Seven Out of Hell (12 page)

“Two.”

“Beth!” Alvin cried, reaching for the woman.

“Three.”

“We’re no good to each other dead,” she pointed out, jerking free of his grip and standing, pulling Mrs. White to her feet.

“Tour.”

Beth looked over each shoulder at the two other women and jerked her head.

“Five.”

They stood and stepped through the helplessly shocked men. Beth led them towards the doorway.

“Six.”

“Beth!” Alvin pleaded again, reaching out a hand. A man knocked it down.

“Seven.”

Beth emerged from the cabin. Mrs. White halted and turned pleading eyes towards Edge. “They’re heathens,” she said. “How do we know they’ll keep their word?”

“Eight.”

“Two more and we’ll never get the chance to find out.”

Mrs. White swallowed hard and stepped from the cabin. The teenager and the spinster stumbled after her. Shin barked an order and the door was slammed shut, the bolts shot home.

Mao’s voice chattered and the harmonica player blew into his instrument again. The prisoners jostled Edge, trying to peer around him for a view through the bars. Shin bowed to the women, gesturing with a hand that they should go towards the fire. As they did so, Beth with her head held high, her body swaying, the other three shambling behind her, Edge glanced across to where he had last seen the Chinese women. They were no longer in sight.

Mao spoke again and Shin pumped his head and broadened his grin.

“Mr. Mao think men dance badly. Think you be much better.”

Mrs. White wailed her misery and Shin shook his head violently.

“No say sing. Say dance Like this.”

He clasped his hands high over his head and executed an inelegant hip-swiveling motion. The men clapped their hands gleefully and exploded with high-pitched laughter. All except Mao, who took out his knife and began to rake dirt from under his nails. Shin completed his demonstration and his face became sad as he looked at the women.

“Chinese patience soon run out,” he warned. “You do like I say or men go to meet honorable ancestors.”

Beth’s angular features looked even more sensuous in the flickering firelight. “You said you’d let us go if nobody followed from the train.”

Shin nodded in agreement. “That is correct. But first must please men. Dance, then
jig-jig.”

“I don’t know how to do a jig!” the blotchy-faced teenager whined.

“That part’s got nothing to do with dancing,” Beth told her, and began to sway her hips.

Her movements completely ignored the tuneless rasp from the harmonica and her body swayed as if to some rhythm from within herself. She thrust her hands high into the air, emphasizing the swells of her breasts and as her feet began to move the men started to clap out a timing. The other three women watched her in amazement for several seconds, then tried to imitate her. But they were not dancehall girls and whatever natural feminine gracefulness they may have possessed was held in check by the harsh grip of fear. They moved like stiff-limbed sleep-walkers, bumping into each other, sometimes tripping over their own feet.

But the men, alternately applauding and sucking rice wine from the bottles, were unconcerned with technique. The surrender of the women into the enforced entertainment had a stimulating effect upon the Chinese as they savored the ultimate delight.

When Mao held up a hand the men became abruptly quiet. Even the harmonica player ceased his monotonous noise.

“You keep dancing,” Shin barked at the women as they faltered. He had remained standing, but now he moved back to his place beside Mao and sank to the ground, crossing his legs. He nodded his approval as the women’s bodies continued to gyrate in the silence, disturbed only by the crackling of the fire and the swish of their petticoats. “Now you have choice,” he continued. “You take off clothes or men remove them for you. Men sometimes not gentle in disrobing ladies.”

“We’ve got to stop it!” Alvin said hoarsely, his face twisted into ugliness by frustrated fury.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Edge replied softly.

“Talk to them!” Alvin pleaded, elbowing his way through the press of bodies to reach Edge at the door. “Promise them anything.”

Edge shook his head, his hooded eyes moving from Beth to the other women as their fingers reached for the fastenings on their gowns. “Right now they got everything they want, kid.”

The hush in the night seemed to expand and take on substance as the fingers of the women fumbled with buttons and hooks. The youngest girl and Mrs. White were crying silently, firelight glistening its reflection from the tears streaming down their cheeks. The thin woman had her eyes tight shut and her lips set in a rigid line which showed up almost black against the paleness of her skin. Beth, perhaps despite herself, could not prevent the experience of a lifetime adding an easy grace to her actions.

Edge heard the deep breathing of the guards flanking the doorway, then the scrape of their boots against the hard ground as they moved closer to the women. They took several more steps as the top of Beth’s dress fell away from her body, exposing her full breasts, creamy white in the firelight. Grunts and gasps escaped from the throats of the Chinese as they leered at the naked flesh. The teenager’s dress fell next, floating to the ground with no waistline to support it. Fear and cold set her body trembling as it swayed and her fingers were blue as they fumbled with the flimsy underwear. Then her youthful slimness was naked and she dropped her arms, vainly trying to cover herself.

“Arms up!” Shin barked, his eyes no longer smiling as they drank in the curves and hollows of the tremulous flesh. He held out a hand and rotated it. “And turn.”

Sobbing, the girl complied. Beth’s voluptuous body was bared before the lust of the Chinese. Then the thin woman’s, finally the flaccidness of Mrs. White’s flesh. The guards moved in closer. The dance continued, each ripple of exposed flesh building up a greater degree of tense expectancy.

“Faster!” Shin demanded, and began to clap his hands. The others joined him, matching his cadence: measured at first, but getting faster by the moment. The incessant sound seemed to induce a near-trance in the women and they flung themselves about wildly to keep time.

A shadowy figure moved lithely across the doorway of the prison cabin and the two bolts grated out of their brackets. A round face, which might have been pretty had the eyes shown intelligence, looked in at Edge through the bars. He had to lip-read against the clapping which was now a continuous tumult.

“You no say I set free.”

Edge nodded and the girl ducked out of sight and flitted away to go behind the circle of cabins. He turned to look into the pale faces of the hostages.

“What is it?” Alvin asked.

“Chink dames figure they got the entertainment franchise up here. Door’s open.”

Alvin pressed forward. “Let’s rush the bastards.”

Edge’s right hand streaked to the back of his neck and moved down, flashing metal: Alvin gulped as the point of the razor pricked his throat. His body became rigid. The other prisoners backed away.

“Kill yourself some other time, Alvin,” Edge hissed. “Right now, listen - and listen good.”

The noise of the clapping hands was driving the women close to the point of exhaustion and even Beth had lost her rhythm. Their heads rolled from side to side, their arms flapped limply and their legs bowed and buckled.

But as the humiliating dance grew more grotesque, so the excitement of the drunken Chinese was heightened.

The thin woman collapsed first, and at once a man threw himself upon her, his hands clawing at her meager breasts. She screamed and found strength to rain blows upon him. He laughed and hit her back-handed across the cheek.

Edge pushed open the door of the cabin and slid out, pressing himself against the wall. Alvin followed him, then the other prisoners. Edge and Alvin stayed where they were while the rest worked their way around to the rear of the cabin and then moved off towards the other buildings surrounding the compound.

Mrs. White sank to the ground, tried to raise herself, but toppled sideways. The Wong brothers scuttled away from the group and leered down at the quivering women. Each raised his robe and the woman screamed in terror as she saw their naked readiness beneath.

Edge and Alvin moved forward, into the area illuminated by the firelight. But no eye was turned in their direction. The attention of every Chinese was torn between the two remaining dancers and the women writhing on the ground. Alvin held back, two feet behind one of the guards. Edge closed in and halted, his body a fraction of an inch from that of the second guard. The razor handle nestled along the centre of his palm, the blade concealed by his fingers. He raised his arm and his shirt cuff brushed the shoulder of the Chinese. The man’s head snapped around, his eyes widening. Edge’s free hand curved around the other side of the man and closed over the stock of the shotgun. Edge grinned at him and drew the blade across his throat. He jerked the shotgun from the dead grip. The barrels were shiny with blood that had gushed from the slashed jugular vein.

The other guard heard the thud of the body and started to turn. He froze when he saw the tall half-breed covering him with the shotgun. He did not resist when Alvin stepped up to him and pulled his own weapon from his grasp.

Beth and the girl crumpled to the ground and the clapping stopped instantly. Edge nodded to Alvin. The boy hesitated but a moment, then thrust his gun into the belly of the guard and squeezed the trigger. The man screamed and was flipped over backwards. Blood spurted like a muddy spring from his ghastly wound.

“Party’s over!” Edge yelled, his voice cutting across the sudden babble of Chinese, silencing it. He aimed the shotgun at Mao. Other hostages emerged from the cabins, encircling the men around the fire. Each held a shotgun. The only Chinese to move were those who had claimed the exhausted women. They backed away from their prizes.

Shin forced a grin to his face. “We let you go now,” he said.

“Obliged,” Edge said. “Get dressed now, ladies. You did okay but these guys don’t feel up to it no more.”

The women scrambled on to all fours and scuttled to pick up their clothes and dress. Relief undammed fresh tears. They hurried to move outside the circle of freed hostages.

Mao unloosed a rapid fire rattle of Chinese. Shin nodded and looked across at Edge.

“Mr. Mao wishes to know how you escape?”

“We had help from the green-eyed monster. A fink among the Chinks.”

Shin was confused. “I no understand.”

“Tell your boss and let him work it out. He’s the big thinker around here. Now tell these guys to get in the pokey.” He motioned with the shotgun towards the prison cabin.

“You have permission to go,” Mao said. “No need lock us up.”

“One,” Edge said easily.

Shin received the message immediately. He passed it on to the men in their own language, then started towards the cabin with the barred door. Some of the men rose to follow him.

“Two,” Edge counted.

“It going to be tight squeeze for us,” Shin complained.

“I feel for you,” Edge told him. “Three.”

Shin hurried into the cabin. Ten of the men followed him. The remainder continued to squat on the ground, looking to Mao for guidance.

“Off your butt, crud,” Edge spat at the gang’s leader.

Mao bowed from his sitting posture, then began to rise, slowly. The others unfolded their legs. Abruptly, Mao shot out a hand, grasped a burning log from the fire and whirled. Edge squeezed one of the shotgun triggers and the load turned the man’s head into a crimson pulp. But the log was already spinning through the air and even before the dead man had hit the ground it had sailed into the open doorway of his cabin.

“Lock ’em in!” Edge yelled to Alvin as the Chinese in the compound exploded into movement, hands jerking knives from beneath their robes.

The boy shoulder the door closed and shot home the bolts. Knives spun through the firelight and three of the hostages screamed their death cries as honed steel penetrated vital organs. Then the moment of shock was gone and shotguns blazed. Robed bodies crumpled, spraying blood and torn flesh into the fire. The fire sizzled and gave off tiny puffs of steam.

An eerie, post-violence hush fell upon the compound. A shout shattered it.

“The money!”

Some of the freed hostages dropped their empty shotguns and ran towards Mao’s cabin. But an orange glow from within emitted a fierce heat to drive them back. Alvin rushed to Beth’s side and gripped both her hands, babbling incoherently.

“Hey, we could die in here if you leave us,” Shin called softly through the bars.

“You’re one smart Chink,” Edge told him. “You catch on fast.” He glanced around at his fellow hostages. “You ready to pull out?”

They took a final look at the blazing cabin and moved dispiritedly across the compound to join the half-breed, Each of the hurriedly-dressed women was supported by a man. Some of the men, deeply shocked by the carnage they left behind, looked ready to keel over themselves.

“What about burying them?” a grey-haired man asked, “At least the three we lost.”