Warpaint

Blood from his nose poured down onto my face, making me gag. I spit it back up at him and hit him in the eye, blinding him for a moment.

He roared, letting go of my boob to wipe his face.

With both hands free now, I pushed him up off of me just a bit. It was all I could manage, but it was all I needed. It moved his body enough to expose his crotch area and give me room to maneuver my leg.

I drew my left shin up under him and kicked with everything I had, sending my hard leg bone soundly up into his nuts. I used every ounce of strength I had left in my body to bring the pain, hoping to paralyze him enough to give me time to get away.

He grunted with the impact, his breath wheezing out in one long gasp. His muscles went stiff as his body curled inward.

I pushed him away with my knifeless hand, rolling his body over enough to wiggle out from under him and move away.

I was nearly free when I felt his hand close around my wrist.

I was on my back, and the small knife I had used to poke his side was now imprisoned and useless. Flipping over to my side, I jabbed the fingers of my free hand into his eyes as hard as a I could.

He screamed and let me go, throwing his hand up to his face.

I sat up and was making a move to stand when his hand came back again, waving blindly, trying to grab onto some part of me.

I didn’t think about it, I just did it. Escape was my only hope of survival. It was him or me. Survival of the fittest. Of the most brutal.

I closed my hand firmly around the handle of the knife and held it out point down as I fell towards him. I was off balance in my hurry and desperation, and not in control of where I was going to land, but I wanted more than anything to stop him from moving … to stop him from holding me back from my freedom and my friends.

A vision of his evil, bloody face flashed before me just before the knife made contact. I felt the blade sink into his neck, only stopping when it reached his spine. Warm blood spurted out, covering both of us.

I let the knife go at the same time that his hand came up to try and grab it. I shoved myself off of him and crab-walked on my hands and feet away from him until I ran into the stinking corpse of a kid with both legs missing.

I screamed and flipped over, running a few steps like a dog on four legs as I tried to get away from him and the carnage. I tripped over the kid’s head and went down on my stomach again. I crawled forward desperately, becoming almost unhinged at the idea of a canner’s blood all over me and being trapped inside this building with the dead and dying.

“Go!” yelled Julio. “Get out!”

The sound of a hawk’s shriek came through the open door and filled my ears, and for the life of me, I couldn’t tell if it was human-made or Nina.

I scrambled on hands and knees to the door. I heard a noise behind me and turned, getting up on my feet. I screamed when I saw the hideous creature coming for me.

The monster Dave was standing, the knife sticking out of his neck, his entire jersey soaked in his dark red blood. He took two steps towards me, sounds gurgling out of his mouth, blood squirting to the side with every beat and pulse of his heart.

In all the madness, I heard a voice rising above it - above the sounds of my own ragged breath in my ears and above the gross sounds of Dave’s life leaving his body with every second.

It was the sound of Julio, dictating the last soccer play of his life.

“The crowd is on its feet,” he yelled, his voice stronger than mine ever could have been. “He’s lining himself up with the goal. There’s no one in his way. Nothing can stop him now …”

I ran to the doorway, drawn by the vision I saw there - Trip with his arms out to grab me. The war paint on his face made him look fierce. He was my warrior savior, there to deliver me from hell.

Trip reached in and pulled me out of the pool house, dragging me through the tall crab grasses that used to be a well-manicured lawn, towards the small door almost hidden in the side of the wall.

I stumbled and tripped my way there, and he caught me as I fell over and over. My arm was still bleeding, and the red from my wound mixed with the monster’s crimson gore that was splattered all over my body.

I wasn’t sure if I imagined it or not, but I swear as I passed around the back of the pool house, I heard Julio agaon.

“He shoots! He scores! Gooooaaaallllllll!” The building exploded from the inside, showering the pool deck with glass and body parts. The percussion knocked Trip and me down into the weeds.

We scrambled to our feet and finally made it the last few yards to the wall and though the door. Peter was standing outside it next to Winky.

I started to say something, but then stumbled. My vision quickly narrowed to a gray tunnel, and I fainted on my way down to the hard, weed-covered ground.

***

I woke up at the truck which was now pulled over on the west side of the canner house, just next to the wall of shrubs Winky, Jason, and I had hidden in earlier.

Peter had slapped me in the face and was apologizing profusely. My scattered brain disregarded him, registering instead the booming sounds coming from what was probably the front part of the canner place, judging from their volume and the smoke I saw rising up over the rooftop. They reminded me of the fourth of July with their sporadic percussions.

“I’m so sorry I had to do that, but you have to wake up,” Peter said, obviously stressed out.

I held my hand up, unable to do it for longer than a few seconds because I felt so weak. “I’m up, I’m up. What the hell? What are those explosions?” I got slowly to my feet, using Peter’s strong grip for support.

“We need to go. You have to get on the top of the truck and hold on.”

“What?” I said, wondering if I was still in la-la land and not completely understanding.

Peter sighed heavily. “We don’t have room in the truck with all the injured people. Able-bodied kids on top. Hold onto the luggage rack. Go! Scoot!”

I ignored his orders and squinted at some movement I saw in the distance, at the far southeast section of the canner house.

It was Paci. He was running around the corner of the yard, coming from the oceanside entrance of the mansion, yelling as he went. “Go! Go! Get out of here!”

A shot rang out, and he stumbled, falling into the high weeds at his feet.

I gasped and Winky screamed. She jumped off the roof of the truck, and both of us took off sprinting in his direction, heedless of the source of the gunfire. My lungs were burning with the effort as the distance seemed to stretch out in front of me. I had lost a lot of blood and my energy was at an all-time low.

Paci got up, glancing back over his shoulder, his hand gripping his right thigh while blood ran down the side of his pants. He looked towards us again and yelled, “No! Get back! They’re coming!” He half-limped, half-ran his way to the truck.

Winky reached him first, throwing her shoulder under his armpit to help him along. I kept going, stopping once I was at their backs, facing the direction of the corner from where he’d come. A split second later, a gun came into view, in advance of the person holding it.

“Get down!” I yelled.

Winky and Paci dove to the ground.

I crouched down, waiting for the canner to approach. I knew I didn’t have enough time to get there and confront him in hand-to-hand combat, so chances were I was going to be shot any second. All I could think about was how I wished my dad had been able to teach me how to dodge a speeding bullet.

The canner came flying out into the open, tackled from behind by someone he obviously hadn’t been expecting. The gun left his hands, launched into the air by the unanticipated attack, quickly coming down to earth to be lost in the weeds.

I ran again towards the canner, realizing as I got closer it was Rob who had done the tackling and was now facing off against him. I was still too far away to get there to help, and the loss of blood and earlier fight with Dave had made it hard for me to go as fast as I wanted. My vision blurred and I saw two of each of them. I fell to the ground and tripped around in the weeds, trying to get back on my feet.

I saw Rob being choked and then nearly burst with pride when his hands come up and blasted the canner’s grip away. He smashed the guy with palm thrusts and then an elbow to the face, blasting him over and over.

The guy bent in half to try and duck the blows, and Rob took easy advantage of it, kneeing him in the chest four times before kicking him in the balls. He finished him off with an upper cut and then stomped him mercilessly into the ground with the heel of his foot.

I jogged over and was soon close enough to see that Rob had kicked the animal into unconsciousness. I recognized this one from his battered, slack-jawed profile - it was Brick, the butcher of children. I wished I had a gun with me right then to end his miserable existence on this earth, but I didn’t; and we had no time to try and find the one in the weeds nearby. I grabbed Rob’s arm and pulled on it. “Come on, Rob. We have to go.”

He spun around, his hands up in ready fighting stance. It took him a couple seconds to recognize me and realize I wasn’t a threat. He dropped his hands and his eyes fell on my arm. “Nokosi, you’re hurt.” He took a step towards me with his hand out, as if to take my arm for me.

“Yeah. But we’re going to be worse if we don’t get the hell out of here.” I turned westward, back towards our vehicle. “Truck’s waiting. Let’s go.”

Another explosion came from the front of the house, not far from where we were standing, causing me to duck involuntarily. Fire was coming from the former front entrance of the mansion, and black smoke was billowing out and rising up into the sky. Even the heavy rain that was falling now wasn’t going to be enough to stop this inferno.

Rob and I held hands and ran back to the truck together, Rob holding me up under my shoulder the last ten yards or so when I started to lose my balance. I was too exhausted to go much farther; my body wanted to shut down.

I got to the truck and looked inside, noticing both Kowi and Trip in seats along with several other kids from the swamp and of course the ones from the pool house. Some of them were lying in the back with their eyes closed.

“How come they get to ride inside?” I asked Peter, referring to our indian friends.

“Like I said, injured people in the truck. You’re not injured enough. Please, Bryn.” Peter pushed me towards Winky’s hands that were reaching down to help me up at the back. “Go on top, and we’ll talk about it later.”

The car was too crowded for me to pick out all the faces, but I didn’t see one of them that I was specifically searching for - Bodo’s.

I was holding up the show trying to find him and process all of this nonsense, so I went to the back of the truck and accepted Winky’s help, climbing up to sit next to her, Jason, and Fohi. Peter came up behind me and the truck tipped to the side a little as Rob got into the driver’s seat.

“I think we’d better lie down,” said Peter, “just in case any of the canners’ spies are still feeling loyal and decide to take a shot at us.”

“Where’s Bodo?” I asked, craning my neck to look back towards the canner place. Rob was driving away, and we had to focus all of our attention on holding onto the racks that were bolted to the roof so we wouldn’t fall off onto the street, so I had to stop searching. No one answered my question.

We laid down for the rest of the trip home and did our best not to slam our faces on the top of the car every time Rob drove over a bump in the road. None of us spoke on the way back to the swamp. All I could do was worry about Bodo and hope I’d just missed seeing him in the truck.

We reached the turnoff to the canoe rental place, and I banged on the roof to be let off.

Rob stopped, and Winky and I got down from the roof, using the rear bumper as our step-ladder to the ground. I waved when we were both down, and the rest of them continued on, the truck tires crunching over the gravel and sending up clouds of dry dust into the air around us.