by David Coy
“You’re sure?” he said with relief.
“Yes. I’m sure.” Her voice was strained tight, and the words came a little fast, propelled by a manic urgency. “We shouldn’t be living like this, Bill. None of us should. It’s twisted.”
She was right of course.
At that precise moment, he realized Joan and none other was the one to hold the bomb’s key. She was the one to negotiate with the Council. She would be tough; tougher than anybody because deep, deep down she really didn’t give a shit. The authenticity of that sentiment would show itself plainly. If they suspected weakness or a failure of resolve, the entire thing would go to Hell. There would be no deficiency of strength in Joan Thomas to suspect. When they sniffed the air around her, for some trace of fear, they’d find nothing but the scent of anger, frustration and the strong musk of an iron will. Some of their number—those with the right noses for it—would detect the odd, sickly stench of madness, as well. She would emit the perfect bouquet.
“You’d do it,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’d do it,” she replied.
“Then if we don’t screw up, we can’t lose.”
“We win either way,” she said.
Habershaw thought about it and swallowed. “Yeah. I guess we do.”
9
“Yo Katz,” Donna said with a grin, “why don’t you just turn your back and let us walk out of here. You could say we grabbed your rifle, got the drop on you and Bukowski, and got away.”
“You tried that one already,” Katz told her, tired of her lame attempts to manipulate him. “Forget it.”
They were on their daily walk, some distance from the jail and just at the jungle’s edge. It was mid-morning, and the red sun pounded on them. Donna looked into the thick, dark jungle with a sense of longing. The irony of that emotion made her want to laugh. Could she do it again? Could she live in the jungle? It was better than this. At least she’d be free and the chances of survival were at least as good.
“Okay then, how about we do it like this,” she said. “We fake like we clobber you with something then tie you up and . . . ”
“No,” Katz said. “I’d get Vilaroosed. You get away, I get Vilaroosed.” His brown eyes were steady, and Donna saw his square hands tighten on his rifle. She’d gone a little too far today. Katz was a full head taller than she was, athletic and strong. She knew if she ever made a grab for his rifle, he’d easily overpower her or even John. She didn’t think he would kill her; he wasn’t allowed to do that. But he could make life harder on her in any number of ways or perhaps clobber her with something.
Katz’s face was odd to her, not in an ugly way, but odd, as if the sunbaked wrinkles in it weren’t quite in the right place. He turned away slightly toward the sun, just to ignore her, and she saw why. When he squinted, his eyes turned way down at the corners. His eyes weren’t totally lacking in compassion, but he was a soldier through and through. Joan imagined that it was all the fighting and killing that changed him, transformed him from what might have been a reasonable man into the murderous bastard he was. Katz and Bukowski were men you could trifle with somewhat because they were bored with the duty and had a sense of humor still buried somewhere. But step over the line—and they might kill you out of reflex, out of instinct, like family dogs killing pet rabbits.
“Hey, it was worth a shot,” she sighed.
“Forget it,” he replied and drifted away from her. There was caution in the maneuver. It frustrated her.
“I’ll try to think of something you can live with,” she said as a parting shot.
“Not likely,” he said from a distance.
“You never know . . . ” she said with a lilt.
“Yeah ya do,” he said in the other direction.
The funny-bunny talk about escape had just about used up its usefulness and her cute persistence about it was starting to grate on him, she could tell. Chatter wasn’t doing it. She’d have to think of something else. She didn’t like the options.
The plan wasn’t to trifle with Katz, but to kill him if necessary. The ploy was simple on the surface: relax them. Getting familiar, friendly with them, seemed the best way to achieve it.
When they got back to the shelter and Bukowski had locked them in, Donna pulled her home-made sap out of a leg pocket and tossed it on the table with a clunk. It was nothing more than a flattish, tear-shaped dollop of lead solder about the size of her hand sewn tight into a sleeve of cotton. They’d melted the solder in a pan on the range and, on the counter top, poured it into a form made with dried mud. It had a short and strong, flexible handle made of a strip of plastic molding taped firmly to the business end. Relatively small, flat and concealable, one good whack on the head with it would knock anybody, even Katz, completely senseless. John had one just like it. He smacked it into his open hand.
“Goddamnit,” she said disgusted, “he’s still too uptight— too cautious. What about Bukowski?”
“He’s dumber than Katz,” Rachel said, “but he’s not stupid. I don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” John said.
“What?” Donna asked.
“Seduce the bastards. Make ‘em think you want to fuck. That’ll throw them off guard.”
Donna had thought of it herself days ago, but wasn’t sure it would work. Besides, she just didn’t like the idea. Katz and Bukowski would see right through it, of course; but then again, the male libido being deaf, dumb, blind and unable to reason—could lose the day.
“Eddie,” Donna said to him, “excuse yourself for a while.” Eddie made a face. “I’m not a kid.”
“Yes, you are,” she replied. “Adios. Git.”
He got up with another face and went to his room. There wasn’t much to discuss. Rachel had Bukowski wrapped around her finger already without doing a thing. But Katz was another story.
“How do we know they’ll go for it?” Rachel wanted to know. “I mean, if they really, really wanted me—us—they’d just rape us wouldn’t they?”
“First of all,” Donna said, Someone's given a hands-off order. “They’re not allowed to hurt us . . . But it’s one thing to take someone by force, and another thing to be freely offered what it is you want anyway. Second of all, we may not have to go through with it.”
“She’s right,” John said. “You can distract the hell out of them if you do it right. No problem.”
“You’re speaking as a man of course,” Donna commented. “Well, yeah. I am,” he confessed to the obvious.
“You won’t have to suck them or fuck them either if it comes to it, sooo . . . you don’t have a problem,” she said.
“Better you than me,” John said, showing his impish grin.
Rachel lowered her head. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said.
“Hey,” Donna said ruefully, “maybe what he said about short guys is true.”
Nobody laughed.
“Look, all you have to do is distract the wary bastards,” John said. “That’s all.”
There was a moment of silence as if someone had asked for a prayer.
“What are we doing?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know,” Donna said numbly. “Trying to escape?”
* * *
On their walks over the next few days, Rachel and Donna began to work on Katz and Bukowski. Rachel made it a point to stay just a little in front of Bukowski and to wear her tightest clothing. The poor bastard didn’t stand a chance when she stretched, bent over or squatted down to look at something. She let him know she was doing it on purpose, letting him have a good look at her full butt and legs. By the end of the walk, it was all he could do to find his way back.
Donna took a more direct approach and decided bold flirtation was her most effective weapon. She never was very good at the oblique stuff; the longing looks and all that. She’d always been very up front when it came to her wishes and sexual desires. She just hoped she wouldn’t come off as being too direct—it had happened in the past.
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When she thought the time was right, she ambled over toward Katz, just penetrating his safety perimeter. She was fiddling with a twig and could suddenly feel sweat between her fingers. She cleared her throat.
“I’m very sexual, really,” she said to him frankly.
“Oh, yeah?” Katz asked, completely neutral.
“Yes. I love to fuck.”
“Nothing like a good fuck,” he said as though unmoved.
“It’s been a while for me. You know . . . John and Rachel are together. Eddie’s a kid. That leaves me . . . you know?”
“Out in the cold . . . ”
“Yeah. Out in the cold.”
“I bet you get fucked a lot,” she said. “You’re very handsome.”
“Forget it.”
“What? I can’t talk about it?”
“I don’t give a shit if you talk about it. But you’re wasting your time. Look. You get away; I get Vilaroosed. I fuck you; I get Vilaroosed. You so much as catch a cold, I get Vilaroosed.”
“So I’m not worth it. Is that what you’re saying?”
“You know what?” he said. “We all die. I always thought I’d die a what you might call a violent death, probably shot through the head or blown to pieces. But being tortured to death in some little cage by religious freaks doesn’t figure in my grand vision of a meaningful exit. So it’s not that I wouldn’t do it under the right conditions. I would. You’re not bad. But these ain’t the right conditions. That’s about as nice as I can put it.”
His voice still had that practiced wariness, a battle-worn caution woven through it like tough cord. He was immune to sexual distractions. She’d bungled that approach anyway. If anything, he was even more alert than before. Rachel’s words rang in her ears.
What are we doing?
Donna considered him. His nice little speech was the most she’d heard him say at one time since they’d been captured. Surprisingly, it made some sense. The thing behind the ragged uniform could think and talk some.
“I take it you have no love for The Sacred Bond of the Fervent Alliance either,” she said, anxious to hear the answer—and change the subject. He didn’t answer right away, and she was afraid his little diatribe was all she’d get from him for today, this week or forever.
“We follow orders,” he said plainly.
“So why don’t you just kill them all—do us all a favor.”
He looked at her like she was a complete ignoramus and shook his head. Then he drifted away. He’d said too much already.
“Forget it,” he said over his shoulder.
Well, at least she’d opened him up a little, and he was talking. Maybe he’d relax in time, maybe not completely, but perhaps enough for her to be able to whack him senseless. Being tortured to death by religious freaks wasn’t her idea of a meaningful exit, either.
“So now what am I supposed to do?” Rachel asked later. “Am I supposed to kiss his ugly mug or what?”
This clearly wasn’t going anywhere. Donna and Rachel had none of the femme fatale in them—not a trace. It had been a stupid idea. They’d been grasping at straws of the worst kind—stupid, weak, poorly-thought-out ones.
It rained the next day so there was no walk in the morning. By afternoon, the rain had stopped, but the sky was still overcast, turning the early afternoon to green dusk. They marched out and down the steps in single file as usual. Bukowski and Katz aimed them at the jungle by flanking them from a short distance—what Donna saw as a clobber-safe distance. When Rachel didn’t take the lead, out where Bukowski could feast his eyes on her butt, he deliberately slowed down to a crawl, forcing her and John ahead, with Rachel under his lecherous gaze.
When they got to the jungle’s edge, the vines and leaves were still drenched and dripping water. There were overhanging branches and torn fragments of trees all along the perimeter that they had to duck under or walk around. Some of the plant structures hung down over their path like huge, wet mops. Katz slowly closed the distance on Bukowski as they walked. Then, timing it just right, he quickly slung his rifle, waited until Bukowski was directly under a big cluster of leaves and shook the branch real hard. Water poured out of the leaves and rained down on Bukowski in a sudden artificial shower.
“Hey! Goddamnit!” Bukowski yelled. Everybody laughed.
In order to pull off that little trick, Katz had to move from the rear up to the front, putting himself and Bukowski between John and Rachel on one side and Donna and Eddie on the other. It was a simple, careless mistake, motivated by a child-like urge to play a joke.
Stepping backwards, Bukowski wiped his face on his sleeve, cursing and grinning at his partner. Donna was no more than two meters behind Katz. She fixed John with an urgent, wide-eyed look. John reached in his pocket, and keeping his hand hidden behind Bukowski, stepped up and brought the sap down on his head with a sound like a stick against a melon. Bukowski stiffened then tried to turn, stumbling like a puppet. John whacked him again. Donna took one step closer to Katz, and by the time he realized what was happening, stars exploded in his head then shrank to spinning pinpoints. He heard the distant sound of the second blow, and the stars went out with a blink.
“Now what?” Rachel asked.
“C’mon. Drag ‘em into the brush,” Donna said. She already had the rifle off Katz’s shoulder and was tugging at his arms.
“Are they dead?” Rachel asked in a small, distressed voice.
“I don’t care if they are!” Donna said, her eye flaring bright. “Grab his feet, damnit!”
They wrestled and dragged them a few meters into the underbrush, safely out of sight. When Rachel saw the slick mass of hair and blood on Bukowski’s head, she started to tremble.
“I don’t think they’re dead, do you?” she asked no one. A sudden quiver grabbed at her just under the ribs. “That wouldn’t have killed them, would it?”
“Rachel, fuck ‘em!” Donna said in a rage. “I’ll kill them right now if you don’t stop talking about it.”
The icy look in Donna’s half brown, half blue eye caused Rachel to shiver. Thoughts were coming to her like molasses. She managed to form the one that told her Donna was capable of killing the men. It told her she’d shoot them right here, just so there would be no questions later.
Rachel suddenly saw herself aiming a rifle at Bukowski’s head. When she tried to pull the trigger, her finger wouldn’t move. Then the gun turned into the big yellow and brown diamond-backed rattlesnake she saw on a field trip to the Mojave desert as a child. She could feel its cool strength in her hands as it thrashed. It twisted around like lightning and buried its fangs in her upper arm.
Without warning, Rachel’s eyes began to flutter, and she felt an all-too-familiar twitching in her throat and bowels. A sense of un-reality filled the air around her head.
“You’re a peculiar blend of deep compassion and raging violence,” Rachel said clearly to Donna.
“What?” Donna asked and blinked.
“You’re . . . ”
“Shit. Not now. John . . . take care of Rachel while I tie these bastards up,” Donna said.
Rachel went stiff and fell backwards into John’s arms. He lowered her convulsing form down to the wet grass and ferns, letting her head rest on his lap. It was a mild one, but it would turn her into a trembling liability for the next few minutes at least. Eddie never knew what to do when this happened. He stood there with his hands tucked in his armpits and watched John keep her from hurting herself.
By the time her seizure had run its course, Donna had the two men tightly bound with their belts and gagged with pieces of their shirts torn off, stuffed and tied into their mouths. Katz eyes rolled aimlessly under half-open lids. Bukowski looked dead. Donna checked for a pulse in his neck.
“They’re both alive,” she said. “Too bad for them. How’s she doing?”
“She’s done. She’s sleeping,” Eddie said.
“Wake her up. Let’s get moving.”
John patted her cheek and rubbe
d her arms until she awakened. A moment later, they had her groggy form supported between them, heading toward the open air.
“We . . . can’t leave them . . . there,” Rachel said. “They’ll die tonight . . . bugs will eat them . . . alive.”
“Watch me,” Donna said.
“Noooo!” Rachel said, thrashing free of their grip. “We can’t . . . do that! We can’t leave them like that!” She stumbled backwards, almost falling down.
Donna glared at her, but Rachel was still too out of it for the look to have any effect. All Rachel could feel was sympathy for those helpless men as darkness and crawling, biting life approached.
“We have to take them with us,” Rachel said. “We have to take them back to the jail and lock them inside.”
“The jail’s a good kilometer back,” Donna said. “Someone could see us marching two tied up guards . . . no, I don’t think so. If you like, I’ll kill them right now; then you won’t have to worry. How’s that?” She unslung one of the rifles and fumbled with the mechanism, unsure how to use it.
“Do you know how to use this?” she asked John. “Yeah . . . ” John replied reluctantly. “I can use it.”
“Show me . . . ”
“No!” Rachel barked. “You can’t kill them!” She lunged at the rifle and tried to take it from her. Donna swung it easily out of the way. Rachel stumbled past and fell face-first into the wet undergrowth. John and Donna exchanged a brief worried look. Rachel wobbled back up to her feet. When she tried to turn around, her feet tangled in the plant growth, and she lost her balance again. Arms waving and hands clutching, she fell backwards. John stepped in and caught her.
“Lemme go!” she said twisting and turning. “Let go of me!”
“All right!” Donna said. “You win! We take them back! But we’ll have to wait until dark. How’s that? We sit right here, waiting for the bugs, then we take them back to the jail and drop them off.”
“They might have to check in or something before that,” John said. “Someone might know they’re missing by then and come looking for them.”
