Gone Tomorrow

She rocked back and stood still.

No pain. Not yet.

Forehead cuts are never fatal. But they bleed a lot. Within seconds blood was sheeting down into her eyes. Blinding her. If I had been wearing shoes I could have killed her there and then. Bring her down with a blow to the knees, and then kick her head to pulp. But I wasn’t about to risk the bones in my feet against her fire-plug body. Lack of mobility would have killed me just as fast.

I danced back.

Lila came straight after me.

I kept my hips back and dodged the hissing arc of her blade. Left, right. I hit the wall behind me. I timed it and waited until her arm was across her body and turned sideways and shoulder-charged her and bounced her away. I spun onward to where Svetlana was tottering around and trying to wipe the pouring blood from her eyes. I swatted her knife arm away and stepped in and nicked her neck above her collar bone and dodged back out.

Then Lila cut me.

She had figured out the reach issue. She was holding her knife in her fingertips way at the end of the handle. She lunged in. Her hair was flying. Her shoulders were hunched forward. She was looking for every half-inch of advantage she could get. She stopped on a stiff front leg and bent low and leaned in and slashed wildly at my stomach.

And hit it.

A bad cut. A wild swing, a strong arm, a razor-sharp blade. Very bad. It was a long diagonal slice below my navel and above the waistband of my boxers. No pain. Not yet. Just a brief strange signal from my skin, telling me it was no longer all co

I paused a beat. Disbelief. Then I did what I always do when someone hurts me. I stepped in, not away. Her momentum had carried her knife beyond my hip. My blade was low. I slashed backhand at her thigh and cut her deep and then pushed off my back foot and hit her in the face with my fist. Bull’s-eye. A major, stu

She went down to her knees. Lila was trying to clear her head. Her nose was broken. Her flawless face was ruined. She charged me. I feinted left and moved right. We danced around Svetlana’s kneeling form. A whole circle. I got back to where I had started and ducked away to the kitchenette. Stepped between the counters. Grabbed one of the hard chairs that Svetlana had piled there. I threw it left-handed at Lila. She ducked away and hunched and it smashed against her back.

I came out of the kitchen and stepped behind Svetlana and put a hand in her hair and hauled her head back. Leaned around and cut her throat. Ear to ear. Hard work, even with the Benchmade’s great blade. I had to pull and tug and saw. Muscle, fat, hard flesh, ligaments. The steel scraped across bone. Weird tubercular sounds came up at me out of her severed windpipe. Wheezing and gasping. There were fountains of blood as her arteries went. It pulsed and sprayed way out in front of her. It hit the far wall. It soaked my hand and made it slippery. I let go of her hair and she pitched forward. Her face hit the boards with a thump.

I stepped away, panting.

Lila faced me, panting.

The room felt burning hot and it smelled of coppery blood.

I said, ‘One down.’

She said, ‘One still up.’

I nodded. ‘Looks like the pupil was better than the teacher.’

She said, ‘Who says I was the pupil?’

Her thigh was bleeding badly. There was a neat slice in the black nylon of her pants and blood was ru

Lila’s busted nose started to bleed. The blood ran down to her mouth and she coughed and spat. Looked down at the floor. Saw Svetlana’s knife. It was mired in a spreading pool of blood. The blood was already thickening. It was soaking into the old boards. It was ru

The pain started. My head spun and buzzed. My blood pressure was falling.

Lila said, ‘If you ask nicely I’ll let you walk away.’

‘I’m not asking.’

‘You can’t win.’

‘Dream on.’

‘I’m prepared to fight to the death.’

‘You don’t have a choice in the matter. That decision has already been taken.’

‘You could kill a woman?’

‘I just did.’

‘One like me?’

‘Especially one like you.’

She spat again and breathed hard through her mouth. She coughed. She looked down at her leg. She nodded and said, ‘OK.’ She looked up at me with her amazing eyes.

I stood still.

She said, ‘If you mean it, this is where you do it.’

I nodded. I meant it. So I did it. I was weak, but it was easy. Her leg was slowing her down. She was having trouble with her breathing. Her sinuses were smashed. Blood was pooling in the back of her throat. She was dazed and dizzy, from when I had hit her. I took the second chair from the kitchen and charged her with it. Now my reach was unbeatable. 1 backed her into the corner with it and hit her with it twice until she dropped her knife and fell. I sat down beside her and strangled her. Slowly, because I was fading fast. But I didn’t want to use the blade. I don’t like knives.

Afterwards I crawled back to the kitchen and rinsed the Benchmade under the tap. Then I used its dagger point to cut butterfly shapes out of the black duct tape. I pinched my wound together with my fingers and used the butterflies to hold it together. A dollar and a half. Any hardware store. Essential equipment. I struggled back into my clothes. I reloaded my pockets. I put my shoes back on.

Then I sat down on the floor. Just for a minute. But it turned out longer. A medical man would say I passed out. I prefer to think I just went to sleep.