A Textbook Killer

As Korin slowly let down the knife, I grabbed his wrist, holding it so he couldn't move it in retaliation. He looked shocked at the fact that I grabbed onto it. I clutched his fingers tightly so he couldn't move my hands with it, and dodged myself out of his grip while holding down the knife.

"What... what are you doing?! You said we could talk about this!" Korin shouted out to Dad. It was an annoying, whiny voice he had like he thought he could get away unscathed.

"You stabbed my son in his arm. Did you think there would be talking without equal punishment?" Dad asked Korin. I completely forgot about it, but the second he mentioned it, my entire left arm felt hot with pain and blood as it seeped through the sleeve and onto the ground.

"Equal punishment?! As if everything I've been through hasn't been enough!" Korin complained yet again. I was reaching my limit.

"As a leader, it's important you understand that even if you're a kid, attempting murder or hurting somebody in the way you did, isn't just excusable with a slap on the wrist. You're playing with fire here, like it or not, and you will be punished accordingly for acting as you did," Dad explained to him. His gun was still raised... and his safety was off.

"No! You don't get it!" Korin shouted out yet again. His face warped in confused sadness, and it snapped something in my brain. My patience was limited, even more so at this moment than ever before. All I wanted was to hurt Korin. I wanted to kill him. I had lost my innocence at the same time it took him to complain about his last remark to Dad and me.

"YOU DON'T GET IT! For what reason did you try to kill me?! Because you fed your sister our food even though she's dead?! Because you broke down the fence and sabotaged everything we had?! To teach my Dad about your 'pain' because you're too much of a bitch to deal with it?! You're lucky I don't have a gun Korin, because I would shoot you plain and square in your forehead!" I screamed out to him.

Everybody got dead silent. Dad didn't say a word, Korin didn't say a word, and I was stuck panting while my arm churned in pain.

"You lied... you never wanted to be my friend! You liar!" Korin screamed out. He ran at me, with the knife in his hand, and bad intentions corrupting his mind.

I was ready to run again, but Dad took action. It was something I would never forget.

The gun fired toward Korin, hitting him near the left edge of his forehead from how I faced him. The bullet entered so smoothly, like a hot knife through butter, and splattered blood all over the wall behind him, and even the ground underneath him.

Korin's eyes warped in confusion as he staggered backward. His left eye began to fill with blood, clouding it in a mess of red while simultaneously stealing his life from him. He made noises with his mouth that seemed absent-minded.

"Uhm... Muhh... Huhh... mhhh..." He mumbled over and over again, focusing on both Dad and me while started to fold his knees backward.

One shot didn't kill him, not like it killed people in the movies. It looked like it damaged his brain beyond repair and recognition. He wasn't coming back from it, this would be where he died.

He fell to the ground with both of his arms raised as he mumbled more, and more. I was completely shocked by the fact he died as he did. I thought when you got shot in the head, you just die. Everything ends... but Korin felt every agonizing thing that followed the bullet that went through his head.

It was weird, watching his body twitch on the floor as his fingers crumped and his legs bent in conjunction. I couldn't find the courage to stare at him any longer, so I turned back to Dad. I wasn't sure what to say to him, not even now. I couldn't muster the words of thanks that I owed him, I was just lost in a blank stare as he looked at his gun.

"That... wasn't..." Dad muttered. I was confused, thinking he was trying to say 'That wasn't what I wanted to do,' or something, but after I heard more footsteps from behind me from heavy boots, I turned again, to see Niko and his smoking gun appear out of the darkness.

The angle should've been impossible from where he came from, but surely enough, Niko did take full credit for killing Korin. He spat in his face and put another bullet in his skull while he was down on the ground. Niko shrugged his shoulders forward, stretching as he turned his head back to Dad while shoving the gun in his holster.

"You have a job to do. You have to lead us. I will not let a young kid like Korin ruin your mind, Dad," Niko said.

From the beginning, Niko had always been a young man who saw the good in everything, and the bad in everything. He tried to justify the apocalypse, the way people thought... but when Korin hurt me, chased me around the school, and tried to kill me over three times, Niko had enough, and loosened his morals.

"You... shot him...?" I mumbled through distant breaths. Niko nodded, staring down at Korin's body, and closed what was left of his eyes from the two bullets.

"I did. And I would shoot him a hundred more times for what he did to you. Are you okay?" Niko asked me. I nodded. I didn't have the capacity to care about my wound... I was left completely astonished by Niko's actions.

The entire time, I had worried about myself, worrying that I might lose myself to this world... I haven't been able to see it destroy Niko in real-time. All along, he's been slipping in his mind as Korin got more and more aggressive. Niko was stained in blood from what I assumed to be zombies, and the splattering blood from Korin's body.

"You killed him..." Dad mumbled next. He had the same, curious tone I did as he looked at Korin's body.

"I know what I did. Those bullets that came into our house, Korin was trying to shoot Leon. Leon got punched in the face, and stabbed in the arm. I only have so much leniency for that failure of a theater kid in this school. We can punish me after we inform Ernesto and Grace about their dead kid. I'll tell them if you want," Niko said to Dad, walking to the door of the school.

Something about Niko felt cold and dead inside. His demeanor, and his morals, quickly changed when Korin became the subject. I watched him walk in and quickly followed behind to get help for my arm.

Dad was stuck outside, staring at Korin's body while absently staring at the ground in front of him. I thought Dad was the one to pull the trigger... but he couldn't. Not then. I had Niko to thank for saving my life.