Page 55 of The Pale Rider
Now what? If I bashed his brains in, the other man with a machete could cut my fucking head off. I rather enjoyed having my head attached to my body. I held Smurfette up in a defensive position. The other guy with the machete was holding back, probably watching my fighting style. I needed to take the unarmed man out of the equation.
I swung Smurfette at his knees. I heard a sickening crack as his knee broke. He fell over howling. I’d deal with him in a minute. I still had my eyes on that second machete. This guy didn’t speak a word of English, but I was pretty sure he put a curse on my first-born child. I know he called me a bitch.
“That’s not very nice.”
I decided to just go for it. He wasn’t a big guy; he only had a big fucking knife. And that big fucking knife was scary. I decided to be scary too. I raised Smurfette above my head and just ran at him. I used the guy with the broken knee to launch myself in the air with my bat above my head.
The guy with the big scary knife cowered in fear as he tried to block me with his machete. I smashed the bat on his head and felt the machete slice my forearm. He fell over in a heap. I looked over, and Aeron had already beheaded the three men who came at him. I expected him to give me shit about not staying in the tent, but he didn’t. He just winked at me.
“Not bad, Speedy. Finish them off so I can move the bodies. We need to get some sleep.”
“You want to sleep after this?”
“You’re bleeding,” Aeron said, dashing over.
He drove his sword into the two men that attacked me and started checking my forearm.
“I will have to stitch this up. I’ve got a bottle of antibiotics. Go in the tent and put pressure on it while I move the bodies far away from us. We can use them as Rage Head bait. Hopefully, they’ll be satisfied with these guys as their meal and leave us alone.
My forearm was throbbing, and five gang members wanted to trade me for camping supplies. I was about to try to sleep with bleeding corpses nearby for Rage Heads to eat.
I officially hated camping.
Chapter 32
I
really liked where things were headed before Aeron and I were so rudely interrupted. Even if I wasn’t sitting here getting my arm stitched up in the dark and wondering how close those dead bodies were, we couldn’t recapture that mood. Stitches fucking hurt too. I was trying to shine Aeron’s flashlight on my arm while he tried not to mangle my arm further.
“Your first apocalypse battle scar. How does it feel?”
“Like I slammed my arm towards the end of a machete, and now you are sticking needle and thread through my arm.”
“You’ve got a pretty extreme pain tolerance.”
“Look at my arms. I wouldn’t have sat and gotten all this inked on me if I didn’t.”
“Let me tie this off, and then I’m done. I’m almost out of ointment, but I’ve got some expired antibiotics for you to take. Leif will have what we need to keep this from getting infected when we get to San Quintin.”
“And how did Leif end up with all the medical supplies in Mexico?”
Aeron cut the thread and started rubbing his last remaining ointment in my arm.
“It was just Leif and me at first. We weren’t just sitting around in Mexico, plotting to get close to you. We were networking. Before they fell, we had the ear of the Mexican government, and the military is still on our side. We helped them during the war. We were looking for you and trying to stop your father, but we were fighting just like everyone else was. They know Leif can help end this, so they go out and get him what he needs. It’s nice to have friends with good toys.”
I just shrugged.
“I feel like all I’m contributing is my fucked up blood and drawings that might not make sense.”
Aeron grabbed my shoulders and made me look him in the eye.
“Listen to me right now, Ariel. Your blood is not fucked up. Nothing about you is fucked up. You are exactly as you need to be. Stop focusing on how Isaiah polluted it for evil purposes and think about the fact that Leif will use it to stop this.”
“There’s a reason I’m at the center of this, isn’t there? And you won’t tell me until your entire team is with you.”
“Ariel, if you think shit is terrible now, it will only get worse. If you are focusing on the evil things that your father did with your blood instead of the marvelous things Leif can do with it, then you will need a support system when you get the full picture.That’swhy I want my team there before I tell you everything.
“We are all different. We can comfort you in distinct ways. You might need something I can’t give, as much as that kills me. We aren’t just roping you into this because of who you are and what your blood can do. Even after Leif gets your blood and figures out what to do with it, it’s our job to get you back to California, safe and sound. The only reason you are coming to Washington with us is so we can keep you safe while we stop your father. Then, I will bring you back to Mabel.”
