Apocalypsis: Book 2 (Warpaint) (13 page)

“Maybe I should.”

“Why?  Why deny yourself the ultimate expression of love?”

“Sex is the ultimate expression of love?  I think you’ve read too many romances.”

“Well, I’m no expert.  But I think it
can
be.  Since we’re both virgins, I guess we’re just going to have to wait to find out.  But I, for one, am not going to hold back, just because the rest of the world sucks right now.  When the right guy comes along, I’m going to go for it.”

“That’s easy for you to say.  You can’t get pregnant.”

“True.  But like I said, you can mess around without getting pregnant.  And besides, maybe someday you’ll want to have a baby.”

“Pfft.
  Yeah, right.  Like I’d want to bring a child into a world like this.  Don’t be stupid.”

“What’s so stupid about letting the world go on?  Letting
life
go on?  Things aren’t so bad for us now, are they?  We have a place to live, a family, a pink poodle…”

Buster seemed to know somehow that he was being talked about.  He jumped up and danced around, his tail wagging so hard it wiggled his butt all over the place.

I dragged him back over to me.  “Come here, Spazmo.  Settle down before you pee yourself.”  I played with his ears while I contemplated Peter’s words.

He continued.  “I think once you get a handle on the canner situation, we’ll find that living here is pretty awesome.  We have a place to sleep, clothes, shoes that don’t stink like dead fish, food, and the constant entertainment of male egos gone wild.  What more could we want?”

“Pizza?”

Peter laughed.  “Okay.  I’ll give you that.”

Our heart-to-heart was interrupted by Bodo coming back, making no secret of the fact that he was injured.  We both got up and went into the kitchen part of our hut.

“Oh, dat hurts,” Bodo said as he walked towards us.  “I bumped my arm on dat tree over dare.  I think I need a doctor.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Just go lay down on your bed.”

“Are you coming?  Becausse I have pain, you know.  Bad pain.”

“Sounds like Mr. Perfection is in need of some nursing, Bryn.  Why don’t you go help him out?” teased Peter.

I stuck my tongue out at him.  “Shush.  And remember,” I whispered, “no sharing our little secrets, right?”

“My lips are sealed,” said Peter, whispering back.

“I can hear you in dare,” said Bodo from the doorway.  “I’m coming in, so you can stop talking about me now.”

“No one was talking about you,” I said, trying to deflate his ego just a little bit.  I was pretty sure that letting Bodo’s head get any bigger would create problems for me - making him that much bolder about coming after me.  And I really didn’t think I had the willpower to resist too much of an effort on his part.

“Oh, dat makes me sad.  You didn’t tell Peter about us being naked in da shower togedder?”

I nearly choked. 
“Gah! 
What?!”

“You guys were naked in the shower, Bryn?  You kind of glossed over that part.”

I glared at Peter.  “Hello?  Secrets?  Remember?”  I turned to Bodo.  “I was
not
naked, Bodo, and you know it.  You’re the only one who was naked.”

“Well, that explains it,” said Peter.

“Explains what?” I asked, exasperated.

“How you know he’s utter perfection in the body department.”

“Peter!  Shut
up!”

Bodo laughed.  “She really said dat?  Oh, dat’s cool.  I like dat.  I am perfect.  Dat has a nice sound.”

“I did not say you were perfect, idiot.”

“Peter said you did.  He’s not a liar, dat Peter.  He tells da truth.”

“I said your
body
is perfect.  That’s it.”

“Oh,” he said, immediately sounding disappointed.  “But not my mind.  Oh, dat’s sad.  Dat’s very, very sad.”

I felt bad.  He really did sound depressed now.  “I didn’t say your mind isn’t attractive.  I just happened to be talking about your body at the time.”

“So you are saying dat you do find my mind attractive, den?”

I was being backed into a corner and didn’t know what to say.  Bodo’s head was already big enough.  “No comment.”

“Dat’s
not
a no!” said Bodo, back to being full of himself again.  “I can take dat, Bryn.  Dat’s not a problem.  You like me, I know dat.  Pretty soon you will say dat I can be Mr. Bryn.  Dat will be my birthday present dis year.”

He passed by us and went into the bedroom area, lying down on his back and putting his good arm behind his head.  The other remained at his side.  “Somebodyyyyyy …,” he called out.  “Bodo is hungryyyyyy.”

I looked at Peter.  “You do it.  I’m liable to shove it up his nose if I have to wait on him.”

Peter chuckled.  “Your wish is my command, Mrs. Bodo.”

“Ha, ha,” I said, refusing to rise to his bait.  I didn’t want to say anything else and have him analyzing my tone and deciding that I sounded as if I really kind of liked the idea of being officially attached to this German nutcase.

***

My first order of business when I woke up was to go talk to Celia.  I was happy to find Coli there with her when I arrived, after only getting lost twice on my way.  When I’d first come to the swamp a few days ago, everything looked the same to me, but now I was able to tell some of the trees apart and I was recognizing different patterns to their arrangement, making it easier to find my way around.

“Hey, Celia, what’s up?” I asked as I walked past Coli and approached her bedside.  She was sitting up and actually looked pretty good, all things considered.  Coli stayed outside the hut, allowing us some privacy.

“Well, I’m still missing part of an arm,” Celia said sarcastically, not even looking at me.

“If that’s supposed to make me feel bad for you, it’s not working,” I said.  Truth was, it did remind me how much crap she’d been through, and I did feel bad for her about that; but I knew the last thing she needed right now was pity.

“You’re too much of a hardass to feel bad for me.”

“Not true.  I didn’t mock your mom’s shell art when I could have.  That’s my soft side keeping my mouth shut.”

She finally acknowledged my presence enough to glare at me.  “I see your softer side has taken a vacation today, though.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t be marshmallows all the time.  I knew a girl one time who could swing a mean baseball bat.  She taught me that.”

Celia smiled absently and then went serious again.  “That girl is dead.”

“Nope,” I said, refusing to give into her pity party, “that girl is sitting right here in front of me and is about to help me lay plans to annihilate some bad guys.”

I sat down next to her, cross-legged, searching her face.  “I’m not going to play the poor Celia game with you every time I see you now.  It’s over.  We’re past it.  If you want to cry about your terrible life, pick someone else other than me to whine to.  My job is to get you back on your feet and kicking A.  And I need your help with figuring out how to take these guys down.”

“You suck, Bryn.”

“Yeah.  So I’ve heard.  So tell me … how many canners were in that group that was keeping you and the other kids?”

She answered me in monotones.  “I saw eight.”

“How old are they?”

“The oldest was probably eighteen.  The youngest about twelve.  The meanest one was probably about seventeen.”

“So the oldest wasn’t the leader?”

“No.  The oldest one was kind of dumb or something.  They called him Brick, as in brick-head.  He mostly just did what he was told.  He was the muscle.  His job was to …”  She put her head down, unable to finish her sentence.

I finished it for her.  “He was the one who took the kids and hurt them, right?”

She nodded her head silently, a tear tracking down her face and dropping into her hands below.

“Okay, what about the others?  What did they do?”

She took a deep breath and said, “Some of them just stayed quiet, doing whatever Loco told them to do.  Others were really loud and wild.  Like
really
wild.  Like crazy.”

“The leader’s name is Loco?” 
How appropriate.

“No.  I don’t think that’s what his parents named him.  I think it’s a nickname the kids who were locked up made for him.  His friends called him Dave.”

“You said they stay in a big house?”

“Yeah.  A mansion by the ocean.  It has a high wall around it and lots of trees.  The house is huge with marble floors and stuff.”

“Where did you stay?  And the other kids … were they with you or somewhere else?”

“There’s a small house kind of, by the pool.  We were all kept in there.”

“How did you get away?”

“There was a big fight one night, in the pool house.  Some of the new kids tried to attack the canners.  I slipped out in all the confusion and ran to the wall.  I climbed a tree and went over it and kept going until I passed out in some bushes in some neighborhood.  I woke up later, maybe the next day, and just kept walking until I got to my parents’ house.  I took our old canoe here and that’s it.”

“You did all that with your arm … freshly … injured like that?”  I glanced at her wrapped stump, noticing the bandage looked very clean.

“Yeah.  They have a kid there who’s like a doctor.  His name is Sean.  He makes sure everyone is treated after being cut up.”

“That’s … uh … nice.  I guess.”

She tipped her head up at me, a truly malicious look in her eyes.  “No.  It’s not nice.  It’s not nice at all.  He does it so we’ll live longer and keep their meat fresh, Bryn.  He’s evil and awful and he needs to
die. 
Slowly and painfully.  I don’t care if he’s not the one calling the shots.”

She said it with such conviction, I knew he was going to be at the top of her list for total annihilation, when and if she ever saw him again.

“No, you’re right,” I agreed. “He’s a monster.  But I’m grateful he took care of your arm so you could escape and get back to your family here.  So right before I kill him for you, I’ll thank him for saving your life.”

She snorted.  “Not if I get to him first.”

I smiled.  I liked her fighting spirit.  “Can you give us an address to that mansion?”

“Yes.  I etched it into my brain, hoping someday I’d be able to go back and end them.”  She was staring off into the distance, as if playing out her retribution in her mind.

“Okay, good.  Can you tell me what they have for weapons?”

“Rifles.  Guns.  A fucking flamethrower … ”

“A flamethrower?”

“No.  A
fucking
flamethrower.”

“A fucking flamethrower.  That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.  But it sure makes for an interesting barbecue.”

“Oh, man.  That’s
messed up.”
It made my stomach turn just thinking about it.

“Yeah.  I kept waiting for it to run out of fuel but it never seemed to.”

“Well, it will eventually.  What else do they have?”

“The usual cannibal implements - machetes, knives, bolt cutters, saws …”

Bolt cutters?  Saws? 
I didn’t want to know any more about that, so I distracted her with another question.  “So other than over the wall, how do we get into this place?”

“Front gate is always locked.  There’s a tiny door in the wall on one of the sides of the property, for gardening I think, but it’s locked too.  I tried to use that before going to the tree.  Climbing with one arm is a real bitch.”

“I can imagine.  Good thing you built up your arm muscle with all that batting practice.”

She half smiled before getting serious again.  “They have two big dogs too.  Mean ones.  They eat kids too.”

“Great.  So we have to find some rat poison, I guess.”

Celia smiled.  “I’d like to serve that little meal, if you don’t mind.  I never hated an animal before, but these things aren’t really animals - they’re monsters.  Just like Loco.”

“Sounds like they all are,” I said quietly.

“Maybe not all,” she said, shrugging.  “I got the impression that a few of them were too afraid to say anything, but that they didn’t agree with what Loco was doing.  Sean is one of them, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to kill him if I ever see his ugly face again.”

“They may not have agreed, but they didn’t leave, did they?”

“No, they didn’t.  But maybe they felt like they couldn’t, or they’d end up being the next meal.  I mean, first of all, the dogs were used sometimes for punishment purposes.  And Loco’s group wasn’t the only one around.  Some of the other kids I was with in the pool house told me about what they’d seen.  Jerry, a kid with only one leg left, he’d been there for a week or more.  When he was conscious, he told me about how they’d taken him and a couple others from a nearby town and had almost gotten killed by another group of canners on their way back.  It’s like a canner war out there.  Everyone’s fighting over bodies now instead of beans and rice.”

“That is just so wrong.”  I shook my head, frustrated with my vocabulary.  “That’s not the right word.  I can’t think of how to say how wrong that is.”

“It’s evil is what it is,” said Celia.  “Pure evil.”

“Yeah.”  I had nothing to add to that.  It did seem to be the most apt description.

Coli came over and joined us, saving me from hearing more.  My gratitude made me feel a little bit ashamed of myself.  A part of me was thinking that I should sit here and listen to every awful thing that Celia had to say, as a way of making things better for her.  But then I wasn’t really sure if talking about it and reliving the horrors was the best therapy.  I decided that I’d let her figure that out, and not feel bad about not wanting to hear the details of canner madness.

“Hey,” said Coli, sitting down next to us.  “How are you feeling, Cee?”

“Fine,” she said, looking away.

“She’s ready to kill a couple dogs and a canner or two.  That’s as much as I’ve been able to figure out so far,” I said, trying to lighten the mood a little.

“A dog?  That yappy poodle thing that Bryn brought?”

I gave an exaggerated gasp.  “Who, Buster?  How dare you?”

“No,” answered Celia, again in monotones.  “The dogs that the canners had for protection.”

“Oh.  I get it,” said Coli, looking at me as if seeking direction.