Beauty and Dread

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  A wave of misery washed over him as he gazed at her in the bed.

  “Yes. Sometimes they don’t wake up.”

  Cate patted his shoulder and left the room. He thought he might have a few minutes alone, but the next moment he smelled perfume. When he turned, Natalie was standing behind him.

  “I’m so sorry, Steven. I couldn’t believe it when I found her sprawled out on the floor. I ran straight to the hospital, and we got her transported here right away.”

  She moved beside him, encircling his bicep in one arm and draping the other around his shoulders.

  “I just don’t understand,” he said.

  “I know, I know. It’s not something you expect from someone who seems healthy. Did you know she had a heart murmur? She mentioned it to me just recently.”

  “No, I didn’t know that. She didn’t tell me.”

  “Well, she probably didn’t want to worry you,” Natalie replied with a squeeze to Steven’s shoulder. “Let’s just hope for the best.”

  Jeffrey’s voice came from the doorway.

  “Dad. They need you over at the southern barricade. There’s some arguing about where the detonator should be positioned. Calvin is being a jerk and Chuck is about to punch him, I think.”

  “Go Steven,” Natalie said. “I’ll keep an eye on Marilyn. If anything changes, I’ll let you know right away.”

  ###

  The next moment Steven was out the door. Jeffrey started to follow his father when Natalie said, “Jeff, may I have a word with you? It’s about Brittany.”

  The boy stopped, then pivoted in slow motion to face the mother of the girl he may or may not be in love with. A small voice in his head suggested it was more lust than love. Brittany could actually be pretty annoying; all she ever wanted to talk about was dead celebrities, clothes, and makeup. But when they were doing other stuff besides talking, he liked her very much.

  “Come in. I promise I won’t bite,” Natalie said with a smile.

  Jeffrey walked the few steps toward the woman, marveling at how different her beauty was compared to Brittany’s. The mother was Hollywood gorgeous, but there was no warmth...no sweetness...just cold beauty glittering like the night sky in winter.

  “I know you two are having sex.”

  The abrupt statement caught him off guard. He had no ready answer, so he said nothing. Better to see where this was going then self-incriminate.

  “And while I don’t condone it, I understand what it’s like to be a fifteen-year old with raging hormones. All I ask is that you treat her with respect and use condoms. Not when it’s convenient, but every single time. If you don’t have a condom, then do oral. She’s much too young to be a mother, and she has my narrow hips. Having her almost killed me, and that was with access to the best doctors and hospitals.”

  Jeffrey’s mouth fell open.

  “What? Too blunt?” she said with a leering grin. “I’m a realist. I know you kids are going to do what you want no matter what your parents say. So just be smart about it, okay?”

  She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. He glanced down at the slender fingers wrapped around his grubby ones, then looked back up at the lovely face. He frowned, struggling to process the disturbing images that came flooding into his mind.

  Natalie released her grip, then said, “Now, run along. I’m sure they need you out there somewhere doing something to get ready for this epic battle that’s about to happen.”

  Jeffrey bolted.

  ###

  “Like a hare from a fox,” Natalie said to herself, then went to the doorway and peeked both directions down the long hospital corridor. Nobody was in sight.

  Her strides to Marilyn’s bedside were purposeful and unhesitating. The next moment she was pinching the nose of the unconscious woman with one hand and covering the thin lips firmly with the other.

  Chapter 49

  “Oh, dear. Such a lovely face. Well, it was.”

  Isaiah’s grin was magnificent. Three days had passed since Dani and Lily’s nocturnal pact. There were two fresh vertical lacerations on her forehead, done so as to look like lightning bolts coming up from her eyes. Isaiah’s idea, of course. He thought the resulting scars would be a hoot. For now, the wounds just looked ghastly. Forehead skin wasn’t thick, so the pain wasn’t too bad at least.

  The fifth and freshest knife wound, which began from the corner of the right side of her mouth and extended to her ear, was the one to worry about. She didn’t have access to a mirror, but her mind summoned visions of Heath Ledger in one of the Batman movies. Tomorrow, on the other side of her face, she would have a second one to match.

  The silver lining was that Lily was the designated butcher or surgeon, as it were, being so capable with her knives. The blades were always razor-sharp and sterilized prior to the daily ‘reckoning.’ She sliced as shallowly as she could get away with...just enough to draw a sufficient amount of blood to satisfy Isaiah, but not so deep that muscle was involved.

  Thank god. Surface scarring was one thing. Looking like a stroke victim was something else.

  “Fuck you,” she muttered. She would never give him the satisfaction of appearing cowed or beaten.

  “Tsk, tsk,” the dulcet voice said. He gazed down at her from his position astride the black horse. “Now that you’re no longer beautiful, that coarse language won’t be so readily tolerated. Nor that discourteous, distasteful demeanor of yours. It’s human nature, you know. We love beauty and will abide much to be in its presence. Who would put up with your arrogance when they have to look at that ruined face? I wonder if your young man will still be so captivated by the frightful, feckless freak you have become.”

  Of course this was the source of Dani’s personal hell; the thorn in her paw that vexed her every moment that she wasn’t thinking about how satisfying killing Isaiah would be. The last time Sam had seen her, there were only two lacerations on her face. Now there were five and they had three more days to go before reaching Liberty.

  “Dearest general, I think it’s time for your dinner. Let me tend to this girl and I’ll join you shortly. Let’s go with,” she paused, the black eyes studied the leaden, winter sky, “Luther for your taster tonight.”

  “Luther? He’s a good fighter. Brilliant with that mace of his. Why risk such as him?”

  Isaiah preferred his food tasters be the least valuable members of his army, but Lily contended all should be put into the rotation. It would keep everyone on their toes and less likely to commit treason.

  And now that Martin was out of the picture, she was Isaiah’s only advisor. He trusted her like no other, especially after hearing the story of how his former lieutenant murdered Dani’s guards then attempted to assassinate Isaiah in his sleep. Thankfully, Lily had been awake and watchful.

  She and her knives.

  “Because Luther is getting a little big for his britches, I think. It sends a message, yes?”

  “Ah. Good point. Very well. Have him sent. As for you, Dani the Disfigured, sleep well tonight. I know I will!”

  Both women watched the man on the horse as he trotted away.

  Lily dug through her ragged clothing for the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a clean cloth to treat Dani’s wounds.

  “The best we can do is keep them sanitary and moist,” she whispered as she worked. Everyone in the camp was busy setting up tents and starting cooking fires. The two new guards assigned to watch Dani looked as tired as she felt after the long day of marching. The hope had been that they would sleep inside that night at a Motel 6 just east of Lyons on Highway 56. The scouts had found it earlier in the day and advised Isaiah that it would make an adequate refuge for the night. But the general rejected the idea. Camping under the stars in frigid temperatures hardened his soldiers. Made them stronger, like forged steel.

  It was an unpopular edict but nobody would complain. Not out loud, at least.

  Dani was so exhausted from the day’s march, she barely noticed the growling of her own stom
ach.

  “I’ll bring you some food,” Lily said, then leaned in closer to whisper in her ear, “I have a tube of petroleum jelly. I’ll put a dab on the wounds. It’ll help keep the germs out and the flesh moist.”

  Even if someone had been watching, they wouldn’t have seen anything suspicious in Lily’s movements. She was like a magician doing sleight of hand. Objects appeared and disappeared from within the ragged clothing faster than Dani could follow.

  “Do you happen to have a mirror in one of your magic pockets?” It was a strange paradigm to be receiving kindness from the very person who had inflicted the injuries.

  “Trust me. You don’t want to see,” Lily replied without a moment’s hesitation.

  No sugarcoating there.

  A sudden spike in the ambient noise level came from the direction Isaiah had gone. Crowd sounds, raised voices that escalated in pitch and volume, then diminished as suddenly as they had begun.

  Dani noticed Lily frown.

  “What? What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Lily replied, turning her head owl-like toward the ruckus.

  The next moment Isaiah reemerged on foot fifty yards away with his three-man escort in tow, plus a fourth person whose silhouette looked vaguely familiar in the fading light of dusk.

  Dani was more alarmed by Lily’s demeanor than the sight of a returning Isaiah. She seemed nervous; unsure of herself for the first time.

  “What’s going on?” she repeated, but Lily ignored her, standing to face the advancing group which was growing in numbers with every step. The soldiers sensed, as she did, that something out of the ordinary was happening.

  The fourth silhouette was female. The wave of relief she felt that it wasn’t Sam was replaced the next moment by a rush of apprehension.

  She knew that face. How could anyone who’d seen it once ever forget the eyes and nose which defied symmetry? She remembered those taxicab door ears that stuck out from matted hair at diverse latitudes. The one useless emaciated arm, woolen-covered now in the winter chill, and the other that ended in pincer-like fingers.

  She recognized that ghastly, hygiene-challenged mouth and the smirk of satisfaction it now wore.

  “Bet you never thought you’d see me again, huh, Dani?”

  Dolores’s voice was as lovely as her face was hideous.

  “I’ve been filling Isaiah in on all your doings back in Hays. Remember? When you murdered my brother and your boyfriend killed my pa? Anyway, I’ve also been following the army...doing a little covert operation of my own. Been watching you and Isaiah’s number-one-girl getting all chummy.”

  Dani remembered how the creature moved. Like a ghost, she remembered thinking in the foul hotel room repurposed as a bordello. Like Sam, Dolores could easily have been moving in and around the marching army without being noticed.

  Dani looked at Isaiah walking next to the girl. His composure was gone. Betrayal was etched into the downturned mouth, and lash-fringed onyx marbles glowed in the gloom like white-hot coals.

  Lily darted behind Dani where she still sat on the cold ground and pressed one of her many knife blades against Dani’s throat.

  “Don’t take another step, Isaiah, or I’ll slaughter your little prize like a spring lamb.”

  “You ungrateful bitch!” he roared.

  The strange squeaking laughter came from behind.

  “You are a fool,” Lily said. “A fustian, flamboyant flatulent fool. I can confirm the flatulence too. A little FYI...just because they’re silent doesn’t mean they don’t smell.”

  Dani realized two things at that moment. First: Lily was crazier than she had previously thought. The woman might have escaped if she had hauled ass when she first saw the look on Isaiah’s face, but soldiers were already beginning to encircle them now. Second: there was going to be bloodshed and the smartest thing Dani could do was to stay perfectly still.

  “I will have you drawn and quartered! But first, I’ll pluck those black eyeballs out of your skull and rip that serpent’s tongue from your lying mouth.”

  “You want to be careful, silly man. I know the importance you’ve placed on this woman whose carotid artery is under my blade. I can nick it quicker than a shake of that lamb’s tail I mentioned.”

  Dani didn’t move. She watched the emotions play out on Isaiah’s face. He was fuming, breathing in and out through flared nostrils and clenched teeth like he was facing a Spanish matador, espadas sticking out from his bloodied hide.

  “What do you want then, Lily?” he spat.

  Dani felt the pressure of the blade lessen. Her brain processed that development, calculating various escape options and the maneuvers they would require.

  “I want all of you to die. You especially, Isaiah. You’re the worst of the worst. I was going to save you for last, so you would witness the crumbling of your monstrous so-called empire.”

  The pressure lessened further. Lily was distracted by her verbal sparring.

  Just a little more...

  “Do you know why? Because all the people that are left...all of you,” she gestured to the silent, watchful crowd with the hand that wasn’t holding the knife, “are monsters. People like you killed my baby’s big sister. Right after the end came. You brutalized her virginal body and then you took her life.”

  The last part came out as a sob. The revelation that Lily’s child had been raped and murdered explained much about the woman’s mental state and the transferred affection for the doll she always carried. Under different circumstances, Dani would have felt compassion for the woman. But it was difficult to feel sorry for the person who had ravaged her face and held a knife at her throat.

  “It is God’s will that you be destroyed and the earth cleansed of your pestilence!”

  A bitter laugh erupted from Isaiah.

  “You’re insane, Lily. Do you know that? I always knew you were a bit off, but now I realize you’re delusional and deranged. You’re a treacherous, traitorous troglodyte.”

  “And you are Satan incarnate! You are all child-killing demons from hell!”

  There it was. Just enough slack in the tension of the blade against her throat to allow an evasive maneuver with reduced risk and a higher expectation of avoiding death than a moment earlier.

  All this went through Dani’s mind in a microsecond. In an explosion of movement, she reverse head-butted Lily while spinning the opposite direction from the hand with the knife. It would never have worked if Lily hadn’t been distracted. It worked now, though. At least enough to get her out from under Lily’s blade and several feet away from the woman who was twirling like a like a rag-clad dervish, knives now in both hands. Dani saw lucidity in the eyes – understanding that Lily realized she was about to die.

  And something else: acceptance. Perhaps even relief.

  Five soldiers approached the woman from different directions, closing in on her but leery of getting too close. Everyone knew how lethal Lily was with her knives.

  The sharp crack of gunfire came from Isaiah’s direction.

  Lily fell to the ground next to the campfire, like a rag doll dropped from the hand of a sleeping child.

  A dime-sized hole in her forehead began to ooze, startlingly red against the backdrop of the pallid face.

  The black irises gazed up at the winter sky, unblinking.

  Dani’s gaze shifted from Lily to the person who’d shot her.

  “Been practicing a lot since I saw you last. ‘Course my left hand isn’t much use.” Dolores lifted the arm with the pincers. “But my right hand seems to get the job done.” She held the revolver between the only two fingers she had on that hand.

  “Excellent, Dolores. I believe you just proved your loyalty as well as your ability. Luther, take two people and bury this wretch.” He kicked at Lily’s boots. “Deep. I don’t want to smell her betrayal in my dreams tonight. You two, not one wink of sleep,” he said to Dani’s guards. “If my prize lamb escapes, you’ll know pain like you’ve never known before. Dolo
res, come with me. We shall dine together. I’m certain there’s more information in that unfortunate skull that can be useful.”

  Dani watched Dolores’s back as they began to walk away, trying to identify something vaguely bothersome.

  ‘I’ve also been following the army...doing a little covert operation of my own.’

  She felt a stab of apprehension. The words implied Dolores was not the only person shadowing the army. Had she spotted Sam? As if reading her thoughts, the girl turned her head to say something over her shoulder.

  “Oh, by the way. I ran into your boyfriend out there. He’s got some moves for sure...but so do I. Let’s just say you won’t have to worry now whether he’ll still love you with your messed-up face. I left him by the road with a knife in his gut. You know, the kind of injury that is super painful and slowly, inevitably lethal? That’s what I gave him. Payback for my pa. I figure by now the crows and the buzzards have gotten to him. Good night, Dani!”

  She had been sitting on the cold ground, her wrists still tied behind her back, her ankles bound in front of her. She collapsed onto her side, not feeling the chill of the earth, not feeling the pressure of the rocks against her body, not feeling the sting of the burning ash flying from the fire and brushing against her wounded face.

  Not feeling anything but despair.

  Chapter 50

  “I don’t know, Pablo. I can’t explain it. She was doing so well,” Cate said.

  Pablo wanted to scream at the ruddy-faced woman who wouldn’t meet his gaze: YOU FAT PATHETIC MORON!

  Instead, he asked through clenched teeth, “How high is her blood pressure?” It took every ounce of self-control not to punch one of his balled-up fists into the face of Liberty’s nurse practitioner.