I pressed my back up against the broken concrete that served as my current hiding place, my whole mind on the sharpened length of rebar in my hand and the people hunting me. They were hunting for me, but what they didn't know, was that I was hunting for them. It was simple. It didn't require thought. A voice came to me, spoken by a face I couldn't remember anymore. The face had once had a name, but it had been lost on the day that the sky had fallen, lost along with mine. "Remember. The best defense is a good offense." The face had not been talking about raiders. It had not been talking about stabbing and running and bleeding. But it still worked. It was the law of the jungle. Kill and eat. Or be killed and eaten. I didn't know much, but I wasn't going to be eaten.

Loud, brazen footsteps scattered gravel in the overgrown cracked lots just beyond my wall. Just one set of footsteps. They were arrogant. Overconfident. They were just chasing one little girl, they couldn't have been more than twelve. Still she had most of her teeth and most of her hair. Wild looking thing, but then that's what the boss man liked, right?

The footsteps came a little closer, and now I could make out the owner of those feet singing. I wished he wouldn’t. His voice wasn’t much worth remarking on, except that I wondered if I would die if I stuck the rebar in my ear. Closer came the feet. I did not move. Strike too soon and I would be dead. Your average bandit, even a starving bandit, could pick up my little boot-leather body and fling me into a wall. Done. The best defense was a good offense. A good offense knew how to pick its shot.

A leg appeared through a gap in the concrete, just ahead of me. Attached to it was the foot, and the foot was clad in a real, actual, honest-to-God boot. The good shit. Most of the good shit was gone, or owned by folks that didn't live in this ruin anymore, so this ganger must have been tough. After all, he was still wearing that boot, wasn't he? I compared his foot to mine for a moment. Not a perfect fit, but I could probably stuff some rags in the toe. The foot came down, braced, the leg straightened to let the other move- now. Now was my moment.

I darted forward, fast as a rattlesnake, and jabbed the rebar into the leg, where the knee should have been, gripping the crude shiv like an icepick and putting all of my little girl weight into it. I heard the tendons break and watched the joint take the shape it wasn't meant to. The leg bent, this time to the side, and the bandit fell toward me, toppling like a tree. He was probably in shock because he didn't scream. As soon as he hit the dirt, I yanked my bloody shiv out of his knee and slammed it down into the hollow of his throat. The only sound he made was a weak gurgle. One down.

This little stretch of ruin and concrete and rust was mine. I lived here, and though I looked like a little girl, I was not. I was a cat. Like a jungle cat. Maybe a panther, or a jaguar, or… a tiger. A tigress. I was the tigress, and this was my territory. These asshole poachers were hunting me for my beautiful pelt. And a tigress could only really do one thing with poachers.

I froze crouched low over the body, out of sight. No shouts, no shots, no problem. Good. The more I took like this, in shadows and the silence, the less I would have to try to take on face to face. I quickly rummaged through the raider’s gear. No gun, just a crowbar. Classic. A few different bullets, though, all different sizes. I pocketed those, and then quickly stowed the jerky I found in his inside vest pocket. I hoped it was made of some animal, but I didn’t look at it too closely. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me, right? Wrong, but who was going to call me on it, this guy? Going through his belt pouch, I found something excellent. A genuine pre-war army grenade. This part was tricky, but it could seriously change the odds against me. But only if I played it right.

Carefully, I trapped the grenade under the dead man's chest, keeping it pinned so that the ‘spoon' (or floppy handle-looking part, as I liked to call it) was stuck firmly into the ground. Then I pulled the pin out, careful not to jostle the little bomb. The grenade would go off if someone touched the body, and take everyone within fifteen meters along for the express ride down to the Big Heat. I had seen it happen a couple of times before, and when I had been eight, I had even watched someone plant a trap just like this one. I knew it would work, so long as I was careful.

I got a few paces away from the dead man and his rapidly expanding pool of blood, put my back to the pillar and counted to five. Then I stuck my head out just enough to let my voice carry out into the open and make where I was a little harder to pinpoint. Then I made my best impression of a horrible scream of pain. Immediately, footsteps responded. The asshole poachers were coming, and they were the ones that would die to the hidden pit of bamboo stakes. No tigers were going to get caught up in this one.

I slunk away, staying low- though I still moved as quickly as I could manage quietly. I didn't want to be less than a hundred feet from a fragmentation grenade. There was now a lot of shouting going on, close by. The footsteps were converging on the place where I had killed that first raider, and angry shouts rose over the ruins, scaring away a couple of nearby flocks of blackbirds. I winced and made myself as small as I could.

Sure enough, I heard the grenade escape its trap, probably set free by some well-meaning raider hoping to help out his buddy. There was a clatter of light metal, and then someone yelled “Grenade!” And then there was a loud bang that turned everything in the world into a dial tone. What was a dial tone again? I didn’t move. Anyone near the blast couldn’t hear right now, but neither could I. Stumbling into someone I didn’t hear coming would get me killed just as sure as one of them getting a good hold on me would.

I waited for several agonizing minutes for the ringing sound to go away, and then I risked a tiny peek around the little clump of shattered concrete I was using as a hiding place. The ground back where I had left my little surprise was a mess. I didn't let my eyes linger on the carnage long. It damaged the illusion. They were just poachers. I was a tigress. I did what big cats would do, and I hunted down my hunters. No big deal. Nothing to worry about.

I crept out a little ways, scanning the ruins for signs of any survivors. There. A big guy stood staring off in the wrong direction, swarthy-skinned and bald, dressed in the tatters of old biker leathers. There was blood liberally spattered across one side of his face, and one of his arms looked like a tigress had gotten her teeth into it and tried to rip it clean off. Of course, that was what had happened? Right? A tigress didn't use grenades or trick people with the corpses of their friends and kin. She just killed her hunters by cleverness and the strength of her magnificent body. And that was what I had done, right? Right.

I moved quietly, carefully, circling through the scattered slabs of concrete and rotting wood, avoiding the tetanus traps of bent and rusting nails that seemed to stick out from everywhere around here. This ruin- I was not exaggerating to call it my territory. I knew this place, and this wasn't the first time I had danced this particular club. I avoided the traps and dangers almost without thinking- making use of my small, starved frame to stay out of sight. I slipped behind a mostly intact section of old strip mall wall, and when I emerged on the other side, staying safely hidden in the shadows, I could see that the big man with the bad arm hadn't moved. Good. I stalked towards him slowly, not darting around in quick movements that would draw the eye, but rather imitating a cat's smooth, sensual prowl, with my rebar shiv gripped icepick style in one hand.

I closed the distance. He was just five steps away. I didn’t dare breathe. If he turned, he would have me off of the ground by my throat before I could even try to run. Those big guys could be deceptively fast. Four steps. I noticed that he had a tattoo on his left biceps, probably from before the war. It was the classic heart encircled by a ribbon- and there were names tattooed there. I looked away. I didn’t want to know those names. I didn’t need to know more about this poacher to kill him. I was the tigress. This was what I did. Three steps. My eyes flicked involuntarily back over to his tattoo, and now I could read the names on the ribbon. I read them before I could stop myself. Jeannie. Sam. Brett. Aaron. His family? Did it matter? Two steps away. No return. I gripped the shiv and prepared my body for the pounce. One step. I tensed… and moved!

"Hey!" A voice from the other side of the ruined courtyard. "Look out!" I was in midair, I was scrambling onto the big guy's back, I was reaching for his chin- but he had turned at the warning, and had gotten an arm between us. I wasn't clinging to his back; I was closer to his shoulder. This might not have been my first rodeo, but it wasn't his, either. Howling with rage, the angry raider seized me by the front of my shirt and charged, pushing me ahead of him like a bull. I was so surprised that it took me a precious second to figure out what he was trying to do. By the time I realized it and tried to escape, it was too late. He pile-drove me into a still-standing wall back first, and I blacked out for a moment.

I opened my eyes and found myself sailing through the air. I had just enough time to realize I had been thrown before I hit the cracked pavement and bounced, leaving some of the skin on my arms and legs behind as I skidded to a painful halt. Oh, this was bad. This was very bad. "Hey!" It was the voice that had warned the big guy, the voice of the one I hadn't seen. "Hey! We got the little bitch! Guys, come on over if you want a piece of this! I got dibs on first run!"

I tried to get to my feet, but a big, broad leathery hand slammed down over my throat like a vice, then closed down hard. I struggled as I was lifted into the air, trying to gasp but unable to breathe past the iron grip suspending me aloft. “Not so fast Burke,” the big man said, tightening his grip on my throat more and more by the second. “This little bitch killed Carter, Kenny, and Rawhide. I’ll be damned, but she was about to stick me, too. I’m going to soften her up first.”

Burke made a noncommittal sound and then sighed. "Go ahead, but remember, Alpha Dog, I don't like my apples bruised."

Alpha Dog’s only response to this was a snicker. “You pussy.” It was unclear if it had been a friendly comment for Burke or a challenge. I was pretty sure I didn’t care either way. What I did care about was the red haze closing in, and the blackness following close on its heels. I couldn't blackout. If I did, I would never wake up- or worse, I would, and death would be a long, agonizing way off. I didn't know firsthand what Burke and those like him meant when they called "Dibs" on me, but I had a pretty good guess. I was young, not stupid.

Without warning, the pressure around my throat released, and I dropped from Alpha Dog’s meaty fist, collapsing to the cracked pavement and gasping for air. I winced, bracing myself for the boot that I knew would be coming- but it didn’t come. Against my better judgment, I looked up.

Alpha Dog was just standing there, his eyes glassy, his mouth slack, and a little dark dribble starting from the corner of his mouth. He stayed there for a moment, making odd, chirping sounds, and then fell forward onto his face. That’s when I noticed the crude pipe-and-scrap tomahawk sticking out of the back of his head. A scrawny, pale man with too-wide eyes growled through a mouth of rotten teeth, “Now who’s the pussy, you fat fuck?” So that was Burke.

Boots crunched on gravel, and I looked over to see two more bandits approaching, both of them bearing makeshift weapons in a casual manner, not seeming bothered in the slightest by the murder that had just happened right in front of them. I guessed that the old Alpha Dog had not been well-liked. One of the men, smoking something greasy between filthy cracked lips, spit a gob of something disgusting and brown. “Hail to the Chief,” he drawled.

“Fuckin’ a,” commented the other in an amused tone, apparently by way of agreement.

It was right then that I remembered that I was in danger. I was the tigress, not a little girl, and I had been snared by the poachers. I had to get out of this… and I thought I saw a way. I lunged forward, snatching the tomahawk out of the back of Alpha Dog's skull, and before the new chief could do anything to stop me, I swung it as hard as I could in a diagonal slash aimed for his skinny little neck. He put up a hand to stop me, and lost three fingers for his trouble. The tomahawk was deflected slightly, and it didn't open the side of his neck. Instead, I tore open the side of his face in gout of blood and pulverized teeth.

Chief Burke screamed and reeled, but none of the others moved to assist him. They just watched, still standing casually, still looking just as amused as before. I snapped my gaze back towards the man I had just maimed, in time to see his undamaged hand come screaming in like a major league fastball for the side of my head. I ducked, and the wind of that blow's passing lifted some of my wild black hair up off of my head in its wake. I didn't wait for another invitation. I dropped my weight and charged forward in a shoulder block, imitating the big athletes I used to watch… before. Burke, already off balance because of his clumsy roundhouse, flipped over my back as I plowed right through him and crashed down hard to the ground.

I spared a glance for my audience, but the two bandits hadn’t moved. One of them lifted a hand and drew a slow circle in a clear “go on…” gesture. I focused on the prone Burke, just now trying to get to his feet. If I had been a hero, like in the movies, I would have thrown that tomahawk right into the back of his head. It would have been poetic, badass, impressive. Instead, I closed with the wounded man, careful not to show any hesitation. I didn’t say a clever one-liner. I didn’t say anything. I just hit him with the tomahawk in the back of his neck until he collapsed and didn’t move again.

For a short while, there was silence, and I just stared down at what I had done. I spit on the bloody wreckage of the brief reign of Chief Burke. Then slow, steady clapping broke the stillness. I looked up. The two bandits were standing a little closer, their weapons down by their sides, deliberately non-threatening.

One of them, a tall, athletic, well-tanned man with a leather patch over one eye said, in exactly the same tone as he had before, “Hail to the Chief.” He gave me a little bow, surprisingly absent of mockery. He seemed genuinely impressed.

The other man, who looked like the lovechild of a bull steer and a dump truck, spat a stream of brown juice from his lower lip’s payload of tobacco and said, “Fuckin’ a,” by way of agreement.

“Okay, cool,” I said, and immediately began scrounging around for that damn pair of boots.