Page 94 of Dating After the End of the World
“Exactly.”
“What’s the best-case scenario?”
“Huh?”
“You said worst case, but you didn’t tell me the best case.”
“Oh, best case, you kill all of them on the spot and it becomes two versus ten instead of what it is now. Any more questions?”
“What are you gonna do? Don’t I need to know your part of the plan?”
Blake squats down to the forest floor, using some of the still moist blood on his hands to make a paste out of the soil, turning it into a thick red-brown sludge. He closes his eyes and smears it all over his face. His eyes pop back open, the whites standing out like keys on a piano against his camouflaged skin.
“Don’t worry about me, Doomsday.” Blake smiles and disappears into the woods without another word.
That’s exactly what I’m going to give these burners ... their very own doomsday.
The wind shifts, blowing smoke from the fire in my direction. The stench is like a backyard barbecue where the grill master opted to char up some expired, rotten meat. Boiling pus and decay mix with hair and fabric remaining on the bodies, creating a fragrance that a full diaper would be envious of. I lift my shirt collar up over my nose, semi-blocking the smell to avoid gagging and giving away my cover.
I have no idea whether Blake is ready or in position. When am I supposed to shoot? Will he give me a signal? Or will I just know? Will the bond that ties us together manifest itself in a physical response, something to say,We can do this, Casey?
“All right, enough! They look plenty deep,” one burner yells. His face is disfigured, as though it’s been melted away by acid or scaldingwater. He forces my family to rise and stand at the foot of each of their freshly dug graves.
“Turn around and face away from the holes,” he yells.
“You gonna shoot us now?” my father asks, a proud defiance in his voice.
“HA! Shoot you? Where would the fun be in that?” The man snaps his fingers and holds his hand out to his side. Another burner places a stick with a lit piece of cloth, flaming at the end, into his open hand. “We’re gonna burn you alive. Let your screams sink into our brains so we can replay them again and again in our minds. It’ll help us sleep at night, like a lullaby for a baby.” He arches back, letting out a roar of laughter. The rest of his compatriots join in. The lead burner goes quiet and raises his leg, kicking my father in the chest. The force sends him flying back into the open grave. I gasp, covering my mouth with my hand, adrenaline surging through my body.
He points the tip of the flaming stick into the hole, while another burner comes to his side, carrying a canister of liquid.
Fuck this.
I flick the safety off and point the gun at the fifth burner in from the left and let my finger sink back into the trigger. The gun whirs to life in a flash, four bullets ripping into the burner in under a second before I start panning to the left. Twenty-six more bullets divide themselves among the remaining four men, blood spraying in every direction as the scene devolves into chaos.
The five men I shot at are either writhing on the ground or lying completely still, no longer a part of the equation. The other seven have turned to the woods, firing wildly in hopes of hitting me. I anticipated this response and took cover behind one of the many oak trees in the forest. No bullet will be able to penetrate the three feet of solid wood, at least from their current positions.
“Cowards! Get in there! Kill whatever motherfucker did this!” I hear a burner yell out, and I can guess who—that ugly, nasty one.
I spot another substantial piece of cover and dart through the woods, changing my location. As I’m running, I look out at the scene and see JJ and Jimmy struggling with the men who were standing in front of them, wrestling for control of their firearms.
Where the hell is Blake?
A heavy rustling of branches and snapping of twigs begins to encircle me as the burners enter the woods. My position of safety is quickly becoming compromised.
Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m gonna be surrounded. Where the fuck is Blake?
A large branch snaps just on the other side of the tree I’m hiding behind, and I poke my head around the corner, my gun at the ready. I lean without taking a step, afraid of the underbrush giving away my position.
My hair is yanked back hard, almost pulling me off my feet as I’m spun around. His rank mixture of grime, BO, and rotten breath hits me in the face like a fistful of raw sewage.
“Peekaboo,” he says, smiling with a knife pressed to my throat. “Boys! I found herrugggghhhhkk—”
Hacking and slurping sounds escape his mouth as blood pools and spills out, trickling down his chin. Blake has one hand over the man’s forehead; the other has plunged a knife deep into his throat, angled up into the brain. He slowly withdraws the blade and puts a finger to his lips, tapping it a few times as he lowers the body to the ground. Before I can speak, he’s gone, back into the cover of the forest.
Two burners come around the trail, guns at the ready, answering the call of their newly deceased friend. When they see me, sinister, salivating smiles cross their faces, and then they look to the ground. Their grins curve downward with the movement of their heads, the corpse coming into view for them. His throat looks like a programmed fountain at a mall or airport, weaker and weaker torrents of blood pumping out at even intervals.
“What the hell?” one of them says just as a flash of black appears from behind a tree. Blake slides across the dry foliage, and his knifeglistens between the first burner’s legs, the fabric of his pants soaking in an upside-down V like he’s just wet himself. The burner falls to his knees as Blake pops back to his feet, grabbing the second man by his hair and plunging the knife into the side of his neck. He pushes it in farther, dragging it up and down to rip through flesh and tendon, the burner’s head now looking like a PEZ dispenser. The first burner is still on his knees, frozen, eyes wide and mouth agape, but no sound is being emitted.
