Callie touched my lower back and I waved for her to follow before making my way down the aisle in a crouch.
Everything happened in a flash. Before I reached the booth I caught a glimpse of a dark-haired girl with a ponytail and a dishtowel shoved in her mouth being restrained, face down on the table. One of the men pinned both of her wrists behind her neck and the man violating her had pulled down her server’s uniform pants just far enough for him to fuck her. The man not violating or holding her watched the man raping her and kept making agreeable sounds while masturbating and telling him to hurry up so he could go next. The girl screamed and tried to kick but her rapist held her hips tight and didn’t seem to waver.
The man restraining the girl noticed me and Callie and said, “Hey, there’s enough for everyone now!”
He hadn’t finished his sentence before I’d dodged across the walkway, snagged up a chair, and charged the group. The masturbator turned toward me and was first in my path. He opened his mouth to say something but the chair made contact with his head before he could say a word. He staggered against the bar, masturbating, as if the blow that produced a gash in his cheek and broken his nose in an odd angle hadn’t fazed him. Blood ran from his nose as he slowly righted himself.
Callie let loose a battle cry and ran past me toward the man pinning the girl. She’d retrieved a bottle of whiskey and the quick-pour spout leaked its contents down her arm and onto the floor as she brandished it above her head for the attack. She slammed the bottle over his head. The glass shattered and shards of the bottle and whiskey rained over all of us. The man she’d hit let go of the girl and clutched his slit scalp while letting loose a line of derogatory profanities at Callie. Callie jumped back, startled by the result of her attack, and looked at the broken bottle neck in her hand.
The girl bucked wildly at her attacker and managed to shove him off. The rapist thrust in the air wildly as if he were still fucking her. The girl rolled sideways on the table, yelped as bits of glass cut her hand, arm, and bare buttocks, and delivered a massive kick to the rapist’s balls as he humped and groped in her direction. The man dropped like a sack of potatoes and went silent. The girl sprang from the table, sobbing, and pulled her pants up while backing away from all of us.
The masturbator I’d struck with the chair regained his balance and began to approach me while stroking himself. He said, “I seemed to have lost my phone number. Can I have yours?” He coughed on some blood that leaked from his nose into his mouth.
I steadied myself and swung the chair at his head a second time. I made contact with the other side of his head and he fell into the bar.
The man who had been pinning the girl to the table clutched his head. He looked at Callie and said, “Hi, my name is Derek. Remember it because you’re going to be screaming it all night.”
Callie screamed in frustration, lunged at him, and planted the broken neck of the whiskey bottle in his crotch with a sickening crunch. The man opened his mouth in surprise and his expression didn’t change as he crashed to the table, his head bouncing off the thick wood. He lay inanimate.
The masturbator righted himself again.
Callie took a step back and yelled, “Ouch!” before lifting her foot to pull a piece of broken glass from it.
“Don’t move,” I told her. “There’s glass everywhere.”
“In the balls!” the dark-haired girl yelled. “Kick him in the balls!”
The masturbator said, “Did the sun just come out or did you smile at me?” He stumbled toward me.
I kicked him hard enough in the balls to make my foot tingle and in that instant I worried I might have broken my toe. The man crashed into the bar and slid to the ground in slow motion. The bar was silent except for the heavy breaths and stifled sobs coming from us three women.
Chapter 4
“There has to be an explanation,” Callie said.
I was crouched and dabbing at the tiny cut on the bottom of Callie’s foot inflicted by the glass she’d stepped on. She sat on the stainless steel counter in the kitchen. The three of us—the girl we’d rescued told us her name was Sydney—had moved to the kitchen since the lighting was the brightest, after searching the rest of the restaurant and securing the backdoor. We’d found the kitchen empty except for a thoroughly boiled over and burnt pot of pasta and a radio droning quietly above the sink. The volume was low and I couldn’t hear anything being said on the radio but I recognized the monotonous tone as the President’s. I wondered why none of us shut it off yet to keep an ear out for any intruders. The President’s voice was similar to an annoying insect buzzing in my ear.
I smoothed a Band-Aid over the cut on Callie’s foot from the first-aid kit Sydney retrieved from the office. “Mass hysteria or something,” I said. “Not everything has an explanation. Maybe we should turn up the radio. They’d have to report on this.”
Sydney scoffed. “Have you listened to what that asshat has been saying?!” She stood facing the counter beside Callie and bandaged a cut on her arm. “This is probably all his fault!” Her voice wavered and tears threatened to spill from her eyes.
The girl had periodically burst into tears since the incident, and rightfully so. It broke my heart every time to see her suffer. She refused to allow Callie or me to comfort her. I wasn’t sure I knew how to comfort her. What could I say? Everything was going to be okay? No, it wasn’t. Sydney had lived through every woman’s worst nightmare. She needed a doctor. She needed the police. And I wasn’t sure how to get her to either of those since there wasn’t any internet or phone service and, from what we could see, there were men slowly roaming around the streets who took to cat-calling us and banging on the glass door if they spotted us through the glass. Luckily none of them appeared smart enough to try and break the glass and stopped immediately after we were out of eyesight. After spending some time in the bathroom Sydney emerged with a new and earned demeanor of equal parts grief and anger and she swung from one to the other in a flash.
I stood and addressed Callie, “We need to get you some tennis shoes. Those ankle breakers are no good.”
She nodded and touched her stomach. “I know this seems wildly inappropriate,” Callie whispered to me, “but I’m starving.”
“Plenty of food,” Sydney said. “Don’t think we have any shoes though.”
Callie slipped from the counter and began exploring. Sydney helped her and I went to retrieve the radio on the other side of the kitchen. As I neared it I realized what Sydney was insinuating about how all of this could be the President’s fault. He wasn’t giving a speech. He was spouting off terrible pickup lines and making crazy misogynistic remarks.
He droned, “Sometimes you gotta put a dick in their mouths to shut them up. Hey, I’m looking for treasure. Can I look around your chest? I just shit my pants. Can I get in yours? Sometimes you have to treat them like shit. Putting them to work is dangerous. Once they’re successful I get jealous and sad. We need to keep them uneducated and dependent on us. Is that a tic-tac in your blouse or are you happy to see me? You must be from Tennessee. Because you’re the only ten I see.”
I said, “What the fuck?!” and turned to the others.
“What’s the matter?” Callie called. She appeared panicked.
“You have to hear this.” I waved her over.
They both crossed the room toward me. Sydney didn’t seem surprised, crossing her arms and hatefully staring at the radio. Callie’s mouth dropped open as she listened to what was being said.
“Fucking pig!” Callie furrowed her brow.