The Fifth Sacred Thing (75 page)

Is he warning me? Is that the route laid out for my feet to walk? How far along have I come? Don’t I already feel it shifting under my feet? And Bird was falling, down and down again, but not quite in a vacuum now. Something else was there. The unit. Against his will, he was part of something.

The questions that haunted him at night kept him from sleeping well.
When would the General get tired of him and order him killed? How long could he protect Rosa? What worse things than he had already done could they make him do?

Then there were the night sounds from the room down the hall. The men pressed him to join them. “You in the unit, you got to taste the meat,” they said, laughing at him when he declined. They could have Rosa in there. Whoever they had in there was someone’s daughter, sister, friend—no, he wouldn’t go in. But he didn’t stop them, didn’t throw his body in front of their path as Rosa had for him.

“Fresh meat tonight,” Sixforty announced to the room where the men were hanging out. “Got us a city girl lined up to break in. Soon as the rec room opens.”

“Give her to Birdie boy first,” Ohnine said. “Time he tasted something raw.”

“No,” Bird said, before he could stop himself. It was dangerous to oppose them too bluntly, too honestly.

“Don’t like pussy?” Ohnine taunted him, an ominous undertone in his voice.

“I like women,” Bird said in a low, serious voice. Stay calm, don’t get defensive. “I love women.” And the thought of the woman who lay in the next room, trussed as his victim, made him want to vomit. He couldn’t rape a woman. It would be a betrayal of every comforting touch he had ever felt, of every rising and spilling of pleasure, of something so deep in himself that it was still intact below all the levels of loss and betrayal. That surprised him, and made him afraid again. So he still had something to lose.

“One waiting for you in the next room.”

What to say to them? “None of the women I love would have anything to do with me, ever again, if I raped another woman.”

“Who’s gonna tell them?”

“When you love somebody, when you really open to them, you can’t keep a secret like that. They would know. It would change me.”

“Guess it’s a good thing I don’t love nobody,” Ohnine said. The others laughed. The tension eased slightly.

I should let it go, Bird thought, but maybe, just maybe, there could be an opening here.

“It’s a sad thing,” Bird said. “To love somebody is really beautiful. To make love to a woman who really wants you, or a man—”

“You do it with men?” Ohnine said.

“Sure, why not?”

There was silence around them.

“That’s evil! That’s the way demons get into you,” Sixforty said.

“Come on, do you really believe that? All you guys here together all the time, don’t tell me none of you ever do it to each other?”

The temperature of the room seemed to drop, suddenly. The silence intensified. Uh-oh, Bird thought. Should have kept your mouth shut, boy.

“You calling us faggots?” Ohnine asked.

What do I do now? Bird asked himself. Back down and grovel or bluff it out, barrel on ahead? How many of them can I take? They’re all force, no finesse, but still there’s fifteen or twenty of them, and one of me.…

“No,” Bird said. “I’m not calling nobody nothing.”

“You a faggot yourself, then?”

Shit. If he apologized and groveled, they would kill him. But that part of him that was broken cried out to do just that, to fall on the floor and whimper, anything, to avoid pain.

“We don’t allow faggots in this unit. Got to be a real man to hang with this unit,” Ohnine said, and the others chorused their agreement.

“Let’s find out,” Bird said wearily. “Let’s find out how many of you real men I can take out before you kill me, twenty on one. That’s real manly.” But his heart wasn’t in it, and they sensed it, like wild dogs sensing weakness in their prey.

But Ohnine doesn’t really want to kill me, Bird thought. He’s probably under orders not to kill me. No, more than that, he kind of likes me. What’ll he do?

“I got a better idea,” Ohnine said. “Take him to the rec room. You a man, prove it there.”

Shit, Bird thought, as the men noisily agreed and shoved him down the hall, he thinks he’s doing me a favor.

The rec room was a windowless office, refurbished with a low bed with a metal grid for a headboard. A young girl lay there, naked, her arms extended over her head and her wrists clamped to the grid. Not Rosa, Bird saw with relief, and then felt ashamed of himself, because whoever she was, her life was not worth less than Rosa’s. Surely not less than his own. He could see blood on her mouth and bruises, and her eyes were both terrified and defiant.

She recognized him. Maybe she’d seen him at Council, maybe she’d been in one of his trainings. He didn’t know her but she knew who he was. He could tell, by the way her eyes suddenly softened with relief and then darkened with a deeper terror.

“Take her, man.” They were stripping off his shirt and pulling his pants down, revealing his old scars. “Or we take her for you, one by one. You can watch. Then we carve our numbers in her ass and your prick.”

The girl was broadcasting terror so strongly that he could hardly focus. I am not going to do this, Bird thought, even if I were willing to, even if I
convinced myself that I could break her more gently than they would, my cock will never rise for this. But how long will that hold true? If I stay with them long enough, if I continue this falling and falling and falling, will I fall into some place in me that finds this very fear erotic? Or will they lead me to it, the way Ohnine said, gradual like, step by step?

Now the men were grabbing at her legs and she was kicking out viciously, intelligently, karate kicks that drew blood.

“Watch out, she a live one!”

“My fucking nose, man! She broke my fucking nose!”

“Cut her, you sinlicker! She move again, cut her devil foot off!”

“No, just back off. Let Birdie take her, if he can.”

There was, just for a moment, a breathing space. Room to maneuver. Not much, not long. Now. Use your brain, boy. Think of some way out of this or die ugly.

The room stank of fear. But fear can be a weapon. He remembered his martial arts teacher saying that, over and over again. Your opponent’s fear is your leverage.

“Any of you sticks ever raped a Witch before?” Bird asked quietly.

They were silent, suddenly.

“Why you ask?” Ohnine said.

“I didn’t think so.”

“What you mean?”

“No, I’m not going to take her. I know better.”

“What you know?”

“Go ahead, kill me. I’m sure you could do it, all of you together. Course it might
take
all of you, together. But I’d welcome it, man. I’d prefer it.”

Ohnine and the others backed off.

“Don’t trust you. What you know?”

“Nothing.”

“We your unit, man. You know something, you owe us.”

“Don’t owe you nothin’. Go ahead, take her. Kill me. I’m happy to die.”

“You want to come back and haunt us, don’t you, man? You turn our souls over to the demons.”

It was working, Bird thought. They were afraid to kill him. His lie had made them afraid.

“What you know, man? You tell us what you know. We brothers.”

“I know what happens when you rape a Witch.”

“What?”

“I’d rather die,” Bird said. “Any day.”

“Shit.”

They dressed the girl and sent her home. Bird never learned her name. It didn’t matter. She had escaped; that was victory, he supposed, if not by nonviolence then at least by trickery. He was amazed that he had won. They miscalculated, he thought. If this was part of their plan, to bring me along, to break me down, further and further, step by step, they made a mistake. No wonder. In their world, rape would be a small thing, not worth the pain to resist. More than that—a pleasure, a reward. How could they know that for me it would be the worst thing, the step I will not come to until the last, the bitterest end? But he was still afraid, still falling. He would not escape.

29

M
adrone sat shivering in the far bunk, wrapped in every blanket Isis’ boat provided. Each breath she took hurt her lungs, but it felt good to breathe, good even to hurt, to feel her heart racing in her chest. Shock and hypothermia, some part of her noted. Her body felt completely drained; every last bit of energy had been spent. But she was alive.

“Drink,” the Melissa said, bringing a cup of hot water laced with honey to Madrone’s lips. She sipped, savoring the liquid on her tongue, the sweetness.

“She okay?” Isis said, poking her head down from the deck.

“She will be, with rest,” the Melissa said.

“Hang on.” Isis retreated above, and they heard the sound of the anchor chain being paid out over the bow.

“We’re fixed for the night,” she said, entering the cabin and closing the hatch behind her. “Now, want to tell us what happened?”

Madrone sipped again. It was hard to believe she was really here, on Isis’ boat, not still floating, a cold corpse on a dark night ocean.

“We heard about the raid,” Isis said.

“Littlejohn’s dead,” Madrone said. “And they caught Katy.” “Shit.”

“Drink,” the Melissa said again.

“You escaped?” Isis said.

“The Angels helped me.” Slowly, haltingly, Madrone told the story.

“So they saved their own tails when the heat came, and left you,” Isis said. “Those slime! You can’t trust them. I hate them like poison.”

Madrone closed her eyes. She was too weary to hold the lids open.

“I’m due for a run up to see the Monsters tomorrow. Want to come along? Three days up, two days back.”

Madrone shook her head. “I need to find Katy. Save Katy. That’s too long to wait.”

“The shape you’re in, you gonna find nobody and nothing but your own grave.”

“They think she’s at the Research Center,” Madrone said, her voice still barely audible. “At the university.”

“Might just as well be on the moon.”

Madrone shook her head. “Beth will help.”

“Who’s Beth?”

“A friend. A doctor—used to be. Years ago.” Madrone paused, gathered her strength, and then explained. “I’ll go stay with her, rest, figure out how to rescue Katy.”

She wasn’t sure where she got the conviction that she could rescue Katy, but it was growing in her moment by moment. She had been saved for something. Why, when so many others were dead, if not to save somebody else? I couldn’t help Poppy, I couldn’t save my own mother from the men who killed her. I have to save Katy. She had to do it, therefore she could.

“You are one crazy woman. You feel like a little fifteen-mile hike through the canyons right now?”

Madrone shook her head. “Need a ride.” She paused, still panting. “Sara might do it.”

“Who the hell is Sara?”

“Another friend. Rich white lady, lives in a big house in the canyon. Where I took the swim. She helped before.”

“And how do we get to her?”

Madrone sighed and sank back into the blankets. She was too tired to think any further.

“Katy was a good woman,” the Melissa said, “but she has gone beyond our help now.”

“No,” Madrone said. “I promised her.”

“Promised her what?” Isis asked.

“Promised I’d be there when her baby comes.”

“Circumstances have changed.”

“I have to try. I have to!”

“All right,” Isis said. “Don’t get all in a froth about it. You tell me how to find your friend’s house, and I’ll take a run out there, see what she’s willing to do.”