my tears ricochet

Chapter Eighty Two

A man was rushing towards Enid and Ivy shot first, barely feeling it, her finger locked around the trigger as she watched him fall to the ground hard. "Damnit," Rosita huffed as she swivelled around and surveyed their surroundings for movement. A distant alarm was buzzing like a pulse in the night and Ivy went to finish the task to keep—

"Stop! Or she's dead."

The man was gazing up at her with flat satisfaction and Ivy froze. There was blood on the ground and he was clutching his arm from where the bullet had gotten him.

And then branches shifted around them. Beth was frozen with both hands upraised and a woman behind her, a gun held to her head.

Ivy's own heartbeat was louder than the alarm sounding off.

"I want your guns and knives on the ground right now."

Ivy blinked and saw her pink switchblade on the parking lot with old cash and coins scattered around. She saw Merle taking her gun, that old piece she had stolen from a gun bag inside an RV. The gun from her hand slipped blindly away and she let the night swallow it whole.

"Nice jacket," an older woman, different from the one in command, sneered at Rosita. "For a murderous bitch."

Rosita said nothing. But her mouth forced itself into a rigid smile so their attackers could see her teeth, that promise of it.

"Well, we'll take it off her before we shoot her."

Beth and Enid were slowly pulling out their weaponry and letting each fall to the ground like silent offerings and Ivy felt the dull edge of an opportunity take root in her mind. They were being compliant. And, with the exception of Rosita, they couldn't look like much of a threat.

She removed the knife from her holder at her belt dutifully and gave it up. But Ivy didn't move to the second smaller one tucked away in her boot.

Daryl had given her orders once, fresh in the aftermath of Lori's death, to grab his spare gun and hide it on her for back up. If the strangers were going to kill her, Ivy wanted one last hope for some kind of chance. And a small knife seemed better than fighting with a nail pulled from a chair to do some kind of damage.

And they would be fighting in the end.

.

"This ain't going to go right, I can feel it," the man whined.

The older woman huffed, irritated. "I'm getting it tighter. Jesus, give me a second."

"Son of a bitch, you're cutting off my circulation."

"Well, sport. It's supposed to."

More gun fire from the distance cut off their bickering. "What was that?"

Beth shifted and tried to move her hands cautiously, wary of drawing attention. 'M-O-T-O-R-C-Y-C-L-E,' she spelled out in tentative little flashes of movement. The alarm had died down already and they were huddled together with the satellite centre barely visible through the branches. Paula, the woman who had gotten the drop on Beth, peered through a pair of binoculars as she scanned the area before her.

"It's Primo. Damn it, they've got him. Give me the walkie."

"Babe, what's happening?" The man demanded as he passed it over. Ivy tried to take note of the language, the way he shifted to look at her. Relationships could be valuable if exploited properly.

"Lower your gun, prick," Paula demanded, voice dropping slightly to sound a little deeper.

Rick's voice chirped back and Ivy flinched at the sound of it, at how badly she wanted to hear Daryl's voice instead. "Come on out. Let's talk."