She glanced toward Tom, silently intent upon the flatland below. She unbuttoned her shirt and ran the cool, moist cloth around her sweat-sticky neck and shoulders.
She opened the shirt all the way and began to give herself a bracing sponge bath. She luxuriated. She could not remember anything at any time being as satisfying.
Again she glanced toward Tom. He was sitting on his haunches, watching her raptly. He reached a dirty hand to the buckshot wound on his shoulder and scratched it. He winced.
Randi observed the gesture with concern. The wound was getting infected, and Tom was making it worse. She dipped her handkerchief in the water and held it out to him.
“Here, Tom,” she said, knowing he would not under-her words. “It'll feel good.”
Deliberately she wiped her own shoulder with the wet cloth and again held it out to Tom.
“It'll feel good, Tom,” she insisted gently. “Please…”
He watched her intently, but he did not move.
Her eyes searched his, but found no comprehension, no response. Tears welled — and smarted. Tom… Her thoughts rambled, confused. Tom. He was a man — and he was a wounded, troubled creature. He was vulnerable — and he was her husband.
It suddenly overwhelmed her. He had been all those things. All along.
But she had felt only her own wound…
She crawled over to him.
“Here, Tom,” she said softly. “Let me. Let me help… It'll feel — good. Cool…”
She reached her hand toward his shoulder. He pulled away, his eyes never leaving her.
“Now, Tom,” she said, gently reproving. “You know I won't hurt you. I didn't before… Sit still, now. It'll be all right…”
Again she reached for him.
He sat still. Wholly alert — but he let her touch him. Carefully she pulled the torn cloth of his suit aside. The injury beneath was still covered with the handkerchief she had placed there — stuck to the moist wound. Gently she peeled it away. He twitched, but did not move from her. The wound beneath the cloth was viscid, the raw edges angry red with irritation.
Gently she sponged it with the wet handkerchief.
“There,” she murmured reassuringly. “Doesn't that feel better?” She leaned away from him, her open shirt falling from her shoulder. She rinsed the cloth in the little stream, turned back and began to sponge his sunburned neck and chest.
Tom was intent on her. Her caress felt cool and good. He liked it. He was fascinated with this being who made him feel good. He reached out his own hand — and touched one of her breasts visible through the open shirt.
With a startled little cry Randi drew back. Tom followed. The firm softness that met his hand excited him. He pressed his hand against it. He moved with her, both hands seeking the pleasure touch of her soft skin.
In growing alarm Randi tried to pull away from him. “No, Tom… No! she whispered. “Please… Don't… Don't…”
He was not aware of her words. A new, unknown feeling swelled in him. Urgent. Demanding. Something was happening to him. Something he did not understand. Something that could not be denied. It enveloped him. He could think of nothing else. His hands grew totally insistent. It was no longer enough to feel, to experience the softness with his hands alone. His whole body strained to meet and enfold this other being, whose feel and smell excited and stimulated him.
Badly frightened, Randi shrank away from him, pleading with him — knowing she would not be understood.
“Please… Tom… Don't. Oh, God — don't… Don't!”
Even the sound of her voice agitated him. His demanding hands tore at her open shirt, ripping it from her. Suddenly he pulled her to him and buried his face in the softness of her breasts. He breathed the woman scent of her. His open mouth tasted the moisture on her skin. It was like his own, like the bad water — but it intoxicated him.
They toppled to the ground. Tom was oblivious to anything but his needs, the fiery urge that possessed him. The impassioned desire to merge with the female being. He pressed himself down on her. He tore at her clothing — and his own. He raged against their obstruction. He felt a swelling of urgent pleasure and fought to free it, to fulfill it. A growing, droning sound surged in his ears.
The hook on Randi's pants snapped apart — the cloth ripped. Terrified, struggling under his urgent weight, she cried in bitter anguish: “Tom!.. No!.. Not like this… Oh, dear God! Not — like — this…”
Her cries beat against his ears, obliterating the steady drone — inflaming him even further. He arched against her, craving release.
The shock of a sudden, thundering roar slammed against them. A blast of unbridled force beat down on them as a terrifying demon shot over the mountain ridge and hurtled across the hollow only a few feet above them.
Instantly Tom reacted. Savagely he grabbed Randi and pulled her with him down among the rocks in the shadows close to the cliff wall. Terror and fury, vying for dominance, blazed hot in his eyes as he watched the fearful menace growl across the sky.
The helicopter slowly circled the craggy mountains, its rattling whirr reverberating among the barren rocks. Gradually it disappeared in the distance.
Tom searched the sky. His burning, broiling enemy above was not to be seen. But there were other enemies that came from the sky. He knew that now. He had seen and heard them before out in the open. Enemies even more frightening than the monsters that rumbled in pursuit on the ground.
Randi huddled against the rocks. She was deeply shaken. She gathered her clothing around her, fastening and tying the torn cloth together as best she could.
Wide-eyed, she stared at her husband as realization flooded her.
She had been aroused — as she had not been for such a long, long time…
Tom was uneasy. He did not know if the monsters would come at him from below or from the sky. The little hollow with the waterhole was no place of safety. He must leave it.
He got up, cast a last, long glance toward the disappearing enemy, pulled Randi to her feet, and together they began to climb farther up into the desert mountains…
It was dusk when Tom and Randi reached a little valley hidden in the mountains. None of their pursuers had been seen, either on the ground or in the air. They were quite high above the desert floor, and stunted trees grew scattered among the brush — scrub pine, Rocky Mountain maple, water birch.
Below, at the bottom of the valley, along a narrow, obviously seldom-used dirt road, stood a row of large, curious, cone-shaped stone structures — ten of them — looking like giant, rocky beehives. Randi recognized them from a picture on the wall in Stark's office. They were abandoned charcoal kilns from bygone mining days, standing lifeless and deserted in the wilderness, robbed of their purpose.
Worn and haggard, every step a painful exertion, they made their way down the incline toward the kilns below.
They were climbing down around a rock formation on the hillside, its base covered with brush and scrub trees. Tom was passing close by a bush when suddenly a big black bird burst from the stunted branches and flew off, emitting a raucous croak of protest.
Tom started. Instinctively he crouched in an attitude of defense.
Randi followed the bird's flight to a rocky perch some distance away, where it sat scolding stridently. A raven? she thought. The bird of ill-omen… Take heed that when a raven cries, misfortune soon it signifies… The old saw ran through her tired mind. It wasn't quite right. The remembered quotation. She prayed its prophecy would be even less so. But she felt chilled.
Tom watched the bird. Instinct told him it presented no danger to him, and his startled fright was replaced by curiosity. He looked at the bush from which the raven had flown. He parted the branches. In a sandy pocket on the cliff behind it a crude nest had been built. In it lay five good-sized eggs. He reached in, tore the nest loose and worked it out through the branches.