Anne looked down at her hands. “You don’t know that. Maybe they got a ride.”
“You idiot. Have you seen how many people are walking on the roads? No one’s picking anyone up. Your family’s dead; my family’s gotta be dead. And it’s all because of those assholes.”
“They can be nice, you know.”
“Did you get gang raped the first night?”
Anne didn’t answer.
“Yeah, don’t tell me about them being nice,” Danielle said.
“But some of them are.”
“Name one.”
“Joel.”
“You two together?”
“Right now I’m with Hank. But I’m hoping this guy Barry gets me. He seems nice.”
“You’re with that shithead, Hank?”
“He can be nice.”
“The first chance I get, I’m going to kill him.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that. But Barry’s nicer. He’s cute. And he’s younger, too. He’s not old like Hank. Do you know Barry?”
“No. Did he screw you, too?”
“He did the first night. But he said he had to, to fit in. He’s Abby’s grandson, Hank’s nephew…and Joel’s cousin. But it’s different with him and me, now”
“Who’s Abby?”
“She’s the old lady you got mad out there.”
The old lady had a name, now.
“So this guy, Barry, wants you, now after everyone’s had you?
“Well…yeah.”
“To be his girlfriend?”
“Kind of.”
“What do you mean, ‘kind of’?”
She didn’t answer.
“Does he already have a girlfriend?”
“He’s married.”
Danielle sat up. “What?”
“It’s okay. He said she doesn’t really love him.”
“So you’re going to be his concubine.”
“What’s that?”
“His fuckin’ mistress. His whore, you bimbo.
“This place is a damned zoo,” she said to no one in particular.
“There are more men here than there are girls,” Anne said.
“So?”
“Well, that’s good for us. But we’ve still got to do stuff or they’ll turn us out.”
“I’d rather be turned out than live here.”
“What about your baby?”
“My sister.”
“Oh.”
Danielle lay back, again, and hugged Whoops. “She’s the only reason I don’t run—or kill myself—yet. But, as soon as I can find a way to take care of her, I’m gone. Then I’m going to report these people,” she said, and suddenly wished she hadn’t. And she wished she hadn’t said anything bad about Joel, Hank, or anyone else. Anne had just told her she’d do almost anything to stay and that would likely include reporting what she’d just said. “Why’d Joel leave the room?” she asked to change the subject. “It looked like he’s mad at you. Is he?”
“Maybe. I think I hurt his feelings.”
“How?”
“Because I’ve been with some of the other guys.”
“Were you two together?”
“Yeah, the second night, and for a few nights after that. Then I hitched up with Hank…” She trailed off.
“Why’d you drop him?”
“Because he’s just a kid. The other guys can keep me here. I don’t want to get turned out into the cold.”
“I think you should have stayed with him.”
“Why? Do you think I made a mistake?”
“I get the feeling he’s his grandmother’s favorite.”
“Oh,” Anne said and looked at the floor shaking her head. “Actually, you’re right. But I didn’t know it, then.
“You gonna try to hook up with him?” she suddenly asked Danielle.
Danielle didn’t answer but just gave her a dirty look.
The door opened, again. It was Joel. “You’ve got to come out here, Anne. Grandma wants you.”
She looked at Danielle before she got off the bed. “I’ll talk with you, later. We should be friends,” she said. “We both need friends.”
“Hi, Joel,” she said and touched his arm as she passed him.
He pulled away from her touch.
He lingered in the doorway after she left. “Grandma wants you to get up and get busy, too.”
Danielle pulled the covers up over her face.
“You’ve got to,” he said. He sounded concerned.
He closed the door and she was alone, again.
She lay there and thought to herself again that she shouldn’t have said things about the old lady, Hank, or anyone else to Anne. Instinct told her she couldn’t trust her. She didn’t know if she could trust anyone. But she had to trust someone for Whoops’s sake. She wondered if Joel could save her.
Δ Δ Δ
In the kitchen Hank told Anne, “Get out to the barn. You’ve got work to do.”
“It’s cold,” she said and looked to Joel for support, but he ignored her. She looked around for Barry. He was a large redheaded man with tightly curled hair and a moon face. He looked away from her because his wife, Terry, was sitting next to him. She looked at the faces of others who were there trying to get warm and fed before the day began.
“Get your butt out there, now, girl.” Hank ordered.
“What about the new girl? Doesn’t she have to work?”
“You never mind ’bout her. Let’s go.”
But instead of going to the door, Anne walked over to the grandmother who was knitting in the stuffed chair and leaned toward her. She stayed like that for a minute, whispering in her ear, and the woman stopped knitting to listen.
“Okay,” the woman said and resumed knitting. “Now, you run along and tend your chores in the barn.”
Anne hesitated. She’d hoped the information about Danielle would win her a reprieve from going outside.
“Run along and do your chores,” the old woman repeated. “I’m not gonna say it again.”
Anne’s shoulders sank and she grabbed a coat and went out the kitchen door.
Before Hank could follow her out, the old lady said, “Hank, you wait just a minute.”
He hesitated in the doorway and the old lady waited until Anne was out of earshot. Then she said, “Get rid of that new girl.”
Joel perked up and had a pained look on his face. He didn’t want Danielle to go.
“Aw,” Hank said dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “She’s okay. I can control her.”
“What if the weather warms up?” she asked matter-of-factly. “What if everything goes back to normal and she goes to the authorities? What happens then?”
He didn’t reply.
“Besides…” and she mumbled something no one caught.
“What’s that?” Hank asked.
“I said, you keep bringing these girls in, but we’re not running a whorehouse here.”
“We’ve got to get some women in here,” Hank said. “We’re two-to-one in guys over girls.”
“Yes, we have more guys than gals, but some guys already have a woman…” She glared at Barry who didn’t flinch, and his wife, Terry, looked at him and knew the old lady was confirming her suspicions about him and Anne. She got up and left the room.
“I think you’d better go after her,” the old lady said to Barry who shrugged and languidly sauntered out of the kitchen to find his wife.
“Get rid of her,” she repeated to Hank. “There’ll be more comin’ down the road that’ll be more compliant. But I don’t want no more of you guys, who’re already hitched, messin’ around. Otherwise, it all stops.
“And get rid of that skinny one, too.”
“What?” Hank asked.
The old lady waved toward the door Anne had just gone out. “Get rid of her.”
“Anne? Why?” Joel asked.
“Because she’s a whiner and she’s useless and she’s gonna wreck a marriage…” She thought about what
Anne had just told her about Danielle: that she’d tell the authorities if there were ever authorities again. She knew Anne would go to the authorities, also, if it ever served her purposes. “…and she can’t be trusted.”
As soon as Hank closed the door behind himself, she turned to Joel and said, “Joel, be a good boy and get that other girl out here, now.”
Joel crossed the kitchen to his grandmother, leaned with his hands on the arm of her chair and asked, “Gram, why do they have to go?”
Abby stopped knitting. She loved her grandson. Ironically, he had the same easy-going manner as his grandfather, her late husband, a long-suffering, spineless alcoholic who’d spent his entire marriage committing suicide, one bottle at a time, so he could endure her haranguing ways and abuse. He finally succeeded doing himself in three years before the onset of the ice age. They found him lying in a pool of his own vomit and other bodily excretions right here in the middle of this kitchen floor. But in one of life’s incomprehensible jokes, Abby worshipped Joel with as much ardor as she had held contempt for her now dead husband, the man whose character Joel had inherited. Her husband had been a failed project while Joel was a work in progress that she could love. He was at the center of her universe. “Just do as you’re told, dear,” she said to him, “and we’ll talk about it, later.”
He let out a deep sigh and went to the bedroom. Just as he reached for the doorknob, the door opened. Danielle stood there with Whoops in her arms.
“Grandma wants you,” he said.
Danielle walked back into the kitchen.
The old lady didn’t look up from her knitting. “Get out there to the barn and get some chores done,” she said. “If you’re going to be here, you’re going to work for your keep.”
“I’ve got to feed the baby, first.”
“Give the baby to Ingrid. She’ll take care of it.”
“I’ll feed her myself.”
The woman paused her knitting, but didn’t look up. “Then you feed her whatever you find out in the barn.”
Danielle sighed. “Who’s Ingrid?”
A woman in her twenties rose from a chair and put her arms out to Whoops and Danielle surrendered her reluctantly, but kissed her before she let her go.
“Give her a coat,” the old woman said to Joel, “and have her cut kindlin’ for my stove. Then have her and the other one do whatever else needs doin’.”
Joel got a corduroy coat from one of the hooks near the kitchen door and handed it to Danielle. It was far too big a fit for her, but she put it on. Then she looked down at her bare feet.
“Put on them boots,” he said pointing to a well-worn pair sitting against the wall.
She put them on. They were big, too. She knew her feet would be cold in them.
When she and Joel left the kitchen the old woman said, “That little slut is going to have to work before she or her baby get fed.”
“How can you tell she’s a slut?” Ingrid asked.
“Look at her,” the woman said. “Listen to her foul mouth. I can tell.
“I wish the boys would stop bringing these girls in off the road. I know they’ve got needs. Makes me wonder what shortcomings you girls have that they keep having to bring these tramps in.”
She never looked up as she said this. None of the women dared contradict her. And they all hated Danielle and Anne, just as they had the girls before them.
Ingrid held the baby up. “She’s cute. And she’s so good. She almost never cries. Can we keep her?”
“We’re not sullying the bloodline with the blood from some road tramp,” the old woman said as she knitted. “You girls should be makin’ yer own babies. What’s the matter with you?” She stopped knitting and looked around the room. “So don’t go getting attached to no strange kids,” she warned.
Δ Δ Δ
Danielle and Joel went to the barn.
“You’re going to have to chop some kindling,” he told her.
“How do you do that?”
“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”
He took her to a chopping block and proceeded to show her how to use a small axe to split larger pieces of wood into smaller sticks.
“See, it’s easy enough.”
But she was distracted when she heard something coming from the loft. It took a minute before it dawned on her Hank was in the loft with Anne. They were talking.
Suddenly, Danielle heard a loud slap.
“Ow!” Anne cried out. “Why’d you do that?”
“’Cause,” Hank laughed.
Danielle stared at Joel, but he acted as if he hadn’t heard anything. “That’s all you gotta do,” he said as he handed her the axe and stepped back. “We need a lot of it. Get to it and I’ll show you what you have to do, next.”
Anne yelled, “Hank, stop! You’re hurting me.” Then she whimpered.
Suddenly, Anne screamed. “You’re breaking my arm.”
Danielle cringed. Even Anne didn’t deserve this. “Stop him,” she said to Joel.
He ignored her.
There was another slap accompanied by another scream from Anne and Danielle closed her eyes. She was afraid she was going to throw up.
“Spread ’em,” Hank said.
“Cut the kindling,” Joel said.
Danielle opened her eyes. Joel was staring at her. How could he ignore what was going on in the loft, she asked herself.
“You’ve got to cut the kindling,” he said.
So she tried to block out the sounds from the loft and started chipping away at the wood.
But seconds later, Hank came down the ladder from the loft. When he reached the bottom he turned and stared at Danielle. “Ever do a threesome?” he asked her.
She didn’t answer.
He laughed.
Anne came down the ladder behind him. The left cheek of her face was red and she rubbed it with her left hand while she flexed the other arm as if it hurt.
“You stack the new load of wood they brought in,” Hank said to Anne.
“It’s cold,” she said.
He kicked her backside harshly. “Get to it,” he said.
And she did.
“You, too,” he said to Danielle.
“She’s supposed to be cuttin’ kindlin’,” Joel said.
“She’ll do as I say,” Hank said in a menacing voice.
“You’d better do what he says,” Joel said under his breath. Then he sat and watched as the girls stacked the load of firewood along one of the walls. Anne threw pieces up on the stack as it grew and Hank went over and wrenched the wood out of her hands and seethed, “Stack it neatly.”
Anne stacked the wood more carefully.
Hank began to do repair work on a skid they used to bring wood in. But he kept watching Danielle who pretended to ignore him.
At first she thought it curious he never said anything to Joel about him not working, but it confirmed what she suspected: Joel was a “favorite.”
After a while, Joel got up and started out of the barn.
“Where are you going?” Anne asked.
“It’s cold,” he said.
“I’m cold, too,” she said, but he ignored her and left.
Because the boots were too big and because she had no socks, Danielle’s feet got cold, but she didn’t complain. But she didn’t want to be left in the barn with Hank either. However, she had no choice. So she worked.
They stacked the wood, cut kindling, and cleaned the pigsty. When they were done, Hank came up behind Danielle and grabbed her breasts.
“Keep your filthy hands off of me,” she said.
“You got a boyfriend? Did he pop yer cherry, or did I get it, first?”
“If he was here, he’d cut your balls off.”
“If he was any kind’a man he’d be here taking care of you,” Hank said and laughed.
She wanted to say something in her boyfriend’s defense, but what was there to say to this man?
Suddenly, he said, “We’re done, for now,” and
just like that they returned to the house.
Δ Δ Δ
Both girls were glad to be in from the cold.
Danielle kicked off the boots and felt the mixture of comfort and pain from the suddenly warm floor. It was agonizingly sweet.
She looked around. “Where’s Whoops?” She asked in subdued panic.
“What a name for a baby,” the old woman said derisively.
“Where…is…Whoops?” Danielle demanded.
No one answered.
“Where is she?” Danielle screamed.
Without looking up, the old lady told Joel, “Go get this tramp’s baby.”
He left and moments later Ingrid came back into the kitchen. “Look who’s here,” Ingrid said to the baby.
Danielle walked to meet her and, as she passed her the baby, Ingrid said, “She’s such a happy little girl. I already fed her. She eats so well.”
Danielle carried the baby to the counter. There was bread on the counter. She tore some off. She opened the cupboard with the peanut butter and took an open one down. She opened a drawer and took out a butter knife. She slathered peanut butter on the bread and started to the bedroom.
“You’ll eat with the family,” the old woman said.
Danielle slammed the door behind her.
“That gal’s gotta go,” was all the woman said.
“I thought you didn’t want her to eat with us,” Joel said.
“I had changed my mind,” the woman said, though it wasn’t true. “But, if she’s too good to eat with us, she’s gotta go.”
Δ Δ Δ
Danielle made herself and the baby comfortable. She ate her peanut butter sandwich in the dim light and wished she had brought something to drink with her. But she wasn’t going back out there to get anything. She finished the sandwich and lay back on the bed with Whoops and started to cry. She had to think of a way out of there. A way to southern California. A way to be with her family, if they were still alive. Or a way back to Yakima. But the traffic wasn’t going in that direction. No one but the Army ever drove north. And the Army didn’t pick anyone up.
She tried to think of what to do about her predicament. But there were no solutions for her.
Danielle Kidnapped: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Ice Age Page 8
