Chapter Nineteen
The Marauders
My arms raise slowly, baring empty palms as the marauders emerge from behind the trees with grinning, sullied faces.
The hollow barrel of a shotgun points towards me, and my peripheral shows another drawing close to Leon.
Another guy snakes a machete in a figure eight with a leather strap across his chest, hosting a collection of slaughtered rabbits.
The dog has been released by Zeke and cowers towards the men, reluctantly reuniting with his owners.
“Good job, Boomer,” one says, his greased hair separated into long strands while his gun points towards Atlas’s chest.
“How can we help you?” Leon asks, inching closer behind me.
The second marauder has his gun firmly pointed at Leon from behind. “Slide off your bags and throw them to my pal over there.”
We edge our arms from the straps and let the bags fall from our shoulders, dumping them at the feet of the marauder with the knife.
Their leader—the one holding his gun to Atlas—orders, “Any sudden movements, and it’s game over.”
The knife wielder slumps above the bags as he raids our collection of food. “Looks like we’ll be feastin’ tonight, Hutch!” And he releases a series of hiccupping yips.
“Where’s your settlement, then?” Hutch asks Atlas, to which he offers no response.
“We’re just passing through,” Leon says. “We don’t want any trouble, so we’ll get out of your way.”
The marauders cackle, and Hutch readjusts his grip, extending his dirt-coated fingers to the gun’s barrel. “On your knees.”
Atlas ignores him.
“On your knees! Now!” Hutch launches his boot into Atlas’s chest, the air puffing from his throat.
As Atlas drops to his knees, Zeke follows suit, and Leon lowers behind me, but I remain standing with my face shadowed beneath the peak of the hat.
The gun raises towards me as Hutch shouts again, “Knees, now—”
But his words stop short with the revelation of my quivering bottom lip and lashes saturated with tears flowing down my face.
I utter with a shuddering breath, “P-please help me.” My heart pounds as I step away from the guys with raised hands, trembling as I pull my hat away, letting my long curls fall to my shoulders.
Hutch lowers his gun as I step backwards to stand beside the man pointing the firearm at Leon. My heart sinks at the cheated look on the guys’ faces. Leon and Zeke’s mouths are agog, while Atlas fumes through flared nostrils, firing a piercing shot with his sharp stare.
“Poor little pretty… Have these men taken you?” Hutch asks, resting his gun under his arm as he approaches, with his tan boots crunching along the debris of the forest floor.
I continue to cry—a long-overdue gush of emotion, enough to trigger hiccupping breath. It’s enough to cause the rear gunman to stand uneasily beside me. His brows narrow as he looks between me and his leader while lowering his gun.
Hutch’s head tilts, mimicking a concerned appearance, but he is unable to conceal his excitement at finding a woman. “Have these men … hurt you, my pretty?” he asks, now standing beside Zeke with Atlas turning to watch.
I bury my face in my palms as my shoulders shake with sobs. His crunching steps approach, and I lift my face, looking up under my brow towards the set of eyes, too vigilant to look away––straight into Atlas’s leer.
With my hand already at my belt, my lifted face is sober, my words clear as I lock onto Atlas. “No… They’d never hurt me.”
I plunge my knife into the rear gunman’s waist, snatching the shotgun from his unsuspecting hold and tossing it towards Leon.
With my back turned on Hutch, all my trust is in Atlas—but I know it’s the right thing to do.
Hutch’s face falls by my feet with Atlas’s knee planted firmly into his back, pinning him down.
The stabbed gunman is squealing at my knife in his side, and I go to reach for it when the machete wielder jumps over the bags, sprinting towards me. I flinch at his toothless scream.
Bang! A shot skewers, ringing in my ears while my body uncoils, and the machete wielder goes still before me, tipping backwards like a fallen tree.
His yellowed vest melts into red like a violent sunset as the gunshot leeches the life from his body.
Blood fountains with his coughs, while Zeke snatches the blade from his loosened grip before moving to the remaining marauders, liberating them of their weapons while Leon and Atlas hold them at gunpoint.
The adrenaline rush shakes me, nausea bubbling in my stomach.
I grab and reseal the rucksacks before resting them across my shoulders, but the dying knife wielder grabs my ankle.
I squeal, reacting the fastest way I know how.
Lifting my leg, I plant my free foot on his head.
His clutch tightens on my caught foot, and my panic shifts something within me.
I repeatedly stomp with a maniacal scream ripping through my throat.
My rage repeats and repeats, only to be broken with a touch on my arm.
I wake from the trance with a gasp, while Zeke gently pulls my elbow.
My focus blurs with the aftermath of the bloodied mess at my feet.
There’s a dizzying confusion of my current reality and memory.
Back at the diner, it was my job to fetch the pies from the oven.
I remember rushing and pulling one out with a dishtowel when the dish scalded my fingertips as soon as I took its weight.
The dish smashed to the floor, ceramic shards exploding across the white tiles.
The pastry crust fractured and displaced as the insides seeped out from the sides, slow and lumpy.
The cherry filling seemed to crawl as it broke out over the broken top crust, triangles of pastry dripping with its momentum, pulsing with heat as it dripped onto the floor.
It was as dark as blackcurrant until it spread, vibrant red, and a bastard to clean from the white tiles.
I’m still thinking about how to scrub the cherry stains from the grout when I see the features of a face amidst the mess.
Two nostrils. A smattering of teeth. The hollowed holes of eyes beneath half-closed lids.
And the hair … stringy and russet-wet among the cherry sauce.
It’s blood, Everlee.
Zeke gently pulls on my elbow again, forcing his face before my mess. His blue eyes ground me, and I nod, assuring him that I’m okay as I step back, gripping the bags.
Leon says to the remaining marauders, “As if the world isn’t fucked up enough already, we’ve got to deal with assholes like you.
” He whacks the butt of the gun into the rear gunman’s head, letting him fall awkwardly to the ground.
He leans down, pulling my knife from the man’s side with ease and offering it back to me with a tightened expression.
It’s only a five-inch blade, but half of it is stained as I reach down, wiping it off on the jeans of the unconscious marauder.
Zeke sweeps in, binding the man’s hands with zip ties as his bloodied mouth drools onto the dry ground.
After pulling off the other men’s boots, he ties the laces together and launches them into the trees, where they swing and dangle from the branches, well out of reach, slowing them down if they choose to follow.
Atlas lifts his knee from Hutch and spins him onto his back, and he’s less intolerable on the ground, cowering like a true coward in our shadows.
He whimpers, his palms held up in front of his face.
Leon lowers, sitting on his heels as he pulls a chain from under Hutch’s vest to show military dog tags. “These yours?” He squints. “David Hutch. Wow. You should know better. You should be fighting for a better world. Maybe when you wake up, you’ll have a change of heart.”
“Night, night,” Atlas says, slamming the butt of his gun into Hutch’s face and rendering him unconscious as the blood trickles from his nose.
There were multiple reasons I felt like I was different as a child.
My temper was one of them. My fathers acknowledged it.
They tried to siphon it into combat, to cool it with meditation, but it arrives with surprise every time.
It became harder to manage with age because I had become so accustomed to violence, which seems to be the counterpart of anger.
I have seen blood, brutality, and death aplenty, so it became harder to silence my temper while such behaviour was normalised in this world.
But I must remind myself of Rex’s warning.
He told it to me since my earliest memories, like a cautionary fable, becoming more a prophecy when I became a woman: Violence is a parasite.
It feeds and grows within. Since I entered the city, it has extended into my limbs, inviting me to clench my fists and grind my teeth.
For a long time, I was coiling tighter, preparing to spring.
But like the little girl who sat before her father, I was scared.
I was worried about this tentacled emotion taking me over, possessing me, while I became its puppet and it the master.
Today was a slip of control I have not experienced before, and I am mortified to have unleashed it before Leon and the guys.
Little is said as we detour along the rusty pebbles within the stream, trying to make sure their hound loses our scent.
I sheepishly avoid their gazes as we arrive at the cabin, but before stepping inside, I wipe my boots clean.
The gore they inflicted is scorched into my mind—visions of broken cherry pie and roadkill rise to the surface.
My boots scuff vigorously until they tear the grass beneath.
Leon’s hand comes to my arm, and it pulls me back to reality as we step inside with the confirmatory clicks of locks securing us.
I get myself a glass, not realising I’m shaking until I fill it with water.
Leon asks from behind, “You okay, kid?”
I turn to answer, but look to the floor. “Uh-huh. I’m good.”