Just Watch What Mommy Can Do

Mutated humans were not that clean. Their powers came apart inside their bodies and rebuilt them wrong. Some grew bone plates through their skin, some leaked acid from their mouths, some could jump from walls with twisted legs, some screamed loud enough to burst eardrums, and some still remembered just enough words to beg right before their hands tried to rip your throat out. 

Vera had learned early that pity got you killed with those things. You did not talk. You did not wait. You cut tendons first if they were fast, broke the jaw if they could scream, took the eyes if they had ranged powers, and then finished the neck before the body figured out how to keep moving. If the head stayed attached too long, they adapted. If the spine was not broken, they crawled. If one hand remained free, they grabbed. So Vera had learned to be clean, fast, and mean enough to live.

So at the end of the day, there was only one outcome here. Death. They did not have compassion left, and Vera was going to treat them like zombies.

“Babies, do not be scared,” Vera said calmly, rubbing her belly once before tightening her grip on the machete. “Just watch what your mom can do.”

“You think you can hurt one of us?” one of the bandits growled, his voice closer to an animal’s than a man’s.

The others roared in acknowledgment, their red eyes flashing as their damaged powers sparked around them in broken waves. Vera noticed the detail immediately. Only one of them could still speak. Good. That meant he had enough mind left to be useful later if she broke him properly and kept him alive.

“Okay, big guy,” Vera said, tilting her head as she looked straight at the speaking bandit. “Do you want to show me what you’ve got, or are we going to stand here and make ugly faces at each other?”

The bandit snarled, and the sound dragged through his throat like something half-animal trying to remember how words worked. His red eyes flashed, and he jerked his chin toward the others.

They attacked at once.

No one expected what happened next. The first one rushed her on all fours, claws dragging through the dirt with a dry scraping sound, moving too fast for a normal pregnant human to follow. His mouth opened wide, spit flying from his teeth, and the boy behind Vera made a small broken sound like he wanted to scream but forgot how. Vera was already moving before the attacker reached her. She stepped to the side, calm as if someone had simply walked too close in a hallway, let his weight carry him past her, and brought the machete down across the back of his neck.

The blade cut deep with a wet crack. Not enough to take the head completely, but enough to drop him twitching into the garbage.

“Oh, that works,” Vera muttered, looking at the machete for half a second. “Good to know.”

The second attacker came from the left, metal spikes pushing through his forearm as he swung at her head. The movement was ugly but fast, and the spikes made a sharp tearing sound as they scraped through the air. Vera ducked under the swing, drove a dagger straight into his knee, and when his leg folded, she grabbed the back of his head and slammed it down toward her rising blade.

His skull split before the hardening power could fully cover his face.

“Too slow,” she said, already turning.

The third tried to spit something black and burning at her. Vera smelled it before it left his mouth, bitter and acidic, and her hand snapped down to the ground. She grabbed a broken pipe and threw it into his open mouth. The pipe hit with a brutal crunch, and his jaw cracked wide. The black liquid spilled down his own chest instead of reaching her, hissing where it touched his skin. He screamed through the pipe, or tried to, but Vera was already close enough to finish it. One clean cut across the throat, and the sound died in a wet gurgle.

The babies went quiet inside her.  Vera felt their fear press against her ribs, but she did not stop. She could comfort them later. Right now, comfort was keeping the monsters away from them.

The fourth attacker came from behind, his body stretching wrong, arms bending too far as he tried to wrap them around her waist. Vera turned into him instead of away, because backing up from grabbing types was how people lost ribs, spines, and sometimes entire limbs. She slammed the machete handle into his temple. His head snapped sideways, and he staggered with a confused growl. Vera clicked her tongue.

“No hugging without permission.”

Then she cut both arms at the elbows. Grabbing types were always trouble if you let them keep their reach, and Vera had learned that lesson in a ruined mall on Earth when a mutated man with arms too long for his body had pulled three people through a broken store window before anyone understood what was happening. She was not repeating that mistake here.

The fifth was the one whose arm she had already taken. He came at her screaming, wild from pain, blood spraying from the stump with every step. Wounded animals were unpredictable, and Vera did not play games with unpredictable things. She shifted her weight, let him come close, and ended it with a clean slash through the neck.

“See? This is why we stay down when we lose an arm,” she said, stepping over him.

The sixth and seventh attacked together, one low and one high, and that almost made her smile. They thought numbers meant strategy. Cute. She had fought packs before. Real packs. Starving, infected, half-mutated things that knew how to use bait, shadows, rooftops, and dead bodies to hide their approach. Compared to that, these two were loud, angry, and stupid enough to announce themselves with every breath.

The low one lunged for her legs. Vera kicked him in the face hard enough to cave his nose inward and send teeth scattering into the dirt. The high one charged at her shoulder, trying to knock her down with his whole body, but she pivoted around him and buried the machete through the side of his ribs. The blade sank deep, and the attacker made a shocked choking sound like he had not believed she could actually hurt him. Vera ripped the machete free, turned back to the crawling one, and cut down into his spine before he could drag himself closer.

“Bad teamwork,” she said, breathing evenly. “Very disappointing.”

The last two finally understood the small pregnant woman was not prey. They ran.

Vera’s face cooled. “Oh, no,” she said, reaching into her mind space. “We are not doing cardio today.”

She pulled two short blades and threw them with the same cold precision that had kept her alive in alleys full of corpses and ruined streets full of screaming. One blade sank into the back of a knee. The other punched through a shoulder. Both men fell hard, hitting the dirt with panicked grunts, clawing at the ground as they tried to crawl away.

Vera walked after them, not rushing, not angry, not excited. Just steady.

One of them looked back at her, red eyes wide now, fear finally pushing through the madness. He opened his mouth like he wanted to beg, but nothing human came out, only a broken growl and a thread of spit.

She ended the first with the machete through the throat. The second tried to roll, and his power flared under his skin, damaged energy pushing to repair what was already ruined. Vera brought the blade down hard, cracking through skull and power core together, because collapsed-power humans sometimes did not die until the broken energy inside them stopped trying to keep the body moving.

Then it was over.

In less than a minute, the place went silent. Not peaceful. Just empty of movement. Nine bodies lay scattered around the garbage, including the one whose arm had been cut off first. Blood ran into the dirt, dark and thick, soaking between scraps of metal and broken plastic. A few twitching limbs finally stopped. Somewhere nearby, a loose wire sparked against a rusted panel, making a sharp little snapping sound in the quiet.

Vera stood in the middle of it all, machete hanging from one hand, white dress splattered red, hair stuck to her cheek, belly round and untouched. She looked down at the bodies, then at the blade, then at her own arm.

Here, her strength was much greater. Every swing had come too easily. It had not felt like cutting through bone and muscle. It had felt like spreading butter over warm bread.