“Again,” ordered the General, his voice bored. “Until she’s clean, I said.”
Elanna crouched, cringing, waiting for the blast of icy water. In a second it came, full force, stinging like a thousand needles piercing her skin. She gasped, helpless, the frigid water shocking the breath from her lungs.
“Stand up!” Kodak, who held the hose, turned the nozzle again, and again the water blasted forth.
Elanna turned, letting the water strip away Lansing’s blood and praying they’d finish soon. Even over the roar from the hose, she could hear the tiny boy crying from his place on the floor. He would be getting wet, too, she thought as she pushed her hair off her face with numbed fingers. She had to get him off the floor, and dry.
“Enough,” said the General.
Kodak, chuckling with evil glee, continued to spray the water. She aimed for Elanna’s softest parts, her breasts, belly and the juncture between her legs, and also her eyes. Elanna raised her hands to block the sting from her face.
Abruptly the blast of water stopped. Elanna opened her eyes to see Kodak kneeling in front of the General, who had both hands knitted into her hair.
“I gave you an order,” The General said, staring down at Kodak without expression. “Isn’t that right, you little bitch?”
“Sir, yes Sir!” Kodak said in a strangled voice.
“And you ignored my order, didn’t you, bitch?”
“Sir, yes Sir!”
The General pushed her away from him so that she sprawled in a puddle of icy, dirty water. “And what punishment do you think is appropriate for such a misdemeanor, soldier?”
Kodak shook her head, seemingly without words. Elanna began to shiver. She found the towel-wrapped child along the wall and gathered it to her chest. Its tiny lips were blue, and it shivered. It had stopped crying.
“I can think of a lot of things,” the General said in a mild voice. He sounded like he was talking about the weather. “But I think I’ll just send you away for now, Kodak. You’re denied the privilege of helping me with this interrogation.”
“No!” Kodak cried, standing. “No, Sir, I --”
“Shut the fuck up,” the General said in the same mild tone. “And get out. Before you make me angry.”
Kodak scuttled away, out the door. The General turned, looking at Elanna with a bored face. She stared back at him defiantly.
“This baby needs dry clothes. And food.”
“Why do you care so much about that thing? It isn’t even yours.”
Elanna looked down at the sweet face, sunk into exhausted sleep. “How can you not care? It’s yours.”
In reply, he tossed her a soft, dry blanket from the table next to his chair. Both table and chair were on a small raised platform, above the water that swirled only sluggishly down the drain in the center of the room. Elanna managed to catch the blanket, and she let the child’s dirty, sodden towel fall on the floor.
As the blanket warmed it, the little boy began to root again, nuzzling instinctively at her breast. The familiar sensation tugged her nipples. Elanna let him suckle, though she wasn’t certain he’d bring anything forth. The suckling soothed the baby, anyway, even as the unforgettable feeling of it clenched her womb. She felt a fine trickle of blood on her thigh but had nothing with which to wipe it away.
She glanced up to find the General looking at her with amazed disgust plain on his face. He shuddered and seemed to force back a gag.
“God,” he muttered. “That’s how they eat?”
Elanna didn’t answer. She was shivering too violently. She looked longingly at the pile of clothes on the table.
He saw her looking. “Cold?”
The General flicked a switch and overhead lights the color of fire came on, bathing everything in a hot glow. She felt the heat from them and raised her face to it, grateful. So intense was the heat that it dried her in minutes, and a few minutes more made the room start to become unbearably hot.
“I don’t mind the heat myself.” The General smiled thinly, avoiding looking at her chest. “I’m always cool.”
The infant had fallen slack-lipped from her breast. It slept, tiny fists curled and cheeks pink. His tuft of pale hair had dried, sticking up from his pulsing skull. He was beautiful.
“If it’s done,” the General said, “put it down and stand in front of me.”
He gestured to a basket she hadn’t seen before. They could have put the baby in it before, she thought furiously as she placed the sleeping boy in it. Instead they’d tossed him to the floor like garbage. She shot a livid glance at the General. He saw her looking, and smiled.
“Here, in front of me,” he repeated, gesturing.
She did, lifting her chin and refusing to show her fear.
“Not afraid to show your tits, huh?”
Elanna frowned. She looked down at herself, cleaned of blood and grime. Her nipple, where the baby had suckled, was red and rigid, though the color was fading back to its normal pale pink.
“Why would I be?” He couldn’t know, she reflected, that she’d stood naked before men so many times it meant nothing to her.
He looked at her speculatively. “You’re not one of them. Those Plain assholes.”
“No.”
His eyes flicked down to her leg. She expected more disgust, but the sight of her blood didn’t seem to offend him. “You on the rag?”
“What?”
He pointed. “That. You’re bleeding.”
“I…I had a miscarriage a few days ago,” she said with dignity.
He tossed her a towel. “Wipe it off.”
She did, but more came to take its place. She tucked the towel between her legs, knowing she looked awkward and embarrassed. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Christ, you’re stacked,” the General said. “Turn around.”
She hesitated a second before complying, and he was on his feet and in her face in a second. He didn’t touch her, didn’t grab her, but his look was so menacing it made her stumble back a step. The towel fell off. Her feet sloshed in the last remnants of the water.
“When I give an order, I expect it to be done. Immediately.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers,” she said.
He stared at her. “You think I give a fuck? You do what you’re told.”
She lifted her chin. “Or what?”
He cocked his head like a curious bird. “Or I hurt you.”
She would have been less frightened if he’d yelled. She thought again that if he were crazy she’d know how to react, how to watch him and expect him to behave. But this soft voice, this calm exterior, scared her more than rolling eyes and ranting would have.
“Is that how you get them to do what you want?” She asked, quaking inside. “Is that how you got Amy into your bed?”
Now his eyes flickered. She saw his fists clench and release, so fast she might have imagined it. She’d struck him in a vulnerable spot.
“Don’t even let her name get dirty on your lips,” he said in a low voice. “Sit down. There, on my chair. Put a fucking towel down first so you don’t get blood all over it.”
“And if I don’t?”
He looked at her naked body, blood trickling down her thighs, and then met her eyes. “You can’t stand against me, bitch. My soldiers can’t, and you sure as hell can’t. Don’t even try.”
She didn’t think he was joking, but something inside her made her resist.
“Az men ken nit beissen, zol men nit veizen di tsain,” she muttered in Yiddish. Those who can’t bite should not show their teeth.
“A hunt on tsain varft zich oich oif a bain,” he answered, shocking her. “A dog without teeth also attacks a bone.”
“You understood?”
“Of course I do,” he replied. “How do you expect to know your enemy if you can’t speak their language?”
He was talking about the Plain People. “They don’t have to be your enemy,” she said.
“We were sent here to keep pea
ce and order,” he muttered.
“That was a long time ago. Things have changed. And they are peaceful --”
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything.”
“So is that all you are?” she asked. “A dog?”
“Sit down in that chair,” the General told her in that same calm voice, “Or I slice that lump of shit in that basket into a hundred different pieces and feed him to my troops.”
She looked at the baby, who still made no peep. “You can’t!”
“I can,” the General said, and Elanna knew he’d just discovered her weak spot. He wouldn’t hesitate to use it. “Don’t think I won’t.”
Elanna sat, her brief resistance gone. “Don’t hurt the baby.”
“Put your arms on the arms of the chair.”
When she did, he reached deftly beneath them and pulled up the straps she hadn’t noticed. He fastened them in mere seconds, pulling them tight enough to cut into her flesh. He tied one more over each wrist, rendering her hands immobile. More straps came out to pinion her legs and feet to the chair legs. She couldn’t move. The seat was hard and unforgiving, especially against her bare skin. She’d forgotten to put down the towel.
Elanna winced but said nothing. She thought about the baby. Thought that soon it would wake on its own, hungry again, and that soon she’d have to find something better for it to wear. Cloths for diapers, and a softer blanket…
When the General ripped off the fingernail from her right forefinger, Elanna threw back her head at the agony of it. She wanted to scream, tried to scream, but sheer pain had knocked her breathless. She writhed in her bonds, barely even able to squirm.
“Shhh,” said the General soothingly. “Don’t wake the baby.”
The baby. The baby. She had to think of the child whose life she’d saved. The unwanted infant whose mother died to bring it life. The baby.
Her chin slumped to her chest, and she saw the bloody ruin of her finger. He’d used a pliers, and now he tapped them gently into the palm of his hand. And smiled at her. Hateful, hateful smile.
“On second thought,” the General said, leaning close to her so his cheek pressed against hers, “who gives a shit about that baby? Scream for me, pretty lady. Scream real loud.”
Elanna found she had no choice.
−
47-
General Adam Townsend waited until the bitch’s screams died away on their own rather than plug her mouth with one of the dirty cloths he usually saved for that purpose. He watched her dispassionately as she sagged in the torture chair. There was much, much more he could do here, but suddenly he didn’t feel like it anymore.
He realized he was bored. And tired. And jeezly Christ, his eyes stung with a sensation he remembered from when he was a child, though it had been more than thirty years since the last time he’d actually wept.
Amy was dead, killed by the brat he’d got on her. He glanced over at the thing in its basket. Like the woman before him, it had screamed itself silent too. Adam repressed a shudder as the basket moved a little when the creature inside it waved its arms.
“Why?” The woman asked him. Elanna. He remembered them saying her name was Elanna, and now she looked up at him from red-rimmed eyes.
Unbroken, he thought with amazement. She was still able to talk, still able to question him. He looked at his pliers, a trusty and well-used tool, but didn’t feel like using them. He didn’t feel, Adam realized as he tossed them to the ground, like hurting her anymore.
“Why what?” He asked her, more from surprise that she’d asked him then any desire to actually talk to her.
“Why…do this to me?” She wheezed. Snot and tears dripped from her face. Her tits and thighs and belly bore the marks of his hands.
With something like shock, he realized he didn’t even feel like fucking her. The stinging in his eyes grew worse. Could it be, he thought, that he was grieving for Amy?
“Because I can,” he replied. “Because you took something away from me that I….”
He stopped, stunned. “That I loved.”
“…didn’t….” Elanna breathed. Her eyes drooped, and then her head fell back down.
Adam tried to find the anger that simmered beneath the surface of his emotions for as long as he could remember. The anger had helped him rise through the admittedly sorry ranks of what remained of this poor excuse for an army. It had let him demand, and receive, the power which had forced the few remaining oldsters, those who didn’t agree with his policies, to back down and obey his orders. It was even the anger that fueled the charms that had wooed the growing army of girl-soldiers into abandoning their parents and making him their leader.
Their lover, their father, their God. The one who commanded them to force the rest of the adults, those who wanted to defy him, out of the barracks and away. He was the man who’d ordered the barrier, who’d overseen the teams of girls, none older than twelve then, as they’d ransacked the countryside looking for things to use in building the wall. And when their parents, the oldsters, the ones who thought it might be time to put down the guns and stop the war, had tried to cross and reclaim their children, he’d been the man who’d led those girls into the fray. They’d slaughtered that off-shoot army, and left their sad, tired bodies to rot as a lesson to anyone else who thought to cross him.
For ten years he’d fucked and bullied his way through the battalion of young girls and women he’d inherited. Trained them to be strong and hard, and unforgiving, just as he’d been trained. Trained them to be soldiers. None had ever died. And he’d never loved any of them until Amy.
“Agh, Christ,” he muttered. “Jumped up fucking Jesus on a crutch.”
Elanna didn’t say anything. He thought she might have passed out, finally. The thought of rousing her for more punishment didn’t even get his cock to twitch, much less make him hard. He was tired, dammit.
The baby in the basket let out a peep. Then the anger came back, not full force but a taste of it was enough. Adam leapt up on the platform and stood over the basket in three swift steps. Fists clenched, he looked inside at the thing that had grown inside Amy Lansing and killed her by being born.
It had been twelve years since he’d even seen a baby. Sophie Dallas was the last one born here, and he guessed she was a big part of why the oldsters had finally turned against him. They’d called him a monster and a pervert, and why? Because he took a taste of what had been practically shoved in his face?
So what if Sophie’s mother had only been twelve years old? Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed. He didn’t stop taking what he wanted just because they ordered him to. Little Sophie’d still been pissing in her diapers when the great barrier war had gone down. She hadn’t even been there. Probably why she was no good as a soldier, either.
This baby didn’t look anything like he remembered. This one was plump and rosy cheeked, batting its tiny fists in the air and squirming in its blanket. It had golden fuzz on its head. As he watched, it kicked off its blanket and pissed, sending a surprisingly strong stream of urine into the air.
Adam jumped back, grunting with disgust. This thing had grown for nine months inside Amy’s womb, then torn itself out of her. It had killed her.
He glanced back at Elanna, still slumped in her chair. He’d taken no pleasure in her screams or her blood. Hadn’t even managed to get it up enough to fuck her like she deserved to be fucked. And why? Because this little ankle-biter in the basket had killed Amy.
For the first time in ten years he didn’t want to be in charge any more. He didn’t want to make the orders, or run the drills. He wanted to crawl into the bed he and Amy had shared, and put his face in her hair that always smelled like springtime, and feel her arms around him.
When had she turned from just another of the girl soldiers he’d taken to bed, to the girl who could make him laugh just by crossing her eyes? He’d told himself it was just because she was so great in the sack that he’d stopped fucking anyone else. How could he not have know
n that he loved her?
Christ, this was fucked up. He scrubbed his face, feeling the stubble there. Everything was shit. He didn’t care about the bitch in the chair. He didn’t even care about the car she’d come in, or the all the stuff in it.
In his whole miserable fucking life he’d only really cared about one thing, and now Amy Lansing was dead. What else really mattered? Commanding a bunch of women in an army that hadn’t been any good in over a hundred years? Harassing those Plain morons down in the valley?
The baby yawned and whimpered, but Adam only looked at it with loathing. He didn’t want a kid. Not even a boy child he could train to be just like him. He’d kill the brat and kill the bitch, and then maybe he’d kill the rest of them, too. Better yet, he’d order Kodak to do it. She was one cold bitch, and she’d get more pleasure from doing it than he would anymore. He’d toss her that bone. He guessed, after all these years, he might owe her that much.