Hissers II: Death March (14 page)

The little girl finally undid Amanita’s zipper and pulled her pants down, revealing her underwear. Marcus knelt down and yanked Amanita’s shoes and socks off, and got her jeans off.

“I can’t get her shirt off with the ropes on,” Eunice said.

“Just tear it off the whore,” the girl’s mother said. She was holding a circle of steel wool that Luke had given her. He had
broken it up like bread and given a piece to everyone.

“C’mere,” Eunice said, and tore at Amanita’s shirt until it ripped down the front and came off. Now she was standing in just her bra and underpants under a sallow moon
, tied to a boulder in the backyard of a cabin in the woods, possibly miles from any help, if help even existed in this world anymore.

Amanita hung her head and plead
ed. “Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I swear I won’t tell. I’m not a whore. I just want to go. You said you’d let me go.”

“That was before we knew who you really were,” said Harold, approaching her. “But you are unclean, and your soul needs to
be saved. Once you are married to my son and serving him, you will see how much better your life is. You will not have to fear the undead, for we are protected out here. God is looking over us. But to accept you into our circle, we must purify you. Children, please begin cleansing her.”

The first to step up and place steel wool against Amanita was Kelly, rubbing it as hard as she could against Amanita’s bare belly. Then Luke, Eunice and Marcus began scrubbing as well. Instantly, Amanit
a’s skin burned and began to tear away. She screamed and flailed as blood ran down her body as more wounds were rubbed into her. She could not form words, could not fight back, just scream and convulse at the intense pain.

“Stay still,” Marcus commanded, “or I will not honor you with a place at my side.”

Michelle placed her piece of steel wool against Amanita’s left breast and pressed hard, drawing blood and opening a rash of blisters. Together the family dragged pain all over Amanita’s body.

“Oh my God stop!” she yelled
through tears of agony and horror. “I’ll do anything you want! Please stop!”

“Enough,” Harold said.
“Let her alone for a moment.”

When
the family stepped away, Amanita hung her head, drool and snot dripping from her face. She glimpsed her body covered in blood. The wound on her breast was rubbed through to the fat underneath. She could make out the striations of muscle on her stomach where the skin was gone. Her thigh and shoulder were the same. Everywhere her body burned in pain.

“Will you perish the demons f
rom your soul, whore?” Harold asked her.

It was all Amanita could do to form words without screaming. “Yes. Please. Just let me go.
I’ll do anything you want.”

“I cannot let you go until I am sure the demons are gone. There is only one way. And then, when you heal, we will discuss the wedding plans.”

“Oh God. What are you going to do?”

“We must finish the cleansing.
The devil has too many tricks and I don’t trust you yet. You are still impure.”

Now Amanita remembered what the little girl had said inside when they were discussing the ritual of cleansing the whores. Fire. It had something to do with burning
away the Devil. Oh dear God no, she prayed, please don’t let them burn me.

But her prayers fell on deaf ears as Michelle went into the house and came back with a broom handle wrapped in a cloth. Amanita was
not much for horror movies but she’d seen this staple in enough of them. A torch. Harold pulled a lighter from his pocket and set the cloth ablaze, which went up in a huff. It had clearly been dipped in some kind of accelerant. Harold took the torch and approached her, held the flames up in front of her face.

“I’m sorry,” Amanita cried, though she was unsure what she was apologizing for. She just knew she had to stop them any way she could. “I’m sorry I’m a whore. But I not bad anymore. Please believe me. Please don’t do this.
Let me go and I’ll prove it. Don’t burn me.”

“Do it, Father,” Eunice said.
“Burn away the demons.” The other children joined in and repeated it over and over. “Do it, do it do it.”

“It is for your own good, Amanita.” Harold touched the torch to her head and set her hair on fire.

Amanita screamed, flames licking around her ears, as the children approached once again with their steel wool. Just when the fire began to singe her scalp, just as the skin began to blister, she saw a massive shadow come tearing out of the woods, cloaked in darkness, and plow into everyone like an angry bull. Something akin to a blanket was thrown over her head and heavy hands stamped down on her skull. What followed was not more pain, but the sound of those hands, now fists, beating human flesh. Harold grunted and groaned. Marcus yelled and then began to choke. The women yelled shrill curses but their voices were soon cut off as well. Somewhere in the noise a bone snapped and a howl of agony rose to the sky.

Peering down
through the blanket, Amanita could make out her own feet highlighted in moonbeams. They were covered in drips of blood from where her skin had been worn away. Her jeans lay nearby in a heap, a reminder of how they’d been torn off her against her will.

There was a yelp and then
Eunice’s unconscious body fell at the base of the boulder, her head thwacking on the ground. Her nose had been broken and hear ear was bleeding. Something had attacked her.

If it was a hisser, Amanita thought, it would be fitting. Tied to a rock and tortured by religious lunatics trying to cast out her demons, only to be eaten by a real demon. She was too far gone in fear to scream for help. If the hissers were here it was all over. At least Harold and his clan had got their just desserts. She scrunched up her eyes and waited for the pain, hyperventilating in anticipation of her own death. All she could think was that maybe, just maybe, she would see her family again.

She heard heavy breathing right in front of her now, deep and guttural. Fingers played over the sheet on her face, walked up to her nose. The sheet whipped away and Doug’s bruised face hovered before her.

“You okay?” he asked. “Of course you’re not. Look at you. We need to get those wounds cleaned up. And your hair…” He quickly undid her bindings.

Amanita started crying, looked him in the eyes and tried to find some words that would make sense.
She fell forward into his arms and buried her face into his chest. He smelled of dirt and sweat and his chest heaved as he caught his breath but she hadn’t felt this safe in a long time. She backed up and looked down at herself, instinctively crossed her arms over her half-naked body.

“It’s okay,” he said, “hang on while I
gather up this rope. Gonna tie these idiots up and try my hardest not to take that torch and send them to Hell. Almost done. There.” He slung it over his shoulder.

“My scalp hurts.” Amanita pulled her hands away from her head, saw plenty of blood o her hands. “
Oh my God I’m disfigured.”

“
You’re not. Trust me. And hang on.” Doug picked up the sheet and wrapped it over her shoulder. “Put this on. It’s getting cold.”

She realized now it wasn’
t a blanket, but rather his large sports jacket. It fell across her like a massive shawl.

“I’ll turn around. Get dressed
if you can.”

When his back was to her she put her jeans on
but stopped when they rubbed against her open wounds. “I can’t. It hurts too much,” she said, holding her jeans in her hands. Instead she buttoned up the jacket, which fell down to her thighs, covering her up for the most part. Her shirt was in tatters and useless now so she kicked it aside. While she put her shoes on she watched as Doug dragged the unconscious bodies of Harold and his family into a pile and tied them up like cattle.

“They dead?” she asked.
“Did you—”

“Of course not. These two—
” he pointed to Marcus and Harold— “I had to knock in the jaw as hard as I could. Good old haymaker my daddy taught me. They’ll wake up in a second. The women I took down with sleeper holds. They’ll be out for a few.”

“Eunice’s nose in broke.”

“Yeah, well, they were trying to burn me. Had to make a concession. I don’t hit ladies, but I find you torturing a friend of mine and trying to roast me, I don’t care if you got ovaries and tits, chivalry needs to be put aside. Yeah, I clocked her good, but the bitch deserved it.”

Amanita helped him tie the knot
s of the rope. She stared hard at Harold’s lolling head and shook with anger. “You fucking asshole. You piece of shit.” She spit in his face then stood and ran to Doug and threw her arms around him. “Thank you thank you thank you.” Convulsions overtook her as she cried out all of her fear and pain.

“C’mon, let’s go inside and find some bandages. W
hat the hell did they do to you?”

“They tried to scrub the demons out.
They ripped me open. They were gonna burn me alive. I can feel blisters on my head.”

He put his hands on her shoulders
and looked into her eyes, swallowed hard. “They Didn’t…rape you, did they?”

She shook her head. “No. Though there was talk of marriage and I’m sure there would have been
mutant babies to follow. The scumbags.”

Inside the house, Doug tore open the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, took out a roll of gauze and burn ointment. “This is gonna hurt but we gotta clean you up before any infecti
on sets in.

New tears came as Amanita saw the reflection of herself in the mirror. A large patch of blood splotched her right cheek and her hair was black and singed. Her lip was split and her right eye swollen black, both likely done
when she’d been trying to head butt her attackers. “I’m hideous,” she cried. “Look what they did to me. They ripped my skin off.”

“I know, Am. I know. Sit on the toilet and let me clean you up.”

She sat down, remembering how she’d done this before with Nicole. How they’d cried and talked about Connor to get their minds off of the monsters that had been chasing them. Only this time she couldn’t get her mind off things because it hadn’t been monsters that did this, but fellow humans.

“It’s okay,” Doug kept whispering. “I’m here now. I’m here.”

When her legs were bandaged, she asked, “How did you find me? I thought you were dead.”

“
Me too. I’ll tell you about it when we get outta here. For now, see if you can put your pants on and let’s get going.”

She stood up and slid her jeans on. They rubbed terribly against her wounds but the gauze helped. She looked in the mirror once again. “My fucking hair.” Thankfully, the flames had just begun to touch her skin when Doug had arrived. There were some welts and blisters,
some superficial bleeding, but nothing that wouldn’t heal soon enough. Still, she looked like someone had attacked her with a Flowbee.

“I’ll find you a
shirt,” Doug said.

“No! I don’t want anything of theirs touching my body.”

“Fair enough.”

“Do you know how to get to the road?”

“Maybe. It was easier coming in because I could hear your screams. Going back is going to be tough. It’s a lot of woods. But, you know, as with any bit of wilderness, if you walk in a straight line you’re bound to come out on a road somewhere.”

Back outside, they saw that the family, with the exception of Eunice and Luke, were awake and struggling against their bindings. “You’ll die for this, whore,” Harold said. “You and your demon
both.”

Doug sat down in f
ront of Harold and punched him square in the face. Harold spit out a tooth. “That’s for insulting the girl,” he said. “This is for being a general waste of space on this planet.” He punched him again and knocked him out.

“You’ll never get out of here alive,” Michelle said. “The woods are thick and the undead can smell you.”

“Can it, you ugly pig.” Amanita slapped her in the face. She then picked up the torch, which was still lit, and walked over to the cabin. “The hissers may be out there somewhere, but they’re not gonna be coming for us. Not when they see the bright light we’re leaving on for them.”

“You wanna do that?” Doug asked her.

She thought of General Winston Davis and how his crippled body had lain on the baseball field in Castor. How they’d left him there to die and felt no remorse for it, justifying it by knowing it was his fault this whole apocalypse had started. She looked at the family that tried to kill her. That had tortured her and disfigured her. “It’s more of a fighting chance than they gave me. So yeah. I’m doing this.”

She set the torch to the cabin and watched it catch flame
. As the fire licked higher toward the roof, she dropped the torch and motioned toward the woods. “After you.”

Doug nodded.
“Right. Let’s go on and git.”

FRIDAY, 10
:12 PM

Outside, the night air was dropping toward jacket weather. The green landscape was turning over into desert. There were no street lights working, and the blackness stretched so far it resembled unexplored the vastness of the deep sea. “Where are we?” Connor asked. “I think I can see houses and stuff, back there on that hill.”