Come To Me (Owned 3)

“Vic…” Lenny looked up, but then her head fell as if too heavy for her body.

“Are you happy here?”

I didn’t look up from my ministrations. Keeping your shit shiny, even in the goddamn desert, was just something you did. We kept our shoes clean, we kept our things folded, and when we went out and got bloody, we came back and washed it like it was dirt on our clothes, not the life blood of another.

“Are you happy here, soldier?”

I looked up, stopped my rubbing, and paused at her question. It was just me under the tent—the other guys were playing soccer with their down time—so she was definitely talking to me. She had long blonde hair, but it was pulled tight behind her head. With her in her suit, I felt underdressed in my tank and fatigues. Her face was done perfectly, somehow not sweating even in the heat.

I should have recognized her for what she was all those years ago. When Alice asked me if I was happy in the war, I didn’t realize my answer would shape my life forever.

I aimed my SIG at her head.

“Vic,” Alice said, her smile blood red. A brief thought flashed through my head: I wondered if she was wearing lipstick or the blood of her victims.

“Sorry to break up the party,” I replied, keeping my aim.

She shrugged at the dead bodies around us. “Nothing that wasn’t expendable.” She gave a cursory glance to Lennox and I clenched my jaw.

“Drop Lennox and maybe I won’t drop you.”

“Really, Vic, there’s no need for dramatics.”

I shot off a warning bullet above her head. The casing lodged in the cement, causing plaster to fall and hit her in the head. Alice glared, tipping her head so the plaster fell with a thud to the ground.

“Did you know we didn’t even have to drug her?” Alice laughed. “She was already fucked up when we grabbed her. Top notch choice in women, Vic, really.”

I took a deep breath, canceling out all periphery and extraneous noises. Once upon a time, I was a dead shot. This was what my training was for. It wasn’t so people up in their ivory towers could keep blood off their white houses. It was for this, to save the people I loved.

“Don’t worry though,” Alice purred. “We woke her up extra special. Did you hear how much she enjoyed being woken up?” Alice laughed, but the sound was already fading. Nothing save the weight of my own gun mattered at that moment.

“Just a few cuts here and there but it was enough to get her screaming like a stuck pig.” Alice goaded me, but I hid how much the blood on Lenny’s body boiled my own. A day would come when she would know what it felt like to be skewered. I would stick her like the snake she was and roast her over an open fire.

But I couldn’t rush it.

Alice gripped Lenny by the neck, shaking her slightly. “Really pathetic. She might have even called your name. I don’t know, it was hard to tell through all her slurred druggy speech.”

Taking another deep breath, I adjusted my aim slightly. I pulled the trigger and the bullet whizzed through the air, hitting Alice in the left arm. She screamed and dropped Lennox to the floor. The look of shock on her face was almost as good as the realization that I’d caused her pain.

I don’t think in all of Alice’s thirty plus years she had ever experienced any kind of real pain. She didn’t have a heart to break, and she was never in any position to feel physical pain. Her pain threshold probably ended at a stubbed toe.

Clutching her now bleeding arm, she shrieked and withered out of sight like a dying plant. She wouldn’t die, unfortunately. I hadn’t had the opening to take that shot without injuring Lenny.

I rushed to Lenny and checked her pulse. It was slow, but she was breathing. She was bloody, covered in cuts, but she didn’t appear to be in any life-threatening danger. She was still wearing the pajamas she’d gone to bed in.

My gaze flicked away from her and to the dark hallway that Alice had disappeared down. I knew I could probably catch her, and Lenny wasn’t in any immediate danger after all. Bodies buoyed us, and if I ran now, Alice could be among them. Just as I was about to stand, Lenny moaned. I froze, hand stuck on top of her.

Not today, but someday I would go down that dark hallway.

I gathered Lenny into my arms, stepping over bodies to make my way out. Only minutes before everything had been so urgent, so immediate. I hadn’t bothered looking at their faces because I hadn’t had the time. Now, I didn’t look at their faces, but for a different reason.

As I walked out, carrying Lenny in my arms, I came face to face with a man. He froze, jaw clenched, shoulders rigid, and stared at me. I stared back. Neither of us made a motion for our weapons. We looked into each other, but I felt no compulsion to kill. From the way the enemy reacted, I’d have said he felt the same way.

We were just two ships passing in the night.

No one disturbed me as I carried Lenny through the empty neighborhood. Then again, that was the key word: empty. Alice had fled and everyone else was dead. We made it safely back to my Subaru, but the safety had come at a price. In order to buckle Lenny into her seat, I’d had to add the weight of a few more bodies to my already suffocating soul.

I wish I could say that over the years killing had culled my emotions. That faces and last words no longer mattered to me. That the people I stole away from this world were as important to me as passersby on the street.