The men with the knives exchanged a quick look, a vicious smile, and then nodded at the overweight sack of shit man. The now family of three turned and rushed off with their possessions held tight in their hands—not a single one of them gave even a courtesy gnce back at the young woman they abandoned.

  “Wa-wai-why? What? What just happened?” The woman was staring at the empty pce her family had been moments before.

  “Aww, don’t worry about them. They didn’t seem like much fun. But we’re fun. Quite fun, I reckon. As the world burns we’ll make sure we all get to enjoy it,” one of the men said and tucked his knife away in his belt, then forced the woman up to her feet.

  “Please, let me go. I just want to leave. I don’t know what’s happening and I’m really scared,” the woman began to plead. She tried pulling away from the man but his grip would not relent. His strength had a vast advantage over hers and he enjoyed watching her struggle to escape his hold. It looked like a parent holding a toddler mid-tantrum by their arm and refusing to let them run away.

  He started to walk toward the street, pulling her alongside him. He slid his arm around her shapely waist and brought her tight against his side while they walked. His fingers walked up her side and came to a rest just under her armpit. His fingers fidgeted with her loose shirt, letting her feel how close he was to touching her chest without doing so. He let the threat of him touching her mentally torture the poor girl while they walked. He was toying with her, messing with her head while she was already panicked. Sick bastard.

  The other man was bouncing on the balls of his feet, an ear-to-ear smile smeared across his face. He looked like a kid that found the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

  “No! Please! Please! I don’t want to go with you!” She shouted and with both hands tried to push her way out of his hold. Her enchanting near-white hair shone in the sunlight as it twisted in the air from her shaking her head in protest. He let out a slow chuckle and squeezed her tighter against him so she had no good angle to push off.

  Alright, this had gone on long enough.

  I stepped out from my hiding spot around the corner and moved toward the two men, making no effort to mask my footsteps from my feet spping against the concrete. The man pulling the girl saw me first and raised his chin at me as I approached. The man with the knife still in his hand craned his neck back to see what his friend was looking at. He saw me and turned to face me; the smile never left his face.

  I’d seen enough from these two.

  “Becca, I think I’m allowed to enjoy this,” I said and oh, I was going to enjoy this.

  Becca: Sure. What’s a few more murders after all? Don’t py around too much and fall back into old habits, you need to get moving.

  The woman gawked at me like she was not sure if I was actually there or a figment of her imagination. Her face was drenched from her tears and bck streaks were running down from her eyes. I stopped ten feet away from the man with the knife.

  They looked mildly amused and a little confused too. I spoke first.

  “We’re in a bit of an urgent situation. So I won’t get to enjoy this as much as I would like to,” I gestured at nothing in particur over my shoulder but the roar of battle could be heard and helped get my point across. “Considering what’s happening in this city, I’m going to tell you this once and only once. Let the girl go.”

  Please say no. Just give me a reason. I’m begging you.

  The man holding the knife stared at me with an open mouth and that stupid smile. With his free hand, he gestured to the knife and said, “Uhh. No?”

  Thank you. I pulled my gsses off my face, folded the temples, and slipped them into my shirt pocket.

  “Good, now I get to make you.” It was my turn for the creepy smile.

  Without missing a beat, the man snorted out a ugh and charged at me with his knife. He held it low with a loose grip. He sshed at me with no clear target, swiped at random, and hoped he would hit me. His smile fell when I hopped backward out of the way of his strikes without much effort.

  A novice. Someone who thought the act of having the knife made him dangerous.

  After his first two misses, he pulled the knife up by his head and ran at me with renewed energy and tried to bring the knife down into my chest. I sidestepped that attack, knowing what he would likely try next.

  Pying his part in the scuffle perfectly, the man pivoted from the vertical ssh and tried to attack horizontally, aiming the knife at my side. With my left hand I snapped my fist into the inside of his wrist to stop his attack, then with a quick flip of my hips I threw a right hook across his jaw. He dropped the knife and stumbled back, almost lost bance but remained on his feet. I lunged forward and drove a left uppercut into his sor plexus. The man clutched at his lower chest as the air was forced from his lungs. I set my feet, and twisted my hips as I brought my right elbow down into the side of his head, the point of my elbow connecting with his temple.

  A high-pitched yelp escaped him as he slumped to the ground and y still.

  I tapped my gun at my hip a few times and clicked my tongue while pnning my next move. Eight rounds left. I needed to be smart with how I used them. I could not waste them here. Well, I couldn’t waste too many of them here.

  I lifted my hand off my gun and walked over to pick up the knife the unconscious man dropped. With the weapon secured, I looked back at the man still holding the woman against him. They were looking back at me, mouths open and dumbfounded. It would have been a cute photo if one of them wasn’t about to force the other to do a lot of things she did not want to do.

  “Normally, this is when I would give you a chance to release the girl. But, as I mentioned before, I was only going to ask once,” I said with a pleasant smile and stepped toward him.

  The man shoved the girl to the ground once again and twisted around to run away. I flipped the knife in the air and grabbed the bde with my fingers. I flung it at the man as he started running. The knife soared through the air, spinning rapidly until it plunged into the back of the man’s knee.

  “Gyuh?!” The man cried out and dropped to the ground, grabbing at his knee. Tears began to form in his eyes as he yanked out the knife.

  Alright, time to aura farm.

  “Ooh, you probably should have left that in,” I said as I sauntered over to the man. I stopped to offer my hand to the girl and pulled her to her feet. Her hair flipped up into the air, the silver undertones in her beautiful ptinum blonde hair shining brilliantly in the sunlight. “Stand over there by the brick wall. I would recommend you look away for a bit. Maybe count all the bricks on the wall.”

  She nodded without hesitation and jogged away from us so she did not have to witness what was to happen next.

  I stepped on the back of the man’s knee when I reached him and put my full weight onto it. He shrieked and dropped the bloody knife he pulled out of himself to try to push my foot off his knee.

  “I’m sorry! We weren’t going to do anything! We just wanted some supplies from people that were preparing to leave! We didn’t have anything for ourselves and were panicking!” the man said as the tears started to drip down his face.

  “I don’t like lying—don’t do it again,” I said and stomped on his knee. The man yelled out again and the tears were really flowing now. Perfection. I wasn't sure if it was more from inflicting the pain or the fear he dispyed, but I enjoyed the moment.

  I crouched down so my face was close to his level. I spoke in a low, quiet voice.

  “I would be lying if I said this was not something I enjoy. I do enjoy hurting people that need to be hurt. I’m good at it too. I had a lot of success with the st group I was running with.” I gnced down at his knee. I took a few moments to look over his knife wound. It was a gnarly gash and the blood was rushing out of the open wound and spilling onto the concrete beneath us. I made sure to lock our eyes before I continued. “I didn’t think I would be in this situation again once I left that world behind. But here I am. So I thank you for the opportunity to indulge my darker side again. Maybe you’ll be my swan song.”

  I picked up the bloodied knife and pushed the handle into the cut. Oh boy, this man was hollering now.

  “Do you want to know why I take off my gsses before engaging in this kind of fun?”

  The man was terrified, no other way to put it. His wide eyes were begging to be anywhere but here as he looked into mine. He had a little lip quiver and was turning pale. I refused to look away or speak again until he answered. The man eventually realized it was not a rhetorical question and nodded.

  “The easy answer is so they don’t get broken. But, really, there’s two reasons why I do it. The first is that things tend to get bloody and I don’t want any blood to sptter on my gsses. Makes it hard to see and I don’t want to miss anything.” I pushed the handle of the knife deeper into his knee and twisted it in both directions several times. The man bit down on his lip to try to avoid screaming, but failed. The pained shriek could be heard from his closed mouth before he could no longer hold back and started bellowing with a bloody bottom lip when I did not stop. Once I was satisfied with his dispy of pain, I continued speaking, with my excitement starting to rush my speech.

  “The second reason is the most important. I want to see every precious moment of pain I inflict. I can’t risk a gre, some blood, or anything else getting in the way. I take them off to enjoy this with my own eyes. Nothing getting in the way,” I sighed as if I was remembering a fond memory. “They say the eyes are the mirror to the soul, and I get a sick satisfaction watching those mirrors go dark with my own eyes.”

  The man pushed himself back with his hands, dragging his injured knee across the ground while he tried to inch his way away from me.

  “Please just leave us. We’re sorry. We won’t ever do anything like this again!” the man pleaded. I stood up and curled one side of my mouth into a sneer. I gred down at this worm begging for mercy. Coward.

  So strong and scary when they feel in control. I was sure he felt immensely powerful when he thought it was the two of them against that one girl. I would give him the same mercy he was going to show to that girl when her family abandoned her. I grabbed the bloody handle of the knife and moved slowly toward the man.

  “No. No! Please! Please! We won’t-ahck!”

  I set the tip of the knife against the center of his neck and let it rest against his skin to give him a few seconds to realize what was going to happen. His heavy breathing hastened and his eyes dashed down at my hand and back up to my eyes. With a little push, the bde slid into his throat like a hot knife through butter. I couldn’t contain my full smile when his eyes widened when he felt the full length of the bde sinking in. That beautiful red liquid leaked out down his neck from the fresh cut.

  Once the entire bde was submerged and the hilt reached his throat, I yanked it out. Blood sprayed out in rhythmic pulses that matched his racing heart. His desperate stammering for mercy turned to gurgles and the blood sprays soaked his colr and seeped down into the rest of his shirt. Some of his blood nded on my shoes. The life in his eyes faded away and his expression went bnk; his head tilted back and he went still. No more begging. No more lies. No more danger to innocents trying to survive.

  “This is a pretty decent knife,” I examined the knife I had just used to execute that man. I searched his pockets and found another knife, this one with a nice leather cover. I deposited his knife into my pocket and went back to the man I knocked unconscious before and searched his pockets as well.

  Bingo! I found a cover for the knife in my hand. I slipped the knife into its cover and put that one in my other pocket.

  Becca: Feeling better?

  “Much better. Satisfied even. Like lunch at a pizza buffet. Hmm, I could go for some mac and cheese pizza. Or maybe barbeque. Speaking of food, time to leave a meal for those assholes that were following me. Two warm bodies should keep them busy long enough to forget all about me,” I said.

  The group of decayed that were following me before may have moved on, but if not, these two bodies will definitely keep them busy for a while. I just needed to lure them over here.

  “Cover your ears,” I yelled to the girl who was still facing the wall. Smart girl, this wasn’t something she would need to see. I was gd she listened to me, that was a good quality to have when trying to survive a zombie outbreak.

  The girl put both hands over her ears without a moment of hesitation. I pulled out my gun and aimed it at the head of the unconscious man.

  “Time to ring the dinner bell,” I said and pulled the trigger.