Unknown - The_Growing_589064

“Call your people off,” Koda orders, and when he hesitates, pushes the gun more firmly against his head. “Now.”

“All of you, get back inside the compound!” he finally yells, seeing from the corner of his eye a long finger begin to tighten against the trigger. “Now!”

Several of the women and men, and most of the children, obediently head for the gate while others unholster their weapons and start for the trio.

“I wouldn’t,” Kirsten comments, almost casually, as she aims at the oncoming group.

Several stop, but one man continues forward, smirking. “You wouldn’t hurt women. Or children.”

“Why not?” Kirsten asks, voice as flat as dawn-calm lake. “You do.”

It is that tone, even more than her words, that confuses him and causes his steps to slow. “You wouldn’t….”

“In a heartbeat.”

The man stops and looks askance at his distracted leader. “Moses?”

“Aaron, take the others and get back behind the fence, now.”

“But—.”

“Do as I say, damnit!!”

With a last, hard, hateful look at the women, he abruptly spins on his heel and walks toward the gate guarding the compound, waving for the others to join him. They do, thought not without a lot of grumbling and threats muttered beneath their breaths. Finally, the street is empty save for the slowly rotting corpses and the three who stand in the midst of the carnage.

“Well?” the man asks, careful not to move so much as a muscle lest he join the rest of these infidels in their eternal damnation. “What are you gonna do now?”

“We’re goin’ for a little walk,” Koda growls into his ear, wrapping her free hand around his neck and pulling backwards. Given the choice between strangulation and having his brains blown out, the man wisely decides to get his legs in motion. Kirsten silently follows, also walking backward as she eyes the murderous glares being thrown her way by the group now safely behind the compound fence.

A mile or so down the road, Dakota finally stops and pushes the man against the tree with a spine-rattling thump. “We’ll be coming back this way, maggot, and when we do, your little wacked out religious commune had better be gone.”

“Or what?!” he shoots back defiantly.

The smile he receives would have looked perfectly at home on a shark. “Trust me, little man,” Koda replies, patting his furred chest, “you really don’t wanna go there.”

“I don’t trust no women,” he spits, narrowly missing Dakota’s face. “Especially dirty, heathen squaws.” He looks past Dakota, leering. “And their pretty little play toys. How ‘bout it, squaw-lover? You like what this Injun does to you? You make me sick, defiling your race with this dirty, stinking….”

“That’s quite enough out of you, little man,” Koda replies smoothly, pulling him up by his matted chest hair.

“Or what?!” he gasps around the pain she’s causing.

“Or…this.”

Dakota’s right fist lands squarely on his chin. His eyes roll up until only the whites are seen as his knees buckle, dumping him to the ground, out for the count.

“Damn,” Kirsten mutters.

“What?”

“I wanted to do that.”

“I’ll let you have the next one, alright?”

“Deal.”

*

Darkness has fallen when Dakota finally leans back against a fallen log, looking over their weaponry by the light of a small, smokeless fire. It’s a meager lot—a few hand grenades, six guns with five boxes of mixed ammunition, assorted knives, and a bow and arrows. Barely enough, she thinks wryly, to knock off a bank, nevermind trying to storm a well-guarded compound. With a soft sigh, she glances over at the closed tent where Kirsten has ensconced herself almost from the moment they had set it up. The young scientist had been unusually quiet since they left the religious killing ground behind; no amount of small talk had been able to spring her loose from whatever dark hell she’d gone into and, after a few failed gambits, Koda decided to give her what she most seemed to need: space.

“Guess it’s just us tonight, guys,” she murmurs to the dog lolling by the fire and the hawk perched comfortably on her shoulder. “I hope you have full bellies, cause I’m not in the mood to cook anything.” Asi and Wiyo don’t appear to be worried overmuch by the statement and, with another sigh, Koda picks up a cloth and oil and begins cleaning their tiny arsenal.

In less than an hour, she’s finished and the small stash of weapons gleams mellowly up at her by the light of the small fire. With a quick shake of her head, as if flinging off unwanted thoughts, she carefully repacks the weapons and ammunition into the bag she’d appropriated for this purpose. Once the bag is packed safely away, she pulls another one free, opening it and dumping out two battered cups and two cloth-wrapped bundles of tea-leaves. Kirsten prefers her tea with a bit less bite, and so Koda has taken to keeping their stashes separate. Taking the small pot from its place on the rocks next to the fire, she pours water over the leaves, then sits back, crossing her long legs and stretching her arms out over the log-cum-backrest as the tea steeps.

Her sharp hearing takes in the sounds surrounding her, knowing she’ll never tire of nature’s music even if she lives to be a hundred and ten. Crickets chirp out the temperature from their hidden beds. Nearby, a shrew scuttles for food, emitting a high-pitched squeak of alarm as the triumphant cry of an owl sounds overhead. Hearing the cry, Wiyo lifts her head from its nest under her wing, sharp eyes scanning the sky before dismissing the threat and tucking her head back down. Asi continues to do his impersonation of a dead cockroach, four paws splayed and all.

With a small chuckle, Koda sits up, grabs another smallish sack and pulls out part of a honeycomb, which she dunks in Kirsten’s hot, steeped tea. She still bears the marks of the bees as they expressed their displeasure in disturbing their hive—part of her is quite convinced that it is a sign from her mother—whose name, in English, is Bee—about what she might expect arriving on the doorstep, a very white, very blonde, very WASPy Kirsten King in tow.

“You’ll just have to deal with it, Ina,” she grumbles, stirring the tea with the melting bit of honey until it is all dissolved. Taking the two mugs, she rises gracefully to her feet and looks down at her two friends. “Be good tonight, you hear me? No running off on badgers, wolverines, squirrels, pheasants, or anything else that strikes your predatory little fancy. Got me?”

Asi rolls his eyes and groans before flopping on his belly and putting his snout on his oversized paws, giving her a look that would have shamed any other human. Dakota simply grins and turns to her feathered companion, who is so unimpressed by the speech that she hasn’t even deigned to remove her head from its warm nest beneath her wing. “Alright, then. Sleep well, both of you, and we’ll see you in the morning.”

*

Stopping just inside of the tent-flap, Koda straightens to her full height and stands motionless, content to simply take in the sight of her beloved who is currently scowling at something displayed on her laptop monitor as her fingers dance over the keys. With a soft sigh of frustration, Kirsten yanks off her glasses, then rubs her free hand over her face, muttering incoherently to herself. Dakota catches a few choice epithets and bites the inside of her lip to keep from giving vent to the grin she can feel tugging at her lips and cheeks. Crossing the small space silently, she eases in beside her lover and hands down one of the steaming mugs. “Thought you could use some of this,” she says, her voice a low, rumbling purr deep in her chest.

Kirsten’s delighter smile is the shaft of sunlight that breaks through a thick scud of stormy black clouds at sunset. Koda can’t help but respond with a quirky grin of her own. “Looks like you’re really burning the midnight oil here, Ms. President.” She glances over at the glowing kerosene lamp hanging from the tent pole. “Literally.”