Apocalypsis 04 - Haven

limbs. Killing was a nasty business, and I was sick that it was my business right now and that I’d been forced into it by these monsters. I worried as I stood there that I was transforming into one of them.
    As the canner entered the place where he expected to find me, I walked out from my hiding spot to stand behind him. He didn’t hear a thing.
    “Where are you?” he asked, looking left and right.
    With only a moment’s hesitation, I punched my knife into his back and through his lung.
    My foot came up next, slamming into his balls from behind.
    My blood was rushing so fast and so strong I could hear it in my head, like a giant storm of waves crushing over me, again and again in a horrible, regular rhythm.
    Two murders in the space of five minutes. Surely I would be going to hell now and would never get to see my father in the afterlife. Will he ever forgive me?
    The canner fell into a heap where he stood, the only sound coming from him a slight wheeze of pain. A hunting knife fell out of his hand and into the leaves next to his right foot.
    “Sorry,” I said, though feeling a little less regret now that I knew he’d come here to not only rape me but possibly stab me, too. I removed my blade from his back and did the same thing to him that I had done to his friend. I pushed his shoulder into the dead leaves so he’d bleed out into the earth.
    “You planned to rape me and cut me, and I can’t leave you here to do that to another girl. No room for sadists in the new world.” Please don’t let me be a sadist for killing these two guys. Please.
    I stood and visibly shook myself, trying to get rid of the guilt and emotional agony I was suffering over the choices I’d just made. I couldn’t entertain the illusion even for a second that this guy could possibly be a good person - someone to be spared. He’d lost whatever humanity he might have had, sacrificing it in the name of domination and torture of other kids.
    It was time for me to stop being so naive, expecting people like this to have good in them when they had the same freedom to be bad as I did and yet took full advantage of it in the worst ways possible. I never chose to eat kids, murder kids in cold blood, or take from others what they wouldn’t willingly give. But these guys had.
    It was black and white for me: people left on this earth were either canners or not canners. They either ate people or they didn’t, period. That was the dividing line for me - respect for human life or a complete lack thereof. Those with respect were safe from me. Those who didn’t … weren’t.
    I looked down at the two dead bodies, kids whose lives I had ended with the training my father had given me and the knife I held in my hand - a gift from the Miccosukee. I probably should have felt terrible. I probably should have been crying. But all I felt was determined now. If we were ever going to live in Haven or anywhere else peacefully, we had to get rid of those who lived to prey on others.
    Once a canner, always a canner; and once a canner, always a rapist, murderer, and thief. There would be no mercy for the wicked.
    I walked away from the scene of my almost-rape. Now I had to figure out a way to get Bodo out of the trap he’d gotten himself into and then locate our friends. Hopefully, we’d find them alive and not suffering at the hands of monsters.
    ***
    I crept back to the hut, my eyes flicking back and forth across the spaces around me, hoping to catch any movements or colors that were out of place - advance warnings that attackers were nearby.
    All the way up the path I panicked, worrying I was about to get shot or jumped. But I reached the end unscathed, and now was just around the corner from the place where we used to share meals with our Miccosukee and Creek friends.
    It was dead silent.
    Why can’t I hear Bodo? He’s always talking. He’d know to talk and let me know where he is.
    I dropped down low, hoping that if the remaining canners were looking for someone to arrive from the path, they’d look up at head level. Down on my stomach, I army-crawled the last few feet until I could see the inside of the hut.
    It was empty. And the bodies of the last canners were on the ground, blooms of red spread out across the back of their t-shirts.
    I got up on my hands and knees and moved farther on. A quick scan of the area told me the hut was completely empty, and if anyone was standing outside it, he was well-hidden.
    I stood, walking as quietly as