Deliquesce

Chapter 17: Machete

Rated: T

Warnings: Violence

A/N: ay

lmao

In the morning, Wonka was gone. He had left afterwards, which is fair enough. Would have been pretty weird if anyone saw him coming out of my room in the morning.

I took a shower and got ready, before he came back to take my cast off. We went to the hospital, and he removed it pretty quickly. The area was washed off, and I flexed my arm. It felt a little weird, but Wonka said it would be completely healed by now because of the injection he gave me, so it was safe to fight.

I left with the group after that, and it was snowing again. The little tufts of white floated down and coated the dilapidated, trashed city. It made it look a bit prettier.

We walked at a fast pace, which I was fine with. It was too cold to walk leisurely. I fell into step with Jackson.

"Hey." I said.

"Hey hey." He said.

"Can you teach me how to fight?" I asked, tucking a few tufts of hair that flew around my face into my hat.

"You don't know how to fight?"

"Not really."

"How the hell have you managed to survive?"

"You know, scavenging, hiding and running. I haven't had the chance to learn yet, I've been injured for a long time. But I'm better now."

"How in shape are you?"

I held out my arm, and and my disgustingly small, bony wrist peeked out from under it.

"Not very."

"First thing's first, you're gonna have to up your daily intake for food. A lot. We need to get some meat and muscle on you, otherwise you're going to break like a twig. I'll teach you some of the basics today, focusing on weapons. Hand to hand is possible, but difficult. I don't think it's a very good idea while you're still very untrained and weak."

"Thank you so much." I grinned. We got to the next street we would be clearing, and climbed over the barricade that was set up yesterday. Spencer shot a few of the zombies that were close to the barricade so that we could get over. We all jumped down, and then Jackson turned to me.

"Okay, see that one up there?" He asked, pointing to one near the alleyway. He dug into his bag and pulled out a machete.

"Whoa." I said, and he passed it to me. It was heavy and solid.

"I think you can handle this. Try swinging a few times, about head level. Twist around back, extend your arms, and swing it right around with all the power you can manage. Like a golf swing, but higher and try to keep it going in a straight horizontal line." He stepped back.

I twisted around, and swung hard. It was heavy, and the swing was clumsy. I tried a few more times, and seemed to get the general hang of it. The rest of the group waited behind us.

"Right, let's get going everyone!" Jackson said to them. "Ember, this one's yours."

I nodded, sucked in a breath. It was kinda scary, almost. I felt my knees wobble a bit and my heart beat a little too fast, but I walked towards it. It turned to face me when I was about two or three meters away, and the swing came more naturally this time. I buried the machete in it's head. It was an inch or two from losing the top half of its head. The cut was clean and deep, and I kicked the zombie off the machete with my boot.

"Good job!" Jackson said, walking up to me after sliding his knife out of a zombie. "Try a few different swings this time. Should come more naturally eventually. However, I'd stay stick with the horizontal swing. A vertical swing, starting above the head and going down, is powerful but I don't suggest it for you because you're... well you're not short or anything, but unless you're actually tall, then it's inadvisable. Go on, try a few more."

My eyes zoomed in on another a few meters away, and I ran towards it, before burying the machete deep inside it's head once again. A delighted laugh escaped my lips, and my knees no longer felt wobbly.

A few stragglers came out of the alleyways, drawn to all the noise but we took them down pretty easily and sealed off the street. After checking the houses for any more, we went back to the factory before dusk.