CHAPTER TWELVE

When the women were done in the stream, they waded ashore. The lean one wrapped the skirt around herself, and fastened it in place. The other tied on the bushy tail and adjusted it so it hung down the split of her rump, as if it were her own natural tail.

After picking up their weapons, they lifted the arms of the corpse and dragged it into the water. The body floated behind them as they waded in, swam across, and climbed the opposite shore.

Lander waited until they were out of sight. Then he rushed to the stream. He crossed it silently, breaststroking. On the other side, he quickly caught up to them. He followed for only a few minutes before reaching a firelit clearing.

He crouched in the bushes, looking out, thankful that he’d held back from attacking the women. If one had cried out…

They dragged the corpse between two heaps of foliage that looked, to Lander, like large beaver dams, six to eight feet high.

The chubby woman called out. Half a dozen figures crowded around, and lifted the body overhead.

With all the enthusiasm and cheers of a winning football team, they bore the body away.

Lander was reluctant to leave the safety of his hiding place. For a few moments, he studied the area. He saw several other tall mounds. They seemed to be shelters, huts fashioned crudely of twigs and leaves. From where he stood, he could see no one. But he heard sudden wild shouts and laughter. He had to see more.

Cautiously, he stepped into the open and dashed to the nearest hut. Staying close to it, he worked his way toward the front.

He crouched, and stared.

A dozen fires. Twice that many huts. A few figures wandering aimlessly, a few sitting by fires, and a big crowd gathered around a central fire. In the midst of the crowd, Lander saw a machete rise and fall. A cheer went up.

The crowd parted. The lean girl, the one he’d wanted to rape, made her way out of the group. Some males followed, harassing her. They seemed to want a share of her take. She laughed and waved them away.

Only one persisted. He hurried alongside her as she walked toward Lander. They talked. He held out his hand. The girl dipped something out of the bowl she was cradling. She dumped it into his outstretched hand, and he shoved it into his mouth.

They sat together at a fire, facing Lander. The girl was wet, probably sweaty. Her breasts shimmered in the firelight.

Golden.

Lovely.

Lander was hard again. He touched himself. His shaft twitched. In seconds, he could relieve the tight, aching need. His fingertips lightly stroked while he considered it.

The release would be good.

Not nearly as good, though, as pumping his load into that girl.

I won’t do that, he told himself. I’m not a beast.

But still, she was so young, so lovely. He fingered his engorged organ and watched her reach into the bowl.

God, he would like to shove…

The bowl, he suddenly noticed, had tangled white hair. The girl lifted it from her lap, offering more to the young man, and Lander saw its face.

The face of the old woman they’d dragged in. The woman Lander had killed.

The boy reached into the head. His hand dripped as he filled his mouth.

Lander turned away, gagging. He rushed from the hut, smashed through a thicket, shouldered a tree and stumbled away, twisting from the impact. As he landed on his back, he rolled to his side and vomited.

He crawled away from his mess. Slowly, he got to his feet. He brushed some dead leaves and pine needles off his wet skin, and thought about returning to the stream to wash up.

Go back to the stream, and keep going!

Get as far from this village of maniacs as his feet would take him. Try to find Cordelia.

What about Ruth?

Oh God, what about Ruth?

She might be somewhere in that village right now. Alive. Waiting for her turn to become food for these fiends.

Hell, there was a good chance of it. If these monsters had any sense at all, they would keep her alive for a while. Consume the dead carcasses before slaughtering more. It only made sense.

He had to go back.

Look for her, save her if he could.

The knife fell from his hands. He dropped to his knees, trembling.

What if they caught him?

What if they took him alive?

A coward dies many times, a brave man never tastes of death but once.

Shit. Fuck Julius Caesar. Fuck Shakespeare. Once is all it would take.

But he couldn’t survive, if he abandoned Ruth. He wouldn’t have a life afterward. Only guilt, and nothing more. It might as well end here.

The buck stops here.

The words made him feel better.

The buck stops here!

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

We band of brothers, we honored few…

The buck stops here!

Picking up his knife, he turned toward the village. In the distance, a cheer went up.

He started to run. He ran until he reached the back of the nearest hut. He worked his way alongside it. The girl was still seated by the fire, eating her grisly prize.

Others were still gathered around the main fire. One at a time, they broke away, each with a small portion of dripping flesh.

He saw no sign of Ruth. Perhaps she was kept in the darkness beyond the fires, perhaps inside a hut. Perhaps not here, at all.

A creature swung his way out of the crowd. He looked more like an ape than a man. A deformed ape, hunchbacked and legless. Though he had no feet of his own, he held a foot in his mouth. Nobody begged a bite of it, as they had begged the girl. Instead, they hurried out of his way. They seemed afraid of him. He propped himself backward against a hut, to free his hands, and began gnawing the foot.

Lander forced himself to look away from the man. He circled around to the rear of the hut, peeked to be sure nobody was nearby, then dashed across the dark space to the next one. After a quick check, he ran to the next. He crept along, staying close to it, and saw half a dozen figures gathered in front of the neighboring hut. They were seated in a circle, chattering in a language that sounded almost like German, and sharing a thigh. All but one. A girl lay on her belly between a man’s outstretched legs, her mouth latched onto his erection.

Backing off, Lander rushed into the trees. He worked his way past the group, staying hidden but close to the clearing, watching them until they were out of sight.

This seemed like a much safer way of searching for Ruth, so he stayed among the trees as he continued his passage around the village.

Soon, he was directly across from the main fire. The group there had diminished to a handful. A single man was squatting near the fire, cooking his morsel at the end of his spear. A few women–two obviously pregnant–knelt nearby, tearing at a heap of entrails. Lander hurried on.

Between two huts at the far end of the village, he found Ruth. She hung inside a tripod of tall, stout poles, suspended by one foot. Her left arm was broken backward at the elbow. As Lander approached, he watched her naked body turn slowly in the breeze.

“Oh you bastards, ” he muttered. “Oh you fucking bastards. ”

He touched Ruth’s face. His hand came away sticky and dripping.

He turned. Saw the bastards not far away, some sitting near fires, a few wandering about, one pair rutting in the dirt. He wanted to kill them, kill them all.

But not yet. First he would take Ruth away, and bury her.

Knife clamped in his teeth, he shinnied up one of the poles. The tripod wobbled. Ruth’s body swayed and turned. Her loose foot brushed across his back.

Lander slashed the cord that held her. She dropped. Her body thudded on the earth.

She groaned.

Lander let himself fall. “You’re alive! ” he gasped.

“Lander? ”

“Oh Jesus! Oh my God, you’re alive! ”

Glancing around, he saw Krulls heading his way.

Three of them. Two males, one female. They approached Lander slowly, more with curiosity than alarm. All were armed: the woman and one man with knives, the other man with a hatchet. The weapons weren’t in their hands, though. The hatchet hung at the man’s side, the woman’s knife dangled in front of her bushy pubic mound, the other man’s knife was tucked into a belt at his waist.

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.