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sometimes flipping them over and trying to hit them with the stick. He didn’t seem to be doing a lot of damage, but at least he wasn’t allowing them to come around behind her.
    After that, there was no more time for thinking or watching the others. The main body of the crab-thing army had arrived, and she was hard-pressed. Each crab-thing itself was no real threat, but there seemed to be an endless supply of them. Flip, crush, and splatter. Flip, crush, and splatter. She would glance up the slope once in a while, and see that there were still more of them coming from the forest. The gore from the crab-things continued to splash onto her as she crushed them, sometimes getting into her eyes, where it stung, and sometimes into her mouth, where it left a foul, sandy taste.
    The pile of dead or disabled crab-things in front of her grew, so that the others started going around and coming at her from the side. She crawled sideways, meeting them head-on at one end of the pile. She gave no ground.
    Soon her left arm, the one with the rock in it, was tired. The muscles burned. She quickly switched hands, resuming her pattern. Flip, crush and splatter. She became lost in it. Softly, through ragged breaths, she began to laugh. Still more crab-things came.
    She was lost in the fight, softly laughing and panting, flipping, crushing, feeling the gore splatter all over her. Several times the arm with the rock got tired, and she switched. Always there were more crab-things to crush. She continued.
    She lost track of time, floating in her own personal haze of bloodlust. She realized that this is what she was made for: to fight, to crush, and to kill. She had never experienced this feeling, such an intimate immediacy to everything. Everything was sharper, clearer, better. She felt the crunch of the rock going into the crab-things. She heard the crackling noise of their under-shells giving way. She felt the viscera splashing up her arms, across her chest, and sometimes on her face. There was a fierce joy in her heart. Is this the joy that the counselors had been talking to her about, the missing thing that her parents, her teachers, and other adults in her life had tried to instill in her? Were these the feelings coursing through others every day? She floated on the joy of the fight, reveling in it, loving it.
    In time, she began to notice that some of the crab-things she came to were already flipped, and moved to crush these, as well. Many of these were slow. They weren’t moving. Why weren’t they moving? Soon the only ones she saw were the already-flipped crabs, the ones she had dealt with long ago. Stopping, she looked up to the slope and saw it was clear. There were no more crab-things.
    She rose to her feet on shaky legs, holding her rock and her knife. Her arms burned in exhaustion. Her knees and ached from being pressed to the pavement as she had fought. She was covered in the gritty brown viscera of the crab-things. It was on her pants and her jacket, on her hands, on her face and in her hair. She wiped a hand across her eyes and spat sandy gore from her mouth. She lowered her hand, watching the brown sludge drip down her fingers and patter on the pavement, already slick with the stuff. She was still smiling.
    She couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled but she was smiling now, covered in gore and standing amidst the broken husks of these things that had tried to take her down. They had tried, but they could not take her down. She laughed again, looking toward the man. He stood back from her, staring, frightened. He did not understand.
    She looked to the dog. Its face and muzzle were covered with the same brown ichor that coated her. It dripped down the throat and chest of the dog. The dog was looking her in the eyes, ears forward, mouth open and panting. The dog understood. She looked to the sky, laughing again.
     
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    They all took a few minutes to clean themselves up. She began to wipe the gore from her face and