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‘Come on, cereal boy,’ Ella spat as she crawled up to her hands and knees. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’
The taunt hit its mark. Arthur’s expression twisted into a mask of rage, no doubt the same look his four victims had seen in the moments before they shuffled off this mortal coil.
‘Oh yeah, I know about your little cereal obsession. That’s where it all started, right?’
Arthur lunged at Ella again, but this time she was ready. Despite the agony in her leg and the burning in her lungs, she summoned every last reserve of her strength.
Ella's body moved on instinct. She rolled away from Arthur's grasp, using her good leg to push herself up. She caught his wrist as he reached for her again, twisting it and using his own momentum against him. The movement sent a fresh wave of pain through her injured leg, but she gritted her teeth and bore it. Arthur struggled against her, but Ella's grip was like iron. She pushed him back, every movement excruciating, but she refused to give in.
Arthur struggled in her grip, launching his feet backward and connecting with Ella’s injured ankle. It knocked the life out of her and she collapsed to one knee, then Arthur spun around and began landing blows against her temples.
Ella's world spun as Arthur's blows landed, but she had been through the kind of trials that break most people, and she had emerged each time, battered but unbroken. She glanced towards the pit where Ripley had fallen, and Ella could only imagine how long someone could survive down there without oxygen. She had no idea how cramped the space was, so Ripley’s life could be over in minutes.
She had to end this now, for Ripley, for herself, and for every life Arthur had shattered.
As Arthur raised his hand for another strike, Ella maneuvered to the side. It was a combination of instinct, training, and sheer willpower. She blocked his arm, twisting it to the side, and with a swift motion, used her good leg to sweep his feet from under him.
Arthur crashed to the ground, his breath escaping in a flurry. Ella didn’t hesitate. She pounced, pinning him down with the weight of her body, ignoring the screaming pain in her leg. She didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to inflict more hurt upon someone who’d already been suffering for years.
Ella supercharged her fist, drew back and planted her knuckles deeply into Arthur’s nose.
She felt the recoil, like she’d struck a hanging punching bag, but Arthur’s head-bobbing was broken by the scraps of debris beneath him.
His skull bounced off the floor, eyes rolling into the back of his head. He twitched and squirmed beneath her, then fell limp under Ella’s weight.
Unconscious.
Dead.
Ella wasn’t sure.
She just knew the fight had gone from him.
For a moment, she felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow for this broken man. The anger, the pain, the madness - it all stemmed from a deep, unhealed wound in his past. But she also knew that justice demanded he answer for his crimes, no matter the source of his torment.
Ella's attention snapped back to the urgent matter at hand. She retraced her steps, searching on all fours for her fallen pistol. She found it amongst the a patch of overgrown grass, then crawled back to Ripley’s pit.
‘Mia,’ Ella called out. ‘I’m going to shoot the lock.’
A series of thuds came back.
That was enough.
Her fingers closed around the cold metal of the firearm, and she aimed it at the old refrigerator imprisoning her colleague.
With a deep breath, she fired what remained in her magazine. The bullets pierced the metal in a horizontal strip along the edge of the door.
‘Push,’ Ella shouted.
Then, the door buckled slightly from within. Like a zombie from the grave, Ripley emerged, smashing the fridge door against the amateur grave that Arthur had dug. She threw her head out, gasping for fresh air.
‘Ripley,’ Ella called out, still on her knees. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Ripley said, taking panicked breaths. ‘I’m getting too old for this shit.’
Ella crumpled into a heap on the edge of the grave. An unconscious serial killer one side, an imprisoned partner the other. Sirens wailed in the distance, signaling the end of this fatal game.
She guessed the old director had been right.
