by Eric Vall
Plus, his room connected to the room that the children were in, and I couldn’t have him sneak over there and put them in the middle of all of this.
We needed to get the jump on tattoo face, too, that way we could take him out with a quick and efficient blow that wouldn’t make too much noise. He was a large guy, so I’d have to have hold of him when he went down, otherwise it would be much too loud of a landing. This would have to be up close and personal, but we couldn’t risk doing it right in front of the doors either. Not only would that be too close to Brody for comfort, but since there was a corner right there, he could easily call out before we even made it to him.
The plan had changed, and I needed to adapt quickly. I thought of the girl we had just run into coming out of Brody’s rooms. Maybe we could use that to our advantage. If I could make some sort of sound, then this tattooed guy would most likely come to check it out, and since someone had just left, it wouldn’t be as much of a cause for concern.
If we could just get him over near us, then I could take him down quietly.
I pulled Tara back down the hallway until we were out of earshot.
“We need a distraction,” I whispered. “If we can get him over to us, then I can take him out with a blade.”
“You think my Ruger will be too loud?” she asked to clarify what I had gestured at earlier.
“There’s a chance Brody could hear it,” I agreed with a nod. “We underestimated how close the guard would be to the doors, and if you take him out he’ll definitely make a noise when he falls.”
“What kind of distraction do we need?” she asked.
“Just a small noise,” I said. “Not loud enough for anyone in the rooms to hear, but loud enough to get the attention of tattoo face out there.”
Tara thought for a moment, then she pulled out a lighter from her pocket and handed it to me.
“Toss this at the wall,” she said. “Just toss it lightly, it shouldn’t be too loud.”
“Good call,” I told her. “I’m going to try to take this guy down as quietly as possible, but if for some reason I’m unable to, I want your sights set on that door. If Brody comes out, you shoot.”
“Got it,” she whispered.
With our new plan set, we made our way back to the corner where we had just been. I holstered my pistol, pulled out my karambit, looked at Tara, and then tossed the lighter against the wall. It made a small sound, but a few seconds later I heard footsteps, so I knew it had worked.
I pressed my back against the wall and waited. Each footstep grew closer and closer until finally he rounded the corner, and I reached out and grabbed him.
I threw my arm over his face so that my elbow covered his mouth, then I brought my karambit up to his neck with my other hand. The poor bastard barely had time to react before his throat was slit. I could feel the flood of warm liquid on my hand and arm, and the guy seized under me as his body made one last fruitless attempt to save itself.
He had gone down relatively quietly, but not as silently as I’d have liked. Still, I couldn’t expect a dying man to not make any noise at all.
Tara had her gun pointed at the doors, but as I went to lay the guy on the ground, his M16 started to fall. If it hit the ground it would definitely make a loud enough noise for Brody to hear. I reached my foot out to try to catch it, but Tara beat me to it, and she thrust her arm out and caught the thing before it could hit the ground.
I breathed a sigh of relief, then I set the dead man on the ground and wiped my arm off on his tank top.
“Nice catch,” I whispered to Tara. If she hadn’t caught that M16, then we could have been in serious trouble.
“Thanks,” she whispered, then she gestured to the door and I nodded.
I looked down at the smeared blood on my arm and hand and smiled. I hoped Brody had a chance to see it, I hoped that he knew that all of his men were dead and that he was utterly alone. None of the civilians would try to save him, he could only try to save himself, but I wasn’t about to let that happen.
I stared at the door then, and took a deep, steadying breath.
It was finally time to do what we came here to do. Brody was just behind that door, and I was ready to see him bleed.
I put my pistol in one hand and my tanto blade in the other, and I stacked my hands so that my pistol was on top. I would be ready no matter where he was in the room. My knife was prepped so that I could easily reach out and slash, and my pistol was loaded, aimed, and ready to go. This asshole wouldn’t get away from me.
He’d taken a beating from me before, but that was nothing compared to the anger I felt at that moment. I thought about the women he killed, and the ones that he’d raped, and the fact that he’d killed his own father, and I even thought about how he’d sent poorly trained men into my territory like lambs to the slaughter. If anybody deserved to die a painful, bloody death, it was this sonofabitch.
I took a deep breath and made my way to the door. Tara was right behind me with her gun and pistol in the same position that we had practiced so many times before.
I reached out and grasped the brass door handle and slowly gave it a turn. The large wooden door creaked slightly as I opened it, and I scanned the room as quickly as possible, but I didn’t see Brody anywhere.
Could he be somewhere else? Did he somehow hear us coming and go into the kids’ room? I glanced at the door that adjoined the rooms then, but it was closed. Of course, that didn’t mean that he hadn’t gone through it.
I stepped through the doorway and panned my pistol over the entirety of the room. If he was in there, I’d find him.
A sudden blow to my knee sent me to the ground, and I turned to see Brody on my left. I couldn’t tell where he had come from, but he knew the room much better than I did. He must have heard something, or maybe he just sensed that something was off. I didn’t know, but what I did know was that my knee was on fire, and there was now a pistol pointed right at my face.
I quickly lunged forward, using the knee I was down on to propel myself upward. The pain all but disappeared with the amount of adrenaline that ran through my veins, and suddenly my whole body was alive. Every nerve ending became hyper aware of what was happening, and my body reacted with all the training that it had received over so many years. Muscle memory took over, and I let myself be led by instinct.
My pistol and knife hit the floor as I grabbed Brody’s forearms and thrust them upward just as he let off a round. The room seemed to fill with the sound of the gunshot, and everything went quiet, it was like my ears were stuffed up all of the sudden, and I could only focus on the feel and sound of my own heartbeat.
Brody locked eyes with me, our arms still tangled above us, and he glared at me with a green stare that would have scared any other man. He was determined, the look told me that he would do whatever he could to stay alive, and that more than that, he wanted me dead.
I knew at that moment that we each had the same goal. The other was going to die, no matter what it took. Brody didn’t care about saving his own life any longer, he just wanted me dead, even if it meant that he got taken down in the process. I could see his hatred for me written all over the snarl that spread across his face. I’d ruined his little plan to be the king of the apocalypse, and he didn’t like that one bit.
He tried to lower the pistol down to get another shot off at me, but I pushed my hands further up his arms until I had a hold of the cold metal of the gun. It became a struggle to get the pistol away from him, so I tried to pry each finger off of the butt of the gun one by one, but he used his body weight to push into me and push my back against the wall.
I looked over to see Tara with her pistol up and ready, but her eyes were panicked. Brody and I were too entangled, and she couldn’t take the shot without the risk of shooting me in the process. I understood her dilemma, and I trusted her to do the right thing. I couldn’t help her, though, I couldn’t yell to her without Brody hearing and knowing the plan. She had to figure out the best course
of action on her own.
Brody tried to spin the pistol around in his hand, but as he did so he lost his grip, I was able to push it out of his hand, and the Beretta M9 flew across the stone floor with a loud clanking sound.
“Fucker!” Brody yelled, and spit flew into my face. He was pissed, which was expected, but also showed his weakness. His anger would make him sloppy, and that was when I could make my move against him.
He lifted his knee to my stomach with a powerful blow, but I tensed my abs in time to take away a portion of the sting. I was up against the wall still, so I had no choice but to take that one. It would be the last one he got, though.
Brody reached for my other pistol in my shoulder holster and got a hold of it, but I was quicker than he was, and I already had a plan.
Now that his gun was out of his hands, I brought my arms down and grabbed him around the chest, then I pressed my feet against the wall and gave a kick off that sent both of us tumbling to the floor.
I heard the wind get knocked out of him as we hit the ground, along with the sound of my other pistol hitting the floor. Just as I had planned, he had lost his grip on it when we’d hit the ground.
He gasped for breath under me, but I was quick on my feet and since I couldn’t risk going for my karambit in the middle of a fight, I lifted up onto my knees and pulled my fist back. My knuckles landed against his cheekbone, and I was more than sure that I had shattered the damn thing with how hard I had hit him. I’d probably broken a couple of my own knuckles as well. Blood flew from his mouth as I made contact, but I didn’t stop there, I lifted the other arm and landed the same blow on the other side of his face.
Brody lifted his arms to cover himself, but I could see that he was already bloody from the first couple hits. He was a large guy, though, larger than me, and he flipped us over so that he was on top of me then, but I was quicker than he was with my arms, and instead of his fist connecting to my face, all he got was my elbow.
His legs were in my way, so there was no chance I could grab my karambit from my hip. I should have grabbed it earlier, but I had been too happy to watch him bleed as my fists made contact with his face.
His hips were up high up above me, so I lifted my leg and wrapped it around his waist, then I yanked my leg back so that he bent over backwards and fell against the ground. I leaned up and made contact with his face again while I wiggled my legs out from under him. I’d probably broken or at the very least seriously injured his knees in the process, but he hadn’t given up quite yet. I had taken our jiu jitsu training seriously, but obviously Brody hadn’t.
His eyes were fierce as he continued to fight, and even though his face was bloody and already swelling, he refused to give in. This was about revenge for him, too, but his revenge was against me. I’d taken his title from him, I’d threatened his fucked up way of life, and he needed to show me that he wouldn’t stand for it. He couldn’t quit, he and I both knew that. He’d either die a fighter or a coward, but either way, he’d die, and he knew it.
Brody made an attempt to get his knees out from under him, but I kept the top half of his body pinned to the floor with blows. His face was bloody as hell then, and his arms were too far from where I’d kept hitting even after he raised his hands up to protect himself. I knew my knuckles were bleeding, too, and I had no idea where his blood ended and my own began, but the sight of the red liquid just fueled the rage in me, and I beat him harder and harder until he lowered his arms out of sheer exhaustion. He was nearly unconscious then, but still, I didn’t stop. I raised my fist again, but Tara screamed and saved him from another blow.
“Tav, look out!” Tara yelled from behind me.
Chapter 28
“Move!” Tara’s voice sounded again, and I quickly rolled out of the way just as the platinum blonde whizzed by me. All I saw was her slender body lunge forward as I moved out of the way just in time to avoid her.
I landed in a crouch a few feet away, but as I did I heard Brody scream. I glanced over to see Tara with her knife stuck in his genital area.
The platinum blonde was down on one knee between Brody’s legs, and she had both hands on the handle of the blade that stuck out from the front of his pants. She looked like a warrior goddess, and as I took in the entirety of the scene I couldn’t help but laugh.
The platinum blonde looked up at me then, and she blew at a piece of hair that fell in front of her eyes before she smiled at me.
Tara pulled the knife out and stood up and backed away from Brody.
“You fucking crazy bitch!” he yelled at her. “You fucking stabbed me in the dick!”
“Yep!” she cackled. “Just like I said I would, you fucking asshole!”
“What?” he gasped in agony. “You never said you were going to stab me in the di—”
“I told everyone else I would,” Tara snickered as she put away her knife and drew her pistol. “Or shoot you. One or the other.”
My laughing grew louder until I was nearly doubled over clutching my sides.
Brody finally managed to get his legs out from under him, and he clutched them as closely together as possible while he used his hands to put pressure on the affected area. He had been nearly unconscious just a moment before, but it appeared that a stab to the dick was just the jolt he needed to wake up.
“You look like hell,” Tara said with a frown as I moved to stand beside her.
“Thanks,” I said with a grin. I guessed my face was probably bashed in pretty badly, but I also knew that Brody definitely looked worse than I did. He was nearly unrecognizable at that point, and I doubted that he could see out of either of his eyes. Plus, he had a stab wound to the junk, and if that didn’t mean that we’d won the fight, then I didn’t know what would.
“He looks worse, though,” Tara said with a gesture at Brody.
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said.
“Fuck you!” Brody groaned. He was obviously in pain, and the blood spot on his camo pants steadily grew larger and larger, despite his fruitless attempts to put pressure on the wound.
I walked over, picked up both of the pistols as well as my tanto blade from the floor, walked back over to Brody, and leveled one of my pistols at his face.
“Oh look at that,” he breathed, his bloody face was scrunched up with pain, which made his taunting seem almost comical. I was honestly surprised that he could still see me considering how badly swollen his eyes were. “Let’s see if Tav has balls after all. Shoot me, you sonofabitch.”
“He talks mad shit for someone bleeding from his wittle wee wee,” Tara chuckled.
“Fuck you, whore,” Brody spat.
“You wish,” Tara said, and she cocked her hip out and crossed her arms. “But you won’t be fucking anyone anymore with a split hotdog. Booyahh!”
“You always were a coward,” Brody growled at me. “You're just going to hide behind your little girl there and let her do the dirty work for you?”
“Little girl?” Tara asked, and she moved to take a step forward, but I put out my arm to stop her. If there was one thing Tara hated it was to be called ‘little girl’, but I didn’t want to give Brody the satisfaction of seeing us get angry. We’d already won, he could talk as much shit as he wanted, but we had nothing to prove to him.
“Brody,” I said with a smile. “Old friend, I think you deserve more than death by a bullet to the head. You deserve to suffer.”
“Fuck off,” he said, but his words had no conviction. I could tell he was more focused on the pain in the front of his pants, and the blood that continued to pool over his thighs. “That’s just an excuse. You have no balls. You never could do what a real man needed to do. This was war, and I’ve just won.”
He was egging me on, trying to get me to shoot him because he knew he was going to die regardless. I wouldn’t give him the relief of a quick death, though, each taunt just sounded to me like him begging me to make the pain stop, and that was something I just couldn’t do. He’d caused far too much pain
for far too many and for far too long. He wouldn’t get a quick death, not from me, not when I had the option to watch him bleed out instead.
“No,” I chuckled. “I don’t think you have. And I don’t think you know what a real man is, either.” I crouched down next to him then, leaned forward, and spoke in a low, but calm voice. “Real men don’t have to rape women to get them to sleep with them. Real men don’t force women to have abortions, or kill innocent people, or kidnap children. Real men don’t have an entire group of people waiting to turn against them because of how foul they are. You did, though. And that made getting in here pretty easy, wouldn’t you say, Tara?”
“Definitely,” the platinum blonde said. “We couldn’t have done it without Renee and Lucy, and everyone else around here who couldn’t wait to see you overthrown.”
I watched Brody’s nostrils flare with anger as he took in our words. I wanted him to know that it was his own people who had turned against him, and I wanted him to know why. He had the audacity to say I wasn’t a real man, but at the same time I had just seen a recently raped woman leave his bedchamber. He was a piece of trash, and I wanted him to realize that was why he was here on the ground bleeding out. Because nobody was willing to save him. Nobody cared. Even his bodyguards had gone down easily, they’d barely put up a fight. And the men that he’d sent to campus, they’d retreated at the first sign of trouble. Nobody respected him. All he had was fear, and that would never be enough to create true loyalty.
“Of fucking course,” he said. “Those ingrates never did appreciate what I did for them.”
“What was that?” Tara asked. “Rape them or make them feel like they had to have sex with you because you took them in? You’re trash.”
