Without warning, his head split open like a ripe melon as Suzy bashed it in with a thick piece of metal, frantically rescued from her bedroom.
His grunt of surprise was soft and feeble, just like his treasured penis which he had planned to use to rape Lorna. His body did a slow motion fold as it made its way to the dirty floor.
Crying hysterically, she sidestepped the remains of Doc to rescue her daughter. She wiped at the snot that ran free from her nose with the back of her hand, careful not to touch the baby with it.
“Oh shit.”
Suzy whirled around to see Kimmey and Liselle at the door. Kimmey’s face drained of color as she tiptoed to a chair, her voice a mere whisper. “I just wanted to see the babies . . .” Suzy ignored her as the stronger Liselle pushed her into her bedroom. She removed Lorna from her hands to wipe off Doc’s blood which had splattered onto the infant.
Making sure baby Lorna was safe, she glanced at Seth, who remained sleeping in his makeshift bed. Grabbing Suzy’s elbow, she pushed her toward the door. Suzy yanked her arm back.
“You’re not getting me to go back in there.” They listened as the sounds of Kimmey retching carried into the room.
“I don’t know what happened here, Suzy, but if you care anything about the women of this tribe and your babies, you’d better just suck it up and figure a way out of this mess before anyone else finds out what you did.” Liselle paced, wringing her hands. “Why now? He was getting ready to die anyway. Couldn’t you wait?”
Kimmey and Liselle’s faces drooped, flaccid and green as Suzy described her grisly discovery from yesterday.
“We were fighting again over the announcement at the council. He wouldn’t commit. I thought he might be planning a fast one. I thought I could hold it over his head. Things got out of control.” Suzy held her head in her hands, her voice faltering between sobs.
“But his pants are down. What . . .” Suzy looked up, sickness oozing from her eyes.
“He was going to hurt the baby . . . to get even with me for insulting him. I . . . I’ve never seen him like that before. I just . . . lost it.” Liselle took her into her arms.
“It’s okay. We just need to come up with a story, fast.” They froze as they heard a man’s voice from the other room.
Seconds passed as if hours before Suzy recognized the voice of her lover, Tom. Pulling away from Liselle, she rushed back into the room and threw herself into Tom’s arms.
“Thank God you’re here,” she sobbed. Quickly calming down enough to talk, she filled him in on the discovery in the small cavern, the monster and Doc’s subsequent death.
“Good God, Lorna. I don’t know if I’m up to getting sucked into something like this.” Tom’s face screamed fear.
Stiffening her spine and relegating her emotions to the back recesses of her breaking-down mind, she took a deep breath, faced Doc’s corpse and turned back to Tom. “It’s all right, Tom. We have it all under control.” Liselle clearly tried to swallow her surprise as Suzy rushed over to Doc’s sixty-pound medicine safe.
“Come on, give me a hand.” They hurried over to the safe. Directed by Suzy, they lifted it over Doc’s mangled skull and dropped it on him. Liselle gulped and knelt to pull up his pants.
“That should work. No one will think much about it when I claim he was moving things to make room for the baby’s stuff. I’ll claim Liselle was here to see it happen. Besides, they’ll be distracted when I tell them Doc finally made his decision about his successor.”
Tom looked at her with amazement, guileless and clueless. “Did he tell you?”
Suzy sneaked a look at Liselle, tossing her a covert wink. “Yes. It’s me of course, Tom.”
“Well you sure have had a lot of luck come your way lately, Suzy.” His brows knit together as if he was having trouble passing a difficult bowel movement. “Quite a bit of unexpected luck . . .”
Suzy anxiously herded him to the door. Trying to get his mind off recent events and her role in them, she kissed him softly, nipping passionately at his lower lip until she felt his manly swelling.
“I think we might have a few things to talk about later, don’t you, Tom?” His eyes glazed with foreseen passion, glittery in their eagerness to forsake everything but the pursuit of sex.
“You better go now. I’ll see you later.” She smiled until her muscles hurt, pushing him out the door as he dreamed of their next tryst and the possibilities now that Doc was out of the way.
Suzy leaned against the door to catch her breath, while Liselle looked on with doubt in the slope of her shoulders.
“I don’t know, Suzy. Are you sure you can trust him?” Suzy wordlessly nodded her head, rubbing her hands on her face, then raked back her loose, stringy hair.
“Yeah, he’s a little temperamental, but he has a sweet simple side. As long as he’s satisfied, he’s happy and easy to control. It’s stress free for me. He just doesn’t want to get dragged into something that would draw the attention of Doc’s men. I think he’s just as afraid of them as we are.”
A sudden pounding sounded on the door, vibrations tunneling straight to Suzy’s hammer-tripping heart.
“Shit.” The raucous pounding sounded again, the women paralyzed with fright.
“Open the damn door, Suzy.”
Suzy whispered to Liselle as they clutched each other, relaxing as she identified the voice. “It’s Lafe. What’s he doing here? He’s got a hell of a nerve.”
She pounded right back on the door. “What the hell do you want, Lafe? You’re not wanted here anymore.”
“Shut up, bitch. I want Doc. He makes the decisions around here, not you.”
Suzy bit deep on her lip, the pain clearing her thoughts. “It’s Doc’s decision, not mine,” she shouted back. “He’s had enough of your shenanigans. Your boys killed one of the Janice twins. He can’t ignore that. We can’t have the likes of you around now that we have the babies.”
“Sounds like more of your bullshit to me.”
She felt a body slam to the door but it held. “Your things will be left for you at the Council Center. Now get lost before Doc loses his patience with you,” she added.
The women were met with quiet. They held their breath as they weighed the silence. It wasn’t long before the odors of Doc’s body reclaimed their attention. Praying that Lafe had departed, they discarded plan after plan until the simple actions of frightened women took over.
Peeking out the door to see if it was clear, they stepped outside and screamed their heads off.
*
Suzy munched on her peach, which she had retrieved from her pouch. The thick aromatic juices ran down her jutting chin unnoticed as she studied her two infants. Her heart swelled with vulnerable love and hope for a better life for Lorna and Seth. Grabbing a cloth, she swiped at her chin, removing most of the juices in preparation for bed.
She dipped the cloth into a cold pail of water, shucking her shirt to scrub at her grimy neck. It had been a long day and she was exhausted.
The council meeting to award the Janice twins to their man had been postponed due to the twin’s death as well as the unexpected death of Doc. It would be held in three weeks after tomorrow’s official mourning of the tribe’s first leader.
Suzy smiled to herself. Out with the old, in with the new.
Doc’s men had come to pay their respects this morning. None had commented on the passing of leadership to her, but she knew from the silent nods and bobbing heads that the official announcement would brook little challenge at the council meeting in three weeks.
Most of the tribe was so saddened and shocked that the women’s version of Doc’s death was readily accepted.
As Suzy slipped her raggedy gray nightgown down over her head, she ran to the next room to make sure the door was bolted. She kissed the babies gently, breathing in their newness and the clean milky smells that come with new infants. After giving Lorna a last loving caress, she climbed into her cot with its heap of frayed blankets. Her last t
hought before she drifted off to sleep was about how good her life with her babies would be without Doc around.
*
Morning came quickly, the babies having slept straight through the night, with not a peep from her two angels. She heard a squeak that ended in a jerky squall—Seth demanding his breakfast. As she pulled down her nighty to feed him, she glanced over fondly to say good morning to her quiet princess.
The crib was empty. Her mind blanked in panic, her thoughts unfocused and useless. She grabbed the now screaming Seth from his crib and ran to the door, which stood wide open. Lafe. It had to have been him. She groped for the sleeve of her nightgown, balancing Seth as she tried to get it up her quavering arm, distracted by the taint of sulfur in the air.
For the second time in three days, she ran outside to scream her head off.
*
Three weeks passed in a daze for Suzy. Liselle and the women of her inner council cared for Seth while Suzy fell apart. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t bathe, and wouldn’t feed her remaining child. Other women, heavy with nourishment from their own newborns, took turns with the neglected infant.
Today, she lay in her cot, wasted from the lack of food, depressed and useless. Her only thoughts were of her kidnapped hope and dreams; her baby Lorna. She couldn’t help compare it to her own kidnapping so long ago. The same defiant spark that had carried her so far for so long buried itself deep, hiding from her consciousness as it had decades ago.
“Get up.” Suzy opened her eyes at the harsh words. Liselle stood at the foot of her cot, hands on her hips and steel in her voice, but softness in her eyes.
“It’s time, Suze. The council meeting is in three hours. You have to pull yourself together. I can’t just watch all our plans go up in smoke. So many women here have lost infants. They go on. Our plans were to make things better for everyone’s babies. Think of them.” Liselle perched on the end of Suzy’s cot.
“Are you going to get up?”
Suzy remained silent, her eyes closing heavily.
“There’ll be time to mourn. You have the rest of your life. Carry on in Lorna’s name.” Liselle stood up with a sigh as it became clear Suzy was unreachable. “You might as well know. Lafe has been sighted. No sign of the baby. It’s rumored he’ll attend the council meeting.”
Suzy’s eyelids flew open. She cleared her throat as steel seeped back into her eyes, recharging her. Liselle held her tongue, watching Suzy swing her legs over the cot and try to stand. Her voice croaked out the words Liselle hoped to hear.
“Over my cold dead body, he will. Get me some water and fruit, please, Liselle. And ask one of the others to bring me a bucket.” She swept her hands over her oily face, cheekbones straining at the translucent skin that strived to hold her together. “I guess I’d better clean up.”
With visible relief, Liselle hurried to fetch the items Suzy would need to bolster her strength. She returned with two women to help Suzy wash and dress.
“Here Suze. Drink this.” She handed over a large mug of tea, filled with bits of strange leafy plants that grew in the growing field.
Downing the hot liquid gratefully, Suzy pushed herself with the blinding hatred she felt for Lafe. The son of a bitch would be made to tell where her baby is. He would pay. Turning to Liselle, she gave the woman a silent hug. Liselle uttered no words as Suzy drew further strength from her wisdom and the force of the tribal women’s dependence on her. Parting, they stared somberly at one another. Liselle’s intense face split with a wan smile. “Welcome back, Suze.”
Chapter 9
The noise from the attendees at the Council Center filtered back to the women in rises and dips. As they approached the crowd, Suzy could see flickers of the bonfire in the center. The stench of infrequently-washed humanity brought tears to Suzy’s eyes as they fought their way to the front of the noisy crowd. Men cursed and women made way as they reached the front line.
A new four-foot-high stage had been built to the side of the bonfire. Doc’s most trusted men stood with mugs of their homebrew raised high, heat from the fire producing acrid sweat that streamed down brows as the merriment raged on.
Suzy stepped into the circle and stood tall as the men noticed her presence. One of the men stepped forward, raising his hands for silence. The crowd settled down as they looked forward to the night’s business.
Liselle gave her a quick shove, and she found herself walking up onto the stage to a round of quiet applause, the subdued reception not what she had expected.
Looking into the slothful faces of Doc’s remaining men, she glimpsed old age, disease, hostility and resentment. Her nerves strummed, wired and ready for confrontation.
“We didn’t expect to see you tonight, my dear.” One of Doc’s most trusted men stepped forward to receive her, his courtly manner not deceiving her as she watched his eyes look over her head, searching the crowd.
“Why don’t you go back home, Suzy? We have things under control here.” She wrinkled her brow in confusion.
“I’m here for the announcement that will introduce me as leader of the tribe.”
The old man coughed into his hand. “Well, about that matter, my dear. It seems a challenger has stepped up and claimed Doc had already named him as successor.”
Blindsided by surprise, Suzy stood tongue-tied. The old man leaned in, his evil practicality dismissing her.
“What is your claim measured against the claim of a man, after all?” He turned his back to her and joined the rest of the men, who now stood clapping Lafe on the back. All distorted grins and awkward dancing, Lafe celebrated his elevation to tribal leader with his new men, a tankard of brew lifted high to rejoice with.
“No.” Her shout rang like a bullet, straight and swift. The din lowered and died as all eyes turned to her. The men on the stage sneered.
“He will not lead this tribe. I was appointed by Doc himself before he died.”
All eyes followed Lafe as he lowered his tankard and limped over toward Suzy, insolence twisting his deformed features more than usual. “Funny . . . Doc promised it to me.” He swept his hand toward a few of Doc’s oldest men, now feeble, senile and sick. “And I too have witnesses.”
He stared at Suzy, his hatred washing across the stage, searing her with its power.
“You are a murderer and a baby thief.” Her venom struck back as his confidence refused to slip.
“I am a man . . . checkmate, bitch.”
Suzy saw red. She flew at Lafe, fist pummeling ineffectively as he backhanded her, sending her spinning to the ground away from the fire. Shaking the stars and black waves that threatened to undo her, she tried to sit up. Lafe limped toward her, his fist pulled back to give her more. The crowd remained quiet and fixated, swept up in the drama.
A low rumble sounded under their feet, unnoticed by most. A murmur snaked through the crowd as it became more pronounced. Screams were heard as the ground began to shake.
With a loud wrenching and splintering, Suzy’s gelatinous monster tore up through the ground, bursting through the wood on the stage, showering them all with rubble and the stench of sulfur.
The crowd scrambled back, clawing over the old and infirm to get away. Doc’s men jumped off the ruined stage to leave Lafe and Suzy to confront the beast alone.
The creature reared high in the air, looming over the terror-stricken crowd that cowered in the dark fringes of the Council Center. From the throat of the beast, a protrusion appeared. The beast formed appendages that gripped the protrusion, lowering it toward Suzy. She remained transfixed, unable to move, and determined to show no fright to the crowd. Lafe slowly inched his way off the ruined stage, kicking a fallen man aside and tripping as he reached the ground.
The beast lowered its faceless head to sway gently over Suzy as its appendages presented baby Lorna to her, safe and secure in a fluffy yellow blanket.
“Oh . . . my baby.” She unwrapped Lorna to a stunning surprise. As she stared at her baby’s two perfectly-formed hands, she stee
led herself to look up at the beast. She awkwardly regained her footing, unbalanced by the weight of her missing infant. Swallowing hard, she forcibly controlled her tremors. “Th . . . thank you.” She raised her hand as if to tentatively wave. With that, the beast retreated as if sucked back down the hole by which it arrived.
No one moved. Suzy watched her healthy baby coo up at her. Her heart swelled with fierce motherly determination. She shook off the final dredges of drained emotions and stood tall. Her voice carried to all, cutting like a buzz saw through the dark and unruly crowd.
“If I’m given any more trouble as the new leader of this tribe, I’ll call it back.” She eased herself down to the ground, her words greeted by a hush. Pressing her advantage, she ordered two men to seal the hole.
“Does everyone understand?”
Heads bobbed in quick agreement, Doc’s men’s eager voices fawning with acquiescence.
Suzy swelled with confidence. She called to Liselle and the other women of her inner circle. “These are my advisors. They will be shown the same respect you showed Doc Benjamin.” A low threatening undertone could be heard coming from Doc’s men. In a stunning show of leadership, Suzy turned to them.
“I need three representatives from your old council to join mine.”
Surprise and respect bloomed in the eyes of the men eager to hold on to the trappings of their power.
“I would ask you, Gus.” The oldest in the crowd hobbled his way to Suzy. “And you, Tom.” Mutters reached her ears as she chose the youngest of the group, her secret lover.
But the biggest surprise was yet to come, shocking all.
“And you, Lafe.”
All eyes turned to Lafe as he still lay on the ground. Embarrassed, he scrambled up to face Suzy, his expression as pleasant as if she had just ordered him to drink his own urine. The sparks of hate Suzy observed in his eyes subsided to be replaced with animal cunning. He straightened his shoulders, bowed to the crowd and moved toward the chosen ones near Suzy. He glanced at her as he passed, and nodded, acknowledging her win in the battle. They both knew the war had only just begun.
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