Apocalypsis 03 - Exodus

have that fun job?” he asked.
    “That’ll be me,” I said, moving towards her slowly.
    “Winky!” I yelled, trying to wake her up. “Get your shit together! I’m coming over there and I do not want to be gutted like a fish!”
    She held her knife up higher, swaying back and forth on her feet, crouched down over the dead, now nearly bloodless body on the ground. She said nothing, just waited.
    I shook my head. “I hate to friggin do this to you, but you leave me with no choice.” I walked over to her without hesitating, easily blocking the knife swipe by arching my stomach away from it. I smashed her in the forehead with my right forearm, doing what I could to not hurt her too badly. She had such a pretty face, I didn’t want to break her nose and have it be crooked for the rest of her life. Just because she was berserking on me, it didn’t mean I wanted to ruin her life over it.
    Her head snapped back, and I took the opportunity to kick the knife from her hand and then grab her in a headlock. I bent her over and squeezed at about half-pressure. “Do you give up yet?!”
    “No!” she growled, punching me on the back.
    “Give it up, wild woman!” I grunted, squeezing harder. “I’m not letting go until you find Winky and bring her back here.”
    She punched me a few more times on the back and on my hamstrings, yelling, “Let go of me you whore-loving bag of dicks!”
    I couldn’t help but laugh.
    “Daaaaamn,” said Jamal, coming up to join his brother. “Did I just hear that right? Did she just call Bryn a bag of dicks?”
    “Yes, you did and yes she did,” said Ronald, whistling out his appreciation. “Girl can cuss .”
    Winky’s hitting subsided and she finally stopped, out of breath and panting, her hands hanging down towards the ground now.
    “Bryn?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Why do you have me in a headlock?”
    “Because you freaked out on me again.”
    “Oh, crap. I’m so sorry. Can I get up now? Ooooh, cruds my back is burning!”
    “Careful!” yelled Ronald. “I’m not sure I’d trust her.”
    “She’s fine,” I said releasing her and standing. “Welcome back, Winky. You had me scared for a second there.” I leaned over and looked at her back, making her turn so I could lift up her shirt. “That bullet grazed you.” I examined the spot where the blood seemed to be coming from and didn’t see an actual hole there.
    “Good … I guess. It hurts like a mother, though.” She shrugged her shirt back down and looked around, her gaze landing on the dead body at our feet. “Oh, shit. Did I do that?”
    “Yeah,” I said, laughing over the fact that she was a killing machine but was lucky enough to be able to block out all the bad parts. That was an affliction I wouldn’t mind having. I pushed her back so she wouldn’t step in my vomit.
    “Come on. Let’s get out of here before someone comes to investigate the gunshots.”
    ***
    I walked over to the three slave girls and spoke to them softly. I was worried they’d think they’d fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire with us. Winky had even freaked me out a little, so I could hardly blame them if they thought we were bad news.
    “Hey,” I said walking up slowly. “My name’s Bryn. I’m sorry this got so violent. We planned to come in here and sneak you away … but as you can see, our plan kind of went straight to hell when we got caught ourselves.”
    Bodo came walked over from the edge of the road, joining me at my side. “You okay?” he asked, putting his arm on my shoulder. The sun was peaking through the clouds now and the rain had lessened to a bare drizzle. He looked gorgeous in the fresh, new sunlight.
    I nodded, turning my attention back to the girls. “This is Bodo. Those guys are Ronald and Jamal, they’re twin brothers. That wild woman over there is Winky - and she’s not usually that out of control, I promise; and back at our camp is Peter with our little dog, Buster. I assume he’s staying there with our stuff,” I said, looking at Bodo.
    He nodded. “He’s got hiss gun.”
    I looked back at the girls. “So, if you want, you can come with us.”
    “Where are you going?” said one of them, the taller one with dirty blonde hair.
    “We’re headed to the Everglades prison.”
    “Why?” asked another, this one with light brown skin and dark hair.
    “We want to set up a new community. A city kind of. So we just thought that’d be a good place.”
    The three girls looked at each