Strange Robby (18 page)

There was no escape. No way out. Only sand and heat and flies, and yet she still wanted to live. Wanted to live and kill them all.

She yelled for Scott, but Scott was dead, he couldn't help her now. No one could help her now. She yelled for him any way, and the bastards threw rocks on top of the tin covering her hole. The sound was deafening, and she covered her ears and cowered into a corner. Maybe she should try to climb out. Better to die trying to escape than die like a neglected hamster in a cage.

There was light—too much light. She was blinded by the intensity of it, and they snared her by the shackles on her wrists with a curved pole before she had a chance to even put up a fight. At the top of the pit she looked into the eyes of the two turbaned bastards. They were alone. No doubt they weren't afraid of becoming unclean. They had just made a terrible mistake. She grabbed the pole one of them held with both shackled hands, ripped it out of his hands and slammed it into his head in one movement. Then she spun and hit the other. Both landed at her feet.

Most of them slept during the heat of the day. No doubt these two bastards had decided to use that as an opportunity to wet their winkies. One of them twitched, and she lifted the pole high and slammed it into him, crushing his face with such force that his brains oozed out of his head. She drug the dead men behind a wall out of sight. Neither one of them had any keys, but one of them had a knife. After several tries she was able to pick the lock and get the shackle off of one of her hands. She closed the loose end up over the other cuff. She grabbed their side arms first, and then she striped one of them and put on his clothes. She smiled because she knew now that she was very close to freedom. No one had sounded an alarm yet, so no one had any idea she had escaped.

She looked at the hole and then back at the now naked dead man. She quickly drug him over and dropped him in. Looking from the light into the darkness of the pit they might not even notice that it was a naked man instead of a naked woman. She quickly put the tin over the hole and quietly made her way through camp towards the motor pool. Even the guy in charge of guarding the motor pool was sleeping. The few people she'd seen moving around hadn't seen through her disguise. She got in a truck and turned the key. She was almost out of the motor pool when the alarm sounded. She sped up.

At the gates two guards stepped into her path, firing. She shot one, but before she could kill the other one a bullet struck her in the stomach. It was hard and hot. She crashed through the gates and down the road out into the desert. She didn't know how long she drove or how far. It was hot. She'd packed her wound, but something was wrong, and she was going to need medical attention soon. Problem was she had no idea where she was. The jeep started to act up, and she realized that she had run out of gas. She looked up at the blazing sun. It was still a long time till nightfall. The jeep sputtered and died.

She dug a pit under it and crawled in to hide from the rag heads and the sun. She had survived the situation, but she was God only knew where, she was badly wounded, and the water stored on all of the vehicles wouldn't last forever. There was a stench coming from the wound that she knew only too well. The bullet had hit a section of bowel. With or without medical attention, infection would set in. Without that attention, she wouldn't survive. It didn't look good. She looked at the gun she held in her hand and decided. She'd take a nap. If she woke up and was in too much pain, she would just shoot herself.

When she woke up she was in the hospital. The SWTF men where there, too. They were arguing with the faceless woman, and people were poking her. Her stomach was better, so why were they poking her?

"She's very important to us," the SWTF men said.

The faceless woman was calling to her, but she couldn't reach her. Somehow she knew that everything would be all right if she could just reach her.

Spider woke with a start and sat straight up in bed. She took several long deep breaths, wondering if she was really awake this time.

"Spider, are you all right?" Carrie asked.

Spider jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom. She ripped off the T-shirt she was wearing and stood before the mirror looking at her stomach and the scar that ran across it.

"Spider," Carrie said sleepily from the door. "Are you all right?" she asked again.

Spider turned to look at her. She saw the light of false dawn struggling to get through the drapes just behind Carrie. She turned back to the mirror and ran a hand over her stomach.

"Yeah, I'm all right. I just had a nightmare."

Carrie came up behind her and hugged her.

"It was so real. One of those things where you dream that you wake up, but you're not really awake, and then when really horrible things keep happening you think they're real."

"I'm so sorry, Baby."

"The worst part was that part of the dream was something that really happened. So it was like the whole thing must have happened, do you know what I mean?"

"Yes . . . " Carrie said. "They're the worst kind. Hard to tell for a while where fantasy ends and reality begins. Want to talk about it?"

"Not really." She slapped herself in the head with the palm of her hand hard enough that it hurt, then turned to face Carrie. "I know why I had the fucking dream. I'm going to kill Tommy."

"Why?" Carrie asked.

"I was complaining about your parents staying with us. Tommy said if I'd lived through a prisoner of war camp I could live through a weekend with your parents. That's why I dreamt about the camp. The hole." She was thoughtful then. "But what was all the other shit? With the So-what-if guys and the faceless woman."

"Why were you looking at your stomach?" Carrie asked carefully.

"I don't know." Spider forced a smile. "I was weirded out, and I guess I thought if I saw the scar instead of a bloody wound I'd know I was awake."

Spider looked into the mirror at the scar on her stomach and the one on her shoulder, and hip. Her body was littered with scars, some small and some large, and all of them had a story. Most of the stories weren't pleasant, but they were hers.

"I'm kind of fucking beat up."

"I think you're beautiful," Carrie said. She wrapped her arms around Spider's waist and lay her head on her shoulder. "I like your scars; they're part of you."

Spider laughed. "You're a little sick, Honey, but I was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I'm certainly lucky that love is indeed blind."

"Can you go back to sleep?" Carrie asked.

"Maybe, but I don't want to," Spider said. "Why don't you go back to bed, though? I know you came in late."

"Are you going to be alright?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Spider said. "I have a lot of nightmares, Carrie. I always have. Even when I was a kid, way before the war. It's normal for me. Now go on back to sleep. I'll be fine."

Carrie was too tired to argue.

Spider watched Carrie lie back down, and then she found her T-shirt, pulled it on and headed downstairs. In the kitchen she started a pot of coffee, and then she punched up her comlink to see what the night's events had been. Mostly to see if the ballistics information had come in on their case. The whole time she was doing it she was trying to figure out what the fucking dream meant. If she could ever figure out who that faceless bitch was, what her presence meant, then maybe the nightmares would stop forever. At the very least, maybe the faceless woman would move out of her head.

Ballistics still hadn't processed their evidence. No doubt they'd have to wait till Monday now. She turned her comlink off and got a cup of coffee. She looked at the kitchen clock and cringed; it was only six thirty. God only knew when she'd gotten up, or when Carrie finally would. She could spend hours rattling around the house, trying not to make any noise until the rest of them got up. Then she would have to spend a whole day in parent hell. Why couldn't the comlink buzz her in to work now? The fucking thing only buzzed you in on your day off when you were supposed to do something you wanted to do, or were in the middle of sex.

"Life sucks," she muttered.

She'd never really had parents as an adult, so she really didn't know what was expected of Carrie by her parents or what Carrie expected of them. As a child, her father had expected her and Scott to stay the fuck out of his face and she had expected him to be passed out drunk by eight o'clock. Somewhere between her own memories and TV families must lie the norm.

She sure as hell didn't know what any of them expected of her. Was she supposed to make herself scarce for the remainder of the visit? Or was she expected to be constantly there, struggling to act entertained. Or was she expected to entertain them, and if so, how?

"I could show them my scars," she muttered.

She took a sip of coffee; it was too damn hot. So she spit it back into her cup and went to the sink to get a long drink of cold water. After a minute, she decided there was no permanent damage. Sitting back down at the table, she stared at the offensive cup of coffee. It was going to be a long day.

Spider had no idea there were this many antique stores in the entire state, much less the city. The first couple had been interesting enough, but how much old junk could you look at?

Carrie moved up beside her and took her hand. "You're bored now, aren't you?"

"No. I was bored three hours ago. I can't even tell you what I am now, because no one has made a word for it yet." Spider forced a smile. "I suppose I'll live. I'm just tired."

"Thinking?" Carrie asked.

Spider nodded. "That damn dream. It keeps playing over and over in my head. I can't understand what my imprisonment has to do with the rest of the dream."

"It's just a dream, Honey. Dream's are like that, weird and . . . " She shrugged. "Well, distorted. If you try to figure out what they mean, you'll go crazy."

"Oh, Carrie! Look at this," Jill cooed from across the store. "Wouldn't this just be divine in your dining room?"

"No!" Spider said adamantly in Carrie's ear. Spider was damned if she was going to stand by and watch Carrie spend more money on a, what-ever-the-hell it was, than she made in an entire year.

Carrie smiled and let go of Spider's hand.

"I'm just looking," Carrie said. She started across the store.

After only a moment's hesitation, Spider hurried to catch up to her.

"Carrie, wait!"

Carrie turned to face her.

"It's your house and your money. I shouldn't have said anything, and I'm sorry."

Carrie just smiled at her and shook her head. "It's our house, and you have the right to say what you want or don't want in it. But, for the record, if I wanted the damn thing, I'd buy it." She poked Spider on her chest with her finger. "And nothing you could say would stop me."

Spider smiled back. "So much for my dreams of dominance."

"Carrie, come here," Jill demanded.

"And mine," Carrie smiled helplessly, shrugged, and went to join her mother in ooing over the breakfront.

Spider started looking around the store. She smiled at herself.
I've got to learn to relax. I've got to quit apologizing for everything I do. Carrie wasn't mad at me. She doesn't really get mad. She just lets things slide and . . . What the fuck!

Spider took a step back. Then she picked up the picture with trembling fingers. It was an old, antique, sterling silver frame, but that wasn't what was giving her the shakes. It was the picture. It was a picture of a young woman with an infant on her lap. A little boy stood at her knee looking at the infant. The boy was undoubtedly her brother, Scott.

She flipped the frame over, undid the clamps, and took the photo out. On the back of the photo it said
Scott, four & Spider, six months
. She put the frame down and turned the photo over. She looked at the woman in the photo long and hard. She was finally seeing her mother. Tall and slender . . .
My God I look like my
mother!
She quickly dried the tears from her eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat.

"You there! What are you up to?" the shopkeeper asked as he approached her.

She looked at him.

"How much?" she asked.

"Three hundred and fifty dollars," he said, and looked at her as if to say I know you don't have it.

"I don't want the frame," Spider spat. "I just want the photo."

She looked around to make sure that Carrie and her parents weren't paying any attention to her. They weren't. She pointed at the picture.

"This is a picture of my mother, my brother and myself," Spider whispered. She turned the picture over and showed him the back. "I'm Spider, my brother's name was Scott. My mother died when I was a baby, and my father got rid of all her pictures. This is the first time since I was three that I've seen my mother."