My daddy used to say that there are only two types of people in the world: Creators and Parasites. He said that Creators create, while Parasites destroy. Creators give to the world, while Parasites can only leech from others. But what he didn’t say is this: Creators must either build for themselves, or go without. The world of the Creators is one of compromises and contracts, objections and obligations; they voluntarily give up their freedom in submission to dogmatic hypocrisy, remaining at all times bound to the whims and wishes of other Creators. Creators are soft, fat, and docile. Parasites do not have that luxury. Parasites can take as they want because Parasites, at all times, must be ready to visit horrifying, unrelenting violence upon all others, including other Parasites. Parasites are totally and in all ways completely uninhibited; the world of the Parasites is one of absolute liberty. I think that my daddy wanted for me to be a Creator. I chose to be a Parasite. Parasites are the only ones who are truly free.

She tucked her manifesto back into her coat pocket as the small, single engine plane began its descent. It bounced roughly against the tarmac a few times, before eventually coasting to a stop. Leaving behind a handful of bills in the agreed upon amount, she hopped out of the passenger seat and took a deep breath. Crisp cedar-scented air filling her lungs; after the suffocating damp of the city, she found the low humidity to be a literal breath of fresh air. There was a diner attached to the small, one room airport building. After using the pay phone to call a cab, she slid a loonie across the counter in exchange for a stale coffee. It tasted like an uncleaned ashtray. She drank it while she waited, standing in the shade near the temporary parking lane.

“Skyview Trailer Park,” she said to the driver, tossing away the half-full Styrofoam cup and sliding into the back seat. Skyview. What a stupid fucking name for a place, she thought, everything has a view of the sky. It’s called looking up.

“You got the address?” he asked.

She read it to him from her hand, copied in pen from the phonebook.

“Luggage?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “This is going to be a short trip.”

“Pleasure?” he asked.

“No,” she responded shortly.

He shrugged and shifted into drive. Suit yourself. “Should be there in twenty,” he said.

She shifted in her seat and gazed out of the window, expressionless, resting her face against the glass. Soon. 

****

“Autumn, open up,” said Holly, pounding the door with her palm. The cab pulled away, kicking up a plume of dust from the gravel driveway.

“Who is it?” asked a high-pitched female voice from inside the mobile home.

“It’s me,” Holly replied, continuing to pound on the door.  “Autumn, open this fucking door or I swear to God…”

“Oh,” said Autumn. “It’s you.” The door opened slightly and the smell of cigarette smoke poured out through crack. A face appeared, large brown eyes framed by bad acne and greasy, shoulder length, dirty-blonde hair. “What do you want?”

“I need your help. Let me in,” Holly commanded.

“Sorry for the mess,” said Autumn, opening the door the rest of the way. Smoke curled from the half-finished cigarette wedged between her knuckles. “I didn’t know you were coming, or else I would have cleaned.”

“The fewer people who know I’m here, the better,” said Holly.

“Oh,” said Autumn dully. “So this is-”

“Business. Yes,” said Holly, as Autumn settled into the indent in the cushions at the far end of the couch.

“Is there one for me?” asked Holly, indicating the large tin canister of tobacco and the box of rolling papers on the coffee table in front of her. As Autumn rolled a cigarette and passed it to her, Holly took notice of the tremors in her hands.

“Jesus, look at you,” said Holly angrily, reaching into her jacket to produce a lighter. “You’re shaking like a fucking leaf. You’re on that shit again aren’t you?”

“It’s not shit,” responded Autumn, starting to roll a second cigarette. “It’s medication. I need it.” Without looking up, she asked, “What’s the business that you need to talk to me about?”

“I have intel that suggests some of my former battle buddies are still active, operating out of one of our old safe houses a few klicks from here,” answered Holly. Autumn frowned, using the remnants of her last cigarette to light the newly rolled one, chaining them together. A minute passed in silence. Holly stared at her with smoldering intensity, ignoring her discomfort as Autumn kept her eyes intentionally cast down, avoiding eye contact.

“Battle buddies,” scoffed Autumn, starting to roll another cigarette. “That’s quite the euphemism for neo-Nazi skinhead militia thugs.”

“Hey. I need you for this,” said Holly, grabbing Autumn by the chin and pulling her face towards hers. Autumn blinked and looked away quickly. She knew it didn’t make rational sense, but she was afraid that if she made eye contact with Holly for too long, that would be able to infiltrate her thoughts. She had seen it happen before.

“No,” Autumn said, standing up and moving away from Holly, putting as much distance between the two of them as she could. “No. In fact, I think you should leave. Now.”

Holly sprang to her feet and leapt over the coffee table, closing the distance between them in one sudden movement. She stabbed her finger into Autumn’s chest, punctuation her words with a sharp pain to her breastbone. 

“If you were anyone else, I would kill you,” said Holly in a low monotone, their noses only a few centimetres apart. Autumn wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Holly’s gaze was hypnotic, drawing her in like a moth to an open flame. She resisted, fought has hard as she could to resist. But staring into her eyes, Autumn saw that she had no choice; she knew that there was violence there, hidden behind that nearly blank slate. The silence dragged on, a series of small tics flickering across Holly’s face. Autumn rubbed her sternum; a bruise was already beginning to form there.

“Okay,” said Autumn finally.

“Good,” said Holly, nodding as she took a step back. “Now, let’s do something about those shakes.” Without another word, she turned on her heel and charged down the hall. A few moments later, a series of bangs and crashes sounded from the bathroom as Holly dumped the contents of the medicine cabinet onto the ground. Finding what she had been looking for, she stormed back into the living room, eyes flashing dangerously, a large prescription bottle held tightly in her hand.

“Look at this!” said Holly, rattling the bottle under Autumn’s nose. “What is this? Can you even pronounce the name of this?”

Of course I fucking can, thought Autumn, remaining silent. But she knew that when Holly got like this, it was always better to remain silent.

“I didn’t think so,” said Holly, intentionally misinterpreting Autumn’s lack of response as agreeance. She strode into the kitchen, twisting off the child-safe top and pouring the contents down the sink, rinsing the pills away with a blast of hot water. Autumn squawked shrilly in protest, gesturing with outstretched arms.

“Shut the fuck up,” said Holly sharply. “This is for your own good. Let me ask you a question.” She dropped the now-empty pill bottle to the floor and crossed back into the living room to stand squarely in front of Autumn. “What the fuck are you going to do when society collapses and you can’t get your pills anymore, huh? What are you going to do then?”

“I dunno,” said Autumn dully.

“What would your daddy think if he saw you like this?” asked Holly.

“He’s your daddy, too,” replied Autumn, momentarily defiant.

“And what do you think our daddy would tell you?” Holly asked again, shaking her head for emphasis.

“He would tell me not to be a parasite,” said Autumn defeatedly.

“That’s right,” said Holly, placing her hands on her sister’s shoulders and resting her forehead against hers. “He wanted us to be strong. And dependency on anything except yourself, that’s weakness.”

“I know,” said Autumn.

“I know that you know,” said Holly. “Now, let’s get to work.”

****

There were two men standing at the edge of the overlook, keeping eyes on the valley below. They were talking to each other, but Holly couldn’t make out what they were saying from her position in the small stand of trees about half a dozen meters behind them. She checked her watch. In sixteen minutes, at exactly 20:00, the scheduled meet was to take place in the dried creek bed at the base of the cliff. She had assumed that there would be a patrol here because, roles reversed, this is exactly where she would have positioned her own team. So far, everything was going according to plan. All she needed was for these two assholes to fuck off, so that her and Autumn could take up their firing position.

 “Listen, I gotta take a piss before the action hits,” said one man suddenly, slightly louder than the other. “This bitch shows her tits around here? She’s gonna get wasted good before she even knows what hits her. Ya know what I’m saying, bud?”

This was it, Holly thought, moving down into the shadows. She assumed that his buddy didn’t have his ears in; she needed to make this as quiet as possible. She reached to her hip, and retrieved her axe from its scabbard. He walked past her, totally oblivious, and started to unzip his pants.

Holly closed the distance between them in a single long stride and crossed the axe across his windpipe. Planting one hand firmly on each end of the handle, she pulled up, choking him. He let out a wet splutter, grabbing at the axe, trying to free himself. She pulled up tighter in response, kicking at the back of his leg to bring him down to his knees. Standing over top of him, she planted her knee between his shoulder blades and leaned backwards, throwing her full body weight against the axe handle. There was a soft crunch as important things in his throat and neck broke, red, foamy spittle bubbling at the corners of his mouth. When she felt him finally go limp, she took the axe out from under his chin and let his corpse fall to the forest floor.

One down.

She picked up a pebble and threw it overhand, hard, at the second mook. It hit him square in the back of the head, and he let out a loud yelp.

“What the fuck, Frank? What’s your fucking problem, bud?” he shouted at his dead friend. Holly remained perfectly still. She needed him to come to her. After spending a few moments staring into the trees apprehensively, he finally decided to come see what was taking about Frank’s piss was taking him so long.

As he started to draw closer to her, she circled around the small stand of trees, masking the sound of her footsteps by matching her pace to his, falling into step behind him. He stopped dead when he saw Frank’s remains, rifle dangling limply from his fingertips.

“What the fu-”

Holly swung the axe straight down, catching him between the shoulder blades. The heavy, weighted blade sunk in easily, and he let out a screech as it brought him to his knees. She put a boot on his shoulder and pulled back on the handle. He let out another squeal as the axe came free with a violent sucking sound. His breathing was heavy, choking, laboured panting. She swung again, straight downwards. The blade connected with the top of his head, splitting his skull in two with a hollow wet pop. His body slid to the ground where it lay next to Frank’s.

Stepping out of the brush, she flashed a hand signal to Autumn, who emerged from the shadows with a hockey bag slung over shoulder.

“Time check,” said Autumn, setting the bag down on the ground and starting to unpack it.

“Eight mikes,” responded Holly, checking her watch.

“Roger that,” responded Autumn, unfolding the large, black rifle’s bipod and slipping the lens cap off of the high powered scope. She lay down on her stomach, nestling herself and the rifle into a comfortable, supportive firing stance before slotting a box magazine of .30 calibre magnum rounds into the magazine well. After a few moments of adjustments to the optics and her posture, she worked the bolt shut and slid the safety off.

“In position, safety’s off.” said Autumn. “Spotter?”

“Standing by,” responded Holly, laying down next to her and taking up an oversized pair of binoculars.

 The sun beat down on the backs of their necks as it set lower in the sky, a bright, late afternoon orange. Crows called to each across the valley. In the distance, a clear mountain stream trickled down a cliff face with a sound like breaking glass. From somewhere behind them, there was the soft tapping of what sounded like a woodpecker. An ant crawled across her hand, tickling as it wove between her fingers. She ignored it. After a few minutes, she saw a cloud of dust being kicked up as her former comrades approached for what they must still have thought was to be her ambush and execution.

“Have eyes on a red pickup truck, approaching from the north-east” muttered Holly under breath. There were only two locations that the rest of the gang would be holed up in, and if these poor bastards were approaching from the north-east, then Holly knew exactly where the rest of them would be.

“Red truck, copy,” responded Autumn.

The truck turned towards them and pulled to a stop just to the side of a sand bar in the middle of the creek bed. Two men got out of the cab, and another two jumped out of the bed.

“Appears to be four enemy foot mobiles, taking up position on the high ground,” said Holly. “Range, twelve-hundred meters.”

“Fourteen,” corrected Autumn. Holly made a little sniffing sound. She hadn’t been exaggerating in the slightest when she had said that she needed Autumn’s help: Autumn really was the best, provided that she had the steady hands that this job required.

“Fourteen,” repeated Holly, standing corrected. She checked the piece of paper in front of her that Autumn had provided. “Adjust two minute of angle.”

“Two minuste,” said Autumn, counting off eight clicks on her scope.

“First target is to the right of the sand bar at your one o’clock, one meter to the left of the vehicle, red ball cap,” said Holly.

“Target sighted,” responded Autumn.

“Weapons free,” said Holly.

A thunderous roar beside her and in the distance, the red ball cap leapt into the air.

“Hit,” said Holly as Autumn worked the action, ejecting the spent casing. “Shift left three meters, target in the open.”

“Sighted, firing.”

“Hit. Shift left two meters. Target is behind that white log, left side, left side high. You can see his hair over the top of the log.”

“No, I don’t… Yeah. Yeah, I got him. Firing”

“Yeah, good kill, good kill. I saw lots of little pieces. Shift right, six meters. Target breaking from cover, heading towards the vehicle. Shoot to disable.”

“Copy, firing.” Through the binoculars, Holly could see the round pass through the front grill of the truck, knocking the manufacturer badge askew.

“Hit, vehicle disabled.” In his panic, the man on the ground hadn’t noticed that the engine block had been punctured. He pounded the gas pedal fruitlessly, desperately yarding on the ignition. “Hostile is the vehicle, driver’s side. Adjust fire, repeat last,” said Holly.

“Adjust fire, repeat last.” Spider web cracks and blood splattered the inside of the windscreen. A few seconds later, the faint sound of a car horn being held down drifted over the forest.

“Hit. Good shooting, that’s one enemy vehicle disabled, four enemy foot mobiles confirmed KIA.”