I kicked out, cracking the ribs of the
squat follower. She collapsed with a gasp. The crack of her snapping ribs
did not influence the others. I could not feel their blows. One hung from my
arm, one had me around the waist but this one was torn away. Adonie. I
glimpsed Adonie. I think she smashed my attacker over the head with a
lamp. The light in the room veered crazily and there was a crash. The
light changed. I did not see Adonie again.
I bit the woman who twisted my arm as though she would split and shred
the skin; I raised a knee and broke her jaw. She dropped, striking a lamp
table. Blood spurted from her nose.
Blinding light flashed within my eyes and exploded in my head. Strangely
I felt no pain then, only the momentary blindness which slowed me, I
thought, enough for the leader to drive into my ribs. Gasping I grabbed
at a scrap of my breath, but none of it mattered, not breath, vision, none
of it. Only the fact that I would not let this assault on us go on. I would
not permit it. That was all.
I staggered, dragging her across to
the door and I flung her out, beyond the porch. She thudded to the
ground, rolled and was still.
I returned and threw out the others, plucking up the last from where her
blood soaked and darkened into the cracks of the floor and kicking her off
the porch to lie among the others.
My breath was harsh, rasping, fast, too fast. I could hear that now in the
silence, and the light was all wrong. One lamp was out, one was crazily off at
an angle in a corner on the floor. The entire room swelled, lurched, like a
sickly bubble it morphed awkwardly, then oozed and dropped away. It
darkened. There was a smell, unpleasant but not unknown. I clutched at
the door frame and managed several steps into the room seeking sight of
Olive and Adonie.
