After Midnight

out like before as if he wanted to give me a big, friendly hug. He still had the knife in one hand and the hatchet in the other.

By now, he had a face of blood from my shot to his head. The rest of his body was a mess, too. A worse mess than before. Now, it wasn’t just the woman’s old, dry blood. It was his blood, too, and plenty of it. It was pouring out of four or five holes in his chest and belly.

Have you ever seen those cartoons where a character gets all shot up, then drinks a glass of water and suddenly he’s squirting out of every hole?

It was like that.

Except these holes weren’t really squirting. They were flowing like garden hoses when the water is just barely turned on.

A guy shot up like that shouldn’t have still been coming at me. And he certainly shouldn’t still have a hard-on. What kind of a freak was he?

“You’re dead!” I shouted as he lumbered closer. “Fall down, you motherfucking idiot! Don’t you know when you’re dead?”

He raised his head slowly and grinned at me.

What a nice thing. What lovely teeth. Brown and crooked. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks, but I thought I could see shreds of flesh caught between some of them.

I gagged.

He stopped just on the other side of the fire. Still grinning, he drew back his right arm. He was getting ready to throw the hatchet at me.

I stuck my own right arm straight out over the fire, shouted, “Eat this!” and fired.

Instead of going into his open mouth the way I wanted, my bullet slashed his right cheek open and punched a hole through his earlobe.

My slide locked back.

I gasped, “Shit!”

He hurled the hatchet. It flew at me over the fire, tumbling, coming straight for my face.

I dodged it. The damn thing came so close that I felt a gust of air against my left cheek. And I’d lurched sideways too fast. I stumbled, trying to stay on my feet. Then I fell.

The bastard cried out, “Ah-ha!”

He thought he had me.

As he staggered his way around the fire, I rolled over, got to my hands and knees, and tried to scurry up. My feet slipped on the dewy grass. I fell and banged my knees, and he gained on me.

“Get away from me!” I yelled.

He grunted and kept coming.

He was almost on me by the time I made it up and launched myself out of reach.

“Thata girl!” Judy cried out.

Cheering me on from the sidelines.

“Get his ax!” she yelled.

I’d already thought of that.

I’d already spotted it, too. The hatchet lay flat on the ground about fifteen feet beyond where I’d been standing before my fall.

I could get to it, but I needed a lead. I’d have to swoop down and snatch it up. Without a good lead, he might end up on my back.

“Die, you bastard!” I yelled as I ran.

He giggled. Giggled! Do you believe it?

Maybe he had a right to giggle. He’d taken all the bullets I could throw at him. Now, he was only a few strides behind me. He’d be on top of me if I slowed down to pick up the hatchet. And he’d probably plunge his knife into my back.

So I didn’t slow down, I dived. Slamming the dewy grass, I slid on my chest and belly, my arms reaching out ahead of me. In mid-slide, I grabbed the hatchet with my right hand. As I skidded to a stop, I flipped onto my back.

Grinning, the big boy sank to his knees in the grass just beyond my feet.

He clamped the knife between his teeth, then leaned forward and clutched my ankles. Grunting, he jerked them apart. He started pulling me toward him.

I don’t know what the hell he thought he was doing.

Well, maybe he wanted to pull me closer in order to work some sort of mischief on me. If you can call rape and murder mischief, which I’m not sure would be proper.

Anyway, he obviously wasn’t thinking straight.

How could he, with all those bullets in him?

I slid toward him on the seat of my cut-offs. He kept forcing my legs farther apart as if he wanted to dive between them. Judy dangled in silence from her limb.

When he dragged me close enough, I raised the hatchet high and swung it down with all my might. It got him in the back of the head.

WHUNK!

Chopped him deep, the hatchet busting through his skull and into the mush underneath. Blood and stuff flew up, glistening in the firelight.

He grunted.

He farted.

Then he plunged forward.

Like he had it all planned to land on top of me and pin me down, crush me, suffocate me, kill me with his corpse.

I jerked the hatchet, trying to turn him away. With a slurp, it jumped out of his head and I was left holding it. Before I could scoot out of the way, he bumped me in the stomach. Then his head slid lower as if he wanted to shove it down the front of my cut-offs. It was too big to fit in, though. So it stayed outside. The next thing I knew, it was shoving at my crotch. As he kept on falling, his head acted like a plow and pushed me ahead of him.

By the time he’d finished, I was in the clear.

23

SURVIVOR

Utterly worn out, I lay on my back and figured I might stay that way for an hour or two. But the top of the guy’s head was jammed between my legs, big and leaking blood through my cut-offs and making me all sticky down there.

So I squirmed to get away from it.

When nothing of me was touching him anymore, I sprawled and shut my eyes and took deep breaths.

Vaguely, I knew that I had to get up. A lot needed to be done. But I had no interest in moving.

“Alice!” Judy called.

“Yeah?” I answered, not even bothering to lift my head.

“Are you okay?”

“I guess.”

“Is he dead?”

“Pretty sure.”

“That’s great. You really did great. You saved our lives.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you come over here and cut me down?”

I didn’t answer, just sighed and stayed on my back.

After a minute or two, Judy said, “Please?”