After (12 page)

All these floors were empty. Unoccupied.

Kicked and shoved from behind, Evan went through the door, into the dark room he knew was the shower for that floor. His heart was exploding. Where was Diego?

Fluorescents flickered on, hurting his eyes. The door opened and another pack of masked men crashed through, knocking Diego forward, naked, blood running from his nose, over his mouth, dripping from his chin, down his bare chest.

The two of them, Evan and Diego, stunned, naked. Seven of them, masked, dressed, jack-booted, circling like hyenas.

One swerved in and punched Evan in the gut. Evan doubled over, but kept his feet, gasping. Out the corner of his eye he saw one take a swipe at Diego. Diego bobbed out of reach, then landed a brutal blow on the masked jaw. Three of them jumped on Diego, pounding him with fists, kicking him with boots until he curled up on the floor, hiding his face behind his elbows.

When he tried to get to Diego, hard bodies, masked faces got in his way, hands caught his arms, dragged him back, boots kicked behind his knees, hands got him down, held him down, wrenched his arms back, cuffed his wrists together.

The tiles were white and clean and cold under his shins, against the tops of his bare feet, and he was sad. He didn't want to die in this sterile, abandoned latrine. Smith and the others would find them, cold and stiff, their cuts and bruises horrible in death.

Peering between legs Evan saw the others dragging Diego closer, getting him up on his knees. Diego's wrists were already secured behind his back, bound in the disposable cuffs they'd been trained to use when detaining enemy combatants. POWs.

“Goddamned faggots,” someone said.

Who? Who's voice? Muffled behind the mask. Or something in his mouth, masking his voice.

“You like it up the ass, homo?” another one said, words garbled. “You like a big, fat, hard dick up your ass, huh faggot?”

That one kicked Diego's legs apart and started undoing his fly.

A scream came out of Evan. Diego was silent.

“Not him!” Evan yelled. “Not Diego. He's not!”

“Get that fuckin' ass in the air, homo!”

He couldn't. He'd die. His heart would stop or explode and he'd die if they did this to Diego.

“He's not gay!” Evan screamed.

“What you sayin'?” One of them asked, cold and quiet. The one hanging back, leaning against the white tile wall.

“He's not,” Evan sobbed. Tears and snot were warm, running down. “He only,” he blubbered, trying to get a hold on his voice, “I, I, I wanted. I begged him. I told him he didn't have to even look at me. Just close his eyes, think of his girlfriend while I did it.”

“You begged him to let you suck his cock?”

He knew that voice. That drawl.

“Yes.”

Evan looked at Diego looking back at him, his brown eyes wild with rage and terror, now welling up with tears. Diego's lips, crusted with drying blood from his broken nose, opened. Evan tried to shut him up with a stare. Maybe it worked.

“And he let you?”

They'd seen.

“Yes.”

“What else he let you do? He let you fuck him?”

“No! No.”

“He fuck you?”

“No.”

“He suck your cock?”

“No.”

God, please. Please. Don't let him hear the lies.

“He's still a fuckin' homo,” the one behind Diego said, low and mean. “Letting a guy suck him.” He got on his knees behind Diego.

“Don't. Don't. Please don't,” Evan begged, crying so hard he thought he'd puke.

“If he don't do your friend, he's gonna do you,” the still, quiet one by the wall said.

“Yes,” Evan said. Things went dark and light again and he thought maybe he was going to faint.

“Besides,” the cold voice drifted in from out there in the dark white, “everyone's having a turn. You can't save him from every one of us. Can you?”

“Yes.”

Evan made himself still and firm, and looked at Diego.

“Yes,” he said again.

“I'll make you this deal, then. None of us touches your friend. Only you.”

“Yes.”

They could kill him. Rape him to pieces. Anything rather than watch them gang-rape Diego.

“But if I do this for you, you gotta do one thing for me.”

Evan stared at the black-masked figure, smudged-looking against the white wall.

“You do him.”

The hard floor went soft. He was cold and floating, like a snowflake. They don't move themselves, just drift where the wind blows them.

“You don't,” the mask said, slow, teasing, even, “an' I think maybe Vallar there gets the works, and you get to just watch.

Evan was saying, “Please, please,” but he couldn't even hear himself. Something lifted him. Not hands. He was just a snowflake, so it was only the wind picking him up, blowing him toward Diego.

Around him there was a lot of noise, like a train close and coming on fast. Men on Diego, hands and bodies jostling him, shoving him toward Diego, elbowing him back.

Through the growls of the men and his own sobs, he somehow heard that low, slow voice drawl from its place by the wall, “Nah, you'll see, my way's more fun.”

Another man, the big one, stomped away from the soft-spoken one by the wall and grabbed the one on Diego, yanking him up.

“You that eager to get your dick in him?” the big one asked. The other man shook the big guy off, then skulked away.

“Go on,” the man by the wall said to Evan.

Something, some force moved his body. He sank down on his knees behind Diego, collapsed down over his love, sobbing.

“See?” said the blur by the wall as something cold touched Evan's wrist and hand, and his arms came free of the cuffs.

“Don't do it, Evan,” Diego ordered in a low growl.

“Ssshh,” Evan, shaking, sobbing, tried to comfort, “it won't be bad. I'll make sure,”

he whispered.

“Don't you fucking do it!” Diego barked, trying to shake him off.

But he did. He had to. And after, the masked men dragged him off, held him down and took their turns while Diego watched, never once turning away or closing his eyes, so big and dark and deep, endlessly leaking tears.

* * * *

Diego waited until he'd heard the door to the stairwell slam shut, until the clomping of their boots on the stairs told him they'd gone down two, maybe three floors, then he went on his knees to the pocket knife one of them had left on the sink. On purpose, and on the sly, Diego had thought, watching him pull it from his pocket as the masked gang clustered by the exit and started sifting out. Why would he do that?

The knife clattered on the tiles when Diego knocked it from the sink. Scared the noise would have startled Evan, he looked back. He was still, his eyes open but not tracking anything. Like a corpse. Diego got ahold of the knife, and fumbling awkwardly behind his back, got it open and sawed through the plastic cuffs.

Evan didn't look at him, didn't even seem to know he was there. Diego reached out, but he didn't want to touch him. It made him a little sick, the idea of touching that naked shoulder. Evan was damp with sweat, stinking of piss, but that wasn't why. And he was afraid. He'd touch, and Evan would flinch, or cry or scream or try to hit him.

“Evan,” he said in his softest voice.

Diego went to the far corner and turned on the last showerhead. Evan didn't make a move or a noise as Diego picked him up and carried him into the spray of warm water. Sinking down, holding Evan close, he washed him clean.

* * * *

Christ in hell. Not again.

Rather than shout out the name of the truant, Smith approached Vallar, a sickening chill oozing through his veins as he noticed the broken nose and, glancing down, the bloodied knuckles.

“Corporal Vallar.”

“Sir.”

“Where's Dunn?”

“In his bunk, Sir.”

“Sick?”

Vallar's dark eyes turned to meet his. Not another muscle so much as twitched.

“Dismissed!” Smith barked to the assembly. Then, to Vallar, “You're with me.”

Not Vallar. He wouldn't. Smith hadn't known him any longer than he'd known the others, but from day one he'd seen in Vallar the sort of soldier he could rely on. Trust.

Not just to follow orders. Vallar was the sort who was a good soldier because he was a good man. But if he'd...

“Sir.” Vallar stepped in front of Smith, barring his way down the hall.

“I'm going in there, Corporal.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.”

God damn it, Smith didn't like that look on Vallar's face one bit. That fear.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

Smith gave him a nod.

“Corporal Dunn...” Vallar's jaw flexed and Smith could see the man was making an effort not to cry. “Just, please go easy with him, sir.”

Smith let Vallar go in ahead of him, heard him call out in a soft voice, “Evan, it's me. Me, and Major Smith.”

The big spare room was flooded in morning light. Twelve empty bunks, eleven neatly made, one rumpled, the white sheets stained with blood. Dunn was in the corner, fully dressed, trying to muster the rigid, salutary stance, but lopsided and hunched, maybe in fear or maybe in pain.

“At ease, son.”

When had he started calling the men “kid” and “son”? Hell, he was only thirty-two. He went over to where Dunn was, and Vallar kept right with him. He had the feeling Vallar was going to put himself up like a shield in front of Dunn who, he could see now that he was closer, was sweating and pale and staring at him in absolute terror.

He wanted to tell him to settle down, that he didn't need to be afraid, but just telling someone that never makes them feel better. So he just asked, “You want to sit down, Corporal?”

“No, sir.”

“Vallar. I see you've been in a fight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dunn do this to you?”

“No, sir.

“Who did?”

“I don't know, sir.”

Standing at rigid attention, Vallar gave the impression of a steel girder vibrating with repeated hammer blows.

“Why don't you know?”

“They were wearing masks, sir.”

Smith stayed quiet for a moment, careful to keep his expression smooth and his voice even.

“How many were there?”

“Seven, sir.”

He looked at Dunn. Not a mark on his face. “They beat you up, too, Dunn?”

“Some, sir.” Dunn's voice was hollow and quiet.

“I'm going to ask you boys a hard question. I hope you both can trust me enough to give me an honest answer.”

Vallar seemed to stiffen. Dunn, well, Dunn looked somehow like he was losing mass, going transparent.

“Vallar. Those men who beat you up. Did they rape you?”

“No, sir,” he answered, his jaw clamped tight. The question hadn't surprised him.

Probably he was lying.

“Dunn.” Tears swelled up in the soldier's blue eyes and spilled down his cheeks.

“Those men rape you last night?”

His lips moved, but hardly any sound came out. “Yes, sir.”

“But not you, Vallar?” It still surprised Smith, sometimes, how he could stay calm through a horror.

“No, sir.”

Dunn tried to catch Vallar's gaze, but Vallar evaded, and Smith still wasn't sure Vallar wasn't lying to him.

“Are you badly injured?” he asked Dunn, feeling woozy but confident he was hiding it.

Dunn looked down at the floor and shrugged. “I'll be okay,” he said, barely audibly.

“Before this happened, anybody say anything to either of you? Threaten you?”

“No, sir,” from both.

“You're lovers?”

Dunn went on staring at the floor. Vallar went taller and tighter and met his eyes, like a challenge. “Yes, sir.”

“You've been keeping it quiet? Behind closed doors?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is a lot to ask of you, right now, but don't. If you're open about it, someone will say something openly, too. It'll give me a chance to lay down the law. Where'd it happen?”

“Here. Then upstairs. One of the unoccupied floors. Sir,” Diego added.

“I'll have you in more secure quarters before lights out. And I'll give some thought to determining who the guilty ones are, and making good and sure they regret what they've done.”

God, it sounded so flaccid. So puny next to what Dunn had suffered.

“Is there anything you need?” Smith asked, hoping some request, some thing he could provide would make him feel less like he'd failed these men.

“No, Sir,” Dunn said, finally looking up and meeting his gaze. Smith couldn't tell if he saw something like gratitude in his eyes. Just wishful thinking, probably.

“A gun, Sir,” Diego said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

~

YEAR THREE

When he's told her what he knows about Kosinski, and about Evan and Diego, John tells Eva about Jake. By the time he's done telling her about Jake, she has slipped into a silence that is like absence. Like she is gone.

“Eva?”

She takes his hand between both of hers, but stays quiet. It's a long time before she speaks.

“It's so strange to think of things that go on, side by side in time,” she finally says, like she's talking to herself. “I thought what had happened to me was so awful, while I wandered through the empty world. But in a way, I was safe. Cold, sometimes, usually hungry. But, once everyone was gone, really safe. But all that time, without knowing, I was coming here, every day coming closer to that day in the orchard. To this. And all that time I was wandering the empty world alone, these things were happening. And Smith was wondering how to make it stop; he was here, planning my fate. And we hadn't even met, yet.” Eva turns to John, almost as if she's just remembered he is there.

She touches his bruised cheek and her eyes go bright and wet. “This. They didn't...hurt you?” she asks, her soft voice wavering.

John gives her a sad smile. “No.”

“You can tell me, John.” She looks at him, holding him in her steady gaze for a long time, like she's trying to read him, or like she's making a silent promise.

Then she whispers, “Have you been raped?”

Stroking her hair, he whispers back, “No, Eva. Really. Nothing like that.”

“I don't just mean tonight.”

“I know,” he tells her. “I've been lucky. They've left me alone.”