by T. H. Moore
Charles pressed his body against the rock cliff, hiding himself from whatever hunting party he feared might truly be tracking him.
The dying buzzard lay on the ground for a few moments, fluttering its wings. Then, from out of a cropping of shade, Elaina emerged, dressed in her prison jumpsuit. She charged at the dying bird, carrying another long wooden spear in both hands. She stabbed it once, putting it out of its misery. Then she flashed the buck knife she had taken from Charles and decapitated the bird.
Even from Charles’s elevated position, he could see the ground grow dark from the blood pouring out of the buzzard. She grabbed the dead bird by its two tethers and dragged it back into the shaded area from where she had come, leaving a trail of blood to the entrance of her cave.
Chapter 24
CHARLES SPENT THE LAST ILLUMINATED moments of the day watching Elaina travel back and forth into the cave, preparing the buzzard she had killed. She hung the animal upside down, draining what blood remained in its body. She ripped the feathers from its flesh by hand and scraped away the feathers with the buck knife as a barber would shave a customer’s hair. Once finished, she impaled it and positioned it over an open fire to cook.
While she labored over her fresh kill, Charles plotted on the perfect time to descend the rocky formation. He had been ignoring his hunger and thirst, as well as the screaming urge to kill Elaina and take all her food and water. He would drift off into daydreams of what he would do to her for besting him, taking their supplies, and leaving him for dead.
She broke into a sweat as she labored. Eventually she removed the top portion of her prison uniform and tied it around her waist. The excess material fell along her hips, accentuating their curves. Her skin glistened from her perspiration.
His heart rose in parallel with his loins. Confusion set in, precipitated by his sudden arousal at the partially clothed woman who had emasculated him in combat.
His thoughts swooped back to his abduction of Abaroo, and how he’d failed to ravage her like his countless previous victims. Since the surgery, his body had betrayed all the natural instincts he had cultivated up until his capture.
To avoid Elaina’s seductive femininity, Charles rolled over to lose himself in the clouds drifting above him, but his heart continued to race. He closed his eyes, hoping to make sense of it all.
His meditation was broken by Elaina’s voice screaming out in pain and terror. He turned around to find that the area where Elaina had been slaughtering the bird was vacant.
Charles pulled his weakened body from off the ground. As he navigated toward her cave, he could hear the echo of her voice, but her words were inaudible. To remain undetected, he paused outside her cave as he waited for his eyes to adjust. When his pupils dilated, the contents of the cave became clear.
It was shallow, with the small fire Elaina had lit flickering close to the entrance. The two wooden spears she had used to slay the buzzard were propped against the wall with the freshly cooked meat stuffed into a satchel. Scorpions and rodents circled the area beneath the satchel, feeding from the discarded scraps of carcass. A few feet away was the nearly full jug of water.
She found water? His heart leapt at the sight, and he crept toward it.
As he moved closer, he discovered Elaina in a kneeling position, her back to him. She was swaying in every direction with her outstretched hands in the dirt. The light of the fire revealed that she was gripping the metallic blade of the knife in her hand as she mumbled to herself.
Charles watched as she continued to pick and fumble through her hair as if trying to remove something from the messy mane. Then she moaned and clutched at a section of her head, then her neck and shoulder.
Charles had reached the jug of water, and crouched down to pick it up and raise it to his lips, making sure he didn’t alert Elaina to his presence. His tongue and throat rejoiced as the container’s cool contents saturated his coarse throat. He could feel the path the water flowed down the back of his throat, past his tonsils, down his esophagus, and into his stomach. The sensation was orgasmic as it shot outward and the energy expanded through his body. It was rejuvenating, giving off an opiate-like rush.
“Get off! Get off of me!” In the far corner, Elaina stabbed at the earth with the blade.
Startled, Charles coughed. Some water shot from his mouth and fell down his chin, mixing in with the dried snake blood he had drunk hours earlier.
Elaina swung her head around to face her intruder. Charles placed the jug down and rose to a defensive posture, readying himself for Elaina’s attack.
The dim light from the fire illuminated the right side of Charles’s body and face. His feet disturbed the insects and rodents foraging on the discarded meat, sending them scurrying. Charles saw Elaina’s eyes widen at the sight of him, but it wasn’t a look of surprise that he had survived, or even of familiarity. It was as if she was looking upon him for the first time.
Charles remained silent and grabbed one of the spears propped against the wall behind him, pointing it at Elaina. She turned around to face Charles, but remained kneeling.
“I figured you’d come for me, eventually,” she slurred, her head swaying as if she were intoxicated.
She grimaced and reached for her scalp and neck again to comfort it. The muscles in her face twitched and took exaggerated blinks with her eyes. When she removed her hand from her neck, Charles could see a swollen, burgundy welt. Large beads of sweat ran down her face, and her clothes were saturated. She stuck the knife into the ground around her a few times, then held it up for Charles to see three impaled scorpions. Then she pointed at what remained of the snake dangling from Charles’s belt.
“Of course, now you reveal yourself after first sending your minions poison me!” Elaina said. “I see the stained remains of the souls you devoured on your face. Have you come with your serpent to feast on me, Diabo?37 Why didn’t you reveal yourself when they raped me, one after the other? Only you could plant seeds of hate so deep where we would even need this place called Katingal.”
Charles stared at her for a moment, then said, “Who do you think I am?”
“I know who you are!” she snarled. “You know who you are!”
“Then speak my name,” Charles demanded.
“Encarnado. Satanás! Você é o Diabo!”38 she responded in her native Portuguese.
Charles took a step back and tilted his head in disbelief at the accusation. He looked her over the best he could in the dimly lit cave, and what troubled him was what rested at her feet. The remains of at least a dozen scorpions were piled up all around her. Most were at least two inches long, their lethal tails still curled up over their backs as though poised to strike.
Charles realized all at once that the scorpion stings were the reason for her screams and accusations. Their venom had infiltrated her system to cause her delusion.
He watched her paw at her tangled hair to rid herself of any remaining scorpions. He kept his distance, unsure of what Elaina would do next. Her head began to bob as if it had become too heavy for her to hold. Her grip on the knife she wielded was growing weaker by the second. Even though she was in a seated position, she struggled to maintain her posture while perspiration coated her skin, bringing it to a glowing sheen with the help of the dancing light of the fire.
“Elaina, you’re very sick right now,” Charles warned. “You’ve been stung by scorpions. You have to let me help you.”
“Stay away from me, Encarnado,” she spat.
“I can’t do that, Elaina,” Charles said in measured tones. “Now, I’m going to walk over toward you. Don’t do anything foolish.”
“I said stay away!” She tried stumbling to her feet but was unable to maintain her balance. Her head swung around, heavy like a drunk, and the knife fell from her hand. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as all her weight leaned to one side, ready to collapse.
Charles dashed toward her as her body fell towards the red earth beneath her, and managed to catch her before her head slammed into the hard ground. She was unconscious, eyes fluttering. Her breathing was uneven, but she was alive.
Chapter 25
TWO DAYS LATER, CHARLES WAS still watching Elaina pass in and out of consciousness from the scorpion venom. During every fleeting moment of her coherence, he would force-feed her and make her drink. He had smoked the buzzard meat and had even managed to kill another one with one of Elaina’s spears. Roasted buzzard wouldn’t have been his first choice in a fine restaurant, but he preferred it to roasted rat.
He was chewing on a tough, stringing piece of buzzard meat when Elaina screamed, another nightmare jarred her back to awareness. Her eyes fluttered open until they grew steady enough to scan the dark cavern, eventually falling upon Charles.
For the first time in days, Charles could see that she recognized him. He watched as she processed her surroundings, then scurried backward to reach for the knife in her belt. Charles removed the knife from his belt and stabbed it into the ground before resuming eating his meal.
“Looking for that?” he asked. “Only the owners of an unclear conscience would reach for a weapon upon seeing an old friend. No food, water, or weapon.” He paused, watching her as he chewed the stubborn meat. Then he swallowed and said, “No chance of survival. That’s how you left me.”
She sat on the ground and against the wall, remaining silent.
“You left me for the buzzards,” he continued to lecture.
“Just like you left the girl Abaroo!” Elaina shot back. “Had you died, it would have been a deserved death, because you are an animal, Charles. Just like the one rotting outside this cave.”
“And what are you!” he shouted. “Where are we? This is Katingal. We fight, maim, and kill, and we’re content to do so.”
“So if that’s all we are, then why am I still alive? You’ve had plenty of opportunities to kill me.”
Charles’s anger subsided for a moment. He stared back into her eyes as he pondered. Then he could do little more than offer a half-shrug. “I’ve thought about it many times over the last couple days,” he confessed. “But I didn’t because I need you. Rather, we need each other to get off this continent, whether we want to admit it or not.”
When she remained silent, Charles looked over at her. He was taken aback, as this was the first time in the weeks he had known her that she didn’t have a pithy reply.
“Yes,” he admitted. “I need the woman who left me for dead three days ago, and now you need me.”
He reached down and pulled the knife from out of the ground. She watched him as he surveyed the dirt around him. Then, in a flash, he pierced the torso of another scorpion and held it up for her to see. Its legs moved frantically through the air, as though it still had hope of escaping the blade.
“Urodacus manicatus, or the scorpion,” he informed as he placed the scorpion over the fire. Its legs grew still as it blackened. “We need each other to survive this place.”
“How did you find me?” Elaina said, her voice oddly hushed.
“I found you two days ago, babbling and delirious inside this cave,” Charles said. He watched the scorpion as it charred and shriveled, and eventually fell into the fire. “This is the most lucid you’ve been since I tracked you down. See the large blisters on your shoulder and hand?”
Elaina inspected her body. She winced when she touched the burgundy and blue whelps. A look of confusion swept across her face when she looked back at him. “Why can’t I remember?”
“The venom in your body induced a fever, delirium, and hallucinations,” he explained. He took a sip of water and handed the container to Elaina.
She reached up to accept the peace offering without question.
“Now get some more rest,” Charles said. “We leave at sunset.”
Elaina swallowed a mouthful of water before rolling over and surrendering to faith that she would be safe to sleep. To warm up, she untied the arms of her jumpsuit from her waist to pull it back onto her upper body.
She stopped when she saw large, dried bloodstains near the inner thighs of her clothes and put a hand inside her pants to investigate. When Elaina saw blood on her finger, she looked at Charles for an explanation.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and realized with more than a little surprise that he meant it. “I wanted to wait before telling you. You miscarried. I’m sure it was the scorpion venom.”
Her expression went blank, and she closed her eyes for a moment as she released a small sigh. Elaina leaned her head back, face pointed toward the heavens before opening her eyes again.
“Thank you, Eloah,” she said as the smallest of smiles formed on her lips.
Chapter 26
AS THE SUN SET, CHARLES and Elaina made their final preparations for what he believed to be the thirty-first night spent walking across Katingal’s Northern Territory. They could see the lights of Darwin’s skyline, and the terrain’s transition from the desert landscape to fertile, green foliage. Charles was more than a little relieved to see that his efforts at rudimentary navigation had paid off.
Since Elaina’s scorpion attack, the two of them had retreated into the recesses of their minds and conformed to an automatic and even pace. Gone was their mutual resistance or quarreling. When supplies ran low, they both foraged the landscape for sustenance.
After a month of rationing food and water, they had grown accustomed to surviving on bare minimums. They were both physically spent from the traveling and sleeping on whatever patch of land they happened upon when the sun rose.
With each passing day, Charles grew more confident that they would see the horizon of the port city. He knew that they would see signs of the city soon, and so, at every sunrise, he kept his eyes peeled for Darwin.
He looked over at Elaina once more as she tied off the satchel containing what few dried-out scraps of food they had left. She caught a glimpse of him observing her and returned the stare. Charles thought it foolish to break the silence, even though he was starved for conversation. He reminded himself of how Elaina’s Brazilian Jujitsu had rendered him so close to death.
He gathered his load, took a deep breath, and continued the hike on swollen feet and tortured legs, determined to reach Darwin.
They were oblivious to the landscape, and to its insect inhabitants and their distracting noises. All Charles could hear was the monotonous crunching of rocks and earth under their boots. Elaina looked at Charles from time to time, but didn’t utter a word.
Then finally she paused and called out to him. “Charles, I need to rest,” she said.
“No!” he replied. “Keep walking.”
“I’m not asking your permission,” she said without moving. “I’m informing you of my intentions.”
“We don’t have time for this, Elaina,” Charles said. He continued trudging forward without so much as a glance back at her. “We’ve already lost three days.”
Elaina stared after him. “You’re one special type of psycho!” she yelled. “What happened to all that ‘we need each other’ bullshit you fed me?”
Charles didn’t break his stride as he continued in the direction of Darwin. With the prize almost in sight, he couldn’t stop.
Elaina kept after him. “It’s no wonder to me why your parents abandoned you. They obviously realized they brought a monster into this world but I wonder, when did you realize you were an abomination?” she asked.
Still, he kept moving without pause. “What is this, Elaina? Another attempt to start a fight so we stop and you get what you want? Is that how you maintained order in your home? Feeble tantrums to manipulate your husband when things aren’t going your way? No wonder he had a mistress.”
“You are so fucked up,” Elaina shot back. She had started walking again and was ten paces behind him.
&
nbsp; “Me? You’re judging me?”
“Yes! I want to know why you’re the way you are, Charles!”
Charles took a quick glance over his shoulder to see that her face showed no sign of her relenting from her inquisition.
“I want to understand it!” she demanded.
“It? What it, Elaina?”
“It! How and why you and I became monsters.”
He made no reply to that. She paused for so long he thought that perhaps she had tired of the conversation. But then she spoke again, and her voice carried bitterness.
“Back in Brazil, I didn’t have to kill them. I could have just left my husband. I could have married again and been happy. You have the answers to everything else, so tell me why I had to kill them and… and their child.” She drew a ragged breath. “I can’t stop seeing their faces. I want to stop seeing their faces whenever I close my eyes.”
“You’ll never stop seeing their faces,” he replied. “That’s the price we pay for being who we are. I don’t have all the answers, but that I do know. You can’t, won’t, or ever understand why I’m the way I am, just like I’ll never understand why you ripped an unborn child out of its mother’s womb.”
Through all of this, he never slowed. His boots thumped steadily over the hard ground.
“I’m sure it would be ideal to sum up what we are in some neat, novice psychological diagnosis,” he continued as though warming to his subject. “But life’s not that simple. I’m sure there are plenty of behavioral scientists who would love to poke and prod at me like a lab rat, deciphering what makes me this way.”
“What’s her name?” Elaina asked.
That surprised him so much he stumbled a bit before resuming his march. “What do you mean? What’s whose name?”
“The woman who broke you.”
Charles scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”
