Survival of The Fittest | Book 2 | Shallow Graves

by Fawkes, K. M.

  Besides, something told me he wasn’t that great with a gun to start with. When I’d first met him, his weapon of choice had been a bat, and it had definitely fit his personality better. Blunt, forceful, and totally lacking in any technique or subtlety. Anyone could use one. Anyone with muscles.

  I’d shot a gun. I knew how much nerve it took—and how carefully you had to aim. How you had to take into account the fact that there would be recoil, and that the nose would shoot up, and that there might be wind, and that the gun would probably skew to the side a little bit when you pulled the trigger, unless you were very careful and accounted for that when you aimed…

  All of which led me to one simple conclusion: He might pull that trigger. But he’d probably only hit us out of luck. And it was dark enough that if we scattered, he’d only be able to track one of us. Maybe. If he didn’t lose us in the darkness, first.

  “He’ll never hit us with that thing,” I muttered to Will, who was standing as still as a statue next to me. “He’ll miss. You go left, I go right. Get behind the first cover you come across and make for the damn gate. Don’t look back and don’t try to get to me or protect me. It’s every man for himself right now. I’ll meet you on the road in front of the house.”

  He didn’t even answer me. Just gave me a very slight nod. Good. He was going to be as good at taking instruction as he was at giving it—and he wasn’t going to try to play hero and protect me when we didn’t have time for it. We were going to get along extremely well.

  “On my count,” I murmured. “One, two, three.”

  I threw myself to the right, my feet and legs pumping in my desperation to get away, and the light followed me. I’d gotten the jump on him, though, and in the darkness, he was floundering. The light skittered to the left and to the right, somehow continuing to miss me, and in the meantime, I was running full-blast for the rose garden.

  I’d been wondering earlier if the bushes would hide me. Now, I guessed I was going to find out. And now, my life was definitely depending on it. Because the fact that he’d followed me with the light instead of Will meant that he and Jameson were absolutely under orders to shoot me.

  Not Will.

  One guess who had given those orders. And what she’d said about it.

  But now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. Now was the time to run like hell. Try to get to the street and get down the block before Bruce even managed to get through the rose garden.

  Shit, if I got to the street and Will wasn’t there yet, I wasn’t even going to wait for him. I was going to haul ass to the first corner I saw and get around it. I’d just have to hope he'd come the same way as me. I definitely wasn’t going to hang out in front of the gate, just daring Bruce to come find me.

  I slid to my knees in the thick mulch around the rose bushes, making for the closest one, and managed to get behind it before the light found the area of the garden where I’d gone. The bushes were still lush and full, thank God, and they were all very mature—which meant that yes, there was plenty of room for me to hide behind each one.

  The problem was going to be getting from one to the other. Because each had a four-foot space around it to give it full room to grow. It was perfect for the roses. It was not perfect for me. That was four feet of room for Bruce to see me as I darted from one to the next. Four feet of room for him to manage to hit me with a bullet.

  But there was nothing to be done about that, now. Will had gone in the other direction and had the maze, which would have been even better cover, but I’d picked this direction, and I wasn’t about to spend time bitching about it.

  At least I wasn’t going to have to find my way through a freaking maze. Besides,

  I was out of the house and on my way to freedom. I just needed to get through all these damn rose bushes first. No problem. Easy peasy.

  I jumped to my feet as soon as the light had swept on and dashed toward the next rose bush in the row, and then the next, and then the next, making my way gradually toward the gate and the street it led to. And as I went, I started to get the hang of getting through the spaces more quickly—without getting snagged on the bushes themselves. I got caught a couple of times before I realized that if I turned sideways and sort of scooted rather than trying to sprint straight on, I had a better shot of getting through unscathed.

  It was also a hell of a lot faster. Getting out of a battle with a rose bush in the dark and when you’re in a hurry is a recipe for a lot of blood and a lot of pain.

  I also realized that Bruce would be going through the same thing I was—and with a lot less luck. He was a ton bulkier than I was—and much less careful. And the moment I realized that, I started taking my time and doing it more carefully.

  When I heard Bruce approaching, though, and saw the light growing closer, I started zigzagging rather than moving in a straight line, and moving more quickly.

  It wasn’t as efficient, but it was less predictable. And I didn’t think Bruce was going to be smart enough to figure out where I was going if I wasn’t moving in a straight line. He was probably the kind of guy who only thought in straight lines.

  A zigzag pattern might just throw him off the scent long enough for me to make it all the way to the gate and out onto the street.

  Then he started shooting, and that definitely caught me by surprise. One shot threw up the dirt to my left, and then another threw up the dirt to my right, and I paused in my flight, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do with this new complication. I had no freaking idea where he was going to shoot next or how to avoid it.

  I didn’t know if he was going to shoot right at the spot where I happened to be standing and hit me purely by accident.

  Terrific. So now I was in danger of being shot by one of the stupidest men I’d ever met, who probably wasn’t even bothering to take the time to aim.

  I increased my pace, taking less and less time between each rose bush and wondering which side of the bushes I should be hiding behind at this point. I had no idea where the hell Bruce was, or whether he’d be able to see me from his current position. I knew the shots weren’t getting any closer to me—but I also knew that they were still coming. And I couldn’t tell where they were coming from.

  I could see that I was almost in the safe zone. The last row of roses was just ahead of me, and behind that was the fancy metal construction that the CEO guy had evidently considered a fence. Get to that fence, turn left, run a few steps, and I’d be at the gate. Get through it and I’d be in the street, and running would get a whole lot easier. And then I’d revert to the aforementioned plan of hauling ass for the first corner and getting around it before Bruce hit the street.

  I’d worry about Will after I was safe.

  I pushed myself even harder, running for that last row of roses like my life depended on it. Because it actually did.

  And that was when I realized that the sound of gunfire was now coming from in front of me, not behind me. A split second later, I went skidding out of the rose garden—and right into Bruce, who might not have been smart, but was evidently smart enough to figure out where I was heading, and how he could beat me there.

  Chapter 14

  I felt a single moment of absolute shock and betrayal—that moment of being so surprised to see something that your brain actually stops functioning and your body freezes—and then I flew at him, my brain kicking back up enough to realize that I absolutely, positively had to hit him before he had a chance to shoot the gun.

  If he was even going to. If he was still serious about shooting me. Because I didn’t believe he was. But I also wasn’t willing to take the chance. The best defense was a quick offense, supposedly—or something like that—and I planned to put that saying to a very high-stakes test.

  I went at him with my hands already up and in front of my face, clawing and scratching and punching, and I must have done some severe damage to the skin of his face before I finally got myself under control and drew back. I was promptly rewarded with a powerful smack
to my right ear.

  I whirled away, ears ringing and seeing spots, but I didn’t have a lot of time to recover because Bruce was on me a second later, wrapping his arms around me from behind and actually biting—biting!—down on my shoulder.

  “Idiot,” I breathed.

  Who the hell bit someone’s shoulder and actually thought it would do anything aside from pissing the person they were biting off?

  I crossed my arms in front of me, grabbed his wrists, bent sharply at the waist, and pushed back with all my might at the same time, using my momentum and his weight to send him flying over my back and directly into a rose bush.

  I hoped it was one of those that had three times as many thorns as a normal rose bush. The kind that could have served as a weapon in the right hands, and under the right circumstances.

  He yelped in pain and took about half a second to jump out of the bush—a mistake, in my estimation, since slow extraction from thorns caused less damage than quick movements—and then he was rushing at me again, his face furious, his eyes bleeding anger and frustration. And pain. His face was drawn up into a grimace of absolute rage, and it was obvious that he’d lost all rationale and gone straight to animalistic instinct.

  And that was exactly what I needed. I needed him to not be thinking rationally—or paying attention to what I was doing. I needed him to be so focused on his pain and the rage he was feeling that he wasn’t actually looking at me.

  I’d seen it before. I’d made people so angry, so frustrated, that they actually couldn’t see straight. So I knew what that combination did to the human mind. It made it sloppy.

  I crouched down, got my hands up in front of me, and got ready to execute my defense. Yes, he was a lot bigger than me. But I had the advantage of my brain being in working order. And I was ready.

  The enormous man came skidding to a stop in front of me—for reasons I didn’t understand, considering it would have been faster and more effective to jump at me—and reached toward me like he expected me to just stand still and… wait.

  Instead, my hands went into action, my brain already having planned out exactly what I was going to do, and my muscles remembering exactly how to do it, thanks to the self-defense classes I'd been taking in the Before. A swift chop with my left hand, with a bit of a twist from my body to increase the momentum, and the heel of my hand struck him right under the jaw, on the side of his neck. One of the most painful places you can strike, though most people don’t know it. Another chop—this time with my right hand, moving downward—and I hit him again in the same exact spot.

  He grunted with pain—and, I suspected, surprise—but didn’t go down. That was okay. I wasn’t finished yet. I was just getting started.

  Before he could move or react, I fisted up with my right hand and punched him right in the windpipe and, when he bent over wheezing, gave him a good, solid knee to the nose to take him down all the way.

  It was the perfect set of moves, and I was just congratulating myself on having executed them so well when I realized that he wasn’t going down the way he should be.

  No, he was definitely bleeding from the nose and wheezing heavily, but instead of going to the ground, he was standing back up, even angrier than before—and evidently even more intent on killing me. Because this time, he had his gun up and pointed right at my freaking head, his finger on the trigger.

  I shuffled backward, my mind keeping time with my feet as it tried to sort out another set of moves to use. But I knew I was in trouble, now. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about a gun.

  I didn’t have any moves to protect me from a freaking bullet.

  My eyes went from the barrel of the gun up to his face, and I knew he saw the panic there, because he smiled with glee.

  “You should know better than to hit a man and not take him out, little girl,” he grunted.

  Before he could say anything else, though, a figure came flying from out of the dark and crashed into him, taking him to the ground. A shot went off—the trigger being pulled in the struggle—and I dove to the right, desperate for the ground and any cover I could find. I scooted quickly toward the walkway, which was now close by, and close enough to ground level here at the gate that I would actually be able to get over it and to the other side easily.

  When I reached it, though, I turned around, desperate to see what was going on. Because there was only one person who would have jumped in to save me like that, and that was Will. Which meant I had a stake in whether he survived or not. I didn’t need to be running right now. I needed to be watching to see if he needed my help. I needed to be coming up with a plan that would help me save him if he required it.

  He had saved me. I needed to be ready to do the same for him—especially now that he’d put his life on the line for me.

  I turned just in time to see him land three powerful punches right into Bruce’s face, and the struggle suddenly stopped, Bruce limp on the ground and Will hovering over him, his chest heaving with the effort, the flashlight Bruce had been using on the ground, shining up into Will's face.

  I could see that his eyes were on me, the electric green sparking in the beam of light.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he muttered.

  I nodded in agreement, and when he jumped up and rushed toward me, his hand out and his eyes already on the road on the other side of the gate, I was ready. He took my hand and tugged me up onto the walkway and we darted to the left, up the street and away from the House of Hell.

  Chapter 15

  The neighborhood we were in was completely deserted—even the streets—and we dashed down the main street without seeing anything other than big, creepily abandoned houses. At least, I hoped they were abandoned. I hoped they weren’t all inhabited by groups of murderous thugs out looking for some fun.

  Though with my luck, there were murderous thugs in every single house. With my luck, the other thugs had already been notified of our escape and were receiving orders right now to come after us.

  It gave my feet wings, and I had no trouble keeping up with Will and his long legs as we pounded down the pavement.

  We turned left at the first street we came to, and then right into someone’s yard, and dashed through what must have been a vegetable garden in the Before, past a pool house that would have been ideal for hiding in if we didn’t need to get as far away as possible, and then through a park thick with trees.

  I kept up my fast pace through the twigs and fallen leaves, not even trying to be careful. If there was no one out there to hear us, then it wouldn’t matter how much noise we made.

  If there was anyone to hear us, chances were they were already after us. Making a racket running through the park wasn’t going to change that or make it any worse than it already was.

  We didn’t stop until we were in an alleyway that ran between two rows of houses.

  It was completely dark here, the moon having gone behind some clouds, so we didn’t bother with hiding. We just stood incredibly still and listened for any sign of pursuit.

  “I don’t think they could be chasing us yet,” Will whispered. “Bruce was out cold, and no one else would have discovered him, yet. Jameson’s route wouldn’t have gone out by the gate.”

  “That you know of,” I added.

  I heard the exhalation of breath that meant he was laughing, dryly.

  “That I know of,” he agreed. “Still, I think it’s highly unlikely. They might not even know we’ve escaped until morning when they try to check on us. Which means we have a second to figure out where the hell we’re going and how we’re going to get there.”

  I let my mind roam quickly through the possibilities, kicking myself for not having through of it before we escaped. This would have been the kind of thing that we could have planned when we first talked about getting out of that house. The kind of thing we might have talked about if Sally hadn’t come barging in and interrupted us. We hadn’t even brought any supplies with us, for God’s sake. We weren’t going to
last more than a couple of days unless we found something to eat and drink. And shelter. And protection.

  I also could have been thinking about this while I was sitting in that room waiting for Will to come up and let me out. I’d had hours to think about this very thing—and I’d completely failed at it.

  I was a terrible schemer. I’d spent so much of my life thinking I was so great at planning things, and now look at me. But now wasn't the time for a pity party.

  Now was the time to let my brain do what it did best: Provide me with answers. I let it speed quickly through the possibilities, clearing my conscious mind to make room for the ideas, and then, I had it.

  “Whitfield Mall,” I said quickly. “It’s only about seven miles outside of town, and we’re on the right side of town for it. There won’t be electricity, but we can find supplies there. And then we get on the road to Somersville.”

  “Somersville,” Will agreed. “Bigger town. Better chance of having people.”

  “Better chance of having a functioning government, maybe even law enforcement,” I added. “Better chance of them knowing what the hell is going on and what we’re supposed to do about it. Better chance of us finding a place to hide—maybe even people to help us—when Sally and her friends come looking for us.”

  “Whitfield Mall, then Somersville,” Will repeated. “Supplies and then shelter. Agreed. Let’s go.”

  He took my hand and we darted forward again, heading—I hoped—for the freeway.

  Whitfield Mall was an obvious choice, and it definitely wasn’t stealthy, but it would give us what we needed. Food. Clothes. Maybe a tent or something. And weapons, which I now definitely thought we had to have. And then Somersville. It was an easy route, at least: straight down the freeway to the mall, then down the freeway again to the city. We wouldn’t have to worry about getting lost, and we would be on a main thoroughfare. Hell, we might even find other people along the way.

  I thought briefly of my earlier idea that there might be other rich people in the houses around us—and that they might help us. Hide us. Protect us. But I put the thought away almost as quickly as I’d had it. We didn’t know whether there would be people in there, and I didn’t want to take the chance of getting trapped in any of those houses when Sally came calling.