back.
“Gimme the glasses.”
Abe handed over his binoculars, saw what Ryan had spotted. Ryan saw the scene
below spring into hi-mag definition through his one remaining eye. The man with
the faintly scaly skin, whom he’d already tagged as the leader, was emerging
from one of the cabins dragging a woman. But this was not, by any stretch of the
imagination, one of the mutie women. This one was dressed in a clean, pouched
combat suit with good boots. She was long limbed, full breasted, with a
high-boned face. Her most startling feature was her hair: rich, deep magenta in
hue, a thick mass of it, flowing over her shoulders and halfway down her back.
The mutie leader was dragging her by it, two fists deep in its chunky mass,
pulling her along the ground. Her hands were tied behind her and her legs were
hobbled at the ankles. Even so she was putting up a struggle, jerking and
squirming as she was tugged toward the large storehouse.
Ryan put the glasses down, shot a bleak look at his companion.
He said, “They got prisoners. We go in.”
Chapter Four
KRYSTY WROTH WINCED HER EYES CLOSED and pushed her face deeper into the filthy
blanket on which she was huddled. All of her body ached, her arms most of all
because they were wrenched behind her, tied tightly at the wrists. Her head felt
as though someone with abnormally callused hands had reached inside her skull
and was clutching at her brain, squeezing it tight then letting it go;
squeezing, letting go. Waves of pain washed over her and receded, then surged
and fell away again. Her breasts hurt, her nipples hurt. Her ribs and kidneys
throbbed where the man with the faintly scaled skin had kicked her viciously,
not once but three times, in swift succession. At the moment she was trying
desperately not to be sick because in her present position, if she were sick she
had no means of avoiding her own vomit, and this would add enormously to her
misery, her feelings of mental despair and physical wretchedness.
The sickness slowly receded, leaving her with sweat dewing her skin, her brow
clammily cold. She fluttered open her eyes, eased her head sideways, her left
cheek away from the verminous blanket. The sudden itchiness she was now
experiencing all over her body she could cope with. The odd flea here and there
had very little relevance to her present stark situation or the outrage that
threatened her, the gross invasion of her body.
She closed her eyes again, breathing out slowly and silently as another, subtly
different ache spread through the pit of her stomach, a soft sharpness that was
at the same time a feeling incorporeal, a shift in the mind as much as in the
body. She winced again, but this time her grimace was halfway an exhausted smile
tinged with resignation, as she felt her blood flowing gently out of her, the
cyclical clock in her body insistent, relentless, even at such a time, in such a
place, at such a dreadful pass.
She almost felt like laughing. Really, it was so absurd. Of course she knew
almost to the minute when she was due, had always known, since menarche. Her
periods were as regular as night falling, day dawning. And of course she had
been aware that she was due, as ever; but the events of the past twenty-four
hours—by turns confused, horrifying, violent, ghastly—had torn her own reality
apart, had indeed almost shattered it. And now, so near the onrushing moment of
terror, of violation, her body had shown her that, blind to all externalities,
the secret rhythm of life continued its perpetual motion undisturbed.
Into her mind there flashed again that sickening scene after the ambush, when
the two burning land wags had lain drunkenly at the side of the pitted highway
and the mutants had been at their bloody work, slaughtering and raping the two
old ladies from Harmony, dear Uncle Tyas, Peter Maritza and the rest of the
passengers. She heard again thunderous shotgun blasts and the hideous ripping
chatter of automatic rifles and shrill, agonized screams. Then the ultimate