by David Coy
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, and 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 rubbed 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.”
“Screw it, right?” Donna said. “It’s the chance we’ll take.”
“Now you’re showing a con . . . a conscience,” Rachel said.
“Oh, save it, Rachel. I’m showing stupidity.”
They sat wet, barely moving, in the dripping foliage like still, carved outgrowths of th
e alien plants. They sat and waited.
“I’m hungry,” Rachel said at one point.
“Me, too,” John said.
“Oh, quit your complaining, Rachel,” Donna snapped.
They sat and waited until darkness and the first bugs crawled or flew out from under leaves, bark and fallen logs.
Finally, Donna rose to her feet and went over to Katz. She pulled the gag out of his mouth. His mouth worked to unstiffen itself.
“Okay, we’re moving. One peep out of you or Bukowski, and I swear I’ll tie you to a tree and leave you here.”
“You win,” Katz said.
“Yeah. I win. Don’t fuck with me.”
“Can you loosen the belt around my arms? It hurts like hell.”
“Forget it,” she said.
They helped the men to their feet, and Donna prodded them forward with the rifle’s muzzle. By the time they were halfway to the lockup, the bugs were heavy in the wet air, swirling around them or buzzing past, smacking noisily off their clothes or flying full speed into their faces, making them duck or wince.
“Ever been out at night without a net suit, Katz?” Donna asked.
“No.”
“You should try it sometime for a few nights—just for fun.”
“Yeah,” Eddie added.
John opened the door using Bukowski’s key, and Donna prodded them up the steps. She kept them moving all the way to the kitchen then pushed them down into the u-shaped dinette seat. “You’re on your own, boys,” Donna said and turned to go. “You’ve killed us,” Katz said.
“Hey, I could have left you outside. Stop complaining.”
“They’ll put us in those cages,” Bukowski said.
“Hey, beg forgiveness. You never know.”
“We’ll be Vilaroosed,” Katz said.
“Better you than me,” she said casually.
“Donna,” Katz implored.
“What?”
“Leave the door unlocked.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Please.”
“Nah. Not a good idea.”
“I promise we won’t move for an hour, say. Besides it’s to our advantage not to . . . to go after you . . .”
“Nah.”
“Or even tell anyone you’re gone. We’re at risk as much as you. Please.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “If you could bring us back, your asses would be in Jacob’s good graces and ours would be in jail waiting to die. Forget it, I can’t take the chance.”
She took a few more steps toward the door.
“Please. I’ll give you my word as a soldier.”
She stopped and turned.
“Katz, look. You’re a smart guy. Forget it. You don’t have much to trade here. I gotta go.”
“Wait! I’ll give you the key to our squad’s shuttle.”
That got her attention.
“You don’t have it,” she said.
“Yes, I do. I have it.”
“Where is it?”
“Here. Here in my pocket.” He pointed at his right upper pocket with his face.
If he was telling the truth, they stood a chance of a clean get away. Her first impulse was to call John or Rachel to check it out. That would have been the smart thing. What she did instead was walk over and put the muzzle of the rifle against his chest. “If you so much as blink, I’ll shoot you,” she said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Holding the rifle with one hand, she reached out with the other and slipped her fingers in the pocket.
The hand came out of nowhere and with such speed she had no chance to avoid it. It grabbed the rifle’s barrel, and she felt herself lose control of it as it was forced into the air. Her finger closed on the trigger and the weapon fired a burst with the loudest noise she’d ever heard and left a straight line of holes in the shelter’s wall above Bukowski’s head. She growled and kicked wildly at Katz as he tried to get up, hitting him solidly in the midsection. The blow drove him back onto Bukowski’s lap. Before he could scrabble back up, she brought the rifle back down at him and fired. A cloud of red spray filled the air around both men as the rifle roared and clattered. Some of the rounds hit the edge of the plastic table, shattering it. When her finger relaxed on the trigger and the awful noise stopped, silence filled her head like soft wax.
Through the whine of ringing ears, she heard the tiny, faraway sounds of table fragments hitting the floor.
Katz was killed instantly. Pinned under Katz, Bukowski’s legs moved and kicked lamely as if he was trying to climb out and get away. He stared up in dumb shock at Donna, coughed a single gob of blood, and then died. The same bullets had killed both men.
John was through the door as fast as his legs could carry him, followed a step behind by Rachel.
“What did you do?” Rachel asked.
“I killed the bastards!” Donna screamed. “I fucking killed them!” She pointed the rifle at Rachel.
“Donna, don’t,” John commanded, pushing the rifle’s business end toward the floor.
“They tried to kill me, Rachel! Katz grabbed the gun, and I shot him! The goddamned bullets went through Katz and killed Bukowski, too.”
“She’s right, Rachel," John said. “Look. Katz must have worked his arms free.” He pointed to the belt now hanging loose from one arm.
“I did them a favor,” Donna said.
“Sure,” Rachel said. “Sure you did. That’s the kind of gesture everybody appreciates.”
“Forget it, Rachel,” Donna said. “At least we’re alive.” She leaned over and reached into Katz’s pocket, just to be sure. She was surprised when her fingers found the object. She held it up to John hopefully. “Does that look like a shuttle key?” she asked.
“Hell, no. It’s a key to a portable field latrine,” he said.
She backhanded the key against the wall. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
She brushed past them and headed for the door.
“Where are we going?” Rachel asked.
“We need transportation,” Donna answered. She opened the door and walked out into the night. The air was filled with flying insects.
“The bugs . . .” Rachel said.
“Screw the bugs,” Donna said and stomped off toward the settlement, rifle in hand.
The first truck they came to was parked outside an abandoned shelter on the edge of the settlement. Three of the tires on one side were flat. When John looked closer, he saw slashes in the tires’ sidewalls. “Somebody didn’t like this truck,” he said.
“Maybe there’re some spare tires,” Eddie said.
“Forget it,” Donna said. “We’ll find something else.”
The contractor’s ghetto was where it had always been, but it was worse than they’d ever seen it. Half the shelters were abandoned. Plants and vines grew up under them and over them and through open doors and windows. The ones with lights on were a little better, but some of the plant life had been trimmed back, and they looked somewhat maintained. The former clinic was ruined; deserted and ransacked for anything useful. It sickened Donna to see it. Its doors hung open exposing a black and cave-like interior—an invitation to any infection-carrying crawler or flyer to come right on in and nest.
A few of the shelters had trucks parked alongside them. Donna set her sights on one straight ahead and marched toward it.
When they got near it, Eddie spoke up. He knew right where he was.
“This is my old boss’s place,” he said nervously.
“So?” John asked. “Wanna go in and say hi?”
“No.”
“Leave him alone,” Donna said.
“That’s her truck. She usually leaves the key in it,” Eddie said.
“Good choice, Ed?” John asked.
“I guess so,” Eddie reluctantly replied.
“Shut up. Both of you,” Donna ordered, “And wait here.”
She crept quietly, and crouching, hid behind the truck and scoped out
the shelter’s windows. When she thought it was clear, she waved the others up. They squatted in a tight knot behind the truck, their voices low.
“We can’t get in it without exposing ourselves to the windows,” Donna said. “Eddie, crawl up and see if the key is in it.”
Eddie slipped around the side of the truck and crabbed along until he could peek up into the cab. There was the key embedded in the dash. All they had to do was turn it on and drive away. Part of him wished it were anybody’s truck but Joan’s. The other part was glad the key was right where it was.
He crabbed back.
“It’s there. We’re all set,” he said.
“We’ll have to risk it,” Donna said. “John goes first then Rachel. Eddie, then me. Go.”
John crouched along the side of the truck, opened the door gently, and slipped into the driver’s seat. He quietly closed the door just until the catch engaged with a slight click. Rachel followed up and slipped in the rear door behind him. She left the door open for Donna and Eddie and scooted over to the far side to make room. Eddie was next and slid up into the truck without making a sound.
“Piece of cake,” Donna whispered to herself. She started toward the open door.
She didn’t see the insect launch itself from the soft green stalk just a meter away. Compelled by the warm flesh at the base of Donna’s neck, its strong back legs sent it from its perch toward the target like a shot. Donna felt the insect hit her collar, but she was quite used to that particular sensation and ignored it. When the insect clamored onto her neck and sunk its spiky legs deep, Donna froze and winced. She went to her knees with the pain, and with a snarl, reached up to pull the offending thing off. Her fingers found the insect’s slick, leathery form stuck to her neck like a barnacle. She knew what it was by touch. She’d removed a dozen of them, but in the clinic, with a good anesthetic and surgical tools. Her heart pounded. She also knew it had to come off—right now. She gripped it as tight as she could with her fingertips. The insect started to drive its pointed snout into the thick bundle of veins just under the surface. Donna squeezed and pulled.
The insect retaliated with a squirt of alkaline liquid from the tips of each of its six pointed legs.
Donna felt the searing flame on her neck. It quickly spread over her entire face and neck. She saw bright lights bursting before her eyes. The sound started like the high-pitched groan of a little girl hurt, then grew to a deep, guttural resonation that would not be contained. Unable to suppress it, Donna opened her mouth and howled.
