The Survivors (Book 2): Autumn (9 page)

He must have seen it on my face, because he grinned that terrible grin at me
.  “Yeah, that’s right, you little bitch.  I’m going to hurt you like you’ve never been hurt before.  I’m going to cut out your fucking tongue, and then tear out every one of your fucking teeth.” He gestured at me threateningly with the pliers.  “But first… Oh, first, I’m going to cut out those pretty eyes of yours.  Let’s see how feisty you are when you can’t see the pain coming!”

Oh, Jesus
.  He’s sick.  Crazy!
Panic overwhelmed me and I fought to get up.  He kicked me again and sent me rolling, laughing all the while as I scrambled away and tried to flee.  Despite the injury to his knee, he caught up with me before I could get up, and pinned me to the ground with one foot – then he lashed out with the knife.

I managed to jerk my face away at the last second; the tip of the blade skidded across my cheekbone instead of taking out my eye as he’d intended
.  The pain was so intense that I screamed despite my conviction.  I couldn’t help it.  I was going to die – no, worse! Oh God, this was so much worse! But there was no way that I was going without a fight.

I twisted with all my strength and managed to make him lose his balance for a moment; he slipped off of me, dropping the knife into the dirt
.  I kicked out with as much force as I could, again and again.  I felt my blows striking flesh, but all that did was make him laugh.  He was stronger than me by a factor of two.  The only thing that gave me hope was that by the time he managed to get me pinned down beneath his weight, the knife and the other weapons were gone.  Dropped somewhere in the undergrowth, I imagined.  It was only a tiny hope, and it wouldn’t last for long.

I screamed again when he hit me, a closed fist right across the face with such force that it slammed my head into the ground
.  His weight was right on top of me, crushing my arms beneath me.  I couldn’t move, I couldn’t reach him with my feet.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get him off me.  Hope faded as he hit me again, and again.  Each blow drew a cry of pain from my battered body, and sent stars dancing across my vision.

I’m going to die
.  I’m going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it.  Oh God, but what about Skye? No, no, no – you can’t have my sister!

I struggled with all my might, but there was nothing that I could do, and he just laughed at me
.  He slapped me across the face with an open hand, then drew his fist back to unload another blow.

The blow never came
.  It was interrupted by the sound of someone else screaming.  But this wasn’t a scream of pain.  It was a scream of rage.

The bastard’s head jerked up and he stared at the other side of the clearing
.  I was too battered to see what he saw, though.  My head was spinning from the violence, and blood blurred my vision.  But I did hear the roar of a shotgun blast, and I did see the man’s head dissolve in a bloody shower of hot shrapnel and carnage.  With the last of my strength, I dragged myself out from beneath the corpse before it could crush me, and only then did I see who my rescuer was.

It was Skylar
.  My baby sister.  She strode across the clearing like an avenging angel, her eyes wild, her hair a golden halo around her face in the pre-dawn gloom, the shotgun nestled at her hip ready to deliver more deadly payload should it be required.

It wasn’t
.  Unlike the walking dead, that man was only human.  A terrible, evil human, but a human nonetheless.  He was dead before she got close enough to check.  I, on the other hand, was bloody, broken, but very much alive.

Skylar kicked the body hard, rolling the sack of dead meat away from me, then she came back and knelt down beside me to inspect my condition
.  Although black and blue from bruises, and bleeding from a half-dozen cuts, I was conscious.  She helped me sit up, and used the very same knife that he had planned to blind me with to cut the bonds around my wrists.

My first instinct was to hug her
.  She hugged me back gently, and then helped me to my feet.  A few seconds later, Michael joined us in the clearing and rushed over to help me as well.  His chest was bound up in a makeshift bandage, but I could see the blood seeping through it already.

“How…?”
I managed to gasp, though my mouth had the metallic taste of blood in it.  My lips were cut, but I didn’t seem to have lost any teeth.

“Your taser,” Skylar explained as the two of them helped me back towards the relative safety of the lakeside fort
.  “After they knocked you and Michael out, two big men grabbed me and carried me off.  They started arguing about which of them was going to rape me first, so I told them that I was still bleeding from my miscarriage and they both got mad.

“They dropped me and started yelling at each other
.  While they were distracted, I got out your taser and hid it behind my back.  When they came back, I hit them with it.  They were so surprised that I managed to get them both before they realised what was happening.”

“You knocked them both out?” I gasped, amazed at my little sister’s tenacity.

“Yeah.” She nodded, hugging my battered frame gently.  “Then I ran back to the camp and woke up Michael, and we went looking for you.”

“I’m so glad you did,” I told her, my voice hoarse from screaming and pain
.  “He was… going to… get his revenge on me by taking my eyes.”

Tears welled up, but I didn’t bother to wipe them away as they fell
.  It was too much effort, and I felt exhausted and wrung out.  I was safe, I had survived, and even though I had screamed, I hadn’t submitted.  Michael swore under his breath.  I knew instinctively that he felt like he’d failed to protect me, but I didn’t have the strength to tell him it wasn’t his fault.

Speaking was too hard for all of us, so the rest of the trip back was in silence
.  When we finally made our way out into the clearing beside the lakefront, the fire had been extinguished, and we found our Maori friends huddled around our belongings trying frantically to figure out what had happened to us.

Someone spotted us and shouted; the next thing we knew, we were enveloped in a friendly mob
.  Someone got a blanket around me to protect my modesty, then Michael and I were guided off to one of the huts that had survived the fire.

We were put to bed side by side, and our wounds were tended as best they could
.  Outside, I heard Anahera issuing orders.  From what little I could understand of her bilingual shouting, I realised that she planned to take us home as soon as it was safe to move us.  She was also sending people out to deal with the brutes my sister had left in the forest.

Beside me, I could hear Michael’s uneven breath, and I worried for him more than I did for myself
.  It was only a small bullet, probably from an air rifle like the wound Hemi had come to us with, but it was in his chest and it could do serious damage.

I squeezed my eyes closed and leaned against him, praying that my love would be okay
.

By midday, we were on our way back home, each of us on the back of a quad bike with one of our friends driving.  Although fuel was precious, Anahera insisted.  She wouldn’t let us walk all that way in our condition, not after what had happened to us while we were guests in her home.  She felt responsible.  I understood, but I felt no reason to blame her.  It wasn’t her fault.

With the bikes to carry us over the uneven terrain quickly, it only took a couple of hours for us to reach our old motel
.  Hemi and Skylar arrived first.  They leapt off their bike and ran to go find the doctor, while the rest of us travelled more sedately so as not to jostle our injuries.  Anahera parked her bike beside the door and helped me off, while behind us Ropata did the same for Michael.

Once the adrenaline had worn off, it left me in terrible pain
.  My wrists were black with bruises and it hurt so much to breathe that I wondered if I might have a broken rib.  My sides and back were covered in grazes from where I’d been kicked across the dirt, and I needed a bath something terrible to get the dirt out of my wounds.

The doctor took one look at me and agreed
.  Skye and Anahera bundled me off to the shower, bathed me, and cleaned my wounds.  The water was cold since the power was still off, but that helped to numb the pain.

I didn’t even mind being bathed by two women all that much
.  After what I’d been through, being naked in front of friends didn’t feel like the end of the world any more.  At least they could reach my back for me – I was so stiff that I could barely move my arms.

Once I was bathed and dried, I was led back to Michael’s room, where he lay recovering from makeshift surgery
.  The doctor knew me too well, and reassured me about his condition before I could even ask.

“He’ll be fine,” Dr Cross told me in no uncertain terms
.  “His ribs stopped the projectile, and I’ve removed it now.  Aside from that and a minor concussion, he’s going to be right as rain.  Now, come here and let me look at you.”

Given the extent of my injuries, I had to stay naked while he examined me
.  That was a more uncomfortable experience than the shower because of his gender, but he was also my doctor.  I reminded myself of that every time he needed to fish a piece of gravel or a twig from a wound in an intimate place.  I just closed my eyes and bore up to it, reminding myself that I was lucky I still
had
eyes to close.  I owed Skylar big time for that.

A couple of the cuts were so deep that they required stitches, including the one on my face
.  Dr Cross warned me that I would probably have a scar from it, but I couldn’t have cared less.  All that mattered to me was that I could still see.  I’d come so close to losing the privilege forever.  I’d come so close to losing my life.

My ribs were examined by gentle touches, but the news from there was good – I probably had a couple of fractures, but no actual breaks
.  None of my injuries were life-threatening.  Every inch of me hurt, but I still took that diagnosis with a smile.  The way I saw it, it could have been so much worse.  Despite the pain, I felt buoyant, even joyous.

Once my wounds were washed and dressed where appropriate, he gave me painkillers and put me to bed with firm instructions to rest
.  For once in my life, I felt no inclination to defy the doctor’s orders.  Frankly, I felt like a couple of miles of bad road, and all my body wanted to do was sleep.

I snuggled up against Michael’s good side, resting my head on the half of his chest that wasn’t covered in bandages
.  I felt an arm slip carefully around me, and the closeness was very comforting.

I slept fitfully through most of the afternoon and into the evening
.  Often, I woke up and just lay there with my eyes closed, thinking over everything that had happened.  When I thought back to my brief captivity, I realised that I felt… nothing.  No fear, no anger, no hatred, despite how close I’d come to losing several body parts that were very precious to me.  All I felt was relief that it was over, and that everyone had gotten home safely.

At the time, yes, I had been afraid
.  I had panicked.  But, more importantly, I realised now that I’d put up a damn good fight.  I had screamed, but I hadn’t surrendered.  Although I hadn’t realised it at the time, my screaming had helped my rescuers to locate me.  Screaming saved my life.

Thinking over it logically, I came to the decision that I’d done very well, considering the circumstances
.  My entire attitude had changed.  If this had happened six weeks earlier, I probably would have ended up a blubbering mess and not had the strength to fight back.

These survivors, my friends, had changed me
.  No, that wasn’t right – they’d shown me that I wanted to change myself.  I wanted to be stronger, for their sakes as well as my own, and when the chips were down I had been stronger.  I was growing, as a person and as a woman.  Skylar and Anahera both gave me good role models to look up to after being alone for so long.  I was proud of them, and proud of myself.  I felt like my mother and my grandmother would have been proud of me, too.

Realising that I’d managed to hold my own in an emergency brought with it a sense of pride, and a sense of personal achievement
.  I had done nothing to be ashamed of.  Even though I hadn’t told anyone the details of my ordeal yet, I felt like I could without any kind of shame.  Considering how humiliated I’d felt for years after my first encounter with that man and his cronies, that was a vast improvement.

All of a sudden, I realised that I felt good about myself, for the first time in a very long time
.  More than just that, I came to another conclusion, one that I had to discuss with someone very important to me.  I opened my eyes and discovered that it was dark, but I could hear the sound of uneven breathing that told me he wasn’t asleep.

“Michael?”
I whispered.

“Mhm?” he mumbled, shifting a little beneath me
.  The moon was full and our curtains were wide open; a shaft of moonlight fell across his face, so I could see his dark eyes watching me.

“I’ve been thinking,” I told him softly, reaching up with one hand to trail my fingers along his jaw
.  His stubble was longer than usual, rougher, but I didn’t mind.  We’d both been through an ordeal.  I couldn’t blame him for being lax in his personal grooming.

“Yes?”
He closed his eyes, leaning in to my touch.

God, he is handsome,
I thought to myself, studying him in the moonlight.

“We almost lost each other today,” I whispered, shifting closer against him so I could press my cheek against his
.  Understanding my need for closeness, he tightened his grip around me and held me gently against his side.  “We live in a world where so much is outside of our control.  There’s so much danger.  We could both die tomorrow.  It’s never going to be perfect; the only thing in this life that’s perfect is the way we feel about one another.”

He started to say something, but I interrupted him with a kiss
.  I wasn’t interested in hearing protests or complaints, not this time.  We loved each other, and that was all that mattered – I knew he wanted me just as much as I wanted him.  We had both been delaying the inevitable out of fear.  So I kissed him, deeply and tenderly, to give him something else to think about besides his own nerves.  I felt his body respond to it.

When our lips parted, I gazed down at him and saw a mixture of confusion and longing on his face
.  I understood the feeling well.  I’d felt it so often in the recent weeks.  Every time I looked at him, in fact – except for right now.  For the first time in a very long time, I felt a kind of clarity.  My desires and my needs were crystal clear.  I knew exactly what I wanted.

“Michael, I don’t want to lose you without ever having the chance to show you how much I love you,” I told him in no uncertain terms
.  “I want to make love to you, right now, however imperfect the circumstances may be.”

“But… your injuries…” he protested
.  I snuggled closer against him, my lips seeking out the curve of his throat.  He was right, it hurt to kiss him with my split lips, but I didn’t care.

“So be gentle
.  You’re very good at that,” I whispered huskily, my breath hot against the side of his neck.  He loved being kissed there, and I felt him shiver in response.

“Are you sure?”
Even though I already had him aroused and I knew he wanted me, he still showed such restraint for fear of hurting me.  I knew it, and I loved him all the more for it.  Drawing back just enough to look down at him, I gave him an adoring smile.

Then a kiss, and another, and another
.  A series of hot, quick, playful kisses.  He responded instinctively, and I felt gentle hands upon my body.  I rolled onto my back and he went with me, supporting his weight on his hands to keep from hurting me.  With increasing enthusiasm, he returned my kisses and I felt his body pressing down against mine.  His skin was so warm, his belly firm and taut, and his manhood…

Only then did I break the kiss long enough to reply, when I was trapped beneath his strong frame and knew for certain that he was just as ready as I was.

“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life,” I told him, and it was true.  After all this time, after how gentle, sweet, and endlessly kind he had been to me, I wanted nothing more than to make love to my policeman at long last.  To return his kindness with pleasure, and to show him how much I’d grown – because of him.

And so we did
.  Tangled together in bed, with our wounded bodies bandaged and bloodied but our minds finally at peace, we made love beneath the moonlight.  I was oblivious to the pain as we fell into a world of our own pleasure, all things forgotten except for my love for the man in my arms.

It felt like that pleasure would last forever, and it was like nothing I could ever remember feeling before
.  So gentle, so expressive, so… right.  I heard myself cry out, but I didn’t care; I heard his voice whispering my name, and that was all that mattered in the world.  This world was our world, and ours alone.  Nothing else mattered here, except for the two of us.

After what felt like forever, we collapsed exhausted and replete in one another’s arms, our bodies slick with sweat and our breath racing
.  He kissed me tenderly one last time as I snuggled up against him, before we both drifted off to sleep.

This time, we both slept deeply.