Apocalypsis: Book 2 (Warpaint) (33 page)

“No.”

I traded my sadness in for anger.  It was the only way to make sure he’d be safe.  “Peter, I’m only going to say this once more.  Get.  The hell. 
Out.
  I don’t have the time or the energy to take care of your skinny ass when those canners come, so beat it.”

“Nicely said.  Now come on,” said Trip, grabbing Peter by the arm and dragging him to the door.  “I need your help moving these kids.”

One of them swayed just in time, causing Peter to have to grab him behind the back so he wouldn’t fall.  Peter looked over and glared at me.  “We will discuss this at home,” he said firmly.  

I grimaced back.  “If we’re lucky.  Now, go.”

I turned away from him, carefully unwrapping the grenade, letting the cloth that had secured it fall to the sides.

Trip opened the door cautiously, looked out, and then led all the kids out of it in a single-file line.

LaShay was the last one out, and she hesitated, looking back at me.  “I don’t know who the hell you are, but whatever.  Thanks.  Do me a favor would you?  If you have another one of those?  Pull the pin and put it in that guy Dave’s pants.  No one deserves to have his dick blown sky high more than that guy does.”

I nodded.  “It will be my pleasure to serve him his dick on a platter.”

She smiled.  “You and I are gonna be friends. 
If
you live.”

“I hope so,” I said, trying to smile back.  I was afraid it came out as more of a frown, but she was gone before I could fix it.

I turned back to the kids, moving cautiously over to the one who had talked to Peter about the grenade.  I didn’t really want to, but it seemed wrong to be planning to do a mercy killing without at least saying goodbye to the person first.

He was the only one awake now, his head towards the door and his lower body facing the opposite wall.  I wasn’t sure if the others had just fallen asleep or died, but they were still, their eyes closed.

“Hi,” I said as I approached, crouching down by his head.

“Hi,” he whispered back.  His face was a grayish-white, a sheen of sweat glistening on his upper lip and forehead.

“What’s your name?”

“Julio.”

“Hey.  Nice to meet you, Julio.  I’m Bryn.”

“You from around here?” he asked, a pitiful chuckle making its way out of his throat.  “I’m trying to pick you up.  That’s my best line.”

The tears were going down my cheeks again, but I smiled through them.  “Nah.  I’m from up near Orlando.  Maitland.  And your line’s pretty good.  I’ll bet when the world was a different place, you were quite the charmer.”

He smiled weakly.  “Yeah, I was.  I played soccer on our school team.  Center forward.  I had a girlfriend, and she was the prettiest girl in our school.  She helped the soccer coach, that’s how we met.  She said she liked being with the guy who had the highest scoring average in the district.  Her name was Yasmine.  She was beautiful.  Like you.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say except thank you.

“I’m gonna see her again, when you drop that grenade in here.  So thank you for that.  I’ve been looking forward to seeing her for weeks now.”  He looked down towards his lower body.  “Only thing they haven’t taken from me yet is my kicking leg.  I guess I still have that going for me.”  He lifted it up and wiggled his foot, laughing a little, I think at the ridiculousness of it all, before he started to choke.

We both sat there waiting for the spasms to subside.  He had a lot of fluid in his lungs.  I ignored the difficulties he was having in favor of admiring the leg he was proud to still have.  It was still muscled and strong-looking.  It had to be some kind of miracle.

“Are you sure?” I whispered, now doubting Peter’s triage and wondering if we could maybe save one more kid - the soccer star with his kicking leg and heart still intact.

He nodded just barely.  “Yeah.  I’m done here with this life.  You’re doing the right thing, putting us all out of our misery.  We’ve been tortured enough.  Just let us go.”

I nodded, now no longer able to speak.  He was so much braver than I would have been in his situation.  I took some hiccuping breaths to try and get myself under control, resting my hand on his chest.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, in and out.  I felt his body rise and fall with the effort.

He opened his eyes again and said softly, “Don’t beat yourself up about this, okay?  You’re a good person, I can tell.  The world is a different place than it was before.  You gotta do what you can to survive.”

“Not like these guys did,” I said.

“No.  Not like these guys did.  Never lose track of your humanity.  That’s their problem.  They’re not human anymore, they’re animals.  They’ve just gone bad.  Rabid.  They need to be put down.”

The sound of the door opening felt like my signal to go, so I drew my hand back and moved to stand.  But the look in Julio’s eyes as he tipped his head back caused me to freeze in a half-crouched position, the grenade held down near my lower belly.

“Oh, no,” he whispered.

And then the last bits of his strength went into the scream that I knew I’d hear in my nightmares for the rest of my life, if I even lived to sleep again.

“He’s here!  Throw it now!  Pull the pin and throw it!”

***

I turned, moving the grenade behind my back so the canner wouldn’t see it.

My eyes rose from the ground and made contact with Julio’s nemesis.  The infamous
Dave
.  Loco.  King of the canners.

He was big.  He could have played linebacker for my school’s football team, his shoulders were so broad.  He wore a blood and dirt-stained jersey, and his hair was long and greasy, kept away from his face in a ponytail behind his head.  He smiled, and I could tell immediately that dental hygiene had not followed him into this world any more than personal hygiene had.

“Well, well, well.  What do we have here?  Another dinner guest maybe?”  He tilted his head to the side, looking me up and down with his eyes only.  “Or maybe not.  Maybe you’ve just come to join me.  I’m getting tired of the little boys.  Maybe I’ll try you on for size instead.”

He took a step forward.

My finger itched to pull the pin out of that grenade and throw it in his face.  But I wanted to live, and if I threw it standing so close to him, I’d be gone too.

My eyes scanned the dimensions and makeup of the room we were in.

Dave stood between me and the door.

All the bodies that I could trip on were behind me.

I had a knife in my moccasin and the grenade at my back.

Chances were that Dave had at least a knife and probably a gun in his pants somewhere.  But he was stupid enough to think right now that he didn’t need them, and I had to let him delude himself for as long as possible.  I had to close the distance between us and get him down before he brought either weapon out to use on me.

I sucked in my gut as hard as I could to make my pants looser, using one hand to pull the back of my waistband out and the other to tuck the grenade inside.  I prayed it would stay there, half in and half out, until I exited the building.

“Get your hands out from behind your back where I can see them,” he said in a menacing tone.

I pulled them away quickly and put them out to my sides.  “I’ve got nothing.  Just tucking my pants in.  They fall down sometimes because they’re so loose,” I said, smiling shyly.  I was pulling on every single scene I’d ever watched in a movie where a girl acts innocent, trying to channel those actresses’ facial expressions and body language into my own through sheer willpower.  “I’m hungry.  Do you guys have any food?”

The monster looked at me mockingly.  “I might believe your horrendously awful acting if you hadn’t somehow managed to get all of my meat out of here before I arrived.  So I know you ain’t hungry.  You’re here to cause trouble.”  He smiled menacingly.  “And guess what, bitch?  You’ve found it.”  He held out his arms and made a couple pelvic thrusts in my direction.  “Now come over here and get your medicine.”

“Don’t go,” whispered Julio.  “Please don’t go.”

The monster’s face went beet red and spittle flew out of his mouth when he yelled.  “Don’t talk,
meat! 
No one hears you!”

“You hear me, demon,” said Julio, in a voice that surprised me with its strength.  “You can’t hurt me anymore, either.  You take nothing from me that I won’t give.”

“I’m warning you …,” said the monster.

“You’re going to burn in hell,” said Julio, interrupting him, laughing now and choking a little, too.

I could see his body convulsing out of the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t risk looking down at him or touching him like I wanted to.  I wished I could rest my hand on his chest and somehow give him some of my strength.  It wasn’t right that he was going to die like this.  What had been done here was nothing less than pure evil, and I had to stop it, not matter what.  Even if it meant killing us all.

Dave advanced on us both, so I took a step forward to meet him, stopping to spread my feet shoulders-width apart.

“Come easy and it won’t hurt as much,” he said.  “Maybe I’ll even let you sleep in my bed tonight.”  He reached out to take my arm.

“Never gonna happen,” I said, slapping his hand away.  I wanted him closer.  I was hoping he would try to choke me.  I’d practiced getting out of that move thousands of times.

He disappointed me, though, surging forward and grabbing the top of my head by taking a fistful of hair and pulling it hard towards him.

The grenade began slipping down my shorts, and it distracted me from making the move that could have ended the fight right there.  Loco’s balls were dangling out in the open, just begging for a nut crusher, but instead of kicking him, I grabbed for my butt, stopping the bomb’s downward progression to the floor in the nick of time.

“Come on, bitch.  Let’s see if I can help you change your mind.”  He tried to drag me out of the room by my hair, but I dug my heels in, trying not to pass out from the pain shooting down through my skull.

A few hairs ripped out of my scalp, and I wondered for one ridiculous split-second how hideous I’d look with a giant patch of hair missing at the top of my head.

Dave stopped walking and took a step towards me, letting go of my hair to slap me hard across the face.

The force of it flung me sideways, and I lost my grip on the grenade.  It fell the rest of the way down my shorts and out the bottom.

I lifted my leg up in a desperate bid to stop the bomb from hitting the ground, but all I did was provide a ramp for it to roll down and shoot off of.  It landed on the floor behind me and rolled a few feet, stopping against the side of Julio’s head.  I took two steps backwards, trying to get nearer to it.

“What the fuck?” said Dave, staring at it with a shocked expression.  “Is that a …?”  He looked up at me, fury in his eyes.  “That’s a goddamn grenade!  You were gonna blow up my fucking meat locker!”

He rushed me with both hands out, planning to wring the life out of me or snap my neck, I wasn’t sure which.

I waited for him to come, my hands twitching at my sides, readying themselves for the moves they would have to make, and make quickly if I were going to get out of this alive.

His big, thick fingers closed around my neck at the same time he hit into me like a human bulldozer.

My head whipped backwards and my breath was cut off in an instant.

I brought my hands up and over his wrists, using the technique my dad insisted I memorize to slam them apart and off of my windpipe.

Before he could reposition them or do anything else to disable me, I took the monster’s wrist and twisted it out and down, forcing his shoulder to the side.

I slid my other hand down to execute a move I’d used over and over, every day for more than ten years, twisting his arm up behind his back.

My right knee came up into his face next and smashed it a couple times, stunning him in the process.

I loosened the grip I had on his arm so he could stand, giving him the false hope that he’d soon be able to come after me.

As soon as his knee was no longer bent and in the way, I delivered a hard kick to his nuts.

He groaned and doubled over, but he didn’t go down.

I’d let go of his left arm and realized my mistake when he reached around behind his back and came out with a knife.

Before I had time to move out of range, he slashed me with it, catching me in the arm.

I danced away, the stinging and wetness I felt dripping down telling me he’d gotten me good.  My arm still worked, but it felt numb all of a sudden.

The monster took two stumbling steps back, his knife held out in front of him, dripping with my blood.  He held this other hand on his thigh, as if trying to push the pain out of his balls by pressing on his quadriceps.

“You’re gonna pay for that, you bitch,” he growled, panting after.

“Come on over here and make me pay, then, wuss.  Letting a girl my size beat you.  I wonder if all those guys know how much you actually suck at fighting.”

He moved the knife until it was eye level for him, pointing it at me while squinting his eyes, sighting down the blade as he moved it, drawing patterns in the air.

“First I’m going to cut out your eyes.  Then your nose will come off - Duke likes to eat noses.”  He smiled, giving me an up front and personal view of his deeply yellow teeth.  “Then your lips and ears.  You won’t be so pretty then, will you?  But I’ll let you live.  You’re going to be my personal slave.  I’ll take the fingers off one of your hands, of course.  I don’t want you getting too frisky.  But we need to keep the fingers on one hand, so you can put them on my …”

I didn’t want to hear the rest.  I
couldn’t
hear it.  He was wandering around in an insane landscape that I couldn’t allow to become my reality.  I strode towards him, my eyes never leaving the knife.

He lashed out at me as soon as I was within range, but I arched my body backwards, letting the blade whistle past through the air above me.

As his arm continued its backward motion, I stepped up right in front of him, punching him
one
,
two
,
three
times hard in the face, destroying his nose and sending his head snapping back with each strike.