Chapter 38 #2
A large branch snaps just on the other side of the tree I’m hiding behind, and I poke my head around the corner, my gun at the ready. I lean without taking a step, afraid of the underbrush giving away my position.
My hair is yanked back hard, almost pulling me off my feet as I’m spun around. His rank mixture of grime, BO, and rotten breath hits me in the face like a fistful of raw sewage.
“Peekaboo,” he says, smiling with a knife pressed to my throat. “Boys! I found herrugggghhhhkk—”
Hacking and slurping sounds escape his mouth as blood pools and spills out, trickling down his chin.
Blake has one hand over the man’s forehead; the other has plunged a knife deep into his throat, angled up into the brain.
He slowly withdraws the blade and puts a finger to his lips, tapping it a few times as he lowers the body to the ground.
Before I can speak, he’s gone, back into the cover of the forest.
Two burners come around the trail, guns at the ready, answering the call of their newly deceased friend.
When they see me, sinister, salivating smiles cross their faces, and then they look to the ground.
Their grins curve downward with the movement of their heads, the corpse coming into view for them.
His throat looks like a programmed fountain at a mall or airport, weaker and weaker torrents of blood pumping out at even intervals.
“What the hell?” one of them says just as a flash of black appears from behind a tree.
Blake slides across the dry foliage, and his knife glistens between the first burner’s legs, the fabric of his pants soaking in an upside-down V like he’s just wet himself.
The burner falls to his knees as Blake pops back to his feet, grabbing the second man by his hair and plunging the knife into the side of his neck.
He pushes it in farther, dragging it up and down to rip through flesh and tendon, the burner’s head now looking like a PEZ dispenser.
The first burner is still on his knees, frozen, eyes wide and mouth agape, but no sound is being emitted.
I point to the man as if to say, What about him?
Blake shakes his head. “I severed his femoral artery. He’ll be dead in less than thirty seconds.” He disappears again, a wisp in the air like the last breaths of the men he just encountered. Jesus, he’s like a super-sadistic Batman.
In the distance, I hear the symphony of Blake’s destruction, a crescendo working in tandem, the strings section wailing out, screaming their final notes. Then a new sound joins the fray.
“Enough with the games!” A loud voice shakes through the woods. “Come out now, or we burn all three of them alive!”
Blake returns to my side without a sound.
He and I can see the burn pit through the trees.
My dad, Jimmy, and JJ are all kneeling with their hands placed against the back of their heads, a burner standing behind each of them.
The leader paces back and forth in front of them, the gas canister swinging at his side.
“What do we do?” I ask, frantic and scared.
“Surrender.”
“Surrender!? Are you joking?”
“Trust me,” Blake says, putting his hands up and walking out of the woods.
I shake my head in disbelief. He gave up so easily after all that show of skill and bravado. For what? A few more dead burners? I follow him, hands up, trusting he has a plan and will get us out of this.
“Ahhh, there you are. Mr. G.I. Joe himself, ripping my men apart. Now, walk over . . .” The ugly burner gasps when his eyes land on me.
“What do we have here? Aren’t you a pretty little thing left behind in this ugly world?
Toss all your weapons on the ground, and please don’t pretend like you each only have one gun.
I can see your clothes bulging everywhere, and if I have to come search you, then .
. . well, I’ll just kill you on the spot. ”
I look to Blake, and he nods, confirming that I should follow the orders.
He lobs me a small wink, and it instantly makes me feel calm and better about the situation.
We pitch our guns out into the grass, creating a small cache of firepower until the leader seems satisfied that we’ve given up all our weapons.
“You see, I was going to just kill you and then burn these three, but how about a little trade instead? If you”—he points at Blake—“burn the three of them . . .” He waves his hand to JJ, my dad, and Uncle Jimmy.
“I’ll let you kill yourself, fast and easy .
. . and I’ll let the girl live. She can”—he licks his lips before flicking his tongue in and out of his mouth like a lizard—“join us.”
Blake looks to me and then the faces of my family.
“That’s the best offer you’re gonna get, soldier, and the clock is ticking.” The leader glances down at his wrist, pretending to count down the seconds on a watch that isn’t there. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .”
“Okay! I’ll do it. I’ll do it,” Blake says, shuffling toward them, his head and shoulders sunken down as he avoids making eye contact with me.
“Blake, no! You can’t trust them!” I start to run at him, but the leader draws a pistol from his side, cocking it and pointing it directly at me.
“Ah, ah, ah . . . let’s not be too eager.
Trust me, you’ll have plenty of time to play later.
” He looks me up and down, taking me in again before his lust turns to surprise.
“Wait a minute. I know you. You’re that little bitch from Chicago.
You did this to me!” He slaps his palm into his own face, fingers wide as he slowly drags it across the topography of his features. “You ruined my fucking face!”
“To be fair, it wasn’t good to begin with,” I quip, not allowing him to rattle me.
The other three burners stifle laughs as their leader glares at them before leveling his attention back on me.
“Oh, I’m gonna enjoy the future that’s in store for you.
I can picture it now. Night after night, piece by piece, the horrors that will come your way.
You’ll be wishing I’d just kill you, take you out of your misery, but I won’t.
You’ll come to look at this ruined face as the most beautiful thing in the world, and you’ll beg it for salvation.
” He turns to Blake, pointing the gun at him.
“But a deal’s a deal, so the girl shall live. Forever, if I can help it.”
“I’m sorry, Casey. But I can’t watch you die.” Blake continues walking toward JJ, the gas canister lifted up to his chest. JJ hangs his head, his shoulders tightening.
“That’s a good boy. Now, you sit tight here, my angel, and enjoy the show.” The leader walks back behind my father, firing the pistol into the air right next to his ear. Dad instinctively cups his ear, the drum likely shattered.
The leader presses the muzzle of the pistol into his hand, searing a red ring into the skin. My father shouts at the pain.
“Stop it!” I yell, my voice crackling with rage.
“Stop? Oh, we’re just getting started.” He fires off a round near Blake’s feet, the earth kicking up around him. “Quit stalling, pretty boy, and do it or the deal’s off.”
Blake lifts the canister over JJ’s head and starts to tilt it. “Sorry, man. Just picture my face on the men behind you.”
“Huh?” JJ responds, confused by his statement.
My hand moves down to my tried-and-true beauties at my side, all along, as Blake’s words sink in. He whips the gas canister forward, hitting the burner standing behind JJ square in the nose. It sends him toppling back into the open grave.
Blake leaps to his left, his knife outstretched as the burner behind my uncle Jimmy turns his gun on him and fires off a shot, ripping through the top layer of flesh on Blake’s left arm, just before the blade of the knife disappears into the man’s temple.
I stand and throw one star at the man positioned behind my father.
The silver disk spins like a buzz saw, ripping into the bridge of his nose as two of the prongs poke out both of his eyes at once.
The other star I hurl at the leader with more venom and force than I’ve put behind any throw I’ve made in my life.
But the extra force doesn’t have the desired effect, as it leaves my hand a split second later, causing it to veer slightly down and to the left, lodging into his collarbone.
He screams out, a fit of rage and pain causing him to drop his gun.
My father, realizing the opportunity, grabs for the weapon, but the leader recovers too quickly and crushes Dad’s hand beneath his boot.
“I’ll kill you all,” he yells out, kneeing my father in the face.
I sprint toward the deformed object of my hatred, hoping to tackle him back into the grave before he has time to get control of the gun, but the distance is too great, and within a second, I’m staring down the barrel of a pistol.
“Such a waste,” the leader says, eyeing my living body one last time. “Oh well.” He thumbs back the hammer and squeezes the trigger.
The world around me freezes. The burst of flame from the gun becomes the sun, everything else in the vicinity around it sucked in by its gravity.
The bullet spirals out of the weapon, a satellite launched into orbit by rocket fuel.
The leader’s eyes are red, reflecting the fire from the burn pit, channeling through his body, into the object in his hand.
But the pull of gravity is even stronger from another celestial body.
The full beard, buzzed hair, and broad shoulders, diving to intercept the missile in flight.
And then time starts back up.