Into the Wild Dark

CHAPTER 35 - SUNNY

Ch. 35: Sunny's Demise

September 11 | Day

The dread that wrapped cold, skeletal fingers around my throat and shut off oxygen to my brain left me dizzy. My heart broke laws of physics in its race to beat the drums of war. Behind me, the love of my life was drowning. In front of me were two Fext soldiers with guns drawn. They were uniformed in camouflage with heavy combat boots crushing irises beneath their feet. Bullets whizzed past my head. I sweated profusely, ducking and dodging. My breath couldn't keep up. I had to save myself to save Jack.

Hitting the ground and rolling behind a large river-stone, my butter fingers fumbled with the sword sheathed to my hip. Yet, scrambled thoughts reminded me it was no defense against the undead. I said a prayer for protection. The sky above the clearing darkened with a stampede of violet storm clouds. I jerked a glance over my shoulder in time to see Jack slam into a dead tree and go under. He didn't come up.

"Jack!" I wailed. He was hurt. I couldn't allow him to be dead in my mind. "I'm coming, Jack!"

The soldiers communicated in guttural grunts and growls, drawing nearer. They had skin the mottled gray of corpses, jaundiced eyes burning with determination. Bullets nicked my stone hiding place. I had to do something. All my years of martial arts training kicked into high gear. I sprang from behind the rock and went at the Fext men with a yowl that stretched my face into macabre wildness. I ran at them with the sword above my head. The savagery made them hesitate just enough.

I hacked at one's shoulder in a downstroke, and he lost his gun. The other fired a stray shot that the upstroke of my blade sent awry. Lightning sprinted across the bulbous masses of strato-cumulonimbus clouds, brightening their underbellies. With a powerful snap kick, I forced my opponent back. Then I drove forward in a flurry of punches and disarmed him, too. I threw his weapon into the water.

A swift glance revealed Jack was no longer in sight. My throbbing heart made my chest hurt. He climbed to safety further downriver, I reasoned.

Rain speared the ground in a chilly onslaught. Breathing heavily, I re-engaged in the fight. I feinted, kicked, punched, jabbed, and hacked. The enchanted Billao whizzed through the air as if it had a mind of its own, but I didn't have Supernatural speed or healing capabilities. It was two-to-one. Each return blow yanked sounds of pain from me.

With them weaponless and my weapon all but useless, the modus operandi was hand-to-hand combat, which was fine by me. The soldiers were too distracted battling me to go after Jack, at least. Sheets of rain layered the atmosphere around us. I was drenched. Mud flung up from beneath my feet as I lunged and side-stepped. It turned out battle was nothing like training. The need to survive added ferocity. I wished I had teeth, claws. I had adrenaline, endorphins.

I landed a blow so intense that it knocked the skin off the rock-hard cheekbones of one of my assailants. In a fit of rage, he threw me against a tree. The angry crack of bones signaled my broken ribs. I screamed in pain as the soldier kneed me in the groin. As I went down to the ground, he back-handed me in the face. Hard. I spat blood as his compatriot yanked my head back by my wet hair. Rivulets of rain arced from brow to chin.

I called on every higher power I knew to aid my lover in completing the mission as I realized I wouldn't measure up to the fight.

"Who are you, and why are you here?" the Fext asked in accented English.

I gathered bloody spit in my mouth and fired it at his face. "Go fuck yourself!" For my vulgarity, I earned another backhand. My jaw felt broken, but as I worked my tongue along my inner jaw, the hinge of my temporomandibular joint worked. I had a loose tooth, though.