Page 103 of Leave Me Behind
Bunny shouts as a soldier shoots her in the stomach. She buckles and falls to her knees. Blood is smeared over her face and hands. Bodies pepper the battleground.
My chest seizes and every moment after feels drawn out and slow.
“Bunny!” I shout. Pete snaps his head up and runs to help her. Jenkins lifts his pistol and shoots Pete without a thought.The bullet strikes the side of his head and he falls like he was never anything more than a body thrown into war.
No.
Jefferson is nowhere to be seen. My eyes lower to the bodies where Pete had stood. My gaze meets Jeffersons’s lifeless eyes, his throat cut and oozing blood into the earth.
My throat dries and all the fight flees from my body.
Jenkins laughs and tears the knives at the same time from my shoulders. I cough at the violent force he uses to rip them from my body. He turns me on my side and presses his hand down over my head, letting his weight make my face sink into the ground.
“I want you to watch him kill her.” He chuckles darkly as he waits for his soldier to finish Bunny off. She fights valiantly for someone just shot in the stomach, but the man sparring with her is uninjured and lands a brutal strike against her face.
“Bunny!” I struggle with every ounce of strength I have and throw him from my back. Jenkins staggers to his feet. I deck him across the face and he falls on his neck. I fist his ebony knife and plunge it into his chest furiously. He cries out as I withdraw the blade one final time and slash his face. The sharp end of the blade catches his lip and tears half way up his jaw. My breaths are uncontrolled and my body rocks back and forth with the adrenaline coursing through me.
Bunny gets the upper hand while the soldier is sidetracked by his boss getting overthrown, and she buries her blade into his temple. His entire body convulses and he falls back lamely.
I return my attention to Jenkins. A darkness falls over me for all the lives he’s stolen from me, and I set to punching his face over and over. I want him to feel everything in his last moments. I want him to feel all the pain he’s caused. His teeth break and blood spurts over my face as he chokes on his incisors. I keep hitting him until his face is almost unrecognizable and raw.
A soft hand falls on my shoulder and I stop. My breath is heavy and uneven as I look up at Bunny. Her eyes are rimmed with red and she looks so fucking tired. Her hands tremble at her stomach, where blood streams from her small frame.
“Let me finish him,” she says sadly, with a grim set to her jaw.
I hesitate. The urge to strangle the life from him still vibrates at the ends of my fingertips.
“Please.”
I struggle to my feet and watch as she lowers to his side.
Jenkins’s eyes soften almost immediately.
He loves her.I look around at the carnage left in the wake of his so-called love. The number of soldiers he brought with him is evident in his intent. He wanted the fight to be fair. Jenkins was anything but unfair in the end. Perhaps even he wanted her to escape him.
Yeah, he loved her. In his own wicked way.
forty-two
. . .
Nell
Jenkins lies still;his neck is at an awkward angle and his breath is strangled. His blond hair is dyed red with blood and he’s beaten so terribly it threads sorrow into my heart. His teeth are bare on the left side where the knife tore through his flesh and his chest trembles weakly with the ounce of life he holds onto.
I brush his cheek gently with my fingertips, his eyes never leaving my face. They’re narrowed and fight to stay open.
“Look at the mess you’ve made,” I say softly, like tucking a child into bed.
He coughs blood and gives me what looks like a small smile. “One last dance, you and me. It was fun while it lasted, Gallows. Can you”—he winces in pain and coughs again—“c-can you hum that stupid s-song for me?” He lifts his hand slowly and caresses his thumb delicately over my cheek.
I nod.
“Davy Jones” was always his favorite, perhaps because of the sad tune. Jenkins, my wicked, lonely soldier.
Our blood mixes as we bleed out next to each other. I hum and stroke his hair back softly until his eyes flutter closed.
My throat constricts as Bradshaw hands me a pistol and my tune sounds off as I press the cold steel to my lovely Jenkins’s temple.
