by M. E. Betts
She hurried over to the lifeless body, her titanium blade already in her hand. She mindlessly rubbed the blade as she ran, running her thumb over the engraving. Talon of the Titans. The pommel was brand-new, crafted from solid, sturdy oak. It had been replaced by a friend back at McCormick Place, who had crafted the handle to replace the deteriorating one it bore when Daphne and her small group had arrived at McCormick Place. She reached the corpse, slicing off the right ear and stashing it in a bag to add to her collection at a later time. She did a quick search of Dylan's person before standing and making her way back toward the campsite, about fifty yards ahead.
She entered the RV park through the front gate, where Kevin and Wendy kept watch. Inside the dozen or so campers where Daphne's group had been peacefully sleeping minutes before, she could now see flashlight beams and hurried movement as they prepared to evacuate.
"What's going on?" Wendy asked as Daphne brushed past her.
"There was someone out there," Daphne replied without turning back to look at the other woman. "Watching us. There should be more on the way."
"The 'someone' you saw--did you get 'em?" Kevin called out.
Daphne flashed Kevin a silent, affirmative thumbs-up and continued into the RV park. She spotted Shari standing outside in front of one of the campers. She was loading her revolver, a distant look on her face. Her gaze cleared as Daphne approached, their eyes locking.
"Just one," Daphne said, her tone low, as she stepped in close to Shari. "He was in communication with someone else, though. He took out a walkie-talkie after he saw that we were here. He was getting ready to tell someone about us."
"What direction did he come from?" Shari asked.
"South," Daphne said, "far as I could tell."
"No sign of others out in the woods?" Shari asked, holstering her gun.
Daphne shook her head, her eyes on the darkened horizon. "Not that I saw, at any rate."
Phoebe approached them, her arms folded across her breast. "What's the meaning of all this?" she blurted, tired and also hung over.
"Don't worry yourself about it," Shari told her. "Just get armed and lay low for now."
Phoebe scoffed. "I've got the 'armed' part of that covered," she said. "But don't tell me to lay low, or not worry myself about it. I'm part of this team, too. Don't forget that."
"I haven't forgotten," Shari said, impatience edging into her tone. "But the task at hand has nothing to do with hacking or exploding stuff, at least not yet, so kindly piss off and try to stay out of the way."
Phoebe rolled her eyes, stalking off to complain to a nearby member of security. After a moment, the whole group was assembled near the front gate, clad in Kevlar and a good number of them wearing infrared goggles. All eyes turned to Shari as she and Daphne approached the gate, awaiting their plan of action.
"We'll head north," Shari said quietly. "Take 32 back to that railroad bridge with the underpass." She headed out the front gate, her hands in her pockets, and nodded for the others to follow her.
Hugo lifted his goggles and pressed his palms into his eyes as he started off with the group. "It's dark as crap out here," he muttered. "Can't be good, can't be good."
Dr. Liu broke into a quicker stride to catch up with Shari as they turned right onto MO-32.
"How far do you think that bridge is from here?" he asked.
"'Bout a half mile, if I'm remembering right," Shari said.
"I get the strategy you've got in mind," the doctor began. "It's a choke point."
"You're wondering what we do if they get there first?" Shari asked.
"Yeah," Dr. Liu said, "more or less."
Shari shrugged, gazing off to her left and toward the dark woods for a few moments before she responded. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
As it turned out, the local sadists had not been waiting at the bridge. Several minutes into the walk, as they approached the bridge that was their destination, Daphne's group realized that they were being followed from the south. Shari and Daphne glanced behind them, noting the infrared forms of other humans 1/4 mile down the road.
"Get in the treeline to the left," Shari told the group. "I want the more vulnerable ones deeper in, past the bridge. Move fast, we need to get into our places before they get here."
They moved more quickly under the partial cover of walnut and cedar boughs, reaching the bridge after several minutes. As they walked, Daphne watched the enemy move in closer.
"Let's hurry this up," she told Shari. "They're gaining on us."
The railroad tracks at the top of the bridge were accessible from the north side, but the southern face was far too steep to be worth navigating, its facade composed of large rocks inlaid into cement at a near vertical slope. To proceed northward without passing beneath the bridge required for one to go roughly 50 yards out of their way in either direction.
Shari glanced southward down the road as she prepared to lead the group out of the woods toward the pass. She saw a few dozen thermal forms through her goggles, in the road and about 75 yards to the south. A few appeared to be peering through scopes of various long-range rifles.
"Make a run for the bridge," Shari said, her tone abrupt. "We need to get most of you on the other side."
The group hurried to the road and into the short tunnel where the tracks passed overhead. The less skilled shooters were to the north side of the tunnel, where they were spotted from the interior by those with better aim. To Shari's right, just before she stepped onto the gravel shoulder to enter the tunnel, a rifle slug bit into the soil and missed her foot by mere inches. She ducked behind a tree and turned briefly to look over her shoulder to the left, noting Phoebe aiming her gun from just past the northern border of the tunnel. The young woman was clustered with a group behind an overturned bus, some of them venturing to the edge and taking shots here and there. Phoebe peered out from around the side of the bus, glaring at the approaching sadists. Her long dreadlocks swung over her shoulder and slapped her on the back as she whipped her head dramatically, to the side to regard the enemies down the road. She held her snub-nose .38 revolver at the ready like a femme fatale in a '70s action movie.
Daphne lingered back in the treeline south of the bridge, lurking silently with her throwing sticks. Hugo, Dr. Liu and most of the security staff stood in the northern threshold with Shari, although a few made their way to the top of the bridge via the accessible side to get a higher vantage point. Gunfire rained into the short tunnel beneath the bridge as Shari and her fellow shooters ducked behind one of two abandoned cars, returning fire on the enemy advancing up the road. The sound of the shots ricocheted through the dark tunnel. From beside Shari, Hugo shouted in protest, his sensitive ears overloaded with sensory bombardment. Even in his state, he managed to carry on the task at hand, aiming and firing his Glock .32 until it was time to reload, then repeating the process.
From the woods, high up in a tree, Daphne launched another wooden stick, watching it incapacitate the nearest sadist on the shoulder of the road. The pointed end entered his cranium, burrowing into the back of the skull and a few inches further until it exited the other side, sending a ribbony plume of blood and brain matter spurting toward his nearest comrade. She did a quick tally of those enemies who had been taken out, counting the warm, freshly crumpled heaps in the road that were visible through her goggles. There were 13 in all, 4 of which had been at Daphne's own hand. She raised another stick, aiming it at the next sadist. Just before she released it from her fingertips, she saw a round burrow into the face of her target, preceded slightly by the familiar ring of Shari's .357 revolver.
Having been spotted by a rifle-bearing sadist across the road, Daphne climbed back down to the forest floor, then ducked deeper into the treeline before scaling another tall, slender pine. Reaching for a stick, she targeted the nearest of the enemy force, sending the sharpened piece of wood through the air. As he went down, sustaining a crippling body shot, she reached for another stick, targeting another sad
ist and repeating the process at the steadiest possible click, going for whatever body parts she felt she could accurately target. If any of them died of body shots and arose, they could be dealt with then.
She looked down toward the far opening of the tunnel and watched as a spray of gunfire touched down around Shari, who crouched down behind the abandoned Corolla between herself and the sadists. Its former driver lay slumped over the steering wheel, rotting but not undead. The glass inside the car was wet with condensation, presumably having been closed up tight with the corpse inside for almost a full year, a whole set of seasons. As the windows were pierced in various places in the hail of gunfire, the reaction from Daphne's group was visible even from her position within the treeline. Although it was impossible to identify the person in question, she was certain that someone from her side could be heard retching as the stench washed over them. Daphne quickly threw another stick, watching it burrow into the chest of her target. As the unlucky sadist seized and collapsed, Daphne looked back at Shari.
She watched as her friend reached toward both hips, glaring through a twitchy right eye at the sadists and sucking in through her teeth. She shook her head with reproach.
Oh, sweet Jesus, Daphne thought. She's going for the big irons.
Sure enough, when Shari raised her hands again, she was holding one massive .500 S&W revolver in each hand. She had trained herself to easily wield their collective heft by constantly lifting, aiming and generally fussing over them in the months that had passed between her acquisition of the weapons and the group's departure for New Mexico. By the time she and the group left, her upper and lower arms were ripply with highly toned, sinewy muscle as intricate in its pattern as the raised swirls gracing her revolvers.
A few nights before Christmas at McCormick Place, the night after the big sadist skirmish on Lake Shore Drive, Shari had fawned over them. She repeatedly thanked Daphne, who had found them on a body and hauled them back as a gift to her friend.
"You know me well," Shari had told Daphne, a wide, inebriated grin spread across her face.
From the dark Missouri treeline, Daphne took in Shari's thermal image, dual-wielding her colossal revolvers from under the bridge. Their hot, 20-inch barrels glowed red through Daphne's thermal goggles.
They do look good in her hands, she thought, supposing that she did know Shari pretty well.
The exchange of gunfire continued for another couple of minutes, until all the sadists had either escaped or come to lie dead in the road. Daphne slipped down from the tree, making her way toward the bridge where her group was gathered.
"How many do you think got away?" Shari asked Daphne as she approached.
Daphne shrugged. "I counted six, but it's hard to say."
Shari nodded. "Well," she said, "it would be foolish to assume this business is done, but I think we bought ourselves some time to evade."
Daphne's mind caught up with the present, in which she was chained up at the water treatment facility. Her svelte blonde tormenter lashed the spare steel chain at her captive, purposely missing, although she came close to her face. Daphne repressed a smirk, supposing that the sadistic woman would be none too pleased to know that he dear Dylan's right ear was stored among many others in her messenger bag somewhere in the building, having been confiscated upon her capture.
"Shit," Heather said, tossing the chain again to the floor, "I should stop. You guys are right, Red's gonna want her for himself, and it's taking everything in me to keep from tearing her limb from limb."
Daphne felt an internal sense of satisfaction as the young sadist stalked off, a smug sense of accomplishment that such a ruthless individual had come to be so perturbed.
Doesn't much like the taste of her own medicine, does she? she thought as the blonde disappeared into another section of the building.
Of the two men in the room, the one slouched onto the desktop to her right was by far the larger of the pair. From his semi-seated position, shortening his stature by nearly a foot, he still stood taller than the smaller man standing beside him. His head was shaven, and the inquisitive grin on his face drew attention to the deep dimples beside the corners of his mouth, more prominent on the left side than the right.
"Who taught you to throw sticks like that, little girl?" he asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest and his long legs casually at the ankle.
"No one," Daphne said, her words coming out in abrupt baritone that echoed through the large, quiet room.
The large, bald man continued to smile, but his brows drew toward one another and wrinkled slightly. "What kinda answer is that?"
"The kind that applies to the question you just asked me," Daphne said.
"I know," the shorter man said, elbowing his mate lightly. "She's some kinda wood mage."
"Yeah," the taller one agreed, "and she has to invoke her ginger rage. Then for 60 seconds she's a berserker with unlimited throwing weapons."
From there, the conversation between the two sadists centered around video games for the better part of an hour. Daphne's mind wandered, having no interest in the topic. Because she had been a child of the woods, not by choice but by force, she didn't understand pop culture. She thought back to her days at the mental treatment facility. The other young patients would all eagerly await television and internet privileges, earning extra time for good behavior. Although Daphne's behavior was generally perfect, at least as far as the staff knew, she rarely used her media privileges. She had done some light research on a few topics that interested her, generally subjects that involved survival such as wild plant, animal and fungus identification. However, her research was limited due to the fact that many of her interests, such as knife-wielding, were off-limits.
While her peers were busy using social media and watching videos whose content was at best inconsequential, Daphne would mostly do one of two activities. The first was reading, mostly reference material from encyclopedias and magazines. The second activity in which she would often engage was simply to be still, looking out the window toward the woods. One of the former nurses, Theo, had given Daphne a stress ball shortly after her arrival at the facility.
"You look like someone who's used to working your fingers and lower arms," he had said, noting the over-developed muscle in the girl's arms. "It's something you can do when you're just sitting around."
Daphne sat one day in December of her seventeenth year, looking out at the whitened sky that sprinkled the landscape with a thick, steady layer of fat snowflakes. The pines that made up the nearby treeline had accumulated a few inches, their limbs frosted heavily at the ends. The dark green peeking through was the only contrast to differentiate from the intense white that dominated Daphne's field of vision as her mind rested, her left hand palming the stress ball. The muscles of the corresponding forearm twanged, and her gaze became blurry, her eyes unfocused.
"You'll never guess what I just saw," Tanya said as she approached Daphne, whose body tensed into a reflexive pose, ready for action. She squeezed the ball more tightly in her palm, instinctually treating it as if it were a weapon.
Tanya laughed. "Calm down there, tough guy. I'm not here to talk to you about the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints. Please don't throw the ball at me."
"So what did you see that I'll never guess?" Daphne asked, switching to her right hand.
"There was a story linked through the local news site, and guess who it was about?" Tanya struggled to contain her excitement about what she considered to be particularly juicy gossip.
"Was it me?" Daphne asked, still gazing out the window.
"Yes!" Tanya said, throwing her arms up dramatically. Lowering her arms, she pulled her sleeves down self-consciously over the scars littering her arms and wrists. "Specifically, some writer chick talking about how you're a 'feminist hero', or something. Saying she was interested in writing a book about your story."
"A-ha," Daphne said, rolling her eyes.
"She would need your permission, at least if sh
e uses real details about you and your case," Tanya pointed out. "You could probably make a lot of money off of this."
"Not gonna happen," Daphne said. "I don't want her money, and I'm no one's hero."
In the end, the writer had opted to base her story as loosely upon Daphne's as she possibly could, in lieu of getting permission. To the best of Daphne's knowledge, though, the book had yet to be released before the dead had begun to rise. The writer was, therefore, unable to capitalize upon Daphne's tragic story.
It was around midnight when Daphne began to hear whispers that Red was back. She heard the front entry door open and close, then murmured voices from outside. Someone threw the front door open again, and Daphne heard heavy footsteps approaching, the kind produced by big feet dressed in hard-soled boots. A moment later, the man whom she could only presume to be Red stood before her, his appearance more startling than she had expected.
From where she was chained, her face was well below the man's pelvis. He towered above her, and she estimated him to be over six and a half feet tall. She gazed up past a broad chest with visibly protruding pectoral muscles, even through a loose-fitting t-shirt, to a severe, chiseled face. Red's square jaw and chin were upright as he glared down over his nose and cheekbones at her, his face lit with harsh fluorescent light. His skin was as milky white as Daphne's own, and freckles were splashed across his nose and cheeks, contrasting sharply with the white flesh surrounding them. His bright, coppery hair was shaven on the back and sides, and cropped to about one inch on top. Daphne could see muscles twitching in his well-defined jaw and neck as he gazed down at her through cobalt eyes, not speaking for most of a minute.
He snorted. "You're the one who did all that damage?" The right corner of his mouth lifted in amusement. His sturdy bulk was so edged and heavily formed, even in the face, that his appearance came across as almost monstrous in its severity, particularly from Daphne's point of view. He looked her up and down. "What are you, 14?"
Daphne glared up at him.
"You know how to talk?" Red asked, crouching down to her height. His face was large in comparison to hers, so large that she almost felt like a child before him. She nodded, maintaining a neutral expression. "So how old are you?" he prodded.
