The bags didn’t drop. Instead they went berserk, attacking everything in sight. They were clawing and biting and stabbing the metal walls of the shed while other bags next to them were slicing and ripping the flesh off of their bones. They died without ever seeming to notice.
Bags who were looking up when the Mother died became fixated on the roof and began leaping up with newfound strength, no doubt ripping muscles and ligaments with abandon, and catching the rooftop easily.
Chuck was out of ammo. Anne aimed and shot with impressive speed and precision as bags began pulling themselves up to the roofline, but I could see that she was now down to the shells containing shot in the last half of the drum. Bags were coming up on all sides of the roof now, and I knew that Anne and Chuck would be overrun in moments.
I ran down the crane and made one last leap to the roof. I kept my feet this time and drew my baton.
“You couldn’t kill the Mother?” said Anne as she backed towards me.
“I killed her.”
“You said that the bags would all die when she did! These things are ten times more dangerous now than they were while she was alive.”
An old man with white hair and bloody hands pulled himself up to the roof in front of her. The gun in her hands dry fired on an empty chamber. Anne waited until he got a foot onto the roof and let go with his hands to stand up. In that instant she skipped forward and hit him in the face with a hard forward jab of the stock. With nothing to hang on to, he fell backwards off of the roof, only to be torn to pieces by the bags he landed on below.
“It’s more dangerous, but it won’t last. Look.”
Down below, two thirds of the bags were already dead, gutted and in some cases literally pulled apart limb from limb by the rest. “Pretty soon they’ll kill each other off, leaving just a couple for us to deal with. We’re going to be okay.”
And this time, I was right. I don’t know how long I raced back and forth on that rooftop knocking bags to the ground with my baton, but it seemed like days. Just another endless, frantic combat memory to stack up with the rest of my collection. Eventually the things stopped coming. I walked to the edge and looked down at the last few bags tearing at each other mindlessly.
In moments, only three were left, and those were tearing their own hands to shreds on the sharp, ragged holes that now covered the sides of the shed. I jumped down and finished them. They died still attacking the unfeeling metal walls.
We staggered away from the grisly scene and down the quarry stairs, not stopping until we reached the parking lot.
Trying not to think about what might still be swimming in the black water, I jumped in to rinse off the worst of the diesel and the blood. I stayed in for as long as I dared, and climbed back out.
I flopped down beside Anne and Chuck who were already lying on their backs on the cool gravel, exhausted. It seemed like my entire body was covered with puncture wounds and cuts, all marinated in diesel. Every inch of me burned or ached.
I rolled my head to one side to look at my companions. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”
Anne punched me in the shoulder. Hard. Then she started to laugh. A few seconds later Chuck joined in, and then we were all chuckling and giggling like mad people.
I felt good in a way that I hadn’t since the war. We made a difference here. And it mattered. When I heard about Pearl Harbor as a boy, I left my family to throw myself into the biggest conflict the world had ever seen. For the first time in my life I wasn’t just fighting, but fighting for something. But since then, I went from a person who protects to someone who avenges. And then to a person who just inflicts pain because he can.
I felt like the man I used to be. I felt clean. Tears and laughter mixed together unexpectedly. Embarrassed, I covered my face until it passed.
When I was able, I got stiffly to my feet and then helped Anne and Chuck up, grabbing each of them by the hand and pulling them upright, eliciting a pitiful chorus of groans.
“I guess it’s time we headed back. We need to check in with Greg and Mazie at the house and see if they found out anything more about …” The words trailed off as I realized what we had done.
Chuck gave me a quizzical look, but Anne got it immediately. “Oh, God! The whole town is still full of bags.” We all turned to look up at the blood soaked shed in the distance.
Realization dawned on Chuck’s face. “Oh, shit.”