by Summer Lane
He screamed and let go, tearing her hands away from his face, but his eyes were already damaged. Elle slammed her knee under his chin and struck him in the face with her boot again. She kept kicking him, over and over again, until he lay still on the floor, twitching.
She stared down at him, red with anger and terror. She walked into the living room and grabbed the knife. It was slick with blood. She wiped it on the carpet and walked into the kitchen again. This time, she approached the door with no fear. She pulled the locks off and opened it.
She stood back.
A man was hunched on the floor, trembling and covered in tears. Snot ran down his face. He wasn’t very old – maybe early twenties. His clothes were caked with mud and the closet smelled of urine.
“Get up,” Elle said simply.
The man stared at her, awestruck, and slowly wobbled to his feet. He was short, maybe a head taller than Elle was. He stumbled forward and grabbed the wall.
“What’s your name?” Elle asked.
He stared.
“Hey. I asked you a question.” She touched his shoulder. “What’s your name?”
The man turned to look at her. He was detached.
“Josiah,” he replied. “Josiah Walters.”
“I’m Elle.” She nodded toward the living room. “Who’s the man who locked you up in here?”
He shuddered, then began to cry again.
Elle felt a twinge of sympathy.
“I don’t know,” he sobbed at last. “He told me he had food and water, and that he could help me find the militias. He was nice. I listened to him – I was so hungry, you see? I was starving…” He remained silent for a long time before continuing. “He brought me here, hit me over the head. Locked me in the closet. I’ve been in there for days, I think.”
Elle thought about the windows upstairs – all nailed shut. The bloody zip-ties. This man was nothing more than a serial killer. Or worse. She shivered and said, “It’s over now. You’re free.”
He looked up at her.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“I already told you.” She walked into the living room. “I’m Elle.”
“Like the letter?”
“Yeah. Elle for loser.” She half-smiled. And then her smile turned to a frown, because the crazy man was moving on the floor, crawling on his stomach, toward the sound of her voice. He couldn’t see. His was bleeding everywhere. He just moved.
Elle walked into the kitchen. The back door was still standing wide open. The man had dropped something on his way in – yes, there it was. A shotgun. Elle picked it up, checked the chamber. One round. That should do it.
It was an old weapon. Simple. No safety – just a bullet, a chamber, and a trigger. She held it up to her shoulder. It was heavy and nearly twice the size of her.
“You might not want to see this,” she said, flatly.
Josiah scrambled away, hunching in the kitchen, rocking back and forth.
Elle watched the man crawl for a few seconds.
She shot him. And she had no regrets.
Chapter Eight
Elle left the young man named Josiah Walters behind. She gave him a little food, and pointed him in the general direction of the river. And she left. She didn’t want a companion, and she was done babysitting people who couldn’t figure out how to survive on their own. She had saved his life – her work was done.
She cut through the night, swiftly. She was lucky to have escaped that house alive, she knew. It could have ended badly. The man she had shot…he could have been doing anything with the people he captured. The thought of cannibalism crossed her mind. She shuddered and shoved it away.
The apocalypse had driven many people to extreme measures, and she had heard stories. Horrible stories. The stuff of nightmares. But she would not dwell on it. She would keep walking, and she would survive, because she was not like the rest of the world. She was a fighter, and she would kill before she was killed.
As Elle moved, she felt herself slipping back into the icy void of solitude. The mask was coming down, the cold detachment. Without Bravo by her side, she had no one to talk to, no one to share her experiences with.
In the beginning, she was good at being alone. But now that she had tasted the sweetness of companionship, losing it was all the more painful. The darkness was now darker than ever before. The shadows were more frightening. The noises of the night held crippling, unseen threats.
Elle paused.
She had reached the edge of the small farm town. She had never discovered its name, but gauged it had once been a sweet place to live. On the edge of the city, she stood in the center of an empty, asphalt road. Behind her was a small shopping center, and beyond that, the neighborhoods she had just escaped from.
Beyond her, it was open roads and empty orchards.
Such a long walk.
The wind rustled the dry, dead leaves on the trees. Elle reached to close her jacket, her fingers brushing the leather of the collar she had meant to give Bravo in Falcon Point.
She held it in her hands, staring at it for a moment.
Bravo.
She closed her eyes, shedding two silvery tears.
Goodbye, Bravo.
She tossed the collar into the soft dirt of the orchard.
It was done.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She turned, slowly, surveying the gray landscape behind her. It was just barely dawn, and the earth was glowing with a dusty half-light, making buildings and old, abandoned cars shift in the shadows. False movement.
On the road, directly behind her, she imagined she saw a man walking toward her. The shadowy mirage was powerful. He wore a hood – only his eyes were visible. His clothes were black. His gloves were black. Even his shoes were black. He wore a long, red sash around his waist. And swords. He had two, glittering swords curved like crescent moons, one held in each hand.
Elle watched it. Blinked.
Had she finally gone mad? Or was it real? Was there really a man walking down the road? If so, she was in trouble. She had no weapons. She had left the shotgun in the house. There had been only one round left, and the extra weight of the big weapon would have slowed her down.
All she had was the small knife that Felix had given her.
Elle took a step forward. The man was walking closer, his footsteps steady and decisive. She called out, “What do you want?”
Silence.
He never stopped walking.
“Hey. I’m talking to you,” Elle said. “What do you want?”
Strange. He was dressed like a Slaver. The hood, the crescent-moon swords. She felt a cold anger surge through her body. She hated Slavers with a passion. They were the dregs of mankind. They preyed on small children and sold them to the highest bidder.
She demanded, “What are you doing here?”
Still, no answer.
He was almost on her now. She knew she should run. She was probably faster than he was – she could run for a long time before she tired – but part of her wanted to see if he would kill her. Wouldn’t it be nice – to die. To escape from this hell-world, this pale shadow of civilization.
No. She would not give up.
Not Elle Costas.
The Slaver stopped. He held his swords, each pointed at the ground. His eyes studied her, clear and snakelike. They stood there, looking at each other, the quiet of the morning encapsulating the hollow remains of the town.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said at last.
Silence.
“You’re going to try,” Elle replied.
He brought his swords up in two swirling arcs, dancing forward. Elle rolled to the side and made a beeline for the gas station on the left of the road. The pumps stood vacant and rusted over, coated with mud and grime. She moved quickly, with purpose. There was a broken piece of pipe near one of the pumps. She picked it up, sliding to one knee. She brought the pipe up, blocking a vicious swipe of the Slaver’s swords. Her body shook with the im
pact. She somersaulted backward – she couldn’t move fast enough. He was swinging his blades, forcing her to move, to jump, to run.
She sprinted around the last three pumps, the pipe still in her hand. Her breath was strained and burning. There was no fear in her. Just the will to win. She grabbed the handle of a gas pump and pulled it out, flinging it at the Slaver’s head. He stepped aside and Elle jabbed with the piping, striking him in the gut. He took a step backward. His eyes tightened.
She retreated. He lunged forward, angry.
Elle grabbed the gas hose and pulled it taut, dashing around him, tightening the hose around his waist, pulling him over. He hit the ground with a dull thud, but he was on his feet again in an instant, running after her.
Elle slid through the open doors of the empty gas station store. There were empty shelves and ransacked freezer bins inside. The cigarettes had been stolen from the glass counter.
The broken handle of a mop lay strewn along the back wall. Elle ran for it. Grabbed it. The broken end was sharp, a splintered piece of wood. She flung it at the Slaver’s head. He dodged it. She moved to the side.
Metal, she thought. I need one more piece of metal!
She sprinted behind the shelving. She could hear his light footsteps on the other side of the racks. Her fingers closed around a sharp, metal yardstick on the ground.
Pipe in one hand. Yardstick in the other.
She raced through the door, braced herself. The Slaver tore out of the store, meeting Elle on the asphalt. Elle made an X with her arms, blocking one sword with each of her makeshift weapons. She looked into the Slaver’s eyes. She saw nothing human.
He drove her farther and farther backward. She blocked each cut of his swords, but every impact rocked her shoulders and ground her teeth together until she could taste blood. The sweat ran thick down her forehead and back, slipping into her mouth.
Despite everything, she remembered Cheng’s words from Bear Mountain:
“When your soul can find peace,” Cheng said, “your body will, too. You will be a better person, a better warrior, a better woman. Cleansing your mind is key to a peaceful soul.”
She took a deep breath and detached herself from the physical pain. She let her instincts guide her, and the world become a razor-sharp portrait of light and sound. She was fluid, and there was only the thumping of her heartbeat against her ribs, and the timing of her movements against the Slaver’s attacks. The pain and the blood and the sweat became nonexistent.
It was all about the fight. Only the fight.
She anticipated the Slaver’s moves, blocking each blow. She whirled around him, making circles, a triumphant smile spreading across her face.
And then she heard something.
A dog, barking.
The mist of fine concentration dissolved, and she stumbled backward, startled. The sound was alien. It didn’t belong here. The Slaver, seeing her mistake, pushed forward and drove his elbow into her chest, pushing her onto the asphalt. Elle hit the ground. She screamed, but her arms were pinned to the ground.
The Slaver’s eyes glittered. Victory. He had won.
Elle struggled beneath him, furious. Why had she broken her concentration? She had been winning! And now the only sound was her rattled breathing as the Slaver’s knee pushed against her ribs. He drew his sword up into the air, suspended.
It was the death blow.
Elle stared at the sharp blade. He would bury it in the center of her forehead. The pain would last only an instant, and then she would be dead, and her body would bleed on the asphalt and the Slaver would leave her here to rot…
Elle went numb, realizing that her death was at hand. She closed her eyes and prayed silently. The lethal blow never came. She was instead jerked sideways. The Slaver’s knee was gone, and he was screaming bloody murder.
Elle opened her eyes, dizzy, and stared at the gray sky. She turned her head sideways and saw the Slaver, on his knees, one sword on the ground, the other in his hand. A tangle of caramel fur and teeth growled rabidly. The animal lunged for the Slaver’s throat and sunk his fangs deep. The Slaver couldn’t even scream. His eyes widened and blood gushed from his neck. He dropped the sword and struggled against the dog, sputtering and choking, making horrible noises that only a dying man could make.
At last he went still and fell to the ground, but the dog did not release his grip until the Slaver’s head was on the asphalt, and his body had gone stiff. He took a few hesitant steps backward. Ruby-colored blood dripped from his jowls. He looked at the corpse for a long moment.
Elle sat up, staring.
The dog turned, and his tail bobbed slightly.
“Bravo?” Elle whispered.
Hearing his name, the dog’s eyes sparkled. He bounded across the distance and met the girl halfway.
Chapter Nine
Elle buried her face in Bravo’s warm, musty fur. She felt his heartbeat thundering beneath her fingertips and the swell of his lungs as he panted for breath. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she pressed her forehead against the dog’s.
“Bravo,” she whispered. “You came back to me.”
She opened her eyes.
Of course I did. He barked. Always.
She hugged him again. She felt joy. A sense of happiness that she had not known in…years, probably. It was as if she had come home after a long journey, like the broken pieces of her heart had been fired together.
Elle didn’t know how long she stayed there, on her knees, her arms around Bravo. It could have been seconds. It could have been hours. She didn’t care. Suddenly Bravo wriggled his head out of Elle’s grasp and barked once. Elle turned around and gasped, tightening her fingers into fists.
Cheng.
He stood there. His fine black hair fluttered in the breeze. His face was still bruised. He carried two katanas on his back. His expression was stony.
Elle rose to her feet.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
Cheng’s lips twitched.
“You seemed to be having some trouble with the Slaver,” he replied.
Silence.
“How did you escape?” Elle asked.
“There’s always a way,” he answered, “when your will is strong enough.”
Bravo’s tail was wagging. The Slaver lay dead on the asphalt.
“Did you kill Matthias?” Elle asked.
“Yes.” Cheng didn’t miss a beat. “And most of his men.”
Elle nodded.
And then, “Are you with Omega, Cheng? Tell me the truth.”
“No. Not anymore.” His eyes became hooded, sad.
Elle went on, “Who is your mother?”
“Omega is like a snake with multiple heads,” Cheng replied. “It’s been burrowing under the ground for years, for centuries. Every whisper of cult society or conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard, it all dates back to Omega. Many of the world’s elite is threaded together in this secret society – kings, queens, czars, presidents…” He sighed. “No war has ever been started and no leader has ever been killed without a supreme purpose behind it.”
Elle went cold inside.
“And your mother?” she prodded.
“An elite. Very wealthy. An Omega flower child.” He shrugged. “I was her only child – her prized possession. When I was fifteen, her birthday gift to me was the tattoo that you saw on the boat.”
“Do you love her?” she asked.
“No,” Cheng replied, instantly. “Why should I? She has no love in her.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. But Elle, I knew about the collapse. I knew it was going to happen before it happened.” He hung his head. “So I ran. And then the end came, and I’ve been surviving like everyone else, and my mother has searched the country trying to find me.”
Cheng gestured to the Slaver on the ground.
“This man,” he said. “His name is Claudius. He’s been tracking you since Slaver Territory. I know him.”
; A stone dropped to the pit of Elle’s stomach.
She walked to the dead Slaver and pulled his facemask away. He had a young face. He was Asian, like Cheng.
“I know this man,” Elle said, realization dawning. “I almost killed him in Slaver Territory. I let him live.” She touched the scar on her cheek. “He gave me this.”
“He’s a spy for my mother,” Cheng explained. “One of many. You must have piqued his interest, so he pursued you. My guess is that he followed you all the way to Bear Mountain, where he found me, and then alerted Omega. Hence the destruction of the camp.”
Elle felt sick.
So she had been the one who had brought on the destruction of Bear Mountain? It was her fault? She had led a spy straight to their front door.
“It’s not your fault,” Cheng said, frowning. “It’s Omega. They’re everywhere. Like an infection. I would know.”
Elle narrowed her eyes.
“How do I know you’re not lying to me about everything?” she demanded. “How do I know you’re not using me?”
Cheng pointed to Bravo.
“I brought your dog back to you,” he said. “And I could have gone anywhere, Elle. Anywhere. But I came to find you. I had to know if you were still alive.”
Elle rolled her eyes.
“I’m not helpless.”
“I am well aware of that.” Cheng removed a katana from his back. Elle tensed, and Cheng held the blade flat against the palms of his hands. “Your sword,” he said.
Elle swallowed.
It glimmered like a jewel.
Elle walked forward and touched the handle.
Yes, her sword.
“You can trust me,” Cheng said. He handed her one of his leather straps and scabbards. Elle slung it around her shoulder and sheathed the katana.
“On one condition,” Elle replied.
“And what might that be?” Cheng asked.
“You tell me everything you know about Omega.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.” Elle held out her hand. Bravo darted to her side, and she rested her fingers right behind his ears. “Leave nothing out.”
Cheng slowly nodded.