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Randall raised his hand, money in his grip. He beckoned her over, smiling mockingly.
Sighing, she set the cleaver down and wiped off her hands. Just a few more seconds of him being a jerk and she would be free of him for another week or so. Scooting around the serving counter, she headed toward his table.
The bell over the front door jingled as it opened.
“Just find a table and I’ll be right with you,” Katarina called out, waving her hand.
A gasp from a customer pulled her attention away from Randall’s wide grin. A man stood in the doorway, his hands pressed against his throat. His mouth opening and closing silently, he stumbled forward. Eyes wide with fear, he slowly reached out toward the customers that were staring at him in shock. Sinking down to his knees, the man violently coughed, blood pouring out of his mouth. Katarina rushed toward him, almost tripping over someone’s purse. Randall arrived at the man’s side before her.
The wounded man’s hands were covered in blood as he pawed at Randall, imploring him silently for help. Katarina gasped at the horrible bloody mangled wreck beneath his chin. As silently as he had entered, the man fell forward as his eyes rolled up into his head. Randall barely caught the man by the shoulders and lowered him to the floor.
“Someone slit his throat or something!” Randall shouted. “Call 911!”
Customers stood in clusters around their tables in shocked silence, staring at the spectacle before them. One or two pulled out their phones. Katarina grabbed a small hand towel from her waistband and thrust it at Randall.
“I-I think you need to put pressure on his neck,” she stammered.
Crouched in the growing pool of the wounded man’s blood, Randall took the towel without a nasty word or leering look. With surprising gentleness, he pressed the rolled up cloth to the man’s throat. “I don’t know if this can help. Is there a doctor or nurse here?”
Hovering over the two men, Katarina shoved her frizzy bangs out of her face. She didn’t know what to do. Her mind was racing and she couldn’t think straight. The customers were slowly tiptoeing up around her, trying to see better, offering advice in distressed voices.
A few headed for the door.
“Hey, you can’t leave! The sheriff is going to want to question us,” Katarina called out.
The customers hesitated, then retreated to their seats.
“I don’t think he’s breathing no more,” Randall said. “Did someone call 911?”
“I’m trying. No one is answering,” someone replied.
Katarina crouched and touched the wounded man’s wrist gently. She checked for a pulse with quivering fingers. She felt nothing.
“I think he’s dead,” she whispered, her voice catching on the words.
The man rose and bit into Randall’s wrist in one swift motion. It happened so fast that Katarina registered the blood spraying her before she fully realized what had happened.
Randall’s screams filled the cafe as people started to shout and cry out in alarm. Katarina was hit with another spray of blood as the man ripped a huge chunk of flesh from Randall’s arm and chewed it.
The horror of the moment froze her body and seized her mind. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears as she watched the bloodied man eating the meat torn from Randall’s body.
“Help me,” Randall gasped, struggling to escape.
The clearly insane man attacked again, teeth sinking into skin and muscle as Randall screamed.
Fear disintegrated into something cold and hard inside of Katarina’s mind. She knew exactly what she needed to do. Twisting around, Katarina shoved her way through the chairs, bodies, and tables blocking her path. People’s faces were twisted into screams and tables and chairs clattered to the floor as they tried to flee. Katarina stumbled a few times, but made it to the counter before the stampede to the back door exit could catch her. Leaning over the counter, she grabbed the cleaver.
Randall’s screams became shriller as dreadful fleshy, ripping noises emanated from the front of the restaurant. Katarina ran toward the sound, her hand raised over her head. Men, women, and a few children ducked out of her way as she descended on the bloody chaos before the front door. Randall lay on the floor, his body seizing as the man tore at his face with his teeth.
Katarina felt strangely disconnected from the world around her as she brought the cleaver down with all her strength. It struck the back of the man’s head with a meaty thwack. She attacked again and again.
It wasn’t until the man lay silent at her feet, his head a butchered ruin, that Katarina felt fear and despair fill her.
She had just killed someone.
A sob broke free from her lips as she gaped at Randall. He was quiet now, not moving. She was covered in blood and bits of flesh and bone. It was warm and sticky.
Turning, she saw a few customers grouped near the back door staring at her in horror. One of them held his phone up to his ear.
“I saw it, hon. You did what you had to. I’ll tell the police,” the man with the phone said. “Pure self-defense. ”
A growl drew her attention to Randall just as a hand clasped her ankle. Randall rolled onto his side, his teeth gnashing as murky eyes glowered at her. Slipping in the blood, he tried to hold onto her while getting to his knees.
“Let go!” Katarina stepped back and tried to pull free.
She almost slipped and managed to grab a table, keeping herself upright. His grip did not lessen, but tightened. Growling again, Randall slid around in the blood as he tried to crawl toward her.
Katarina toppled a chair onto him, but Randall did not relent. He growled and snapped his teeth together, his teeth drawing ever closer to her leg.
“Let go of me!” Katarina raised the cleaver over her head. “Let go!”
Randall lunged, teeth snapping. She slammed the cleaver downward. Her first whack sliced off his nose and lips, but he kept trying to bite her, undeterred. She immediately hacked at his head again and kept hitting him until his fingers loosened and he fell silent.
She had killed Randall.
She had killed two men.
In a daze, she circled toward the back of the café and saw that no one remained inside. She was alone.
Feeling sick to her stomach, yet resolved, she walked over shattered dishes, clumps of food, past overturned chairs and tables, and out the back door into the sunlight.
The parking lot was nearly empty.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the keys to her mother’s old Ford Buick. She had to go home. Wash off the blood. Call the police. She had to tell them she had killed two men.
Unlocking the car door, she listened to the birds singing in the trees. The morning was so peaceful. Yet it felt like it was apart from her. She stood outside the world, as though nothing was real in this moment except the blood covering her and the cleaver in her hand.
Once behind the wheel, she tossed the cleaver onto the passenger seat and started the car. It slowly rolled out of the parking lot and down a sun-dappled lane. The cafe was on the outskirts of Ashley Oaks, so she drove along the old highway until she could turn onto a city street.
The blood on her reeked, coppery and disgusting. She ignored her discomfort, concentrating on driving home. There she would have to deal with her mother screaming at her and demanding to know what had happened.
And she would have to answer truthfully.
She had killed two men.
If only she felt some other emotion other than eerily calm.
As she turned down another street, she saw the town clinic’s parking lot packed with cars. Wounded were being carried inside by concerned friends and family. One woman was screaming, clutching a bloody stump where her hand used to be. Several of the Sherriff department deputies attempted to direct the human traffic making their way inside. The crowd was loud, terrified, and shell-shocked.
Katarina obs
erved the chaotic scene as her car slid past the clinic. The wounded people reminded her of the man staggering into the café. Something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.
Just as she turned onto another street, she heard screams erupting from the direction of the clinic. A few moments later there were gunshots.
Clutching the steering wheel, Katarina stared out at the world dispassionately. Everything felt dream-like and unreal. Cars sped past her as gunshots continued to bark and echo through the neighborhood. She spotted a woman standing in a side street screaming.
Another turn.
Another shocking scene.
A car crashed into a tree. Bloodied people clawing at the windows. The engine on fire.
Chaos was everywhere. Even on her own street.
Ahead was her home.
No, not her home.
It was her mother’s house and Katarina’s prison.
In the front yard, Katarina’s mother stood in her nightgown, clutching the garden hose. She was screaming at two children racing through her flower garden, brandishing the spray nozzle like a gun. She always sprayed dogs, cats, children and even adults to keep them off her perfectly-manicured lawn.
But Katarina knew that the two children would not run away from the blast of water. They were ruined masses of flesh just like the stranger and Randall.
She tried to cry out and warn her mother, but her voice was lost in her throat.