by Ryan Harding
“The mace!” she yelled to Patrick, hoping it might remind Orange to return to his special Gin vigil while Adam and Patrick finished him off. With two blades in his skull and none the worse for wear—so far not even a sound of inconvenience—Patrick probably needed to find a mail collection box with a hand grenade in the next four seconds.
He spun around with an outstretched arm, the blade stuck through his hand on a collision course with her face. She flailed backward, knocking Adam down and tripping over him. The blade missed by inches. Arteries of grass peeked through various cracks in the asphalt, but did little to smooth her fall. The rock scraped her arm as she hit on her side. She and Adam formed a broken V.
Gin scrambled up, stung from the abrasions of the parking lot. Adam would be in the most danger with his limited mobility and she needed to protect him somehow. Thankfully she saw Patrick reengage him and find another knife—the one Adam jammed into Orange’s skull, which should have ended this whole nightmare in conjunction with the arrow.
She glanced over to see Adam on his hands and feet with his face down. Poor kid, in such pain he couldn’t look up to assess his own safety. She didn’t know what they could do for him if they survived the next five minutes. Her best weapon still stuck in Orange’s shoulder, she wasn’t sure what to do in the next five seconds.
Patrick crouched in a knife-fighting stance. Orange stood without pretense, examining the metal struck through his palm. He slipped it through the hole like a scabbard. Patrick struck before he pulled it out, a quick knife jab into Orange’s throat. Blood cascaded from the puncture as if from a bloated sac, drenching the mace in ichor so dark it looked completely black in the weak glow of the flames. Orange fumbled his machete, and Gin had her best chance to arm herself. Patrick advanced, cutting in a wide swath, and Orange obliged him by retreating from the strike. It separated him an important step from the fallen blade, and then another.
Gin took her cue and ran to seize it. If she could get behind him again, plunging a bigger blade like this through the base of his skull might finally put him out of commission if he had any kind of nerve center. She began to circumnavigate, pacing around Patrick by ten yards. Orange noticed her, but he didn’t fixate this time. Maybe he still wanted her last. Past them, Adam tried to steady himself, upright at last. Orange could probably knock him over by blowing in his direction, even through the gas mask.
Without the distraction of the long blade, Orange reached for the mace with his good hand. Patrick lunged and snatched the grip himself. He about-faced with the chain roped over his shoulder, like a man trying to haul a car. The mace detached.
Yes! They had him now. Give Adam the knife and they would all be armed. They could cut him down.
Patrick swung the mace like an Olympian, though Orange stood outside its arc and didn’t need to budge. Gin tried to maneuver herself into his blind spot, a few yards away, mulling the best place to stick him. She needed something to wound him and create an opening for Patrick if Patrick didn’t create an opening of his own in Orange’s skull with that mace.
Patrick flipped the knife over to Adam, where it landed at his feet.
Gin gritted her teeth. You son of a bitch! Orange turned to see where the knife went and abruptly switched course. Easy prey, easy weapon. The man who wouldn’t flambé Agent Orange because he wanted to bait the black ops soldiers didn’t “accidentally” endanger a teenager; that was the whole point. Whether it worked out as the perfect distraction to use the mace or Adam wound up dead before he delivered a solid swing, Patrick would be content either way.
Gin ran, heedless of the danger, and hacked the blade across his vulnerable back from left shoulder to right flank, half of an X. He snapped upright in a shudder—was he beginning to feel the wounds the more they inflicted upon him?—and turned around. The mace hit him in the side of his mask with a satisfying thunk. It didn’t do as much damage as hoped, but it rocked his head viciously to the left and knocked his mask askew.
“Hit him!” Patrick commanded, trying to set for another swing.
She swung in an X pattern, backing him off. Patrick struck again. Orange sidestepped it and in a fluid motion reached to retrieve the arrow jammed in his head. Then it was Patrick’s turn to fend off an attack with the flat of his hand, too off balance to dodge it. He screamed as the arrow pierced it, stopping it right in front of his face.
Gin rushed, realizing Patrick’s hand wasn’t the only one they were about to lose; the upper hand was slipping fast too. She aimed to cripple Orange, remembering Patrick had a lot of success with the trap. The advantage hadn’t held after his little “death” a moment ago (had he somehow regenerated like Patrick predicted?), but it slowed him once and it could do it again. She buried the blade in his hamstring, avoiding bone, and managed to pound it in all the way to the hilt. She hauled it back out, though not quick enough to avoid an intercepting fist to the face. He didn’t turn to look, just lashed out blindly and struck gold with the back of his hand. The worst of Hoon’s meltdowns stopped before this stage and she had never been punched before. It felt like she’d been hit with one of Adam’s tube sock cans.
She lost the blade and her sense of up and down. When she claimed it again, she was on the ground. She saw Patrick flail the mace again, but much more weakly. The blow landed at Orange’s face, but it barely slowed him. He seized the wrist of Patrick’s perforated hand and the back of his head and violently thrust the arrow until Patrick’s hand slapped his forehead as though to squash a mosquito, the arrow angled through his eye socket. The chain links of the mace slapped the ground, relinquished. There was a faint moan and a sickening crunch, like someone stepped on a Styrofoam cup. Blood spurted between his fingers. Patrick dropped to his knees and slumped over face first. The arrow protruded from the back of his skull, a piece of rubbery-looking tissue stuck to the point. If any arrow had remained on the other side of his hand, the ground pushed it through. A black puddle oozed beneath his skull.
Orange stepped on the back of Patrick’s neck (more crunching, and the point of the arrow shifted slightly) as he took hold of the fallen mace. His left leg looked a bit shaky, although it neutralized the encouragement of the injury now that a dangerous madman had a crazy medieval weapon to use on her and Adam.
Adam.
She hunted for the machete, in time to see Adam claim it and move between her and Agent Orange.
“Adam, no!” she shouted. Her mouth was full of blood, the taste bitter on her tongue. She pulled herself to a crouch and stood, face throbbing.
Adam swung the blade overhead with both hands, Conan style. It couldn’t have been his full strength, but he buried it in the top of Orange’s skull. It wedged into place, solid as an arrow at the archery range. Streams of blood poured from the fork of handle and blade, trickling down the front of his gas mask. It bisected the top of his head, the grip sticking out like the bill of a ball cap.
He stood motionless, as though in shock. He’d begun to seem like a crazy variation on a martyred saint, except he could use all the blades that pierced him.
Go down, you bastard!
Orange snatched his wrist. Adam yelped.
Gin retrieved a knife from the ground, the one Patrick tossed.
Adam stumbled away, freeing himself from the wrist lock. He looked back to see Orange midway through a launch of the mace.
Gin could only watch.
The spiked ball smashed into Adam’s face with tremendous impact, easily wielded with one hand by Orange. The back of his head blew apart as the mace pounded all the way through his skull, detonating all the interceding meat into an explosion of wet chunks of bone and brain. An instant shower of glistening confetti exploded at Gin as if fed through a leaf shredder. She opened her mouth instinctively to scream, and found herself choking and spitting out the giblets of Adam’s cranium.
Adam’s body went slack and collapsed to its knees. The mace had rolled past his neck to his back. Orange hauled it back out like a fish from a stream t
o let the velocity decimate what remained of the head, leaving him with only a U shape on top of his neck. Orange cleared away fragments which adhered to his mask and flung them to the asphalt with the outstretched fingers of his glove.
The rest of Adam’s body slumped over, still twitching.
Gin screamed. Orange’s head snapped to attention. The machete seemed downright comical, stuck in his head. He finally seemed to remember it and slapped the top of the handle to bounce it from its trench. The position of his head never deviated, keeping her lined up in his sight.
And then there was one.
He was a blur through the tears in Gin’s eyes. Pain tore through her soul. With Patrick, she lost a valuable resource, but someone who considered her a survival chess piece. Adam was a friend who’d died to protect her. She wiped her eyes, though the blur was preferable as a barrier between her and the world; it made it less real, more like a dream.
Orange made no move to collect the dislodged blade, as if daring her to take it. One on one for the final battle, Gin, just you and me.
Screw that.
Gin ran.
She returned to the store, thinking of the trap in the back and the slim chance he might have forgotten about it. She vaulted over the sprung panel of the front door, and realized it didn’t matter if he’d forgotten because he’d get a nice reminder when he saw her jump the wire again. Shit.
She ran down the aisle to the back of the store, past the shelves where Adam made the blackjacks with socks and cans. Orange’s steps were heavy behind her. He slowed down considerably to climb past the board of spikes he’d reconnected with earlier. She noticed every other step hit the ground harder. The stab through his leg gave her a great advantage, and hopefully he couldn’t heal unless he stopped to rest. The downside was if he really had a regenerative process, everything they managed to do to him a moment ago would become null and void if she escaped.
It sure as hell beat the alternative, though, when she’d brought a knife to a tank fight.
She jumped the wire at the exit.
Always know your escape route. Left takes you to the street.
Patrick said the path was clear of traps. She raced past the back of the building, now officially out of “next moves.” The reality truly set in that she was probably the last survivor. He had no more distractions, no one else to chase around while Patrick plotted silly pranks against his faceless government and sent her and Adam off on cryptic errands. She had only her own strategy and experience to help her now.
She considered doubling back to the store for a possible hiding place, but doubted she had enough distance to pull it off. Plus there was still the fire light and the complication of two entrances if she even reached a dark aisle without setting off a trap.
The thump-THUMP pounding renewed behind Gin, like her own frightened heartbeat trying to catch up to her. She kept to the middle of the street as she ran past the empty buildings. The moonlight was weaker now, offering only a faint cross-section upon Morgan’s defunct downtown. Black squiggles spiraled through her vision from the transition of fire glow to deeper dark. The strip of deteriorating buildings suggested an alien landscape.
A loud scraping sound dared her to look back, like something dragged behind a car. She wouldn’t turn her head, but decided it was probably the spiked ball on the street. He was letting it dip now, perhaps tiring a bit. Not nearly as much as someone should with a sliced leg, a morning star wound, and a huge split in his effing dome, but she was glad for it.
As if to level the playing field, she stumbled and nearly twisted her ankle.
Seriously? she thought, but she kept her feet beneath her and her arms and legs pumping. The middle of the street should be the safest as far as traps, but the street itself was tenuous after decades of neglect. The asphalt was broken and crumbling under her shoes, and in daylight would have looked like patches of fish scales. The uneven surface could put her on her face.
So much for not being trapped.
The sliding sound of metal scraping rock seemed closer now, and a quick look back revealed a deeper swirl of ink in the darkness a couple of blocks back. Her survival sprint could only feed off adrenaline for so long. She already felt her lungs heating up like the burners of a stove, each breath heavier and harder to circulate the air. She was horrified when a distant voice in her mind suggested she just succumb and let the mace finish this whole nightmare. Her body rebelled against the impulse, powered by a new burst of speed.
Submission is for the weak.
If she didn’t have the fight within her, she’d still be with Hoon. It didn’t matter that it might have prevented all of this if she stayed with him, because that would have been no life at all. Here there was hope if she was willing to battle, and her will was inexhaustible.
She hooked to the right of the next intersection before she consciously formulated a plan. It looked to be a dead end, but not before a few branching streets offered her options. The two-story buildings formed a wall against the available moon light, which would have been nice if he couldn’t see plain as day with his goggles. She liked the prospect of doubling back on him—it had been an effective temporary solution today after the lake house—so she hurried to the second alley on her right. She could only hope she didn’t run face-first into a dumpster or bounce off garbage cans like a human pinball.
Or find one of his stupid traps.
Gin padded down the alley as quietly as she could, a hand clamped over her mouth so she would breathe through her nose. Her lungs protested, but the sound was like a pin drop compared to all the gasping. After a moment she heard the faint pounding of his footsteps and the rattle of the chain, a weak echo. It wasn’t getting closer.
He went left, the wrong direction.
She badly wanted to sprint back the way she came, but she had to maintain silence. She actually tiptoed for the first time in ages. It was a relief to reach the end of the alley and a new street.
She paused for an update. No footsteps now or the chain.
Of course not, he probably traded the mace for a bazooka—
And how would he do that? She could almost hear Patrick lead her with that question.
The same way he would have had the mace to begin with.
Her heart resumed its own sprint. She turned left at the corner and squinted. A dark shape excited her, but it wasn’t what she wanted. It was a newspaper rack. Too dark to see inside it, but of course he wouldn’t use one of those anyway. The object was to hide weapons, not stash them for emergency retrieval where anyone could see them.
She wished for the deafening sirens. Without their cover, her footsteps were like glass shattering. Hey, the “Vietnamese” girl is over here if you want her!
Gin checked behind her, knife at the ready to slice his balls off if he had any rape ideas. There was nothing random about her being the last. It was why he targeted Adam with the arrow instead of her. She was scared to death, but she wanted to hurt him—kill him—for what he did to Adam as much as for her own survival. The rest of them, too. Even Annette. More or less.
Morgan must have been a quaint town before the evacuation. Places like these nowadays eventually transformed into a kaleidoscope of strip malls and big chains to allow the convenience of city destinations without having to live in the city, until there was practically no difference.
Another intersection and she had to suppress the cry of joy. There it was—the bulky outline of a mail collection box, and hopefully a stockpile of weapons. She maintained the cautious gait, though she wanted to run and hug the damned thing. The ambient noise of the night seemed shrill in her ears as she crossed the remaining five yards. She expected him to pounce from a doorway, knowing her own plan before she did. Or he’d fixed a trap, a mail bomb to set her arm down about three blocks away.
Yeah, because it’s so obvious he would stash weapons around like that.
Of course it wasn’t, and that’s why this was going to work.
She knelt beside
the box, checked in all directions, tried to listen for anything beneath cicadas and the pressure in her head, like the sound of the world grinding along its axis. Wondering if Patrick’s government boogeymen could see this through a live feed somewhere and cheered her on (yeah, maybe they’d shed a tear when they shot her execution style on a clean-up later).
Gin felt blindly along the surface of the box until her fingers found the outline of the retrieval door. She expected/dreaded it to be locked, but it came easily; he’d oiled the hinges. Up close the scent of the lubricant was strong and she breathed it through her mouth, hoping it would supplant the copper and sushi aftertaste of Adam’s brain.
She sheathed the knife in her waistband, reached inside to play Mystery Box and frowned at the discouraging amount of space. Okay. It would have been nice if it had been so stocked full of weapons they poured out like coins from a slot machine, but there was something, at least, set down at the bottom and larger than her stupid knife, so an upgrade. She found the smooth wood of a handle and withdrew it.
There were two handles in a V pattern and she identified it easily enough when she pulled them apart and heard the snick of the blades.
Hedge clippers.
Her hope sank as if tied to an anvil.
Well, what did I expect?
Better; she’d expected something a hell of a lot better than this shitty thing. Something she didn’t have to be practically dry humping him to use, for God’s sake.
She tried to look on the bright side. She’d seen much smaller ones than these, which were at least two-handed. The blades were about a foot long, and there was no resistance to the scissoring motion when she worked the handles. He took good care of his toys, considering all the WD-40 must be dried up without them airlifting new cans into the Kill Zone (at least she hoped not, but she remembered the sarcastic YOU ARE HERE from the Chicken Exit map and felt less confident).
Realistically there were only so many viable weapons he could put there, but a gun would have been nice. She had a .38 at her apartment, something she’d taken to the range a few times when Hoon wouldn’t leave her alone. Screw her earlier guilt about trading places with him; if she’d known his attention would plug her into an algorithm of ideal candidates for the Kill Zone, she’d have dropped him like a sack of laundry and hoped for a jury of abused women.
