Crisis Event: Jagged White Line (6 page)

“We got him alive. He’s hurt.”

“Did you not hear me tell you to kill him!?” the man yelled, and when the voice at the other end didn’t respond the man yelled: “You ain’t trying to be Saul against the Amelekites, are you?

“No sir,” the voice said.

“Well do what you’re told, boy!”

“Yes sir,”

Sadie heard a distant shot so faint she wondered if it was real. She felt a wave of dread and fear wash over her and wobbled on her feet. She wanted to throw herself down on the ground and refuse to walk. Only the fear of the man’s horsewhip kept her moving.

Her grandfather’s voice tried to comfort her.

“Keep playing along,” his voice said. “You’ll get away. Just be ready.”

Sadie wasn’t so sure, and chided herself once again for sticking her nose into the Tall Man’s business. If only she’d kept hidden and avoided human contact….

But she hadn’t, and as a dim orange light grew brighter and closer, the dark outline of the old farmhouse she’d seen two days before came into focus. Sadie shuddered. She was going to have to kill someone, she realized. Maybe several someones.

Let’s get to it then, she thought as a rectangle of light appeared ahead and a shadowy figure appeared in the doorway of the old two-story farmhouse.

Chapter 7

    “Let’s get those filthy socks and underwear off,” said a woman with braided and pinned blonde hair. She held an oil lantern in one hand and a pistol in the other.

    The woman couldn’t have been much older than Sadie, but her attitude and appearance was so foreign that Sadie couldn’t believe the woman had ever lived in the 21st century. She wore a loose, pale blue dress that covered her entire body like a sack, from her neck to her bare red toes. She and the man had forced Sadie to take off her boots, pants and shirt outside the house and leave them on the wide wooden porch next to the back door. They hadn’t seen the ankle monitor since Sadie had pulled her sock up over it.

    Behind Sadie, an old clawfoot bathtub with scratches and gouges in the white porcelain stood waiting with steaming bubble-bath water in it. The smell of lavender wafted up from the tub. Next to it, resting on a small triangle shelf built into the corner, sat a Bible. A candle flickered beside it.

    “Why are you doing this?” Sadie asked.

    “It’s God’s will,” the woman said with a loud voice. Then she whispered: “Get in there or he’ll beat us both.”

    The woman hung the lantern from a rope and hook suspended from the bathroom ceiling. Then she turned away from Sadie and lifted the back of her dress.

    Sadie gasped when she saw the criss-crossing red welts covering the woman’s hamstrings and thighs and buttocks beneath her baggy white panties. The welts were raised and inflamed, and some of them glinted with fresh blood.

    “He did that because I moaned too loud when he was screwing me this morning,” she whispered. “Moaning during sex is a sin.”

    Sadie, who didn’t move to take off her panties or bra or socks, stood staring as the woman turned and dropped her hem.

    “He’ll whip you for anything,” she said.

    “I noticed,” Sadie said, and rubbed her wrist. “And he’ll die for it.”

    The woman’s eyes widened and rolled toward the bathroom door.

    “Don’t say that,” she whispered.

    “Ya’ll hurry up in there,” the man’s voice boomed through the door.

“Come on,” the woman whispered, and put her hands together as if she were pleading for her life.

“I don’t want to see my son’s wife naked…” the man said, though Sadie thought she detected a note of amusement in his voice that belied his words. “But if I
have
to come in there and hurry you up, I’m sure God’ll forgive me for it.”

    The woman holding the pistol sagged against the door as if her legs had gone weak, and Sadie wondered why she didn’t just turn and empty her gun into the old bastard.

    “Please,” the woman whispered. She lowered the pistol. “Get in. This isn’t even loaded. I just wanted to scare you so he won’t whip us.”

    Sadie made a calculation concerning the lunacy she’d witnessed thus far and said, “You mind?” The woman with the pistol looked away and Sadie quickly peeled off her remaining clothes and stepped into the tub.

    “Samuel’s going to be a happy man,” the woman said. “You might be happy too, if you accept this. He’s good looking. And he’s kind. It’s good you don’t have any tattoos like me. You better get in before it gets cold.”

    Sadie sat down in the steaming, soapy water and gasped. She couldn’t remember the last time bathing hadn’t meant rubbing a gummy bar of soap over her body after splashing cold toilet tank water over her skin. Despite her fear and anger and determination to kill the man who’d whipped her, she wanted to lie back and rest for a week.

    “What’s your name?” Sadie asked.

    The woman flicked her eyes toward the door and knelt beside the tub.

    “I used to be Madelyn Linville,” she whispered. Then she sneered and said: “I’m...Beulah. It means ‘married.’ You believe that? I’m married to Noah. Now hurry up.”

    “I’m not calling you ‘Beaulah,” Sadie said. “Fuck that.”

    “Quiet!” Madelyn whispered. “Don’t ever curse or he’ll beat you half to death.”

“Who are these people?” Sadie asked, and looked for a weapon. She saw nothing.

    “Your new family. If you can keep from getting killed. We had this one girl who wouldn’t stop fighting. Eli’s wife. She ran off and Eli and Samuel went after her.”

“What happened?” Sadie asked.

“They said they killed her for disobedience,” the woman whispered. “But I’m not sure. She was ugly so I think they let her get away. There’s always more people coming by.”

Sadie lay back in the tub.

“You aren’t ugly, though,” the woman said. “The boys won’t kill you, but Noah might. Use this soap.”

Sadie had never enjoyed the smell of lavender, but the warm water made the scent somewhat tolerable. She used the bar of soap Madelyn gave her, and when she’d finished and the water had turned gray, Madelyn brought out a small shampoo bottle and squirted a tiny amount into Sadie’s hair.

“Spa treatment,” Sadie sneered.

“It’s your wedding day,” Madelyn said. “Better try to look good. I know it’s hard, but you don’t have any choice.”

“I’m’ not getting married,” Sadie said. “And I’ll kill the first man who touches me.”

“That’s what I said,” Madelyn said as she lathered up Sadie’s hair. “Until Noah tied me up in the backyard and went after me with his whip for an hour.

“Jesus,” Sadie said. “Why don’t you run away?”

Madelyn stopped lathering Sadie and leaned in close to her ear.

“Haven’t you been out there?” she whispered. “You know how many times I got raped in Steubenville before Noah bought me? I’d have died in another day or two. At least here we get plenty of food. Noah’s got a whole basement full. Enough for years.”

Sadie felt her stomach clench.

Callie’s going to Steubenville.

“What were you doing in Steubenville?”

“I was just trying to get across the river,” Madelyn said. “My brother’s in Chicago. If he’s still alive. Steubenville’s got the only bridge. They blew up all the rest of them. But things are bad there. Real bad.”

“You still haven’t told me why you don’t run away.”

Madelyn laughed.

“This place may suck, but it doesn’t suck as bad as out there. At least here I’m only getting raped by one man, and he’s so old he can’t last more than about a minute if I get him worked up. Small price for food and shelter.”

Sadie’s eyebrows went up. Then she realized the face she was making.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Madelyn said quietly. “I disgust myself. I used to be a feminist. I guess I wasn’t a very good one.”

“Who am I to judge,” Sadie said, and felt a rush of gratitude that she’d been able to hide out in Boston for the first three months of the crisis. Thanks to her grandfather. Back before he’d died—several years before the Crisis—he’d signed her up for some long-term survival planning package he found on the internet. The company sent her thirty MREs a month, which she shoved into the back of her closet and kept hidden from her useless boyfriend.

Sadie remembered the look on her boyfriend’s face when he’d found them one day—the contempt and amusement. Then there was the crap he’d given her for a week.

“Special Ops Sadie,” he’d called her—until one afternoon she’d grabbed his testicles and told him to stop.

“Some people get lucky in life,” Sadie said. “Some don’t.”

Madelyn dropped her voice to a whisper. “I sure as hell didn’t get lucky. I’ve got a fifty-two year-old geezer’s baby in my belly, and no hospital or doctor in sight. Anything goes wrong, I’m dead. Hell, if everything goes right, the best I can hope for is he’ll knock me up again so we can replenish the fucking planet for Jesus.”

“You could run away with me.”

A sudden “BOOM!” on the bathroom door made Madelyn squeal.

“You got sixty seconds to get out of there,” Noah yelled.

“Come on,” Madelyn said, and snatced up a bucket from the floor. “Stand up.”

Sadie pushed herself up and Madelyn lifted the bucket of clean water and poured it down over Sadie’s head. Rivulets of warm water sluiced down her back and buttocks and over her legs and splashed into the tub.

Madelyn grabbed Sadie’s hand and pulled her out of the tub. She took a towel and from a rack and began to pat Sadie’s back and breasts and belly and arms.

“What’s that on your ankle?”

“Tracking monitor,” Sadie said.

“You got someone coming for you?” Madelyn asked.

“Any time now, probably,” Sadie said, and imagined what Titman and his two maniacs would order Blakely’s men to do to this place.

“Noah!” Madelyn screamed, and leapt for the door.

Sadie heard the man’s boots pounding the floor as Madelyn shoved the bathroom door open and stepped into the lantern-lit hallway.

Sadie wrapped the towel around herself as he arrived.

“She’s got an ankle tracker!” Madelyn yelled. “We’ve got to get her out of here!”

“She ain’t going nowhere,” Noah said, and for the first time Sadie saw him without a respirator and a pair of night vision goggles covering his face.

He looked every bit of fifty-two, with a decade tossed in for good measure. His forehead was a deep-lined field of wrinkled flesh and his nose was a bulbous gourd turned permanently rough and red from sunburn. He had stripped out of the black coveralls he’d worn when he’d captured her, and now he was in a pair of bluejeans and a white shirt.

“But someone’s coming for her, Noah,” Madelyn whined, and Sadie couldn’t tell if she meant what she was saying, or if she was just trying to sound loyal in case Noah’s family came out on top. “She can’t stay here.”

“Someone comes for her, God will deliver them to us,” Noah said. “Now get her into her dress. The boys’ll be back and I want her ready to go.”

“Yes sir,” Madelyn said, and the man leaned forward to give her a quick peck on the cheek. He turned and saw Sadie looking at him.

“Get yourself covered,” he said. “Don’t stand around like a hussy.”

“Give me my clothes and I will. Then I’ll be on my way.”

Noah reached for his belt at the same moment Sadie reached for the lantern. Sadie was quicker.

She hadn’t really planned on fighting yet, and had hoped for some food first, but she had the advantage since Noah didn’t appear to have a gun on him. If he did, wasn’t going for it.

Sadie slid the lantern off its hook and stepped forward, letting go of her towel at the same time. Noah’s eyes went wide and darted to her breasts, then lower.

Once again Grandad’s right. Every stinking one of them thinks with their pecker.

Sadie watched the belt buckle separate from the other end of the belt and the leather strip slid through Noah’s belt loops. She smiled when she realized she’d beaten him, then swung the lantern backwards and brought it whizzing forward as her shoulders came even with the door frame.

The lantern arced upward and smashed into Noah’s crotch.

“Oh!” Noah said, and dropped the belt at the same moment Sadie dropped the lantern. She watched Noah double forward as she stepped backward into the bathroom. Oil spread over the hardwoods and caught fire from the lantern wick.

“You whore!” Noah shouted.

The fire spread quickly, but not so fast that Madelyn couldn’t snatch up Sadie’s towel from where it lay on the floor in the doorway, and begin to beat at the flames.

Noah, whose right pants leg had caught fire at the ankle, alternated between slapping the flames and cradling his crotch.

Sadie slammed the bathroom door and turned the old brass lock until it clicked into place. Then she ran to the window and looked through its latticed panes.