Fighting Dirty
My head is ringing, from the blow or from sheer rage, I'm not sure which, but either way, my vision turns red.
I drop my stick as I flail to break my fall, and my right hand skids into the leaf mould, running hard up against something round and solid.
Without thinking, I take it up, my left hand already gripping my steel bottle like a club. I wrench my body to a sitting position, and catch one of the men trying to pin me to the ground.
Crr-ack!
My stone connects hard with his descending knee, and he jumps back, yelping in pain. I swing the other way with my bottle, and get a good strike on the cheekbone of another. I throw myself back and ram my good foot into the groin of a third. I push myself further back onto the verge and get another strike in - my bottle jams into a solar plexus - but four against one is long odds, and I'm out of luck.
I get kicked hard twice on my flank and side, I scrape my stone along teeth and jaws, hands are ripping at my hair, trying to hold me down, I break two fingers that I am sure of, a face gets too close and I break a nose, blood drips on my hands and I don't know if it is mine, my knee connects with another groin, I bury an elbow in ribs, and bite an earlobe straight through, and then -
"AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!"
An embattled wild animal sound roars though the trees, and a blazing red stun-quarrel arcs in from somewhere and explodes all over my opponents' bodies. Some of the gel splatters on my leg, numbing it, but making the muscles spasm uncontrollably.
My opponents instantly back off, arms and necks and legs and faces jerking out of their control.
As my lines of sight clear, my vision slows, and with terrible clarity I see the man who looks like Frank, standing off coolly from our melee, calmly draw his blast pistol and take careful aim. . . at me. . .
Before he can pull the trigger, a second stun quarrel catches him full in the chest, blasting him backwards and coating him in the immobilizing gel. He falls to the ground, grotesquely writhing and twitching.
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!"
The roaring continues, and two ferocious shapes bolt out from the trees, wielding sticks and Stunbows and fists, cracking heads and punching kidneys. Blood sprays from mouths and noses, and I am inundated with the noise and violence and the punching and hitting and blood and numbness and the twitching and-
"Come wi' me lass!"
One wild ferocious shape resolves itself into a man, tall and bearded, holding out a hand that isn't trying to hurt me.
"Can't-" I gasp, "My foot-"
"Agch!" he grunts harshly, then jerks me upright and slings me over his shoulder I still don't know how, and shouts to his companion, "Leave them Angus! Let's go!"
With a final battle cry followed by several thuds, we retreat into the woods so fast I barely have time to look back. In the fleeting glimpse I get, all I see is a man splayed unconscious in the road, a man who mere seconds ago had been prepared to kill me without a qualm, a man who looks exactly like Frank. . .
My rescuers aren't at all interested in what lies behind, however, being all too intently focused on wherever they're going. They don't speak, not to me or each other.
We're a few hundred meters into the trees when the man carrying me halts, and shifts me around so he can carry me hammock-style. Then, with a brief grin and a nod, we're off again. We go up a long incline, and through several gullies, and around so many turns, I'm quite lost. My head whirls as soon as I realize I don't know where I am. I'd gotten a little used to not knowing when I am, but both at once is almost too much for me to bear at the moment. I must spend ten or fifteen minutes staring at my lap before I even wake up to the fact that one of my hands is still gripping a dirty, bloodied stone, and the other has a death-clamp on my steel bottle.
Slowly, I unclench my fingers. As I do so, a deep, uncontrollable shaking starts in my stomach, and spreads to every part of me, as if it very well means to shake me apart. It is virulent and harsh, like a nuclear blast wave, clogging my nerves, filling my head with a roaring, primal pain I cannot express. I want to cry, but I can't, the shaking won't let me. I lean my head on this man's strange, blessed shoulder and make a small, lost sound so pathetic I wonder he doesn't drop me at once out of sheer disgust.
Instead, to my shock, he laughs.
"Aye, lass, I didnae kno' a sane woman yet didnae have that reaction tae Black Jack."
His companion chuckles harshly, "Sane goats have that reaction tae Black Jack."
"Aye, ee's a right bugger, no question. But ye can ease yersel' lassie, we'll be tae shelter soon."
I have no idea who he is, his speech is rough, and he is frighteningly strong, but somehow, he comforts me.
Slowly, over several long minutes, the shaking subsides, leaving in its wake a fatigue so profound I scarcely have time to notice it before I am fathoms deep in slumber.