Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan (20 page)

I didn’t respond, so he kicked me with his foot, making sure to hit my injured shoulder. “I wanted to talk to you before they get their hands on you…won’t be much left after that.”

I could hear his fingers drumming against the table, a slow, steady beat. “You remind me of someone I used to know. You look like her.” His fingers stopped. “I think it’s the eyes.”

I was already sick of hearing him talk, his voice like nails. Why wouldn’t he shut up? I wanted it done, gone. 

Get on with it.

“I bet you think I’m a really bad guy, don’t you?”

Please shut up.

“This may be difficult for you to understand, considering the position in which you currently find yourself, but I’m not a bad guy…not at all. I’m the good guy, sweetie.”

Shut up. Shut up.

“I’m the righteous one. I’m the one righting the wrong. I’m the one avenging a death, not you.”

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

“You and your
daddy
—you hurt my family, hurt me. You took my brother…fed him to those things…turned him into
howler
shit. Patrick was the only thing I had left, the last good person in this fucked-up place, and you killed him. You did that, not me. You and your
daddy
…you did this to yourselves. You left me alone. Whatever happens from this point on is your own fault.”

“He wasn’t my
daddy.
” I don’t know why I said it, why I felt the need or thought it mattered. The words just happened. 

“Oh, no?”
Bloodboots
seemed surprised. “Could have sworn I saw a family resemblance. What was he then? A friend? Something more, maybe?” He paused, leaning back, scratching his chin. “Oh, I get it.” His voice lowered to a whisper, lips stretched to a grin. “Did I kill your
boyfriend,
sweetie?”

He said it with malice. While he was going to let the rest of them hurt me with their hands, he wanted to do it with his words. He wanted me to cry, wanted tears. For whatever reason, he needed me broken. 

“I did, didn’t I? I killed your
sweetheart.
” In a single movement he slid from the desk, dropped to his knees, and knelt beside me. “I broke his face, made him bleed…rubbed that fat nose of his right in the dirt. I punched him, and I kicked him, and put a bullet right in his
pervert
head.” 

Reaching forward, he made his hand into the shape of gun, pressed a finger to my temple, and held it there. “When you really take a moment to think about it, in some ways…I probably did you a favor.”

Something in me was boiling, something in my belly. I could feel it splashing, rising, anxiously spitting. It wanted something, anything. It needed everything. It had no interest in going quietly. The next time
Bloodboots
spoke, it snarled. 

“The things he did to you he shouldn’t have done. He was
sick
man,
sick
in the head. I put him out of his misery,
kiddo
. I di—”

I bit his nose. 

I bit until my jaw clamped shut, until tooth cracked tooth, until blood filled my mouth and drenched my eyes. I bit and pulled, tore it from his face. Before spitting it to the floor I held it in my mouth and chewed. 

“Shutupshutupshutsupshutupshutup!”
When I started screaming I didn’t stop, the same words, an endless loop, so loud I thought my chest would burst.

Bloodboots
staggered to the opposite end of the room, hands covering his nose, face painted red, blood spraying through wobbly fingers. When
Scarface
entered the room I was wailing in
Bloodboots’
direction, eyes wide, legs kicking as I twitched on the floor. 

He looked right at me. “What the fu—”

Bloodboots
snagged his jacket and tugged, whipping the larger man from side to side as his nose spurted in every direction. “Bitch bit me! Fucking bitch bit me!”

I screamed louder, impossibly loud. I wanted to break their ears. I wanted to collapse the ceiling and explode the sun. Suddenly, I was crawling in their direction, moaning like a hungry
howler,
biting the air like a flesh-starved
gimp.
I’d only eaten a nose. I was hungry for a face. When
Scarface
kicked me in the stomach, I didn’t stop. When he stomped my shoulder, I screamed louder. Instead of attacking,
Bloodboots
watched. 

Instead of moving forward, he stepped back. 

I didn’t stop screaming until I heard the explosion: something large, outside, the roof shook and thunder clapped. Gunfire followed, angry voices, confused orders. 

“God damn it!”
Scarface
turned from me and headed for the door.

When he opened it, I saw fire. A wall of flames rose from the far side of the building, fiery tendrils arching to the ceiling. Something else exploded. Someone screamed. Without warning a spatter of bullets erupted from
Scarface’s
back, meaty chunks spraying the floor and soaking the walls. The massive man stumbled backward, tripped over his own feet, and crashed to his back. With his last breath he looked right at me, eyes wide, as if he couldn’t believe he’d been shot. He froze in that position, a dead stare. He never looked away. 

A grouping of bullets pattered the floor beside his face and up the wall and into the ceiling. A wall panel tore in two and tumbled to the floor. Outside the room the screams continued. The shape of a man ran past the open doorway, arms flailing, body engulfed in flame. He shrieked and didn’t stop, hands on his face, fingers clawing desperately at cooking flesh. Before he hit the ground he hit a wall, engulfed in everything awful, insides crackling. With his back to the wall,
Bloodboots
fumbled with his gun, struggling to load it, mumbling nonsense and spitting blood. Through the open door I watched as another man tumbled to the floor, riddled with bullets from an unknown source. An engine started, then quickly died. The flames in the other room were spreading quickly, moving outward, hungrily searching for more. 

Bloodboots
finally managed to slide a clip into the chamber of his gun. “Mess with me? Motherfuckers wanna mess with me?” He was babbling, breath ragged and lip quivering. 

Another explosion tore through the building and decimated a section of the wall opposite our door. Crumbling stone tumbled to the fire, debris scattering flames.
Bloodboots
closed his eyes, desperately searching for the nerve to act, to do something other than what he was doing. 

He looked at me, back at the door and back to me.
“Fuckfuckfuck!”
Halfway through his obscenity his voice cracked, drenched in frustration. 

Sliding across the floor he positioned himself alongside the open door, pulled the gun to his face. When he made the mistake of trying to breath though the hole in his face, he choked, cussed and smacked the wall with the back of his hand. After a deep breath through his mouth and a moment to collect himself, he peeked around the corner. Bullets immediately tore the frame to bits, snapping wood, splinters airborne. 

Bloodboots
hit the wall again, tiny bits of wood embedded in his face. “Goddammit!” 

“Give me the girl!”

We recognized the voice, both of us. Neither believed it.  

Bloodboots
froze. His eyes moved to me. His mouth began to formulate a word, but ultimately said nothing. 

“Give me the girl and I’ll make it quick.”

Through the door I saw only fire, dancing embers, and smoky debris. I knew he was there, my only friend, hidden in the fury of it all, camouflaged by rage. My
monster
had come back.

My
monsters
were worse than his.

Bloodboots
scurried across the concrete on his hands and knees. Using the knife hanging from his belt, he cut the rope binding my feet and whipped me into a standing position. “Get up! Get the fuck up!”

He positioned himself behind me, pressed the steel of his gun against my temple, and pushed forward so hard I thought my neck would snap. “I’m coming out,
motherfucker!
Put down your god damn gun or I’ll paint the wall with this bitch’s brains!”

There was no response.

“Do you hear me? You hear me, you
sonofabitch?
You better
fucking
answer! You better
fucking
answer or I swe—”

“The gun is down!”

Wind whistled. Fire cracked. Outside our fiery tomb, thunder roared.
Bloodboots
wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and squeezed, pinching flesh, nudging me forward. The heat hit my face the instant we stepped from our little room. Most of the building was engulfed, more being devoured by the second. Soon there would be no building left, only fire and the charred remains of what had been. Bodies were scattered everywhere, some set ablaze, others submerged in pools of crimson. There was no sign of my
monster
, only the aftermath of his anger. 

Bloodboots
pressed the nozzle forward even farther, bending my head so far it touched my shoulder. “Come out, you piece of shit! Get your ass out here or I end her!”

Across from us the flames parted, black smoke spread, and
Blueeyes
emerged. His body was painted gray and red, a sticky mush of blood and soot. He moved, taught muscles stretched to their limit, on the brink of a collapse he refused to allow. The hem of his pant leg seemed to be on fire. He didn’t care. There was a hole in his head, a black nothing leading nowhere. He didn’t care about that either.
Blueeyes
dropped his weapons, oversized things stolen from the men who tried to take him from me. His hands stretched out. His eyes moved to mine, scanning my face to see what they’d done. 

When he spoke, he breathed fire. “Give her to me.”

“Y-you, you’re n-not…”
Bloodboots
stuttered, stopped and stuttered again. 

Blueeyes
took a single step forward. “I won’t ask again.”

The grip on my neck tightened, pinching so hard I felt it in my legs. “I k-killed…we kill…”

Bloodboots’
arms went shaky, jittery finger anxiously tracing the trigger of his gun. “Y-you can’t be, y-you…”

That’s when I knew he wasn’t going to let me go. He would have never given me up, not to Blueeyes, not to the walking corpse who’d taken everything from him. He was the
good guy,
said so himself. He was going to kill me. He was
always
going to kill me. He needed me dead. 

I don’t know why I did it or how I even conceived the idea. My body simply moved, independent of rational thought. I didn’t consider, didn’t plan. It was as an act of desperation, a physical response to a physical situation. As
Bloodboots
babbled through blood-soaked lips at the ghost in the flames, I slid my hands to his leg and coiled my fingers around his knife. 

Blueeyes
noticed, screamed. “Megan, no!” 

He probably had a plan, knew what he was going to do all along. I changed it. I didn’t care. When I stabbed
Bloodboots’
leg it was with my full body, a single, fluid motion. If
Blueeyes
hadn’t been so angry, he would have been proud. The blade tore through fabric and ripped through flesh, digging into muscle. When I felt it hit bone, I twisted. 

Exactly as I was taught.

Bloodboots
wailed. The gun fired, so close to my ear. My knees buckled. Sound went away, disappeared. The fire vanished and
Bloodboots
evaporated.  In the blink of an eye everything transformed to nothing, replaced by a high-pitch wail, ear-splitting, rattling my brain. When I hit the ground I refused to stay down; I stumbled forward and regained my balance. I had to move, keep moving. I had to get to
Blueeyes.
My friend was charging in my direction, arms outstretched, screaming and pointing. To this day I’m not sure what he said, couldn’t hear the words, couldn’t hear anything. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I was nearly to him, inches away, when I felt it in my back. Two more steps, just two more steps and he would have had me.

Two more steps and everything would have been different.

My chest opened when the bullet passed through and belched blood, spraying
Blueeyes’
face. He caught me before I hit the ground, collected and pulled me close. I collapsed into his arms, limbs gone, everything numb and fading. I think there was another bullet; not sure where it hit. There was no pain. Nothing hurt anymore. The world changed rapidly into something without form or shape, a
thing
without name. Suddenly, I had no legs. My arms seemed silly. I watched as
Blueeyes
lowered me to the ground, staring at his face. Another bullet hit his shoulder, exploded in slow motion, droplets of blood floating, reflected fire glimmering along an impossibly smooth surface. Another bullet and his arm opened up, brilliant colors, unlike anything I’d seen. He didn’t seem to notice. I watched his face contort in a way I didn’t think possible, breaking before my eyes. In that moment he was someone else: Father and Mother, everything I loved. Tears emerged from the corners of his eyes, glistening dots the color of his eyes. They stretched, expanded, and rolled across his cheeks, clearing the filth and leaving tracks of flesh. 

I watched him cry. 

Face still twisted,
Blueeyes
looked away, lowered me to the floor gently, and screamed at
Bloodboots.
Somehow I heard what came next. I shouldn’t have, as far away as I was.
Bloodboots
squealed, cried, and begged. When he thought he was done screaming, he screamed some more.
Blueyees
didn’t take his time. He also wasn’t in a hurry. 

When the end finally came, I died alone, the same as Mother and Father, the same as everyone. 

Everyone but my
friend. 

18.