Depraved 2 (30 page)

In a few more moments, Allie was no more.

But Sienna had never felt more alive.

She dropped the knife and got to her feet, turning her face toward a vibrant sky suddenly bursting with color, deep hues of violet and crimson in pulsating, shifting patterns. The trees that circled the clearing stood taller now, almost tall enough to touch the heavens, their tops draped in a shade of neon green. She understood she was seeing creation as it really was, in all its cascading brilliance, normally hidden by humanity’s limited powers of perception. The air around her felt suffused with unnatural energy. It seeped into her skin and ignited a new inner fire, a thrumming, burgeoning power, one capable of instigating apocalyptic conflagrations. The heat filling her was exquisitely, almost unspeakably delicious.

Sienna danced over the body at her feet and called out to the gods to bring her daddy back from the beyond, beseeching them in a voice amplified by her talent. It was like the roar of a great beast, resounding majestically in the clearing. But then all that brilliance in the sky dissolved to blinding, all-encompassing white and the world seemed to go away for a time, Sienna lapsing into a state of gray and fuzzy semi-consciousness.

Her eyes were open when full consciousness returned, her face still tipped upward. The sky above her, however, had reassumed its “normal” state. She felt a pang of loss and wished she could always view the universe in its unfiltered form. The light display had ended, but her skin was still tingling from the infusion of power. And though that initial intense surge of energy had faded, she still felt stronger than ever, invincible and gloriously free.

Then she felt the little fingers clawing her ankle and looked down.

She frowned. “Huh.”

Well, this is unexpected.

Allie had resurrected.

She was still flat on her back, but her head was swiveling slowly side to side as a low, groan emerged from her mouth. Her eyes still looked glazed and her skin had that pale death pallor. She was dead but animated, the same as Arlene. The sight of a reanimated body did not, in and of itself, disturb her, but in this case it was more than a little puzzling. This was the first time any of her sacrificial offerings had rejuvenated and at first she could make no sense of it. She could only ascribe it to the unprecedented explosion of energy this ritual had unleashed.

Allie’s clutching fingers slid away from Sienna’s ankle and found the knife. Though her recollection of it was vague, Sienna knew she had dropped it during the ritual. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, Allie being dead and all. The girl’s fingers closed around the base of the blade, gripping it tight, its sharp edge slicing bloodlessly into her undead flesh.

Allie sat up.

Sienna frowned.

Uh-oh.

She hopped backward as the little zombie girl took a swipe at her with the knife. The blade missed nicking her shin by about an inch. Despite the close call, Sienna wasn’t overly worried. Zombie or not, Allie was little and could be easily overpowered. She wasn’t about to turn tail and flee, not until the matter of her father’s resurrection was settled.

The apparent answer to that came seconds later as a patch of ground at Allie’s feet shifted and swelled upward, as if something buried beneath it was attempting to rise to the surface. Sienna’s heart started pounding and a wide grin of unrestrained joy split her face.

I did it!

The ritual had been successful. Her daddy was coming back to her at long last. But dark thoughts tinged the joy as multiple other patches of ground were disturbed. The problem was pretty basic—they were too spread out to be caused by one returning dead man. She had heard stories from other survivors of the Hopkins Bend massacre about the army burying the dead in shallow mass graves. While she hadn’t doubted the tales, they had never struck her as a source of concern. Her daddy had been killed out in the woods, away from the other massacre victims. She had assumed he would be alone in his grave.

She had been wrong, apparently.

Multiple sets of rotting hands poked through fresh holes in the earth, which continued to shift and bulge outward in many places. A head emerged through one hole, a skull only partly covered with rotten brown flesh. The eye sockets were stuffed with mud and a thick earthworm wriggled in one of them. Allie got to her feet and took lurching steps in Sienna’s direction as the dead things beneath her continued to rise from the ground.

Sienna was starting to get just a little worried.

The power she had channeled must have been even greater than she imagined. Or she hadn’t focused it with sufficient precision, because it was beginning to seem as if she had resurrected all the dead things of Hopkins Bend rather than just her father.

Oops, she thought.

Allie took another swipe at her with the knife. Again, Sienna narrowly dodged the attack, but this time she wasn’t able to be so cavalier about the potential danger. There was a good chance she might get hurt if she didn’t take evasive action. She grabbed her backpack and backed off several more paces. Several full torsos had emerged from the shallow grave. One of the dead things was all the way out of the ground and was crawling in her direction. With increasing desperation, Sienna scanned the resurrected corpses for identifying characteristics, any little thing at all that might tell her one of them was her father, but she was soon forced to yield to a crushing reality. Her power was immense, yes, but it wasn’t strong enough to restore dead flesh to a healthy, pristine state. That illusion had been shattered quite thoroughly. They were all too rotted to ever identify without the aid of a forensics lab. Even the remaining tatters of clothing were too caked with dark earth to help.

Just rags hanging off bones.

Tears spilled from Sienna’s eyes in a warm rush.

Shit, she thought. Shit, shit, shit!

All for nothing. All for goddamn nothing!

Allie was almost in range again. She kept swiping at the air with the bloody knife.

Sienna wiped away tears.

Goodbye, daddy, she thought. I’m so sorry.

She turned away from the dead and ran out of the clearing.

26.

The guy with the beard hit Jessica upside the head with the stock of his rifle. She cried out and staggered backward, pain exploding in her head as she fell onto the sofa. Her assailant set his rifle on the coffee table and fell atop her before she could attempt to fend him off. She writhed beneath him and tried to push him away, but the zip-tie cuffs binding her wrists hindered the effort. His sheer mass was another major complicating factor. It was like being trapped beneath a giant boulder. The analytical part of her mind realized the impossibility of escape or successful resistance almost immediately. There was nothing she could do to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to her. And his swollen crotch left little doubt of his intentions.

Years ago Jessica had vowed to never again let a man take her against her will. She would sooner die than let that happen. The purity of that vow was maybe a little tainted by what she had done to Billy earlier, but it was still very much in effect. She screeched through gritted teeth as she struggled to raise her cuffed hands toward the man’s face, intending to gouge his eyes out, which was just barely possible thanks to Zelda having cuffed her hands in front. But the big beast just laughed and pushed her hands back down, pinning them between their bodies. He rocked against her in a humping motion and she felt a shudder of revulsion upon realizing how large his cock must be. It felt big enough to rip her in two. The knowledge only intensified her resolve not to be violated. She would tear the goddamn thing off and feed it to him before she’d let that happen.

“Looks like you’re fixin’ to get up in that shit.”

This was the other man speaking, the one with the racist political T-shirt. He was about as big as his friend and twice as ugly, with a protruding brow that made him look like a white trash caveman. A scar down the side of his head was only partly hidden by his bushy hair. His filthy blue jeans looked like they hadn’t been washed in months. He grinned and reached for his crotch when he noticed her looking at him. Jessica again shuddered in revulsion as she watched him squeeze the massive erection tenting the front of his jeans.

The one atop her glanced at his friend. “Damn straight. This one makes that bitch we nabbed earlier today look like garbage. I don’t even care if she killed Delmont.”

“What’ll we tell Jodi?”

The man on top of Jessica stared right into her eyes as he said, “We tell her the one I shot killed her man. Shit, she ain’t gonna know better. I’m keeping this one, that’s all there is to it.”

He groped at her breasts and tore at her top. There was a sound of ripping fabric.

The other one said, “Reckon you’ll share her now and then, Floyd?”

“Don’t see why not.”

Floyd finished tearing Jessica’s top away. He tossed the flimsy scrap of fabric to the floor and again pawed at her breasts, sliding thick fingers inside the cups of her bra. She squealed and tried again to raise her cuffed hands, redoubling the previous effort. He whipped a hand across her face, a blow so hard it blurred her vision and rendered her woozy for a moment.

“That’s enough of that mess, missy.” One of his hands went to her throat and squeezed hard enough to make her wheeze. “Ordinarily I like it when bitches struggle. Sort of enhances my overall enjoyment. But I’m too riled up for any of that foreplay nonsense. So here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna take my dick out and put it in your mouth and you’re gonna give my hog a good ol’ suck.” He relaxed his grip on her throat. “Understand what I’m sayin’, girl?”

Jessica sneered. “You try that and I’ll bite the fucking thing off.”

Floyd tilted his head back and brayed maniac laughter. He slapped her again. It felt like getting hit with a side of beef. She felt dizzy and her head hurt. Despite the defiance boiling in her veins, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop him. Frustration rose up inside her, burning as fierce and hot as her rage. She had thought she was done dealing with the backwoods cretins of Hopkins Bend forever. The unit had killed them all. Only now it was looking like some of them had slipped the net. Or someone had allowed them to get away. She would have scoffed at this possibility until just a few minutes ago, but Zelda’s revelations about her father had cast things in a new light and the notion no longer seemed at all ludicrous. She didn’t want to believe any of the woman’s wild accusations, but everything she’d said fit the few verifiable facts too perfectly.

Her father was a monster.

He was no better than this loathsome Floyd pervert.

Jessica flinched at the sound of a zipper sliding down. Her first thought was that Floyd was making good on his threat, but he hadn’t maneuvered himself into position to do that yet. She glanced at the other redneck creep and saw that he was removing his pants. His briefs came off next, revealing a dong as big as some monster porn movie dildo. She was mystified by what he was doing until he went to his knees and began to work at removing Zelda’s clothes from her corpse.

Jessica cringed in disgust.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is nothing too low for these animals?

Floyd had also taken note of his friend’s apparent flirtation with necrophilia. “Uh, Cletus? Whatcha doin’, man?”

Cletus grinned as he finished pulling off Zelda’s tight black pants and tossed them aside. “You know what I like about dead girls, right?” He ran one meaty hand up the length of one of Zelda’s shapely legs. “They don’t ever say no.”

Both men laughed heartily at this.

Floyd focused on Jessica again as his friend tore off the dead woman’s panties and climbed between her legs. He smiled and his hand clenched around her throat again. “Here’s the deal, little lady. You ain’t biting shit off. My boy’s too big for that. You’re gonna have all you can handle just trying to breathe.

He sat up and reached for his zipper.

The tab had just started sliding down when an ear-piercing scream filled the room.

“What the hell!?”

Jessica sat up as Floyd climbed off her and got to his feet. Her first instinct was to make a grab for the rifle. Handling it would be awkward with her hands cuffed, but she thought she might be able to get off one shot. She wouldn’t be able to brace the stock against her shoulder, which meant the recoil from that one shot would knock the weapon out of her hands. But the circumstances were too desperate not to attempt it anyway. Hopefully she could put that one shot through Floyd’s thick, ugly skull, thus cutting the threat facing her in half.