CHAPTER 18: BROKEN FIST TO A GUNFIGHT

“Thought you’d be up here,” the fake park ranger said. His grip on his gun was trembling. “Thought a yella chink like you’d just hole up and let everybody else die.”

Well, that wasn’t very nice. “Look,” Mandy said, carefully turning to face him, “it’s pretty obvious the world just went to shit and we’re some of the only survivors.”

“And I’ve got the only gun,” he noted.

Mandy glanced at it uncomfortably. “Yeah…I guess you do.”

“I heard you talkin’ about food in there,” he said, gesturing to the cabin. “Where is it?”

“There was some in the lodge before it collapsed,” Mandy said. She was paying close attention to how he held the gun, in what stance, and how far away. One of the first things a good martial artist learned about self-defense was how to fuck up a guy with a gun.

Well, that and self-discipline, but Mandy had always been lacking on the second part.

“You don’t look too worried,” the guy said, looking amused. “You one of those Kung-Fu chinks?”

Mandy twitched, pretty sure she was going to put her heel through the guy’s eye-socket if he used that Chinese slur again. “Look, sir, I’m Japanese. If you must use an ethnic slur, I believe you refer to us as Nips or Japs. Mmmkay?” Then she hesitated. “And yes. I know karate. I’m a third-dan blackbelt. Could kick your ass without breaking a sweat, best in Alaska, so you should just put the gun down and walk away now.”

He squinted at her in the darkness. “You’re one dumbass bitch, you know that?” He waved the gun at her. “You ain’t a martial artist. You’re too confident.”

“Sure I am,” Mandy said. “Got a prize in the last meet.” Sure, the last ‘meet’ had been the national championships, and the ‘prize’ had been a silver medal for her sex and age category, but this dipshit didn’t need to know that. “The judge says it’s my duty to warn people when I’m gonna kick their ass from now on.”

He laughed proudly. “I’m a former Army Ranger.”

“SEALS are better,” Mandy said. Then she hesitated, cocking her head. “No, wait. Marines are better.”

That flustered him enough to choke and sputter. “You…you…” He went really quiet for a moment, then said, “Fuck the small talk. I’m the last guy alive, you’re the last girl, I ain’t got laid in six months, and I got the gun. Pull your pants down. Go bend over that boulder, there.”

Like that was gonna happen. But Mandy had to steel her glee, almost having laughed at the idea of the guy willingly getting close enough to try and fuck her. Man, was he in for a surprise… She made a few appropriate objections, then, at his insistence, she wandered over to the boulder, though she made no move to drop her pants or bend over the stone.

The guy already had his fly open and was pumping what would have usually been an impressive cock, but now it just looked pathetic, considering how badly she was gonna fuck him up for being a sick freak. Already, that inner rage was building that always came right before Mandy Did Bad Things.

“I said pants down!” the guy snapped. “I’m gonna fuck the yellow right off ya.”

Ooooh, she couldn’t wait to get her hands on him. Well, hand. Her black and bleeding left hand wasn’t going to do shit, considering she couldn’t even make a fist with it.

“Make me,” Mandy said.

She wasn’t ready for the gunshot, nor the little spray of snow right beside her left ear. The guy was grinning at her sudden surprise. “Next time, it’s the eye,” he said. “You don’t wanna get fucked, chink? Then you’re worthless to me, and I’ll put a bullet in your brain and leave you here to rot.”

He really sounded serious.

And, with that, Mandy realized that the only way she was gonna get him close enough to kick the crap outta him was if she did as she was told. Very reluctantly, she pulled her pants down.

Chuckling, the guy stepped closer, still pumping at the apex of his jeans. “Turn around,” he said, not quite getting close enough for her to kick in the nuts. “Bend over.”

Mandy hesitated, needing him to get just a little bit closer…

Mr. Ranger cocked his head at Mandy as he pumped his dick. “You need another demonstration?” Pump pump pump… He grinned, and it was vicious. “Bitch?”

“No,” Mandy muttered.

So that was it, then. Men really were jerks when the societal constraints came off. The apocalypse breaks out, it’s Us against Them, and they suddenly decide they wanna get their rocks off on the first woman they lay eyes on, regardless of her willingness to participate. Mandy was actually a little surprised—she’d had a little more faith in the male species than that.

Very slowly, she turned around, her ass hanging out under her snowcoat, the mountain wind brushing tickling her pubic hair, making her break out in goosebumps.

“Bend over.” He’d gotten a little closer, but not close enough. “Spread your legs. Show me your pussy.”

“It’s cold,” Mandy muttered, feeling her face heat. “Can’t we do this inside?” The idea of presenting her vagina to that fucker made her wanna stab him in the eye with a hatchet.

He snorted. “You’re gonna be fucked anywhere I wanna fuck you. Spread your legs.”

Mandy remembered the cool way he’d shot only inches from her head, knew that he’d killed people before. That meant, if she was going to get out of this safely, she needed to get him off guard. She swallowed hard. Then, slowly, she spread her legs and bent over.

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“Hands on the boulder,” he insisted.

Fuck.

She obeyed.

Then she heard him chuckle as he came up behind her. “Time ta show ya what a real white cock’s made of, not those tiny chink—” She felt the warm head of his penis touch her vulva and saw the gun dip at her back as he looked down and fumbled to get his dick positioned with his other hand.

Mandy twisted, grabbed the gun, twisted it up and back to break his trigger finger, then cracked his balls, slammed his knee, and delivered a side-kick to his face.

Or tried to.

The guy must really have been an Army Ranger, because as soon as she broke his trigger finger, he threw her over his shoulder with a brutality that left her flat on her back, seeing stars.

“Goddamn knew it,” he snarled, dick out and hanging from his open pants, clutching his ruined hand. “Fucking chinks fuck!” At least he was down a hand. With his other hand, he was pulling a big Ka-bar from his belt, a look of death on his face. Shit.

Mandy, who had the gun now, rolled away from him as he dropped to crawl atop her.

She didn’t get a chance to use the gun—hell, she was trained in martial arts, not guns, because what kind of martial artist worth her salt would need a gun for self defense—before the guy was on her. Knowing he was stronger—and not wanting him to take it from her—Mandy hurled the gun away from the fight.

That only made him chuckle. “Oh, you’re fucked now, you little bitch.” He still seemed intent on raping her, which was good for her. If he’d just decided to kill her, he probably would have simply started stabbing.

Mandy didn’t have those qualms. She kicked him in the sternum and face, launching him before he could use the knife on her, then made an awkward one-handed flip back to her feet and twisted to kick him in the head.

Unfortunately for her, the awkward return to a standing position had given him enough time to compensate, and the man grabbed her leg with both hands and yanked in an attempt to her off her feet, and since he weighed in at probably somewhere close to a hundred pounds more than she did, Mandy didn’t really have an option other than to go down.

So she went down on his face, knee to his nose as hard as she could, punching him in the temple as she fell on him. The man screamed and twisted to jab the knife into her ribcage, apparently no longer fucking around.

Mandy hurled herself out of reach, but still took the tip of the knife raking across her side. He grabbed one of her ankles, arresting her escape, still shouting. Then, knowing she couldn’t get her legs out of the way of the knife in time, started kicking him in the chin as hard as she could from the ground.

He just kept coming. He stabbed her in the calf, then, holding her other one in place so she couldn’t kick him again, used it as purchase to climb up her leg, heading for her throat. “Gonna kill you…” he rasped, blood bubbling from his broken face. “Stupid fucking bitch…” He stabbed her in the leg again, higher, dragging himself further up her body, dribbling blood on her waist and clothes.

I just picked a fight with Special Ops, Mandy realized. And I’m gonna die…

Fuck that shit!

He yanked the knife out, this time to plunge it into her stomach, and she sat up and cracked him in the bleeding face as hard as she could with her elbow. Then, as he was recoiling from that, she grabbed the knife by the blade and twisted it out of his hands, throwing it as far from the fight as she could because she couldn’t get it spun around in time to use it on him.

“Fuck!” he screamed. It only seemed to make him mad. With a focused, determined, almost vacant look in his eyes, he reached for her throat, got a grip around her neck with a big, calloused male hand. She slammed both cupped palms over his ears three times in a row—effectively breaking his eardrum with one and slapping him with broken meat with the other—then slammed her right knuckles into his temple for good luck, but it didn’t faze him.

But, by this time, Mandy was seeing red, completely unable to breathe. He had her legs pinned under his heavier body, so she punched him again in the temple with her good hand. He grabbed that hand and pinned it, totally focused on choking her to death.

Mandy’s vision narrowed to a very dim, dark tunnel where his face was the only thing she could see. And there was no hatred in his face, just cold, psychopathic rage. He kept squeezing, utterly emotionless as he held her down, trapping the air in her lungs, cutting off the circulation to her brain. She slammed her broken fist at his arm, trying to dislodge it, but only succeeded in driving spikes of pain-induced adrenaline through her already adrenaline-soaked system.

Mandy felt herself start to lose consciousness, felt her free arm start to go limp. Above her, the man’s face was just a haze, now, his left eye filled with blood.

Then, in a weird moment of magnanimity, he slowly sat up, pulling his hand free of her neck. Mandy sucked in a breath of air and immediately punched him, hard.

Blood dribbled from his left ear, dislodged from where it had been pooling in the ear canal. Lots of it. It spattered her shirt and he blinked at her as if confused.

Mandy hit him a few more times, until he got up and, seemingly in a daze, trudged away. She sat up, panting and blood-covered, to watch him stumble a few yards across the parking lot, then slump face-first into the ash. A moment later, his body started to spasm in some sort of violent seizure.

Oh my fuck, Mandy thought. Oh my fuck. She was bleeding from the two huge knife wounds, her lifeblood flowing out onto the ground. Still, the first thing she did was crawl over to the gun, grab it, point it at the guy shivering on the ground, and put six rounds into his shaking corpse. Then, when he stopped shuddering, she crawled closer and put another two in his head.

Then, trembling all over, body weak and vision dim, she dragged herself back to the front porch of the cabin and let herself inside. She crawled through the door and slumped by the stove, then took the blanket from the kid and wordlessly started tearing it into strips.

The kid got up and backed away, wide-eyed at all the blood. Mandy ignored her, knowing she was going to die if she didn’t get the bleeding stopped. And, if she died, both of them died.

Cold air was rushing in the door, sweeping away the heat from the woodstove, but Mandy’s whole focus in life had narrowed to making bandages tight enough to stop herself from bleeding out. She had two knife wounds that each on their own would’ve sent a normal person to the ER, and she knew she wasn’t going to get to a hospital any time soon.

By the time she got the last bandage cinched on her leg and the bleeding relatively stopped, she was cold, too cold, and weak. The little girl was still cringing against the far wall, staring at her in horror.

“Shut the door,” Mandy said, slumping with her back to the bed, unable to find the strength to climb into it. “Find wood, put it in the stove, keep the place warm. If I don’t wake up, there should be food under the biggest pile of rubble outside.”

The little girl just stared at her.

“You hear me?!” Mandy demanded, that inner rage firing her again, if only briefly. “Close the door. Keep it warm in here. Use wood from that stack beside the stove to feed the fire. If you run out, use wood from the piles of destroyed buildings outside. Keep it warm in here. The biggest rubble pile had food under the side closest to us. I might not wake up. If I don’t wake up, you’ll probably wanna take a knife from the lodge and go down to where I picked you up and cut up that dead cow and eat it. Just follow the road down the mountain from here—you can’t miss it. Keep yourself alive as long as you can and maybe someone can find you, okay?”

The girl just stared.

“Are you goddamn listening to me?!” she snapped.

The girl nodded.

“Then close the door and do what I goddamn say!” Mandy cried. Even then, her vision was going dark, and while she could hear herself talk, she couldn’t see the girl’s reaction. Oh well, I tried, she thought. Then, sleepier than she’d ever been in her life, she felt herself lose consciousness for the second time that week.