Blush

by Suzanne Forster

  The hunter-gatherer had returned. He moved first to untie the sack's drawstring. Once he'd accomplished that and yanked the sack open, he drew his knife from the sheath on his thigh. The silver blade flashed blindingly, sending sunlight zinging in all directions.

  What was he going to do? Clean his kill? That possibility galvanized her. "We're not alone, " she announced.

  "What's that?" He glanced over his shoulder at her.

  "There's someone or something in that cabinet. " She pointed him toward the rusting unit. "I heard it scratching. "

  He swung around, knife in hand.

  "Wait!" The chair groaned as she left it rocking and rushed toward him. "Don't go over there. It could be dangerous. "

  "Don't be ridiculous. " He gave her a pained grimace. "It's probably nothing, a rat. "

  "I heard it growl. Rats don't growl. "

  "There's nothing in there, " he insisted, setting the knife on the table. "I opened it this morning. There were some dried-up lizards, a few dead flies. None of them looked very dangerous to me. "

  She forced a smile and backed away. "You're probably right. I'm just jumpy. "

  "Of course I'm right. Here, I'll show you. "

  The floorboards gave way the instant he stepped on them. There was no warning, no crackling or snapping this time. They simply opened up like a trapdoor and he disappeared.

  Gus didn't see him hit bottom, but she heard a kawhump that shook the shack violently, and the next thing she knew, a siren was wailing in her ears. She turned in horror, compelled to the window by the deafening sound. She expected to see police cars, ambulances, maybe even fire engines, but there was nothing outside the cabin but sand and sagebrush. Nothing! That's when she realized he must have wired the shack with a motion device in case she tried to escape.

  She told herself to run, to grab some supplies and make a break for the van while it was still cool enough to travel through the desert. This might be her only chance! Her heart was pounding as hard as if she were running. Her nerves jumped, anticipating flight. But instead, she turned slowly back to the pit as if she were drawn by some invisible tether and stared at the gaping hole, trying to imagine what had happened to him.

  The jangling bell made it impossible to hear any noise he might be making. He could be hurt or even unconscious. She would have her head handed to her if he ever got out of there, and perhaps several other body parts as well. But she had to know. She couldn't leave without knowing.

  "Are you all right?" she asked as she crept toward the edge.

  He didn't answer. He probably couldn't hear her over the alarm, and she couldn't see him until she got to the very brink of her homemade deadfall. He was crouched against the dirt wall, frozen where he knelt. He glanced up at her and shook his head negatively.

  "You're not all right?" she persisted.

  Gus didn't understand what he meant until he mouthed a word that turned her blood to ice. Snake. With great difficulty she crept around to the end of the pit where he was trapped and saw the rattler coiled less than five feet away from him. Its eyes seemed to glow in the dark—glittering orbs that bulged in their sockets and looked as if they were lit by the fires of hell. The evil thing was swaying slowly, its fangs bared.

  If he moved, it would strike.

  "Get my gun, " he told her, mouthing the words. "It's in the briefcase. Five-two-seven. "

  But Gus had begun to teeter so violently she couldn't walk. She couldn't even speak. Just the sight of the reptile had totally unhinged her. She felt as if something inside her were screaming as loudly as the siren, shrieking so wildly it might drive her insane.

  "Gus!" he yelled over the noise of the alarm. "My gun! You have to get it. You have to shoot the snake. "

  She lurched back, soaked in sweat. "No—"

  "You have to—Gus!"

  She wanted to, but she couldn't. Her fears had already plummeted her into the past, into a waking nightmare that swam with slithering, crawling creatures, their eyes glittering like the snake's in the pit. Screams shook her small, rigid six-year-old body as the cold, slimy ropes coiled themselves around her arms and legs, around her throat. Their hisses burned in her ears, their fangs pierced her tender flesh...

  She heard him calling her name as she turned and burst out the door, and knew she would never forget the horrible grip in his voice as long as she lived. It clung to her as she floundered through the sinking sand, wondering which way the van was. Which way? She had to find it. This was her chance to escape. He couldn't follow her now. She was free.

  The van was still nowhere in sight when she dropped to her knees in the desert, dizzy with confusion and gasping under the rising sun. She was lost. Her head was buzzing, her lips painfully cracked, and her throat so dry she couldn't swallow or speak. She had no idea how long she'd been walking, but she was afraid to go any farther.

  Turning in a circle, she searched the arid, wind-scarred landscape and realized she had no idea how to find the van. Something that might have been the shack was still visible behind her, a black spot in the distance. The moment she saw it, a sob burned in her throat. She had to go back. She couldn't leave him that way. Death by snake venom was slow and torturous. His suffering would be unbearable.

  She was nearly blinded by the time she got back. The sun had burned dazzling white spots into her retinas that couldn't be extinguished, even when she closed her eyes. It was like being forced to stare into a spotlight. The pain of her scorched vision, her sunburned face and arms, was excruciating. It felt as if someone had set her on fire!

  The sun could be fatal at this time of day. Sheer terror had forced her out of the cabin, that and the chance to escape. She should never have left, and now she had no way of knowing what awaited her inside. What would she do if he'd been bitten? She didn't know how to treat snakebites. She didn't know first aid, and if it was something worse— No, she couldn't allow herself to imagine him already dead.

  She was wearing his canvas shoes and they were huge and unwieldy, but even without them, the three porch steps would have been more than she could manage. She didn't realize how sick she was until she tried to climb them. The railing swayed dizzily with her weight, and the handrail wrenched up as she grasped it, exposing rusted bolts and nails. By the time she'd pulled herself up to the landing, she was rocking on her feet like a drunk person and swallowing back the sour taste of nausea.

  The alarm was still ringing, but she could barely hear it now, as if it were coming from a tunnel. This was heatstroke, she realized. Her internal temperature must be dangerously high. Even her tongue felt thickened and unmanageable. Her vision was spotty now, washing in and out, but she could see that the door was hanging open, just as she'd left it.

  The interior of the shack looked cool and dark, but Gus's dread was so great that the vaultlike gloom only intensified it. She didn't want to go inside. She wanted to run back into the raging inferno called Mojave and vanish without a trace, evaporate instantly like raindrops. It would be easier than facing this nightmare. Anything would be.

  But she couldn't run away. She'd been through this before, years before, when she was hardly older than Bridget, only then she was the one trapped in the pit. It was a freezing February morning, just one week after her mother walked out. Lake and Lily had caught her crying and locked her in the abandoned root cellar in the basement of the family mansion. It had been their idea of a good joke, and to be fair, perhaps neither could have foreseen what would happen.

  Gus had pleaded to be let out, but no one came. And when the snakes began to crawl inside her clothing, when they pierced her flesh with their fangs, she shrieked so long and loud that her voice gave out. A doctor later diagnosed her vocal cords as permanently scarred, but that was only the physical damage. The emotional trauma left her unable to speak and quaking in terror, even after the doctor had pronounced her well.

  No one understood her fears or why she couldn't control them. Lake and Lily teased her cruelly, and the housekeeper punished
her for malingering. Her stepfather seemed barely able to stand the sight of her, probably because she reminded him of her mother. The fact that he'd done the honorable thing and lived up to his obligation as her adoptive parent, despite his personal feelings, was clearly all that he felt was required of him.

  Gus saw only one way out of the nightmare. Her shame was so great that her desire to escape her tormentors, which included her own paralyzing fears, became an obsession. There were train tracks along the perimeter of the Featherstone property and a Southern Pacific freight train rumbled by every morning like clockwork. She stole out at dawn one day, liberated by her decision and free of her fears for the first time. But as she sat hunched on the wooden ties, absorbing their deadly vibrations and waiting with a stoic heart for her deliverance, waiting to be forever at peace, she realized she didn't want to die.

  She wanted to live. She wanted to fight.

  That was the day the brat was born.

  His gun was somewhere in the briefcase. What was the combination? She remembered a five, a two, and a seven.

  Moments later, hunched over in front of the case, her hands shaking uncontrollably, she tried several combinations before the lid flew open. In the green glow of the screen she saw the words satlink above a menu of choices that were too technical to decipher. The rest of the screen was a grid of the shack and the surrounding desert with two flashing sensors that must have been the intrusion devices. A message blinking across it all said security breached! alarm activated! press exit to terminate!

  Gus searched the keyboard, hit the exit key, and the shack was plunged into silence. A sob welled in her throat, and she shuddered with relief. Now she had to find the gun! He'd said it was in the briefcase, and as she tried various buttons and dials, the keyboard lifted, revealing a compartment underneath.

  The Magnum was there, as cold and clumsy as a boulder as she lifted the gun into her hands. She didn't know how to use it, but he would tell her. He would tell her what to do.

  Sickness washed over her as she walked to the mouth of the pit, the gun cradled gingerly in her hands. He was still there, crouched just as she'd left him, only the light from the window had shifted. It illuminated his eyes now, and Gus could see their flat, dead stare. He had given up on people, not today, but a very long time ago. Today she had proved him right in doing so.

  The rattlesnake was frozen like a porcelain sculpture, its head and neck forming the perfect S curve of a swan. Gus had never seen anything so graceful... or so evil.

  She swayed over the broken boards, waiting for him to tell her what to do. When he said nothing, when he wouldn't even look at her, she grasped the gun in both hands and pointed it at the snake.

  The rattler's head flicked up. Its marble eyes gleamed at her, and a horrible, hollow rattle filled the air.

  Terror slammed into Gus's body like an oncoming freight train, like the death she had narrowly avoided as a child. She stepped back from the side of the pit, her hands shaking. The only way to get through this thing was to keep moving forward, she told herself, to do the next thing that had to be done. Point the gun and pull the trigger, that was the next thing! Pull the trigger!

  Her forefinger jerked back to the sound of an empty click. No! Oh, God, no! She let out a silent and terrible cry of disbelief. The gun hadn't gone off!

  "Cock it, Gus. Pull back the hammer!"

  Dizziness made her stagger farther back. Oh, Christ, of course! She hadn't done it right. She had to pull back the hammer first. Which was the hammer? She only knew about guns from the movies. Which was the hammer?

  The rattling noises grew louder and louder, battering at her nerves. Someone was laughing, she realized. No, they were screaming, the terrible high-pitched screams that only she could hear. Her hands were frozen! She couldn't do this. She couldn't!

  "Cock the gun, goddammit!"

  Her thumb spasmed, dragging the hammer back with it. Pain streaked up her arm, and the gun went off with a flash of light and a deafening explosion. The stench of burnt gunpowder seared her nostrils.

  "Jesus Christ! Don't shoot me!" The kidnapper sprang up, flattening himself against the wall.

  Gus let out a cry of sheer, wretched agony. She'd missed the snake and nearly hit him!

  The snake flashed into the air, a much deadlier weapon than the gun. It struck so quickly all Gus could see was a blur.

  The kidnapper moaned. "It got me. "

  Gus began to sob. She closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger savagely. This time the weapon's kick felt ferocious. It rocked through her, snapping her head back and dropping her to her knees.

  She threw the gun away and fell to the floor, rolling up like someone under attack, splaying her hands over her head and refusing to open her eyes. The blast of the gun reverberated in her ears.

  Chapter 7

  Jack had lost count of how many times his life passed before his bleary eyes, but he did know the rattler had struck him at least twice before Gus shot it. The impact of the attacks had spun him off balance and thrown him out of her line of fire, fortunately for him. How she actually hit the snake was anybody's guess. It took more than dumb luck to hit a flying object with your eyes closed. It took a Ringling Brothers Circus act.

  Disbelief fizzed up like cold, burning laughter. She was that, he conceded, squinting up at the bright circle of light above him. All three rings, even if her timing did stink. Apparently she'd followed her sharpshooting exhibition with another disappearing act. Where the hell was she?

  He slumped against the wall and bent over dizzily, running his hand down the leg of his jeans to check for puncture wounds. He'd felt the pressure when the snake bit him, but not the pain. That meant nothing, of course. He'd taken five hollow point bullets in the gut, chest, and face once, and he'd felt zip then. Adrenaline had overridden any response that didn't ensure immediate survival, including the pain. Shock had done the rest. He hoped he had enough of both now to get himself out of this sinkhole. It wouldn't have surprised him if she'd dug it herself.

  The tiny remote device that controlled his security sensors had dropped out of his shirt pocket during the fall, and he hadn't been able to retrieve it because of the snake. He found it now, near the rattler's carcass, scooped it up, and hit the button to rearm the devices before dropping it back in his pocket. Now to get out of the pit.

  Foot and handholds gouged out of the dirt wall got him high enough to grab hold of a floorboard that would bear his weight. The rest took gut-busting strength. His jawbone felt as if it had been ground to near powder by the time he'd hauled himself up and swung a leg over the edge. Once he was that far, it was a matter of alternately heaving and hitching his way out. He still couldn't feel the pain— any pain, anywhere—but a gash on his wrist was bleeding freely, thanks to the broken boards. There were splinters and jagged edges everywhere.

  Sweat poured off him, and more than once he thought about the way his laboring heart was pumping deadly snake venom through his system. His only satisfaction came from imagining her in excruciating technicolor detail as he forced her to slice open his wounds and suck out the venom. He wanted to live long enough to see that.

  What he did see once he was on solid ground again was a crazed, mumbling woman, curled up on the floor like a third grader in an earthquake drill, her arms clamped over her head. An occasional shudder racked her, and she was rocking back and forth as if the movement could somehow ease her horror at what had happened. He couldn't quite make out her choked utterances at first, partly because of his own heaving weakness, but as he listened they became more intelligible.

  "I sh-shot him, " she sobbed. "Oh, God, he's dead, and I ki-killed him. I have a man's blood on my hands—"

  Maybe he should have been touched. He wasn't.

  Apparently she'd been making so much noise she hadn't heard him fighting to drag himself out of the pit. "I'm alive, " he said, trying not to topple over as he yanked up the leg of his pants, "at least for the moment. "

  Dizziness sw
amped him, muddying his concentration as he searched for the snakebite wounds. It wasn't until a moment later, when he glanced over his shoulder, that he realized she hadn't heard him. She was still hiding her head and rocking like a demented soul. And he still wasn't touched. Where had that damn snake bit him? And why the hell didn't she snap out of it so she could be of some help? He couldn't find the fang marks, but his head was buzzing like a chain saw, and his vision was going pale and spotty. With gritted teeth and a few choice words, he pulled off his boot to inspect his foot and ankle.

  "Blood on my hands, " she moaned. "A man's blood—"

  "Gus! I'm alive, for chrissake!" Disgusted, he tossed the boot away and hauled himself over to where she was huddled. The effort made his head swim and submerged the shack under a sea of undulating water. The castle he'd been fooling with the night before was floating a foot off the table, and for an instant he thought he was going to be sick.

  Sheer effort of will got him through it, but then he was left with the problem of getting through to her. He couldn't figure out where to touch her, so he gave her shoulder a shake. He used very little force, but that had nothing to do with wanting to be gentle, he told himself. He was too weak to give her a good shake.

  She went completely silent at his touch, as if afraid to move. Apparently she thought he'd risen from the dead.

  "You shot the snake," he told her. Come on, Gus, baby, don't wig out on me now. I need you.

  Another shudder racked her, but still she didn't untuck. "I did?"

  "Yeah, but it got me before you got it. "

  Now she peeked up, looking at him through the narrow opening of her clamped arms. "The snake bit you?"

  "Twice, I think."

  Her arms fell away and her head whipped up as if mounted on a spring. "Are you all right?" She searched his bloodless face.