“Can you go on?” Dani stroked gently with her thumb.
“Think so.” With great relief, she realized she actually did feel ready to go on. The tremble had subsided, and the panic had gone down to a tolerable level.
Dani withdrew her fingers from Lynn’s face but took her hand instead. With the other, she picked up the mittens from the ground.
They resumed their short journey.
Lynn let herself be pulled along and stared at the place their bodies met as if her hand were a foreign object that had somehow gotten attached to her body. Lynn knew she should be holding her tomahawk instead, and she should be looking out for danger, but her world had gotten very small, and Dani’s hand seemed to be the only thing tethering her to reality. She couldn’t let go of that—if she did, she’d be swept away by that wave again.
Dani stopped.
Lynn stopped too, but not before bumping into her. She stepped back dully.
“We’re here. Come, down to the stream, okay?” Dani pulled her along again, carefully guiding her over grass and rocks. When Dani stopped again and rolled off Lynn’s top shirt, Lynn let her. Dani pulled the second shirt free from her pants. Again, Lynn raised her arms dutifully, and Dani slipped it off.
The wind ghosting over her back, belly, and breasts felt wonderful. Lynn hummed and didn’t protest when Dani sank to a knee and undid the strips of cloth around her boots, then slipped her boots off. Lynn dug her toes into the cool grass with immense pleasure. Dani laid the tomahawk by Lynn’s feet and set her nimble fingers upon the knot in the rope holding up both of Lynn’s pants.
Lynn stepped out of them.
“Go on in.” Dani looked up at her. “I’ll keep watch.”
“In?” Lynn frowned.
Dani tilted her head and furrowed her brow. “Into the water.”
The words shook loose the memory of scouting out the shallow stream by a bridge near their camp. That memory in turn brought back the day’s events. Lynn jolted and blinked. She quickly whipped her head about, all of a sudden realizing she stood naked in the open and Dani’s face was level to her crotch. She stepped back. “Wha—?”
Carefully, Dani stood and raised her hands, palms up to show she was unarmed. The tip of her spear bobbed up over her shoulder. “It’s okay. Just get in the water. It’s… it’s been a long day.” She looked at Lynn as if she had become a cornered animal with bared teeth.
Lynn felt as if maybe she had. Then something seemed to tumble from her hair, down her back and off the curve of her ass. She gasped and eyed the water by her feet. The need to get clean overwhelmed all other instincts. She stepped in.
The cool water hit her like a slap in the face and cleared some of the fog. She put her other foot in as well and waded out. The water barely came up to her knees at the center of the stream, but that was enough. She lowered herself down and then submerged herself entirely, staying underwater as long as she dared, hoping everything alive would either float off her or drown.
She came up and inhaled deeply. Finally, her lungs didn’t fill with the sickening stench of rotting flesh. She inhaled the pure, moist air again and sank back. Slowly, she opened her eyes to make sure everything was all right around her. Nothing beyond an outright attack would get her out of the water.
Dani had climbed up the embankment and stood on the road that led across the creek, her back to Lynn, but casting sweeping glances at their surroundings. A little downstream, hooked behind a branch, were Lynn’s clothes, getting a good soak.
As Lynn lay in the stream, ass on a rock, head tilted toward the sun, she felt the touch of death seep out of her slowly. Secure in the knowledge Dani was watching over her, she moved her arms above her head and then back down. The water pressed against her palms and coursed through her spread fingers. Goosebumps played across her skin, and her hair stuck to her scalp. Slowly, Lynn started connecting to her old self again.
Very carefully, she allowed snippets of today’s ordeal back into her active memory: blood seeping from ears and eyes, ripped and maggot-infested skin, the weight of him as she pulled. Lynn didn’t usually have nightmares, but she would probably have them tonight.
She lay in the stream until she felt cold and clean to her bones and she’d gone over the grueling hours three times in greater and greater detail. Every time a memory caused her panic to rise, she submerged her head and held her breath until her lungs hurt. Physical pain was much easier to deal with than emotional turmoil.
That was a good thing because she had quite a bit of physical pain to deal with. Of course she felt sore all over, but one part of her was far worse than the rest: her left arm. She lifted it out of the water to examine the bite marks. Even though they were almost a week old by now, they were far from being healed. Most of her lower arm had swollen to an alarming size, either from strain or infection. The fact that she couldn’t tell which unsettled her even further. The shallower cuts had been healing well and had held up under the stress of grave digging twice in the same number of days, but the deeper punctures had opened up again. She bit back a hiss of pain as she washed them out with her fingers, making sure to get all the blood and yellowish gunk out.
By the time she’d cleaned her arm, it was throbbing but the skin didn’t feel half as taut. She was a little woozy from the pain and took her time cleaning the rest of her body. Her hair deserved special attention because the feeling of things creeping around in there just didn’t want to budge.
By the time she sat up, she wasn’t over the dig, but she’d gotten to a place where she could start to deal with it when she was ready to—and ignore it when she wasn’t. She looked around and found Dani staring off into the distance. Her shoulders were drawn up. The tip of the spear she’d gripped to stand guard now drooped.
“Hey, you okay?” Lynn didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to: beside a few singing birds, it was quiet and the wind was still.
Her words shook Dani out of her reverie. She turned and looked down over the railing. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”
“About Richard?” Lynn stood and wrung her hair out.
Dani nodded.
The breeze couldn’t have hardened her nipples even if it had tried; they were already painfully hard from the cold water. She cupped her breasts to let them settle under the slowly retuning heat of her palms. When she looked back up, she caught Dani staring at her before averting her gaze. The flutter in her belly had nothing to do with nausea this time. “Wait, we’ll talk.”
Still not looking at her, Dani nodded again.
Once her nipples returned to a state of “erect but no longer able to cut rock,” Lynn released her breasts and exhaled in relief. She waded downstream and fished her clothes out of the creek before she climbed up the bank.
Dani’s gaze slid down Lynn’s body as she drew closer, then she peered at the ground before examining the tree line—looking anywhere but at Lynn.
“How are you holding up?” She examined Dani as she let the water run down her body in streams. The pile of fresh clothes Dani had brought lay on the ground by Dani’s feet. Lynn’s tomahawk had been placed on top of it.
With a shrug, Dani brought Lynn’s attention back to her. “I’m actually doing better knowing he’s dug up than I was when he was still in the ground.” She tried to put cheerfulness in her voice, but she only partially succeeded. “It’s weird. I thought I’d be more anxious, but I’m feeling more in control. We’re halfway done now.”
Lynn stroked water from her skin and leaned down to fish her pants from the pile. She tugged them on over her clammy skin. “More like three-fourths done. We went the long way ’round on the way here. Depending on how much the cart is going to slow us down, we should be back in two days, probably three.”