Apocalypsis 03 - Exodus

gun if you’re not one of them.”
    He looked from them to me and back again. “Here,” he said, walking over to the guy being choked by the slave girls. “I’ll do you one better.” He lifted the gun and shot the guy in the stomach. Then he walked over and shot the guy I had nut-crushed in the head, ceasing his moaning and writhing around on the ground.
    I jumped with the sounds of the gun going off. The slave girls scrambled back out the way, grabbing onto each other while screaming and crying. The one who was sleeping before covered her head with her skinny arms, moaning like a wounded animal.
    “See? Would I do that if I were with them?” he asked in a calm voice, smiling at me.
    The gut-shot guy was screaming in pain. His voice sounded inhuman. I couldn’t tell if the hair lifting up on the back of my neck was from the calm demeanor of the murderer standing less than five feet away from me, or the horrible sounds coming from the dying guy.
    “Jesus,” was all I could say, looking at the wounded rapist, watching the blood pour out of his abdomen and onto the ground. It was mixing with the rainwater, turning it pink.
    “Don’t feel bad, he had it coming,” assured J-Dog. “Let me go finish this.” He strode over to where Winky was, and before I could think to stop him, he pushed her away and shot her attacker in the face.
    My hand flew to my mouth, disgusted by the pure violence of it. I looked quickly at Winky, hoping she’d thought to turn away before it had happened. She was staring at the guy with the gun, a look of murderous intent on her face.
    “Winky?” I said, confused.
    “What’d you do that for?!” she screeched at the gunman.
    “I was doing you a favor! What do you mean, why did I do that?! He was about to rape you, in case you didn’t realize that!”
    “He was mine to kill, not yours!”
    “What? Are you some kind of lunatic?”
    He’d turned to face me, opening his mouth to say something, when Winky launched herself at him. She jumped on his back, grabbed his hair to jerk his head back, and bit his ear hard while she scratched his neck deeply with her fingernails.
    He yelled in pain, reaching back with the gun to point it at her.
    “Noooo!” I screamed, jumping into action and running full speed at the two of them, knowing I’d never get there in time.
    The gun went off seconds before I reached them. Winky screamed, moving her fingers from his hair to his eyes, digging them in deeply. Blood from his mangled ear ran down her mouth.
    J-Dog spun around, trying to get her loose, and I saw the blood on her back when it was turned to face me. He went around one more half turn before I arrived, putting him in perfect position for a nut crusher, which I was more than happy to deliver.
    “Kill him!” yelled one of the slave girls. “He’s the worst one of them all!”
    I didn’t doubt her for a second. Neither did Winky apparently, because she reached into her boot, pulled out her knife, and drew it across his neck, cutting deeply.
    She leaned back, grabbed his shoulder, and flipped him onto his side, making the blood go into the dirt instead of up in a fountain like it had started to as soon as her blade opened his skin.
    I turned to the side and barfed, unable to keep my stomach from rejecting all this violence and gore. As soon as I wiped my mouth off, I looked up at Winky, expecting her to be suffering the same as me. But she was crouched over the now dead slavedriver, her knife held out in front of her, like she was still seeing possible attackers ready to come for her.
    “Winky?” I said tentatively. “Winky? Are you okay?”
    She swung her knife towards me, narrowing her eyes.
    “Oh, shit , Winky. Don’t go all berserker on me now. I don’t have it in me to fight you off.”
    I heard footsteps behind me, but I was too alarmed over Winky and her knife to turn around.
    “Bryn!” came Ronald’s voice. “What happened?” He came up next to me, breathing heavily. “Whoa. Some doo-doo hit the fan here, I see.” He looked up at Winky. “Uhhhh, what’s going on over there?”
    I held out my arm to keep him from going any closer to her. “She’s gone into berserker mode. She’s done it before, when she was cornered. We just need to snap her out of it.”
    “And how does one do that?” he asked politely.
    “One smashes her in the face a few times,” I said quietly, hoping she wouldn’t hear me and take it as a threat.
    “Oh, boy. And who is going to