Lander laughed.
It sounded properly maniacal.
He laughed again, turning his back to them, and began to fondle Ruth. In the darkness, naked and dirty, his face averted, perhaps he wouldn’t be recognized as a stranger.
He pushed his face against Ruth’s breasts. One hand stroked between her legs. The hair, usually crisp and springy, was matted with sticky wetness. She moaned in pain as he fingered the lips of her vagina. His other hand, hidden beneath her head, ached from its tight grip on the knife.
He climbed onto her, using his knees to spread her legs. His penis went soft. Just as well. He didn’t want to penetrate her, to hurt her more where she already hurt so much.
The semblance was enough.
He humped, grunting.
Someone stopped to his right. Squatted. Keeping his face in Ruth’s breasts, he glimpsed the man’s erection tilting skyward. He squeezed Ruth’s left breast, and pumped harder.
From the sounds, the others were all around him. He glanced to the left. The woman was crouched there, knees wide, knife hanging like a strange, steel cock.
“Bright boy,” she said. “Think you can put one over on us?”
Christ!
Sick with panic, he flung out his left hand. His fist pounded the hilt of her knife. The blade jumped, pivoted on its thong, and vanished between her legs. Her quick shriek tore his ears. He lashed sideways with his own knife, ripping into the midsection of the crouching man—the one with the hatchet.
Scrambling off Ruth, he dived onto him. Slashed the cord. Grabbed the hatchet and hacked the shin of the standing man, who yelped and fell. Lander jumped onto him, swinging the hand ax. It chopped into the side of his head.
Lander looked back. Others were coming. He crouched over Ruth, pushed his arms beneath her, and lifted. He rammed a knee into her back, forcing her upward, tugging and jostling her until she fell over his shoulder. Arm wrapped around her legs, he knelt and grabbed the hatchet. Then he ran, hugging her legs to his chest. He ran for the trees.
He moved slowly under the weight. Like running in slow motion, running through deep water.
He heard the others behind him.
Not a chance, not a chance.
A club flew past his head, pounded a tree trunk, and dropped.
Then he felt a shove. Ruth bucked. Sharpness pricked his back. Warm liquid spilled down his rump and legs. He felt another jab. Looked back.
The man behind them held a long spear forward like a vaulting pole. Its tip was buried in Ruth’s back. The man shoved, twisted, and the point again cut into Lander’s back.
Oh Jesus, it was stabbing him through Ruth!
Jabbed again, he jerked with pain. Ruth started to slide off his shoulder. He stumbled sideways. Ran into a tree. Dropped her. Turned to the man who was trying desperately to pull his spear out of Ruth, and split his head.
A dozen others were coming. Men and women. Howling, waving knives and spears.
He looked down at Ruth, a speared hump of darkness.
Then he ran.
He ran away into the trees. He ran until his lungs burned. Finally, he reached the stream. He splashed across it, scrambled up its other shore, and nearly bumped into a one-eyed man. Lander kneed him in the groin. With the hatchet, he pounded the man’s head to soft pulp.
He crouched over the body. The woods were silent. He’d left his pursuers behind, or they’d given up.
He had time.
He took the dead man’s knife. He stripped off the dead man’s leather vest, and held it to the moonlight. A fancy design on the back. A naked woman, arms stretched out, a dark orb resting in each palm. The orbs, he realized, were nipples.
The vest was chest skin from a tattooed man.
With a shiver, he put it on.
Then he ran.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cordie climbed onto the trunk of a fallen tree. She held a dead limb to steady herself, and gazed ahead. Nothing was visible in the darkness except more trees.
Ben climbed up beside her. “Which way?” he asked.
“I guess it doesn’t matter. I mean, they might be anywhere.” Cordie couldn’t keep the despair out of her voice.
“Do you want to go back?”
“Go back where?”
“Try to find the others again.”
“Oh, you know right where they are?”
“Not exactly, but…”
“How the hell are we supposed to find them, then? Just turn around and start walking? That’ll do a lot of good.” She sat on the trunk and scooted forward, her legs stretching toward the unseen ground. She pushed off. Not hard enough. A rough jutting stub of branch jabbed and scraped her back as she dropped. “Damn!” She stumbled forward, grabbing at her back.
“You hurt?”
“Yes! Shit shit shit!”
Ben leaped down.
“God damn!”
“Let me see.”
She turned away and lifted the back of her blouse.
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Kiss it and make it well. But gently.” She felt the soft brush of his lips on her back.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He stood beside her, and she took hold of his hand. She studied the dark wilderness. “I don’t know, Ben. They might be anywhere.”
“We’ll just keep going.” He shrugged. “Not much else we can do.”
“If we could just find that clearing…I thought it was this way, but…” She shook her head. “None of this looks familiar.”
“I don’t think we’ve gone far enough, yet.”
“Maybe not.”
“It’s a big clearing. We’ll probably run into it.”
“I sup—”
She staggered back as a naked boy leaped from behind a tree. He planted himself in their way, crouching slightly, one hand forward. The hand held a knife.
Cordie and Ben backed away, but the boy stepped forward, staying close to them.
“Run?” Ben whispered.
“Let’s get his knife. He’s just a kid.” Cordie lowered her eyes, hoping to spot something she could use for a weapon. The ground was too dark. But her heel knocked into a hard object. She stooped and felt for it. Her fingertips found a moist surface of bark. She grabbed, clutched a thick branch, and lifted. It started to pull free from the ground, but one end stayed down.
The damn thing was a dozen feet long!
As she let it go, the boy lunged. His knife flicked at her face. She threw out an arm to block it. The blade sliced into her forearm. Then Ben was on the boy, pulling him back, reaching for the knife hand. He couldn’t get a grip on it, but Cordie grabbed the wrist with both hands. She twisted sharply. The arm made a sound like crackling gristle. The boy cried out. The knife fell.
Cordie dropped to her hands and knees while Ben struggled to hold the writhing boy. She raked the moist ground cover. Found the knife. Got to her feet. Braced herself. “Okay, hold him.”
She pressed the point against the boy’s belly. He stopped moving.
“Where do you live?” Cordie asked.
The boy growled. His upper lip curled, baring his teeth.
“I don’t think he understands,” Ben said.
“Yeah. Maybe not.” She leaned close to the boy. “Do you speak English?”
Again, the boy growled.
“The kid’s an animal,” Ben muttered.
“Kid. I’m looking for my parents, my mom and dad. Do you know where they are? Where do you take the people you catch? Do you have a camp or something?”
“He can’t talk.”
“What’ll we do with him?” Cordie asked.
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know if we ought to let him go. No telling what he might do.”
“Well, I don’t think I’m up to butchering him. Are you?”
Ben sighed. “I guess not.”
“Hey, let’s have your belt. We can loop it around his neck, maybe use it like a leash, see where he
takes us.”
“We can give it a try.”
Keeping one arm clamped around the boy’s neck, Ben unfastened his belt and yanked it free. As he held it out to Cordie, she passed the knife to him.
She slipped the broad, leather tip through the buckle, and dropped the loop over the boy’s head. Ben forced the belt down to the thin neck. Cordie jerked it taut.
“Okay,” she said. “Let him go and we’ll see.”
Ben let go.
The boy leaped at Cordie. She sidestepped, tugging the belt, and swung him off his feet. He sprawled, choking. He clawed at his throat, but Cordie stepped on his back and kept the belt tight. He rolled. Cordie’s foot skidded off. Balance lost, she fell. The belt flew from her hands.
She saw Ben kick. His shoe slammed into the boy’s face, and the boy went down.
“He’s out,” Ben said after nudging the body.
“Dead?”
“Just unconscious, I think.”
They took the time to bandage Cordie’s cut arm. Ben used the tail of his shirt, slicing it off with the boy’s knife and tying it around Cordie’s wound.
Then Cordie knelt beside the boy. She loosened the belt. Touching his neck, she found his pulse.
“Let’s just leave him while he’s still conked out,” she said.
“Okay with me.”
Leaving the boy, they ran through the trees. They had gone no more than fifty yards when a voice boomed the single word, “KRULL!”
Not the voice of the boy.
It came from behind. Cordie stopped, and turned.
Its roar still vibrated through the woods like a furious, echoing blast of hate.
It sent a shiver of dread through Cordie. “What do you think that was?” she whispered.
“I don’t…”
The shriek of the boy ripped into her ears.
Ben grabbed her arm. “Come on.”
They ran a few steps. Then Cordie pulled free. “Wait.” She crouched behind a tree, and pulled Ben down beside her. “What’d that sound like?” she whispered.
“Like a voice out of hell.”
“I mean, didn’t it sound like somebody yelled ‘Krull,’ and then maybe killed the kid?”
“Yeah, that’s what it sounded like.”
“Maybe he’ll help us.”
“You’re nuts.”
“No, really. I mean, we’re not Krulls. Maybe he’s trying to get away from here, too. Just like us.”
“Not just like us. You heard him, for Christsake. He hardly sounded human.”
“It’d be…” Her voice froze in her throat at the loud crushing of underbrush.
Ben’s hand tightened in hers.
A tall, broad shape strode between the trees.
Cordie heard a strangled whimper inside her throat.
Ben lunged away, pulling her hand. She jerked it free. Ben glanced back.
The awful voice roared, “KRULL!”
Ben ran.
Cordie saw the hulking shape lope after him. In a patch of moonlight, she saw its shaggy arms, its thick legs.
Then there was only forest. She heard the crashing footfalls.
Ben yelled, “No! Please!”
She covered her ears.
Ben’s final cry was cut short.
She curled at the base of the trunk, and hugged her knees, and listened to the woods.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Holy shit, a cabin!”
Robbins caught up to Neala. They stopped beside Sherri, and looked through the trees.
Near the end of a long, moon-washed clearing stood a cabin of logs.
“Not bad,” Robbins said. “Let’s have a look.”
He went first, stepping into the open and pausing to scan the area. The clearing was larger than a football field, maybe a little more narrow. Watching the edges of the forest, he saw no movement. The cabin looked dark and deserted. “Stay close,” he said.
Neala stepped to his right side, Sherri to his left. He started forward, rifle ready. The ground felt springy under his boots. A cool breeze stirred across his bare arms.
He looked at Neala. She was limping. Her mouth was pressed shut as if she were biting into the pain. She looked very brave and very vulnerable. He wanted to hold her.
She saw him looking, and made a smile.
“How’re the feet?” he asked.
“They’ve seen better nights.”
He turned to Sherri. “Gonna make it?”
“First chance I get,” she said, and laughed sourly.
As they moved closer to the cabin, Robbins saw that it stood in a field of pickets. Each of the tall poles had a crossbar like the arm bones of a scarecrow. Each was topped with a dark ball.
Sherri grabbed his arm and pulled him to a halt. “Oh shit,” she gasped. “Oh fucking shit!”
“They’re heads!” Neala whispered.
Robbins squinted at the top of the nearest pole. The sphere on top was a head, all right, its dark hair drifting in the breeze. He looked from one pole to another. A head was impaled on each. “Good God,” he said. He took a step forward.
Sherri tugged his arm. “We’re not going in there!”
He turned to Neala.
She shook her head.
“The cabin,” he said.
“I don’t want to,” Neala told him in a voice like a terrified child.
Turning around, he saw movement in the woods. A face appeared beside an aspen. He raised his rifle and took aim, but the face slipped sideways. It vanished behind the trunk.
To the left, a pale body darted between trees.
Sherri groaned loudly.
“Let’s go for the cabin,” Robbins said.
Neala squeezed his arm.
A knife arched through the night, flipping end over end, its blade flashing moonlight. Robbins shoved Neala. She stumbled sideways as the knife whipped by. Robbins rushed to her.
“Let’s go,” he said, pulling her up.
“God, it would’ve…”
“It didn’t.”
They raced toward the cabin. Sherri caught up. A dozen feet before the first stake, Robbins dropped Neala’s arm and snatched the knife from the ground. “Take this,” he said. He looked back.
He saw no one.
Then he led the way among the poles, ducking beneath the crossbars. The pikes were close together. He moved carefully, afraid of bumping them, but his rifle butt knocked into one. The staff wobbled. Something dropped from above and Neala, behind him, gasped with horror. He wanted to look around, but the staffs enclosed him like a cage. He couldn’t turn without tipping others.
“You all right?” he called back.
No answer.
“Neala?”
“I’m okay,” she whispered.
“Sherri?”
“Get us out of here!”
“How’s the rear?” The words were out before he realized his mistake. “Forget—”
“Yaaaaah!”
He raised himself. His shoulder hit a crossbar. The staff wobbled in the loose earth. He clutched it to stop it from falling. Then he pivoted and looked back. Neala was still crouched low. Sherri, a distance behind her, was standing upright, back toward him, shoulders level with the crossbars, head just below the other hands.
Robbins watched her, and knew she wasn’t checking the rear for Krulls. She was gazing at the impaled heads. Dozens of them. Surrounding her. Pressing close like a hideous mob.
“Sherri!” he shouted.
She whirled around. Knocked into a pole. It fell against another, and that one tipped, and suddenly a dozen staffs were swaying and falling, their grisly ornaments jerking toward each other as if to share a secret, others thudding together, some falling and rolling.
Sherri looked at it all, then at Robbins. Her eyes and mouth were dark holes in her moonlit face.
Neala started to rise. Robbins pushed her head down. “Don’t look,” he said.
“Sherri, just come on forward.”
She
didn’t move.
“Sherri!”
“I can’t.”
“Stay right here,” he said to Neala.
Crouching below the crossbars, he made his way through the forest of pikes. When he got close to Sherri, he found the crosses standing at crazy angles. He tried to lift one out of the way. A weathered head, little more than a skull with patches of hair trailing in the breeze, wobbled in front of his face. Sickened, he dropped the pike.
He stood facing Sherri. She was several feet away. A tangle of sticks and heads separated them. Keeping his eyes on her, he began moving forward, stepping high, his boots smashing the frail crosses to the ground. Twice, his feet came down on heads. One crushed. The other tipped like a rock, and nearly sent him sprawling. He caught his balance, choked with horror at the thought of falling into such things.
Then he had Sherri by the arm.
He looked beyond her. Nobody was in pursuit.
“You all right?”
She answered with a whimper.
Holding her arm, he pulled her through the trampled mesh.
“Shut your eyes,” he said.
He looked back to make sure they were shut. Then he pulled her forward again. He told her to hold on to his belt. When he reached the first upright cross, he kicked it aside. The head flew off, but he didn’t watch. Another cross stood in his way. Cursing, he used his rifle butt to knock it away. He moved fast, smashing the barriers down.
“Neala, keep your eyes shut. We’re coming up behind you.”
He slammed the sticks out of his way. They crashed into others, heads flying.
When he was close to Neala, he uprooted three of the crosses and flung them to the sides. He stepped past her. “Grab on to Sherri. Keep your eyes shut and hang on.”
“Johnny, what…?”
“I’m getting us to that cabin.”
He shot his foot forward, kicking down a frail stick. It took down the one in front of it, and that one tore down another. As they fell, he plowed ahead and knocked down more. He swung his rifle. The butt smashed through one cross after another. He swung high and it clubbed a head. He swept low. The pikes scattered. Then there were no more in front of him. The cabin door was yards away.
Robbins turned, and saw the path he’d battered through the barrier. The passage was bordered by half-fallen crosses that teetered at strange angles.