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Keeping her eyes on Mark, Rachael clasped her hands behind her back, pointing off to the side away from the stairwell with one hand, hoping that one of her people would understand what she needed. The traitor went on with his tirade. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice what was going on in the shadows behind him.
“So, what now?” she asked. “There’s a lot of us here, Mark. Do you really want to have that many murders on your conscience?” Please let him focus on me and not turn around, she prayed to anyone or anything that would listen, her fingers wrapping around a small knife tucked in a sheath at the small of her back. Taking one, two, three steps forward, she continued to talk.
“Fuck,” laughed Mark, “I’m not even sure murder is a crime anymore. Seriously . . . go ahead and call a cop. Oh, wait, you can’t, because they all got eaten. That’s how it is now. It’s a big scary world, so I’m doing what I need to do to protect me and mine.”
“Okay,” said Rachael, keeping her voice calm, “I agree with you. The world is really scary out there. It’s terrifying. But, come on . . . you have to at least take a chance for some peaceful way for us all to survive. I don’t know who you are, I don’t know your friends, or what any of you have done, but you can start over. Don’t you want that? We’re already at war with the world out there. Don’t you want a chance for something better?”
A clatter of something sliding across the tiles on the second floor echoed like a gunshot. Mark flinched, and his gun went off. Rachael cried out as a bullet grazed her shoulder, hissing as white-hot agony seemed to ignite in her skin.
“That’s just a taste, bitch,” Mark yelled. “Unless you want more you’d—”
In one fast, fluid movement, Rachael whipped the knife from its sheath and flung it at Mark, then dove behind the lobby desk. He dropped his gun off the balcony and let loose a stream of curses. In the dim light of the unlit lobby she heard the echoes of the pistol clattering off the tiles.
He yelled a command to his partners, and Rachael’s warriors sprang into action at the same moment, roaring out battle cries like a pack of marauding Vikings.
Pulling the long knives out of the sheaths at her hips, she crouched, moving as silently as possible. Then she launched forward, propelling herself off the wall and diving over the counter toward Mark’s henchmen charging down the stairs. Swinging her knives in the half-light, she felt them sink into living flesh. Men screamed in shock and pain, and Rachael pulled her knives from their bodies, rolling through the dive to slide behind a pillar.
Parkour and sneak attacks and fighting undead were one thing, but going up against trained men with knives was still far outside Rachael’s realm of expertise. This wasn’t LARP or tabletop or cosplay; this wasn’t make-believe. All of their lives were at stake, their home, everything they’d worked for.
Rage surged through her, and she used it to throw herself against the closest man, the momentum driving him to the floor and knocking his knife out of his hand. She slammed her knife hilt against his head three times, knocking him out. A second man grabbed at her, swinging his knife at her face in retaliation. Ducking out of the way, she sunk her blade into the soft flesh on the inside of his thigh, causing him to collapse in a howl of pain.
Rachael didn’t want to kill them. She didn’t like to kill; not people, not animals, not anything. She didn’t even like killing the undead orcs, though that was a survival necessity.
It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps, the Firefly quote popped into her fangirl brain. She scurried back to the shadows as more men streamed into the lobby. She was getting used to the near-darkness. Shapes were beginning to form, helping her make sense of what was going on around her. More fighting upstairs from the sound of it, shouting and screaming. No gunshots, but the grunting and thumping of bodies hitting the floor worried her.
“Please let them not be mine,” she murmured to herself, creeping along the wall. Her whisper was louder than she intended, and two dark shapes in the center of the lobby turned, looking around for the source of the sound. At the same moment, a smaller, feminine shape appeared in the gloom by the front door. Maria.
The men turned, raising their knives, only a few yards away from the young teen. Rachael stood, using that moment to slide across the tile and slash at the backs of one man’s ankles. He collapsed with a yell as Maria swung a wooden sword hard at the other man’s head, cracking the weapon down the middle with a sickening sound of breaking bone.
After that, silence.
Brian clicked on their electric lantern, restoring some light to the lobby. Better. Rachael climbed to her feet. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Is everyone okay?”
“Th-they’re fine,” Maria replied, as the two came in for a hug. “I-I-I was worried, I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said, blinking back tears. She looked at the blood staining Rachael’s arm with concern.
Rachael stroked the girl’s hair comfortingly. “It’s okay, I’m okay. But I need to check on everyone upstairs.”
None of Mark’s men were still standing; most of them appeared to be either dead or unconscious. Mark, however, was nowhere to be seen.
“Have you seen Mark?” she asked as her warriors secured the fallen men. They looked at her and shook their heads.
“He must have taken off during the fight,” Alice suggested.
Rachael didn’t feel so confident. She crept past the others, eyes darting around as she made her way cautiously down one hallway, then another in the dark. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She sensed the presence of another person, heard the quiet breathing of someone around a corner.
Instinctively bringing her daggers up in front of her head, she blocked the machete that would have gouged a chunk out of her face, immediately throwing herself back from the onslaught of swings that Mark threw at her. Her adrenaline rush was fading; the strain in her arms aching as she attempted to parry his blows.
With the last of her energy, she ducked a wild swing and darted past Mark, kicking out at his ribs as they passed. He lost his balance and she kicked again at his groin, letting out a yell that echoed through the darkened halls. Her kick missed, catching him instead in the hip. The hit sent him staggering back a few steps, but he caught himself, raised his machete overhead, and rushed her again.
“No!”
The scream was nearly as deafening as the gunshot that followed, and Mark staggered, arms still raised, before he collapsed to the ground, unmoving.
Maria stood behind him, her arm out, frozen, before dropping the gun with a clatter. She let out a sob and fell to the floor. Dropping her own weapon, Rachael gathered the girl into her arms.
“I . . . I wanted to . . . to be brave.” Rachael could make out the words between Maria’s broken sobs, and she hugged the girl against her, holding her tightly.
“You are brave,” Rachael countered quietly. “Even the brave can be afraid or sad. But your mom and Eden would want you to keep going. They would be so proud of you. You are the real hero. You are the real Wonder Woman.”
