by T. H. Moore
“You want to fight, huh?” he challenged. “Come and get it, bit—!”
Before he could complete his insult, she delivered a blinding roundhouse kick to his face
“You talk too much. Bitch!” she retorted. He vision doubled and starts danced everywhere he looked. Elaina circled him, bouncing on her toes like a prizefighter. Still gathering himself, Charles admired Elaina’s strategy of forcing him to keep moving as his equilibrium recalibrated itself. It kept him a step behind her attacks.
She sprung into the air, kicking him again in his jaw. He lifted his arms in defense a split second too slowly and tasted the sole of Elaina’s boot once more. She did relent and followed with a right cross the moment her feet touched the ground, smashing his nose. He crashed to the ground. The back of his throat filled with the same blood that was filling the palms of his hands. He could barely breathe. Charles thrust defensive kicks at her while lying on his back, but Elaina bounced in and out of range, delivering low, sidewinding kicks of her own to his thighs.
Charles scuttled back like a crab, hoping to gain a few seconds and regain his composure.
Elaina pursued. Jab, step, spin, kick—her every move seemed to build in momentum and strength to end with a climactic ax-kick. He watched her left leg rise parallel to her torso before descending toward his head. He crossed his forearms to protect his face. Elaina changed the trajectory of her blow and directed the heel of her foot to his ribs.
Charles rolled onto his side, writhing in pain, leaving his back exposed. She delivered more snapping kicks, targeting his neck and shoulders.
“Elai—” He pleaded, before she landed another kick to his stomach, the fury on her face deliberate and intense.
“Tell me how it feels! Having your ass handed to you! By a woman!” Elaina antagonized.
Charles fought his way back to his feet, but he was barely able to stand upright. His legs were knotted from the numerous kicks his thighs. He’d reached full rage and through trying to reason with her. He tossed a few meaningless jabs to measure off his striking distance, followed by a powerful right hook she blocked but the force threw her off balance. His front snapping kick that followed found its mark in the middle of her chest, knocking her to the ground.
But she rolled backwards with her own momentum and sprung back onto her feet to immediately charge back at Charles again. Like a dancer, she leapt into the air with one leg extended. Charles threw his arms up to protect his broken nose, but at the last second Elaina bent her leg back under her and landed gracefully on the ground. Charles braced, ready to absorb her kick until the flash of her uppercut snapped his head back. The sun’s bright smile greeted his gaze until Elaina swept his legs from under him turning his world upside down.
The course terrain mixed with the blood pouring profusely from his nose. Dust and gravel coated the side of his face, nose, and lips. Elaina continued her rhythmic defensive bounce, chin down and fists clenched.
Charles sneered. He was finished letting her have the upper hand. No woman was going to beat him into submission.
They circled each other, and through the piercing pain in his nose, dust filling his lungs, and the throbbing pains over his body, Charles willed himself into a new attack. He bull-rushed Elaina, using brute strength tackling her to the ground. She immediately wrapped her legs around his waist, creating a defensive posture to protect her from the barrage of angry strikes to come. Charles’s attacks were sloppy. She was dodged or blocked the majority of them with her forearms.
“You fight like shit!” she taunted him. “You strike like a bitch!”
He looked down at her body, and her eyes grew wide. She instinctively threw her arms in front of her abdomen. Charles threw a punch with all his might aimed at the mouth degrading him. She dodged that one too and listened to it smash into the hard earth. The pain stunned his entire body.
Elaina shot her legs from around his waist to his throat, as she had done to the correctional officer. The panic is his eyes were instant. He had already witnessed how this scene would end. He knew she could kill him.
“Confess, pedophile,” she raged. “What did you do? At the village?”
Charles couldn’t speak. Foamy saliva gathered in the corners of his mouth as she tightened her grip around his neck with her thighs. His vision dimmed to dark shapes and shadows before he collapsed.
When he went limp and crumpled to the ground, Elaina lifted her face and screamed up to the heavens in victory. She let go and kicked him away from her, discarding him to the wasteland where he belonged, exhausted. She looked at him lying still, limp, kicking him once more to the back of his head. He didn’t move.
She stared at his body for a moment before bursting into tears. She put her filthy hands to her face and sobbed, her whole body heaving. She’d won a victory, but it was short-lived. Now she was alone.
Chapter 23
CHARLES WOKE ON THE GROUND—NOT the dry, red dirt of Katingal, but the clean, white brick of an unknown land. A pair of fresh dungarees, a short-sleeved button-up shirt, and black dress shoes had replaced his dusty, blood-stained prison uniform. He felt well and jumped up.
He turned in a slow circle, amazed by the open, flat land stretching in all directions. All that disrupted the emptiness was a large white building so well-camouflaged that it seemed almost like a mirage.
He approached and looked through the glass double doors etched to catch the sunlight. No one milled in the lobby. He pulled the door’s golden handles and a sterile, interior breeze passed over him as he took the first few steps inside a long white corridor.
The doors shut behind him with a definitive thud. He turned to look, but the doors had gone. In their place was another corridor identical to the one on his other side. He hesitated, lost. A brief memory of his fight with Elaina flashed in his mind and blood began to pour from his nose. He cupped his hands, but they filled in seconds overflowing into a puddle on the floor.
A woman in a white coat and stethoscope dashed through one of the halls into a room. Charles yelled after her for help. She did not turn.
“Doctor? Anybody?” His voice echoed off the smooth white walls.
He found a room with swinging doors that led to a surgical theater, metal table, white sheets, and tools perfectly aligned. There was no sign of the doctor or anyone else. He returned to the hallway and bumped into a desk that had not been there before.
“Is anyone here?” he yelled, tearing off his blood-sticky shirt. He balled it up and held it against his nose while banging the shiny silver bell on the desk with his other hand.
“God, no!” a woman yelled from the operating room he had just left. Only a few seconds had passed, but somehow the room had filled with several doctors, nurses, and orderlies all working on a young female patient lying on the table. Bloody footprints and bandages lined the floor. Charles watched the commotion through the round windows of the swinging double doors.
“A liter of epi, wide open, and hang another liter of O-neg,” the doctor said as she pressed on the little girl’s chest and looked at the monitor. “Charge the paddles!” she ordered.
The young girl’s peasant clothing lay in shreds on the floor. She was naked on the table, and the doctor and nurses did not notice or, perhaps, did not care about the blood, dirt, and body tissue smeared over their white coats.
“Clear!” the doctor shouted as she placed the defibrillator paddles on the girl’s chest and squeezed the buttons to release the electric shock.
The girl’s body jerked violently.
“Charge to one twenty! Clear!” The doctor delivered another jolt of electricity.
The girl’s body arched again into the air and flopped back down. Charles inched as close as he could. Her eyes were closed, and her body was limp. Her skinny arms fell off the sides of the table and glistened under the strong lights.
The doctor climbed on top of the
girl and continued CPR. Charles moved into the room. Reddish dirt filled the creases on the bottom of the girl’s feet. Her knees were skinned raw, and scratches and abrasions hatch-marked her thighs.
Charles stood silent behind a crying nurse. The doctor hung her head and began to weep, too. A steady flow of blood bubbles pulsed from a deep laceration in the girl’s throat. With every compression, air exited the slit that ended her life prematurely. The monitor’s steady, shrill flatline gave undeniable proof that the patient was dead. An elderly nurse fell to her knees, mumbling and chanting in an aborigine dialect.
“Look what they did to my child,” the doctor cried out. “Open your eyes! Open your eyes, or I’ll take a switch to you.”
She began beating her daughter’s chest, harder, then harder, until the surgical tools on the gurney crashed to the floor. The small child’s body began to rock faster and faster. Her head tilted to the right, and her fixed, lifeless eyes targeted Charles. The doctor stopped, her face in full recognition of what had happened.
Charles suddenly recognized that the doctor was Oodgeroo.
“I curse the demon who stole you away from your father from me. Speak their name, child. Tell me where they are, and I’ll hunt him to the ends of the earth!”
The child’s right arm shifted, her finger was limp but fell at rest in Charles’s direction.
Silence fell over the emergency room. The nurse ceased her murmuring. Everyone looked at Charles.
“Abim!”36 the doctor screamed. “You butchered my child after I saved your life? Abim! Abim! Abiiiim!”
Oodgeroo lunged toward him. He closed his eyes, ready to accept his fate at the hands of the mourning woman…
~~~
His eyes fluttered open under the blazing sun, and in its ferocious heat, Charles became aware of a dull ringing in his ears. His head pounded and his neck was stiff.
He lifted his head from the hot ground and rolled over, looking all about him to get his bearings. His memory felt dull and cloudy for the first time since his surgery, but sharpened and focused as he tried to stand. Each ache and pinch of his stiff body reminded him of another detail of his battle with Elaina. He inspected his bruises and wounds, noting the collage of bite marks that Katingal’s insects had left on the exposed parts of his body.
He had no idea how long he had been out. Charles struggled to stand, stumbling about like a punch-drunk boxer. Eventually, he gathered himself to brush away the pebbles and dust imprinted to the side of his face from being pressed against the ground for so long. His tongue was as dry as the earth falling from his clothes with every wavering step he took. His thirst was peaking again. He swung his heavy head, looking for the supplies he so desperately needed.
It’s all gone! All the water and food, gone. She took it all.
He noticed one of the T-shirts that he and Elaina used to carry food tumbling in a distant gust of wind. He dashed toward it, flailing to catch it, until he trapped one sleeve under his foot. His body teetered as he bent, and the desert twirled around him. He rested one knee on the ground to restore his equilibrium.
He inspected the shirt for food but found only dust.
She’s left me for dead.
He rummaged through his jarred memories and salvaged a memory of the mountains. He oriented himself until he could see the mountain’s peaks poking above the wavy heat lines twisting the air above the sand. His rubbery legs wobbled with each step, like a toddler learning to walk. He held out the palms of his hands and watched them shake beyond his control. Nausea swelled inside him. He steadied his breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“I may have a concussion,” he told the air.
His blood boiled and his hands shook as more memories of the fight he lost returned to him. His steps became more rapid, and the feeling of nausea returned.
“Focus, dammit! Keep your head. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.”
For two hours, Charles stumbled toward the mountain range, where he had hoped to find shade, water, and salvation. Bugs and spiders, children’s laughter and crow calls, pools of water and drifts of snow, all manner of hallucinations danced in his brain as he struggled to stay on his path.
He realized that he was the closest he had come to greeting death since his battle with the dingo. He chanted the word persevere, hoping his mind could convince his body that the situation was not as dire as it seemed. He looked up at the sky, squinting at the sun with contempt, but the sun’s hypnotic rays cursed him back.
His face-off with the sun caused dizziness to overwhelm him, and again he fell to the ground. He broke his fall with his hands, but couldn’t stop the momentum of his head before it cracked against the earth. The sun was heavy as it pressed its weight upon his back.
“Damn you and your creator,” he cursed at the sun. “My soul isn’t yours to take.” he shifted his attention to the ground beneath him, squinted his eyes as if he could penetrate the numerous layers beneath him until he could see Hell and all its inhabitants. “My soul isn’t is yours, either!”
A hissing sound broke him out of his rant. A four-foot-long serpent writhed before him. Charles froze, and the serpent stopped slithering to stare at him. It exhibited no defensive or offensive posturing, but maintained its eye contact.
Charles placed his hands on his knees and peered closer at the reptile. His heartbeat slowed and his breathing returned to normal. The serpent remained still, flipping its tongue at Charles as the two creatures remained motionless.
Even baked by the heat, Charles’s brain scanned until he was able to identify the snake as Antaresia/Liasis perthensis, a nonpoisonous pygmy python.
He circled the serpent, anticipating that his movements would encourage the snake to slither away. The python defied Charles and stared back at him as if they were kindred spirits.
Charles stepped onto its head with his boot heel and grabbed the serpent, pulling and twisting until it detached from its head. The still-slithering body coiled around Charles’s wrist as he lifted it to his mouth to drink. The warm, wet snake blood stained his lips and teeth red as he squeezed every drop of moisture from this creature that was both sacrifice and his savior.
Fortified, he tucked the serpent’s skin into his belt and continued his march to the mountain range. For the moment, his focus was clear. He looked up at the heavens once more.
“Not today,” he mocked with a bloody sneer. “I’m not finished with your world.”
~~~
Charles had reached the mountain while the sun was still perched in the sky. The small crevices he found provided enough shade so he could rest, but it would be only a matter of time before the earth’s rotation changed the sun’s trajectory to where its glare returned to him.
The shade was a relief, but there was no salvation from his thirst or the swarms of insects hopscotching the length of his body. He had given up on the effort of shooing them away.
He scanned the area for any sign of water. He scavenged among the large rock formations, searching every crevasse and cave for the substance he needed most to sustain life.
The search seemed to last as long as the walk to the mountains. He continued around large rock formations that seemed to never end. Eventually he scaled the mass, hoping an elevated view would bare more fruitful results, but all he found were the same cloned rock formations that began to blend into one large collage with no foreseeable end.
His mind tormented him, returning the fear that he might never find water, and that the blood he drank from the snake still swinging from his belt was a fleeting triumph. He shielded his eyes and noticed that, not too far from him, buzzards were circling.
He scowled once more at the heavens. “You send them for me?” he said with outstretched arms and clenched fists.
One of the birds broke from the flock’s aerial formation and dove toward the earth. Charles
marched to the open ground the buzzards were stalking. Then he positioned himself on a rock formation that overlooked open ground about a hundred feet below. The flock of buzzards circled fifty feet above him. One by one, they would dive to the ground.
Charles approached the ledge. Below, he saw the rotting carcass of the animal the buzzards were pecking. From the condition of the rotting meat, he could see that this feast was fit only for the birds. He had no idea what the corpse had been in life.
Exhausted from his long trek and the rocky climb, Charles watched the circling scavengers. Another buzzard dropped out of formation and headed toward the ground. This time, it descended more, lower and lower. Charles watched its descent, observing the vulture’s hesitant approach.
Then, in a flash, it struck the body of the dead animal with its powerful beak, ripping and tearing away at its flesh. It threw its head back, swallowing the pieces whole before two more buzzards soared in for their share of the meal. Now all three were on the ground eating, and at times flapping their wings and pecking at each other as they laid claim to their share of the carcass.
Charles’s stomach growled at the sight of the trio’s feast, and he salivated at the idea of stomaching the same disgusting flesh.
Then the outcry of one of the buzzards snapped Charles from his daydream. He looked down at the ground and saw two of the three buzzards bouncing away from the carcass, opening their large wings and taking flight. The third buzzard was lagging behind, bouncing away, trying to fly with one wing open. It fluttered on the ground, screeching in pain.
In defiance, the buzzard fluttered its way back to its feet, only to be met by a long, wooden spear impaling its body. The buzzard summersaulted backward in reaction to the violence before landing on the ground. Charles realized that it wasn’t a broken wing hobbling the buzzard, but instead, another wooden spear protruding from its body. The second spear ensured that the buzzard wouldn’t get away from whoever was hunting it.
