by M. E. Betts
"It's about the girl. She's on some kind of rampage."
"Yeah," Red replied. "I'm aware."
"I don't feel safe just standing here," said a 30-something from the new group, cinching her poncho more tightly and stroking the barrel of her shotgun as she glared into the woods.
"Yeah, let's keep moving," a male agreed.
"So what do you want us to do, Red?" asked the one holding the radio, continuing after several silent seconds. "Red? Red!"
"He's gone, man," said a young man. "He left us."
"Yeah," agreed an older male. "He doesn't want us to lead her to him."
"So what now?" the younger man asked.
A burly female shrugged. "There's still a lot of those shitheads to kill back by the building."
As a few of them started south, Daphne reached into her bag and pulled out three sticks. She hopped from one branch to the next and then into the neighboring tree, which was beside the road, to facilitate a better view of her targets. When they came within her range, she was ready. The first stick left her fingertips, lodging into the side of the large, stout woman's skull. She cried out, grasping at the stick and yanking it free. Because of the way Daphne sharpened her sticks, the wound in the woman's skull was worsened upon removal of the implement, enlarging the hole and pulling a small amount of brain matter out with it as she dropped, alive but incapacitated, to the ground.
Daphne ignored her for the moment and moved on to the next one, a male in a dirty denim vest. Having spotted Daphne, he aimed a Beretta up at her, his mouth open wide in a roaring battle cry. Daphne focused on the space between his parted lips, letting her stick fly toward him and into his gaping orifice. The stick exited through the back of his neck, leaving him alive but in a great deal of pain. Daphne saw one of his fellow sadists come in for a mercy kill, resting the barrel of his .38 on the man's temple and pulling the trigger, relieving him of his agony.
Daphne turned toward the last of the three, a young man, and unleashed another sharpened length of wood in his direction. It entered through the chest, knocking the slight man off his feet. He landed to the right on the asphalt, his eyes open wide and his body lifeless.
Having taken care of the two men, Daphne turned back to the last of the three left alive, the female writhing on the ground with the trauma of her severe head wound. Dropping from the branch upon which her feet had rested, Daphne grabbed onto a lower branch to slow her fall and lessen the sound of the thud produced as her bare feet made contact with the ground.
She bent her knees sharply and stalked toward the convulsing woman in sneak mode, knife in hand. Additional enemies were headed her way, twenty-five feet down the road, but they seemed to be unaware of her location. She finished the female sadist lying in the road, yanking the wooden stick free and plunging the stainless steel knife briefly into its place. The woman's body went limp, her mask of fear frozen onto her face.
"She's right there!" yelled one of the advancing sadists. A spray of gunfire erupted in the road, and Daphne darted past the shoulder and into the treeline. From there, she sprang into the nearest tall tree, scaling its length in seconds. Surrounded by evergreen boughs, she was quickly lost to the sadists' line of sight.
On the opposite side of the tree in which she was standing, Daphne felt, saw and heard a substantial chunk of limb and foliage being blasted away by a large caliber rifle round. As she moved into a neighboring tree, the offensive continued, with assault and shotgun rounds raining into the wood and leaves behind her.
She moved down a few trees further, then slid down a trunk until her feet rested on the soft earth. She was shrouded by a cloak of pine needles twenty-five feet in diameter. She felt herself detach even more from her usual cognitive state, spiraling further into her psychedelic experience. The colors around her were even richer than before, and every sound in the woods reached Daphne's ears as a single primitive yet melodic musical piece.
As a handful of sadists approached Daphne's vicinity, she waited within the cover of pine needles, preparing to pounce on the most convenient target. She peered out through the tiny spaces between the dense needle cover, counting the three sadists in the advancing group. They reached the tree beneath which Daphne hid, one member coming within grazing distance of its bushy lower limbs. As they did, Daphne slid her hand over the woman's mouth and used her other hand to grab her by the back of her head, yanking her by the hair beneath the cover of the pine before she could scream or even utter a gasp.
Never ceasing the flow of movement, Daphne placed a hand on each side of the woman's jawbone, twisting to the left sharply. The loud cracking sound produced alerted the other two sadists nearby.
"What was that?" one of them whispered.
"Shit," said the other. "Where's Lena?"
Daphne stepped out from the tree, just behind the second of the two sadists. She drew the knife back behind her head, then arched it into the man's brain stem. She wrenched it free, producing a wet, cracking sound, then sprang upward and to her right, swooping down onto the last of the trio. The tall, doughy man with graying hair failed to suppress an expression of terror that overwhelmed his features as his hand reached in vain for his shotgun.
Daphne grabbed and broke the fingers of his right hand as they came in toward the gun, which she herself unholstered and wielded. She pointed the end at the sadist, who was reeling with the pain of his mangled digits. Daphne jammed the butt of the shotgun upward, under the chin of the dumpy male. As his jaws were forced together, he bit off the tip of his tongue, which tumbled from between his lips and onto the ground. Daphne kicked the towering man's knees out from beneath him, then drove the knife's blade through his temple as he knelt in shock.
Having eliminated the small group, she turned her attention to others who were nearby. She raised her arms and hopped up, pulling herself into a branch as several more sadists approached.
"Get the women out of here!" one of the men ordered from somewhere near the road.
"What?" another man asked. "Shit getting too real for them? Guess they better get used to it."
"Hey, I'm a card-carrying pink taco vendor here," concurred a female, "and I endorse that statement. You think we're not tough? How the hell is it, exactly, that you think we managed to last this long?"
Daphne had no interest in their partisan squabbling, even if she had been in a state of mind to comprehend it. Her eyes were glued to the group of four individuals heading her way, their guns drawn. Just before they passed beneath the branch on which she was standing, she knelt briefly on the limb, grabbing onto a sturdy offshoot with her left hand. She swung down, hanging by one arm, into the path of an outermost member of the group. As the two collided, she planted her bare feet into his chest. With her right hand, as her feet bore down, she plunged the steel knife blade into his open eye, killing him instantly. She pulled the blade free, pushing with her feet to ease the process, and yanked herself back up and onto the branch, scurrying to the trunk as an eruption of gunfire filled the earth and air where she had been standing and tore into the body of the dead sadist.
As she swung her weight into the next pine, she heard tones of concession from below and behind her.
"Not worth it," a sadist was muttering. "Screw you guys, I'm going to Jonesboro."
"Shit," said another one, "me, too."
"The hell you are," said a raspy older female. "What, and taking our ammo stash with you?"
"What? No! I don't give two shits about the ammo, I just want out."
Daphne heard a hammer click, followed by muted gasps.
"I can't let you leave here," said the woman whose voice felt like sandpaper to Daphne's ears.
"We don't care about taking anything!" a pleading voice insisted. "Just let us go, and you won't have to worry about seeing us ever again."
"Yeah, I believe that," the woman said. "It's just that I don't know that you won't rob us blind on your way out. And apparently--" She paused, nodding toward the gun she pointed. "I'm the one in char
ge now. And I don't have time for this nonsense."
Four shots were fired from the woman's revolver. Daphne ascended a pine tree, quickly climbing from one branch to the next until she had a clear view of the group. Two sadists lay dead on the ground, the red pools of blood on the gravel shoulder around them appearing black in the low light, even to Daphne's enhanced vision.
"Anyone else have anything to say?" the woman asked as Daphne aimed the stick in her hand, targeting the back of the woman's head. "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."
Daphne had a point to make. Her stick sailed through the air, angled slightly downward. It drove into the woman's spinal cord, separating vertebrae on its way in. It came to rest protruding upward from the top of her neck and over her chest at a 45-degree angle from back to front. Daphne leaped, from about twenty feet high, onto the dirt floor of the woods. She crouched softly as she landed, then sprang semi-upright and bolted in a low-leaning run in the direction of the stunned survivors gathered around the short-lived, one-time leader.
She reached the nearest of them within moments, gut-stabbing the first one. She pulled the knife free, catching the distinctive smell of entrails torn asunder as she raised the blade past her face, transferring it to her left hand. As she re-gripped the weapon, she armed her right hand with a throwing stick. She lashed out her left hand, slashing the throat of the next nearest sadist. No sooner did her left hand complete its task, then the right one set into motion, throwing the stick at a charging sadist carrying a sledgehammer. Her left hand flicked out again at the next one before her, jamming the blade up from just below the sternum, as she watched the stick make contact with the sledgehammer-wielding target.
As the weapon struck the man's forehead, its tip burrowed into the skin. The stick, however, continued to be propelled forward, tunneling beneath the scalp like a worm. The tip exited the top of the scalp and continued, pinning the man to the tree behind him. Daphne's wrist flicked out, unleashing another stick. This one pinned the sadist's lower torso to the tree, as well, stapling him through the flesh and muscle near the left kidney.
Still alive, he reached for his fully automatic assault rifle, and Daphne dropped down to her belly as the irrational, frenzied sadist fired blindly at her. The result was a dozen sadists prostrate on the ground, dead because of his friendly fire.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Daphne rolled to her left, behind a group of three sadists who were gathered near one another. With one hard swipe of her knife blade, she cut four out of six of their Achilles tendons. Two of the three suffered the injury in only one foot, but the third unlucky sadist found both feet afflicted, dropping to the ground never to stand again. Daphne dragged her blade across his throat, ear to ear, as she stood.
One of the two who were left, a few feet away, was reaching for his rifle with his right hand, his weight on his rear end and his left hand at his side. He breathed sharply in his acute distress. Daphne lifted a knobby chunk of rock weighing around ten pounds, closing the gap between herself and the sadist as she lifted the rock above her head with both hands. She hopped up slightly as she brought its weight down onto the injured man's skull, using all of the strength in her body to channel through her fingertips and into the unyielding hunk of earth. As it made contact with the victim's skull, it crushed down the entire top of the cranium, ultimately coming to rest cradled inside the cavity that had been created. The sadist, his lifeless eyes bulging free from his distorted face, fell to the ground along with the rock, both discarded by Daphne as she continued her rampage.
The last of the three sadists with the slashed tendon, standing on her left foot with her right hanging limp, reached for her holster. Just before she could fire her revolver, Daphne grabbed hold of another sadist charging at her with a wood-cutting axe. She crushed his right wrist, squeezing until bones broke, blood vessels ruptured, and he dropped the axe to the ground. Daphne ducked and picked up the weapon. She threw it at the revolver-bearing sadist, watching it spin end over end, its blade coming to a halt as it wedged into the woman's trapezius muscle between the shoulder and neck, breaking the collarbone and producing a snapping sound.
Shots continued to be fired in Daphne's direction from those sadists who were still alive, roughly a dozen. She disappeared into the nearest tree, swinging her slight weight around and upward, then into the next tree, entering deeper into the woods.
"Why the fuck should we even bother?" snapped the sadist with the broken wrist, the one who had wielded the wood-cutting axe confiscated by Daphne, as the gunfire paused upon the aggressor's disappearance. "This is Red's mess. It's time we left him to clean it up."
"Fat chance of that," another one said. "I could see his cowardly ass getting away, somewhere safe. Then he can start all this shit over again, with a brand-new set of people."
"If he went north," the first one said, "I bet you he's headed up toward the mine just south of Viburnum, right on the highway there."
"Why do you say that?" asked a female.
"Me and Red both came from there," the male replied. "We worked the mill back in the day. There's a big, cement block building, pretty secure. I don't know for sure, just an educated guess."
"Let's hope so," said another of the sadists as they started north. "At this point, I really want to see him get his ass handed to him."
"You hear that?" one of them called out into the woods, unsure of where Daphne was lurking in its unlit depths. "If you don't kill us, we'll try to take you to him."
Daphne understood enough of the intention and tone, albeit without interpreting the individual words. She followed them along 49, heading toward the next town about 2 miles further to the north.
After a couple of minutes, Daphne heard rapid footfalls approaching from behind. She was on a stretch of road that ran through a sizeable clearing. The sadists, about 50 yards ahead, had already run through the open space, re-entering a heavily wooded stretch of road. She noted that whoever it was running in her direction, they seemed to be closing in quickly. She looked around the dark road thoroughly, noting that the only place to hide was thirty-five feet up, at the top of a utility pole. She climbed up, then sat perfectly still and breathed shallowly, her gaze down the road.
Seconds later, two figures came into her field of vision, followed a moment later by another. Daphne could tell by the movements that they were undead, paying no heed to the damage they did to their limbs as they tore down the road. As they got closer, she recognized them as freshly killed sadists, some she had taken out herself and some killed unintentionally in the spray of automatic gunfire.
She continued to sit, silent and motionless, at the top of the pole. As the zombified sadists passed her on the pavement below, they seemed to sense her presence. After a moment, however, they apparently confused it with that of the living sadists heading down the road, who were making much more noise than Daphne. She observed from her perch as the trio of undead came and went, then she slithered down and continued up the road.
She heard chaos begin to unfold as the undead sadists caught up with their living counterparts. There was screaming, joined a moment later by shotgun blasts and the barking of pistols. Daphne quickened her pace, drawing toward the treeline. She had to make sure that the entirety of the group wasn't wiped out, because she needed them to take her to Red.
Slinking off of the road, she cloaked herself within the shadows of tall pine and walnut trees as she came near to the conflict occurring between the sadists and their strong, fresh undead adversaries. Several beams of LED light bounced around the area as the panicked sadists wielded both flashlights and weapons.
Daphne flitted from branch to branch until she had a good view, crouched upon a limb stretching over the southbound lane of 49. From her perch twenty-five feet above the highway, she watched the action. A stocky sadist with jet-black hair and a matching goatee swung a twenty-pound sledgehammer at the chest of a male zombie who towered around six inches higher than he himself. The head of the sledge connected with
the undead man's chest, knocking him down onto his back on the pavement. There was a distinct cracking sound as the back of his skull made impact, but he struggled still to get onto his feet. The short but sturdy sadist planted his feet to either side of the undead man's legs. He brought the sledgehammer up briefly above his head, then dropped to one knee, bringing the weapon down squarely onto the face of the zombie sprawled and dazed in the road.
For some reason upon which Daphne couldn't be bothered to reflect, she smiled in amusement as the head ruptured beneath the sledgehammer like a piece of fruit. Pieces of brain and bone rose momentarily above the road before raining down onto the corpse with the neck stump and the satisfied, goateed sadist.
Daphne glanced around, surveying the extent of damage done to the sadist party. One to her left was attempting to cover a gaping bite wound to the neck by raising the hood of an oversized sweatshirt. In the very low light, the gushing blood was like black crude bubbling out from inside the sadist. No sooner had the garment obscured the wound, than a .50 caliber round was discharged in his direction. The back of the cranium shattered upon impact as the bullet ripped through the skull, exiting the front of the face and leaving very little of the head in its wake.
Behind the headless corpse, a Desert Eagle-wielding sadist lowered their weapon, turning and tripping over a well-aged zombie who lay in the grass. From what Daphne could make out, the undead person was little more than a weathered heap. As its body was jostled by the sadist, likely for the first time since the onset of the previous winter, it released invisible waves of partially composted stench which escaped in all directions, reaching Daphne's nose. Under normal circumstances, she would have gagged as a reaction to the repugnant odor. In her current state, though, she merely wrinkled her nose as she rose and strode down the branch, where she had a more direct view of the revenent in the grass. As she reached into her bag for a stick, she perceived a myriad of smells floating to her on the breeze. There was the rotting fetor of human flesh, but also the smell of men's hair gel from the sadist who had tripped over the winter-weathered zombie. Daphne watched as he stomped down into the face of the undead individual. Having flattened its already ruined features into the ground, the sadist lifted his pant leg, crying out in despair as he felt with his fingertips, sensing a faint raised outline of the zombie's top middle teeth, which just barely broke his skin.