Hope and Undead Elvis (19 page)

Rae's mouth shut with a snap, cutting off her scream except for a hoarse, whining cry in the back of her throat that Hope found even more disturbing. She grabbed hold of the nun again, this time taking her hand. "Rae, look at me." The nun stared at her, eyes wide. "We're going to get out of here. You and me. But you've got to trust me, okay?"

Rae nodded.

"Which way is the car? Where you found me?"

The nun pointed past the convent into the trees.

"Shit. Okay, stay close and don't stop for anything." Hope tugged on Rae and finally the young woman understood and they ran.

Flames were already licking at underbrush, glowing red and orange through gaps in the trees around the convent. Hope could hear women screaming inside the convent and male voices shouting at them. Beneath the anguished cries of the brutalized and the gleeful yells of their assailants, behind the persistent crackle of fire that seemed to pervade everything, was the amplified voice of the man who led the Righteous Flame, exhorting them to do their utmost to cleanse the world of impurity. Hope knew that she would hear that voice to the end of her days, in her darkest nightmares.

A door banged open and an emaciated man dragged a screaming, naked nun out of it by her hair. Blood stained the inside of her thighs and ran from what looked like bite marks on her breasts. The man dashed her head against a large rock and she stopped struggling. He sank down and started to rip at her flesh with his teeth, growling and snarling like a wild dog.

Rae screamed, and so did Hope. She'd never been so frightened before, not even when she was trapped in a bar sinking into the sands so many weeks ago. Hand in hand, they staggered past the convent, limping through the forest in their soft slippers as they tried to outrun the flames and the screams. The smoke made Hope dizzy, and the change in her body had never been more apparent than when running. Her entire center of gravity had shifted, and it made her feel clumsy and awkward, like she was going to trip and fall headlong at any moment.

And then her ankle turned, and she lost her grip on Rae's hand to sprawl onto the forest floor. Her first thought was of the baby in her belly, and hoped she hadn't hurt it. Then she noticed the taste of blood in her mouth; she'd bitten her tongue when she hit the ground. She rolled over to look back at Rae and a man rose up behind the nun and grabbed her. He wrapped one arm around her neck and pulled her arm back with the other. Rae's eyes bulged in terror but the man's wiry arm prevented her from drawing breath to scream.

Hope didn't have time to reach for her fallen pistol. She flung herself forward and grabbed hold of Rae's ankle and pulled. She wasn't going to let the young woman be carried away and raped, burned, or eaten. Rae slumped forward as the man tightened the pressure around her throat. The young nun became the rope in a desperate contest of tug-of-war.

The man's silence unnerved Hope as she grunted and pulled, trying to keep her new friend. He began nosing along the curve of the nun's neck, licking his lips like a dog anticipating a treat. He released Rae's limp arm and reached around to grope one of her breasts. His filthy hand left a sooty print on her habit. Behind him, a tree erupted in flames. The wash of heat made Hope's skin prickle. The man's hips convulsed in a peculiar way and his eyes rolled as he snarled and laughed. She realized in revulsion that he was coming. The very act of wanton destruction and violent lust had aroused him to an orgasmic plateau.

He staggered as his muscles celebrated the ejaculation and Hope yanked on Rae with all her strength. The nun slipped from the man's grasp and fell to the ground with a dull thud like a child's doll dropped on the floor. The man's smoke-reddened eyes fastened upon Hope as if he'd just noticed her. His face transformed into a leer and he licked his black lips with a gray tongue. Hope tried to scrabble away, but he sprang forward with inhuman speed and locked his hands around her ankle.

She kicked at his hands, at his face, but he clung to her with the burning lust of the fanatic. She glanced back and realized in horror his hair had caught on fire. It burned in bright counterpoint to the blazing tree behind him. As ashes fell around his face, he showed no sign of feeling the least bit of pain. He raised her ankle to his mouth.

Hope's fingers closed on the fallen Shepherds' pistol. She twisted at her waist and snapped off a shot. She could have blown a hole in her foot or missed altogether, wasting one of her two remaining precious bullets, but instead her aim was true. The bullet made an unspectacular third eye in the man's forehead, where a Hindu woman would have worn a red dot. The mark Hope made was a shiny, liquid black amid the soot and ash of his face. For a moment, she thought she'd have to shoot him again, but then he released her foot and fell the the forest floor.

Hope gasped for breath. She'd fought off the immediate threat, but the fire still approached and she didn't know how many more men were wandering the woods, looking to void their lust and satiate their appetites upon her. She crawled over to Rae, keeping the gun clutched tight in case anyone else dared to show his face.

Rae was deathly pale. Hope held the back of her hand against the young woman's lips and felt a slight tickle of breath. "Rae, get up. Come on, get up. I can't carry you. Please, get up."

Another tree burst into flame. Hope looked up and saw the sparks leaping between branches. Soon the entire canopy around her would be afire. She had no more time. She tucked the gun into a pocket of her robe and wrestled Rae's limp body up and across her shoulders into a passable fireman's carry. The nun would be her cross to bear on this next leg of her journey.

With that, Hope took one step, then another, then a third. Legs shaking and back aching with the strain of carrying Rae, she staggered deeper into the forest and away from the tortured screams of the dying in the convent behind her.

Chapter Twenty-One

Hope and Rae

Hope discovered quickly that a fireman's carry looked a lot easier in the movies than it was in real life. She staggered even under Rae's slight weight. With the unconscious nun curled across her back, Hope could feel every bone in Rae's body digging into her back. Hope tried not to think of the women they'd left behind, brutalized, eaten, and burned. But she believed whatever lay beyond for those poor women was a hell of a lot better than what they would leave behind on Earth.

God was a bastard. Maybe she couldn't say it aloud, but she could sure as hell think it. She'd heard so many people over the years talk about God's love. A loving God wouldn't let loose a plague on the Earth like the Righteous Flame, or taken away Hope's only friend in Undead Elvis, or given her a baby she had neither asked for nor wanted.

"Asshole," said Hope through clenched teeth as she carried Rae along. Hope slipped on a loose piece of deadfall and struggled to keep her feet under her and Rae on her shoulders. The slender girl moaned a little, just enough for Hope to hear over the distant crackle of flames. At least the screams had stopped. And Rae was, for the moment, still alive. Hope was determined she should stay that way, even if she had to carry her all the way out of the forest on foot.

That felt like a daunting proposition, especially since Hope hadn't eaten any better than Rae while in her coma. She'd lost some of her strength and muscle tone, but years of dancing had given her much more to fall back upon, and still she managed to put one foot in front of the other. The distance between her and the Righteous Flame eventually grew until she couldn't smell smoke or hear anything but the wind whispering through the canopy.

And still, she staggered onward. Like her journey through the endless, timeless desert, her world shrank to a few repetitive motions. Move one foot forward. Rest. Move other foot forward. Rest again. Try not to think about the weight resting on her shoulders.

Step. Rest. Step. Rest.

Rae groaned and moved on Hope's shoulders. The noise startled Hope from her mesmerized state. She looked around and spotted a large tree with a sloping bole covered in lush moss. She knelt down, ignoring the screams of protest from her knees and thigh muscles, and rolled Rae onto the ground to lean against the tree.

The young nun's eyes opened but rolled around unfocused. Hope knelt in front of her and took gentle hold of Rae's head. "Rae? It's Hope. Are you all right?"

Rae's hands shot up to grab Hope's hands—not as if she were afraid, but instead overjoyed. "Your son…"

Hope's eyes widened. "What?"

Rae's eyes still rolled around like she had a concussion. Her voice, though soft, was insistent. "Your son… will be a great man." Her eyes closed and she slumped against Hope.

"My… son?" Hope clutched at the swell of her belly. As if in response, the baby within fluttered back and forth. Tears ran unchecked down Hope's cheeks. She'd felt guilty about falling, about not eating right, about losing herself in a coma for months. And still, the baby moved, safe in his warm cocoon.

His
.

She'd been thinking of the baby as
it
for a long time. Now, whether Rae was right or wrong, Hope felt comfortable calling the baby
he
.

She'd have to start thinking of names.

Rae started, like she awakened from a nightmare. She jerked back from Hope, screaming.

"Rae, don't!" Hope hated that she had to shout, but knew her voice wouldn't penetrate into fog of deafness and terror.

Rae quieted her voice. Her breaths came short and sharp. "Who's there?"

"Rae, it's me. It's Hope." Hope dared to speak louder.

Rae swung her head around, frantic tears flying. "Hope? Where are you? I can't see. Why can't I see?"

Hope took Rae's hands in a gentle grasp. Although Rae jumped in fear, she let Hope guide her hands up to feel Hope's face, and down to feel the gradual swell of her belly. "I'm here."

"Hope? Oh God. I can't hardly hear, and now I can't see at all." Rae fell into Hope's arms and sobbed. "I'm so frightened."

Hope sighed. It had been hard enough carrying the young nun as far as she had. She was exhausted already, and a sightless Rae would only make things harder. Hope pulled Rae's wimple back to stroke the young woman's short, ragged hair. Rae buried her face against Hope's shoulder.

As she soothed the nun, Hope took stock of where they'd stopped: a gentle downhill slope peppered with ancient deciduous trees whose mossy sides gave off a heady aroma of life. She couldn't hear the crackle of flames anymore. Instead, birdsong, the persistent hiss of insects, and a burble of nearby running water filled her ears. She realized how thirsty she was from her flight. She pulled Rae off her shoulder and turned the nun's head so she could speak right into her ear. "Rae, can you hear me?" she called.

Rae nodded. "A little."

"We need water. There's some nearby. Can you walk?"

Rae clambered to her feet and took tight hold of Hope's hand. "Guide me."

Together, the two women made slow progress down the slope. Hope kept her ears open for the sounds of anyone approaching, but the only sounds not of the forest were from her and Rae's descent. As they walked, Hope spotted colorful mushrooms nestling at the bases of some trees and others seeming to grow right out of the sides of the trunks. Her stomach roiled. She didn't even like mushrooms but would have sat down to a feast of them, had she only known which ones weren't poisonous. She wished she'd been a girl scout or more outdoorsy or anything but a stripper. "Useless," she muttered, quiet enough that Rae wouldn't hear.

The sound of moving water expanded until it seemed to fill the air around them with its subsonic throb. They broke from the trees and Hope saw a shining expanse of water flowing slow and steady toward the south. It sparkled in the afternoon sunshine with such unexpected beauty that it made Hope's eyes go all teary.

Cattails and reeds lined the banks, and gave off a rotten-sweet scent in the air. Rae's nose wrinkled. "River?" she asked.

Hope squeezed her hand and led the sightless woman down the bank. Mud along the edges threatened to take their slippers, so Hope slipped them off and tucked the mud-stained shoes into the pocket of her robe. She helped Rae off with hers. The young woman squealed with delight as mud oozed between her toes. "Come on," said Hope. "I bet the water's clearer away from the edge. We can drink there." She didn't know that to be a fact, but after a life spent making hasty decisions and living with the consequences, she wasn't going to change that now.

The river was one of the widest Hope had ever seen, so unlike the glorified trickles the denizens of the southwest had called
rivers
. It moved with slow, infinite patience, like it was the idling engine that drove the world. Hope wondered if it could be the Mississippi. She couldn't believe she'd come that far east, though. Maybe it was just a river without a name.

Hope and Rae waded out into the shallows, clutching at each other for balance. Hope could see fish circling about in the clear water, examining their toes as they kicked up clouds of silt with each step. Her stomach rumbled and she decided that after they had a drink, she'd try to catch them some sushi. A little protein, a little fat… it would be almost like Heaven. If only she had some
wasabi
and rice to go with it, it would be perfect.