The strength that raged through her body was not born of anger or disgrace or fear. It was something far more basic, something that stretched back to the very beginning of humanity when the earliest cavemen tried to drag the earliest rape victims to their caves and those first feminists had fought back and discovered that man might be bigger and stronger but, if hit in just the right place, far more vulnerable than any woman.
Victor recoiled from the smack of her knee but he couldn’t pull completely away because she wouldn’t let up on his fingers. If some woman had gouged out a man’s eye, she could rip off this guy’s fingers. Then she’d get on top of him while he cried like a little baby and yank his ball sack right off his body. She could dangle it over his face, stuff it down his throat.
Those courageous thoughts vanished in another direct punch and she could no longer keep her bite on his fingers. He fell off to the side, however, and she had a chance to crawl out, run away, get to daddy and then she’d be safe. She heard him outside the tent, yelling for her. Why wasn’t he in here? Why wasn’t he saving his daughter?
She got to her knees and dizziness nearly toppled her. The opening of the tent was only a few feet away but the world in here was a swirling mess of dark blobs like she was dropping into a black hole. Her head felt like it had detached from her neck and was floating off into another dimension.
The flashlight was somewhere to her right. She threw herself in that direction and thought for sure she would tumble endlessly into a bottomless black pit. Instead, the hard earth stung her knees but that was okay, hell, that was great, and so much preferable to the warbling pain in her head and the throbbing misery between her legs. When she finally got to check herself down there, she feared it might be destroyed.
Her hands found the flashlight. The plastic casing was cold and fragile but solid enough. She turned it on and the beam blinded her for a moment. She spun around and there was Victor grinning at her, blood on his chin. My blood, she thought, from my fucking nose. And there was his dick, dangling between his hairy legs and getting hard again. No, please, dear Jesus, how could he be ready to go again? She had just kneed him as hard as she could. He was supposed to be disabled, unable to breathe, helpless.
She screamed or groaned or something and lunged toward the entrance to the tent. Her hands tangled in something and she thought wildly that Victor had set a trap and that there was no escape, no escape from this madman, and then she realized it was her jeans. She grabbed them.
The end of the tent flung open and there was daddy with a stronger flashlight. His whole face was wide with fear and confusion. His head whipped side to side as if the tent were huge rather than a mere few feet wide. He saw her, she knew he did, and then he looked away as if he couldn’t process what he was seeing.
“Daddy!” she cried.
“Mercy?” he said like he had forgotten what she looked like.
“Help!”
The other guy, Caleb, with the broad shoulders, was behind Daddy, almost towering over him and that was great because Victor stood no chance against both men. He might be able to fight her father but not both. They would tackle him, tie him up with bungee cords and then drag him down the mountain and call the police. She could relax now. Everything was going to be okay.
Caleb’s arm came around her father’s neck as if Caleb were trying to stop Daddy from doing something stupid and she figured that was probably smart. They couldn’t kill Victor. If they did, this would turn into some kind of update of Deliverance with the three of them burying Victor’s body and then trying to control their paranoia that the cops were going to find out, find out and lock them all away for the rest of their lives. All for killing some shit head rapist.
“Mercy!” Daddy yelled.
Caleb’s arm tightened over his throat. “Whoa there, Hoss,” Caleb said like he was some fucking cowboy.
“Please!” Mercy said in a voice on the verge of hysteria.
Her father realized what Caleb was doing and grabbed his arm. “Get off of me,” he yelled.
“Afraid I can’t do that,” Caleb said. His body jerked forward and Daddy screamed, his own body slumping forward at the hips as if his back had given out.
“Daddy!”
He dropped to his knees, Caleb maintaining his wrap around the throat. Daddy ground his teeth against some intense, unseen pain. His eyes rolled frantically in all directions as if looking for some escape hatch from this sudden trap of pain.
“Mercy,” he said, only now it was less her name than the desperate plea of an injured, vulnerable man.
He reached for her but she couldn’t move. This was too much to process. It wasn’t happening, that was all. Victor was still on top of her, having his way with her, and she was off in some other now where the horror continued to unfold in the sinister corners of her mind where nightmares reigned.
When her father fell forward onto the ground, Caleb held the knife so the body slid free. Light glinted off the blade in the small gaps that blood hadn’t obscured.
“What an annoying fuck,” Caleb said and stared at Mercy. “Is it my turn yet?” His smile was the most horrifying thing she had ever seen.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Victor wished Mercy could appreciate the moment from his point of view. If fear and panic hadn’t destroyed her mind, she might be able to admire how well this plan had progressed. Instead, she was in the clutches of white hot fear, nothing more than a cornered animal desperate to escape.
He could push aside the pain emanating through him; he had learned to do that many years ago. Later he would suffer the crippling spasms and full-body seizures, but not now, not with the adrenaline flushing his veins. Even so, he knew how to keep control, to harness that primal strength, to not be rash and do something stupid.
Caleb stepped into the tent and got to his knees. He was completely focused on Mercy but his brain was flooded with the fantasy of rape, so he didn’t register the flashlight clutched in the girl’s hand as a weapon. Its light flickered on his face, distorting his features like a facade in a dream, but it was Caleb who was in the dream. He was overcommitting out of desperate longing.
Victor was not surprised when Mercy brought the flashlight straight up into Caleb’s chin in a quick, powerful arc. Caleb’s jaw snapped shut on a sliver of tongue and his head rocked back as if he had slammed it against a wall. It had been too easy for her to catch him off guard, too easy for her to disable him and scramble on her knees for the exit.
“You fucking idiot,” Victor said without surprise.
Caleb responded in single-syllable moans while he clutched his face and rocked back and forth on the ground like a traumatized child.
Mercy’s white ass glowed in the tent doorway for a moment, a small moon just for his pleasure, and then she was gone.
Victor pulled up his pants, secured the belt and went after her.
He made it halfway out before the girl’s father screamed to life and grabbed him around the waist. His fingers latched onto Victor’s belt and pulled him back inside the tent. Victor tried to yank free of his grip but the old man’s last gasp was a mighty one.
“My daughter,” he said through clenched teeth. “My baby.”
Victor rolled onto his back and kicked the man across the face with his bare foot. The grip came loose and Victor could reposition above him. He punched him across the face twice and waited for another retaliation.