Chapter 23: "History Doesn't Repeat Itself, But It Often Rhymes" - Mark Twain

Vivi stood, frozen in her shock and frustration, between Eli and Meli, obscuring the left side of his body from her line of sight. Knowing he couldn't reach for the nearby rifle, chamber a round, and fire off a shot before the dark-skinned bitch could kill Julie, he remained perfectly still, trying to appear non-threatening and compliant. Despite his overall stillness, his left hand slowly, tediously slowly, lowered to hang by his side, his thumb brushing against the folding combat knife clipped to his belt.

"We're not part of the JSU." Meli scowled at Eli.

Julie scoffed at Meli's statement. "If you're not JSU, then get that gun out of my face."

Eli cautiously slid the knife from his belt, careful to avoid making any quick movements or noise.

"Val! Maria!" Meli shouted toward the open door, refusing to engage with Julie's demands. "Get in here!"

Eli unfolded the blade from the handle, and masked the sound of the blade's lock clicking into the 'open' position by talking to Meli.

"If this isn't related to the JSU, then what the fuck are you doing?"

Meli's narrow-eyed gaze shifted to his face, and a cruel, devious grin affixed to her lips. Her tone was smooth, almost snarky and mocking as she spoke. "I'm a trader. We're a trading company. What am I doing? Well, I'm acquiring trade goods, of course."

"Goods?" Eli asked, though he had a hunch what she was talking about, and the thought ignited a burning flame of disgust and hatred within him.

"The most valuable of all trade goods." Meli said with an increasingly arrogant smugness. "A young man. And with a pretty face like yours, we shouldn't have any trouble finding a buyer willing to pay whatever price we ask." She continued to speak, as if she savored the looks of disgust from her captives. "Of course, you'll be worth a lot more after Val and Maria finish training you. Well, breaking you, is probably more accurate. Normally, we only deal with much younger boys, since slaves are easier to train while they're still children, but this opportunity is just too good to pass up. A handsome young man, fleeing from a destroyed town, no help, no connections, no supplies.....and they show up at my caravan's motel with a dead roller and no way to escape? Fuck, I'd have to be stupid to not snatch you up." 

Eli raised his right hand and grasped the open door, then pushed it shut.

"Hey. What the fuck are you doing? Stop moving!" Meli pushed her revolver against Julie's forehead.

"Or what?" Eli asked as he slid the bolt of the door's lock into place. "You'll kill her? But aren't you already planning to kill both of them after restraining me? You said you take boys, not people, so you obviously have no intention of letting them live. Which means I have no intention of letting you live." 

Meli's eye twitched, and her smug grin vanished. "Val! Maria! Hurry the fuck up! Get your asses.....in....here...."

A series of rapid thuds and crashes from the next room interrupted Meli's shouting. It sounded like something heavy smashing into the wooden furniture, and banging off the thin walls. Meli's dark eyes drifted away from Eli to focus on the wall between their room and the next, her confusion apparent by the way her thin eyebrows wrinkled.

Meli's brief, momentary distraction was all the opening Julie needed. She threw her hand up and clutched the revolver, jamming her thumb between the hammer and firing pin. Meli reflexively pulled the trigger , but the hammer thumped harmlessly against Julie's thumb. With a sharp, violent twisting move, Julie pried the pistol from Meli's grasp and swung her free hand around in a wide arc. Her fist caught the left side of Meli's face, causing her head to whip around as she staggered a few paces backward.

Vivi had also taken advantage of Meli's distraction. She lunged to the foot of the bed and scooped up her pistol. As she dropped to one knee, she yanked the gun free of it's holster and rammed the slide back to get a live round in the chamber.

"Stop!" Eli yelled to Vivi. His voice was deep, forceful, authoritative. All three women froze in place, and Meli was furiously grinding her teeth. She didn't make any moves, however, because she had two guns aimed at her head, one of which was her own revolver.

"You sell little boys?" Eli spoke in a dangerously low growl. "How many?"

"What?" Meli asked without taking her eyes off Julie.

"How many children have you sold into slavery?" Eli asked as he stalked toward her.

"Heh." Meli forced a dry chuckle. "You'll be the fourteenth. You gonna kill me? Fuckin' do it, then. It won't change anything. It'll still be a five-on-three fight, and you're seriously out-gunned."

"Vivi, watch the door. Mom, move the weapons out of reach, but keep an eye on this bitch." Eli said.

"Sure, I've got it covered." Vivi said.

"So that's how you want to do this?" Julie smirked. "Alright, sweetheart, but make it quick."

Julie kept the revolver trained on Meli while she gathered the weapons from the bed and moved them to the chair closest to the door. Eli stared coldly at the self-admitted child sex trafficker until Julie had every single weapon moved and secured. Eli raised his knife, showing the blade to Meli.

"Ha! You want a fight, kid? Fine. Come at me. I'll take that little blade right out of your hand, and after I'm done putting you in your place, I'll use your own knife to slit their throats while you watch." She snarled.

Eli flicked the blade closed, then tossed it onto the chair with the other weapons. "Oh? You think you're a real badass, don't you? Well, miss badass, have you ever fought a man your own size before? Or do you only attack unarmed, untrained children?"

Meli glared at him, and her nostrils flared in anger. "Boy, I've been in life-or-death fights all my life. You should have shot me when you had the chance, because I'm about to break you."

"Pfft." Eli held back the laugh that nearly escaped his mouth. Sure, the scumbag woman might have more combat experience than him, but only when accounting for his time as Eli. If anything, they probably had about the same level of fighting experience, and he had no doubts that his second-hand military training was far superior to any amateurish training she'd been through. Besides all that, even if she was slightly taller, he weighed at least forty pounds more than she did. Her baseless threats were so ridiculously impossible, Eli couldn't help but laugh. The arrogant bitch had no idea how dead she was.

His cavalier disregard of her taunting sent Meli over her limit. She screamed out a war cry and charged straight for him. Her burn-scarred right hand reached out toward his neck, and her eyes were fully consumed with blind rage. Eli shifted his weight, grabbed her outstretched wrist, stepped in close to her chest, twisted his body, and threw her to the ground, hard. Her left shoulder hit the dusty cement floor first, and a horrible cracking sound, like a tree branch being snapped, told Eli that it was either broken or dislocated.

Meli really was a combat veteran, though, because she rolled through her fall and sprang back up on her feet to take a defensive stance. Her left arm hung limply at her side, but she held her right fist up near her face. She sucked in sharp breaths through her clenched teeth, like she was trying not to focus on the pain in her shoulder, but she was definitely hurting.

Her fiery rage toward him hadn't subsided in the least. In fact, the injury only further infuriated her, but she was no longer eager to rush at him, and the arrogant attitude she displayed moments ago was gone. 

"Thirteen children." Eli said. "You destroyed the lives of thirteen children, right? You'll wish for death thirteen times before I'm done with you." Eli rushed toward her, closing the gap between them in a single step. 

With a swiftness he didn't expect from the injured woman, her right fist connected with his jaw, but the impact was too light to do any real damage. He felt her arm move around his neck, and she jerked his head downward, forcing him to bend at the waist. Holding him in a reverse headlock, she twisted her hips and struck at his right side with her knee. The impact was sharp, but, once again, too light. Eli clenched his fist and slammed it into her ribs in return.

"Ugh?!" Meli's grunting voice contained equal amounts of surprise and pain.

Eli grabbed the wrist of her injured arm and yanked it down, forcing a scream of agony from his opponent. Her hold on his neck slackened in response, and he broke out of her grasp while still gripping her wrist. Meli was wide-eyed with pain and fury, but she stood firm nonetheless.

Her good shoulder pulled back, telegraphing an incoming attack from her right, but Eli wasn't in the mood to trade punches with her. Before she could finish her swing, he tugged her toward him, leaned-in, and smashed his forehead into her nose. He felt the crunch of breaking cartilage as her nose shattered against his head, spraying her warm blood across his face.

She reeled back from the impact, sputtering, choking, and still as furious as ever.

Eli's vice-like grip on her thin wrist was relentless. Refusing to let his prey escape, he grabbed her by the throat with his other hand. Her dark brown eyes still didn't show any fear, and he intended to fix that. Bending his knees, he stiffened his arm, grunted with effort, and sprang up. Fear finally entered her dark eyes as she was lifted off the ground by the neck and choke-slammed onto the hard floor.

When her back hit the ground, she coughed out a bloody mist from her broken nose, staining the front of her shirt, and Eli's arm, with a bright red spatter.

Meli was instantly frantic. She bucked her hips, thrashed her body, and repeatedly threw right jabs at Eli's head. He ignored her weak attacks, but knew he'd have some serious bruises later, and mounted her waist. He released her wrist and throat from his holds to bring his fists up into position, ready to rain hell down onto her from above. The bitch's struggling intensified; she must have known what was coming, and she managed to bring her good hand up in time to partially block the first heavy-fisted punch to her face. Partially. Her head still rocked from the strike, and her eyes glazed over for a moment.

But her punishment had only started.

Eli swung one fist after the other.

By the third hit, one of her front teeth was broken, and Eli's right knuckles were split open.

By the fifth, her eyes were completely hollow; her brain had been rattled in her skull.

By the seventh, she finally stopped struggling. Her cheek bone had been broken, and her left eye was swollen shut. 

Eli raised his fist to hammer her again, but halted before bringing it down.

"Really? Done already? Fuck, I thought you'd be tougher than this, you barely even put up a fight." He slapped her cheek a few times, but Meli was out cold. He sighed, checked the pulse in her neck, confirmed she was still alive, then stood up.

He stretched his neck to loosen the tension in his muscles, then shook his hands when he noticed the throbbing in his knuckles. He scowled down at the unconscious woman on the floor. 

Shit. He sighed and rubbed his sore jaw. I know the world's different now, and I know she's a total piece of shit who deserves worse, but I still don't feel good about beating on a woman like that. Dammit, I really thought she'd be tougher than this. Hell, I took harder hits from Kate when we sparred during training. Ugh, now I feel like an asshole who beat up a helpless woman....

"Sweetheart?" Julie gently placed a hand against his cheek and turned his head to look at his face. "You alright?"

"Yeah, mom. I'm fine."

"Hmm." She looked skeptically at his swollen lip, but didn't push the subject any further. "Alright. Hurry and get her tied-up, then we'll deal with the others. There's no way they didn't hear all the noise, and I don't like how they haven't tried to get in here yet. They might have an ambush waiting just outside the door."

"Shit, you're right. But, you want to keep her alive?" He asked while kneeling beside Meli and removing her denim coat from her limp body. He rolled her over onto her side and bound both hands by tying her wrists together with her own clothing. "I thought you'd want to kill her, for sure. Especially after your...." he grunted as he pulled the knot tight and flipped Meli onto her stomach,"....well, after everything that happened when I was younger."

"What happened to you is the reason I want her alive. She'll tell us the names of all the boys she sold, where she took them from, and who she sold them to. We'll make sure the information reaches their mothers, at least. She stays alive until she tells us everything, then she dies." Julie looked down at Meli's battered face with pure disgust and loathing.

Eli smiled at his mother, and felt a little ashamed that he hadn't thought of that himself. "Yeah, good idea. You have any good ideas on what to do about the rest of the caravan?"

"I've got a few!" Someone shouted from outside. 

Julie and Vivi both swung their guns around to aim at the door, and Eli dropped to a crouch then stalked over to the window. He held up a hand, gesturing for his women to wait for his signal before firing, then cautiously parted the curtains. The gap between the rough sheets of fabric was almost imperceptible from outside, but it was wide enough for Eli to peek through with one eye.

The storm was much closer by then, and the sun had dipped most of the way below the horizon. Sparse, drizzling raindrops pattered against the cool glass window, and he tilted his head down so his breath wouldn't fog it over. Panning his sight to the area outside the door, a lone figure caught his eye. Sophia. She was breathing heavily, and every breath released a thin cloud of mist into the cold, rainy night. She abruptly turned her head toward the window he was peering through, almost like she knew he was watching her. 

"What the fuck?" Eli muttered.

It wasn't Sophia's presence that caused Eli's concern. It wasn't even the creepy way she seemed to know he was looking at her. The thing that really caught his attention, that concerned him the most, was what she was carrying.