tw ; graphic violence
Severing a head with a shovel isn’t all that hard when it comes right down to it. As long as you’ve got the body in the right position: flat on its back, boot to the chest to pin it down, you’re usually in the clear. It’s only the thrashing about and bargaining that you really have to watch out for.
Earlier, Jud had told himself that it wasn’t his fault this scavenger assumed him to be an easy mark. It was all on her that she didn’t slit his throat right when she’d first set eyes on him. Instead of going in for a clean kill when he was around back taking a leak, the girl thought she could get away with sneaking in through the front, and make off with whatever supplies he had lying about his cabin before he got back. Needless to say, the robbery didn’t exactly go according to plan.
A quick and rather messy scuffle later, Jud had the looter downed and facing him on the hardwood floor, her shins both shattered but she still managed to swing that hunting knife of hers about wildly in what he assumed to be an empty threat. She skewered him once in the ribs when he foolishly got within arm’s reach to grab for her weapon, causing the shovel he’d crippled her with to slip from his hand and clatter to the floor beside her. The way she’d extended her arm for the jab, however, gave him enough leverage to quickly seize the girl’s wrist and crack her elbow down hard over his knee before she could pull away, resulting in another painful fracture and effectively disarming her.
Kicking her hunting knife away before putting his boot down hard on her sternum, Jud weighed his options while trying his best to catch his breath. Each rise and fall of his now-heaving chest only served to nag at the weeping gash, as seemingly every movement seemed to stretch the damned thing. He imagined he’d stomp her throat until she stopped twitching, but his legs were already starting to feel like jelly after all the blood loss. Jud had only gotten the bright idea to grab for the discarded shovel when he saw the thief’s eyes stray to it, as he couldn’t take the chance of allowing her to arm herself again in his negligence and strike out in renewed desperation.
Still, it could have served him to think the action through a bit, first, instead of bending down for it, as the sudden pressure on his abdomen nearly caused him to double over before he managed to reach it. Wheezing through his teeth, he set the tool blade-down on the floor, throwing his weight into the handle to serve as a brace to keep himself from toppling.
Only when Jud was fully upright and in no danger of spilling over did he line the blade up with the girl’s throat. It wasn’t as if she’d make it away if he actually had the intention of letting her go; with the shape he put her in, ending her life now would be a mercy. He drew in a deep breath, setting the foot he had planted on the ground upon the shovel’s tread. Exhaling long and slow, he put his weight into it, forcing the shovel’s blade straight down through her windpipe with a wet crunch, only letting go of the tool and stepping down off the girl’s corpse after it had cleaved clean through her spine and lodged itself firmly into the floor beneath her.
No longer possessing the strength needed to pull the shovel from the floor to use as a makeshift walking aid, he slowly hobbled his way outside as to evade the obtrusive, fungal odor of the girl’s blood permeating the rotten wood planks her body now rested upon. Gait near-indiscernible from that of a walker’s, and appearance almost as shabby, he continued, clutching mindlessly at the gouge in his torso, to shamble in that same direction he’d started in. Aside from the growing breathlessness, he could barely register the fact that he was moving forward at all, as his legs had long since gone entirely numb on him. Step by dragging step, Jud slowly put the sprawling woods behind him in some neurotic attempt to walk the pain off.
A misstep out of the brush and off of the curb abruptly landed the grimy mess of a man gracelessly prone and motionless at the feet of a stranger on the side of the road.
