A Breath of Snow and Ashes (42 page)

The blow made my eyes water, but the fire lit him from the side; I could still see the smile on his pudgy face. A cold qualm ran through me, making me shudder. He saw that, and the smile broadened. His canine teeth were short and blunt, so the incisors stood out by contrast, long and yellowed, rodentlike.

“Reckon you’ll think this is even funnier,” he said, rising to his feet and reaching for his flies. “Hope Hodge don’t kill you right away, so you get to tell your husband about it. Bet you he’ll enjoy the joke, man with a sense of humor like he’s got.”

The boy’s semen was still damp and sticky on my thighs. I jerked back by reflex, trying to scramble to my feet, but was brought up short by the noose round my neck. My vision went dark for an instant as the rope tightened on my carotids, then cleared, and I found Boble’s face inches from mine, his breath hot on my skin.

He seized my chin in his hand and rubbed his face over mine, biting at my lips and rasping the stubble of his beard hard across my cheeks. Then he drew back, leaving my face wet with his saliva, pushed me flat, and climbed on top of me.

I could feel the violence in him, pulsing like an exposed heart, thin-walled and ready to burst. I knew I couldn’t escape or prevent him—knew he would hurt me, given the slightest excuse. The only thing to do was be still and endure him.

I couldn’t. I heaved under him and rolled to the side, bringing up my knee as he pushed my shift aside. It hit him a glancing blow in the thigh, and he drew back his fist by reflex and punched me in the face, sharp and quick.

Red-black pain bloomed sudden from the center of my face, filled my head, and I went blind, shocked into momentary immobility.
You utter fool,
I thought, with total clarity.
Now he’ll kill you.
The second blow struck my cheek and snapped my head to the side. Perhaps I moved again in blind resistance, perhaps I didn’t.

Suddenly he was kneeling astride me, punching and slapping, blows dull and heavy as the thump of ocean waves on sand, too remote as yet for pain. I twisted, curling, bringing up my shoulder and trying to shield my face against the ground, and then his weight was gone.

He was standing. He was kicking me and cursing, panting and half-sobbing as his boot thudded into sides and back and thighs and buttocks. I panted in short gasps, trying to breathe. My body jerked and quivered with each blow, skidding on the leaf-strewn ground, and I clung to the sense of the ground below me, trying so hard to sink down, be swallowed by the earth.

Then it stopped. I could hear him panting, trying to speak. “Goddamn . . . goddamn . . . oh, goddamn . . . frig . . . friggin’ . . . bitch. . .”

I lay inert, trying to disappear into the darkness that enveloped me, knowing that he was going to kick me in the head. I could feel my teeth shatter, the fragile bones of my skull splinter and collapse into the wet soft pulp of my brain, and I trembled, clenching my teeth in futile resistance against the impact. It would sound like a melon being smashed, dull, sticky-hollow. Would I hear it?

It didn’t come. There was another sound, a fast, hard rustling that made no sense. A faintly meaty sound, flesh on flesh in a soft smacking rhythm, and then he gave a groan and warm gouts of fluid fell wet on my face and shoulders, splattering on bare skin where the cloth of my shift had torn away.

I was frozen. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the detached observer wondered aloud whether this was in fact the single most disgusting thing I had ever encountered. Well, no, it wasn’t. Some of the things I had seen at L’Hôpital des Anges, to say nothing of Father Alexandre’s death, or the Beardsleys’ attic . . . the field hospital at Amiens . . . heavens, no, this wasn’t even close.

I lay rigid, eyes shut, recalling various nasty experiences of my past and wishing I were in fact in attendance at one of those events, instead of here.

He leaned over, seized my hair, and banged my head several times against the tree, wheezing as he did so.

“Show you . . .” he muttered, then dropped his hand and I heard shuffling noises as he staggered away.

When I finally opened my eyes again, I was alone.

I REMAINED ALONE, a small mercy. Boble’s violent attack seemed to have frightened away the boys.

I rolled onto my side and lay still, breathing. I felt very tired, and utterly forlorn.

Jamie,
I thought,
where are you?

I wasn’t afraid of what might happen next; I couldn’t see any further than the moment I was in, a single breath, a single heartbeat. I didn’t think, and wouldn’t feel. Not yet. I just lay still, and breathed.

Very slowly I began to notice small things. A fragment of bark caught in my hair, scratchy on my cheek. The give of the thick dead leaves beneath me, cradling my body. The sense of effort as my chest lifted. Increasing effort.

A tiny nerve began to twitch near one eye.

I realized quite suddenly that with the gag in my mouth and my nasal tissues being rapidly congested by blood and swelling, I was in some actual danger of suffocation. I twisted as far onto my side as I could get without strangling, and rubbed my face first against the ground, then—with increasing desperation—dug my heels into the ground and wriggled upward, scraping my face hard against the bark of the tree, trying without success to loosen or dislodge the gag.

The bark rasped lip and cheek, but the kerchief tied round my head was so tight that it cut hard into the corners of my mouth, forcing it open so that saliva leaked constantly into the wad of fabric in my mouth. I gagged at the tickle of sodden cloth in my throat, and felt vomit burn the back of my nose.

You aren’t, you aren’t, you aren’tyouaren’tyou
aren’t
going to vomit!
I dragged air bubbling through my bloody nose, tasted thick copper as it slimed down my throat, gagged harder, doubled up—and saw white light at the edge of vision, as the noose went tight around my throat.

I fell back, my head hitting hard against the tree. I hardly noticed; the noose loosened again, thank God, and I managed one, two, three precious breaths of blood-clogged air.

My nose was puffed from cheekbone to cheekbone, and swelling fast. I clenched my teeth on the gag and blew outward through my nose, trying to clear it, if only for a moment. Blood tinged with bile sprayed warm across my chin and splattered on my chest—and I sucked air fast, getting a bit.

Blow, inhale. Blow, inhale. Blow . . . but my nasal passages were almost swollen shut by now, and I nearly sobbed in panic and frustration, as no air came.

Christ, don’t cry! You’re dead if you cry, for God’s
sake
don’t cry!

Blow . . . blow . . . I snorted with the last reserve of stale air in my lungs, and got a hair of clearance, enough to fill them once more.

I held my breath, trying to stay conscious long enough to discover a way to breathe—there
had
to be a way to breathe.

I would
not
let a wretch like Harley Boble kill me by simple inadvertence. That wasn’t right; it couldn’t be.

I pressed myself, half-sitting, up against the tree to ease the strain on the noose around my neck as much as possible, and let my head fall forward, so that the blood from my nose ran down, dripping. That helped, a little. Not for long, though.

My eyelids began to feel tight; my nose was definitely broken, and the flesh all round the upper part of my face was puffing now, swelling with the blood and lymph of capillary trauma, squeezing my eyes shut, further constricting my thread of air.

I bit the gag in an agony of frustration, then, seized by desperation, began to chew at it, grinding the fabric between my teeth, trying to smash it down, compress it, shift it somehow inside my mouth. . . . I bit the inside of my cheek and felt the pain but didn’t mind, it wasn’t important, nothing mattered but breath, oh, God, I couldn’t
breathe,
please help me breathe, please. . . .

I bit my tongue, gasped in pain—and realized that I had succeeded in thrusting my tongue past the gag, reaching the tip of it to the corner of my mouth. By poking as hard as I could with my tongue tip, I had made a tiny channel of air. No more than a wisp of oxygen could ooze through it—but it was air, and that was all that mattered.

I had my head canted painfully to one side, forehead pressed against the tree, but was afraid to move at all, for fear of losing my slender lifeline of air, if the gag should shift when I moved my head. I sat still, hands clenched, drawing long, gurgling, horribly shallow breaths, and wondering how long I could stay this way; the muscles of my neck were already quivering from strain.

My hands were throbbing again—they hadn’t ever stopped, I supposed, but I hadn’t had attention to spare for them. Now I did, and momentarily welcomed the shooting pains that outlined each nail with liquid fire, for distraction from the deadly stiffness spreading down my neck and through my shoulder.

The muscles of my neck jumped and spasmed; I gasped, lost my air, and arched my body bowlike, fingers dug into the binding ropes as I fought to get it back.

A hand came down on my arm. I hadn’t heard him approach. I turned blindly, butting at him with my head. I didn’t care who he was or what he wanted, provided he would remove the gag. Rape seemed a perfectly reasonable exchange for survival, at least at the moment.

I made desperate noises, whimpering, snorting, and spewing gouts of blood and snot as I shook my head violently, trying to indicate that I was choking—given the level of sexual incompetence so far demonstrated, he might not even realize that I couldn’t breathe, and simply proceed about his business, unaware that simple rape was becoming necrophilia.

He was fumbling round my head. Thank God, thank God! I held myself still with superhuman effort, head swimming as little bursts of fire went off inside my eyeballs. Then the strip of fabric came away and I thrust the wad of cloth out of my mouth by reflex, instantly gagged, and threw up, whooping air and retching simultaneously.

I hadn’t eaten; no more than a thread of bile seared my throat and ran down my chin. I choked and swallowed and
breathed,
sucking air in huge, greedy, lung-bursting gulps.

He was saying something, whispering urgently. I didn’t care, couldn’t listen. All I heard was the grateful wheeze of my own breathing, and the thump of my heart. Finally slowing from its frantic race to keep oxygen moving round my starved tissues, it pounded hard enough to shake my body.

Then a word or two got through to me, and I lifted my head, staring at him.

“Whad?” I said thickly. I coughed, shaking my head to try to clear it. It hurt very much. “
What
did you say?”

He was visible only as a ragged, lion-haired silhouette, bony-shouldered in the faint glow from the fire.

“I said,” he whispered, leaning close, “does the name ‘Ringo Starr’ mean anything to you?”

I WAS BY THIS TIME well beyond shock. I merely wiped my split lip gingerly on my shoulder, and said, very calmly, “Yes.”

He had been holding his breath; I realized it only when I heard the sigh as he released it, and saw his shoulders slump.

“Oh, God,” he said, half under his breath. “Oh, God.”

He lunged forward suddenly and caught me against him in a hard embrace. I recoiled, choking as the noose round my neck tightened once again, but he didn’t notice, absorbed in his own emotion.

“Oh, God,” he said, and buried his face in my shoulder, nearly sobbing. “Oh, God. I knew, I knew you hadda be, I knew it, but I couldn’t believe it, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! I didn’t think I’d ever find another one, not ever—”

“Kk,” I said. I arched my back, urgently.

“Wha—oh, shit!” He let go and grabbed for the rope around my neck. He scrabbled hold of it and yanked the noose over my head, nearly tearing my ear off in the process, but I didn’t mind. “Shit, you okay?”

“Yes,” I croaked. “Un . . . tie me.”

He sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and glanced back over his shoulder.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “The next guy who comes along’ll see.”

“The
next
guy?” I screamed, as well as I could scream in a strangled whisper. “What do you mean, the next—”