Cordie lay on the ground, curled up and shivering at the foot of the tree, afraid to move. She’d stayed that way for a long time.
Hours must have passed since the woods echoed with the monstrous yell of the beast and she’d seen its dark shape stride through the trees. Hours since she’d heard Ben’s pleading, terrified voice. God, he must’ve met an awful death.
The thing had come her way, and passed her by.
But it might be lurking near.
She couldn’t stay on the ground much longer. She had to urinate badly, and she didn’t want to wet herself.
Finally, she rolled onto her belly. She raised her head. Her eyes searched the forest. The air had a blue-gray cast, and she could see a long distance into the surrounding trees.
With sudden dread, she realized that the night’s protective darkness was gone.
She got to her knees. Her right arm, numb from being crushed by her body for so long, hung useless at her side. Slowly, feeling returned to the arm. It tingled and burned. She shook it. She flexed her fingers. When the arm felt usable again, she stood up.
She turned slowly, studying the woods. She seemed to be alone.
Quickly, she lowered her pants. She squatted and let herself open. Her stream sounded terribly loud hitting the leafy ground. Eyes on the woods, she wished the noise would end. But she wasn’t willing to stop the flow; getting rid of the aching tightness felt so good. Finally, she finished. She stood and pulled up her pants.
For a few moments, she stared in the direction that Ben had run. She didn’t want to see his body. She couldn’t just leave, though. Not without knowing, for sure, that he was dead. To know with absolute certainty, she had to see him.
She walked slowly, trying to move with total silence. In spite of her care, each footstep caused a quiet crush of the forest debris. Not much of a sound. But enough for others to hear. Too much. She took longer strides. Though her footsteps were louder, that way, she wouldn’t need as many to reach her goal.
A goal she didn’t want to reach. She wanted only to hide.
But she had to find out.
She kept moving. She knew just where to look. All night, in her mind, she had seen Ben dart into the trees, heard him running, heard his voice. He hadn’t gone far. No farther than the distance, back home, between the front door and the kitchen.
When she saw his legs, she stopped. He was on his back, one leg straight out, the other bent sideways at the knee in a position that looked painful. The rest of Ben was hidden behind a tree.
His pants were all covered with blood.
“Ben?” she asked. The word came out as quiet as a breath.
But much too loud.
She took a step, and saw more: the lap of his pants, the bloody stomach of his shirt. She inched closer. The tree uncovered more: his chest, his out-flung right arm. With another step, she would see his face.
God, she didn’t want to!
Not dead.
Twisted and hideous with Ben’s final horror.
It would serve no purpose. He was obviously dead. She didn’t have to see his face to know that.
God, to look at it…
The face she had kissed, so long and hard, only last night.
She began to cry.
She took a step backward until the tree concealed all but his legs. She stared at them. They were blurred by her tears.
Those shoes.
She’d flung one out the car window at a drive-in movie, last week.
“Oh Ben,” she moaned.
Then she ran. She knew she was making too much noise, but she didn’t care.
Let them get me. Let them!
She ran hard. Away from Ben. Running blindly, tears in her eyes, head thrown back. Better to look at the sky, the blue morning sky, than what ever might be coming to kill her.
She crashed into a thicket. Its limbs gripped her legs, but she churned through, kicking and grunting. It couldn’t hold her back. As she broke free, though, it caught her trailing foot. It tripped her. She plunged forward, shrieked, and twisted wildly to keep from falling onto the naked boy.
The boy who’d attacked her last night.
The one slaughtered only minutes before Ben.
She hit the ground. Got to her hands and knees. Glanced at the body. Saw blood and ants, and the pulpy stump of neck where his head should have been.
Scrambling to her feet, she ran. She knew she was making too much noise.
Now, she cared.
As soon as she was well away from the body, she stopped. She looked around her.
There!
A dense thicket, off to the right.
She rushed to the high cluster of bushes. She circled it, trying to see inside. The closely packed, leafy branches blocked her view.
Perfect!
Dropping onto her belly, she squirmed forward. She pushed her way through the leaves and springy, low-hanging tendrils. Deeper and deeper into the thicket.
Finally, she stopped. She looked to each side, and saw no hint of the outside world. She rolled. Directly above, she could see a few tiny patches of sky.
Something tickled her arm.
She looked.
An ant.
Her fingertip got it. The ant left a tiny skid-mark on her skin.
“Not yet,” she muttered.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Neala woke up. Her head was on Johnny’s lap. They were still outside, Johnny sitting with his back to the cabin wall.
He smiled down at Neala. His eyes were bloodshot. His face, dark with a day’s growth of whiskers, was torn by scratches and streaked with the brown stains of dry blood. This is how soldiers must look, she thought.
Reaching up, she touched his rough cheek.
“Guess I could use a shave,” he said.
“And sleep. Did you get any sleep at all?”
“What’s that?”
His hand caressed Neala’s forehead. It felt big and warm and comforting. She drew it down to her mouth, and kissed it. Then she slipped it inside her shirt. She closed her eyes as the hand moved lightly over her breasts. It stroked the skin of her belly. She felt his hardness push against the back of her head. The hand returned to her breasts, less gentle now, squeezing and plying her rigid nipples.
She moved his hand away, and stood. Her stiff muscles ached and burned as she stretched. She smiled down at Johnny. He watched as if he knew what would happen next.
She opened her shirt, and slipped it off.
“Are you sure?” Johnny asked. “Here?”
She kept her eyes on Johnny. If she turned to the field of impaled heads, she knew she could not go through with it. “Here’s the only place we can,” she said.
“Inside?”
“Sherri.” She tugged at her belt, and opened it. “Here’s fine. In the sunlight.” She unfastened her corduroys, and slid them down her legs. Stepping out of them, she stood before Johnny, clad only in her brief pan ties. She slipped them off. The morning breeze licked her skin. The sun was warm.
She crouched in front of Johnny, and helped remove his boots and socks. Standing, he peeled off his T-shirt. As he opened his pants, Neala stroked his broad shoulders. His chest was smooth and muscular and tanned. She fingered his nipples.
He bent down to lower his pants. Then he embraced her. He was warm and big. His tongue pushed into her mouth like the phallus of a small, insistent animal.
For a long time, they held each other. They touched and probed. Then they spread their clothes on the ground.
Neala lay on her back.
Johnny knelt between her legs. His shaft was huge and solid.
It filled her, stretched her, hurt her, but the pain only sharpened her desire. She whimpered into his mouth. She clutched his buttocks as he drove into her with long, endless strokes that seemed to plunge deeper with each thrust.
Then it was too much.
He pounded, pumping, flooding her, and she tried not to cry out as she quaked with her own spasms more inte
nse than any she had ever known.
The cabin door squeaked. Opening her eyes, Neala saw Sherri step out.
“You done?” she asked, her voice sarcastic.
“For Godsake, Sherri!”
“Oh, don’t pay any attention to me.”
“Get out of here! What’s the matter with you!”
Shaking her head, Sherri gazed into the distance. “Nothing’s the matter with me. I just wonder about you two.”
“If you’ll go inside for a minute,” Johnny said, “we’ll finish up and get dressed.” His voice was calm.
“Don’t you like an audience?”
“Damn it, Sherri!”
“Well, you’ve got one. Just thought I’d let you know.” She pointed.
Neala turned her head. “Oh God,” she moaned. She gripped Johnny’s sides.
“They’ve been out there since you started,” Sherri said. “Just a couple, at first. Must be fifteen or twenty now. I guess they liked the show.”
“Don’t worry,” Johnny whispered to Neala.
He raised himself. He was still inside her, still erect. With a look of tenderness and regret, he slowly slid out. Moving on his knees, he grabbed his rifle. He stood, shouldered it, and aimed toward the scattered group beyond the barrier of heads.
Neala began to gather the cast-off clothes. She glanced up. Sherri was staring at her. “Give me a hand, damn it!”
Nodding, Sherri crouched and picked up Johnny’s boots, his socks, his pants. That took care of it. Neala rushed ahead of her into the cabin.
Sherri stopped in the doorway, and looked out. She stayed in the doorway as Johnny moved toward it.
Dropping her bundle of clothes, Neala grabbed Sherri’s arm and tugged her inside.
Sherri swung around. “Leave me alone!”
“Sherri, for Godsake, you’re acting…”
Sherri clutched Neala’s hair and jerked her head back. “Shut up,” she hissed. “Just shut your fucking mouth!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Waking up, Cordie stared through the tangled roof of bushes, and listened, afraid to move.
She heard running. She heard the jabber of voices. She heard harsh laughter. From the sounds, she guessed that half a dozen teenage kids were nearby.
The thicket no longer felt like a refuge. Now it was a trap.
She wanted to get out, to run….
They might hear her, though. They might hear her crawling over the matted leaves and twigs, and get to her before she was free. Trapped in the mesh of bushes, she would be helpless. A game for the kids.
Play with her.
Taunt her, cut her, set her on fire.
She listened to their vicious laughter, their squeals.
All around the thicket.
As if they knew she was there.
She wanted to curl up on her side and hug her knees to her breasts. She didn’t dare. Instead, she pressed her legs tightly together. She pressed her arms to her sides. She stared at the morning sky through a cross-work of limbs.
And waited.
The kids argued in sharp, high voices. Someone chuckled. Bushes rustled.
Cordie’s rigid body trembled. Her neck ached with stiffening muscles.
They know I’m here!
How could they?
She heard the sounds of someone crawling inside the thicket. Coming for her.
She sucked in her breath and held it, trying not to scream.
All other sounds stopped.
They’re listening, she thought. They’re all out there listening, waiting.
Cordie raised her head. She looked down her body, past her shoes, and saw a face appear. The face of a girl. A blond girl with twigs in her wild hair. A girl with blood smeared on her lips, her cheeks, her chin.
She was young. Thirteen or fourteen. Her tanned shoulders were bare.
As the girl crawled closer, Cordie heard herself gulping quick, short breaths. Like a dog with a nightmare. Swallowing, she choked and gasped for air.
The girl moved alongside Cordie. The skin of her back was crosshatched with scratches, smudges of dirt. Her buttocks were bleeding from scratches like the rake marks of fingernails.
She sat up and crossed her legs. “I’m Lilly,” she said. “What’s your name?”
Cordie mumbled her name.
“What?”
“Cordelia.”
“That’s a weirdo name.” She wrinkled her nose. “What kind of a weirdo name is that?”
“Who are you?”
“Lilly.”
“You’re one of them?”
“Sure.” Lilly scratched one of her small, cone-shaped breasts. “I’ve been with ’em a couple of years. It’s fun.”
“Fun?”
“Shit yes!” She giggled. “No school, nobody telling you what to do, fucking all the time. It’s great. You’ll like it.”
Cordie shook her head.
“You’ll love it, really.”
“You’re murderers.”
“Sure. It’s a gas. Anyway, you’re supposed to come out.”
“What for?”
The girl smiled and shrugged. “You don’t want to stay in here.” Leaning forward, she propped her elbows on her knees. She whispered, “If you don’t come out, the boys, they’ll have to come in. They won’t like that. They’d have to crawl. So you’d better just come out with me.”
Cordie shook her head.
“They’ll get real mad. It’ll spoil your chance.”
“Chance of what?”
“Joining up. They just won’t let you, if they’re pissed.”
“What happens if I join up?”
“Then we don’t kill you.”
“But what happens?”
“Well, after the boys look you over, you’ve gotta get initiated. Then you’re one of us, and you can live free in the woods like we do.”
Cordie rested her head on the ground. She stared through the lacework of branches. The sky was pale and cloudless. “If I join up, they won’t kill me?”
“Not if they like you.”
“I have to…make them like me?”
“Right.”
“And then they won’t kill me?”
“You’ll be one of us. That’s how I joined up. That’s how a lot of us did.”
“All I have to do is go out there, and…and let the guys screw with me or something? And that’s it. They won’t kill me or anything, they just want to screw me?”
“Yeah. That’s about all. Then we’ll take you to the village, see. You’ll have to go through some shit there, but it’s nothing. Old Grar has to give you the okay, stuff like that. Nothing to worry about. Come on.”
Cordie lay still, afraid to move.
God, she didn’t want to go out there!
“The guys are gonna get tired of waiting.”
“Okay,” she said.
“You first.”
She forced herself to move. She turned around, and began to squirm forward on her belly, head down.
What if the girl was lying?
What if they planned to kill her?
But she had no choice.
She kept inching forward.
Then she saw them. Three of them. Teenage boys. Squatting naked in the sunlight just outside the bushes, staring in at her.
She stopped, cramped with fear, and looked back at Lilly.
“Keep going.”
She shook her head.
“Go on.”
“No!”
At a sound of crushing foliage, she snapped her head forward. Two of the boys were scurrying toward her, smashing aside the bushes in their way.
“No!” she shrieked.
She kept shrieking as they grabbed her arms and dragged her from the thicket.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Why don’t they come?” Neala said, whispering so she wouldn’t wake Johnny.
“You sound like you want ’em to,” Sherri said.
“Hardly.” She was dressed and standing
in the doorway, watching the distant Krulls. Several times, she had tried to count them. They kept moving, though—some vanishing into the woods, others appearing. She counted twenty, twenty-four, nineteen, twenty-six. They seemed to be doing nothing special. Just milling about. She couldn’t see them well because of the crosses and heads.
“It’s like they’re waiting for something,” Neala said.
“Yeah. For us. Why don’t we shut the door?”
“We’ve got to watch.”
“We can,” Sherri said. She closed and latched the door. “Over here.” She stepped sideways through the darkness, and lifted one of the deer skins draping the front wall. Sunlight spilled through the gaps between the logs.
So this was how Sherri spied on them, Neala thought. Anger and humiliation began to burn in her. How much had Sherri watched? The whole thing? Had it turned her on?
God, how could she sink that low! Her best friend!
Reaching up, Sherri yanked the deer skin loose. She flung it aside. “That’s better,” she muttered.
Neala peered through a crack. She could see exactly where she’d been with Johnny. She looked up, saw the Krulls still wandering beyond the stakes, and lowered her eyes again to the spot where she’d made love to Johnny.
“Why’d you do it?” she whispered.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“Look, I said I’m sorry.”
“I know. I don’t want another apology. I want to know why. You’re my best friend, Sherri. How could you stand here and spy on me like that?”
“We’re all going to die here. You know that, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You think your Johnny will wave a magic wand and—Presto!—we’re home again?”
“Hardly.”
“Those people out there—those things—they’re going to get us sooner or later. And it won’t make a damn bit of difference why I watched you, will it?”
“It makes a difference to me now.”
“Suit yourself,” Sherri said.
“Tell me.”
“Just let it go.”
“I can’t. Not if we’re going to stay friends.”
“Shit.”
“Okay. If that’s all it means to you…”
“You have no idea what you mean to me. Not the slightest.”