Revenence (Novella): Dead Red (8 page)

    
Daphne decided that it was time to close in slightly on the sadists, time to move east, get closer, and thin their numbers before they made it to Red.  She shifted slightly from northbound to northwest, mindful not to get close enough for the enemy to hear her.  The brisk air moved over her receptive skin and she breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of the damp, chilly woods.  Her dilated pupils allowed her a view of the forest that had a clarity rivaling daylight.  She heard everything from her own heartbeat to the birds tucked away for the night in the trunks of hollow oak trees.

     Just ahead, running southward directly toward her, was a panicked sadist.  Daphne, without formulating words in her head, gathered that he was deserting, considering that he appeared to be just as fearful of the sadists behind him as he was of what may lurk ahead.  Being nearly silent, Daphne got within three feet of the man before he saw her.

     He let out a strangled cry as he raised a forearm to cover his mouth, his face full of trepidation.  Daphne gazed at him for a brief moment before her eyes averted ahead, dismissive of his presence.  The two passed one another, traveling in opposite directions.  The runaway sadist was headed toward Jonesboro, and Daphne continued to pursue her target to the north, and any minor targets in between that got in her way.

     As she trailed behind the evading group, she saw a ribboning clearing ahead.  She bounded up and into the lower branches of a dead tree, climbing toward the top.  Through its barren limbs, she saw that there was a road running through the center of the clearing.  From the west, she heard footsteps approaching, dozens of shoes and boots striking the pavement.  From the sound of it, they were moving at about the same speed as the group she had been chasing. 

     She lingered in the tree, waiting for the two groups to meet.  Those she had been following, comprised of two females and three males, reached the two-lane highway, turning to the west as they caught their breath and awaited their advancing compatriots.

     "The fuck are y'all waiting for?" yelled a member of the group making their way down the road.  He gestured ahead.  "Red's that way."

     "Get on your radio," snapped one of the females from the first group.  "Tell Red that crazy ginger bitch is on the loose."

     "Where's Cynthia?" someone from the new group inquired, producing a walkie-talkie.

     "I'm assuming dead," said one of the three males left alive from the first group.

     "Red," the one with the radio said into the mouthpiece, "we have an issue."

     "Make it quick," came Red's reply from the speaker.  "I'm already dealing with more bullshit than I can handle right now."

     "It's about the girl.  She's on some kind of rampage."

     "Yeah," Red replied.  "I'm aware."

     "I don't feel safe just standing here," said a 30-something from the new group, cinching her poncho more tightly and stroking the barrel of her shotgun as she glared into the woods.

     "Yeah, let's keep moving," a male agreed.

     "So what do you want us to do, Red?" asked the one holding the radio, continuing after several silent seconds.  "Red?  Red!"

     "He's gone, man," said a young man.  "He left us."

     "Yeah," agreed an older male.  "He doesn't want us to lead her to him."

     "So what now?" the younger man asked. 

     A burly female shrugged.  "There's still a lot of those shitheads to kill back by the building."

     As a few of them started south, Daphne reached into her bag and pulled out three sticks.  She hopped from one branch to the next and then into the neighboring tree, which was beside the road, to facilitate a better view of her targets.  When they came within her range, she was ready.  The first stick left her fingertips, lodging into the side of the large, stout woman's skull.  She cried out, grasping at the stick and yanking it free.  Because of the way Daphne sharpened her sticks, the wound in the woman's skull was worsened upon removal of the implement, enlarging the hole and pulling a small amount of brain matter out with it as she dropped, alive but incapacitated, to the ground.

     Daphne ignored her for the moment and moved on to the next one, a male in a dirty denim vest.  Having spotted Daphne, he aimed a Beretta up at her, his mouth open wide in a roaring battle cry.  Daphne focused on the space between his parted lips, letting her stick fly toward him and into his gaping orifice.  The stick exited through the back of his neck, leaving him alive but in a great deal of pain.  Daphne saw one of his fellow sadists come in for a mercy kill, resting the barrel of his .38 on the man's temple and pulling the trigger, relieving him of his agony.

     Daphne turned toward the last of the three, a young man, and unleashed another sharpened length of wood in his direction.  It entered through the chest, knocking the slight man off his feet.  He landed to the right on the asphalt, his eyes open wide and his body lifeless.

     Having taken care of the two men, Daphne turned back to the last of the three left alive, the female writhing on the ground with the trauma of her severe head wound.  Dropping from the branch upon which her feet had rested, Daphne grabbed onto a lower branch to slow her fall and lessen the sound of the thud produced as her bare feet made contact with the ground.

     She bent her knees sharply and stalked toward the convulsing woman in sneak mode, knife in hand.  Additional enemies were headed her way, twenty-five feet down the road, but they seemed to be unaware of her location.  She finished the female sadist lying in the road, yanking the wooden stick free and plunging the stainless steel knife briefly into its place.  The woman's body went limp, her mask of fear frozen onto her face.

     "She's right there!" yelled one of the advancing sadists.  A spray of gunfire erupted in the road, and Daphne darted past the shoulder and into the treeline.  From there, she sprang into the nearest tall tree, scaling its length in seconds.  Surrounded by evergreen boughs, she was quickly lost to the sadists' line of sight.

     On the opposite side of the tree in which she was standing, Daphne felt, saw and heard a substantial chunk of limb and foliage being blasted away by a large caliber rifle round.  As she moved into a neighboring tree, the offensive continued, with assault and shotgun rounds raining into the wood and leaves behind her.

     She moved down a few trees further, then slid down a trunk until her feet rested on the soft earth.  She was shrouded by a cloak of pine needles twenty-five feet in diameter.  She felt herself detach even more from her usual cognitive state, spiraling further into her psychedelic experience.  The colors around her were even richer than before, and every sound in the woods reached Daphne's ears as a single primitive yet melodic musical piece.

     As a handful of sadists approached Daphne's vicinity, she waited within the cover of pine needles, preparing to pounce on the most convenient target.  She peered out through the tiny spaces between the dense needle cover, counting the three sadists in the advancing group.  They reached the tree beneath which Daphne hid, one member coming within grazing distance of its bushy lower limbs.  As they did, Daphne slid her hand over the woman's mouth and used her other hand to grab her by the back of her head, yanking her by the hair beneath the cover of the pine before she could scream or even utter a gasp.

     Never ceasing the flow of movement, Daphne placed a hand on each side of the woman's jawbone, twisting to the left sharply.  The loud cracking sound produced alerted the other two sadists nearby.

     "What was that?" one of them whispered.

     "Shit," said the other.  "Where's Lena?"

     Daphne stepped out from the tree, just behind the second of the two sadists.  She drew the knife back behind her head, then arched it into the man's brain stem.  She wrenched it free, producing a wet, cracking sound, then sprang upward  and to her right, swooping  down onto the last of the trio.  The tall, doughy man with graying hair failed to suppress an expression of terror that overwhelmed his features as his hand reached in vain for his shotgun.

     Daphne grabbed and broke the fingers of his right hand as they came in toward the gun, which she herself unholstered and wielded.  She pointed the end at the sadist, who was reeling with the pain of his mangled digits.  Daphne jammed the butt of the shotgun upward, under the chin of the dumpy male.  As his jaws were forced together, he bit off the tip of his tongue, which tumbled from between his lips and onto the ground.  Daphne kicked the towering man's knees out from beneath him, then drove the knife's blade through his temple as he knelt in shock.

     Having eliminated the small group, she turned her attention to others who were nearby.  She raised her arms and hopped up, pulling herself into a branch as several more sadists approached.

     "Get the women out of here!" one of the men ordered from somewhere near the road.

     "What?" another man asked.  "Shit getting too real for them?  Guess they better get used to it."

     "Hey, I'm a card-carrying pink taco vendor here," concurred a female, "and I endorse that statement.  You think we're not tough?  How the hell is it, exactly, that you think we managed to last this long?"

      Daphne had no interest in their partisan squabbling, even if she had been in a state of mind to comprehend it.  Her eyes were glued to the group of four individuals heading her way, their guns drawn.  Just before they passed beneath the branch on which she was standing, she knelt briefly on the limb, grabbing onto a sturdy offshoot with her left hand.  She swung down, hanging by one arm, into the path of an outermost member of the group.  As the two collided, she planted her bare feet into his chest.  With her right hand, as her feet bore down, she plunged the steel knife blade into his open eye, killing him instantly.  She pulled the blade free, pushing with her feet to ease the process, and yanked herself back up and onto the branch, scurrying to the trunk as an eruption of gunfire filled the earth and air where she had been standing and tore into the body of the dead sadist.

     As she swung her weight into the next pine, she heard tones of concession from below and behind her.

     "Not worth it," a sadist was muttering.  "Screw you guys, I'm going to Jonesboro."

     "Shit," said another one, "me, too."

     "The hell you are," said a raspy older female.  "What, and taking our ammo stash with you?"

     "What?  No!  I don't give two shits about the ammo, I just want out."

     Daphne heard a hammer click, followed by muted gasps.

     "I can't let you leave here," said the woman whose voice felt like sandpaper to Daphne's ears.

     "We don't care about taking anything!" a pleading voice insisted.  "Just let us go, and you won't have to worry about seeing us ever again."

     "Yeah, I believe that," the woman said.  "It's just that I don't know that you won't rob us blind on your way out.  And apparently--"  She paused, nodding toward the gun she pointed.  "I'm the one in charge now.  And I don't have time for this nonsense."

     Four shots were fired from the woman's revolver.  Daphne ascended a pine tree, quickly climbing from one branch to the next until she had a clear view of the group.  Two sadists lay dead on the ground, the red pools of blood on the gravel shoulder around them appearing black in the low light, even to Daphne's enhanced vision.

     "Anyone else have anything to say?" the woman asked as Daphne aimed the stick in her hand, targeting the back of the woman's head.  "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."

     Daphne had a point to make.  Her stick sailed through the air, angled slightly downward.  It drove into the woman's spinal cord, separating vertebrae on its way in.  It came to rest protruding upward from the top of her neck and over her chest at a 45-degree angle from back to front.  Daphne leaped, from about twenty feet high, onto the dirt floor of the woods.  She crouched softly as she landed, then sprang semi-upright and bolted in a low-leaning run in the direction of  the stunned survivors gathered around the short-lived, one-time leader.

     She reached the nearest of them within moments, gut-stabbing the first one.  She pulled the knife free, catching the distinctive smell of entrails torn asunder as she raised the blade past her face, transferring it to her left hand.  As she re-gripped the weapon, she armed her right hand with a throwing stick.  She lashed out her left hand, slashing the throat of the next nearest sadist.  No sooner did her left hand complete its task, then the right one set into motion, throwing the stick at a charging sadist carrying a sledgehammer.  Her left hand flicked out again at the next one before her, jamming the blade up from just below the sternum, as she watched the stick make contact with the sledgehammer-wielding target.

     As the weapon struck the man's forehead, its tip burrowed into the skin.  The stick, however, continued to be propelled forward, tunneling beneath the scalp like a worm.  The tip exited the top of the scalp and continued, pinning the man to the tree behind him.  Daphne's wrist flicked out, unleashing another stick.  This one pinned the sadist's lower torso to the tree, as well, stapling him through the flesh and muscle near the left kidney.

     Still alive, he reached for his fully automatic assault rifle, and Daphne dropped down to her belly as the irrational, frenzied sadist fired blindly at her.  The result was a dozen sadists prostrate on the ground, dead because of his friendly fire.