After The Virus (8 page)

“The other women… the cattle…” She couldn’t finish the question.

“Infertile, too old, they’re… feeders, for them, you know,” Buddy answered.

“He’s gonna do things to you I can’t imagine. I hope I get to see the results.” Excitement-spittle formed at the edges of Asshole’s lips.

“My arms are numb.” She tried a play for sympathy in Buddy’s direction. “One of my wrists feels broken.” Buddy didn’t lift his gaze from the fire.

“You don’t need arms for what he wants you for,” Asshole sneered. “Or legs either. You’re gonna breed the Boss’s Sons of New World Order. And breed, and breed, and breed.”
 

He cackled and wandered over to the fire. Rhiannon’s heart stopped beating, which wasn’t at all helpful.

She deliberately leaned on her broken wrist, and the resulting jag of pain shocked her heart.

“Least she’s awake now,” Buddy muttered. “Lost us two days.”

“Better than punishment for delivering her dead,” Asshole reminded him as he retrieved some poor animal’s leg from the fire and gnawed it.

“Hell, if she was dead, we’d have to run for it,” Buddy whined. “Bad enough, returning without it, your brother, I mean. He hates losing them.”

“Yeah, but we ain’t going take the blame for that.” Asshole turned to smile maliciously; pieces of dead flesh between his teeth.

Rhiannon tried to ignore him as she struggled to sit up. Her movement pulled her wet t-shirt tight across her chest and drew his foul eyes again.

“I bet she was giving it up freely to that cowboy guy,” Asshole pondered. “Not like she’s any virgin. Boss wouldn’t know the difference.”

“It’s your neck.” Buddy shrugged.

“We could cut out her tongue, like they did in the real old days,” Asshole suggested. Buddy looked at her.

“The real old days,” Buddy murmured like he was actually thinking about it. Rhiannon, despite being hog-tied, tried to look as intimidating as possible.

“Nah,” Buddy decided. “Boss probably wants her tongue plus she might bite. I hate that.”

Asshole snorted, but did drop the subject of rape.

∞

She could hear the river. They’d been on foot for half a day. Asshole and Buddy were still hoping to find motorcycles, while she looked for escape routes. They had her on a fucking chain; probably the one they’d had around Its neck. The Infected. Of course, she knew how to pick a lock; she’d played a thief once.
 

They had dragged her to her feet at dawn, but soon figured out she couldn’t stand yet. She buckled and heaved bile out of her empty gut.

Buddy, the idiot, had remarked, “Geesh, maybe she’s really hurt. I seen her take harder falls, in that cool dragon movie, what’s it called?”

“That was the stunt guy, you moron.” Asshole hauled her to her feet again. “She’s got a concussion; think she was faking the knocked out part?”

Rhiannon spat remnants. Before, when she’d been unconscious, they had carted her on a gurney made from a La-Z-Boy. It was weird what you found abandoned on the side of the road, but long term, that would be impractical.
 

She wondered briefly if Will was tracking her, and then realized that Snickers was his priority; plus he wouldn’t know which way to start. Besides, she only felt like being rescued because she was in a certain amount of pain, and she didn’t think walking was going to help much.

Focus on the facts.
 

She was on her hands and knees at their asshole feet. They planned to enslave her as the concubine of a bigger asshole. She laughed, a little like she might slit their throats. They stopped debating movie titles. She, still laughing, locked eyes with Asshole.

She enunciated each word, so that, idiot though he was, he wouldn’t be confused: “Are you going to deliver me in this condition?” He, agape, stared.

“My wrist? Broken, and my ribs? Might be. My jacket? Missing, so my skin will burn, like crazy. Red? Good color on me, but not as skin.” The point hadn’t filtered through his thick cranium, so she added, ”And these cuts are going to get infected, which would be bad. Very bad.”

They stared at her like maybe she was a talking dog. They seemed thrown by her straightforwardness. She wasn’t going to simper or smile.
 

“She’s right,” Buddy slowly figured. “We better fix her up. What if… I mean… she looks rough, nothing like that picture he, he, you know, uses?”

“Cunt! Fucking bitch!” Shotgun Asshole swore and paced. She stopped herself from smirking.

He was going to have to take care of her.

∞

That didn’t stop them from chaining her. They wrapped fabric, velvet of all things, around the neck shackle before putting it on her. They were still more scared of losing her than hurting her further, hence the chains, but they had splinted, bandaged, and tidied her up. They also had no idea who they were dealing with, and the extent she’d go to for revenge. If they managed to get her to the city, if she had to spread her legs for this psycho Boss, she was going to demand their fucking heads on a silver fucking platter.

Even though the play had fucking sucked, she’d been brilliant as Salome.

∞

She slept only when they did, even though that was prime escape time, knowing that sleep would aid with her healing.

She woke feeling little fingers loosening the knots at her wrists. She thought she’d known fear, but that had been nothing compared to this.

She could hear B.B.’s unmistakable breathing nearby. Her traitorous heart momentarily thrilled at the thought of being rescued by Will.

Fuck! Why would Will put Snickers in this danger?
Then she realized Will wouldn’t. Which means Snickers had followed her, with B.B.
Well, that plan had harshly backfired. So, time for a new one.

She wiggled her fingers and Snickers squeezed her hand.
 

Suddenly, her heart was beating like those movie drums that always signified death.

She twisted her head to try to see Snickers in the dark, to communicate fear and the need for stealth.

The chain around her neck rattled.

B.B. shifted as she sniffed down the length of the chain, which was staked about a foot from Asshole’s sleeping form by the dying fire.

Snickers worked one hand loose. Holding the chain from clanking, Rhiannon fiercely hugged the girl, a gesture the child actually accepted.

She patted Snickers down and quickly inventoried a knife strapped to her leg — perhaps copying her — a shotgun across her shoulder, and a backpack.

She deliberately wrapped Snickers' hand firmly around B.B.’s collar, and held it there until she felt Snickers' nod of understanding.

Then she delicately wrapped the chain around her arm as she slid closer and closer to Asshole. He snorted and rubbed his genitals.
Typical
.

She fought the urge to strangle him with the chain and started work on freeing the stake from the ground. They’d hammered it in with a rock.

Unexpectedly, Buddy rolled to his feet and lurched a few steps away.

Sleepwalking?

Then he unzipped and pissed.
Fuck. Not asleep then.
 

The stake pulled free from the ground with minimal noise; she must have still been pulling on it. Buddy turned around. He saw her. His eyes shifted and she was sure he was seeing a nine-year-old girl aiming a shotgun at him.

“Can she shoot that thing?” he asked quietly.

“Yep, and the dog will rip your balls off,” Rhiannon return whispered. B.B. started to growl. Buddy’s eyes fear-widened; he hadn’t seen the dog.

“You… you going to stake him?” Buddy quavered. She inadvertently still held the stake poised over Asshole, who was now wide awake.

She was going to have to improvise their way out.

With nothing near for Snickers to brace the shotgun on, she’d get a single shot that probably wouldn’t hit and would land her on her ass. Rhiannon could try to grab the gun from Snickers, but was pretty sure Buddy, and probably Asshole, would have guns trained if not fired before she could manage that move.

She mentally inventoried her injuries.
Can I run? Maybe. Can I pick up Snickers and run? No way. Were they way faster? Fuck, yes.
So they weren’t going to get to walk away clean. Someone was going to get hurt, probably Snickers. She’d just be collateral damage to them.

Buddy’s eyes darted toward his gun, which he’d left beside his bed. Asshole’s hand twitched to reach for his own gun strapped to his leg. She was going to have to make a decision, otherwise they would, but she wasn’t accustomed to having to factor the safety of other people into her choices.

Asshole moved first, just like she fucking knew he would. He reached for his gun; she stabbed the stake through his hand into the ground. He howled, but also managed to grab her neck in a chokehold with his other hand. She smashed her chain-wrapped forearm up under his chin.
 

Buddy dove for his gun.

She whirled around and flipped Snickers over her shoulder.
 

B.B. pounced and clamped down on Buddy’s gun arm as he raised his hand to shoot.

She ran.

B.B. snarled and tore flesh.

Buddy screamed.

A gun went off.

Silence fell.

This lack of sound severed her heart, but she kept running. Snickers clung to her, soundlessly as always. She realized she was muttering the mantra, “No B.B., no B.B., please no, B.B.,” and stopped.

∞

It was so dark.
Where the fuck was the moon?
So she had to stick to the road once she found it. Necessity and distance beat stealth.

Then the adrenaline infusing her brain eased, and she recognized that the river was thundering on the left. She was running the wrong way. She paused, pressed up against the cliff face, and looked back.

“Did you leave Will any clues to where you were heading?” she asked Snickers. Snickers, her face pressed against the crook of her neck, shook her head.

Fuck
.

Snickers knew which direction to head because of B.B.’s nose.

She tried to not think of B.B. bleeding out, dying back there, just because she was stupid enough to get caught running away like a brat.

Rhiannon lowered Snickers, disengaged her arms from her neck, and tucked the girl behind her against the cliff, her eyes still locked on the road.

One of her ribs pressed harshly against her lung, and she willed herself to believe it was only bruised, not broken and about to puncture. Feeling through the darkness, she wiped her hands across Snickers’ wet cheeks, kissed her forehead, and pulled a bobby pin from her hair. It was difficult with the dark, the angle, and without being able to see the lock, but she eventually got the neck shackle off. She wove the bent bobby pin back into Snickers’ hair, retrieved the knife tied to the girl’s leg, and pressed it into her hand.

Then she commandeered the shotgun and filled her pockets with shells from Snickers’ backpack. She also kept the chain coiled around her arm.

Snickers painfully squeezed her shoulder, and Rhiannon looked to see a dark figure looming behind, or maybe sitting on, a boulder a dozen or so feet eastward. She didn’t know how long this person had been there, but as the sun started to rise, the sky behind the figure had lightened and revealed it.

She raised the shotgun, but, as the figure leaped forward, she recognized it. B.B. Snickers flung herself at the dog and B.B. whimpered.

Rhiannon pulled them into the recessed cliff spot, and as the sun further lightened the sky, she saw that B.B. had a bullet groove across her chest.

She started to pull off her jacket to stanch the wound, but then Snickers pressed packages of gauze, bandages, and antiseptic into her hands. She had packed with forethought beyond that of a child of nine. Channeling this swell of emotion, Rhiannon smiled at Snickers, whose face lit up.

“You are simply amazing, Snickers. Thank you,” she whispered, and then turned to tend B.B.’s wounds. The girl, without any fear, stood guard.
 

∞

It was near dawn when she got B.B. patched and ready to go. More light meant more danger, but they couldn’t stay pinned down either.

The river blocked the south, as the cliffs did the north. The city was to the west; the east led back to Asshole and Buddy, but also to Will.

“Will is going to be so pissed,” Rhiannon whispered. Seeing Snickers smirk, she teased, “He’s not going to be tickled pink with you, either!”

Snickers grasped her shotgun-free hand. They stepped out of their hiding spot and, skirting the cliff face, started back the way they came.

∞

The first person they came across was not Will, nor Asshole, nor Buddy, but Wee Wee. She didn’t instantly recognize him clothed. He grinned to display teeth that indicated he didn’t get many vegetables in his fish diet. Rhiannon first thought was to tuck Snickers behind her.

Second thought, she was pretty peeved that she hadn’t heard or seen any warnings that he was nearby, such as his liberally littered leghold traps.

He tilted his head as if that offered a better angle. “I know you.” He limped when he stepped closer, but unfortunately only a little.

She raised the shotgun, and that stifled his grin. He shifted right as if to see behind her, as if to see Snickers. His eyes gleamed. He had a series of fishhooks woven through his upper lip.

B.B. growled and strained against her collar, but Rhiannon continued to hold the dog firm. She didn’t want to ask for trouble, hadn’t asked, especially with B.B. wounded and Snickers in the mix. But she would fight, kill, if needed.

“Real familiar,” he mumbled.
 

“You can thank me for your leg,” she stated casually. “And it’s really too bad the infection didn’t kill you.”

He grinned again, and this time, she caught something feverish in his eye. So the infection hadn’t killed him, but it had added to the crazy.
 

“That’s a girl, ain’t it?” He ignored her barb, and probably didn’t get her threat either. Sometimes she was too subtle for her own good.

“A little girl is real, real valuable,” he continued. “More breeding years, better chance of, of, catching, birthing multiples.”