by Ryan Schow
One of the guys either scoffed out loud or laughed, she couldn’t tell.
If there was one thing she knew to use as a weapon against men like this, it was ridicule. She had learned that from politics and found it worked on regular people, too. Men and women. Everyone. If you could find a way to break a person down and destroy their morality or their self respect, they’d back down and back off. Then again, it could also have an opposite effect. She was hoping this wasn’t the case.
Guy got off her, stood up, and fixed his shirt. “Are you just gonna stand there and take that from her?” he asked his guys.
The ugliest of the two rushed her, body-slamming her against the wall. He then dragged her to her feet and screamed, “If I want you, I’ll take you!”
Beaten up from just that short, violent exchange, she tried to breathe but couldn’t find her air. Her chest seized and she shook with fear. She didn’t mean to, but she let go of her bladder. Betraying her, it had released on its own.
The man who attacked her looked down and said, “See? Fear makes her wet.”
“I’m first,” his buddy said.
“No you aren’t,” the guy holding her said. “I tenderized her, so I get her.”
“Neither of you idiots is first until we find out what she can offer on other fronts,” Guy said. “After that, do whatever you want.”
“I can’t offer anything,” she muttered, her breath back. “We don’t even live in this state.”
“Where are you from?” Guy asked.
“Kentucky, Nicholasville,” she finally said.
“Don’t lie!” the guy who’d thrown her yelled in her face. He socked her in the stomach and let her fall again.
“Knock it off!” Guy roared.
Faith felt her eyes widen, like a terrified horse ready to bolt. Behind the three idiots in front of her, there were two more men, neither of them moved by the entire episode.
Sucking in wind, Faith looked up as Guy knelt down before her and whispered, “I think if you gave me the choice between beating a woman to death or raping her, I’d beat her to death.”
“Bad marriage?” she asked.
He laughed and said, “Two actually.”
“I get that,” she said. “Eventually, most women do nothing but grate a man’s nerves.”
Smiling, he smacked her face and said, “You’re able to play both sides of a coin pretty well. I like that. Most women just cry and beg. But you? You’ve got some fire in you.”
“Are you talking about my ability to be nice one minute, then cut to the bone the next?”
He stuffed a finger in her mouth, then pulled it out and sucked it, tasting her saliva. “That’s exactly right.”
She spit out the dirty taste of his finger then said, “A woman has the ability to wage marital terrorism on a man whenever she wants. It’s like we have that in our DNA if we want it.”
“Yeah, we’ve all seen it.”
“But most of us only take that tact when the man we’re married to is an asshole. I bet you were the worst husband ever.”
“I was,” he admitted. “Got good at it on wife number one, became an expert on wife number two.”
“Well, I’m married to a good man, which is why when I look at all of you social lepers, all I see are marital and societal castoffs.”
Guy looked at her a long time, intimidating the crap out of her, and then he stood her up and slammed the back of her head into the window so hard the glass spider-webbed. He rammed her head into the glass again. Dizzy for a second, hurting, she’d felt some of the glass give way. As she stood there on weak legs, she felt a cool breeze tickle the back of her neck.
This is about to get really bad, she told herself.
Struggling against him, the fight was back in her, but then he pinned her in a bear hug, pressing his ear on hers hard enough to keep her from biting him. When he felt the last of her efforts draining from her, he relaxed his grip, then turned, put his mouth to her ear and said, “And this is why beating you to death seems so much better than any form of sex you might be forced to give.”
“I’m a terrible lay,” she managed to say, giving up the struggle because he was too strong for her. Besides, there were too many of them.
“I bet you are anything but that, my dear,” one of the quiet ones said as he moved into her field of view. He was an especially unattractive man, worse even than the others. The idea of him being inside her made her want to vomit.
“I’d be especially bad with you,” she said. “I bet you have the most disgusting body when you’re naked. You probably can’t even get it up in front of all these queens.”
Guy laughed for a second, then he stopped and said, “You’re like the Energizer Bunny of insults.”
“She’s full of it,” the guy she started to think of as Heckle said.
“We’re about to find out,” the new guy said. With that, Guy moved away and left her standing before this vile creature. Without a word, new guy grabbed the hips of her pants and ripped them down with force. The friction burn instantly stung, her hips traumatized in the process.
“Nice undies,” he said as Faith stood there half naked and humiliated, and forced to contemplate the absolute worst of her fears.
Chapter Twenty
Colt McDaniel
With nowhere specific to go and nowhere specific to look, Colt began going through the buildings one by one. He asked anyone and everyone he saw if they’d seen Faith. No one could tell him anything. He had stepped out onto the street, dejected but not bested, when he heard screaming. He stopped. Was that Faith? Did that sound like her? The woman screamed again and he was suddenly sure it was her.
With the street so empty and very little noise to contend with, the sound traveled well. Judging by the clarity of her scream, he was sure she was nearby. Colt sprinted down the street, heading for the nearest building.
Faith screamed again, helping him lock in on her general location. He found the building, slipped in through a broken front door, then moved through the dim interior of a loft-like structure. He went for the staircase, knew he needed to go up a level or two. There, he came face-to-face with a guy coming down the stairs. The man had an old flashlight with him, making himself a target.
When he saw Colt, he tried to kick him in the face. Colt parried off the kick, caught the man’s leg, gave it a solid yank. He fell forward, but Colt didn’t let go of his leg. The man fell hard in the splits, his jeans tearing as he landed hard. The only sounds that left the man’s throat were slight, high-pitched whimpering sounds.
Wasting no time, Colt grabbed the man’s head and slammed it sideways into the metal railing once, twice, three times for good measure. The man’s body turned to jelly as he fell into a slumped-over heap. At the top of the stairs, he reached the relatively clean-looking hallway with four doors. One of them was slightly ajar. Hurrying to it, his stolen flashlight bobbing, he was terrified of what he might find.
He stopped and listened, barely making out the sounds of voices. He covered the light, tiptoed to the door in question, then stepped back when he heard one of the guys inside saying, “Milton just took off. I told him he didn’t have to screw her if he didn’t want to, but you know Milton. Total weenie.”
The second this idiot pulled the door open, Colt punched him in the mouth with all he had. The guy staggered back, arms uselessly at his side, his eyes all but rolled back into his head. How he was still on his feet, Colt didn’t know. Either way, he dropped low, moved in fast, then drove an uppercut into the man’s Adam’s apple so hard, Colt felt everything in there crunch and flatten. The man fell down like a tree toppling in the forest.
Inside the loft, across the open space and backlit by a flood of daylight, Colt saw a pack of men surrounding his wife. There was also a big hole in the window with the bulk of the glass fractured and frosted-over.
In a split second, he assessed the situation. It looked like they had yanked Faith’s pants down around her ankles, for she was stand
ing in her underwear surrounded by four men. She was roughed up pretty good, but she was coherent. The guy next to her had just taken his pants down to his knees. When he looked up, it was with a wolfish grin.
“When I’m done pumping one out,” the guy said while standing there in his dirty white underwear, “we’re going to beat her to death. If you’d like, you’re more than welcome to watch.”
Colt’s rage went from a level ten to a level twenty in nothing flat. Two of the four guys cut off the path between Colt and his wife’s soon-to-be rapist. Bombs exploded inside his head and in his heart as he charged in like a bull. He dropped his shoulder and drove through the first guy so hard, he went up and off his feet, landing hard on his back and sliding a few feet across the floor.
The second guy landed a big shot on Colt’s brow that hit hard but didn’t do squat to him in that crazed state. He turned and shoved this guy to his ass about ten feet away just as the first guy he’d hit was getting to his feet and wobbling forward.
Mr. Pants Down Around His Knees yanked his jeans up, grabbed Faith, and pulled her away from the broken window. The fourth guy backed up, like he wanted the others to soften Colt up first. He stood there, ready for whoever was next.
Faith nearly fell as she was pulled away from him. She’d gotten tangled up in her pants and had tried to hop to keep from falling over.
“Kill them,” she hissed from a bloody mouth.
Colt ducked a haymaker from the first guy he’d hit, then spun him around, grabbed him by the back of the pants and drove him headfirst into the broken, spider-webbed glass. More of the glass caved in, but it didn’t break out completely. When he jerked the man back out, the glass shards sunk into his neck. Colt yanked him one more time, and he came loose, dropping to the floor.
Someone hit Colt hard, a big body slamming him into the wall next to the broken window. More of the glass shook out on the floor and on the injured man below. In his peripheral vision, he saw Faith break free of her captor and hop his way. Then gunfire broke out. He ducked down, but off to his side, Faith was not so lucky. She slammed onto the ground hard. Was she hit? Oh, God…she wasn’t moving.
Another shot dug into the brick wall beside him, peppering his sleeve with shards of blasted clay.
“Stop firing!” he shouted. But the shots kept coming.
The next bullet plinked the metal frame holding what remained of the broken window. The impact loosened the top plate of glass, which fell in pieces, shattering all over the guy below. He was on all fours, gagging and gulping and holding his throat, which was slopping blood out everywhere.
Another shot nicked Colt’s shoulder, but only barely, and then he ducked sideways as two more bullets dug into the bricks around him.
The man with the torn-open throat finally collapsed, dead or soon to be dead. Colt’s eyes flashed on Faith. She still wasn’t moving. Blood was on the floor in front of her face.
When the shooting stopped, he was able to catch a glimpse of the shooter—the guy he left alive in the stairwell. That’s when the would-be rapist charged him, tackling him sideways. He’d taken Colt down, but Colt rolled with the fall, managing to get the top mount.
Supercharged with white-hot rage and fear for his wife, he put a monumental beat-down on the guy only to be body-slammed by the second guy he’d attacked, the one he’d shoved to the ground.
Colt hit the floor, took a couple of shots to the cheekbone, then managed to put up a hand and block the next shot. The shot came in fast and hard, hitting his blocking hand, which in turn blasted him in the face.
With Faith in the bright and shiny center of his mind, he tried to stay conscious. He took more shots to the cheekbone, then pushed away from yet another shot, which was coming in even faster. The fist missed him, slammed into the hardwood floor. He grabbed his attacker’s arm as the man tried pulling his damaged hand back; he ate an elbow for his efforts.
A wave of dizziness crested over Colt, but it passed quickly as he pushed the injured man aside and haphazardly scrambled to his feet. The man’s face was full of pain as he held his hand. The skin was badly damaged, his fingers a bit mangled. He tried to kick Colt, but it did no good. Colt kicked him back, a soccer-ball kick to the side of the leg.
Another shot was fired but the klutz he’d beat up in the stairwell was a lousy shot, so he ignored the bullet as he kicked the guy with the busted hand over and over again. He finally got the guy with the right kick, one that sank like a dream into his uprights. He fell to his knees, holding his groin, his face beet red. Colt grabbed him by the back of the head, fired a knee into the man’s gut, doubling him over, and then again into his head, putting him out cold. The buffoon fell over backward, unconscious.
It was just him and the shooter, but the guy shot his last bullet, as evidenced by the gun’s slide position. Turning, he looked at Faith, then back to the shooter.
“Did you shoot her?” Colt growled.
“No man, I only shot at you.”
He was hoping Faith had dropped down to protect herself, but he was wrong. There was too much blood for that.
Is she dead? Was she hit on accident?
He turned to look at her one last time, but in that second, he was hit with something hard, right in the back. He winced, even buckled a bit from the pain. Whatever it was that hit him had landed on the floor with a hard clatter. He looked down and saw the stairwell man’s gun laying on the floor, the slide open.
The guy had just thrown his gun at Colt. Unbelievable! Bending down, he picked the gun up and threw it right back, catching him in the face with the edge of the slide. A huge cut opened on the man’s face, surprising them both. He staggered backward holding his face, then turned and stumbled out of the loft, into the hallway, then down the stairs.
Colt turned back to Faith only to be stabbed in the hip with a knife from the man he hadn’t yet finished off—the would-be rapist.
Colt looked down and saw a knife protruding from him. He then looked at the disgusting creep who threatened to abuse his wife. His face was bloody from multiple lacerations, and he was grinning.
If this form of beast mode had a new gear, Colt just found it. He grabbed the beaten man’s face, wrestled him for control, then drove both thumbs into the man’s eyeballs. He squeezed them in as far as they’d go, even as the man howled out in pain.
Colt then yanked them out and wiped the gore on his pants. The man slumped over, screaming, crying, writhing in pain.
Taking a big breath, bracing himself for the worst, he turned and saw Faith still laying there, perfectly still. Burning with fear and rage, he turned back to the eyeless creep, he grabbed the back of his head, then drove a knee into his face as hard as he could.
He looked back at Faith.
She hadn’t moved.
Vengeance filled him, coursed through him, made a bloody monster out of him. Instead of letting the guy be, he grabbed his head again, torqued it as far as he could, then turned his feet and gave the neck a mighty twist. The loud pop of the neck snapping was both sick and rewarding. The victory was lost on him the second he took it.
Faith had been shot. Faith was dead.
He went to her, bent down, rolled her over. She wasn’t breathing. The sight of her lifeless, bloody face was murder on his senses. He felt a hitch in his throat.
“Faith, sweetheart…it’s me.”
She opened her eyes, and he found he could breathe. She looked left and right, then said, “It’s okay now? Did you get them?”
“Oh dear, God,” he said, melting, shaking. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I was playing dead,” she said, seeing his face and breaking into a sob. “It was all I could think to do.”
He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “I thought you were gone when they took you, and then I thought I lost you again just now.” Choking back the tears, he said, “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
For a long time they just held each other. Finally, she said, “What are we goi
ng to do?”
“We have to get back to Constanza,” he replied.
“It’s going to be dark soon.”
“I know.”
“What about the battery, the El Camino?”
“We’ll do it tomorrow.”
“We need to get on the road now, Colt,” she said. “We can’t wait until tomorrow. Every second Rose is exposed to the elements, and this madness, she runs the risk of…of…so much.”
He nodded, feeling every word and knowing it to be true. “It’ll be dark soon and she’ll be too scared to leave.”
“That’s why we need that car tonight,” she said.
“Yeah, okay, I agree.”
She stood up and that’s when she saw the knife sticking out of his side. “Colt, you’ve been stabbed.”
He turned and looked at it. “Oh, yeah.”
He took the knife, wiggled it out of the heavy leather belt, then pulled his pants down enough to see a very small cut. The belt took most of the blow, but the man was in a weakened state and the leather was heavy.
“Someone’s looking out for you,” she said. “Your guardian angel.”
“No,” he said. “Someone’s just dragging out the inevitable.”
Colt picked up the hand-crank flashlight he’d stolen from the man on the staircase, then took the knife’s sheath off the dead man’s hip and put it on his own hip. He checked the remaining men for guns or ammo but came up empty. Aside from the knife and the gun he’d thrown a moment ago, there were no other weapons to be had.
The walk to the dropped battery was long and painful. When they finally arrived, he saw the battery inside a circle of dead bodies. He went quiet. The sight took his breath. Not far away, he spotted a couple of baseballs, reminding him of the pain he experienced when getting hit by them.
He leaned over and picked up the battery, the strain overwhelming and colossal. The walk to the house where he’d left the El Camino took longer than expected, but they were hurt and walking slowly. Grateful the vehicle was still there, he popped the hood, propped it open, then went to work removing the old battery.
