was crimson red and gooey-looking, likely from running her bloody fingers through her hair over and over again.
Like a monkey, she jumped onto one of the Northers’ backs, grabbed her by the head and chin, and snapped her neck. When the Norther fell, Jack landed on her feet and punched two fists into the air.
“I’m fuckin’ alive!”
She ran off in the opposite direction and jumped high, kicking a Norther in the back. Next, she bounced away into the air as if performing a dance move and kept on running with two knives in her fists.
From where I was standing, it looked like she was enjoying the fight.
Unfortunately, her fun didn’t last long. As she bounced up and down, slicing her small knives toward any Norther she saw, a set of familiar blades came violently thrashing toward her. It sliced through the dirt-filled air, leaving a clear streak floating above Jack’s now headless body.
The moment Jack’s body collapsed to the ground, Rainer stepped out into view with her two identical steel blades held by her sides. I’d seen these swords earlier that day—they’d hung on the wall inside her lair like nothing more than decorative pieces.
But it wasn’t the swords my eyes kept gravitating to—it was her son, Isaac, who I couldn’t stop staring at. He marched forward with huge, broad shoulders wider than two women standing side by side. His forearms were the size of my calves, and in his grasp was a massive battle-ax that looked like it weighed as much as a Great Dane. It was so heavy-looking that veins popped out through the golden skin of his arms, and his thick pectoral muscles bulged out to the point of resembling breasts.
The ax’s handle was longer than the width of his body and constructed of dark cherrywood. The head was forged in steel, which came as no surprise. It was so filthy it looked like he’d murdered more than a hundred women with it.
Across his chest was a large metallic plate that would have likely glistened underneath the sun, but in the middle of battle, it was matte and covered with dirt and blood. A bone mask hid most of his face—both the top and the bottom—and from the skull’s human resemblance, I could only assume it had been sawed off a gorilla.
When three of my people came charging at him from behind, Isaac raised the ax above his head and released a deep, animallike cry. He twirled it over his head twice, and though the women raised their weapons to attack, he swept the ax sideways, tearing through all of their torsos at once.
I turned away and winced, not wanting to see bo
dy parts fall to the ground.
No way could I take him out alone—I was out of arrows, my quiver was broken, and he was covered nearly from head to toe. I would have to get a perfect shot, and with the way Rainer was marching in front of him, it was obvious she’d fight to the death to protect her son.
I thought of Ellie’s lifeless body and my throat swelled. But I couldn’t focus on that. Women were dying… my women, and I had to stand up and fight. Turning around, I tripped over a dead body but caught my footing beside a dead Norther.
A sword.
I reached down and grabbed it, appreciating its light weight. I had planned to take Zsasz’s sword, but the damn thing seemed built for a giant. Given how hard she’d strangled me, it was understandable that she’d managed to use it.
Glancing back at Isaac, I observed every piece of metal across his body. The only way anyone was going to kill him was with an arrow… or many arrows. Where were all of our archers? I peered toward the jungle’s thick greenery, where women continued to fight near the trees.
Only one thing would have stopped them from shooting arrows: they’d run out, which meant all of their arrows were on the battlefield.
Then, like flowers blooming across a field of manure, dozens of arrows began to pop out at me. Some lay in the dirt, while others stuck straight out of our enemies like a frightened porcupine’s quills. If I became desperate enough, I’d tear them out, but right now, I had plenty of arrows to choose from—and that wasn’t counting all the full quivers lying in the dirt.
In a crouched position, I ran around as fast as I could, gathering both new and used arrows. One Norther lay in the dirt with two arrows sticking out of her—one out through her open mouth and the other out of her chest. In her large, dirt-stained hand, she held onto a longbow and underneath her, there appeared to be a crushed quiver full of arrows.
With my knees bent, I pulled upward on her arm, trying to roll her body sideways. It was like attempting to roll over a bag of bricks—the woman was huge. As I gave one hard tug, her body immediately rolled with such ease that I found myself questioning my own strength.