She could not fight him. She could not run. She felt bruised in all the places where he'd caught onto her to drag her back. He was going to do it anyway. She watched him, panting, submissive and only wanting it over with.
"That's better. Now say it again. 'I want you to fuck me.'"
"Iwantyoutofuckme."
"That's not good enough. You have to sound like you really mean it. You sound like you're doing me a favor, and I don't like that. You're not ready yet, are you?"
He stood above her and shucked his jeans, preening for her. The first fingers of dawn light had crept from behind the trees, and she could see his pale solid flesh and the terrible jutting penis. He was immense. Monstrous. He would split her cleanly in two with it and leave her bleeding
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in the meadow to rot in the sunlight, just as Danny lay rotting somewhere behind them in the shadows. Danny had died with more dignity. She was a thing now, something for the red man to play with.
She shut her eyes tightly and waited for him to do it to her. She felt him turning her body as if she were a doll. He was taking too long, folding her clothing carefully and laying her things in the weeds. She felt him looking at her.
He was touching her again with his thick fingers.
"You're sweating. You're getting hot."
A finger moved beneath her breasts, sliding across the cold perspiration and then down, circling her navel and poking into it. Over the flare of her hipbones. She felt him turning her over and panicked.
"No . . . please—"
His hands cupped the cheeks of her buttocks, and then the awful tracing started again. There was no part of her that would belong to her when he was finished. Nothing. The finger moved deeply along the crease and prodded, trying to enter there. She held her breath, too terrified even to pray.
Finally, the hands turned her onto her back again, and she thought that now—
"You're not wet enough. You're holding back from me."
"... no."
"Don't lie!"
He was between her legs, his hands almost lazy. Touching, rubbing. He stopped for a moment and she opened her eyes and saw that he was staring down at her crotch, his mouth open and slack. He caught her looking at him and smiled.
"You like this. You love it, don't you?"
She shut her eyes.
"I'll bet you taste sweet."
"No . . ."
"Oh yes, you do." She felt his lips and tongue violate what had been her private center. Danny had never done this to her. The red man made some noise, some humming growl against her most vulnerable flesh. He seemed about to
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bite into her and leave her bleeding. "You do taste sweet. Taste." He plunged one finger deep into her and withdrew it, bringing it up to her lips. She clenched her teeth.
"I said taste it!"
His finger forced its way in, past her lips, cutting her teeth, and she tasted blood and a muskiness that must have come from herself.
"See?"
"Yes. Just do it if you're going to. Please."
"Beg me."
"Please . . ."
"Say, 'I'm begging you to fuck me.'"
"I'm begging you .. ."
"To fuck me."
". . . to fuck me."
"On your knees."
"I can't move."
He yanked her by the hair and her body rose up to its knees. She repeated whatever he wanted to hear.
"Where do you want it?"
"What?"
"Where? In the mouth? In the ass? In the pussy?"
".. . in the ... pussy."
He hurt her more than she had ever been hurt, at first a tearing pain in her pelvis, and then something shattered inside, and she could no longer tell where the damage was centered. She heard him gasping out words against her ear, but could not grasp their meaning and did not want to know. It went on for a very long time, until she was sure that he was killing her; all she knew for certain was the pain. He drove himself into her rhythmically and then faster and faster, his face a set mask—so red from the sun that shone directly into her own eyes—and there was finally no sound except for the slap, slap, slap of his thighs against hers and the screaming in her head. Suddenly, he whimpered and gasped, and stopped, rolling off her in flopping motion. 161
She did not turn her head. She could see the sky and a hawk sliding on the wind above her, could feel some insect creeping in the sweaty furrows of her neck. The red man gulped for air and sighed to himself.
She knew that she would kill him. She would find some way to smash him and smash him until he was no longer recognizable. And then she would go to Danny and lie down beside him and wait for death to cleanse her.
He leaned over her and she flinched, but he only kissed her cheek and patted her shoulder. Did all men do that, even rapists? She felt hysterical laughter bubble up, but it emerged a sob. He let her crawl away now without protesting or grabbing for her and she searched through the grass until she found her clothes. She dressed with her back to him, but he said nothing.
She saw that he was asleep, his face soft and open. He was not afraid of her, and he didn't move at all when she walked away. If he woke, she would tell him she had to go into the woods to pee, and he would believe that. She had to find a weapon. His guns were somewhere in the pack underneath his head, and even if she could get to them without waking him, she didn't know how guns worked. Danny had tried to show her so many times. Why hadn't she paid attention? She could not kill him with her bare hands. It had to be with something that would stun him as he slept. If he was conscious, he would kill her. He was going to kill her anyway when he was done with her.
She couldn't find a club. The fallen boughs were either too big for her to carry, or so rotten that they crumbled in her hands as she lifted them.
The rocks were too round, with no true cutting edges, and they were covered with moss. After a half hour she found one rock, heavy—but liftable—and chipped cleanly on one side, sharp enough perhaps to sever an artery. She cradled it against her breasts and carried it back toward the treacherous meadow. Killing him might possibly wash him out of her body and her mind. She could still smell him; his semen drained out of her and she shuddered. She would not be clean if she bathed for days.
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The rock was warm and solid and the feel of it calmed her and her rage calmed her, but her legs trembled.
He was still asleep, on his back now, one arm flung across the place where she had lain. He did not hear her approach, or perhaps he only seemed not to hear her and was listening. Animals did that and he was only an animal. He was ugly.
She looked down at him and wondered which part of the head must be smashed. She assumed the forehead, but if she missed, the thudding stone would alert him. Her preference was the face itself. She wanted to see his eyes and mouth lost in bone chips and blood. But she knew he would still be able to rise and strangle her, even with his ruined face and blinded eyes.
She would have to chance the forehead, crack the skull-plate hard enough so that the brain beneath would bruise and bleed. Danny had told her people died like that, quite easily. The brain bounced around inside the skull like a balloon as it crushed itself on every unyielding plane of bone it hit. And brains controlled life—not hearts or lungs. She should have paid more attention to Danny's stories of murder. She had never killed even a spider or a mouse; she had avoided hearing about the killing of humans.
He stirred in his sleep, and she raised the rock higher, casting its shadow over his face. She could not do it, hesitating not from mercy but because she was afraid. Life was no longer important to her, so she should not fear dying. But she feared more pain. She dreaded the violence that would fall upon her if she could not render him helpless with her first blow. And she was ashamed. If she could be assured that she too would die in an instant, she would not be afraid, but she could not endure another long time of hurting.
Her arms ached from supporting the rock over his face, but her hands could not let it go, any more than she could put it down. If she let him live, he would rape her again— and probably worse. That was one choice. If she succeeded in destroying him, she would die, but at a leisurely pace in the wilderness. She did not know which way they had come and therefore knew no route out. Either way, she was 163
dependent on him. Living or dead, he controlled her existence.
There was God to consider. If she killed the red man first, would God forgive her—or was murder murder, no matter?
Her hands shook and bits of dirt broke free from the rock and bounced off his sleeping face. She willed herself to let go of the weapon, but she could not. Then she saw his eyes flutter and open. He watched her for a moment. She had expected fear in him, but there was only a flicker of surprise. She raised her arms higher and he moved like a mongoose, the side of his hand catching her behind the knees so that she fell heavily across him. She still clutched the rock and it crushed her fingers against the ground. There was an instant of numbness, and then her hands flamed with pain.
He was on his feet, and all her tenuous advantage was lost. She waited for him to hit her. Instead he crouched beside her and took her hands in his, turning them to see where she was cut.
"What were you doing?" He seemed genuinely puzzled.
"I was going to kill you."
"Why?"
She pulled her hands away from him and sidled back into a sitting position against a stump. "Because you raped me. You had no right to touch me. You told me you were going to help me."
"I am going to help you."
"You hurt me."
"I didn't hurt you. You fought me. You may have hurt yourself."
"You raped me. You destroyed something that was very precious to me."
"I don't understand you. You need me."
"I didn't need rape. I didn't need . .. what you did to me."
"You were slipping away. I had to warm you. I had to make you part of me so that I could give you some of my life."
"You're a pervert—"
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His hand covered her mouth. "You don't understand, but you will. You'll remember why I'm here and you'll be sorry you talked like this. You have to live. You will have to eat and sleep and walk when I tell you to because I'm the only one who can save you."
He took her cut hand in his and watched her blood seep into the marks her teeth had left in his palm. They were part of each other now.
"Will you promise not to—not to touch me that way again?"
"I don't have to promise anything. You don't know what sex is. You don't understand at all. I will show you that sex is a way to keep from dying. I gave you life when you were trying to throw it away. You were allowing yourself to die. You didn't want me, but you will."
"Never. I will never want you, not like that. Not in any way, and I will kill you the first chance I get."
He stood up and gathered their gear, ignoring her. When he had shouldered it, he turned back to her. "It's daylight, and the days are growing very short up here. We have to get over the mountain summit while we have the sun. You can come with me or not. If you stay here, you're going to die and there won't be anyone to help you. If you think that she-bear has given up, you're mistaken. She's out there right now tracking us. She can smell exactly where we've been when the ground fog lifts. I had to kill her cub, and she won't forgive me for that. She's big. Bigger than you can imagine; she could take your whole head in her mouth and crush it until nobody would ever recognize you. Is that what you want? To be nothing but pieces of bloody meat?" She covered her head with her arms to shut him out.
"I'm going now. Are you coming with me?"
"Go away."
He sighed, and she heard him throw one of the backpacks down, and then the sounds of his feet moving away from her through the meadow. When she looked up finally, she could see only the back of his head and his shoulders disappearing fifty yards beyond where she sat, heading down into the
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apricot haze of larch, and then she couldn't see him at all, only the meadow itself and the walls of trees on every side. She could hear far-off noises behind her, something moving through the way that they had taken, and she knew she wasn't brave enough to die alone.
He turned and looked back toward the meadow. He could see her weaving through the weeds, looking for his trail. He could shout to her and tell her the way, but he stayed silent and let her fumble her way along. She had been ungrateful and hostile to him. She needed humbling.
He leaned against a boulder, shutting himself off from her sight, and lit a cigarette.
She would come.
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It was almost noon when he stopped in the shade of a rock cliff, and handed her two protein bars. "Eat them," he said. He had not acknowledged her at all when she'd caught up with him, had pretended she wasn't walking behind him.
She forced them down, chewing with jaws clenched unconsciously for too long. She felt leached of any kind of feeling at all, save a stubborn resolve. He would pay, and she would be free of him.
He reached to take her pack, and she shook her head; she wanted nothing from him except escape and the satisfaction of seeing him arrested. And she asked nothing of herself beyond the physical stamina to maintain his pace along the trails. She thought she could do that. All the hours of running had prepared her to climb and hike and cling to the narrow trail with an efficiency of effort that few women— few men—could match. She could not think of Danny or ponder why he was dead and the red man lived.
There was an awful thought that she'd tried to block
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before it bloomed fully. Was it possible that Danny was dead because of her, because this crazy stranger had wanted her and knew that the only way to have her was to kill her husband? If that was true, and if she had only suspected that, she would have lain down for him. Anything to keep Danny safe.
She hadn't flirted with the stranger; she hadn't even liked the stranger. She'd been bundled up in layers of shirts and jeans, without make-up and with greasy, tangled hair. She could not be the cause of it. She had to push that explanation away each time it crept toward her, or it would mean that she had killed Danny. No, he had raped her as an afterthought, because she was female and helpless and there. They were climbing toward a summit, and she tried to gauge their direction from the sun. It seemed that they were heading north, but she wasn't sure of it and she would not ask him. His self-control seemed erratic, as if his surface calm might splinter at any moment and catch them both in the madness beneath. As long as they kept moving, she felt safer. For the moment, she was more afraid of the mountain, revealing itself now as bare rock, deeper and deeper hues of stone where nothing could survive beyond the clinging lichen, a few tenacious bellflowers, and the thickening larch trees, evergreens that were not evergreens but stunted, burning bushes caught in a last fiery display before winter left them naked. Another time, she would have been awed by their splendor, but now they looked like the flames of hell.