Red - Jack Ketchum [38]
He reaches into the back of his belt and pulls out the .45 and puts it to the woman’s head.
“The doctor is in,” he says.
~ * ~
“Dry as a bone, now. We don’t want her coming down with something,” Chris says.
The woman’s shivering and Belle can hear those nasty teeth chattering but less so as she goes about her business, starting with her hair which is still matted, which will take a lot more washing and a hell of a stiff brush before it will be anywhere near decent but she‘s struck that it‘s such thick, healthy hair and wonders how that can be given the life she’s led. Or that Belle supposes she’s led.
She moves down to her face and neck, drying these quickly because gun or no gun and even with the towel between them she doesn’t like the proximity to that goddamn mouth of hers. She dries each arm and as she does realizes that her husband’s done his job quite well, if brutally. She’s pretty clean. Not much grime coming off on the towel at all. But then comes the hard part.
Her torso. Her breasts and belly. Her privates.
She doesn’t want to touch these. But Chris is expecting her to so she does and as she does, as she runs the towel over her breasts, a curious thing happens. There’s a tingling where there shouldn’t be. That’s not possible, she thinks. That’s ridiculous. So she runs the towel roughly over her belly and even more roughly over her ass and the fur between her legs — she thinks of it as fur, not pubic hair. But there it is again. That tingling.
She denies the feeling. She curses the feeling and curses this woman who by all rights shouldn’t even be here, who should be out digging up roots and berries or lord knows what and truth be told, curses her husband too. She sweeps the towel down over both legs as quickly as possible.
“There,” she says.
And stands away.
~ * ~
The female touching her reminds her of Second Stolen touching her. The wish to touch and yet not to touch, both at the same time, which she has read quite clearly. The Woman taught Second Stolen not to wish to touch her the hard way. With a thick branch of birch which she whipped across the girl’s thighs until she lay huddled whimpering on the floor of the cave.
Second Stolen is gone now. They’re all gone.
The Woman is alone with prey and monsters.
~ * ~
Cleek has applied Bacitracin and clean dressings to both the wounds at her side, which are healing remarkably well, and her left ankle. Now he moves to her right ankle and slips the cuff up slightly so that he can get at the swollen red chafing there and swabs the antiseptic over it and wraps it tight.
He stands and sees that she’s holding her hands out to him, palms up, so that he can get at her wrists. Almost a gesture of supplication he thinks. And perhaps it is. Her wrists are much worse. Particularly the right one — the one she worked free. The one she tried to throttle him with. It’s not only bleeding, it’s leaking thin yellow pus.
He attends to the left one first. Cleans away the blood, swabs it, bandages it. Then he turns to Belle.
“Honey? Throw some alcohol onto one of those sterile pads, would you?”
The woman’s had no problem with any of this so far. If anything she’s seemed grateful. But that could be pure exhaustion. She’s clearly exhausted. This next bit could go down a little bit harder. He should probably warn her. He takes the pad from Belle and holds it up for the woman to see.
“This is gonna hurt,” he says and makes a face, pulls his lips back, a grimace of pain.
She looks at him questioningly. She doesn’t get it.
“Owwwww!” he says and hisses and makes that face again.
She nods.
He applies the pad to the worst of the damage. Her fingers stiffen but she holds the wrist steady and doesn’t make a sound. Good girl, he thinks.
“Soak me another, hon,” he