Page 4 of Scythe & Sparrow
I’m halfway up the driveway before I realize what I’m doing. But it’s too late to stop now. I pull my helmet back on and the mirrored visor down. I pass the raised vegetable beds and scoop up the aluminum baseball bat just as the screen door slams and Matt comes stalking onto the porch. I freeze but he doesn’t even notice me, his attention locked on the phone in his hands. He trudges down the steps, a scowl imprinted in his weathered features, and starts walking toward the truck parked next to the house.
My grip tightens around the bat.
I could stop. Duck into the cornstalks and hide. He’ll turn around at any moment and see me. It will be unavoidable as soon as he gets into the vehicle. Unless I hidenow.
But there’s one thing that keeps playing on repeat in my thoughts.
The show can’t start until you jump.
So I take my chance.
I stay on the grass as I rush toward him. Footsteps light. Tiptoes. Bat ready. He’s nearing the front of the truck. His eyes are still on the screen. I’m closing in and he still doesn’t know it.
My heart rams my bones. My breaths are quick with terror and exhilaration. My visor fogs at the edges.
I take my first step on the gravel and Matt’s head whips around. A second step and he drops his phone. I raise the bat. On the third step I bring it down on his head.
But Matt is already moving.
I hit him but the blow doesn’t strike hard enough. He ducks and drops, and the contact only angers him. It’s not enough to bring him down. So I swing again. This time he catches the bat.
“What the fuck,” he snarls. He rips the weapon from my hand and wraps his palms around the grip. “Fucking bitch.”
A moment of unsteadiness on my feet is all he needs. He swings the bat as hard as he can. It hits my lower leg with the force of a lightning strike.
I fall to the ground. Flat on my back. Gasping for air. For a brief, glorious moment, I feel no pain.
And then it consumes me like an electric shock.
Shattering agony climbs from my lower leg and up my thigh and through my body until it erupts in a choked sob. I gulp a breath of air. Not enough comes in through my helmet. Whatdoes carry through it is the scent of piña colada, the smashed fruit that’s tumbled from my torn backpack, the seams split with the force of my fall. It’s cruel. Sickening sweetness and blinding pain.
The bat comes down a second time and hits my thigh. But I barely feel it. The pain in my lower leg is so overwhelming that a third hit feels like a dull thud.
I see Matt Cranwell’s eyes through my visor. Just a heartbeat. Long enough to see determination. Malice. Even the cold thrill of a kill. The whole universe slows to a crawl as he raises the bat above his head. He’s positioned over my injured leg. If he hits my lower leg again, I know I’ll pass out. And then he’ll kill me.
My hand scrapes across the gravel. Nails dig into the dirt. I gather a fistful of sand and stone, and just as he’s about to take his swing, I toss it in Matt Cranwell’s face.
He pitches over at the waist with a frustrated cry, lowering the bat to work the gravel from his eyes. I tear the weapon from his grip, but he’s quick enough to grab it back, even with his eyes watering, leaking dusty tears down his face. I kick his hand with my good foot and the bat flies into the cornfield. Before he can regain his composure, I kick his leg at the knee, and he tumbles down to my level.
I claw my way backward. My left hand slides through the slime of a mashed banana. Matt Cranwell crawls after me, half-blind with dust and rage. He reaches forward and I scramble around me for something to grab on to. A weapon. A shred of hope. Anything.
I sweep my hand through the gravel and a sharp point digs into my palm. I glance over just long enough to spot the cocktail sticks strewn next to my fingers. A bunch of them rest in the shattered plastic tube.
I grab them just as Cranwell wraps his hand around the ankle of my busted leg and tugs.
The scream I let loose is agony and feral rage and desperation. I pitch forward, the spikes clutched in my fist. And I drive their pointed ends right into Matt Cranwell’s eye.
He cries out. Releases my ankle. Squirms in the dust, a shaking hand hovering over his face. He turns in my direction as he thrashes from the pain he can’t escape. Blood tumbles over his lashes and down his cheek in a viscous crimson rivulet. Three cocktail sticks jut from his eye like a macabre kindergarten craft. Their little flags quiver with his shock. His lid tries to blink, a reflex he can’t stop. Every motion of his eyelid hits the highest wooden skewer and he jolts with a fresh hit of pain. He’s screaming. Screaming a sound I’ve never heard before.
My stomach churns and I retch in my helmet. I manage to swallow the vomit down, but just barely.
I have to get the fuck out of here.
I turn myself over and push up onto my good foot, the other dragging behind me as I limp to the bottom of the driveway. Matt is still yelling behind me, curses and pleas that tumble after me down the gravel track.
Tears stream down my face. My molars clamp tight, ready to crack. Every hop I take forces my broken leg to take the pressure of the step. Agony. It’s fuckingagony. A spike of pain that drives from my heel to my thigh. That threatens to bring me down.
“Keep fucking going,” I whisper as I flip my visor open. My first breath of fresh air is the only thing that keeps me upright.
