Untitled.FR11 (24 page)

She scanned the cabin for a weapon. Bastard had used a wrench on them, nowhere to be seen. Cords of wood, thin branches and thick, were stacked near the hearth. One had her focus at once, more than an inch thick, just under two feet long, black bark with a good solid heft to it. Swift as their attacker had been, she went as swiftly toward the door, pulled it soundlessly open, ventured out into a full moon’s light.

Sherry was on a 747, aisle seat, dozing off, her head caught in that half-sleep, creeping forward, brought back, the steady hum of. . . but there was no engine hum. Just the sound of an exhausted train doing a slow chuff, pause, chuff again, a monumental hill besting it. And she wasn’t sitting at all but somehow on her feet, the seatback rough and gnarled at her spine. She would ask the steward for a pillow, and why the engines were silent. Were they out of fuel? Saving it? The locomotive gave up. Rustle of leaf cover in the carpeted aisle, the steward coming closer, as her eyelids slitted open.

Moonlit building a hundred yards off. A clearing, no plane at all. Her focus was fuzzy, her mind slow to grasp what lay before it. The steward moved into view, knelt at her feet to retrieve something, then he rose. His fingers touched her naked thigh, grubby, earthen. That touch woke her completely, her struggle in the cabin coming back, the rush of die intruder, cold metal against her thigh, a thud of oblivion at her skull. “She returns to the land of the living,” he said. The guy from the Student Center a while back—a soft green Lands’ End shirt, textbook stuffed with papers then—stood before her.

What, she tried to say—but only an mmph emerged. No clothing, warm darkness, her feet planted apart in a Peter Pan stance. She made to move, was surprised at restraint, only a little give below, her arms fixed to a tree lofting high above, her breasts thrust boldly outward.

“I’m getting good at this,” he said. “Wouldn’t do lo have the canvas move under the brush.”

Then she saw the hole, a spade lying to one side, one of the Lyra-holes Katt had mentioned, but dug 111 > again and with the dirt mounded beside it.

“Where’s Katt?” Absurd, her fear that Katt had been buried. The guy wouldn’t know who she was talking about, who she meant by Katt.

“Inside. Trussed up. We’ll get you going, prime the pump, then bring your friend out.”

She could smell damp earth. It amazed her how matter of fact the fucker was, like he owned her, like it was his right to intrude on her life. Derek all over again. That same belligerence, the swagger, the ownership in his eyes. Anger simmered deep down. She’d take none of it, no more, not even naked and open to this bastard’s worst. He would rape them and she very much feared he would kill them, but she would never give up in spirit and she vowed right here and now to maim her captor the first chance she got.

Then the moonlight hit his hand, the one he raised.

Hackles. She said, “Hey now what—”

He whirred it. It fell silent. “You understand,” he said. “Don’t pretend you don’t.”

Oh shit. The stories in the Coloradoan—details left vague to spare the reader—came back to her. Coed Killer. Her voice shook through the scheming that instantly welled up and out: “Hey listen, I’ve read about you—”

He rolled over her, not heeding her words, continuing his train of thought. “The twisted metal leaves a residue inside, a tiny antenna. Bloodspill links all you breeders together, community of be-hind-handers.” He pawed the skin of Sherry’s cheek, pinched it like a Sharpei owner yanking at loose rolls of dogflesh.

242

“Keep your hands off me!” The anger ran deep. She’d be damned if she’d make it easy on him. She shook but not from fear. Through the rage, returning to her scheme, she struggled to sound reasonable. “No, now listen, you and I can talk this out, I can help you reach your goal.”

At her anger he’d yanked his hand away. Now his eyes fell and he touched her right breast, not a man perversely fondling a woman but a carpenter caressing unspoiled wood. “Two of you under the drill will do the trick—”

“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you, it isn’t—” “—double the antennas, twin screams, two blood-spills for every one before, mirror images if I can manage it—”

The unspeakable thing was whirring again, a sound she had once regarded as innocuous but which now contained all the madness humankind was capable of. The curved L of his thumb and index finger taunted her breastflesh just above the right nipple. He raised the drill, angled it.

“—the physics isn’t right, there are better ways and I can help you find them if you’ll just—” Whenever anyone brought a needle close to give her an injecdon, Sherry looked away. But she couldn’t look away for this. Surely he wouldn’t do it. He looked so normal, even now, ignoring her words. He’d stop short, there’d be no violation of her body, she’d get through to him. Drill whinings, .1 smooth silver blur coming on.

“—if you’ll just shut that off, we do have a network and I can tell you the real way to tap into it, I'll help, we’ll get your message across—”

The tip raised a hint of whirlwind where it closed on her skin. She stood paralyzed, in disbelief and rage, all her wiles spilling from her mouth as she watched.

“—but you’ve got to, I can’t if you, shut it off now it has to stop now, no don’t, you can’t, it has to—”

The thing stung. It bit. A wasp sting that sank and sank, getting worse as it went. Dark fluid whipped out to blacken his hand, to spatter her breast in outflingings of blood. It was her. It wasn’t her. The pain kicked over, the unbearable height still unbearable but topped and then topped again. The silver blur grew shorter. Kept coming, kept sinking in, worse than any shot, tearing at her, deaf as machinery to all protest.

Her words crumbled.

But in their place, the sounds that filled her mouth, that howled past her tormentor, were the same sounds Derek had seered out of her so many years ago. Crazy fucker was him all over again, different face, same brutal bastard on a rampage.

And the pain reared up and tore at her, savaging her, attacking her oneness. Helpless again in the face of that outrage, with all the trapped frustration of her will, she screamed to deny it, to shut it out, to reverse the damage he did, the damage Derek did, the damage they all managed, sooner or later, to visit upon her.

The drill bit grew shorter and shorter.

Katt steeled herself. Sherry’s screams, purer now in the unmuffled air, increased Katt’s sense of urgency. But she couldn’t afford shock or paralysis, whatever the night was about to reveal. She skirted the cabin facade, mosses soft and cool under her feet. Drainspout at the corner, a moon-angle on the ground. Then she turned it, saw the two of them against the tree, near where Lyra had dug last, an urge to stop and take it in, interpret it, but Katt rushed on, clothed man bent so intently, Sherry spreadeagled upon the tree before him, was he raping her, no, his right hand was swollen, elongated, pressing at her breast, a sculptor in flesh, maniac, they loomed larger, rocky ground hard at the soles of her feet but it didn’t matter, zigs of blood, Sherry’s screams covering Katt’s approach, her eyes locked so intently on the mayhem that she, too, saw nothing of Katt racing toward them.

Bastard looked up, sensed something. Pulled a bloody plug out of Sherry’s breast as if he were a tree-corer and Sherry a tree nymph who’d got in the way. Her eyes caught at Katt, large, terror-stricken. Katt concentrated on the turning man, not near enough to best him through surprise. His instincts were sharp. He rallied, took her in, raised the drill before him, surged to meet her.

But for all his seeming advantage, muscular, clothed, weapon more daundng than Katt’s, this was her ground, the place where she drew herself together in strength and will and the power of wholeness. She swung low, her eye on the bulky green drill, broke the fucker’s hand and watched his drill fly up, whirr abrupdy dead like a smacked mosquito, thudding as it fell to earth. He let the pain falter

him. That gave her enough time, his attention diverted, to lift the branch and bring it down full force upon his head.

He fell, moaning, eyes agog. Katt smacked him again, so hard the branch broke with a snap and a backspring, and Sherry’s attacker collapsed ungraciously to the ground.

“Kill him,” Sherry urged. “Kill him.”

“Nope,” she said, spying spills of rope out of a bag, taking up one of them, the same sort she’d burned through, “but I’ll truss the fucker up.” She did so, wrenching his hands behind his back so hard his face slammed against the ground. A keychain jangled out of one pocket, fell to the earth. Katt tied his wrists as tight as she could, hoping to cut off his circulation. She left him damaged and out, and went to Sherry.

“Kill him,” Sherry repeated, her eyes burning on the inert sprawl before her. “Kill the bastard.” Twin rivulets of blood coursed down her breasts, eyes weeping red past the nipples. Katt cupped the wounds with her palms, focused in, shut out all else—the damaged milk glands, the lung tissue he’d bit into. Willing it healed, she felt the energy course through her arms, her hands, in its surround of traumatized flesh, fighting off infection, doing in seconds what would have taken weeks. “Kill him,” she heard, Sherry’s voice transfigured. When she was done and all inside was whole, her palms peeled from the sticky breasts like a wet swimsuit from skin. Sherry’s eyes were still fixed on the Coed Killer, but the pain of her ordeal was gone at least from her face. Still she was too crazed even to acknowledge it—and who could blame her?

Katt worked to unbind her, snipping through the ropes at her ankles (poor abraded skin would need some attention later this evening) and at her wrists. Sherry limped from the trussing, but she grabbed up half of Katt’s branch and knelt to whack the unconscious man up and down his body so hard that it shuddered with each blow. Katt imagined ribs cracking. Probably so. But they’d be heroes and a little self-defense would be excused, even delighted in, by those who learned of it.

Sherry seemed possessed. A string of expletives flew from her lips as she hurt her attacker. She turned him on his back and yanked his legs apart. Then the branch arced down vicious upon his crotch. That woke him up, and blows two and three confirmed the agony of his reawakening.

Katt weltered in feelings. She shared Sherry’s wrath and outrage. And yet their attacker was nothing more than a sick man, now subdued and becoming surely more repentant with every blow of the branch. Her friend was maiming the monster, perhaps permanently.

Then Katt realized that she truly meant to kill him.

And that gave her pause.

“That’s probably enough,” Katt said. But Sherry just looked about wildly. She saw the drill. Katt reached it, grabbed it, flung it off into the woods, bush rusde and a skip of thuds as it fell. Sherry stopped before her, eyes wide, grimaced, and slapped her hard. A moment later, she had bolted for the cabin, her mind on something useful she could grab there. Katt choked up, not at Sherry’s frenzy, but at having tried to rein it in. Sherry needed this and the law be damned, she thought. She herself felt excited, elated, at having triumphed over their attacker; but then, and this she had to remind herself of, she hadn’t suffered the violation of his drill, nor had she ever been with any man who’d scarred her, as Sherry’s husband had.

Still, this was murder they were about. Under a full moon, she laughed bitterly. Who was she to talk? Life in all its richness was one complex phenomenon, never wanting to hold still and neatly resolve itself as it did in films and books. At her feet, the wretched Coed Killer groaned, rocked, incapable of much movement after his drubbing.

Sherry returned, her blood-draped body mottled in the moonlight, Lyra’s flag flapping at the end of its aluminum flagpole. Looked like a crazed pole-vaulter, some demented Olympian practicing naked under the moon. Should she stop her? Not on your life. She glanced about as Sherry raced on. The Lyra-hole he’d apparently dug up, meant for their corpses no doubt, would do quite nicely for his.

Jesus, what was she thinking? He was an excrescence, an earthly abomination; he deserved to die. It would be a matter of justice, as right as could be. And yet it would be wrong. Staring down at the grave, Katt’s mind teetered in uncertainty, her friend’s needs battling her weak sense of what the moment required.

She could hear the balls of Sherry’s feet hitting the earth. When she turned back, it was in dme to see silver metal angling down, puncturing denim with a pincushion nit sound, then slamming home, on target. Sherry’s hair flung forward like an Apache warrior’s. “Take that, you fucker! Send it to your race!” Bearing down, she twisted it about as the maimed psycho howled helpless before her. An earth image, a marble in darkness, fluttered on the flag.

She yanked it out at last and flung it aside, sobbing suddenly into her hands. She looked like a soiled urchin.

Katt went to her, held her. It was startling that so violent an act could seem so right. Love demanded that it be honored and seen through to the end. “It’s okay
_r
” Katt assured her. “We’ll bury him. No one will ever know.”

Through his pain, he heard that and started howling a series of No’s. But they each grabbed a shoulder, hands in dght armpits, and dragged him across the ground. For all his muscles, he was a rag doll. His butt skidded across a patch of moss, his legs as lifeless as any paralytic’s; in his face—now gone completely rubbery from the steel sheen of his moments of triumph—shone loss and confusion and an anger enervated by defeat.

His body hit the bottom of the grave like a hard swat to the back that stole his breath away.

Soil flurried down upon him, spaded in by Katt, flung in fistfuls by Sherry. His head remained barely above the surface, spewing out mouthfuls of dirt as they covered him, protesting all the way in his incoherent rage.

Spade upon spade of dirt, Katt penned him in. Aromas of loam and rich dark groundcover rose from their efforts. He was trapped, confined, his maimed bloody limbs embraced by the weight and cover of earth. He seemed, in his face, at once vividly there and receding rapidly, his eyes fixed on her, then on Sherry, disbelief mingled with an impotent fury that distorted his features.