The Hungry Dead (27 page)

Nancy awoke at four in the morning and could not sleep anymore. Gwen's supposedly upcoming escape attempt both tormented and tantalized her. If it only worked! But it wouldn't. Then, again, it might.

Locked inside the wire cage, Nancy couldn't picture herself free. The images had no tangibility. She had to fight against giving up. Her mind was mostly a blank. Her life wasn't passing in front of her. Maybe that meant she wasn't going to die.

Gwen was going to try to seduce the brothers, Luke and Abraham. Would such a thing be a mortal sin? If so, it would be on Gwen's soul, not Nancy's. Yet Nancy would benefit from it. She hoped. It made her feel guilty when she contemplated some of the saints her catechism classes taught her to revere: the ones who had allowed themselves to be butchered rather than giving in to sexual intercourse.

She had made a good confession, finally, after two years. She was in a state of grace, almost, providing stealing the groceries could be thought of as a venial sin. Maybe God had inspired her to get ready and purify her soul. But she was still scared to die, even knowing she would go to heaven.

She tried to think positively, as Gwen had urged. But in the confines of the cage this was difficult. Wild, panicky thoughts kept tumbling through her mind. Either the situation was truly hopeless, or else the numbness of fear made it seem so. Not one idea conducive to escape occurred to her.

Her ears perked up as she heard someone's footsteps on the stairs. Cynthia came into the living room and stopped in front of Nancy's cage, casually reaching out and resting her hand on the wire. Nancy's eyes widened. Cynthia was wearing a pink satin robe and appeared fresh and well rested, as if nothing disturbing was going on. She even smiled and then said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Nancy replied, her voice breaking to a tiny croak as the automatic response issued from the depths of her conditioning, shaking her with a small shock wave of irony and dismay.

“Breakfast will be ready soon,” said Cynthia quite pleasantly. With that, she strode through the dining room and into the kitchen and began banging pots and pans.

Gwen's sudden whisper startled Nancy. “Fucking bitch!” Gwen said under her breath.

“I didn't know you were awake,” Nancy whispered back.

“In a little while you'll smell eggs, toast, and coffee,” said Gwen. “But we won't get any. Luke, Cyrus, and Abraham will come down and they'll all have a nice hearty breakfast and a friendly chat. When they're done they'll give us some bread and cheese. Then they'll let us out to do our business. That's when our big chance will come. I was afraid to try it yesterday on my own. But now I have you to help.
One
of us might get away—or both of us, if we're lucky.”

“I'm still scared,” Nancy said. “I'm not sure what to do.”

Gwen eyed her shrewdly, trying to instill confidence. “When the right moment comes, don't hesitate—make your move. Grab a stick or a rock. If you could play up to one of the brothers beforehand, that would double our chances of getting hold of a gun.”

“I don't think I could stand to have them touch me,” Nancy said.

“You're going to wait till they do worse?” Gwen challenged.

The three brothers clomped down the stairs. Luke and Abraham went directly into the dining room, but Cyrus lingered around the cages, leering and giggling and jabbing with his fingers—poking the girls from one side to another in their wire cells. Luckily, he didn't have his knife.

“Cyrus!” Cynthia called. “You come in and eat while it's hot!”

He gave a few final pokes, gleefully waddling around the side of Nancy's cage on his way into the dining room, where he dragged a chair across the carpet and sat down.

“Hotcakes instead of eggs today,” Gwen said in a whisper. “How could anything that black-haired bitch touches smell so good?” Cursing was her way of boosting her courage.

Nancy lay flat on her back, staring up through wire mesh, trying to get over the stomach-churning anxiety of the recent torment from Cyrus. Turning toward Gwen, she asked, “Do they ever let the dumb one have the keys?”

“No, I'm afraid not. Why?”

“I guess he'd be the easiest one to trick.”

“You know it and they know it,” Gwen said.

A lively conversation ensued around the breakfast table. Nancy and Gwen could hear everything but could not see the participants because of the placement of their cages. They had to peer through the dining room archway on a sharp angle, the view further obstructed by their lowness to the floor and the intervening aspects of large pieces of furniture. Cynthia was giving instructions. When she spoke the three brothers listened.

“When you're done with the two in there, Luke and Abraham, you go on out and fetch a third one to keep them company. Mama expects there to be three. Cyrus, you needn't go along. You have your work to do, sweeping up the chapel and polishing the pews. Don't dawdle about it. People will be coming in tomorrow and expecting the usual thorough preparations. Most of them will be checked into motels in town. A few will stay here at the house. We've got to be congenial and accommodating at all times, just like Mama said.”

“She wasn't mad at me last night,” Luke said. “What happened with that other girl wasn't none of our fault.”

“Be that as it may,” said Cynthia, “we have got to have three, come hell or high water, tomorrow.”

There was a racket of chairs being pushed back from the table, and then Luke and Abraham came into the living room. Cyrus pushed in behind them but Cynthia yelled for him to go on out the back door with his broom and get to work sweeping the chapel. Luke and Abraham both had the pistols they had taken from the deputies. Taking a ring of keys out of his pocket, Luke said, “Goin' to take you out in the field now to relieve yourselves. Don't want you lettin' go in here. Afterward, we'll lock you up again with somethin' to eat and drink. Behave yourselves now—or you don't have nothin' at all to eat.”

“Why can't we go to the bathroom in here?” asked Nancy.

Gwen flashed a look at Nancy to tell her to shut up. If they didn't get outside, how were they ever going to escape?

“We ain't lettin' you into our bathroom, where there's stuff like glass and razor blades,” said Luke. “You might get feisty, or you might try to slash your wrists.” He unlocked the padlocks on the dog cages and let Nancy and Gwen out, keeping his pistol trained on them. Abraham backed him up, both brothers warily alert, not about to lose their captives and take flack from Cynthia and Mama.

Nancy and Gwen unbent slowly and stiffly, massaging and stretching their cramped muscles.

“Get a move on!” Abraham snapped. “This way. Out the back door.”

Prodded in the back with the guns, Nancy and Gwen marched through the dining room with scraps of food still on the table, out through the large country kitchen and down off the back porch. Gwen looked at Nancy out of the corners of her eyes, signaling: Be brave and our chance will come.

It was a crisp spring morning with dew still on the grass. The two girls shivered and got goosebumps; they were wearing their underwear and nothing else. Barefoot, they stepped gingerly through the cold, wet grass. They were headed toward an outhouse adjacent to the cemetery and chapel across the field. The thought that Cyrus was out there filled Nancy with trepidation. “Where are we going?” she asked, playing dumb.

“Make any difference to you?” Abraham countered snidely.

“You can do your business right here where we can watch,” said Luke, snickering.

“I can show you a better way to get some kicks,” Gwen told the two brothers, stopping in her tracks and turning to face them seductively. “Why don't you let me and Nancy take the two of you into the woods for a while? Cynthia doesn't have to find out about it.”

Luke chuckled derisively, but Abraham seemed interested. “If they already ain't virgins, what difference could it make?” he suggested to his brother.

“It's a trick,” said Luke.

“But you both have guns,” Gwen argued. “How could we get away with anything? Nancy and I talked about it last night, and we figured that if we were really nice to you, maybe you'd be nice to us.”

“Maybe we would, at that,” said Abraham shrewdly. “Why don't we have us some fun, Luke? Then we'll see if there's a way of helping the two girls.”

“Well . . . maybe,” Luke debated. His lusts were getting the better of him. He told himself that the risk would be minimal if the girls were willing to have sex in return for possible favors. Of course, the favors wouldn't ever be forthcoming, but they wouldn't have to know. It would be nice doing it with a pretty girl who was putting her all into it for a change, not having to be forced. “If you were real nice to us, maybe we'd let you go and capture two more,” he said slyly.

Nancy was panicked. The way Gwen had talked, Nancy and Gwen both would have to give in to Luke and Abraham, or at least lead them on. What if it got out of control, and they never escaped at all? Or what if they were let loose and two other girls took their place? That would be a mortal sin for sure. Letting someone else die to save your own hide.

“I've got my mind made up to show you the best time you ever had,” Gwen purred breathily, unsnapping her bra.

Abraham and Luke ogled her large, firm breasts. Following her lead, as if in a trance, Nancy took off her bra, too. The two brothers' eyes gleamed lecherously, darting back and forth, taking in first one girl, then the other. It was easy to believe that Nancy's wide-eyed stare was one of desire.

“Over there behind the trees,” Luke said, gesturing with his gun. He had turned briefly, glancing over his shoulder, and when he turned back he was jolted by the sight of Abraham already fondling Gwen's breasts, his revolver stuck carelessly in his belt.

Luke felt he was moving in slow motion, as Gwen reached for the butt of Abraham's gun. But he got to her in time and smacked it out of her hand. Nancy saw it fall. Paralyzed for an instant, she was too late diving for it on the grass. Luke kicked it away, then gave her a savage chop behind the neck that sent her sprawling, nearly unconscious. By that time Abraham had recovered and was repeatedly slapping Gwen, beating her with his fists on her face and breasts, then punching her in the stomach, sending her writhing to the earth. She stayed down, moaning in pain, and Luke kicked her in the ribs. He picked up Abraham's pistol and handed it back.

“Filthy teases!” Luke snapped. “Tried to make blasted fools out of us, didn't they?”

Luke and Abraham dragged Nancy and Gwen to their feet and pushed them behind a clump of bushes and waited while they relieved themselves, then marched them back into the house, shoved them down into their cages, and locked them up. “Nothing to eat for you now!” Luke barked before stomping away. “They tried to escape,” he told Cynthia, who was in the dining room cleaning up.

Gwen and Nancy lay on the bottoms of their cages, in pain and despair. Their escape attempt had failed miserably, and it was not likely they'd get another chance.

Out in the dining room, Cynthia was saying, “Tomorrow you can take them down to the chapel, Luke. In the evening you'll be building a fire in there, and it will be warm enough so they won't die of pneumonia. Locked up in the chapel, they'll be hard put to give us any more trouble.”

“I was under the impression you wanted only one down there at a time during the services, and only the one we're working with, at that,” said Abraham.

“Put them in Uncle Sal's office,” Cynthia instructed. “That way they won't see anything that's going on till we want them to. You understand, I mean for you to keep them in their cages.”

“Yeah, I get the picture,” growled Luke.

This last part of the discussion killed a ray of hope Gwen had been nurturing through the agony of her injuries. She had thought maybe they'd be locked up in a room, with more freedom of movement, rather than in the escape-proof wire cages. Now, that hope gone, she was overwhelmed by the knifing pain in her rib cage, which felt as if the whole side of her upper torso had been kicked in by Luke's heavy brown boot. More demoralized than ever, she gave in to thinking that maybe she never would see her daughter again.

Sitting back in her cage, wrapped in the ragged, musty blanket, Nancy began reciting a rosary. Luke and Abraham scoffed at her as they went out the front door. She heard them backing the van out of the garage at the side of the house; the garage door shut, a door slammed as one of the brothers hopped into the cab, and the van drove away. Cynthia came into the living room and stared down at the two girls in their cages. To Nancy she said, “Why do you pray? It will do you no good.”

“Don't you believe in God?” Nancy inquired softly, after saying the amen at the end of a Hail Mary and then taking a deep breath before confronting Cynthia.

Cynthia smiled patronizingly. “You believe that your God is good and merciful, yet He has allowed such bad things to happen to you.”

Nancy swallowed hard, her mouth and throat dry. She spoke softly: “We're taught not to question His wisdom. He sent His only begotten Son to earth to suffer and die for our sins. Maybe He is asking me to suffer a little, too, so that I can be saved.”

“Were you such a great and terrible sinner?” Cynthia said, amused.

Nancy lowered her eyes. Wrapped in her blanket and holding her ribs, Gwen gazed in open contempt at Cynthia's face.

“Some of your holy priests, even the ones you call saints, weren't so humbly able to accept pain as you are,” Cynthia told Nancy. “Allow me to enlighten you. Have you ever been permitted to read eyewitness accounts of the bloody witch trials carried out in the name of your God? Fascinating, I assure you. For instance, in the 1500s a certain parish priest was condemned to be tortured until he should admit he had a pact with Satan—the inquisitors were convinced of his guilt merely because he was knowledgeable about some excellent herbal cures and had nursed some badly ill people in his village to total recovery. It was thought in those days that any unusual talent, beauty, or skill had to come from the Devil; in this way mediocrity and obedience were encouraged, while those with exceptional physical or mental attributes were put to death. So they hung the good priest on the rack and pulled his limbs from their sockets, and applied the thumbscrews till the blood spurted from the ends of his fingers, striking the wall five feet away, and all the while he kept praying to his God, as you have been doing now. He couldn't believe that this merciful God, who knew his innocence, would not intervene and put an end to his suffering. But no such intervention happened—the heavens did not open up; God did not descend in a ray of light—and the pious priest died horribly, his religious beliefs shattered along with his mind and body at the end when death finally took him. You see, there are times when evil will have its triumph, and nothing can change that fact. Evil is more powerful than good. Your God sits indifferently on His celestial throne, entertained by the agonized antics of His subjects, who writhe and jerk like dismembered puppets. Why are you so vain as to imagine He cares a whit about you? Don't you recall that even Jesus, the Son of God, cried out in His final agony on the cross: Why hast Thou forsaken Me?”