Apocalypsis 02 - Warpaint

the confusion and ran to the wall. I climbed a tree and went over it and kept going until I passed out in some bushes in some neighborhood. I woke up later, maybe the next day, and just kept walking until I got to my parents’ house. I took our old canoe here and that’s it.”
    “You did all that with your arm … freshly … injured like that?” I glanced at her wrapped stump, noticing the bandage looked very clean.
    “Yeah. They have a kid there who’s like a doctor. His name is Sean. He makes sure everyone is treated after being cut up.”
    “That’s … uh … nice. I guess.”
    She tipped her head up at me, a truly malicious look in her eyes. “No. It’s not nice. It’s not nice at all. He does it so we’ll live longer and keep their meat fresh, Bryn. He’s evil and awful and he needs to die. Slowly and painfully. I don’t care if he’s not the one calling the shots.”
    She said it with such conviction, I knew he was going to be at the top of her list for total annihilation, when and if she ever saw him again.
    “No, you’re right,” I agreed. “He’s a monster. But I’m grateful he took care of your arm so you could escape and get back to your family here. So right before I kill him for you, I’ll thank him for saving your life.”
    She snorted. “Not if I get to him first.”
    I smiled. I liked her fighting spirit. “Can you give us an address to that mansion?”
    “Yes. I etched it into my brain, hoping someday I’d be able to go back and end them.” She was staring off into the distance, as if playing out her retribution in her mind.
    “Okay, good. Can you tell me what they have for weapons?”
    “Rifles. Guns. A fucking flamethrower … ”
    “A flamethrower?”
    “No. A fucking flamethrower.”
    “A fucking flamethrower. That’s not good.”
    “No, it’s not. But it sure makes for an interesting bar-b-cue.”
    “Oh, man. That’s messed up.” It made my stomach turn just thinking about it.
    “Yeah. I kept waiting for it to run out of fuel but it never seemed to.”
    “Well, it will eventually. What else do they have?”
    “The usual cannibal implements - machetes, knives, bolt cutters, saws …”
    Bolt cutters? Saws? I didn’t want to know more about that, so I distracted her with another question. “So other than over the wall, how do we get into this place?”
    “Front gate is always locked. There’s a tiny door in the wall on one of the sides of the property, for gardening I think, but it’s locked too. I tried to use that before going to the tree. Climbing with one arm is a real bitch.”
    “I can imagine. Good thing you built up your arm muscle with all that batting practice.”
    She half smiled before getting serious again. “They have two big dogs too. Mean ones. They eat kids too.”
    “Great. So we have to find some rat poison, I guess.”
    Celia smiled. “I’d like to serve that little meal, if you don’t mind. I never hated an animal before, but these things aren’t really animals - they’re monsters. Just like Loco.”
    “Sounds like they all are,” I said quietly.
    “Maybe not all,” she said, shrugging. “I got the impression that a few of them were too afraid to say anything, but that they didn’t agree with what Loco was doing. Sean is one of them, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to kill him if I ever see his ugly face again.”
    “They may not have agreed, but they didn’t leave, did they?”
    “No, they didn’t. But maybe they felt like they couldn’t, or they’d end up being the next meal. I mean, first of all, the dogs were used sometimes for punishment purposes. And Loco’s group wasn’t the only one around. Some of the other kids I was with in the pool house told me about what they’d seen. Jerry, a kid with only one leg left, he’d been there for a week or more. When he was conscious, he told me about how they’d taken him and a couple others from a nearby town and had almost gotten killed by another group of canners on their way back. It’s like a canner war out there. Everyone’s fighting over bodies now instead of beans and rice.”
    “That is just so wrong.” I shook my head, frustrated with my vocabulary. “That’s not the right word. I can’t think of how to say how wrong that is.”
    “It’s evil is what it is,” said Celia. “Pure evil.”
    “Yeah.” I had nothing to add to that. It did seem to be the most apt description.
    Coli came over and joined us, saving me from hearing more.