This is the moment, I told myself, this is the moment you warned me about. They’re going to rape and kill us, Momma, and I can do nothing to stop it. I wished they’d just kill us and get it over with.
The leader cocked his head to one side, the slim smile always present on his face. “Are ya hungry?” he asked, and motioned somewhere behind him. “We have some meat we took off a man about a mile back.”
One of his men stepped up and handed him a bloodstained bag filled with something moist.
The leader set his gun on the ground behind him, and he worked apart the drawstring with his fingers. When he pulled his hand from the little bag, a thick piece of raw meat came out with it.
“You two look like you could use a good meal.” He pushed the bloody meat into my view. “It’s all yours if you want it. Do you want it?”
Sosie burst into tears. I held her tighter, but I could no longer be the strong one; tears shot from my eyes, too, the second I looked at the meat, the moment I imagined what it could be. I shook my head repeatedly.
“You don’t want it?” the leader said, cocked his head to the other side. “No strings attached; I just want to help. No one’s gonna hurt you.”
His words sounded sincere, but I didn’t trust him. And I hadn’t forgotten his earlier threat: “Your answer will depend on whether you live or die.”
“Come on, take it,” he urged.
I looked at him, then down at the meat, back up at him again; my eyes skirted the men standing behind him; they were whispering amongst themselves.
“What is it?” I finally said, my voice low, cautious.
“It’s meat,” the leader insisted. “Do you want it or not?”
I shook my head in a rapid motion.
“We don’t want it.”
“Why not?” The leader turned, and glanced up at the men from his crouched position as if to say: “So far, so good”.
“We can find our own food,” I insisted.
“Like what?” he quizzed, as though he didn’t believe me. “How do you hunt?” He looked behind us, took stock of my nearly empty backpack that probably told him we had little, if nothing, with which to survive on, much less hunt with.
“W-We can eat earthworms and lizards,” I tried to explain, but I knew he wasn’t buying it. “A-And I-I can fish—I know how to set lines and make hooks.”
The leader pursed his rough lips and nodded.
“Well, that’s a good start,” he said, “but for how long? I just don’t see two young women living out here in the wild all alone like this. No weapons. No shelter.” He pointed at my backpack. “That all you got?”
I didn’t answer.
“Last chance,” the leader said, still holding the meat in his palm. “Do you want it, or not?”
“No,” I said. “Not unless I know what it is.”
“I told you what it is.” He laughed under his breath, and so did his men.
“What kind of meat is it?” I was starving, and had been for days; I was so hungry that I thought maybe, just maybe they did only want to help—starvation could make a person think crazy things.
“Does it really matter?” he taunted me.
“Yes!” I cried. “It matters!” I squeezed Sosie tighter. “We don’t want it! Please just leave us alone!”
The leader dropped the meat back inside the bag.
He scooped up his gun from the ground. “If they were savages,” he said to his men, “they’d have taken it without question.” He tossed the bag back to the man who’d given it to him.
“I’d say that one’s a savage,” the man whom I’d bitten chimed in, pointing at me. “Gotta a helluva jaw on her, that one.” Only then did I remember what I’d done; I spit on the ground a few times to get the taste of him out of my mouth. He watched me with a sort of sick satisfaction.
“Well the good news is,” the leader said, “we don’t have to put you down—and it was squirrel meat, by the way. The other news will either be good, or bad, depending on how cooperative you are.”
Sosie’s fingers were inside my skin by then, I was sure of it.
“You’re going to have to come with us,” he said.
My heart clenched. And then it stopped.
“No! Please leave us alone!” Sosie screamed.
Three men shuffled around behind us, blocking our path.
“You’re not safe out here alone,” the leader said, holstering his gun at his side. “There are cracks all over these mountains. I’m surprised you’re not dead already.”
“We’re not going anywhere with you,” I spat.
“Well sure you are,” the leader said, cheerily. “Don’t know why you wouldn’t want to. You’re in more danger out here than you’ll be with us. Shit, most women would be grateful. You’ll be safe.”
“Safe?” I echoed with sarcasm. “You’re murderers. You move through the countryside, ransacking people’s homes, killing those who fight back, slaughtering elderly people.” My voice rose thinking of my father. “And…you kill people’s fathers!”
The leader put up his leathery hands.
“Hey, we only do that to the cracks and the savages,” he said, pleading his case. “Where we live, we don’t need to ransack innocent people’s homes.”
Surprised by how truthful he seemed, I wasn’t sure what to say at first. I didn’t want to believe anything he had to say, but a part of me couldn’t help it; the irrational, hungry part.
“You didn’t attack a small town about a day’s walk from here?” I asked warily.
“Don’t believe them, Thais,” Sosie whispered next to me. “They’re lying—don’t let them take us.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with that one?” another man, skinny as a rail, said pointing at Sosie. “Somethin’ wrong with her eyes?”
“Yeah, she’s blind, you idiot,” the brute of a man whom I’d bitten said.
“It wasn’t us,” the leader said with a shrug, about the attack on our town. “It was probably the cracks—I told you they’re all over this forest.”
“What do you mean, cracks?” I asked.
“Bandits. Thieves. Rapists. Murderers—the unruly sort.” He seemed surprised I wasn’t already familiar with the term.
The leader lit up a cigarette; afterward he tucked a flat tin can of sorts he carried them in, back inside the pocket of his camo pants. He took a long pull, held it deep in his lungs and then let the smoke stream from his mouth and nostrils, carried off by the breeze.
“What are your names?” the leader asked.
We didn’t answer.
“I’m Marion,” he offered.
Still, we refused.
Marion waited, patiently sucking on his cigarette, taking time to enjoy each inhale.
“Okay,” he said in an indifferent fashion, “have it your way then.” He motioned for two men who then came toward me and Sosie.
“Thais! Don’t let them—”
“NO!” I shrieked, and then something slammed into the back of my head and everything went black.
8
THAIS
After I came to sometime later, Sosie and I were forced to walk, wrists bound by rope, pulled along by men sitting high atop horses.
Sosie fell often; the man at the other end of her rope got tired of helping her up and he began to ignore her.