by Pam Godwin
The stairs that were no longer guarded by armed men.
Dread crashed over me, shaking my limbs. Darwin bounded the steps, and my feet slapped against the wood floor to keep up with him and Jesse, and now Roark, who shoved past me.
The sudden scream of a woman rang in my ears and chilled my blood. My eyes darted up the stairs, toward the sound, my legs pumping harder. Then more horrified screams, the cries of several women, followed by footsteps pounding across the ceiling and Link’s enraged shouting.
My breath stuttered. Fuck, fuck, fuck! What the fuck was happening up there?
Jesse and Roark gripped the railing as they took the stairs two at a time, their heads tilted back and eyes up.
I strained my ears, picking through the varying pitches of cries, listening for Shea. I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t… Oh God, if anything happened to her…
At the top of the stairs, I threw myself forward, following Jesse and Roark and Darwin, and fucking hell, the cries grew louder. No, not cries. They were blood-curdling, oh-Jesus-save-me screams of fear.
My spine turned to ice, and the hairs on my neck stood on end. I picked up my pace, down the hall, into the third bedroom, and slammed into Jesse’s back.
The screaming was so loud I stumbled back, my view blocked by Jesse and Roark. I pushed forward, my bare feet slipping on the wet carpet. Wet? I glanced down.
Blood.
It was everywhere.
The unholy screams in the small bedroom shivered my skin with goosebumps. But it was the smell, the overwhelming scent of copper and iron, that sent my heart crashing into my ribs.
My hands shook and my toes squished through wet puddles as I pushed around Jesse and Roark. They didn’t stop me from stepping in front of them, but I only had a millisecond to question that before my vision filled with blood.
Streaks on yellow walls. Splatters on brown work boots. Smears on pale skin. Pools around limp bodies. Torn pink pajamas, zippered flies spread open, lacerated flesh, stab wounds, and holy fuck, one of those bodies was castrated.
My limbs went numb, and my ears rang. Death pervaded the air so thickly I inhaled through my mouth and held my breath as I took in the rest of the room.
Link squatted over the bodies of a woman and a man, his hand wrapped around a red-stained blade. And Shea…oh God, her eyes were hard but alive, showing no signs of physical pain, no visible wounds. She stood beside Link and glared down at the third body. Another man.
A total of three dead.
Four women huddled on the bed in the corner, their shrieks muffling into heavy sobs, hands covering faces, arms hugging stomachs. No blood on their pajamas. The slaughter concentrated on the walls and floor near the door, spreading out around the three bodies.
The dead man at Shea’s feet lay on his back, a metal instrument—Shea’s scalpel?—buried in his eye socket. His tattooed arms lay askew around his head, the zipper of his jeans gaped open.
I looked away and reminded myself to breathe, releasing a heavy exhale.
“Wha’ happened, Shea?” Roark’s brogue slipped out without censure. He abhorred murder, but it was obvious she’d killed this man in self-defense.
She closed her eyes and wiggled her jaw, as if struggling to unclench it.
Darwin skirted around her and rooted his head under the arms of the wailing women, licking their hands and faces.
Link watched them for a moment, rubbing the knuckles of his knife-wielding hand against his bald head. “When I noticed the guards missing from the stairs, I ran up here and—”
“I want to hear it from Shea.” Only my lips moved, the rest of my body detached as I stared at the hunk of flesh in Link’s other hand.
Blood dripped from his fingers, plopping on the mangled hole between the spread legs of the man beneath him.
I shouldn’t have been shocked by all the gore. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a castration. When I’d killed the Drone’s brother, I’d relieved him of his pathetic dick. And before that, I’d severed all of Steve’s parts in my haste to split him sternum to groin in my father’s basement after he’d raped me.
The clash of past horrors and present fears spun through my head, jerking me off balance and thrusting me into a fever of heaving breaths and hot skin. The room vanished as remembered pain ran riot through my body, stretching my limbs and cutting my flesh, locking me in a nightmare of memory, in a place where men couldn’t be trusted.
My hand jerked to my forearm sheath and started to release one of the blades.
“Evie. Breathe.” Roark’s arms came around me from behind, hooking across my belly. “I’m here. You’re safe.”
His accent was calm and coaxing in my ear, a voice that would never hurt me or rape me or lie to me.
I gripped his arms, holding him to me, letting him know how grateful I was for his constant protection.
Beside me, Jesse lowered his head, glancing at me then up at Roark out of the corner of his eye. He and Roark exchanged a look, then he turned his attention back to the room.
Link shot another glare at the sobbing women. “Fuck. Someone get them out of here before my head explodes.”
I lurched forward to help them, adrenaline surging through my stupor, but Roark held me in place.
Shea’s head snapped up. “I’ll take them.”
“No.” I didn’t want her out of my sight, and I needed her to tell me what happened, to assure me she was okay.
“I’ll do it.” Liliana pulled herself from the huddle of women. “Come on, ladies.”
The queen of the Mississippi Queen really was stunning. Her chocolate skin glowed in the flickering light of the candles, her body tall and lean beneath the satin of her ivory slip. But the horror of what she’d just witnessed trembled her delicate hands and stained her cheeks with tears.
“Liliana.” Link stared at her, his black eyes creased with warning. “Until I get this sorted, you should…”
A look passed between them, and she tilted her head. “Watch my back?” She gestured toward the women to follow her and stopped at Link’s side, her focus on his face instead of the massacre soaking the carpet beneath him. “Sugar, I was fighting off men before you were a bullet in your daddy's gun.”
The tanned skin around his eyes tightened. “What the fuck are you implying?”
I didn’t understand what they were talking about, especially since I still didn’t know what had happened here. But I could guess on the latter. Rape. Self-defense. Perhaps Link blamed himself for trusting the men who turned on these women?
The blond woman had died during the fight, her eyes staring blindly at the ceiling. I hoped her final thoughts reflected on a happy life rather than on the two brutish men who lay dead beside her.
My chest ached, and I forced a deep inhale, pushing past the tightness.
Liliana reached for Brooke, the brunette standing behind her, but her eyes remained on Link. “You’re not on my payroll anymore. You have nothing to prove to me.”
With that, she led the women out, tugging on Brooke’s hand. I’d been introduced to all of the women throughout the course of the day and remembered Brooke as the girl who’d demanded the vibrator. But now that I saw the colorful cosmography of stars inked on her arms and the metal rings pierced through every feature in her delicate face, I knew she was the rebellious one Shea had cured after I left the house.
Angie, the blonde with shoulder-length hair, stumbled after Brooke. The rabid look in her hazel eyes wasn’t just from all the bloodshed. Two days ago, she’d been the nymph tapping on the window, the one who looked like she’d lived in the wild for two years. She wouldn’t remember those years, but they seemed to have left a savage kind of vibration humming across her skin.
Jillian trailed behind them, also blonde, her hair falling in sheets around her elbows. She quickened her bare feet to keep up with Angie, but her gaze strayed to Jesse. Even as she sniffled and blinked her swollen red eyes, the flushed look on her face was und
eniable. She tripped, her fixation on Jesse never wavering until she was out of sight down the hall.
Jesse seemed oblivious to his admirer as he stepped beside Link, his attention on the bodies. “Shea?”
Darwin brushed against her leg, nuzzling her fingers. As she absently petted his head, he angled his neck to give her easier access, his little black eyebrows pulling against the golden fur on his forehead.
Shea wiped her other hand on her sleep shorts, streaking the yellow cotton with blood. “That one came in first.” She pointed at the man with the metal handle protruding from his eye. “I woke with him on top of me.” Her expression darkened. “He didn’t know I slept with my scalpel.”
That’s my girl. My lungs expanded with a heady swell of pride. “Did he…?”
She shook her head. “I stabbed the son of a bitch in his brain before he got his dick out.”
The man she’d knifed in the eye was the tattooed volunteer who had been following her around all day. The same man who’d been assigned to guard the stairs while the women slept.
“The other one…” Her chin trembled, and her hands balled into fists as she glared at the man beneath Link’s bent knees. “He was the second guard on the stairs, right?”
Link nodded, his eyes tapered into dangerous slits.
Shea flexed her hand at her side. “He was over by the door, wrestling Jennifer to the floor. I…I think she attacked him first. She tried to protect us.”
I pulled away from Roark’s arms, stepped around Jennifer’s body, and hugged Shea to my chest. She pushed away at first, but as I tightened my embrace, she deflated against me, hugging me back.
Self-defense was all well and good, but Shea was still new to this world. Deep down, she needed a certain level of normalcy, and standing over the body of the woman she’d been taking care of was a reality few could stomach. Even I struggled to maintain my composure, regret chewing painfully at my insides. The valuable and very rare life of a woman ended tonight because of the greedy, selfish needs of a man.
Footsteps shuffled around the doorway, drawing my gaze to the six men gathering on the threshold. I couldn’t remember the names of three, but Paul, Eddie, and Hunter were among them, their expressions seething and growing hotter by the second.
A single tear skipped down Shea’s cheek, the steadiness in her voice crumbling. “I couldn’t get to her before his knife pierced her belly. Before he ra…” She covered her mouth with a shaky hand. “He stabbed her while he was raping her. He would’ve gone after the other women, but Link showed up.”
“Too fucking late.” Link stared at the bloody wound in Jennifer’s stomach, his gaze igniting as he lowered her nightie over her hips, tugging it down her thighs. Then he pinned his blade-sharp eyes on the men at the door. “You know the rules. You touch a woman against her will, and what happens?”
Paul stepped forward, fury shadowing his dark complexion. “We lose our dicks. Then we lose our lives.”
Link held up the sawed-off penis. Blood trickled down his forearm as he squeezed his fist. Then he bent over the corpse of the other man, swiped his knife, and removed those genitals, too.
The gush of blood and the sickening sound of squishy meat were enough to trigger my gag reflex. I fought back the bile, but Shea wasn’t as lucky. She jerked away and turned her back to puke on the floor.
“That one got off easy.” Link pointed his knife at the man Shea had stabbed. “I prefer them alive while I castrate them.”
He stood and dropped the severed dicks on a discarded towel.
The sudden silence coiled around me, shuddering with adrenaline and testosterone and the hunger for revenge. Considering Link and his men hadn’t been around women for the past two years, I suspected his no-nonconsensual-touching rule was something he’d implemented on the steamboat prior to the aphid plague.
They glared at the dead men like they wanted to resurrect them and kill them all over again, their palpable need for violence shivering through me. The walls in the small room closed in, made excruciatingly more unbearable with the hot scent of Shea’s vomit.
Saliva pooled in my mouth, and my stomach folded in on itself. These guys hadn’t survived the past two years without killing or watching those they loved being killed. Yet beneath the anger storming across their faces were glazed eyes, parted lips, hunched shoulders. Shell-shocked. Had Link put enough fear in them to prevent another attack within the group? I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Roark broke the awful hush as he knelt over Jennifer’s body and touched her forehead. “In nomine Patris.” His thumb moved to her breastbone. “Et Filii”. He brushed her left shoulder then right shoulder as his brogue vibrated through the room. “Et Spiritus Sancti. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord…”
As he continued to pray quietly, some of the men stepped into the room and joined him. Hunter knew a few verses, his lips moving along silently, his hair hanging in his face as his gaze rested on the bodies.
Link stood in the doorway with Jesse, his head bowed, nodding every few seconds as Jesse spoke in his ear. Then they both looked up at me.
“We have to move.” Link’s brows dug together. “We don’t have the space to shelter ten more nymphs, let alone hundreds.”
Ah. So Jesse had just filled him in on the next problem.
Link strode toward the pile of genitals, gathered them in the towel, and carried them to the door. “I’m recruiting more men.”
“More men?” I pushed my way out of the room, trailing after him and Jesse. “How?”
Link moved in quick, silent steps down the hall. “I sent out four guys the night we found you. Two are rounding up more soldiers. The other two are checking out Arkendale.”
My head swam. “I didn’t even know four men left the property.”
He stopped at the top of the stairs. “I only sent out four. I’ve got eight guys on guard outside. Two dead. And six men just standing around.” He pointed at the crowded bedroom we’d just left. “Put them to work.”
Alrighty. As soon as I was done with this discussion, I’d tell them to drag all the mattresses downstairs. We would all sleep in the living room, whether we fit or not, because there was no way the women would feel safe upstairs, separated from each other and us.
“What’s in Arkendale?” Jesse asked from behind me, his tone more curious than skeptical.
“Widewater Beach.” Link glanced down the stairs. “It’s a peninsula on the Potomac River, surrounded by water on the east, south, and west. The strip of land is heavily wooded. Lots of large homes. Would be easy to build a barricade, one huge fortified wall, across the north side where it connects to Virginia. Even with only a few guards, it would still be damned difficult for anyone to enter the peninsula without getting shot.”
A place where the women could spread out and safely live? Maybe not safe from men, but at least aphids wouldn’t be able to reach them without crossing a guarded barricade.
The tension in my spine loosened a little. “How far away?”
“A hundred and thirty miles east.”
Jesse stepped beside me, his bow on his back and his arms crossed over his chest. “And if men already inhabit the area?”
“If they meet my requirements, they can stay.” Link smiled, his eyes edged with a cruel glint. “If they don’t…”
He left the rest of that sentence hovering on the upper floor like an ominous cloud as he stomped down the stairs with his terrycloth sac of dismembered flesh.
A few minutes later, the pounding of a hammer reverberated through the house. Somehow I knew what he’d done, but it didn’t make me any less disgusted when I walked outside later that night to help the men bury the dead.
Yep, Link had nailed the dicks to the front door, one on each side. Every time I stepped in or out, the mutilated reminders swung in my face.
The shriveled meat hung on the door while we all slept crammed like sardines in the living room night after night. While we ate the meals Eddie prepared for us day aft
er day. They blistered in the sun while Paul worked on the engine of an old school bus. While Hunter gathered food and medicine. While Link, Roark, and Jesse interviewed the arrivals of new men. And they attracted flies and made a nesting ground for maggots while the rest of us prepared to transport eleven recovering women one hundred and thirty miles east.
The stinking, rotting flesh sagged on the door for a week.
The week after that, the nymphs came.
I knew it was coming, but I was powerless to stop the pressure of hundreds of anguished whispers. As the nymphs grew closer, my body crumbled into a ferocious fit of convulsions. My veins froze up, my muscles seized, and my bones turned to ice. For a panicked moment, I thought I would plummet to the floor and crack my head, but Roark’s grip around me was as inflexible as a straitjacket.
Cradling me in his arms, he ran out the door and into the sunlight. I was aware enough to recognize the yellow paint on the bus and the heavy fume of exhaust. Then a dark fog surrounded us.
Amid the hellacious agony of the nymphs’ pain, I remembered Paul had boarded up the windows of the bus. We must’ve been inside it. That was the plan anyway. When the nymphs were close enough for me to identify their numbers, we would load our women into the bus and drive them to Arkendale with the trail of nymphs behind us.
One-hundred-and-thirteen nymphs. That was how many I’d counted before I lost consciousness the first time.
Expecting so many to follow us was a Hail Mary shot in Hell, but at least the aphids wouldn’t fuck with them along the journey.
I heard the whimpers of the women around me. Felt the kick of gravel beneath the spinning tires. But beyond that, I wasn’t able to focus on anything other than the icy daggers skewering my insides.
Roark’s mouth touched my brow. I could feel that, concentrated all thought on it. The heat of his breaths, the softness of his lips, melting the pain, calming me. But not for long.
The trembling returned, shooting unbearable spasms through my entire body. An arctic wind slammed against my skin, and a metallic taste coated my tongue. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t keep warm, couldn’t open my eyes.