The Warriors' Ends- Soldiers of the Apocalypse

by Keith T Jenkins

  E-Day – 7.5 Years

  She has been drinking again, and there are drugs, at least that’s how she wants it to appear. She has been to a bar, drinking Virgin Mary’s all night, ‘til the right wrong crowd gives her their attention. A beast of a man, named Tiny, thinks she is the cutest little plaything he has seen in some months – or at least a few days.

  Tiny doses her drink when she is not looking, but she has been expecting it, so . . . when he’s not looking, she pours it into the sink across the bar. That’s why she chose this seat. She uses a tiny umbrella to keep the ice in her drink, not making that giant noise of hitting the steel bottom of the sink. Her straw makes a slurggling noise as she sucks the bottom of the glass. She orders another drink, and acts a little drunker, acts as if the world is a little blurrier, and when he suggests that they take the party to another venue, she takes the suggestion, encouraging him with her hands on his chest and behind.

  Tiny takes her in a truck as others tag along in a suburban and several bikes. On the way, she snuggles up next to Tiny with more caresses and kisses to spur him on. She is a bit concerned about a gang rape situation, but it turns out that turns are in order; at least that is what Tiny implies when he says to someone, “You can have second.”

  She is hanging on his arm, occasionally kissing his face, scratching his chest a bit, even grabbing his package from time to time, as they wander down the hall of a trailer house. He is one happy hombre getting in on this one first. She’s hot as hell, and hot for a little action, he can tell by her hands.

  They enter the room and fall on the bed, where he begins kissing her, licking her neck, and groping her body all over. She is infinitely aware of her surroundings, the most significant element of which is a man on top of her. It is as if her twenty-second birthday was coming back to haunt her . . . but tonight, there will be differences.

  When she was twenty-two, she went to a club, drank too much, so that she couldn’t taste the drugs in her drink, and when she awoke, he slapped and beat her into submission for her resistance. She had no idea of how to defend herself, back then, much less how to retaliate. But, those days are gone forever.

  She is present of mind, looking around the place, gaining a real sense of her location, evaluating her circumstances thoroughly, all through her slit-opened eyes, and all while that man is enthusiastically enjoying her state of seeming unconscious non-resistance, and preparing to enjoy it even more. This appearance of her condition is about to end. She slaps him and says something unmistakably to the effect of, “No!” He grabs her wrists to pin her down and his motions become more vigorous. He is not taking “no” for “no.” She wriggles like a little girl under his weight and thrusts, partly just giving him a chance to realize his wrong, to stop, and to let her go. But mercy is not on his agenda, and now, neither is it on hers. Her resistance methodology has to change, unless she wants to allow him to get farther down his desired path. Her response to that thought is a determined, “Get the fuck off!”

  She bucks against him a couple of times, trying to just bounce him off, but that only excites him more, enjoying the challenge, and he raises his hand to slap her. He likes a woman with a little fight in her, but he wants it beaten out of her before too long. When his hand speeds down and reaches the place where he expects it to run into the soft cheek of her face, it meets her forehead instead, braced for the impact, and there is a cracking sound. The object he has stricken is far harder and more resistant to the hand than the face he had anticipated. He suffers a spiral fracture to the two smallest metacarpal bones of his palm, which brings significant pain, but still somehow, it does not quell his verve. Connected to his left hand, she jerks her right hand above her head while slamming her head, as hard as she can toward the far side of the ceiling. With his left hand jerked forward, he begins to fall toward her, so her head meets his nose firmly on the bridge, where there is another crack – much louder this time – and a splatter of blood onto her face. The blood is his. She bucks her hips again, and this time, although he does not relent, she is free of him. She stands there, bloodied, angry, looking for her exit, which she soon spots on the other side of the room, on the other side of him.

  “Bitch!” he growls at her with his broken nose and busted hand. “I’m gonna fuck you up!” he says, moving around the end of the bed. “Then I’m gonna fuck you some more, and then . . . you gonna die.” But he is in serious pain, with his hand partially disabled; all the while though, her head is quickly clearing up from the head butt, restoring her aggression to full capacity. She is fighting her way through him as if there were no cloud of whatever drug he has given her in that last slurp of her drink.

  As he lunges at her, stepping with his right foot, grasping with his left hand, she takes his hand, twisting it thumbward, she rolls toward his feet. He tumbles over her, landing with a thud on the floor, and she springs into what he assumes is a judo position, prepared to receive her attacker once again. His ego is too great for anything else to occur. He is on his hands and knees as he looks up at her across the room and realizes that she has jumped at him, like a luchador, and too late, he discovers that he is the recipient of a body slam from above, her left elbow on his upper spine, her total body weight driving his head onto the floor.

  Scrambling on the floor, he spins around, trying to crab-crawl away from her, but she sends a lamp between his legs so fast that he is almost knocked unconscious in pain, crawling to his knees, grasping her shirt, he vomits all down her front.

  She quickly rotates around him, throwing her legs into position, one hooked over his head, the other under his left arm, at the shoulder, and caught behind his back. His instinct is to grab her with his free hand, and he gets a handful of her butt, still to no avail. She reaches over and uses her hands to shimmy up his right arm, twist it behind him, and pull it all the way, until the wrist snaps and the shoulder dislocates and lets it pop back into place. She is picking him apart, piece-by-piece, and she is enjoying it. She disengages from him as he groans and slowly clamors to a vertical stance.

  “Was it worth it?” He has no idea what she is talking about. At first, he thinks she may be talking about bringing her here, but nothing could be worth this. “That girl you brought here last month. Was she worth all of this to you?”

  He begins attempting to recall the women of the past month or so.

  “Blonde hair? Black eyes? Asian? Teeny? Remember? Her name was Mae!”

  He does remember now! She was hot, and young, very small. She had been in a college bar, looking for a man, and – to him – she had found one. Actually, that night she had found more than one. There were nine DNA samples on and in her, vaginally, orally, anally, in her hair; and some of them were post-mortem deposits. They had washed her naked body with tire cleaner at the car wash, but being drunk, drugged up, stupid, or all three, they had not been very thorough. They left her body in a dumpster behind the Denny’s. Tiny and his friends had been there delivering a quarter pound bag of white to a preppy for a party.

  “She was my sister.”

  He may be confused about the sister thing, but he is under the distinct impression that he will have to fight for his life, if he is ever to get out of this room. The din of music coming from the other side of the door, backed up by some video game rumblings and shooting; his stamping feet are drowned out completely. He shouts a couple of times, but they are used to some pretty rough sounds coming from this room, if they can hear him at all over the noise, and their own drink and drug worn conditions. “Sister,” he thought. “This girl is 5’8” with a medium build – tough – and true blonde hair, blue eyes . . . a beach bunny.” Even when evaluating the woman who is beating the crap out of him, his measure of her is pejorative. He stoops to reach under his dirty clothes, to get his gun, but as he comes up to point the barrel in the right direction, he is met with a heel on his chin, which slams his teeth together to the decimation of several in the front. She lands three feet in front of him, rotating in a spinning heel
kick, facing away, she drives her heel into his sternum, hard enough to drive him into the studs of the cheap trailer, cracking the wallboards, cracking his sternum, shaking the trailer, and stopping his heart. He falls to the floor, clutching his chest with his one good hand, panic, fear driving him . . . now, grasping with the other hand, doing the hand more damage as terror fills his eyes. For a moment, she can see that he can now see the other side, and whatever he sees in that place, literally scares the crap out of him. Either that or, as many dead men do, he voided by lack of neural restraint in the sphincter. He has also ruined her shirt by his earlier intestinal evacuation.

  She pulls a Ramones t-shirt out of his closet, changing her top, and she assembles herself. As a final note she takes his denim vest – his colours from his body – with the gang logo on the back, his rank, his gang name, and two dozen other things stitched on which she does not understand, nor does she really care to. She’s earned them, and he isn’t going to need them. Using his pocket tool, left mounted on his belt, she rips his nametag free, dropping it on his face. She puts her arms in the armholes of the vest and jerks his colours into place with a snap. She takes his gun from the floor, finding another in the nightstand, and after checking both for ammo, she goes down the hallway to the rest of the house with a plan. Well, it appears to her to be at least half a plan.

  The bathroom door is open as she passes and no one is in there. The same is true for the next bedroom she sees. She walks in past the kitchen, spotting the living room with half a dozen men in it, and the first one that is targetable by her right hand, after she can see the whole room, that’s the first one that takes a .45 round to the head. A percent of a second later, blood splatters across the guys on the far side of the room. Another round quickly blows into the back of the head of a man facing away, and substantial chunks of his face immediately decorate the game, displayed on a 60” flat panel TV, mounted to the wall.

  The noise of the head banger music and the constant shooting of the game almost drown out the sounds of her guns. She feels a sharp pain in her right wrist as her gun falls to the floor and she realizes that it is a broomstick that has struck her. The broomstick is now headed for her forehead. She braces for the impact, drives her forehead against the weapon and it snaps in half, just as the gun in her left hand levels toward the aggressor in the kitchen, which she had failed to clear, but now she feels the room closing in on her. BANG! The round passes five inches below his belly button, into his belt buckle, driving everything about him toward the sink. He may have survived if not for the next three rounds in rising succession, striking him in the stomach, chest, and face. That 9mm Glock rises quickly and to the left, expelling another round, as a fellow thug takes the weapon between his hands. Unfortunately for him, the barrel is already pointing at his face, so the bullet passes into his mouth and out through his brain stem as the slide scrapes grooves into his palms. It occurs to her that he may actually survive, because the upper functions of his brain may still operate, but considering the fact that the communication systems to his body have just been destroyed; if he does survive, no one would call it living.

  Two more men are right behind him, driving his life-lost body into her, down the hall, and onto the floor. The gun goes off another five times, clearing the magazine, and in the process does enough damage to the smaller of the two men that he can no longer move; laying on the cold floor, bleeding nearly a pint per minute. The larger one remains in a conflagration of knees and elbows in the ultra-close quarters of the hallway floor – two and a half feet wide with two combatants – and in reality, the big man is suffering terribly. He has never met a woman of such ferocity, skill, energy, and tenacity. Conversely, she never thought of such a large man as an easy target, but tactically speaking, this is where they find themselves.

  She had been training for this, since she was nine years old, and started taking Tae-Kwon-Do at a local dojo. She looked so cute in her little “karate outfit,” but she was also a girly girl, a princess with tea parties. She grew to be a bit of a nerd, even though she was also a beauty. As she grew she learned to do kata as if she were a ballerina, with such grace and movement, that her every contest was a second place victory. The primary reason she never took first, and the judges told her each time, was because she didn’t demonstrate the power of her kata, though her every movement was full of grace. She never understood it until the day, or should I say the morning following her twenty-second birthday, where regret over the lack of power was hers in full. Her whole world changed that night. It all became too real.

  She was at college, majoring in Chemical Engineering, and her junior year was almost over. She had taken most of her Chemistry classes and studies in theoretic compounds and more, and was looking forward to a year of basics and electives, including all of her English, Social Studies, and hopefully some art or scuba. She had gone to a bar with her roommate, Janie, and they were looking to have a little fun, maybe even find someone to mack on, just for grins. What they found was a dose of Rohypnol and a bad morning after, just like this morning could have been. When she awoke that morning, there was a man on top of her. She stirred awake, realized her circumstances, and began slapping at him. He slapped her back, which made her madder and she squirmed, so he punched her in the head, knocked her unconscious, and he finished what he had begun.

  That long ago day, she woke up in the storage room of a bar with a black eye and her friend beaten almost beyond recognition. On this day, this very day, there are already six dead, and one more on the floor with her, going at it hammer and tongs, and this day, her strength, speed, and skills are far and away, more than he can handle. Yes, on this day the word victim will have to be redefined, somehow, because it will never be her again. On this day, her sister will be avenged . . . and then some. On this day, a deserving group of predators will learn what happens when you piss of one of the nations greatest female warriors – a first class downrange operator and killing professional

  He punches at her face, but her face is not there. As his left fist strikes the wall, breaking through the cheap paneling, her forehead strikes his mouth, loosening his two front teeth, breaking open his lower lip, and startling the hell out of him. He grabs her by the hair – a wild, flowing collection of filthy golden locks – and pulls her head over him to the other side of the hall. Now his right hand is free from under him and he grabs his knife from the sheath in his boot. His hand comes up, knife well gripped, and it’s met by her elbow. Shocked and bruised by the impact, it rises slower, but regains speed. She jams her body against his as the knife rises. He is hoping to stab her in the chest or armpit, but her proximity has changed, too close because his back is against the wall. The blade snags Tiny’s colours on her back slightly, as her arm locks his arm in place. She pulls his upper right arm toward her, wrapping it with her left arm. He repositions to get the knife between her legs, but she locks his wrist with her ankle against her thigh, pulls his arm forward rotating her body and shoving his other shoulder, then POP! his right shoulder is dislodged. Powerless in his hand, arm dislocated, and her pulling on it, the knife falls free as he screams, almost like a girl, until she slams her forehead into his face a couple of more times – in the nose and then the cheekbone – and she scrambles for the knife.

  He is cognizant enough to realize that she is sliding down the floor toward the blade, so he grabs her by her golden mane, pulling her up toward him. He is however, unaware that the handle of the weapon is already firmly in her grasp. She is kicking and screaming – mostly for his distraction – as he drags her head up toward his face. He is about to give her a slam with his forehead when he feels it. There is a slicing sensation, piercing, burning, dull throb, combined with a sharp stabbing pain, and the blade opens up the flesh of his thigh, sliding from the back to the front, severing his femoral artery.

  He is quickly becoming aware that his life is over, and he wants to take vengeance on the one that done him in. But with each breath, and every little thought, the
blinks of his eyes reveal that the hallway becomes more and more dim. She stares directly into his eyes as his view of the paneling and her face fades and fades ‘til there is no more. His blood has saturated the floor, along with her pants; the slickness makes it difficult for her to rise. But rise she does, glad to see no more aggressors.

  Since no one else has appeared from the far bedroom, she assumes that there is no one there. But she also assumes, “better safe than sorry.” Crossing the living room floor, grabbing guns as she goes, she heads into the far bedroom, only to discover that there is a young woman tied to the bed, naked and unconscious. She had been set aside earlier, so each of the bikers could take a turn at her again, and again as they like. This seems to be the apex of their collective understanding of fun – kidnapping and rape. No reasonable person will ever extol the virtues of this club, and she is certain that no one will ever miss even the least of them.

  She covers the girl with a sheet and begins untying her feet, then her hands. The girl stirs slightly, then more. As her left hand is fully free, she begins fighting back, thinking she is in the presence of another attacker, but she soon realizes that she is safe and that her captors, as she would soon hear, “have been subdued.”

  “What do you mean, ‘subdued,’ and who are you?” she asks.

  “My name is Miki’do, but you can call me Mike.”

  Mike tosses her guns and phone on the bed, taking the girl to the shower. They both clean up considerably. Mike rinses all the blood from her clothes, and the girl cleans all of the smell of her abusers from her body. The girl says, “Shouldn’t I let the cops gather evidence?”

  Mike tells her, “There won’t be any cops.”

  They dry down, best they can, with the towels available; grimy as they are, and while the girl gets dressed – her clothes are on the floor by the bed – Mike goes to the kitchen and blows out all of the pilot lights of the stove and oven. She opens the door of the oven, then she turns all the valves to their max. With a candle in hand, she returns to the girl, who is putting on her boots. She lights the candle, dripping a pool of wax to stand it on the dresser in the far corner of the room. The girl gets her purse from the dresser, slings the strap over her head and shoulder, and checks her phone. She is showing amazing awareness, all things considered, but screams a little when she sees the carnage of the living room.