Six men gleefully descended on the horrified girl. Pamela shrieked and tried to scramble away.
Irene was on her feet, moving swiftly across the compound toward the men. Pamela was kicking and clawing at her captors and the men strained to contain the writhing body.
“Get away from her,” Irene screamed.
“Irene. Please Irene,” Pamela was screaming as the men hoisted her squirming body from the ground and holding her shoulder high, they bundled her toward the far side of the plane. “Oh please,” Pamela’s cry was plaintive. “Oh god no, you can’t. Please don’t eat me!”
Irene charged into the men, the knife was out and she slashed at first one man and then a second, tearing skin and sending up cries of surprise and fear.
“Ashwin Franks– you’ll rot in hell!”
Ashwin whipped around, his startled eyes landing on Alex. She held a bow and it was fully extended, the tip of the arrow pointed at his face.
Irene’s heart turned to ice.
Alex looked magnificent. She stood tall, her legs spread at full stride. She was side-on to a startled Ashwin, the longbow raised and at full extension. The three-foot arrow was poised, its deadly tapered tip aimed at Ashwin’s face. They locked eyes. Ashwin stood flat-footed. There was no way he could reach the revolver in his belt before he was cut down. He could only watch the unwavering point of the arrow and await its deadly arrival.
Irene, her breath locked in her lungs, heard the sickening sound of splintering wood. Oh God, no!
The bow came apart. It shattered in Alex’s hands and she had to flinch to avoid being struck in the face with shards of wood. The arrow traveled a dismal ten-feet before dropping uselessly to the ground. Irene had never known the world to stand still until that moment. All eyes were turned on Ashwin who stood as still as a granite tome stone. Even the birds had gone silent.
Ashwin’s chest heaved and he laughed. It was a cold heartless laugh, mirthless, and there was no mercy in his eyes. He pulled out the revolver and marched to where a helpless Alex still held the fragments of her broken bow. “On your knees, bitch.” He pointed the gun in her face. “C’mon. Get down. Open your mouth.”
Alex silently got down onto the ground, her eyes locked closed as Ashwin placed the muzzle of the gun against her forehead. The sound of him cocking the hammer echoed through the compound like a thunderclap.
“Ashwin!” Irene cried out. “Don’t!”
She still had the knife in her hand and Irene took a step forward, her movement instinctive, without thought to herself. There was a dull clunk, like someone driving an ax into a pithy stump. The sizzling pain shot up the back of her skull like a skunk’s stripe. It reached around and spread across her forehead. Irene felt the pressure build behind her eyeballs and there was a flash of brilliant white that fragmented into pulsating spots that slowly, gradually, dimmed.
Irene wasn’t aware of the fact she had dropped to her knees and rolled onto a shoulder. She didn’t see Dirk standing over her, inspecting his billy-club for signs of blood. Irene wasn’t aware of Pamela being thrown across the trestle behind the plane. Didn’t hear the pleading sobs as the girl was repeatedly raped. Didn’t hear the squeaking of the wheel as Pamela was hoisted by the ankles nor the slushy sound of the blade sawing, separating Pamela’s head from her shoulders so the carcass could bleed out. Irene was wrapped in sweet dark nothingness. If only it could have lasted.
Irene’s head lolled to one side.
Her first conscious thought was that someone had cleaved her skull in with a hammer. Her head rolled the opposite way and she wondered if she should try opening her eyes.
Bad idea.
The light cut into her brain like white-hot dagger tips. She moaned and lifted a hand to her forehead. A hangover was a birthday-treat compared to this. Her tongue was thick, her throat parched.
She was on her feet, sort of. But tilted back.
And then her foot slipped.
Irene was jolted into the present by a blind panic. Something snapped in her brain: If she slipped, she might as well be dead. Irene knew that; didn’t know how or why, but her instincts took over. She scrambled to regain her footing, sliding dangerously. She struggled but finally managed to steady herself. It was like she was straddling a child’s teeter-totter.
Her eyes rolled back and she started in horror and disbelief.
Her friend Alex, was dead.
Almost close enough to touch, Alex was trussed up to a tree-trunk by the neck. Her feet dangled helplessly, a scant few inches above the pine-needles. Her face was black and the tongue, still drooling strings of mucus, protruded dark and ugly between brilliant white teeth.
Irene closed her eyes and willed the apparition away.
She became conscious of her own plight: She too felt a tree at her back. And there was no mistaking the rope around her neck. Irene shuddered when she thought how close she had come to losing her balance. Slipping. And she was made painfully aware of the throbbing burn between her legs. God, what had they done to her? No… to them. Her and Alex.
Even in death, Alex held the key to Irene’s survival. Alex would tell her all she needed to know, and with renewed courage Irene opened her eyes and studied her friend’s body.
Alex had slipped from a log that had been placed on end under her feet. Irene could make out the one under her own feet. And the rope around Alex’s neck had been cut from a cargo net. The yellow polyethylene strands matched those Irene could feel around her own throat.
Irene’s vagina was throbbing, dull and persistent. She looked down along Alex’s nude torso and focused on the coarse twine that had been used to sew the vaginal lips together.
Oh Jesus!
Irene took a moment to contemplate before running a hand between her own legs. She was sickened by the feel of the string; the crude stitches that ran from her clitoris almost to her anus. And she felt something else. Inside.
They had sewn something inside. Something hard.
Irene saw the stick that hung from Alex’s wrist. It was pointed and the size of a pencil. Irene lifted her right arm and a stick swung beneath her hand. The realization crashed home. She knew what she had to do to save herself.
Her fingers found the end of the butcher’s twine that crisscrossed back and forth through the lips of her vagina, holding it tightly closed. It was one long continuous thread that had been sewn in tight loops, from left to right. Irene walked her finger lower, counting. She had been skewered six times each side with the needle and would have to unravel a total of six loops of cord, like unlacing a shoe.
Using the pointed stick, she plucked at the first loop. The jolt from the burn stilled her hand. She felt her skin prickle as an animal-sweat broke out across her shoulders and her stomach revolted. Am I going to be able to do this?
She found the stitch she had loosened with the fingers of her opposite hand and tugged gently. The loose end dangled, a scant three-inch length to be dragged through her flesh. She started with a long slow pull, pinching the string in the fingers of one hand and supporting the fiery tissues with the other. The string slithered through her flesh bringing with it a blast of white heat. She stopped a moment to rest and realized the more string she unraveled, the longer it would get. The agonizing sliding-pull was going to get worse.
With a sense of resignation, she readjusted her grip on the loosened stitch and pulled again. The rough cord was almost through when it abruptly caught with a pinch.
Irene gasped. She prodded carefully and found the knot. Any resolve she had, leached out the pit of her stomach. The sadistic bastard who had sewn her up, whoever he was, he had tied a knot in the end of the string. A knot that she would have to slowly work through her tortured flesh.
The task set before her stretched like an unending thorny path. It might take hours to remove the stitching, long painful hours and all the while, balancing precariously on the end of the upright log. One slip would leaving her dangling by the neck to slowly choke. Irene squared her shoulders. At least she would try.
Irene had just forced the knot into the puncture-hole in the lip of her vagina when she was chilled by the sound of a far off scream: “Oh God. Please.”
Irene sucked in air and shouted. As loud as she could manage. Nothing. She screamed again but there were only a host of phantoms drifting among the trees to listen to her helpless cries.
Linda’s head came up.
The scream had come from beyond the curve in the pathway. It was a piercing shriek and a moment later, the slightest tenuous reverberation followed. Maybe an echo, Linda thought, from a far off canyon wall. Or maybe, maybe she had just imagined it.
Linda got to her feet and moved quickly along the path. Laylee had gone to the river to bathe before her prearranged visit with Ashwin and his knife, but now Laylee raced toward Linda, her eyes turned back in terror. Laylee almost ran into the girl who was rushing to meet her.
Linda clasped her by the forearms. “What is it, Laylee? What?”
“A man,” Laylee blurted out, still focused on the path behind. “There’s a man back there, in the trees. He was watching.”
“One of the men?”
Laylee finally locked eyes with Linda. “No. He was dark.” Her eyes shone with fear.
Several of the others arrived and Linda handed Laylee over to them. “Take her back to the compound. Erin? C’mon. Let’s have a look.”
The two women hurried back along the path toward the river. The sun was sliding behind a distant mountain sending a nighttime chill across the water and lengthening the shadows. From the shore they carefully scouted the treeline but if the man was still there, he proved elusive.
They crisscrossed the shoreline, back and forth, but nothing.
Linda stopped a moment to study the trees. A man spying on a women skinny-dipping in the river, she thought, would want to get as close as possible. Her eyes lifted to a rocky outcropping. It was close by, gave the advantage of height and was crowned by three stunted pines. “Over there,” Linda pointed and she and Erin clambered up the rocky path.
Their short climb brought them to the same spot Ashwin had found to enjoy an unobstructed view of the patch of wiry curl cradled between the long tapered legs of a young black girl. Erin was the first to see it; the glint among the pine-needles. Linda bent to look.
It was a bit of tinfoil that had been stripped from a stick of chewing gum. She brought it to her nose and inhaled the still fresh fragrance of spearmint. “He stood here,” Linda pointed; the indents of his boots were still visible in the soft soil. And she saw something else clinging to the pine-needles. She didn’t have to hold it to her nose to know it was semen.
Irene was struggling with the forth stitch, the one holding the opening to her vaginal canal tightly closed. Her thighs ached and the muscles in her calves were starting to bunch-up making it exceedingly difficult to stay atop her perch. But a slip meant an agonizing, slow, asphyxiating death. There was a certain incentive in that, to bearing the burn of the string.
She picked at the butcher’s twine until it was loose enough for her to grip it in her fingertips and she started the long painful process of dragging the string through the puncture wound. And there would be the knot. She had tried to work it apart, but to no avail. If she could reach the knot with her teeth she would have chewed it off. But the rope around her neck was unforgiving.
Irene stiffened. Something had slipped. Inside.
She loosened the butcher’s twin a little and slipped a finger in. She felt it. Smooth and hard. She worked at the string a little more and got another finger inside and gripped the intrusion, scissoring her fingers around the end of it, moving it forward. With a push, it slithered into the palm of her hand. It was slick with mucus and she held it carefully.
She looked down: Red plastic. A Swiss Army knife!
The sun was nestling into the mountaintops as she opened the blade and started sawing at the rope that held her throat to ransom.