Page 223 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Nope. She goes for the skull mask.

Aw, fuck.

She grins at me like she did that on purpose, and she probably did.

I shrug and grin right back at her, pulling the pink mask on. "I can rock it. I've got enough raw masculinity pumping through my veins to make up for a li'l pink."

This time, she doesn't just giggle. "You're fucking insane," she cackles, stretching up on her tiptoes to kiss the jaw of my mask before tugging her own over her head.

Shit. Now I'm all blissed out. How the fuck am I supposed to wreck a room if I've got fuckin' butterflies pumping through my veins instead of adrenaline?

Next, the weapon wall.

Baseball bats, crowbars, golf clubs, a fire axe that would pair well with Ivy's usual favorite weapon of choice. And hanging from two heavy-duty brackets at the end like Excalibur waiting for its king or queen, the biggest sledgehammer I've ever seen.

Fucking beautiful.

I pull it off the wall and hold it out to Ivy.

She stares at it.

"That's enormous," she says, tugging on a pair of work gloves.

"That's what she said."

"Whiskey."

"Take it."

She wraps both hands around the handle and the weight nearly tips her forward before she adjusts her stance, planting her feet wider. The sledgehammer hangs at her side, the head resting on the concrete floor, and she looks up at me through the gas mask with those blue-green eyes and I swear to every god that exists my heart fucking stops.

"Why this one?" she asks.

I grab a crowbar for myself and spin it once, because I'm me and I can't help it. "Because you've spent a long-ass time making yourself small."

Her grip tightens on the handle.

"Tonight, you get to be loud," I tell her. "Loud as you want. Break whatever the fuck you want. Scream whatever the fuck you want." I tap the sledgehammer's head with my crowbar. "And this baby? Nobody can be quiet with a sledgehammer."

Her shoulders drop a little.

"Okay," she says softly.

Then she says, louder, "O-fucking-kay."

That's my girl.

The room I reserved for tonight has a big green neon sign over the metal blast door that reads THE WASTELAND, complete with a skull with green LED eyes hanging off the sign, and it's everything I dreamed it would be.

It's a gutted warehouse space about the size of a racquetball court, lit with flickering red and amber lights to simulate flames. The boombox mounted in a protective metal cage pumps an industrial song that rattles the spray-painted walls covered in post-apocalyptic graffiti. Biohazard symbols, slogans like THE END IS NOW and EAT THE RICH.

Old office furniture is stacked against a false door like a barricade to keep out zombies, desks and filing cabinets and swivel chairs piled on top of each other in a mountain of destroyable glory. Keyboards and printers and a fax machine with that good hard plastic that shatters into a million pieces when you give it a good smack.

"Holy shit," Ivy breathes.

"Welcome to the end of the world, wildcat."

A digital timer on the wall reads 30:00 in red. I slap the start button.