Free First Wave (The Travis Combs Post-Apocalypse Thrillers) by JT Sawyer

Looks like there’s no point in
applying that tactic to you though.”
    The smile left Enrique’s face as he stared into her eyes.
As she walked around him, she removed a folding knife from her vest pocket and
palmed it behind her back. She knew there wasn’t time for more sophisticated
tactics and a man like Enrique would respond well to an act of tremendous
violence displayed towards him.
    The giant man sneered over at the two armed men
beside him and then back at Nikki. “Nobody talks to me that way bitch. What the
hell kinda place is this and what am I doing here?”
    “Don’t you know sugar” she said, in a honey-sweet
voice. “This is a new kind of of Bed & Breakfast in town where we ask you
questions and, if you answer correctly, you get to continue enjoying the
ability to eat solid food.”
    “I just took ownership of this city and I don’t
recall seeing you or your pretty soldier-boys here in these parts before. What
do you want chica?”
    She leaned forward and placed the shiny blade
against his right cheek, the tip near his brown eye. “So many questions but you
just leave those to me.”
    “Your laughs will turn into screams for mercy when my
men come for me and level this building. Then, they’ll skewer the three of you pendejos
on the flagpole outside.”
    “You must be someone to reckon with. Maybe we messed
with the wrong guy,” she smiled. “Though it was pretty easy to ambush your
small convoy and separate you out from the rest of the garbage,” she said, walking
around the front of him. The two guards let out a faint chuckle and glanced at
each other.
    He swung his head around smiling. “Do you know who I
am? What I’ve done to people? You better let me go, you scar-faced whore.”
    Nikki’s eyes narrowed and lips tightened. She lunged
forward and with a single, blinding stroke, sliced off half of the man’s left
ear. He screamed and landed on the floor, like a piece of fallen timber, writhing
in pain. “What have you done….you crazy, fucking bitch. You cut off my ear….”
    She sprung upon him and delivered another slash
across his right cheek exposing the thin muscles and gums below. Grabbing his
greasy hair and yanking his head back, she thrust her knife towards his eye,
pulling back at the last second with her hand quivering. Her face was red and a
bead of sweat rolled down her forehead as her mind reeled back to his comment.
Before the IED explosion that raked open her neck, Nikki was always the collected,
calm operator. Now, comments on her looks unraveled her, sending to her into a
rage she could barely contain. The nature of her work had long provided an
outlet for her personal demons, but she could never seem to squelch the anguish
arising from such assaults on her indelible beauty.
    She held the tip of the blade before the man’s eye,
with a white-knuckled grip. She took a deep breath, rocking the knife back and
forth. The guards looked at one another with hesitation. The seated guard
jumped to his feet. Nikki looked up, studying each man, all of whom were new in
her unit. “Don’t worry your pretty faces. I only shred a person back to the
point of their perceived physical collapse. The mind fails long before
the body,” she said.
    Enrique was silent, his eyes swollen with terror
while his ear leaked out on the tiled floor. Nikki eased her grip on his hair
and flung his head back. She held the knife inches from his face while
straddling his body. Then she wiped the blade across his leather jacket and
slowly closed it, placing it back in her vest. Nikki stood straight, took a
deep breath and gently brushed a lock of her hair back. She clenched her fist
behind her and turned back towards the wailing man.
    “The next words that come out of your mouth should
involve more fore-thought or my blade will strike much, much lower and your
days of taking innocent women will be over. Savvy?”
    The squirming man nodded and attempted to sit up on
his knees, the sliced facial