The impact from the fall knocked Brice's empty crossbow barrel askew on its soldering, broke its strap. Even if the weapon still worked, it lay pinned beneath his butt and useless legs. In between that and Sydjea's weight, he couldn't pull it out from beneath his body if he wanted to.
Before I could stop her, my sister had already gouged out Mr. Pittman's right eye with her suaakudsi.
Now, I've heard that eyes can be surgically reattached if put on ice immediately, and aren't too damaged, so this wasn't something I could just leap into without thinking, but what could I do? In seconds, Sydjea would likely digest, or at least melt, the eyeball.
I crossed myself, saying a fast prayer for Mr. Pittman's eye.
As stated previously, I and my sisters had grown to roughly the size of great Danes. Mr. Pittman, having spent most his life using nothing but upper body muscles (as evidenced by his quick climbing) managed to grab Sydjea around the throat, pushing her back.
Sydjea, of course, closed her suaakudsi, its built in fangs popping his eye like a grape.
I'm sure everyone on the base could hear that scream.
I searched Brice's `Technodrome' for a weapon, but wasn't quite a `MacGyver', as the man described it. I found plenty of tools, some with sharp edges, but many were no better than my claws, and would only end with my friend receiving third degree acid burns.
"Children," I whispered. "Do you (Satan) do you children see any weapons? A gun, perhaps?"
Although I shuddered at the thought of actually killing Sydjea, I thought maybe firing a few rounds, possibly into her flank, might either scare her away or make her too slow to chase us.
After a few moments' bewildered search of debris on the shelves, the girls only found heavy or impractical to wield pieces of machinery, toys, and harmless computer equipment.
Sorry to say, my mind was still tortured with guilt from Kiarsshkoy's death. For this reason, I hesitated somewhat in aiding the search.
In my defense, I did say silent prayers that the two parties could be reconciled before more bloodshed could occur.
During this period of shameful inactivity, Mr. Pittman had his free hand searching the floor for the nearest `power tool.'
His hands wrapped around a large action figure, roughly the size of a can of exterior house paint, a demonic looking toy covered from head to foot with sharp looking plastic objects like little nails and shards of glass. A character from the Spawn comic books, I believe.
At first Brice seemed puzzled by the object, but I guess he remembered the texture, for a smirk appeared on his face.
"Eat this, you son of a bitch!" he screamed as he shoved the thing into Sydjea's mouth.
Letting out a gurgling shriek, Sydjea backed off a little, and this proved to be just enough for Brice to push her further, enough for him to swing one of his crutches like a baseball bat, knocking her across the floor.
As my sister spat out the half melted statue, Grouchsticks glanced around the room with one eye, swearing under his breath.
He reached into a lower shelf, swearing more as he cut his hand on a saw blade.
A gun had been hidden behind a pile of junk. He quickly drew it out, chambering a round.
I don't know the difference between a Glock 9 Millimeter and a Desert Eagle, or how good or poorly a man can fire a gun with only one eye, so when he pointed that weapon at Sydjea's head, I got worried.
Good or bad, Sydjea was still my sister, and I still hadn't gotten over killing Kiarsshkoy.
A thought kept running through my mind: What if I could save Sydjea? What if I could bring her to the Lord? Would we have a potential ally? A friend? Someone to save the girls?
I really hoped and prayed that this would be the case.
Sure, Sydjea was a little...pissed at being burned and shot full of arrows, but Mr. Pittman was missing an eye! Didn't some famous leader, maybe Gandhi, who said something about when you wound others, you're really wounding yourself?
Sydjea was all alone.
Injured.
The girls would be safe if I could only convince her to leave us alone.
That's why, when Mr. Pittman pointed the gun at my sister, I stepped in between them.
Grouchsticks responded by telling God to damn `it', whatever `it' was. "Bernie! Get out of the fucking way!"
"No," I said firmly. "Family. (Hosanna)."
Brice asked God to damn `it' again. "Whose side are you on!"
I pointed to the ceiling. "You have heard (maid) heard that it was said, `An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' (Angel). But I say unto you, Do not resist one who is evil. If any one strikes you on the right cheek, let him have your cloak as well."
Brice screwed up his face in puzzlement. "What?"
Okay, so I didn't have all the details of the passage completely together in a way that made sense, but I still felt my heart to be in the right place, and knew what I was talking about. I tried again, quoting Romans 12:19 to him.
This time, when Brice told God to damn something, he left out the object of the damning and said it in a bitter hiss. His face flushed a bright red. "That's bullshit! That verse is meant for people! Humans! Not...whatever the hell you are! That thing fucking chewed out my eye!"
He actually said that the eye was damned by God, which, judging by its ruined state, may have at least been partly correct. I mean Matthew 5:29, for example.
"I'm not going to forgive that (God condemned) insect any more than I'm going to forgive a fucking mosquito hanging off the end of my dick! Might as well forgive an (eternally condemned) cockroach for shitting in my corn flakes! The cockroach doesn't even give a fuck! Now get out of the way before I blow another hole in that brain shell of yours!"
Sydjea seemed confused. I guess that's why she didn't sneak away during the course of our argumentation. The fact I risked my life to save hers must have baffled her terribly. Being the least intelligent Ss'sik'chtokiwij of the pack didn't help matters.
I didn't move, willing to take the bullet for my sister.
Brice pulled back the hammer. "Get out of the way—" He asked God to damn me. I sincerely hoped his curses had no power.
I turned to face Sydjea, who now appeared to be coughing.
"Go!" I hissed in our language.
For a second, my sister looked perplexed.
Overwhelmed with emotion, she sneezed, turned and fled down a tunnel, leaving me staring down the barrel of Grouchsticks' gun.
Saying nothing, Brice simply pointed the gun at my head and fired (22).
"No!" Sarah cried.
"Ernie!"
Only a signal gun. The flare exploded in my face, scalding, burning me with something that left bright afterimages on my retinas, but other than the burns and the impaired vision, I felt okay. Even my patches remained intact.
After I lay on the floor screaming for a few minutes, I managed to rise to my feet.
"Serves you right, you dumb son of a bitch," Brice growled. "Your little friend would have lived no matter if you stepped in or not."
"Sorry."
He didn't accept my apology. He just sighed and swore to himself.
"Is everyone okay?" Sarah's mother stood in the doorway, her body crisscrossed with bandages dripping with gunky white liquid.
"Mom!" Sarah cried. "You're hurt!"
"I'm fine," she said.
"What's that stuff on your bandages?" Rebecca asked.
"Antibiotics."
She gasped when she noticed Pittman's eye. "Brice! What happened!"
Grouchsticks pointed to me. "His little friend fucked me up."
"Actually, I'm female." Not a good time to bring it up, but I figured there would never be a good time.
Brice ignored me. "I can still see out of my left. Can you get me that eyepatch I wore last Halloween?"
Instead, Mrs. Hansen instead knelt in front of him, examining the tattered remains of his cornea, sucking in her breath when she caught sight of the destroyed white tissue on the floor.
"So what do you think, doctor?" he said dryly. "Think I'll be able to see out of it again?"
Mara gave him a pained smile. "Your old eye is damaged beyond repair, but I think I can order something."
"Goody," he grumbled. "I always wanted to see the world through Super Mario's eyes."
Rebecca furrowed her brow. "What are you talking about?"
Brice smirked a little. "What she's talking about, honey, is a digital eye. I've seen pictures of them in operation. No matter the pixels per inch, they can't eliminate those fucking little squares."
"They generally do give the brain a bitmapped or pixellated image." Mrs. Hansen opened a first aid kit on the wall. "Often very similar to a video game or a computerized camera." She knelt in front of Brice, leveling a little pen shaped device at his damaged eye.
Brice held up a hand. "Wait. My medication." He dug a bottle of aspirin and a flask of whiskey out of a drawer, washing down a handful of tablets with a few generous swigs.
The woman used the pen to cauterize the injured areas of his eye, cleaning the socket.
Instead of giving him an eyepatch, she covered his eye with actual bandages. "You'll get an infection otherwise."
"Gin and tonic contains quinine, which fights infection," Brice muttered, but she didn't approve.
Once Mara finished treating his eye and hands, the man rose on his crutches, frowning at his tools.
Smirking, he strapped a black pirate eyepatch over his bandages, then slung a machete, in carrying sheath, over his back. "And they laughed at me when I ordered this."
The next item in his arsenal: A mechanical spear with a tip that jabbed like a jackhammer, spun and stabbed dangerously.
"What's that for?" Sarah asked.
Mr. Pittman used some power tools to remove half the device for easy carrying. "To kill Bernie's bastard friends." He belted the object to his body.
"It's a rock tiller," Mrs. Hansen explained. "It breaks apart the rocks so we can do lichen treatments and fertilizer."
"I'd like to use those things as fertilizer," Brice muttered, loading a satchel with seemingly random scraps of machinery, containers of chemicals, beer bottles, and a can of flying insect killer.
"Let's go."
[0000]
(22) See Dream Neighborhood chapter (Item IV) for a spoiler comment.