Say Goodbye: Part Two
Back in the fray, the spiked fire in Simon's hand swept over him again, this time aiming for the Marine's already pain-steeped face. Hugh's legs were dead weight. Something was wrong. Unable to use his numbed and noodled lower extremities, he scrambled away from the torch and its triggerman, using his palms and arms like crutches, scooting himself back and away.
With nothing to shield him, Hugh could only lower his head whenever the flame came to kiss his face. The bowing movement was excruciating as the metal wedged in his spinal column shifted and chaffed the plexus of nerves in his lumbar. The skin on his bald head split and sizzled as the pressurized flame sliced steadily, leaving painful crisscrossed burns.
He moved closer to the platform's edge, keeping his eyes on Simon. Hugh could feel the stickiness of blood on his back as his flesh was scraped and pierced by discarded nails and screws. Below him the unhinged gallery of hooting guerrillas salavated at seeing his demise.
A length of rope entangled Hugh's foot. He tried to kick free, but couldn't. Pain forked through his lower back with the intensity of a high voltage current. He was no optimistic fool. He knew his injuries had crippled him beyond repair. He'd been defeated by a masonry tool and was now at the mercy of the lunatic above him armed with a soldering gun.
He desperately scanned the crowd over his shoulder, looking for his child. Simon took advantage and lit up his ear and cheek. Over his other shoulder, he tried again and a large portion of his neck was seared. He didn't see Michonne anywhere and he found some solace in knowing she'd been smart enough to use this distraction to escape.
He'd paid his debt to Gayle. He'd freed her sweet child and when he died here tonight, he'd free her too in a way he never could have alive. Hugh's fractioned glances also showed him that Rick still had Negan. If anyone deserved retribution it was that maladjusted moron.
Hugh August could only be Hugh August. If the choices were sink or swim, he'd become a shark. He just needed to find another row of teeth. He searched for a weapon again amongst the glossy wet wreckage of the construction site. All he saw were long hefty nails scattered around him. But gripped by his big hand, there would only be enough of the sharp tip to tickle Negan's executioner.
The lame husband and father's hunt for a suitable weapon was suspended when he heard Simon curse with frustration. Hugh watched with frail relief as the blow torch's flame died out, empty of fuel. His attacker tossed it to the side, dissatisfied.
"I'm tired now," the Pieman confessed. He staggered, arms limp, head back, trying to catch his breath.
"Yeah, you look 'bout dead." Hugh managed, barely able to hear himself over a low rumbling in his ear. Pushing himself up against a vertical rail behind him through another agonizing spasm, he egged his worn out enemy on. "So let's get on with dying. I'm ready. What about you, you demented fucking lap dog? You ready to wake up in hell?"
"Ain't quite ready." Simon tried to laugh, but he brought up blood instead. "But you send me a postcard."
The madman limped toward Hugh like a creeping nightmare. He spit out a viscous red line, went to one knee and delivered a savage wallop to the swollen face of the obstinate dark skinned man. Simon yanked the screwdriver from Hugh's thigh. Michonne's father swallowed a howl of misery and gritted his teeth.
"Think I'll take his eyes first. Whad'ya say, Negan?" Simon hollered across the yard. The force of him shouting made his chest cramp and his damaged windpipe raw. He was more than happy to get this over with. The Marine had proven himself to be a stubborn foe and Simon didn't have much fight left in him. He tapped just under Hugh's eye with the star tipped tool and smiled.
"Well, Grimes. Looks like you backed the wrong horse." Negan said, turning to Rick, cocky as ever. "Last chance before we have to slaughter you and everybody that came with you."
It wasn't over yet. The law of KC heard the intermittent burst of what sounded like gunshots off beyond the treeline. Maybe it's Daryl and Espinosa, he thought. Still fightin' to the end. Rick responded confidently, "Looks like the chickens you're countin' ain't been hatched. You lost any chance of survival you had the second you sent your people after my woman."
The SOC leader shook his head, impressed but disappointed. "Go ahead, Simon," Negan shouted louder than before. His voice finding purchase above a tense buzzing filling the air. He stared Rick down as he bellowed the order to his man and suggested to the sheriff with a raised brow and an arrogant grin, "Maybe we'll change his name to Simon the Eye Man."
Simon spread his calloused bloody hand over Hugh's face, locking his head still against the supporting brace. "Okay, you shit colored coon," Simon gave Hugh the choice, "Which eye first? Left or…"
Negan lifted one knee about to pull himself to his feet, triumphant, when Simon went quiet.
A nail, six inches long and thicker than average sunk with a mechanical thud into the tattooed man's right eye, decimating his temporal lobe and piercing his brainstem. Another punched through his forehead, another his cheek, another his sinus cavity.
He fell from the scaffold, dead before he crashed down on the spectators below. They stood slack-jawed and frozen in disbelief as they watched their chosen warrior plunge lifeless onto their heads. The impact made three more broken corpses on the ground, the same as the Pieman.
Hugh's jarred shoulder surrendered under the weight of the heavy hydraulic nail gun. He dropped it to his side with a painful stifled exhale. He could barely move. His left eye had been melted shut. He found some ironic humor in the fact that he couldn't feel the chunk of meat missing from his thigh because the metal spade in his back had stolen all feeling from below his belt.
Negan blinked, uncomprehending. Knees weakened at the reality facing him, he sunk back onto his heels. "Well, I'll be an entire goddamned son of a bitch," he muttered to himself in a quaver of a voice.
Rick knew a man like Negan, who's misleading ideas and charging words bred chaos, could not simply be locked away for the rest of his life without creating new chaos and bigotry. Even if they dropped him in the deepest darkest hole… as long as he could whisper, the ugly sound of hate would find a melody in the hearts of frightened men. Rick considered, And with his connections, who's to say a hole was in Negan's future?
The shotgun barrel puckered up to the would-be founding father's temple. The cool metal sliding across his adrenalin dampened skin. He looked up at Rick remembering the last words he'd heard Michonne speak. Rick remembered too.
He took a step back and discharged the first chamber into Negan's ribcage, knocking the kneeling man over on his side. "And that's how you hatch your chickens," the sheriff told him as he lay there wheezing around a collapsed lung. And for once Negan Louis had no clever reply. No cocky expression.
Or if he did, Rick would only find it in the pink soup of shattered skull and bits of brain slathered over the porchboards when he loosed the second chamber into his head.
…
Inside, Michonne's search for Merle ended before it started as she followed the terrified cries of a man in pain and found him struggling on the floor. He was unrecognizable. Shards of shrapnel from his exploded rifle peppered his face. He looked like a Halloween mask. Michonne stood frozen for a second, piecing together what happened.
"I can't see! Daryl? Daryl? Help me up. I can't see." Flailing his arms out to his sides and reaching out in front of him, Merle groped blindly hoping to feel his brother somewhere in the room.
But Daryl Dixon was gone and Merle was all alone with the woman he'd had no cause to harm. But somehow with the dominoes of life tipping and falling and touching and tipping and falling and touching, he'd tipped far enough to fall and he fell hardest on her. After so great a fall, the dust was settling and now, too, all the scores.
Michonne deigned to watch the snake writhe on the ground. His pores oozed fear. His eyes were gone, still he wept blood. He had quieted now, only sobbing into the rug. She took a step forward, relishing watching him despair in the darkened chambers of his own making.
A floorboard creaked under Michonne's foot. Merle turned, still prostrate on his chest and elbows. "Daryl," he said, hopeful. He perked. "I knew you would come back."
Michonne stepped forward again, silent, looking down on the sniveling wretch. Merle found her foot with his fingertips. He pulled himself closer, wrapping himself around her ankle and snuggling up to her boot. He kissed her feet.
"Thank you, Little chief! Remember I used to call you that when you were a kid?" He sprinkled Michonne's boot again with kisses, stuttering through emotions while he reminisced with his beloved little brother who'd apparently left him there to rot.
"Little chief. Remember that? We'd play cops and robbers in the field behind momma's trailer. You know, momma always wanted you to be a man of the law, just like me. She'd've been proud of us. Remember she'd get so tickled watching you flash that cardboard badge? And I'd put my hands in the air and surrender. Well now you got me again, little chief."
"You been fuckin' around in the armory behind my back. You could've told me." Merle hissed out a sardonic laugh and sat up on his haunches wagging a playful incriminating finger. "You know, if this had been one of those monster guns we keep, that backfire could've took my damn head off." He conceded quickly, "But that's okay. I know you think I tried to shoot your girl. So I guess we're even."
Michonne felt queasy listening to the way Merle would manipulate his brother. She wanted to kick his teeth in but instead she listened as he rambled. "You know I wouldn't have hurt that little spitfire. I always liked her… as much as you could like a loudmouth broad like her. You understand that was meant to be just a warnin' shot, right?"
"Negan wants to turn me into Simon. But I couldn't never be like him. You know that, right, little chief? I can't be no butcher. Yeah, I killed Dwight and a couple of hardheaded whores…"
Merle's throat went dry and he swallowed. He sounded poised to add to his list of coldblooded murders to prove he wasn't a coldblooded murderer. Michonne tightened the hold on her sword.
She didn't know if she could bear it. If he mentions Andre. If he were to say his name.
"... and that whole mess with Grimes' woman's kid… which don't really count cuz his daddy was trying to run me down," he dismissed. "And you know if that bitch, Mitchell, could get a conviction on that or any of this stuff happening tonight. They'd lock us up and throw away the key."
"That's why I knew you'd come back for me. The punishment should fit the crime, bro. You and me both know an ex-cop has no friends behind bars." Merle sounded petrified. "That's twenty five to life of hell on earth."
"And after all that," Michonne finally spoke, "an eternity of pain."
Her eye twitched with realization. She'd started the night wanting to help the man at her feet. She'd been intent on taking away some of the pain and guilt weighing on his shoulders. But he'd left her mother for dead, then pistol-whipped her and tossed her into his trunk. When she woke up on this ranch, revelations about him and his Saviors of the Confederate had her intent to leave his guilt but take his head off his shoulders instead.
But no more. He'd just talked himself into his worst fear. She wouldn't bless this creature with what would surely be a mercy killing. She wouldn't snatch him from the humiliation of a public trial. She would cast him down, blind, at the feet of American Justice.
A lady who shared his new handicap. The champion of equity whose visage welcomed Michonne to work each day. The robed woman holding high her scales. Her eyes were covered to keep justice just, suggesting a person's education, background, status or color could not be used for favor or disadvantage, since it could not be seen.
But, it seemed, the toxic bitch was blind to individual humanity too.
Merle recoiled. Unsure of his bearings, he stepped down into the open floor safe. He stumbled and stuttered. His familial pitch to his brother withered and disappeared in the air between him and Michonne. "You? Where's my brother."
"Somewhere with Deputy Espinosa, I have no doubt. They're gonna go on to grow and love each other while I see to it you're stripped of that badge and your freedom. And your brother's not going to give you a second thought when you go away shuddering into the penitentiary."
"No. No… Please." Merle whispered, weak and despondent. He sat there with one foot in the floor, calling to mind the old saying 'one foot in the grave'.
Michonne slid her katana ever so slowly, ever so delicately down the center of his chest. Then across the plane of his chest. Merle shook, widening his useless eyes as the razor sharp edge made quick work of his flimsy cotton. He flinched, paranoid, when she snatched it off his body. The thin superficial cuts immediately ran red. Michonne crouched down in front of him to wipe the blood from his face.
"You say life as a convict cop is worse than death?" She asked dabbing at the dripping wounds with his shirt. He trembled and whimpered with every touch. She kissed her teeth, with mock sympathy. "It must be even worse for a blind ex-cop. Always in the dark. Always afraid. Useless…" She spit in his face and moistened the drying blood, "Useless except for whatever sucking or fucking you could offer."
Merle mumbled "No please. I'm sorry." He was startled when he heard her scoff.
"If my mother were here she would call me crass. I'm sure even she would agree there's nothing more crass than treating innocent young girls and women like livestock. But my mom's not here… because you almost killed her tonight. Are you going to tell me that was just a warning shot too."
"I… I, I never meant you or yours no harm. That was… it was just Negan. I was following orders."
She pulled the switchblade from her back pocket, releasing the blood-stained edge with a flip of her wrist. "Pulling that trigger backfired too, just like the ones your clever little brother put in your hands. It just took you longer to realize it," she told him, leaning in close.
The entire house vibrated like one massive machine. But the reason for the deafening din was the furthest thing from her mind. Her jaw tensed as she drove the cold sharp point down between his legs and twisted.
"That's for Gayle August and all the women here."
Merle Dixon howled in agony.
...
The sound of Rick's shotgun blasts unloading slugs at Negan's head brought everyone back to the moment. Like the scene had been unmuted, the unmistakable sound of firing pistons, sputtering mufflers and vibrating engines could suddenly be heard coming from every corner of the secret trafficking hideout.
The Saviors lurched forward nervously. Twisting and turning, disoriented by the erupting racket closing in from all directions, they peered into the surrounding veil of night.
A heartbeat later, swift shadows flew like birds of prey between the rows of parked cars. A calvary of riders burst in and out of the arches of light between the stables, more fear inspiring than war horses. From the house's rear, what seemed to be a torrent of alloy, molten and slick, illuminated intermittently by the moon shining through the receding rain clouds buzzed to a high pitch.
Grizzled men and sharp-faced women dismounted roadsters, cruisers, choppers and other biwheeled vehicles. Uniformed in black leathers emblazoned with each group's respective symbol and name, the small army of bike clubs had come together in force. A uniting of people from every background.
Vikings. Hawks. Crusaders. Eastwoods.
Men made of onyx and copper with big wooly beards. Women full lipped & full hipped, some with hair trimmed as close as their counterparts. Some with cornrows and some with a crop of coils.
Men with skin like cedar and slicked jet hair under their helmets. Saddle tanned women, two of whom sat the same bike and passed a flask between them. Sandy colored men, sporting inky mustachios and tipped goatees. Proud women stood as equals among them with austere features and buttery undertones.
There were paler riders, too. Saffron and ginger and golden haired. Frosty faces, weathered from a life of riding into the wind.
A ring of harsh round white eyes suspended in air beamed all at once, throwing light over the terrorists that Negan had grown on his farm. America had provided him the seeds, Hugh thought, looking down on the rotten product of racism left unchecked as they shielded their eyes from the glaring headlights. The storm of the night had rooted out this particular crop, though.
Not the winter squall from the sky, but the tempest named Michonne. She was coming now. Her father could see her blurry image in the doorway of the house across the yard. The sky was beginning to lighten, from indigo to lavender as the sun began to rise. She approached unruffled, walking over the red carpet that Negan's death created and moved his headless body from her path with the toe of her boot. Rick followed.
Hugh would've smiled if not for the burned wreckage of his face. He remembered Michonne's grief-stricken face the day they found those bear cubs. I'm teaching you to survive it all, he'd shouted as her panicked breaths steamed the mountain air and fat tears rolled down her cheeks. Because life will throw everything at a little black girl. And you're going to be ready or you won't make it!
All the criticism he received from his father, the desperate pleadings from his wife, the resentment of his daughter… it was all worth it. They were few, but at times he'd doubted the tough love he'd given Michonne. He could never reconcile bringing such a beautiful thing into such an ugly world.
But she'd survived.
He couldn't have been anyone else, not even for her. He could only be Hugh August. He figured he'd done the best he could. Anyone who disagrees can kiss my black ass. Even burned, broken and bleeding, he ruffled at the mere thought of anyone questioning his command.
A figure in King County browns swung a leg over the back of a bike where they'd rode double behind a behemoth of a man. When he left his seat, his chopper immediately rose six or seven inches from the ground. He wore no headgear except the naked flaming ladies inked onto his scalp. Rick immediately recognized that head from Andre's funeral under the rafters of Kingdom Ministries Church, sacreligious as it was. The sight was a relief to see, much as it had proven to be on that sad day.
The sheriff thanked God that Big Dave and his Vikings had appeared, though he didn't know how they'd come to be there. But he began to understand when Dave's passenger's short gray hair was revealed as she lifted off her helmet. She quietly gave Big Dave some instruction and he relayed the message to his crew, whipping his finger in a spiral through the air above his head. The other motorcyclists spread out, arresting baffled Saviors.
"Listen up," Big Dave boomed his announcement through the warming morning air, "There's a new sheriff in town." He gave a slight grin, having always wanted to say something like that.
"The little lady by my side is the interim head of King County's sheriff's office. Her name is Carol Peletier. The feds are on their way with busses big enough to cart you racist rapists off to jail for the next thirty years. 'Til they get here," he held a bunch of zip ties up for all the Saviors to see, "me and my crew are gonna wrap you up like Christmas presents."
As the Viking Club members started taking the scum of O'day Ranch in hand, one wealthy Savior who was used to giving orders, not taking them, attempted to struggle.
"Take your hands off me! Do you know who the fuck I am? You dirty bikers don't have the authority to…"
Big Dave cut him off in answer, "Yeah, we do," the Viking said, producing a piece of folded paper from his vest pocket. "We been deputized, motherfucker. Ain't that right, Sheriff Carol?"
Peletier's blue gray eyes twinkled, corners crinkling, as the first rays of sun began to break over the ridge. Rick stopped to shake her hand. "I'm shocked but I'm not surprised," he said, impressed. "How'd you even…"
"Don't concern yourself with the inner workings of my department, Grimes." Carol joked dryly. "My appointment started as soon as your letter of resignation was delivered. Smartest thing you've ever done. And since you had nearly all of my deputies fighting a war out here in the sticks, I had to outsource some help."
She turned, to look proudly at her makeshift team of crude deputies as they rounded up the Saviors they outnumbered two to one. "Their appointments run out at noon, but that's more than enough time to break up this little nazi boy's club for good."
"Your gonna end up with a medal from Monroe and a landslide victory next election and every election that follows," Rick predicted. "As long as you want the job, Sheriff."
"It's about damn time. King County has been in need of a motherly touch. No offense, Grimes, but men just don't have the balls to do what women get done."
Rick looked to his fearless woman as she climbed the scaffold to her father. "You'll get no argument from me on that," he assured Carol.
….
Hugh heard Michonne behind him, yet he kept his gaze out to the yard where the Viking clan was hog-tying the SOC like the pigs they were. "You hurt," he asked his daughter, without making any effort to see for himself.
"No."
"Good."
Michonne was finally close enough to see the extent of his injuries. A latticework of scorched tracks etched his face along with a grimace of pain. Beaten to a pulp, he sat in a pool of his own blood.
Michonne crept over the erected battleground to her father, unsure of what to say or do next. Beth said her father was broken. Michonne stared at Hugh and imagined that the wounds she could see were nothing compared to the ones on his soul. Should I thank him? Should I curse him? Should I forgive him? Her private reflections were brought to a halt.
"There's nothing I need to hear from you," he said sternly as if he could read her mind and all her old traumas festered. She balled her fists and turned to walk away. He shouted, "Did I say you were dismissed?!"
A shiver went through her and she stopped and faced him from a distance. After everything she'd done that night, defying her captors, striking down her enemies, revealing her misgivings to Rick, Hugh August still brought her back to a helpless child with one question in his arctic tone.
"There's nothing I need to hear from you, but there's something you need to hear from me." The effort to make his voice carry over the few feet between them was too much. He beckoned her closer.
"I don't regret one minute you were gone," he said when she kneeled close enough. "I never wanted to be a father, I would've been happy enough with just me and Gayle. But you came along anyway and your mother loved you so I…" he sighed, not finding the words.
"I never asked to be your daughter. If I could've chosen a father it wouldn't be you! The absent black father is always the butt of somebody's joke," she spat, "while you were my present and constant nightmare!"
Those words rolled off of him like he didn't even hear them. "My point is, I really tried to love you… and I did… best as I could. But I know you deserved better, so when you left to raise that baby..."
"Andre," Michonne demanded. "Say his name!"
"I won't," Hugh declined, bitterly.
Michonne could no longer contain her anger. She gave her father a weak slap across the mouth. "You will," she screamed and slapped him again, harder. "You will! You will! Say his name! Say my baby's name. You don't get to pretend he never existed just because you wished he didn't." Her open handed hits connected wildly, desperate to make him listen to her just once.
He finally caught her wrist and disabled her, digging his finger into a pressure point. His hand was strong, though he looked to be at death's door. The strength in his arm somehow comforted her and she crumbled in tears across his chest. He released her wrist and she stayed there, weeping.
"I have to live with that shame…" he said after she quieted some. "He wasn't in my realm of control and I couldn't accept that. I couldn't accept him. I never regretted you leaving because that child deserved better than me. The things I'd done in combat, I… I tried my best with you. But he was yours to mold …"
"And I let him die!" Michonne wailed. "Daddy, I let my baby die!"
"You didn't let him die, no more than I let him live." Hugh declared in a hard-boiled tone. A tone that said he wouldn't argue the point. He knew he ought to hold her and console her, but he lacked the impulse. Instead he said, "Don't break your arms trying to control the world. Don't break your heart trying to turn back time."
Michonne heard him but she wept all the same. She wrapped her arms around him and he issued a dreadful groan when she found the metal shard in his back. She pulled away abruptly. "You…" she started, but the look on Hugh's face told her it was a worst case scenario.
He diverted her question about his injury and continued stubbornly, "I'm not going to say his name. He's gone now and I never knew him. But if there's a God, maybe he'll let me say my piece to your son before he sends me below."
"You don't believe in any of that."
"Well I'm going to know for sure, soon. Bullet or blade?"
Michonne's voice was small as a baby cub's whimper. "What?"
"I need you to finish this for me. I need you to tell your mother that I loved her with everything I had. Tell her that I died to make her happy just once. You don't have to tell her that you did it, but I need you to send me on my way now. I can't live like this," he said referencing his crippled legs and disfigured face. "But I'll die like this... for her. And I need you to do it."
"Daddy, I can't."
"Don't call me daddy, Michonne." He reminded her. "My name is Hugh. That's all I can promise to be. And you're as vulnerable as those bear cubs we found that day in training. Remember that. You don't have anyone to protect you. Remember that."
"She does." Rick said, taking a knee beside his woman.
Disarmed by his sudden presence, she relaxed into her ex-sheriff's arms, more tears falling from her red-rimmed eyes. "Oh, Rick! I found Merle inside. I want him to suffer. I couldn't kill him. And now, Hugh…" she looked back at her father's plight. "He can't walk. He wants me to… he wants me to… to..."
She couldn't even say it outloud. Rick calmed her, rubbing her shoulders. He whispered in her ear, "It's okay, sweetheart. Just say goodbye and go back down. I'll stay here with him."
She met his eyes. Those pools of the warmest blue. "Just say goodbye," he repeated, nudging her with a raised brow over those eyes. "I'll stay here with him and then I'll be down."
Michonne broke down again, but she held Rick's gaze like an anchor. "Okay." She nodded. She sniffled. "Okay." She kept her eyes on Rick's and never looked back at her father. "Goodbye, Hugh," she said to her father stiffly as she floated in his watery blues. "I love you." She said to them both and scrambled down the scaffold racing her doubts.
"Okay, Grimes. I'm ready," Hugh said when the sound of Michonne's retreat could no longer be heard.
Below them, across the yard, women were venturing out of the house. Some still half dressed, some wrapped in blankets. Others had found recruit's lockers and put on jeans and shirts and boots.
They reached past the Vikings, kicking and punching the Savior's sitting bound in custody on the ground. Carol's amateur deputies intercepted the women's violent attack at first. But some of them only shrugged, letting the victims have their way, their vengeance.
"Your daughter saved a lot of lives tonight and you saved hers," Rick said to Hugh. "I want to thank you for that. I couldn't have..."
Hugh cut him off. "Just take care of my wife's sweet child, Grimes and do a better job than I did... if you can."
"An asshole to the bitter end. Huh, Hugh?" Rick echoed the unspoken truce between them with a scoff and checked the ammunition in his firearm.
"And Grimes," Hugh paused the scene for a final word, "take care of Gayle, too. I don't want her remarrying somebody else she doesn't love just for some stability. You make sure she finds a good man and you tell whoever he is that her husband was a son of a bitch that would surely come up from hell to kill anybody that hurts her."
"Will do."
From the ground level platform of the scaffold, Michonne sat and watched the Viking women tend to Negan's victims. They brought out more frightened women from the house. Confused women of color were being led from the stables.
Two biker's had Merle's hands behind his back as he stumbled blindly down the front steps of the ranch house. His face was shredded and his eyes were two dripping wounds. The sun was a half circle of orange skirted by the treeline, bringing an end to the night. Michonne promised Daryl that his brother would never see another sunrise. And he never would.
When she heard the single gunshot from Rick's colt above her, she didn't cry. She just dropped her head, exhausted physically and emotionally.
The charcoal smell of fire filled her nose and when she looked up black smoke was coming from the roof of the house and as flames became visible, the young girls and women Negan had stolen hugged each other and watched it burn. Beth had set the fire. But she was not content to passively watch it burn.
She picked up the biggest rocks she saw and hurled them at the house, breaking it's windows and denting it's walls. She threw and threw and threw until she fell to her knees. The rest of the trafficked women joined her mission. Rocks flew at the house, at the stables at the Saviors, at their cars. And women screamed into the dawn together attempting to suture the slashes that the men in that place had left in their souls.