by J. T. Warren
Victor considered. “Not everyone is going to survive. People who refuse to accept what must be done will be cast aside.”
“That’s rather Biblical of you, Victor,” Dad said.
“God has nothing to do with this.”
“He’s merely watching the great debacle transpire?”
“The forces at work are greater than God. Much greater.”
“Now that sounds interesting,” Dad said. “What could be greater than God, assuming He exists, of course?”
“Do you know how many people there are in the world?” Victor asked.
“A lot,” Caleb said. Mercy thought of all the smart ass kids she ever sat near in school.
“Almost seven billion.”
No one spoke for a moment, the number weighing on them. Mercy couldn’t really imagine several billion of anything. The number was more like a random statistic than anything tangible. As if this whole discussion were philosophical.
Wasn’t it?
“How many people do you think will survive the Great Change?” Victor asked.
“Worldwide?”
Victor nodded like a wizened sage.
Dad toyed with an answer, a smile playing at his lips. “Why don’t you tell me.”
“Fewer than one hundred thousand,” Victor said.
“And what happens to all those other billions? They vanish?”
“Most will probably starve to death,” Victor said. “The rest? They’ll be cleansed.”
“As in bathed?” Caleb asked.
Victor stared at Caleb for what felt like a while and Mercy tried to think of something to say to break the tension, lighten the mood that had turned dark uncomfortably fast. She could not think of anything.
“They’ll be killed,” Victor said.
The slight smile that curved his upper lip made Mercy think of deranged madmen stalking the streets for vulnerable women. Men who carried knives underneath long, slick jackets.
THIRTY-THREE
Victor couldn’t help but grin. A lesser man, someone who believed he controlled his own success, would be gushing with masturbatory self-congratulations. Everything was falling very perfectly into place. Victor, however, knew he was only a servant to a grand, amorphous master. If he did what was expected of him, did not fight against it out of some misguided self-assurance that he knew better, but fully embraced his destiny, all things would come to him.
They were practically in his hands already.
Mercy’s father glared at Victor for a moment and then burst out laughing. “Of course they’ll be killed. The question is how.”
Victor shrugged. “How many ways are there to die?”
“Now, there’s a discussion,” her father said.
“Maybe for weirdos on the Internet at two in the morning,” Mercy said. “But I really don’t want to get into that now.”
“Okay,” her father said. “You’re right.”
When his eyes met Victor’s again, however, he said, “If billions of people are going to die, it’s got be some kind of global climate apocalypse. Thousand-foot tsunamis or unprecedented hurricanes or--”
“Systematic murder,” Victor said. “One at a time.”
Her father seemed to consider that. “Sounds like it’ll be a while before the Great Change then.” He laughed and so did Caleb. Victor joined in after a moment.
“Maybe not as far off as you think,” Victor said. “This process started a long time ago.”
The fire made crinkling, snapping noises and the darkness weighed on Mercy’s father like a foreign hand, slumping his shoulders, bowing his head. His face fell into shadow and the firelight set his hair aglow. It almost looked like a halo. As if angels actually existed.
Above, a crow cawed.
“You’re a very interesting man,” Mercy’s father said. Something more lingered on his lips but he kept it to himself as if afraid to voice those thoughts.
“You want to take a walk?” Mercy asked.
Her legs were pulled up to her chest, head tilted so it was almost resting on her knees and her hair cascaded toward the ground. It would be so easy to wrap his hand in that hair and yank her head back and forth. Yank it hard enough to snap her neck.
“No,” Mercy’s father said. “You shouldn’t go walking in the woods after dark.”
“Dad. There’s nothing out here. We’ll be fine.”
He turned to Caleb. “How about you show me that tent you’ve got over there. Some kind of fancy thermal igloo thing?”
“Sort of,” Caleb said.
The men stood. Mercy’s father nodded to Victor and then winked at his daughter. Caleb simply turned around and walked to his single-size tent. Before their forms could vanish completely into the darkness, flashlight beams shone from their sides like sabers and they became walking ghosts.
Victor didn’t believe in ghosts, not as most people thought of them anyway. Ghosts were manifestations of the universe’s will. They were messengers. He had never seen one but if ever there were a time and place to encounter one it was tonight on this mountain. Such a sign would be further vindication that he was not only right in what he was doing but empowered to keep going and going until the reward was his. Until Mercy Higgins was writhing beneath him, moaning or screaming in pleasure or pain. It didn’t matter which.
“I feel bad,” Mercy said.
“Why?”
“My dad is trying to be so nice while he’s . . .”
“He’s what?”
She licked her upper lip. “He’s got cancer.”
“I guess the conversation about the end of everything wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear,” Victor said.
She shrugged. “He actually seemed interested. I don’t know. He only just told me today. I don’t know how he’s feeling. We come up here because my mother died of cancer a few months ago and he thought we needed some time or something.”
“You poor thing,” he said, sounding sincere and empathetic. For a moment, he wondered if he actually had been sincere.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all sad.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
She shifted her body closer. Her jeans pulled tight against the insides of her thighs.
“Well, you did start it with that apocalyptic stuff.”
“Guilty as charged.”
He held up his hands as if under arrest. She smiled in a contemplative way and touched her palms to his like they were playing paddy cake. Her skin was soft, like touching fine fabric. Her fingers were slender and perfectly straight, ending in clean, rounded nails.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Her fingers slipped between his and their hands curled together. She pulled him gently toward her while she leaned in. He could snap both her wrists with one, fluid jerk of his own.
She paused only a few inches from his face. Her soft flesh pulsed in shades of orange and yellow as if her blood was boiling. Her lips opened just enough to let her tongue pass slowly over them.
“Well?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you kiss me?”
He leaned toward her and she shut her eyes and her lips protruded toward him like a pair of eager worms. He stopped an inch from her face, their noses almost touching.
“You’re killing me,” she whispered.
“Maybe we should go in your tent,” he said. “So your father doesn’t have to watch.”
When she opened her eyes, tongues of fire lapped across their glistening surface.
“Not even one kiss first?” she asked.
“Once I start, I fear I won’t be able to stop.”
She kissed him quickly on the cheek and pulled off her boots. She appreciated him for another moment and then scrambled toward the tent as if something wonderful were waiting inside.
Victor approached the tent slowly. There were times to hesitate and manipulate for control. There were also times to take that control and surrender to all his desires.
His belt buckle was already swinging open when he crawled inside the tent.
THIRTY-FOUR
Mercy couldn’t believe she had taken control like that. Grabbed his hands and teased him with the tongue on the lips bit. It was corny and almost stupid, but it worked.
Tracy Runner had been one of those girls who seemed always to be at the peripheral of every conversation, though this was not because she was an outsider; on the contrary, she was accepted into every group of girls either because of envy or intimidation. She had a full head of blonde hair, a lithe body with perky breasts and an ass that bespoke hours on the Stairmaster. Everyone said she could be a model and, of course, she said she had done a lot of modeling but wanted something more challenging. Like most girls who were hot and knew it, she could also be a real bitch. She would walk into Mercy’s dorm room and interrupt a conversation to tell Mercy and whoever else was in there that they weren’t going to get any boys sitting around reading. “You could clean up really well,” she said to Mercy. “Then it’s all a tease. Lick your lips, push out your chest, bend over. Sounds stupid but it works. Boys don’t want you--they want the illusion of being with a goddess. Or a whore.” When Tracy walked on to bother other girls, Mercy’s friend remarked that Tracy was a bitch and Mercy agreed, but her advice burrowed into Mercy’s head.
And now it had worked. She laid down on the floor of the tent, which was really just laying on a piece of nylon set over hard, bumpy ground, and ran her fingers through her hair while twisting her hips and arching her chest. Like a Victoria’s Secret model sprawled on a bed in a black babydoll with matching panties.
She felt sort of stupid and ridiculous and the ground was already starting to bother her with its jagged pokes, but a kind of intoxication had seized her and would not let up. Her body flushed with warmth and she wanted this guy to touch her all over, to kiss her everywhere. She wanted to feel his hardness and then, finally, feel that stiffness inside her.
This was stupid and foolish like a teenage girl out of her mind with horniness but Mercy was a college graduate. A virgin college graduate. She didn’t need to wait for someone serious, for potential husband material. She had tried that approach and yet here she was anyway.
She was going to make Tracy Runner proud.
When Victor entered the tent, Mercy could smell the day’s sweat on him. It made her body tingle, the thought of his sweaty skin against her flesh. She wanted to grab him, yank off his pants and taste him, knowing he would be sweaty and even stink.
He whipped off his belt in one fluid motion and she imagined him slapping it across her ass, telling her that he was going to give it all to her, every single inch.
The cynical voice of caution that usually reigned in her brain was still yapping that she was being stupid, imagining ridiculous things, fantasies fit for a whore, and that if she didn’t stop now she would always regret this, might even get hurt. Mercy pushed that yapping voice as far back in her mind as she could and reached for Victor. Besides, her father was nearby if needed.
Her hands found the edges of his jeans and slipped underneath.
When she had him in her hands his whole body quivered and he groaned deeply and she thought he was going to ejaculate already, just shoot his stuff all over her chest and that filled her with even more lust. Could she really be driving a man so crazy that he would lose control like that? Joel had never been like this, so eager.
No, he had commented on her stale-smelling clothes and clammy hands.
Like Dylan who thought she was just a kid, pecked her on the check and left.
She could have lost her virginity at some frat party, if she had wanted, but she had held out for something better. Such a joke. She never meant to save herself for marriage, just someone decent.
You think this guy’s decent? He was talking about the end of the world, remember?
It didn’t matter. She wanted this. She did. Maybe Victor would still be the weird guy hiding in the corner of Rune Books or maybe he would bring her flowers, take her places. Maybe she was a whore to him or maybe this was the crazy start to a passionate love affair.
Victor thrust himself back and forth inside her hands and grew bigger and bigger and she wondered if maybe that cynical voice wasn’t on to something, if maybe this thing would hurt her, rip her up, leave her bleeding. That was a silly fear, of course. It was bound to hurt when she had never had so much as a trio of fingers inside her before but women had sex every day and of that number, how many were left bleeding and injured?
More than you think, that cynical voice said.
His mouth dropped over hers and she tried to embrace it but his tongue dove between her lips and probed toward her throat. A tickle started in the back of her throat and she knew she was going gag and that would ruin the moment. As for gagging, what if he wanted to put his thing in her mouth? If he was this violent with his tongue, he might be brutal with his thing, fucking her mouth and not caring as she choked and gagged and her eyes turned red and bulged with the pain.
Then you seize his balls, that cynical voice said, morphing into the voice of the protector. You tear into them, pierce them, rip them right off his body.
She touched them now, delicately as if they might crumble under the slightest touch. They were small and hard, pressed tightly against his body. He groaned more urgently and his tongue aggravated something inside her mouth and she was coughing violently, pushing him off her.
He let her get air and her whole body rocked with the coughs. She turned on her side and coughed harder, eyes watering, and hoped this sensation would pass. Let that be a warning to you, the voice admonished. When you try to be the whore, you end up hurt.
She wasn’t hurt, though, not exactly. Not yet.
His hands found her breasts and gripped them harder and she would have cried out if not for her choking. She batted his hands away and they went immediately to her jeans. She grabbed them as another fit of coughs seized her. He had her jeans undone and his fingers rampaging for her crotch and she tried to pull them back but his hands were too strong.
The first fingers that entered her sent convulsions through her. The sensation of penetration surprised her like something she would never quite be ready for but it also thrilled her and wasn’t her wetness a sign that she really wanted this? Maybe he was aggressive but that was kind of hot, wasn’t it?
She tried to tell him to slow down, that she would go all the way, but she was still coughing and now her jeans were down past her knees and he was spreading her thighs and ripping off her underwear.
“Please,” she managed between coughs.
“My pleasure,” Victor said in a gruff, panting voice.
Before she could protest that she hadn’t meant please fuck me, but please slow down, he yanked her on her back again and was on top of her and then, oh, jesus not yet I’m not ready, his penis was at her and she tried to clench those muscles (Kegel muscles, she thought) but she was so damn wet and his thing slid inside her and at first it was okay, nothing really, not much different than meaty fingers, but then holy shit the pain was intense and consuming as if his dick were as large as her whole body and she couldn’t breathe and she thought she would die right here with some guy’s dick inside her in a tent on a stupid mountain while her father was fifty yards away.
He pumped and thrust at her like some mindless beast and every movement was a stab of pain that clenched her lungs. Her wetness dried in her pain and that only made the pain worse. He grunted and groaned right over her face. Specks of spittle flew from his mouth onto hers.
This is what you get, that voice said.
But then it was the voice of the protector, screaming at her to fight back. Bite his face, rip his fucking lip off. Scream. For God’s sake, scream!
Not the protector. It was Mom.
Scream, dammit, SCREAM!
Somehow she found the air and did scream. It felt glorious to shout like that as if the scream were a release valve on an overheating boiler an
d now she would be okay, she wouldn’t explode, he would stop and apologize and she would check for blood and go hug daddy.
Victor punched her in the face instead.
THIRTY-FIVE
It was just like a stupid bitch to ruin a good moment. But she wasn’t going to get away that easily. Not a chance. His fist bounced off her nose and he felt her head smack against the hard ground. She coughed and gagged like he were fucking her mouth instead of the sweet spot between her legs, legs that were wobbling against his own as if her muscles were under incredible strain. Her skin had been flushed with warmth but it turned cold as if she were leaking heat out of her in a flood.
I’ll pump it back in you, he thought and continued his business.
Her head lolled side to side with the rhythm of his movement and she grunted like she was keeping the beat. He went faster and faster. Her body jiggled like she were dead and that was almost too much. It brought him right to the brink and he had to force the image away. If she wanted to fight him, Victor would be disappointed but he wouldn’t let that stop him from getting what he wanted. And then getting it again after he sliced her throat.
He could even fuck the stab wound. God, it would probably be so warm. Even warmer than what he was enjoying right now. He would straddle her face and rip her injury wide with his emphatic thrusts. Watch her dead eyes roll back in their sockets like she was experiencing the most intense pleasure.
That did it. The hotness rushed out of him in a long, continuous spasm. He groaned against the strain of every muscle in his body and knew he should be quiet but it didn’t matter. This was how the universe wanted it. The day had been spent in pursuit of this glorious release and now he had to be ready for what awaited him.
Consciousness returned to Mercy’s eyes as if a switch had been flipped and a scream ushered out of her that made Victor’s ears ring. He had to punch her again, break her nose, let her gag on some blood, but he was still unleashing the hot stuff and he couldn’t move, had to let it flow and flow and flow.
Mercy screamed again, louder still, and Victor did the only thing he could: he bit down on her nose and clenched his jaw with all the strength flooding his body and all the hotness gushing from him. Her scream now was of immense pain and that made him bite down even harder. Blood encircled his lips and dribbled on his tongue like something sweet.