Irene woke before sunrise. The throbbing pulse between her legs was persistent and needed tending to.
She had found her way back to the compound in the dark, had devoured a quart of water, washed herself as best she could and looked for something to cover her nudity. There wasn’t anything.
The men had taking her underwear, so naked, she slipped beneath the blankets next to Linda who slumbered fitfully; mumbling, her muscles twitching in troubled sleep. Irene shivered and relished the warmth that Linda’s skin offered.
The butcher’s twine still hung between her legs but daylight and a pair of manicure scissors would be the least painful way to deal with the last of it. Irene eased her eyes closed but that didn’t rid her of the image of Alex, limp and naked, hanging by her neck. The dream was over: The cabin in the Rocky Mountains? Alex raising her garden and her kids while Rob flew domestic charter flights and was home most nights for dinner? All of that was gone, snuffed out by a rope with a relentless hold on Alex’s throat. Irene could only hope that Alex was unconscious when she had slipped from the log. But no. There was something about the look of terror that had remained in Alex’s glassy eyes long after death had released her from the agony.
She started. A shadow moved across the compound. Irene squinted, her night-vision focused and she saw Ashwin move toward the fire. He lifted the lid of the stew-pot and Irene heard him chuckle lewdly to himself. He flicked out a hand and there was an insignificant splash. And then a second one. Insignificant, Irene thought as Ashwin replaced the lid. Insignificant to everyone but Laylee.
Irene eased the blanket back. In the hazy predawn light, while everyone slept, she sorted out her flight-bag. She squeezed hand sanitizer into the palm of her hand and swiped the jell between her legs. The burn was intense but after what she had been through, the pain was almost a relief. She dug out her manicure kit, removed the small scissors and delicately, she snipped the remaining stitches. Tweezers, removed the last strands of twine.
Released from her bindings, Irene renewed her search for something to wear. In Alex’s flight-bag, Irene’s hand fell on an empty wine bottle; a naked photograph of Alex peered at her from behind the glass. Irene couldn’t bear to look, pushed it back and searched deeper. There was a French two-piece and Irene slipped into the straps. Clothing, as minimal as it was, brought an immediate sense of moral decency. She stoked the fire and put water to boil for spruce tea.
Irene eased away from the others during the morning swim. She washed herself and sitting on a rock, she applied the soothing antibiotic cream Sissy had provided. The needle wounds were still fiery-red but the throbbing had eased. Irene momentarily studied the punctures and wondered how she might explain the scars to a future lover. Providing, she thought dolefully, she had a future.
Ashwin had been surprised to see her handing out cups of spruce tea. Irene saw it in his eyes. He had immediately looked around for Alex, didn’t see her, but said nothing. Instead, he singled out a couple of his men and sent them off into the woods, in all likelihood to retrieve the body for the stew-pot. Irene had escaped that fate but for how much longer? It amazed her that she was still alive. She was older, after all, and less desirable than the younger girls. Why had Ashwin held onto her for so long?
“Let’s have a singsong,” Ashwin announced, an impish gaiety undeniable in his voice.
Irene shuddered.
“C’mon girls. Line up and give us a song. Something everybody knows.” The girls obediently got up from where they had been brushing out the damp tangles and loosely formed up. They stood, shifting their feet and looking into one-another’s eyes trying to interrupt the man’s intentions. A song they all knew?
Ashwin snapped his fingers. “I know. The Nation Anthem. Everyone knows the words…” And he started: O hey can you see…
The girls gawked.
Ashwin stalled. “What’s da matter with yah. You know the words, now sing with me!” He started again.
The girls, apprehension glistening in their eyes and their voices, timid, raggedly joined in: By the dawn’s early light…
“No! No! No!” Ashwin screamed. “Let me hear you. Sing loud. Be proud, girls. Now once again, from the top.”
Ashwin waved his hands like he was conducting the New York Philharmonic. The girls started in again, bravely singing as Ashwin made his way along the line, listening to each girl like a vocal coach.
He stopped them at the end of the first verse. “That’s much better. But I still sense a lack of enthusiasm. So once more, with feeling.”
The girls started in again: O hey can you see…
“That’s it. Keep singing. Don’t stop but turn around. Sing it to the mountains.”
By the dawn’s early light… The girls shuffled their feet, turned their backs and lifting their faces, they sang to a distant mountaintop, glistening snow in bright sunshine. A moment later they would be singing to the dirt at their feet.
“Keep singing girls. That’s it.”
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming…
“That’s it, girls. Keep singing and everyone bend forward now, and pull down your panties.”
The ragged chorus faltered but a few bravely sang on. Some of the girls leaned forward and pushed their underpants to their knees and the rest, fearing Ashwin’s wrath, quickly followed, exposing a line of lofty buttocks perched on straining thighs; each dusky crevice holding the promise of a quivering anus: The most forbidden fruit of all.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight… the girls were singing with hands on knees, aware that the men were moving in from behind. O’er the ramparts we watched where so gallantly streaming…
Hands were stroking upturned bottoms and still they sang: And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs busting in air… A girl cried out, knees buckling. From where Irene was hunched with her bum in the air, she couldn’t make out the identity of the distressed girl. Irene just caught the movement of feet. One of the volleyball players she thought. The girl staggered forward, caught herself and quickly regained her place in the line, pushing back on the penis that pinioned her rectum. She continued to sing: Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there…
Another girl cried out. And still another as the men moved along the line taking each anus in turn. O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave… Irene look sideways to where Linda was hunched. The girl staggered momentarily, her eyes wide with surprise and disbelief. She bit down, blinked wildly, opened her mouth and sang: O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ashwin bellowed with a laugh. “Please bend over for the National Anthem.”
The girls had to endure another two verses before being ordered back to the river to wash. Irene followed. Her rectum ached from the abuse dealt out by a man without a face. She could have looked back over a shoulder, but maybe it was better this way; not to know whose semen she carried in her bowels.
“Jesus.” Dirk was licking his fingers. He and Ashwin were sitting with the others by the fire and had just finished their lunch when the men drifted out from among the trees like a morning mist. Dirk elbowed Ashwin. “Who the fuck?”
One of the girls uttered a cry of surprise. Irene and the others saw them too. Eight men stood where moments ago, there had been nothing. They were Colombian, dark and dressed in green camo. Each carried a gun.
Ashwin was in awe. “Look at those weapons.”
Dirk checked. “The six in front have AK-47’s; Russian made. The two, flanking the others have Remington shotguns. Standard police issue.”
“They military?” Ashwin asked.
“Who the fuck knows. Everyone dresses like a guerilla fighter in this fuckin’ country.”
Ashwin studied the men. “I want one of those AK’s. Look at the size of that banana clip.”
“Trade him one of the women for the gun,” Dirk said glumly. “He can always replace the gun but what are his chances of having a nice looking white woman?”
Ashwin turned, wide-eyed. “Christ. Do yah think he’d go for it. Maybe I could unload Irene on him. She’s old but nice looking and a decent fuck. Wha’dya think?”
“I’d make him an offer before he decides he can just take what he wants.”
Ashwin chuckled. “Oh c’mon. They’re just a bunch of army boys who got separated from their outfit. Probably just looking for some grub. I’ll go talk with ’em, offer them something from the stew-pot. After they’ve had a bite to eat, I’ll take Irene over and introduce her around. I’ll strip her right in front of their eyes. Give her to them stark-naked in return for one of the guns.”
“Just like that…” Dirk smirked.
Ashwin set his plate aside and got to his feet. “Watch me.”
With a magnanimous grin plastered across his face and his arms spread wide in welcome, Ashwin strode across the compound. The lead Colombian eyed him carefully and when Ashwin stepped closer, the man reached with the muzzle of the gun. He lightly tapped Ashwin on the breastbone as if to warn he was close enough.
Ashwin smiled even wider. “My amigo…”
The Colombian pulled the trigger.
There was a double burst, the crackle shattering the silence. Girls went screaming and scrambling, falling face-forward onto the ground. Irene saw the back of Ashwin’s shirt ripple, rupturing in a plume of dust-like pink. She instinctively ducked as bullets clattered in the treetops. Ashwin stood a moment, eyes wide with surprise and the smile wiped clean. He blinked, slumped to his knees then rolled face forward.
Dirk and the others where instantly on their feet but the Colombians with their shotguns stepped in. Ashwin’s men were wide-open in the center of the compound with no place to run.
The lead Colombian took his time. He toed Ashwin’s bloody carcass, stepped over him and slowly moved to the middle of the compound. Ashwin’s men stood in a loose group, fear and anxiety evident in their eyes. The Colombian studied each of their faces intently. He moved from man to man, looking. At the end of the line, he stepped to one side and nodded.
The shot-gunners stepped forward. Each fired two blasts and Ashwin’s men were shredded in a barrage of heavy buckshot. In a heartbeat the six were reduced into a pile of bloody quivering pulp.
The Colombians turned to the women.
“Ross!” the lead man shouted in a thick accent. Irene was startled. The man knew her name. She wondered if it might be safer to stay seated, ignore him, but he was already moving toward her. He knew exactly who she was, Irene realized. And what she looked like. Irene slowly got to her feet and waited for the man to approach.
He stood in front, his gun loosely cradled across his chest and he took a moment to study her eyes. “Brad English,” he said, quite succinctly.
Irene couldn’t get her lips and tongue to form the words. Her mouth was dirt. She lifted quaking fingers and pointed to the makeshift infirmary.
The Colombian looked, his expression unreadable. He beckoned three of his men and sent them across. There was a startled cry from Brad as the men ducked under the low doorway and the flap fell back, with a certain finality.
There was a mumbled discussion taking place in the infirmary and Irene strained to hear the conversation. But she didn’t have to strain to hear Brad’s murderous screaming. It was a scream that stilled the blood, the stuff of nightmares, the sounds of a slow relentlessness death. Irene beseeched the Colombian with her eyes but he remained detached.
A moment later, Brad’s screams were stifled and a wheezing erupted, like an asthmatic old man searching for his inhaler. The halting sounds eased and the men stepped out, one holding Brad’s flight-bag. He nodded to the man in charge and pointed to the broken plane.