I looked over at Kimberly’s cage. She stood at its nearest corner, facing me. “I’m really sorry,” I told her. “She was trying to kill me, and I… I’m pretty sure she’s dead. She went down in the cove.”
Kimberly was silent for a moment. Then she murmured, “It’s all right. I mean…”
“All right?” Wesley blurted. “It’s fucking perfect. Thank you very much for ridding me of the ugly cow! She did have her uses, but… I do believe that we’re all much better off without her. My God, what a pig! Three cheers for Rupert! Hip hip hooray!” On hooray, he thrust his torch high. “Hip hip… hooray!” Up went the torch. “Hip hip… hooray!” He rammed the torch at the sky.
Then, laughing, he performed a weird little dance on top of Billie’s cage: stomping his feet on the bars, waving the torch, twisting and shaking, swinging his hips, thrusting with his pelvis. He probably would’ve jumped and twirled, but was afraid of stepping between the bars.
I hoped for him to slip and fall. I even thought about snatching up the spear and making a try for him while he danced. But Billie would burn if anything happened to make him drop the torch.
His wild gyrations sent sweat pouring down his body, flying off his hair and skin.
“So long, Thelma!” he yelled. “Nice knowing you! Nice, my ass! Ha hah!”
Billie, looking straight up at him, suddenly blinked and ducked her head and rubbed her face.
Then she began to dance.
In silence, she swayed and turned, swung her shoulders, jumped from one foot to another.
Wesley noticed. He quit dancing himself, and bent over. Huffing for breath, he looked down at Billie through the ban. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Dancing.”
“Knock it off.”
She didn’t stop. Though she remained in the center of her cage as if shackled there by Wesley’s threats, she hopped from foot to foot, waved her arms, bowed, twirled, shook and leaped.
“You’ve got nothing to dance about,” Wesley said.
“Do, too,” she called out.
“Knock it off.”
“It’s my rain dance!” she shouted. “I’m calling up a storm!”
And her dance suddenly broke into a savage frenzy. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. The way she leaped and writhed, she must’ve had manic drumbeats in her head.
Instead of ordering her to halt, Wesley stared down at her, captivated by the view.
I was captivated by the view.
It wasn’t something you could look away from. Not if you were a guy.
My God, it was like watching some sort of pagan ritual, the way she cavorted naked in the firelight, bowing and rising, spinning, whimpering and grunting with the effort, her feet splashing in the puddle of gas, her shiny buttocks flexing, her glossy breasts jumping and bouncing and swinging, her face agleam and streaming as if dipped in oil, sweat leaping like melted gold off her hair and nose and chin and nipples and fingertips, sweat spilling down her neck and chest and breasts, down her back and belly, her buttocks, her pubis, her legs, sliding down like golden runoff from a torrent of rain.
A downpour.
A squawl.
It’s my rain dance! I’m calling up a storm!
Spoken to Wesley.
Meant for me.
Dropping to a crouch, I grabbed the spear out of the grass. Wesley still stood atop the cage, bent over and watching Billie.
He didn’t look at me as I straightened up, raised the spear above my shoulder and hurled it at him.
Wesley’s Last Stand
He still had his head down when the spear struck him. It caught him near the top of his left shoulder, punched him there but didn’t stick, bounced off the bone and leaped out of the thin covering of flesh, its other end whipping upward as if a pole-vaulter was taking off from his shoulder.
He roared.
The whole spear leaped off into the dark behind him.
He raised his sweat-slick, dripping face. His eyes bulged. He bared his teeth at me.
Straight below him, Billie had stopped dancing. She stood in the puddle of gas in the middle of her cage, her head tipped back. Her body gleamed and dripped as if she had just climbed out of a swimming pool. She whined with her struggle to breathe.
“You dirty little fuck!” Wesley shouted at me.
And jammed the torch down between the bars at his feet and let it go.
“No!” I yelled.
The torch fell.
A moment later, it touched off the gasoline. The gas erupted with a heavy WHOP! like a mainsail snapped by the wind. The sudden brilliance hurt my eyes. As I squinted, a hot wind rolled against my body.
Wesley had been right about needing sunglasses.
The cage looked as if a bonfire had erupted in the middle of its concrete floor.
I saw Billie in there. All firelit and bright and shiny, her back to me.
Running. Leaping onto her upside-down bucket. Using it like a step for leaping again. High up at the far back corner of her cage, she caught hold and latched herself to the bars, curled tight with her knees up.
Depending for her life on the sweat of her mad dance, sweat meant to sluice the gasoline off her skin and bathe her with saving moisture.
I didn’t know if it would work.
Afraid to see her burn, I turned my gaze to the top of the cage.
Where flames leaped for Wesley.
They wrapped the cardboard of his “bombardier” box, licked the sides of his gasoline tin.
With a squeal of alarm, he kicked the gas container and knocked it flying. The punt sent it well past the far side of Billie’s cage, sprinkling gas from its spout. It clamored against the empty cage that he’d intended as my cell.
I looked back at Wesley to find him prancing across the bars like a ballerina as the flames tried to climb his legs. Just as he got away from them, he lost his footing. He crashed down belly-first on the ladder. It jumped and shuddered under him, raising a terrible racket.
Before the ladder had a chance to settle down, he shoved himself to his hands and knees and started crawling across it.
Away from the fire of his own making.
A fire that had already fallen to half its size.
But he didn’t know that. He wasn’t looking back. If he’d seen how the fire had diminished so abruptly, he probably wouldn’t have been so quick to flee.
Billie still clung to the bars at the distant corner of her cage.
She still had her hair.
From shoulders to buttocks, her skin looked ruddy, shiny wet, uncharred.
She’d made it!
Now the job was to kill Wesley.
I snatched up the machete and raced for him.
Halfway across the gap, he saw me coming. He let out a yelp and crawled faster, the ladder shaking and clattering beneath him.
I ran full-speed between the cages. With the ladder looming over me, Wesley almost to the other side, I leaped and reached high, slashing with my machete.
Missed him, the ladder, everything.
I’m not a tall guy. I must’ve missed the ladder by a foot.
Gave him a good scare, though. He’d squealed when I swung at him. As I put on the brakes, the clamor of the ladder let me know he was scurrying like mad.
The ladder noise suddenly stopped.
I turned around in time to see Wesley look for me over his shoulder and try to stand up.
He should’ve been watching his feet.
The right one stepped down between two of the bars. He cried, “Yaaah!” as his leg shot down. He flapped his arms. His other leg bent at the knee and scooted out from under him. His bare ass struck the bars.
And there he sat, his right leg hanging down into Kimberly’s cage.