Off Season - Jack Ketchum [62]
She watched with pleasure as the water began to boil. They had hunted every animal but there was no flesh like man’s, she thought. It was sweet and more subtle than game. Delicate streaks of fat ran through even the leanest meat. If you placed a piece of venison or bear in a pot to boil, it would lie at the bottom like a stone. But man’s flesh had life. It would bounce and swirl inside the pot. The other was just meat, just a meal. Her toothless gums worked rapidly from side to side and her fat stomach rumbled in anticipation.
The pregnant girl wandered back to the cage. Three of the children were amusing themselves by poking sticks through the open spaces in the bottom of the cage at the bare feet of the two new captive women. The eldest boy, a year younger than the girl, stood beside the cage and watched them closely. The girl smiled at him but he did not return the smile.
The children had cut the right foot of the blonde woman. There was blood on the bottom of the cage. But watching did not interest her much. She scowled at the children and chased them away. The big boy laughed beside her.
The girl looked at him with a sudden interest and then reached up quickly and thrust both hands into the cage. Startled, Laura tried to pull away but the girl was much too fast for her. With one hand she gripped her ankle and squeezed while she ran the other hand roughly over the bleeding sole of her foot. Then just as suddenly she let go. She looked at the boy again and smiled, holding out her hand palm upward so he could see the rich smear of blood. He moved closer.
She lifted the skin she wore over her head and dropped it to the ground, then wiped the blood over her naked breasts and belly. The boy’s eyes went wide. He reached for her but she laughed and stepped away. He followed her. He pushed her to the wall and pressed himself hard against her, heedless of the unborn infant inside her. He reached down to free his penis from the stained white pants, and while he was doing so, the girl moved her left hand with a pickpocket’s delicacy to the bulge in his back pocket, where she knew he kept the knife.
When she saw his pants fall about his ankles, she laughed and pressed closer to the boy, flipped open the knife behind his back and then stabbed him lightly in the buttocks. He jumped away and howled. She laughed again, dropped the knife, and went to him. She reached both hands around him and rubbed the slowly bleeding wound until her hands were slick with blood. Then she stepped back and held her hands up to him to show him what she’d done. The boy’s face lost its angry, confused expression and he smiled. His penis was hard again as she reached down for it and covered it with blood. Then she lay down on the floor of the cave. She spread her legs for him and waited.
They moved together quickly and almost silently, without expression. Behind her two of the children watched them, and, although they were much too small, threw off their clothes and imitated their positions on the floor and the noises they made and the odd, jerky way they had of moving their hips. In another part of the cave, a little boy squatted to defecate. The boy and girl who were chasing the rat caught it crouching under a pile of clothing and stomped it quickly to death.
Marjie watched it all; nothing they did escaped her notice. What she saw frightened and sickened her, but she would need to understand them if she were to have any hope of getting free; she knew that. It was like watching another species entirely, a pack of wild animals.
Behind her, in the