After (3 page)

“Stand down!” he barks, startling them with his uncharacteristic heat. “Ssshhh,”

he coos in her ear, holding her, petting her, rocking her. “It'll only be John. Just John.

After tonight, he'll be your...like a husband. This part will be over soon. Soon.”

Smith's face is a stoic mask, but his eyes are wild and his voice wavers. “John.”

John steps up and helps Smith peel Eva free. Like he dragged her through the orchard up to the gates of the compound John drags her now. Her desperate struggle hardly slows him. Soon he has her at the center of the room, beside two tables that have been pushed together, with a thin, narrow mattress thrown on top. And just as she'd suddenly panicked at the site of the fort, when she looks down and sees the mattress and the way the men are closing their circle around her, Eva's strength seems to triple. She convulses and lurches and even wrenches her arms free of John's hands once, twice. But he seizes her again, more and more brutally, and finally pushes her down onto the mattress and pins her wrists down by her shoulders.

“Eva,” he pants against her cheek, his chest swelling against hers with every breath. “Stop. Stop fighting me. Us struggling, it's just getting them more riled up.”

She squints her lids closed over her dilated eyes. The frenetic din of male voices booms and echoes throughout the hall, built to seat two or three hundred.

“Not Nichols!” Smith's voice cannons into the throng. One of the handcuffed men is dragged from the fray, shoved aside at the edge of the room.

“It'll go faster, easier, if you just let it happen.” Johns voice is cold. Matter-of-fact.

But his eyes are sparking. He wrestles her the rest of the way onto the mattress and in one quick gesture flings the hem of her gown up. She is not wearing anything underneath.

And as if he's severed some connection to her brain she goes soft. No more screams. Pathetic little whimpering noises squeak out of her now. As John mounts the makeshift bed and plants his knees between hers, unzipping his fly, getting out his stiff cock, Eva focuses her bleary gaze on him.

“Please,” she sobs, to just him now, and not the whole room. Not to Smith. “Don't do this. Please don't.”

John catches her two wrists in one hand and pins them over her head, then takes hold of his cock and moves into position.

“No!” she shouts, starting to flail again. “Don't! Don't!” she screams one last time before he clamps his hand over her mouth and thrusts between her thighs.

Her eyes go wide. Tears pool at the edges of bloodshot whites and golden irises and cavernous pupils, then drain away down her temples, then pool up again. He thrusts again. She just sobs quietly into his palm, now, as his hips pump between her legs.

The men are ringed all around them, watching from a few feet away. Some bark at John, “Tits! We wanna see her tits!,” and “Feed her your cock! Make her suck it!” The two prisoners are snagged in a pulling, tearing, gripping mesh of soldiers bending their prey over, kicking them to their knees, ripping at their belts and pants.

John thrusts faster. More urgently. Eva cries quietly under his palm. She's soft and static, now. He grunts, his pumping frenzied, then groans, long and loud, and his body slumps over hers. He keeps his grip on her wrists, keeps his hand clamped down on her mouth while he pants oxygen into his taxed blood stream, then as he lifts himself and locks eyes with her. Then he lets go. Gets off.

Eva just lies there, eyes fixed on the empty space where John was a moment earlier, not trying to cover up. The insides of her thighs are shiny and smeared. She turns her head toward the cluster of ass and mouth raping, and that pathetic whimpering noise starts leaking out of her again. John tugs the hem of her gown down, then, when he's done zipping and buckling up, he scoops her off the mattress and carries her past Smith, whose gaze doesn't shift a single millimeter from the bed, and out of the hall.

Still, quiet, she sags in his arms as he carries her into a building, up some stairs, and into a room. She stays still and quiet as he lays her on a bed, and as he walks away. He comes back with a small towel and sits on the edge of the bed and she stays still.

“I'm just going to get you cleaned up,” he says quietly.

She doesn't move or say anything as he lifts the hem of her gown, or as he parts her legs, or as he wipes the slick mess from her thighs. When he rubs the cloth against her sex she just moans softly. John rises from the bed and rinses out the towel before throwing it into the hamper. Then he returns, tucks her into bed, and gets in beside her.

She's pliant as he curls up behind her, spooning her, stroking her hair and murmuring quietly, “It's all right, Eva. You're all right. It's going to be all right.”

When Eva wakes the next morning, John is gone.

CHAPTER TWO

“You drugged her.”

“Yes.”

“With what?”

John is taut, vibrating, as if his rage is about to explode. Smith is lax. Except for his eyes, sharp, alert.

“A glass of wine laced with a bit of tranquilizer and a little mood elevator. Not enough to make her sleep through it, but enough to take the edge off, I hoped. Does she remember anything?”

“I don't know. She was asleep when I left.”

“I know you'll be careful of her, John. Try to help her...adjust.”

“You rigged the draw, too.”

“Yes,” Smith concedes after a few seconds' hesitation. “It was awful to do to you, when you so vehemently opposed this entire arrangement, but I'm sure you understand that I couldn't just let chance decide who'd get her.”

“You could have let Eva decide.”

“John, we've been through this. You know I value your opinion, and I've heard you on this. But this isn't a democracy. I have the dubious responsibility of ensuring that this little den of wolves doesn't tear itself apart. Especially now that she's here.

* * * *

A gentle rapping. Eva snaps to standing. White-knuckled fists clenched at her sides, she stares at the door. There's a sound of deadbolts sliding and clicking back, and the door opens. John stands in the aperture.

“May I come in?”

Her chest heaving, she lifts her chin in defiance. “No.”

For a moment he doesn't move or say anything. Then in a soft voice he says, “,”

and shuts the door. The deadbolts slide and click back into place.

She stands there, shaking, staring at the door for a long time, like she can't believe he really accepted her refusal. But he doesn't come back. Not until the following day.

“May I come in?”

“No.”

Longer than the day before, he's quiet and still after her answer. But finally he steps back and starts to close the door.

Fists clenched by her sides, breathing hard, shaking, she says, “Wait.” Then, when he opens the door again and looks at her, she says, “Wait.” Then, “Come in.”

John steps inside and closes the door. When the guard outside locks it, she flinches a little at the click of each deadbolt. Taut and trembling she watches him come nearer, then pull a chair back from the little table by the window.

“Is it all right if I sit down?”

She nods and he sits. She seems to be stretched a little less tightly.

“I came,” he begins, his voice soft, his look direct, “because I have things to tell you. But first, if you have anything—“

“What's going to happen to me?”

Still holding her gaze he pulls in a deep breath and lets it go.

“The other night. You remember the lottery?”

“Why wouldn't I?” she accuses.

“Because Smith drugged you.”

“Why?” Now, on the strength of a single syllable, she sounds enraged.

Exasperated.

“To make it easier on you,” he tells her in a flat voice.

Tears are sliding down her cheeks. She seems to be out of questions for the moment.

“We...” He is still meeting her eyes, but the matter-of-fact voice is hitting bumps, now. “We drew lots. For you. Remember?”

She nods, shaking. “Sort of.”

“And I...my tag was drawn. That's why I...” Her jaw muscles flex and her breathing speeds. “It was all decided ahead of time. Long before you turned up. Before I came here. How it would go, if there was ever a woman. Whoever...whatever tag was drawn, that's what the man was supposed to do. I would have spared you that if—”

“What's going to happen to me?” She sounds impatient of his extenuating circumstances.

“You live. Here. With me.”

Pacing back and forth, keeping the little table between them, she breathes hard through a few long minutes of near silence.

“What?” she finally forces through clenched teeth. “Like your concubine?”

“Yes.”

“And the others?”

“No one but me is allowed to touch you.”

“So that's the price I pay. For getting to stay here. To live. I'm your whore for the rest of my life?”

“Even if you wanted to leave, to try surviving out there, on your own, Smith, the men, they wouldn't let you go.”

“Why? Why should they keep me here, just for you?”

“None of this is 'for me.'” For the first time in her presence, he sounds angry. He smooths his voice out and goes on with, “I was compelled to take part, the other night, against my wishes. And the only reason I went through with it to the extent that I did was because I...” He takes a deep breath. “Riggs and his boys. Out in the orchard. They aren't the worst here. Not by a lot.”

“If only you get to fuck me, what do they care if I stay or go?”

“Because,” he says, looking seasick, “of the spectacles. Like the other night. And because, if anything happens to me, they'll have another lottery, and someone else will get you.”

Like he might say something more, his mouth opens, but it closes on silence.

Arms crossed over her chest so they rise and fall with her frantic breathing, she stares out the window, across the expanse of compound, toward the perimeter wall beyond which gray sky and the forest treetops are visible. After a long while she turns back to John. He is sitting, very still, hands folded on the table, looking at her. Keeping her eyes on him she pulls back the empty chair. He stays still. She sits down.

“The other night, when you...” her eyes are tearing up and she bites her lip. Tries again. “when you had me pinned down. You didn't. Did you?”

“No.”

“I don't remember much of that night. But the next morning it didn't seem...feel like you had. But it was...my thighs were sticky,” she comes back, her voice full of suspicion.

“I did the least I could. But I had to make the men think it was real. So I,” his eyes shift away and he forces them back to face her. “I rubbed against you until I came. If I'd walked out of there with a hard-on, they would have known. I tried to get you washed up,” he says and she blushes fiercely.

“Why?” she asks, crying now. “Why'd you fake it?”

“Because. I'm not a rapist.”

”And for what you did the other night you risked what?”

“Banishment.”

“Death.”

“Yes.”

“So, what? If I tell you to piss off, you'll just go away and leave me alone?”

“Yes.” She glares at him, challenging him. He says, “But then there'll be another lottery.”

“Not if we lie. Pretend. Like the other night.” Her voice is like an instrument, a probe, to gage him.

“Maybe. We could try. But it'll be hard.”

He looks up toward the ceiling, drawing her gaze up and around the room. There is a camera mounted in each of the four corners.

“The orgy in the mess hall,” he says with palpable distaste, “was a one-time thing. Smith's idea of an emergency pressure release. But we're expected, we'll be forced to provide the men with entertainment.”

Even after everything, this insult seems to stun Eva, and she is shaking.

“That's what I wanted to discuss with you. It's horrible. I know,” he says in a careful voice. “I've argued and argued with Smith—even before you got here. But he's unmovable. I've thought all through this. There are options, but none of them are very savory. We fake it and take the very real chance of getting caught, which for me means exile—so death, probably—and for you means being handed off to one of the other men. And I'm about certain that any other of the men would take full advantage. Except Smith. But he won't take you.

“You’d defy Smith and risk that? Exile?”

“Yes.”

She's gone quiet.

“We could try to get out of here,” he says, “but I expect that would end with me shot and you back in the same situation. Even if we get out, it would seem our chances of survival are about nil. Do you agree?”

“Yes,” she answers in a small, defeated voice.

“Or we can do as we're expected to do, and try to stay human through it all, somehow.” He is looking at her. “If you have an idea I haven't thought of, I'd like to hear it.”

He sounds earnest. She shakes her head. No.

“It's a lot, I know. To take in. Deal with. I'll leave you alone, come back later, and we can talk some more.

"Why did you come? Now I mean? To talk to me?

"You deserve to know. To have a chance to think. To decide. I can't, I mean, I wouldn't decide for you. I did it the other day, when I brought you here. And part of me is sorry I did that. I won't do it again." He sounds more determined than apologetic.

She regards him with cold stoicism.

“I should go,” he says.

“Wait.”

He waits.

Visibly bracing herself, she says, “After the lottery. While you had me...while I was on the table. And after. I think I saw. The two who tried to rape me in the orchard.

What was happening to them?” she finally gets it all out.

“It's the punishment now, for rape. Or attempted rape.”

“Smith let the men...”

“Ordered them to.”

She looks like she might vomit. “Did you?”

“No. Not me. Not Jake.”

“You said 'now.'”

“What happened with you, in the orchard. That wasn't the first time.”

“Oh.” Her voice is small, broken.

"I'm sorry,” he says. “I have to get back to work. If I'm late, the others will have to work late with me tonight."

She is wearing another sheer negligee. These garments, left behind by the dead wife of a dead general, are all she has been given; there are no other clothes in the room. John has a bag. He hands it to her. Inside are military-issue pants, a t-shirt, and underwear.