Black Water

by Jon Fore

They met Shannon in the sporting goods department where she was collecting sleeping bags and other camping items. In no time at all, they had a camp set up in a large area between aisles complete with steaks in a pan on a camping stove, a radio, and bright gas-powered lanterns in case the electrical service should happen to fail.

  Ethan went shopping after turning the cooking over to Shannon. He collected a complete set of clothing and a large pot to heat water in so they could wash. It had been a couple of days since his last shower, and he looked forward to getting some of this grime and rotting stink off him. He could smell the cooking meat throughout the store so he did not linger.

  Shannon was just forking the meat onto a tin camping plate when he returned. He filled the large pot with water and put it on the camping stove to heat while they ate. Kayla was already on her third pack of Twinkies and second can of soda. She seemed more comfortable, more accepting of their situation—that or she had completely gone mad and did not realize their peril any longer.

  The radio statically whispered some form of country music, almost indecipherable over the background noise.

  Ethan looked down at the radio as he took the plate from Shannon. “That’s not a local station, is it?” he asked almost hopefully.

  “No, Philadelphia. That’s why it’s so hard to hear.”

  “Well, its music and proof that society continues, at least somewhere,” Ethan replied as he sat on a sleeping bag next to Shannon.

  “Kayla, would you like some steak?” Ethan offered.

  “No, thank you. I don’t eat meat,” she said in a very adult voice. She washed down her fifth Twinkie with a sip from her soda. She put the can down, kicked her shoes off, and worked her way into a sleeping bag decorated with a square, spongy cartoon character.

  Ethan ate his steak in silence, trying to ignore the bum who was trying to explain the living conditions of cattle before they slaughtered them for his meal. Shannon had cooked it a bit overdone on the outside and not quite done on the inside, but it was far and above one of the best steaks he had ever eaten. Twinkies and soda followed the steak along with some of the chocolate ice cream.

  “So, we try the other road in the morning?” Shannon asked over the soft sounds of Kayla’s snoring.

  “Yeah, you know where it is, right?”

  “No…but maybe Kayla does. I only know it is in the direction of Black Water Mountain.”

  “I’m sure we will find it,” Ethan said as he rose and went to the gun counter. He found a couple more boxes of 40 S&W ammunition for the handgun and a pump shotgun with a couple boxes of shells for it. It took him some time to get the locking chain off the rifles, but he felt better having a weapon more powerful than the Glock.

  When he returned to the makeshift camp, Shannon was washing herself with a dishtowel, squatting nude before the stove. Her body surprised Ethan, her skin so flawless with the exception of the bruising and scratches of the night before. Her back was slender and delicate, ending with a full bottom, topped with lengths of wet blonde hair. Ethan found he was becoming quickly aroused and turned his back out of respect for her as well as what she had been through the night before. He would have made a pass at her had she not been so brutalized—hell, he would have considered her bathing like this a pass at him if not for the rape.

  He sat and loaded the shotgun with as much as it would take, then placed it alongside his own sleeping bag. He could hear Shannon getting dressed again, and he waited a bit before turning back. She was briskly rubbing her hair dry with a towel, and when their eyes met, she smiled broadly.

  “I feel like a new person.”

  “I bet. You look like a new person, too.”

  “Thanks,” she replied brightly. “I don’t know if it is because I used to work here or not, but I feel safe enough to sleep, and sleep I’m gonna.”

  “You should. I will watch over you two,” Ethan promised softly as he began to wash himself. He wondered if a woman could ever overcome a rape like the one she had suffered and still lead a normal life or have normal relationships. He doubted it but found himself hoping nonetheless.

  “Wake me at some point so you can sleep, too; no need for you to be exhausted,” Shannon offered as she climbed into her sleeping bag.

  “Sure,” Ethan answered reassuringly.

  When Ethan was satisfied with his bathing, he unfolded a chair and sat with the shotgun across his lap. In moments, Shannon was breathing deeply and evenly, finally having found rest. Ethan began to prepare himself for the boredom of sitting in a chair all night and watching other people sleep. The fear was still tight in his belly, even with the sudden arousal of seeing Shannon washing, and he hoped that would be enough to prevent him from falling asleep. If it got too bad, he could find some coffee. If cellophane could keep Twinkies fresh, perhaps a can could keep coffee fresh.

  He stood and stretched a bit before walking a circuit around the store, near the windows to see the swirling darkness just beyond and to make sure the doors remained closed. The hateful baying from the mountain now was easy to tolerate in the large store, barely more than a thin whistle from the outside. When his circuit took him to the campsite again, he sat heavily in the fabric and metal tube chair. His head grew heavy and his eyes ached for sleep. He decided he had better find some coffee and a percolator or he would soon be snoozing.

  Before he gathered enough resolve to go and seek out some caffeine, the broken music suddenly went silent on the radio, the cracking and popping fell into dead air. The silence was shocking and unnerving at the same time.

  Ethan stared at the radio for a moment, trying to decide if it had lost the signal or the batteries had died, but a soft sensual voice eased from the speakers like the warm breath of a lover just satisfied, “Ethan…”

  He knew immediately that it was Madison’s voice—that sultry, exclusively female voice, which always seemed to beg for attention. His body was suddenly electrified with both desire and bald fear.

  “I am coming, Ethan…” Her voice urged from him his attention. “It was you that I always wanted, Ethan… I was waiting for Abby to free you, waiting for so long… Now is our time; now is my turn…”

  “She wants some Ethan meat…” The bum whispered in his sour, rotting breath from over his shoulder.

  “Ethan… Come outside where I can see you…”

  Ethan reached over and turned the radio off. That was enough for him. He did not even consider getting coffee now, the idea of Madison searching for him, pleading with him to come out and be with him was just too terrifying an idea for him to find sleep.

  Chapter 29

  Shannon found herself running headlong down a dark street, desperate to get away from the animals following her. She did not know what had happened, what had driven them insane, unless it was that screeching call from some animal on the mountain. All she knew right now was those men following her meant to kill her, rip her apart like the bodies she was skipping over in the street.

  She had just finished a rather boring day at the boutique, not many customers interested in her trendy wares, when the town seemed to have gone crazy. It started with a simple fistfight, still shocking in this yawn-burg of a town. The police had come, beaten the two fighters into submission and then hauled them off to some barred room somewhere. Right after they left, another fight broke out, this time a little down the street, and this time with a knife. That is when she decided to close the shop early.

  She was in the middle of locking the front door when someone threw a child against the plate glass window of her shop. He did not go through it, but slid a bit before falling onto the sidewalk. Shannon boiled with emotion, wanting to help the child, afraid to interfere with someone callous enough to heave a child like that. Before she could make up her mind, the child stood, screamed in unbridled rage, and charged the woman that had thrown him.

  Shannon did not wait to see how this played out; she was terrified of what was going on, and wanted to get out of there now. She rushed down the sidewa
lk towards the bus stop, hoping beyond prayer that the bus was due any moment. She had sold her car recently to cover the stock that her customers never seemed to want to buy. It was her last ditch effort to stay in business, but she now wished she still had the old Nissan to get herself out of here.

  Before she could make it to the small sign indicating the bus’s normal route, a large man she did not recognize grabbed her from behind. He spun her around, forced her to the ground with his weight, and began tearing her blouse off. She brought her knee up as hard as she could, and the man fell from her. She stood quickly and began running towards the parking area near the shop. If she had been thinking clearer, she would not have pinned herself in, but fear ruled her thoughts.

  When she came to face the chain-link fence, she realized her mistake. Turning to flee the enclosure, she caught sight of three men standing in the drive of the parking lot. They were all beaten and bloody, their clothing torn and stained with the soil of battle. Shannon screamed louder than she thought possible.

  Then she began to run, the men following after, calling to her, asking her to give them what they wanted. She leapt up onto the fence and began to scramble over. One of the men wrapped his powerful arms around her, filled his hands with her breast, and literally tore her from the fence by her nipples. Shannon screamed again, this time coming from her sleep like a threatened mouse.

  She looked into Ethan’s troubled eyes and began to weep. Her memories flooded back to her in large smothering waves--the terror of the night before, along with her childhood memories, the memories of her parents’ death, now a fresh wound in her soul. She clawed her way from the sleeping bag and met Ethan moving towards her. She embraced him almost violently and began to sob in a way normally forgotten by adults.

  “Shannon, it was just a dream, it’s over now,” Ethan cooed to her.

  “No,” Shannon forced through her sobbing, “I remember. I remember everything.”

  “Well that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “They raped me. They beat me and raped me. They thought I was dead and didn’t care, so many men…”

  Ethan drew her closer, held her tighter. He had hoped she would not remember the rape completely until they were free of here, but it was now too late for that. All he could do was hold her close, give her a foundation to cling too as her battered mind got a solid grasp on what had happened.

  “Mommy, why are you crying?” Kayla asked as she sat up. “You’re not my mommy…” she said in a cloud of sleep driven confusion.

  “No sweetie, she isn’t. She will be alright in a bit. It’s still night time, so try and go back to sleep, ’kay?”

  “Why is she crying?”

  “She thinks she has lost something or something was taken from her.” Ethan stumbled with a reason he could give a child her age.

  “What? I can help look,” Kayla offered while stifling a yawn.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. She will get by, you’ll see.”

  The little girl worked herself from the sleeping bag and trotted over on tiny bare feet. “Can I give her mine?”

  Shannon looked up into the innocent eyes of untroubled youth and smiled as she wept. “You’re a gem, you know that?”

  Kayla knelt down beside Shannon and worked her arm between Shannon and Ethan to embrace the woman so abused. This helped Shannon cry even more, and Ethan did not try to stop her. The emotional release could only help, or he hoped it would. Either way, he held both the girls for some time before the crying jag ebbed. Even Kayla worked her way through a few sobs while holding Shannon.

  When they had grown silent, Ethan continued to hold them even after Kayla and then Shannon lost themselves to an exhausted slumber. There were still a few hours until sunrise, and they could both use more sleep. Ethan lay down with them gently and stared at the woman before him. She was so lovely, so delicate, so used. He knew rape was rape, and he could not fault a woman for being raped any more than he could fault a dog for not being a horse. That he could live with, but could she ever live with it? Could she bring herself to be intimate voluntarily again?

  He found himself hoping she could and that after they were free from here, she would stay with him; get to know him outside this nightmarish town. He was not sure why, probably his desire to live on, to have children, to make something of himself or be part of something else more than what he was alone. His studies in survival had taught him that these types of feelings could come up unexpectedly when given a stressful situation. However, those classes were more for plane crashes, or shipwrecks, or becoming lost while hiking, not for some lunatic distortion of a town by these torturous entities hiding in the mountain.

  Then he began to wonder why it was they had assaulted the town. He did not know, but was certain that what was going on here was coming from the mountain, coming from those nightmarish forms he had escaped. They wanted something, a vengeance probably. He did not care. He would find his way out of here and continue his life with or without Shannon. He would start seeing his doctor again, get rid of this bum, and lead a normal life.

  He stood, gently letting the girls find the floor and cuddle amongst themselves, and began walking a circuit around the store. He checked the stock room first to make sure nothing had worked its way past the large rolling door over the loading dock, then the front of the store to make sure those doors were locked as well.

  The outside was still pitch, the fog barely perceptible as it roiled just beyond the glass. He began walking the length of the windows towards the doors when he heard the sound of flesh rubbing against glass. He spun around with the shotgun, telling himself if he fired through the glass, the store would be open to anything that wished to come in.

  There, pressed against the glass was a naked Madison. She moved herself against the window like a stripper, undulating and pleading with her femininity for him to come to her. She grabbed and rubbed at the parts of her body that did not make contact with the glass, and Ethan found himself instantly aroused. She was so incredibly gorgeous that it took every ounce of fear not to rush to the doors and let her in.

  Her breath fogged the glass around her mouth as she pleaded almost soundlessly for him to come out. She was working her groin with her hand and pulling roughly at her full breast. Ethan’s breath came in rapid gusts as he watched, transfixed and unable to turn away. He discovered that his hands had found himself like some teenager with a dirty magazine.

  He approached the glass and gently touched it with his hand. Madison immediately tried to suckle on his fingers, her body jerking as she came closer and closer to her own orgasm. She turned slowly, allowing her body to maintain contact with the glass, and bent over far enough to continue her efforts and allow him to watch from behind. The glass was becoming an unreasonable obstacle to his desire, and the importance of keeping out the outside evil was losing the battle. He realized he was rubbing himself against the window as well, trying desperately to make contact through the thick glass.

  Madison began to slide her finger in, her other hand grabbing at her crotch and opening herself for him to see. Ethan began to lose control with his thoughts, wanting nothing more than to feel her from the inside, as she was doing right now. He would stop breathing right now if he could plunge in her, seek out the deepest parts of her, and leave that little part of himself there. In a sudden decision, he started heading for the door.

  “Ethan! Don’t open that door, Ethan!” Shannon called to him from behind.

  He knew he should not, but he had to have Madison. Nothing mattered more than to take that petite but voluptuous girl and have his way with her. He began clawing at the rather strange locking mechanism that held the automatic doors closed, desperate to have them open.

  Shannon spun him around and forced him against the door. “Ethan, you can’t open that door!” She could tell by his rapid breathing, the pulse surging beneath her grip on his arms that he was close to being lost.

  “I have to! God, I have to!” he hissed, his eyes clenched shut agains
t the battle raging within him.

  Shannon stared at him for a long moment, holding him against the door with all of her strength and the last of his waning self-control. She knew that when the self-control failed, she would be helpless to stop him. He would open the door and either go out to this naked woman or allow her to come in. She did not know who she was, but if she was out there naked and doing what she was doing, then she was part of the town’s trouble and not a survivor.

  The solution suddenly came to her, and with the desperation of survival and the pent up disgust with her own self-loathing, she grabbed Ethan by both the neck and his crotch and kissed him hard, searchingly, longingly. He responded immediately, his groin already stiff, his mouth more hungry than hers. Their paired desperation to survive, to continue beyond this point and the over-powering sensuality of that wonderfully sexy woman pleasuring herself beyond the glass fed the fire between them, and they embraced even harder.

  Deep in Ethan’s mind, he remembered the violation Shannon had suffered and so did not attempt to find her most intimate places, but she was hungry with hand and mouth, and soon he was sated and in control once more.

  Outside, when Madison saw his release, saw him fill Shannon’s mouth with what should have been hers, she began to scream the scream of a tormented soul, scream the scream of the eternally damned, then fled away deeper into the concealment of the fog.

  Chapter 30

  Ethan woke with a start, his heart pounding at the dream he just escaped. Madison had returned somehow…and wanted him. She was here trying desperately to make him open the door, let her in with her hidden brood of whatever. Shannon…she had saved him from himself, she had come to him and did what a woman raped not more than a day ago should never have to do. He had a sudden chilling thought that somehow this was all real.

  “Morning,” Shannon said sheepishly.

  Ethan rolled over and saw her, the swelling of her eye and jaw line were receding and the deep reddish color was becoming an angry mixture of purple and blue. Still, with her hair brushed out and fresh clothing, she looked radiant. “Did we…?” Ethan trailed off.