Tooth and Claw

by R. Lee Smith

  She closed her mouth and covered it with both hands.

  “What’s your name?” Sir asked.

  “F-Fiona.”

  “Nope. Your name is Tiny-tits. Tiny-tits,” he went on as his boys whooped and laughed, “I want you to watch and learn. Saggy-ass, come over here and give me a blowjob.”

  One of the other women silently left the group, walked over to him and knelt in the mud.

  “Now Saggy-ass is not an exhibitionist,” Sir continued evenly as she went to work. “She doesn’t want to do this. She’s not even very good at it. But she knows if she doesn’t make me happy, she’s going to die. And I might shoot her or cut her or burn her or bury her in shit or whatever the fuck I want, she doesn’t know, but she knows one thing and that is that she only gets to live as long as I let her. And that is the only thing she needs to know. Understand?”

  Some muffled crying. Otherwise, no answer.

  “Okay. That’s enough,” he told the woman on her knees and then beckoned toward Fiona with his gun. “Get over here and finish me off.”

  Fiona didn’t move.

  Sir merely nodded as if this were just what he expected. Then he shot her.

  Not in the head. Not in the heart. Not where it could kill her. He shot her in both knees and then, while she was rolling in the mud and screaming, he sent two of his boys in to grab her by the arms and drag her out. They took her to the fire and got a few more guys to help hold her down. The commotion drew men the way blood in the water drew sharks, until she was lost, nothing but a grasping hand glimpsed through a wall of shifting legs.

  “There’s always one,” said Sir as he tucked himself away and zipped up. “I guaran-fucking-tee you that poor dumb cunt is going to be begging someone to kill her before morning. You mark my words. You listen for it. ‘Kill meee,’” he moaned in a weepy falsetto. “‘Just kill me already!’ She’ll be begging even when she’s still got both eyes and all ten fingers and the nipples on her teeny tiny tits. She’ll beg before she even has the first fucking clue how bad it’s going to get.”

  Laughter all around, like it was funny, like they weren’t doing anything wrong.

  Nona went back to looking at the sky. Sir was right about one thing. Two things, actually. She couldn’t see any hope of escape here and there sure wasn’t going to be a rescue. So that left just the one question: Was she going to lie back and let it happen or not?

  “But you’ll have a clue,” said Sir, once more unsmiling. “That’s my gift to you, ladies. Tonight, you don’t have to do a goddamn thing except listen to Tiny-tits and think about the choice she made. Tomorrow, you make your own choice and your new life begins. Just remember, you only get it as long as I say you get it.”

  Not, Nona decided. The worst thing they could do was kill her and they were clearly going to do that anyway. Being good was only going to prolong the torture and she’d never been all that great at being good anyway. Being angry was definitely going to get her killed, but it would sure feel satisfying right up to that point.

  Sir nodded toward the other women, the ones who’d already been in the corral. “I’m trusting you to show them the ropes. Reaper, Ice, you’re on guard duty. I want a quiet night, ladies. You cry and I will give you something to cry about.”

  And with that, orientation was over.

  The men who had gathered to watch the show now wandered away to the tents. Some took women with them. Nona waited for her turn, knowing this was it and her death was liable to be slow and painful, but determined to gouge out an eye or a testicle before they took her down. However, Sir was apparently serious when he said tonight was for thinking things over, at least for the new recruits like Nona. A few guys looked her over, but look was all they did. Even the two men left to guard the corral were more interested in talking to each other than in their prisoners and why not? They’d seen it all before.

  Gradually, the collective shock and panic subsided. The new girls clustered, regarding the older ones with suspicion until fear and anxiety wore them down and they started to talk. Nona watched them, too far away to listen. She had no curiosity as to what they were saying. The rules for survival, she supposed, which would have been good to know, except that she had no intention of living like this, no motivation to survive.

  Nona left them to it and curled up under the tarp to get out of the wind. She pulled her arms in out of her sleeves and balled herself up as much as she could for warmth. She never thought she’d fall asleep, but as the night wore on, Fiona’s voice gave out and in the dark and quiet, eventually, impossibly, she slept.

  3. Nona Makes Breakfast

  A foot kicked her in the ribs, waking her out of a dream in which she slept in the mud into exactly that same reality. Nona rolled over and frowned at a bleary-eyed soldier as he cut the tape on her wrists and ankles before moving on to rouse a handful of other women from their sleep-huddle.

  “You’re on kitchen duty,” he informed Nona’s group, already walking away. “You four get wood, you four get water, and the rest of you stay put for now. Hey, Packer! Where’d we put the cigarettes?”

  ‘No mercy,’ Nona thought, following the other women across camp to the fire where she’d last seen Fiona’s grasping hand. There was nothing there now but smoking ashes and drag marks in the mud. ‘This is not about incapacitating them long enough to sneak away. There is no away here and no point in sneaking. Take them out.’

  Good advice. She wasn’t sure how to do that, though. She hadn’t hit anyone since high school and she’d never done anything more serious than break a nose or chip a tooth even when she had. She did not consider herself a violent person, but she thought about killing these people now, thought about it without rancor or excitement, but only as the first step in a procession that led to her certain demise. She had to kill them and kill them so fast that they didn’t even have time to think about catching her, but only took her down. If they caught her, they’d torture her. They’d made the other girl, Fiona, scream in ways Nona could not have imagined coming out of a real human being and they hadn’t even had a reason to do it. Whatever Nona did, she had to do enough of it to make them panic, make them shoot her in the head, end it quick. So none of that baby-shit. No slapping, no punching, no ball-kicking. Murder.

  She got comfortable with the idea. It wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be.

  The other women wasted no time turning last night’s buried embers into a cooking fire. No one spoke, apart from a few murmured words to Nona whenever another hand was needed. Nona carried what she was told to carry without complaint. It meant a number of trips to and from the supply tents, which gave her plenty of time to study her surroundings and think. She’d counted twenty men in this camp last night, but the morning fog was thick and muffling, and she could only make out ten of them now.

  The other camps weren’t visible at all and she couldn’t hear much beyond the rustle of tents, footsteps in sucking mud and the occasional low voice. How tempting, to imagine this small camp, these few men, were all she had to deal with. How tempting and how dangerous. She remembered too well the sounds of teeming hundreds from the night before, the sight of dozens upon dozens of fires, each with their own ring of tents, their own crowd of men with guns.

  Well, she’d known she wasn’t getting out of this alive either way. Might as well get started.

  There were a couple of frying pans lying around back at the kitchen area. Nona picked up a sturdy-looking iron skillet and put it on the fire. There was a bowl of lard handy. She scooped out a good dollop with her fingers and dropped it in, watching it slowly warm and melt.

  “Are you new?” a woman asked.

  “Yes,” said Nona.

  “I didn’t think I recognized you.” The woman looked her over from the corner of her eye as she rapidly mixed some kind of flour into batter with her hands. “That’s a nice sweater.”

  The human instinct to obey social customs, regardless of how hideously inappropriate the situation may be, briefly pe
netrated even her mental armor. She said, “Thanks,” then looked around, confused. “What?”

  “It looks so warm, I meant.” The woman nodded down at her own clothing—a cotton top whose original floral pattern had been all but buried beneath layers of mud and ash and other stains. “It was summer when they got me.”

  Nona looked around at the others in the ‘kitchen’ and this time saw the people and not just their bruises. Short sleeves. Short skirts, in some cases. One had no shoes, only the rags that had once been maybe a sporty summer scarf tied around her feet.

  A touch of last night’s unreasoning anger crept back into her numb heart. It was the wrong response. What she was planning was stupid and suicidal enough, but it would be futile as well if she couldn’t keep a clear head. Emotions could not and never had made a bad situation better.

  And yet…

  “Why can’t they get you clothes?” she asked. “What, it’s not in the budget? They steal everything anyway!”

  She didn’t think she said it loudly, but the woman hushed her and several of their fellow workers looked around. Nona put her head back down and told her burning heart that anger was pointless.

  The lard melted, melted and finally began to bubble.

  “What’s your name?” the other woman asked finally.

  Social obligation struck again. “Nona.”

  There was a last name, of course. There’d been many over the years as her mother used her to cadge money out of various men, none of whom had turned out to be her father. She used her mother’s surname when a surname was required, but she hated it, hating anything tying her to that toxic anchor. If money weren’t always so damn tight, she’d change it to something new, something fresh and clean.

  Would have changed it. Another window of opportunity, closed.

  They’d probably found her phone on the street corner by now. Definitely had, in fact. There’d been plenty of witnesses to the shooting and abductions. Cops and reporters would have been all over that scene. And there was Nona’s phone, lying on the rainy pavement, with another missed call from her mother flashing on the cracked screen. Shit, they’d have probably called her back, let her know all about it. And wouldn’t her mom love that? She was probably on TV right now, looking tearful in too much makeup and a low-cut top, playing the victim for an audience of millions. A dream come fucking true.

  “Just Nona,” Nona said now, switching off that mental television. And since the other woman was still looking at her and social habits were hard to break, she automatically added, “What’s yours?”

  The other woman glanced toward the shadowy shapes of men in the mist and lowered her voice. “June. June Stockton. Just don’t say it where they can hear. It’s the first thing they take from you. Whatever they call you, just take it. Don’t react. If you get upset, at best, they’ll just call you something worse, and at worst…”

  At worst, they shot you and spent the night torturing you to death.

  She couldn’t think about that right now or she’d lose her nerve before she really fully found it. Nona looked around for something else to talk about and saw nothing, just men moving in the mist, battered women silently at work, and June shivering in her summer clothes. “Since summer, huh?” she said lamely. “It’s September now.”

  “On Earth.” June hesitated, then added, “He’s right, you know. We’re really not on Earth. I don’t know where we are, but it’s not Earth.”

  Nona nodded without really paying much attention. The lard was really getting going, snapping and popping, loudly sizzling when stray drops of rain found its way under the canopy. Nearly ready. “Who are they fighting? Like, aliens?”

  “I…guess so? If it’s not Earth, then it must be aliens?” June shook her head. “I’ve never seen one. They don’t talk about the war around us. I don’t think it’s going very well. We shouldn’t talk about it,” she concluded. “Are you ready to start frying?”

  “Just about,” Nona said. There were three men fairly close by, relaxing and smoking their morning cigarettes. One by the corral, of course, the one with the knife. Two more still asleep; she could see them under the canopy of their army-surplus tent, motionless, toasty warm inside their sleeping bags. One man was shaving, all his concentration on the little mirror he’d hung from a tree branch. Another was laboring himself into his clothes. The one who’d kicked her awake was talking with Sir, both of them standing at the very edge of visibility in the thick fog. She had no idea where the others were, and she knew there were plenty, but she’d just have to play it by ear.

  “Um…that looks ready to me.”

  “I guess it is.” The grease was now spitting violently in the skillet.

  “So are you ready?” June held out the bowl of batter.

  Nona did not take it. “I’m ready,” she whispered. “I’m ready to kill as many of these guys as I can reach. So you might want to back off a bit and keep down until I’m shot.”

  June peered at her, her brows slowly beetling. “What? You’re going to what?”

  Nona picked up a dirty rag that the women were using as a hotpad and wrapped it around her hand. She lifted the skillet and held it in a tight grip. It was damned heavy. She guessed she should say something before she committed suicide like this, but she couldn’t think of any good last words, or even any bad ones. She thought briefly about praying, then decided if there was a God, He had a lot more explaining to do than she did.

  “Just stay back,” she said finally. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Except, you know, the ones I’m going to kill. Okay?”

  After a long moment, June nodded.

  Nona raised her free hand and beckoned at the three men standing close by and smoking. One of them saw her, said something to the other two, and they all came strolling over. One of them yawned.

  “S’up?” one asked.

  Nona flung the spitting grease into his face and hit the one next to him as hard as she could swing. She felt an eggshell-like crunch all the way up her arms, but she hardly heard anything. She expected a gonging noise from the skillet, but no, just a dull whump, mostly obscured by the sound of wind shaking dozens of tarps and rain splatting into mud. Her aim with the grease hadn’t been too great. She’d been trying for his eyes, but most of it went into his yawning mouth. He gargled, then bent and vomited out a gush of boiling grease and blood. There was no sound beyond the wet splash of the liquid and the sizzle as it met the cold ground.

  “Jesus Christ,” said the third guy. Just said it. Conversationally. His eyebrows were raised.

  Nona swung the skillet into his politely astonished face. Whap. Whap-sizzle, really. Then she grabbed him by the hair and threw him face-down into the fire. He yanked a breath full of red coals and sparks, let out nothing but hisses and coughs, jerking and kicking like a man having seizures. That ended after another crunching blow with the skillet.

  The guy by the corral was still leaning on the fence, staring at the girls he was guarding. The one shaving finished one cheek and moved on to the other. The third finished getting dressed and headed over to a tree for his morning piss. None of them seemed to realize anything was wrong. Fog was thick, muffling, and the usual chatter made by a hundred people starting their day absorbed whatever noise Nona and her scuffle around the cookfire had made.

  Well, heck, she really thought she’d be dead by now.

  “Do we have knives?” Nona asked.

  Silence.

  She looked around. June and the other women were staring at her, their eyes huge and mouths open.

  “I said, are there any knives?”

  “Guns,” said a woman, looking at a body. “They have guns! Get the guns!”

  “Don’t be stupid!” Nona said sharply, and the other women immediately shrank back with hurt expressions. “No shooting. Everyone will hear.”

  “But—”

  “Not yet, I said.” Nona headed for the corral. She didn’t run. Running people attract attention.

  Just the extra t
hirty or forty feet to the corral made the leader and the kicker fade into mist. The man at the corral was alone now, leaning on the fence in contemplation of the swirling nothing on all sides. It struck her as a profoundly cinematic image, almost a romantic one.

  Then Nona raised her skillet over her head and brought it down with all her might. She felt the skull buckle in, saw the blood and brain matter splat out. She wondered vaguely why seeing it didn’t make her sick. She didn’t watch horror movies, shouldn’t be this calm. But this was not the time or place to speculate on just when and how she had become so desensitized to gore. She took his hunting knife and opened the corral gate.

  “Oh my God,” a girl whispered.

  “Hurry up,” said Nona. “If you’re going, now’s a good time. I’ll keep them busy as long as I can.” Her skillet was cooling and it was still damned heavy. She put it down on the fire again on her way to the shaver. Someone was cooking bacon in the mist at another camp. Her stomach rumbled.

  The shaver heard it, or maybe he just saw her coming in the mirror. “Breakfast ready?” he asked, keeping his jaw clenched while he scraped stubble off the underside of his chin.

  “Not quite,” said Nona and pulled the hunting knife across his arched and clean-shaven neck. It unzipped without a sound. Blood steamed, sluicing over his chest and his legs and his feet. He goggled at her in the mirror, his breath bubbling turgidly out the gaping hole in his throat, and then he fell over. She thought surely she’d feel sick now, looking at all that blood. She didn’t.

  The pissing man was just shaking off. She cut his throat, too, since that seemed to work so well. The blade’s edge grated against bone in there, making the hair on her own neck prickle and rise. He shit himself with a huge farting sound, clutching at his neck and trying to scream through the gap she’d carved into it, and finally dropped dead with his jeans around his knees and his dick out.

  “Jesus, Zig, eat some fucking fiber!” someone called somewhere in the fog, and two other men laughed further away.

  The soldiers sleeping in the tent never woke up. She supposed she should feel bad about killing them still zipped up in their sleeping bags and helpless, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel much of anything, apart from a mild surprise at how well this was going.