On Broken Wings Read online

  She dropped into a stoop and tried to shuffle the way she had seen older patients do. Louis led her slowly across the parking lot, toward a blue pickup truck in an otherwise unoccupied section. No one approached them. She was desperate to look back, to assure herself that the Butchers were moving toward the hospital entrance and away from her, but Louis's command rang in her head.

  He bundled her into the passenger seat of the truck, slammed the door and raced around to the driver's side. Five seconds later the truck was in motion. She began to straighten and turn back toward the hospital entrance, but he reached over and shoved her head back down.

  "Not until we're clear, damn it! Do you want me to have to fight all of them?"

  She resumed her crouch, and the truck picked up speed. Ninety seconds later they were on the highway and barreling eastward at seventy miles an hour. She straightened again, and this time he made no objection.

  A few minutes later they pulled into the driveway of a modest two-story brick house on a road that was otherwise undeveloped. He helped her out of the truck and led her inside.

  The house was sparsely furnished, but was clean and attractive. Bookshelves crammed to capacity lined all the unwindowed walls. She could not remember ever having been in such a place. He led her to a sofa and bade her sit before dropping into an armchair beside her. She kept silent. It wasn't hard, with her heart lodged in her throat. A considerable interval passed before he spoke again.

  "You're safe here. This is my home. No one ever comes here uninvited. You're welcome for as long as you choose to stay, no strings attached. Now, do I get to hear about it?"

  She gaped at her unexpected savior, began to speak, stopped herself, and burst into a flood of tears.

  ====

  Chapter 4

  It was an hour before dawn the next morning when Louis rose. He donned a T-shirt and shorts and descended to his basement, making as little noise as possible.

  The basement was partitioned into an open storage area and a single room with a door. He entered the room, raised the ceiling lights, and closed the door behind him. Exercise and martial arts training equipment of many kinds lined the whitewashed cinder block walls.

  He had provided her with a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. She was a big girl, an inch or two taller than he and generously built, but the clothes had been loose enough on him to accommodate her. When she had changed, she asked him in a barely audible voice to help remove her bandages. She stood motionless before the mirror in his master bathroom, eyes clamped shut, while he peeled the day-old dressings from her face.

  When he had finished and stepped back, she opened her eyes. Her mouth flew open, and she began to shake from shoulders to knees as she confronted her new face. On both sides, it was laced with scars, from her hairline to the line of her jaw. Some were as thick as earthworms. All stood out angrily, in vivid relief against her pale olive skin.

  She had been pretty, even beautiful, before the scars. Her face was a perfect oval, her cheekbones high and definite, her chin firm, her features nicely positioned and proportioned. Her thick, curly brown hair was a testament to her youth and her essential vitality. But if he could rely on what he knew of such things, the scars would be permanent.

  He didn't know what to say or do. He merely watched while she quaked. She said nothing, only stared at her reflection. When she had ceased to shake, he led her back to his living room and sat her on the couch.

  She began to speak.

  In the northwest corner stood an old universal machine. He checked the wall mount, set the pinions for bench press, loaded two hundred seventy-five pounds onto the resistance train, and mounted the bench. He began at once to pump the immense load of iron as fast as he could. Ten repetitions, twenty, thirty.

  "I can't remember anything before them anymore. Maybe it was the drugs. They used to pump a lot of drugs into me to keep me quiet, when they weren't using me. I guess over ten years that'll do something to you. I don't even know my real last name. D'Alessandro's just a name I picked from the phone book to give to the doctors, 'cause I liked the sound. I must have been somebody, once, but it's all gone."

  When his chest had begun to burn, he lowered the lift bar onto its safety stops and slid out from under it. From behind the universal he took a six foot length of cherry, about two inches thick, that he had once spent all his free time over eight consecutive days stripping clean of bark and polishing to perfect smoothness. He hefted it, moved to the center of the room and began to spin it in the vertical plane as fast as he could manage. Sweat dripped from his arms and chest, and now and again it flew from his brow as he shook it away.

  "They r-raped me every night. Sometimes all of them. Sometimes two at once, or three. There was one that only wanted my ass. He liked to choke me from behind while he did it. Said it made me a smoother ride. There was another that only wanted my mouth. He'd fuck me there for a half an hour at a time, and if my teeth even brushed his dick he'd beat me so hard that I couldn't see afterward. He made me piss blood maybe two dozen times."

  He halted the rotation of the staff and went to the large bag in the northeast corner. He established his footing and began a pattern of six blows, repeated with increasing force and speed. High left, low right, high right, low left, down from top, up from bottom. His hands slid easily along the smoothed wood, his perspiration the only lubricant he needed. The muffled thuds of the staff against the bag blended into one another as he increased his tempo.

  "I never knew when they were finished with me. I never knew what they'd come up with next." Her voice was as hollow as a doctor narrating an autopsy. "A few weeks ago a bunch of them took turns pushing a broom handle into my ass as far as it would go. They laid bets on who could get it in the farthest. I passed out before they were done. I woke up the next morning naked from the waist down, in a pool of my own blood on the floor of the barracks."

  He threw the staff aside and breathed deeply once, then began a sequence of side kicks, spinning counterclockwise. He found his proper timing, establishing a resonance with the big bag, and strained to pour all the force in his body into the kicks. Though stoutly mounted and guyed and twice the weight of a man, the bag jerked with each kick. Loud rasps came from its anchor rings in counterpoint to the sounds of the impacts themselves.

  "The leader calls himself Tiny. He likes torturing people better than anything else in the world. If he had to choose between getting laid and carving somebody up, he'd pull out his knife without a second thought. I can't even think about some of the things he did to me, much less talk about them. When I thought he was about to catch me again, I was ready to kill myself right then and there. I owe you more than my life for getting me away from him. I just hope he doesn't find me here."

  He had become a spinning blur, barely touching the floor between kicks. The furious pounding he inflicted on the big bag began to pull the top anchor loose from the ceiling joist. He paid it no mind. When it did come loose, the bag flew into the wall and slid to the floor. He aborted a kick just in time to avoid following it. He stood staring at it for a moment, breath coming in enormous draughts, uncertain of what to do.

  "I couldn't have stood it even one more day. I would rather have died. The surgeon said I nearly did. But I was willing to kill, and I did, and if a faceful of scars is all the price I'll have to pay for my escape, I'm the luckiest woman on Earth." Her head drooped and a deep shudder ran through her body. When she looked up again, it was with little-girl eyes that were filled with defiance. "There's nothing that's worse than what I did, but I'm not sorry, and no one can make me be." Her face had puffed with blood, making the scars stand out like vampire worms. Her voice was rising toward a scream. "I only wish I could have killed them all!"

  Fury had risen in him as her narrative began. It had grown all through the night. He had never known this kind of rage before, the lust to hunt and kill for the sake of killing, to bathe in a victim's blood and howl triumph at the sky. He knew it now. Malcolm had warned him
about it, had told him how important it was to avoid surrendering to it. He had failed to understand, then. He understood now. He would not leave the basement until he had quelled it.

  "Aren't you scared yet, Louis? You probably thought you were doing a good deed. But I'm a walking sperm bank who's also a murderer, and you've taken me into your nice quiet little home. Plus, there are about two dozen real big guys who ride motorcycles and hurt people for a living, who'd probably kill you as soon as look at you, and they're all looking for me. You saw them. What's it worth to you to see me disappear forever, right away, tonight?"

  He hoisted the bag from the floor, propped it against the corner of the room, and began to punch it, alternating hands. Malcolm would not approve, he knew. Malcolm had drilled him for years on never throwing a punch. Malcolm would have tossed the bag aside and invited Louis to throw a punch at him. If Louis had been foolish enough to try, Malcolm would have thrown him into the next time zone.

  He sat beside her then and took her awkwardly in his arms, and she crumpled against him. Her tears began again, as copious as before. She wailed a wordless song of pain that might have come from Buchenwald or the Gulags. It seemed to go on forever. He held her and waited.

  When she had passed out against his chest, he carried her to his guest room, laid her on the bed, and covered her with a light blanket before going to his own bed to toss the night away in nightmares culled from her decade of torment.

  His right fist split the canvas bag at its seam. A puff of its shredded stuffing sprayed into his face. He halted himself and forced himself to sit. It was almost beyond his powers.

  They had visited every abuse on her that a twisted mind could conceive, yet would leave her alive to suffer another day. She knew they were searching for her. God alone knew what would happen to her if they should find her. She did not know who she was. She had nothing and no one.

  He shook his head furiously, as much to clear it of the nightmare visions as to fling away the hot fluid that had pooled in his eyes.

  It would not be. He would not permit it. She had him, now. No further harm would come to her while he lived.

  Even as the thought formed, an arc of pain passed through his abdomen that bid fair to bisect him. He doubled over, clenching himself around it, gasping for breath.

  While he lived.

  ***

  Christine awoke in the all-at-once, thrown-switch fashion characteristic of combat soldiers and very young children. She was used to it, and to awakening already in street clothes. She was not used to awakening alone in a clean, nicely-appointed room with a closed door, nor on a conventional bed, nor covered with a peach blanket. It took a moment before the disorientation passed and the events of the previous day returned to her.

  I'm free.

  And immediately after:

  He knows.

  The exultation of the first thought collided with the shame and humiliation of the second. Against all rational expectation, a rescuer had appeared when she needed one most. Against all good sense, she had spilled her guts to him.

  What kind of greeting awaited her beyond the bedroom door? Had her story frightened him enough, or revolted him enough, to thrust her out of his home? Or had she unwittingly persuaded him to think of her as his property?

  What does it matter? Could anything be worse than what he saved you from? If he were to turn you out on the spot, would you go looking for the Butchers? If he were to rape you every night, would you run back to Tiny's loving arms?

  The Nag was still there, still relentlessly sensible, still unwilling to let her do what she had wanted to do for so long: give up and wallow in her despair. There had been days she hated the Nag even more than she hated Tiny. But whatever it was, it would not go away.

  When the muffled thuds that permeated the house pierced her introversion, her fear returned in full strength. Something violent was happening below. The proximity of violence of any kind had always had unpleasant consequences for her. For a moment she lay motionless.

  Get moving. Go to meet it. There'll be no good in waiting for it to come to you, whatever it is.

  The sounds of impact stopped. She threw the blanket aside and sat up. She was still fully clothed. He had not even removed the sneakers he had given her. She went to the door and eased it open.

  Had anyone asked her that day whether it was harder to tip the bike and kill Tex or to descend the stairs of that unfamiliar house, she would have chosen the latter.

  ***

  Louis stripped off his sodden T-shirt and toweled off. With the shirt wadded under one arm, he strode up the stairs two at a time and stepped through the door to his kitchen just as Christine entered it. Her face tightened, the sudden rush of blood making her scars even more livid, and he realized that he was nearly naked.

  "Excuse me." He turned aside and made for his bedroom. He returned to the kitchen in his bathrobe, to find her sitting motionless at his kitchen table. Not knowing what else to do, he made coffee. She sat in silence.

  "Milk? Sugar?"

  "What?"

  "In your coffee, Chris. Do you take milk or sugar?"

  She shook her head.

  He set a mug down before her and filled it. She stared at the mug without touching it, as if it held some secret of transcendental importance. He poured a mug of his own and sat down across from her. Her hands wrapped themselves around the mug, but she did not raise it to drink.

  "Did you sleep well?"

  She stared at the mug and said nothing.

  "Chris, are you all right?"

  Still nothing.

  "Christine, answer me."

  At the sound of his command voice, her eyes jerked upward to meet his. It never failed. He could have blessed Malcolm for teaching it to him.

  "What are you going to do with me?"

  He was trying to frame a reply when she spoke again.

  "I owe you big time, and I know it. Just tell me what you want so I can get it over with."

  It was the little girl's voice, the one that combined equal parts defiance and pain. He cringed inside at the sound of it. It was some moments before he could proceed with what he had planned to say.

  "I have an errand to run this morning, but I should be back before noon. After that, I want you to meet a friend, a very good friend. He's a smart man, and I think you should talk to him. A little grocery shopping, and we'll be set for the day. While I'm out, you might want to take a shower, try to relax a bit. After that we can talk about whatever's on your mind."

  She stared at him, not comprehending.

  "I told you yesterday, you're safe here. No one's going to do anything to you. And you're welcome to stay as long as you need to. If you were expecting to have to make some kind of payment, you can relax. We'll talk about putting you on your own two feet when you've had a while to rest and recover. I don't see that we have to rush it."

  He was doing his best to be reassuring, but from her expression, he might have been babbling in tongues.

  "I'll have to find out how much you know and what you'll need to learn before you go off by yourself. I don't want you to leave here unprepared. The world isn't a very forgiving place. So we'll spend a few hours each day on that. And I do have affairs of my own to attend to, so I won't be with you all the time. But I promise you, Chris, you will not have to face those creatures, or anything like them, helpless and alone ever again. I swear it. You might not believe it yet, but you will."

  She continued to stare at him, eyes wide and mouth working, but no sound came out. For a moment he thought she might begin to cry again. Instead she drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and returned her attention to the coffee mug, from which she still had not drunk.

  "What's the errand?"

  Oh, nothing much. I'm just going to ramble on over to the hospital and pay your bill without letting them know where you've gone. Then I get to lie still for an hour and let them pump me full of toxic chemicals on the off chance that they'll extend my life another week or two,
because all of a sudden I'm afraid to die.

  He forced a smile. "Nothing to concern yourself over."

  He went to her side, covered her hands with his own and, against some slight resistance, brought the mug to her lips. She took a sip and swallowed. Fear-filled brown eyes rose once more to meet his.

  "It's good coffee, isn't it?"

  "Yes, thanks." She attempted a smile of her own, and failed. It was painful to see.

  He nodded and looked away.

  ***

  "That all of them?"

  Hans nodded.

  Tiny rose from the couch and went to the front of the barracks, where its sole eye-level windows were located. There was nothing to see but a few cars dribbling by on Lumberjack Road. The weather was improving, the temperature rising, but there was nothing to do with it. Onteora, despite the Butchers' frequent stops there, was not a fruitful place for an extended stay. They needed richer pickings.

  He was frustrated, but he took pains not to show it. The nurse-receptionist at Onteora General had been so terrified, he'd been certain he'd struck pay dirt. But Christine had not been there, and the receptionist had sworn up and down that no female accident victim had been brought to the hospital for more than a week. It was unthinkable that any woman's resolve not to talk could resist the kind of fear he could engender. He knew where his strengths lay.

  "Don't sweat it, Hans." He did his best to suppress his irritation. "It was a good idea. No one else had any. The slut's gone, and that's that. Probably dead in a ditch somewhere. We'll find another one. When were we supposed to meet the Vikings?"

  "Three days ago, boss. You thinking of heading out?"

  Tiny nodded, looking out at the thin stream of traffic that ran past the barracks. "We've been here long enough." He turned back toward his lieutenant and grinned. "Don't I always say that after we've been here a few days?"

  Hans grinned in response. "When do you want to pull stakes?"

  Tiny shrugged. "Tomorrow morning'll be soon enough. I don't want to have to collect the guys today. Let them get pickled one more time. And you and me, let's go out and find a fresh piece of ass. Hell, maybe one each for a change."