by Schow, Ryan
“If any of you encounter anyone, cut first, got it?” he instructed. “This is not a war, this is a mop-up. All the warriors went after Maria.”
“What about the women?”
“Kill them,” Tim said without hesitation.
“But they’re kinda hot.”
“We aren’t rapists.”
When Tim found his way to the back door, he reached for the knob, but his hand never got there. The hollow thonk! he heard was a baseball bat cracking him in the head. He fell down, the rush of red drizzling down his split open head.
His entire world shrunk mightily, and then it expanded right back out too fast. Looking up, his eyes rickety and unsteady, he saw a boy who was almost twenty with a serious look on his face.
“Hagan?” he heard another young boy say.
“Over here,” Hagan replied.
Another kid who was a year or two younger than the baseball fanatic joined Hagan. Tim was on his knees, sunk into the earth and not sure he could recover from this. The smaller boy grabbed his shoulder, rolled him over on his back so they could get a good look at him.
Tim, however, was looking right back at them.
The younger of the boys said to Hagan, “He’s still breathing,” almost like there was something wrong.
“I know,” Hagan replied.
“Well, finish it.”
“Dad may want to talk to him,” Hagan said. “Go get him.” The boy started around him, but Hagan grabbed his arm and said, “Ballard, there may be others.”
Ballard nodded, then disappeared inside the house. That’s when Hagan said, “You messed with the wrong people, Mister.”
For a long, cold minute, all Tim heard was the rush of blood in his head and a few nearby crickets. The cold air licked his face. It might as well have been sandpaper.
“My dad’s probably going to show your brain the light of day,” Hagan said, eyes on the door and not on Tim.
He didn’t say anything.
Instead, he took the opportunity to whistle as loud as he could to warn the others. Hagan’s giant foot stomped down on his mouth. The second Tim brought his hands up to cup his nose, Hagan did some kind of WWE wrestling move. He jumped up and landed with all his weight on Tim’s stomach.
The air woofed out of him, his body bowing to the pain. In one fluid motion, Hagan rolled off him and got right back to his feet.
Tim finally managed a breath, right in time to get his face foot-stomped again.
“I can do this all night,” Hagan said.
Tim didn’t doubt it.
When Ballard didn’t return, Hagan said, “Turn over, face in the dirt.”
Tim didn’t move.
Hagan kicked him hard, hissed at him to turn over. When he finally did, the first thing Tim felt was a sharp pain in the back of his head, one he knew to be the baseball bat striking him again.
And then nothing…
The second Hagan hauled the man over in the dirt, he knew what was going to happen. He’d never killed a man before, for this was not a movie, or a video game. This was real life and he knew real life had consequences. His father, Jagger, told him about consequences just as much as his mother, Lena, did. Even he and Macy talked about this, although the consequences in first love were far different than the consequences in war.
“When I first shot a man, he deserved it for sure. I thought I’d be okay,” Macy told him the night they first kissed, “but then he began creeping in my mind. Like a monster who shows up with three eyes, then twelve fingers, then five ears and a pig snout. And like that monster, the memory just stares at you, making you think about what you’ve done, making sure it made you pay. At least, that’s how it’s been for me. It’ll probably be different for you.”
She’d gone on to describe the feeling of murder as something that twisted itself around in your brain, making you ache for it to go away. But it never went away. It festered there, wretched and unwanted, like some knotted constant.
“These are the kinds of things that torment you when you sleep,” Macy told him, “and they happen in the most unexpected moments.”
Now Hagan was faced with the same challenge. He knew the situation was serious, that they were being ambushed! But hitting the man in the head with a bat was only him dipping his toes in the water.
It was time to go swimming.
He raised the bat up over his head, then swung it down on the back of the man’s skull. One shot might knock him out, two might do brain damage, but three would send his soul packing.
Hagan struck him four times to be sure. Twice because he needed to do the job, three times to work the repulsion out, and four because that was the shot that made him sure of what he was doing.
Afterwards, for a long second, he stood there smelling the blood and feeling the reverberation of the bat in his hands. The tremors shook right up into his wrists and arms. The bat fell from his grip. He tilted his head into the cool night, drew a deep breath and shoved the nausea down. After a moment, he reached down and picked up the bat, then slipped inside to the sounds of commotion.
His parent’s room was to the left, but noise was coming from the right.
He moved right, bat at the ready, hurrying, but not moving so fast that he might walk in to an another ambush or give up the element of surprise. Emerging in the kitchen, he saw a horrific sight.
Two men with blades were attacking the women, slicing them up with their knives. He didn’t see his mother, but he saw Cincinnati, Margot, Bailey and Jill—Jill had been cut pretty badly, but she was holding off one man while the other was slicing and chasing and cutting off escape routes as he hacked at the other three.
The women were trying to defend themselves against the men, but they were getting defensive cuts all over their arms and hands, and things were looking pretty bloody.
Wasting no time, he overhanded the baseball bat in an end-over-end vertical throw that went right at the closest man. The bat sailed past the main attacker, nearly hit Bailey, and slammed into the wall. Disappointed with himself for missing, he charged the man hoping against all hope that he wasn’t going to end up as bloody as the women, or worse. Launching himself into the fight, he dove through the air and connected with his target. Unfortunately, that’s when he felt something sharp stab down deep into him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Atlanta saw the man come out of no where and tackle Macy. Heart kicking, shocked but still moving, she raced into the dark to where a ground scuffle had broken out. She stopped short, listened to the grunting, hard-packing sounds of bodies getting punched. There was also cursing and Macy crying out in pain.
“Did you just bite me?!” the man screeched.
Atlanta flashed back to something Rider once said. “Everything you have on you that you can use to hurt someone else is a weapon. If they’re bigger than you, you can spit in their eye to blind them. Your spit is a weapon. If you’re in close quarters and they have you wrapped up, you bite whatever you can and pretend you’re a pit bull and never let go until whatever you have in between your teeth comes off. In this case, your mouth is a weapon.”
If Macy bit him, it was out of necessity. Meaning he was probably on top of her and she was in trouble. Rex, Rider and later Marcus taught them that fighting dirty was not wrong.
“If you aren’t fighting dirty,” Marcus had said, “you aren’t really fighting.”
Atlanta honed in on the shadowed ball of bodies rolling around in the darkness. She didn’t know who was who, and she didn’t want to hurt Macy trying to get…whomever it was attacking her.
Macy cried out again, jolting Atlanta. She had to take a chance. Tucking her blade, dropping her shoulder, the blonde pixie ran hard and hit the top body sideways.
Two people suddenly became three.
She’d nailed the man square, and thank God! He was squirming beneath her, cursing, and that’s when she turned the blade and got busy.
While she went to work on him, Marcus’s lessons rang deep in he
r mind.
“In a knife fight, the person to cut the deepest and the fastest wins,” he’d said, “but only if they hit major arteries and not just a bunch of inconsequential meat first.
The man was inconsequential meat as far as Atlanta was concerned. After about forty solid stabs, she stopped and rolled off the man. He was laid out by then. Done for.
“Good God, Atlanta,” Macy said laying on the ground, her chest rising and falling fast. She gave the dead man a nudge with her foot and relaxed.
Atlanta wiped the sweaty hair out of her face, let the knife fall away, then sat down next to her friend and took a deep breath.
“Girls don’t fight like boys,” Atlanta said with a laugh.
When the two girls first started training with Rider and Rex, Rider said to them, “Girls don’t fight like boys, that’s why the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed on the battlefield.”
“Are you hurt?” she asked Macy, reaching up and holding Macy’s hand. She felt the sticky wet blood in between her fingers.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Macy replied, squeezing her hand.
“I’m not hurt,” she said letting go. “You didn’t answer me.”
“I think I have a dislocated finger,” Macy said. “It’s going the wrong way, but it doesn’t feel broken. I just landed on it wrong. Plus he punched me in the face a few times so I need you to see if my nose is broken.”
“Does it feel broken?” Atlanta asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied, sounding a little stuffed. “But it’s bleeding pretty bad.”
Standing up, she said, “Let me have your finger.” Macy stood and gave it to her. It definitely felt dislocated based on the fact that it was making a seventy-five degree sideways turn at the second knuckle. “Take a deep breath and hold it.”
“What are you going to do?” Macy asked.
“Pull it out away from the joint, then reset it,” she said. “You’ll feel better after that.”
“Oh, boy,” she said, breathing through it. “Alright, go ahead and do it.”
Atlanta pulled it out, reset it, then ran her fingers up the joint to make sure it was seated right. Macy was biting her lip and groaning, but she understood the danger that could still be out there so she made almost no noise.
“Flex that,” Atlanta said, “tell me how it feels.”
“Sore, but fine,” she said. “My nose?”
Atlanta felt up the sides and the bridge and relaxed. She then swiped a finger underneath the nostrils, smelled the drizzle and said, “Bleeding and maybe fractured, but nothing that needs resetting.”
“There are probably more of these guys out here,” Macy said as she took the lead up to the house, blade in her good hand.
“Your mom or Cincinnati will probably be awake to check on your nose,” Atlanta said. “I kind of feel like it’ll be fine, though.
“You think the guy is dead?” Macy asked.
“I think he’s now a whiffle ball,” Atlanta replied with a penitent laugh. “So I’d say yes.”
“Inconsequential meat,” Macy said.
“Exactly.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The second Hagan dove onto her attacker, Cincinnati scrambled after the bat, grabbed it and absolutely let go. Digging into the darkest, most primal parts of her, she started swinging. Every crunching blow was a triumph. A reason to keep going. She wanted so badly to beat every single one of these knuckleheads to a bloody…
Someone grabbed the bat from behind her, both surprising and jarring her. She twisted around, but by then Jill had punched the guy right in the spine. She yanked the bat back, jerking it out of his hands as Jill punched him again.
Bowing out, his belly prominent, she rammed the bat right into the middle of him. A huge hoof of air poofed out of his mouth and opened up his ugly eyes. She rammed the bat again, this time catching him in the mouth.
It wasn’t satisfying enough, though. For all the fear and injustice this world heaped upon her, she kept digging deeper, scratching past the layers of her once storied life. As a nurse, she saved lives. As a survivor, she took them.
She was winding up for the big home run swing when Jill grabbed his knife hand and stole his blade. Whatever psychological bottom she was trying to get to, Jill got there first. The woman started stitching holes in his kidneys like it was a prison shanking. When she paused a moment to catch her breath, she cried out, “Hit him already, Sin!”
Glancing down at her arms, grinding against the pain, the blood and the damage, she wound up and whacked him right in the ear with all her might. The bat’s impact with his head was more than satisfying. Staggering sideways, he fell into the couch. Nearby, Hagan hit Bailey’s attacker hard enough to run him off. Bailey looked okay, but Hagan did not. Cincinnati went to the boy’s side. He was sitting down, one of his legs out in front of him and stiff. The way he was sitting made perfect sense when she considered the knife sticking out of his thigh.
“Hagan, are you alright?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“Okay, well don’t pull it out yet,” she said. “We’ll do that when we’re ready.”
“Bat!” Jill called out, snagging her attention. Cincinnati turned and tossed her the bat. In turn, she lobbed Cincinnati the knife, which she caught by the handle. “Check on Jagger and Lena.”
“Are you okay?” she turned and looked at Bailey.
“Yeah,” she said sitting up and pushing a tangle of pulled hair out of her face. Her hands were cut, as were her arms. Beyond that, she was on the floor, her back up against the couch, her legs splayed out before her. Releasing a big breath, her face swollen and tight looking, she gave a slow, but certain nod.
“Go, Sin!” Jill shouted.
Margot was suddenly there, kneeling down to check on Hagan and Bailey.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Cincinnati said as she got up and headed to the back rooms. The first thing she encountered was a sleep-drunk Nick staggering in to the kitchen, his body not quite ready for the fight.
“It’s me, Nick,” she said when she ran right in to his chest. “We’re being attacked!”
In the candle light, his hair was a mess, his eyes puffy from sleep, his face hanging hard as he tried to make himself wake up. He took in the entire scene with a look of horror. Even though he’d been jolted out of bed, he said, “I’ll get the first aid kit. Sin, you go do…whatever it is you have to…wait, is it safe?”
“I got it,” Cincinnati said. “Just help Bailey and Hagan.”
He nodded and she hustled through the kitchen in time to glimpse the shadow of a man trying to run out the back door. Jagger burst out of the bedroom and shot through the hallway after him. The second the back door was opened, Cincinnati heard an ooof! and then a struggle. She got around the back and found the shadow of Jagger wrestling the man down.
When he went down and stayed down, Jagger said, “Go check on Ballard.” He didn’t know he was talking to Cincinnati. He didn’t even look back as he wrapped the man up and started exerting lethal pressure on him.
Lena started screaming in the back room.
Cincinnati was about to go when Jagger’s man came to life and started climbing up the wall in an attempt to get back to his feet. Jagger loosened up the man with three brutal shots, but they were short blows in a compact space. In other words, the guy kept coming.
“This maggot cut Ballard,” Jagger hissed. “Sin, please go!”
If she left, though, the guy would get the jump on Jagger. She could see that as plain as day. Finally, Jagger squirmed around the man, got him in a figure four lock around the throat.
The sleeper.
“Help!” Lena screamed from the bedroom behind her.
Sarah rushed into the kitchen, then back to where Jagger was struggling. Cincinnati turned and said, “Back room, Ballard’s been cut.”
“I’m on it,” Sarah said.
Cincinnati moved in, knife out, ready to go. The man s
aw this, put on a burst of energy that had Jagger struggling.
“How many more of you are out there?” Sin growled, her arms hurting, so hopping mad they’d broken in and tried to kill them.
The question slowed him down, gave Jagger a slight advantage. The man blew his snotty nose at her, some of the spray catching her face. She didn’t even bother to wipe it off that’s how focused she was.
“Help me tie him up,” Jagger grunted as he finally locked the choke hold. That’s when she launched herself at the man. She drove her knife deep into his belly, causing him to bark out in pain.
“How many?!” she screamed in his face. She felt the blood flowing on her arms where his buddies had sliced her up.
“Screw you!” he groaned.
She yanked the knife out and stuck him again, causing him to fall into a weakened state of venomous cursing.
“Dammit Sin, we need to tie this guy up, not kill him!” Jagger said. The injured man was slipping away, his legs buckling and pulling Jagger down with him.
“I beg to differ, Jagger.” Then, to their prisoner, she said, “One more time, douchebag, and if you don’t answer, you’re going out the hard way.”
“You heard me the first time, lady,” he grumbled, blood and saliva flicking off his lips.
And with that he made one last squirming attempt to break loose. She ripped the blade out and drove it in one last time. The fight stopped as he went still with agony. Leaning into the knife, both hands on the handle so it wouldn’t slip, she shifted her weight forward and shoved the knife down the length of his stomach with everything she had. After that, she turned and pulled it sideways.
She’d cut a fifteen inch trench right down the front of him, flowering open his insides. When it was done, she backed up, pulled the blade out and both heard and felt the slop dropping out of him onto the floor. When Jagger let him go, he dropped to the ground, dead.
“What the hell, Sin?” Jagger barked.
“Sack up, pilot,” she said.
“We still don’t know if there’s more or not,” he argued. “You have to think about things like that.”