Word: Brickbat

        

brickbat

[brik-bat]

noun

1. a piece of broken brick, especially one used as a missile.

2. any rocklike missile.

3. an unkind or unfavorable remark; caustic criticism:

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       Janet threw another brick.  It slammed into her intended target, shattering bones and splattering the fleshy interior.  In a blind panic, she reached for another one and threw it with everything she had.  A miss this time.  The brick shattered on the ground, just in front of one of the horrible monstrosities.

                “Damn it!”  She swore.  She reached behind her and found her pile of bricks had been depleted.  “Damn it!”  She shouted again.  “I need more bricks!”

                “You and me both.”  Greg said.  He was down to his last few bricks himself.  Janet swore a third time. 

                “Casey, stop playing around and help!”  She shouted to the third member of their little band of survivors.  Casey looked up blinked, and went back to what he was doing.  “Seriously?”  Janet said.

                She watched the quiet young man fiddle with stray wires.  He was carefully braiding the short lengths of metal, seemingly aimlessly.  Janet was getting fed up with the guy.  They had found a nice little shelter that wasn’t nearly as nice anymore, and Casey had yet to do anything to protect it.

                “I thought you said this guy was useful?”  Janet said as she looked around the roof for anything that might be used to fend off the horde of mutants.  “So far all he’s done is a whole lot of nothing.”

                “Give him time.  He’s just… a bit different is all.”  Greg said as he hurled his last brick. 

He soon joined Janet in finding weapons.  There wasn’t much up there.  They had used all the really good stuff already.  All Janet found was some loose pipes and cables.  The pipes weren’t even sharp.  Even though the mutant’s bones were softer than a normal human’s due to decay, a blunt pipe was still not likely to do much.

“Find anything?”  Greg called.

“Nothing.  You?”  Janet called back.

“No weapons or anything, but I found some boards we can use on the doors.  It might give us some time.”

Janet scrambled over to help her fellow survivor board up the only entrance to the roof.  They didn’t have any nails though, so the barricade was shoddy at best.  It would give them a few minutes at most, if that.  Janet fell, gasping for air.  She looked over and saw Casey looking at the pipes she had discarded.  He took a few of the smaller, thinner ones and one bigger, thicker one over to his little area. 

Janet seethed.  He still had things he could use.  He had a few more bricks to throw.  He even had a cinder block left.  But he wasn’t doing anything with them.  He simply set the pipes down next to him and continued braiding wires.  Janet rushed over to him, trying to take a few of his weapons.  He quickly moved them out of her grasp, keeping everything close to him.

“You fucking idiot!”  She screamed at him.  “If you’ve got all that stuff, the least you can do is help us!  I swear you’re the most useless piece of crap I’ve ever seen!” 

“Hey now, give the guy a break.”  Greg said.  “I don’t think that stuff would make much of a difference at this point anyway.”

“That’s not the point!”  She screamed.  “We’re over here, busting out asses off trying to keep us alive, and he’s done nothing for us.  He’s completely useless!” 

“Just give him time.  It might seem like he’s not doing anything, but I promise when push comes to shove, he’ll prove his worth.”

Janet huffed and hunched over.  She didn’t have nearly the same confidence in Casey’s worth as Greg did.  She turned to watched Casey doing whatever he was doing.  He took one of his remaining bricks and a pipe and started pounding on one end of it, flattening the opening until it closed up.  He did this several times with the other short pipes before stuffing the other end with bundles of braided wires.

Janet’s attention was pulled from his work to Greg, who was shouting for her help. The mutants were closing in on them fast.  He was leaning up against the crude barrier as the horde did it’s best to break free.  Janet rushed to help him, putting all her weight into the task.  She hoped they would just give up sooner or later, even as more and more of them ganged up on them.  She was also very glad that, unlike movie zombies, the mutant’s softer bones made them weaker than normal.  They only won out with sheer numbers and tenacity, really. 

“Hey, did you find a melee weapon or anything?”  Greg asked.

“No, why?” 

“Cause I figure if we’re going down, we might as well go down fighting.  Maybe help the next guys survive by taking a bunch of them with us, you know?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.”

Their conversation was cut short by the horde’s numbers growing too great for the two of them to hold back any longer.  They lept aside and readied themselves for a fight.  Even if it was just with their bare fists, neither of them wanted to just roll over and die.

Casey stood up as the mutant’s started coming through the doorway.  He swung something and one of their heads was blown off its shoulders.  Another swing, and another dead mutant.  Casey swung whatever weapon he had found over and over again, each time taking one of them down.  It took awhile, but there were eventually no more of the left coming up the stairs. 

Casey took a deep breath and shouldered his weapon.  It looked like a hammer made of a thick mess of wires with spikes coming out of the ends.  Janet looked and recognized the wires as the braids he had been making and the spikes were the pipes he had pounded into shape.  The handle was the larger pipe he had secured later.  She looked over at the pile and found several of the bricks and the cinder block were now missing.  It didn’t take much thought to figure out where they went.

Casey walked over to Janet and handed her the weapon.  It was definitely heavy enough to have a cinder block and a few bricks in it.

“You’re welcome.”  He said in a surprisingly deep, husky voice before walking down the now cleared stairs.

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Not quite a zombie story, but pretty close.  I'm not really sure what else to say about it other than that.   Although, I do have something about the word.  I think it's kind of a mismatch, don't you?  I mean, it sounds like it should be some kind of blunt weapon made of bricks, but it's actually referring to bricks as a thrown weapon.  Kind of funny how these things work, isn't it?