Chapter 6
The next day they came to a clearing in the forest - a manmade clearing.
Hundreds of acres of trees had been cut down, and their burned remnants had been
pushed to one side of the clearing. No heavy equipment had been left, but the
men saw its traces everywhere: the deeply scarred earth, the deep ruts left by
huge tires and caterpillar tracks.
"Mining?" asked Gene.
"Yeah, probably," said Louie. "Left a hell of a mess, didn't they?"
Sheena scanned the desolate scene, and for the first time since they had
captured her, she wept.
Louie patted her clumsily on the shoulder.
"I know what you mean," he said. "I'm no fuckin' tree-hugger, but the
bastards who done this oughta be shot."
They crossed the raped and ruined land and soon found themselves back in
the jungle. But the vegetation was thinner here. They were coming to the end of
the great forest.
"Look, you can see big bunches of sky," Louie said. He opened his arms
and sang, "Good morning, Mr. Sunshine."
"Fuck the sunshine," said Gene.
Louie dropped his arms and frowned. "Yesterday, you were sick and tired
of the fuckin' jungle. Now, you complain about the sun. What the fuck's wrong
with you?"
"He's a horny bastard," said Akbar. "He wants to get back inside Sheena.
We all do. You should try it, too. Make you feel better."
"I feel great," snapped Louie. "I don't need no woman to feel good. I
mean, I ain't queer or nothing, but I don't need pussy to make life worthwhile."
But Akbar's suggestion stuck with him. He hadn't had sex in a long, long
while. He had felt up Rosie's pussy, but that didn't really count. Neither did
jacking off every few days in the forest.
He wanted a woman. He wanted Sheena. But not as part of a gangbang with
these assholes. He wanted to be alone with her, and he wanted her to want it,
too.
He was deep in thought when Akbar called out, "Look, we're almost out of
the jungle."
Louie looked up. Sure enough, the trees had thinned to the point that he
could see well into the distance - and that distance was filled with open
grassland.
Sheena looked at this vista and shivered. She had spent almost all of
her life in the jungle, where the eye became accustomed to the vertical. Here
was a horizontal land, broad and flat. It made her dizzy.
"What's that over there?" Gene said, pointing.
"A building, some kind of ranch house or something," said Louie. He grew
excited. "And in front of it. Is that a truck?"
Akbar pulled out a pair of binoculars. "No, not a truck. An SUV. And
it's one of ours - a Ford Explorer, I think."
"All RIGHT!" Louie roared, as they exchanged high fives. "An American
truck, not another British shitwagon."
They hurried toward the house. It was made of timber and mud, with a
corrugated tin roof. A porch ran the width of the house. A big wooden cistern
loomed on one side of the house, and in back was an outhouse.
As they approached the porch, Gene pulled out a BXP submachine gun.
"Put that away," Louie said. "We didn't come here to shoot anyone. We
just want to borrow their truck."
He knocked on the front door, and it swung slowly open. Louie stepped
inside. Everything was very neat. Two big stuffed chairs with cream colored
antimacassars, a wicker couch, small tables with kerosene lanterns.
He went into the kitchen. It was clean and neat, but there was a nasty
smell. He discovered the odor came from a small refrigerator. It had been
connected to a generator outside, but the generator evidently hadn't been
working in a long time.
"Whew," said Gene. "Let's get out of here.
"Something's wrong here," Louie said. He opened the back door and
stepped outside. Another strong, unpleasant odor greeted him. It came from the
outhouse.
Gene followed him out. "Fuck, don't they ever clean their goddamn
shithouse!"
"I don't think that's the problem," Louie said. He took a deep breath,
held it, and opened the door of the outhouse.
Three badly decomposed bodies were crammed inside.
"Jesus," Louie said, gagging.
He backed away, trying to breathe.
"Get back in the house," he yelled, as the others came out the back
door.
They gathered in the living room, and sat quietly for a while.
"What do you think happened to them?" Tremain asked at last.
"Marauders of some sort," Louie said. "Maybe guerrillas, like Sheena was
talking about. What do you think, honey?"
Sheena said nothing.
"Well," said Gene. "Can't do nothing about them. Meanwhile, there's
canned food in the kitchen and some kind of local cola in plastic bottles. And
the Explorer. If we can't find the keys, I can hotwire it."
"What about gas?" Louie asked.
"The auxiliary tank is full. Can't tell about the main tank til we crank
her up."
"Any idea where we are?" said Tremain.
"No," said Louie.
"Then what the fuck good does it do to have a vehicle if we don't know
where we are and where we're going?" It was the most Tremain had said on this
entire trip. He sounded like a man who was about to snap.
"Okay, okay," said Louie. "Let's think this through. If whoever lived
here had a Explorer, they must have left tracks when they used it. There may not
be a regular road, but we'll find where he drove it. And we'll follow those
tracks, and I'll guarantee you we'll eventually get to a town."
"Then what?" said Tremain. "We get to the nearest town, the folks there
recognize the truck, they figure we must have killed the owner, so they shoot
us."
They bickered back and forth.
Sheena got up and walked out onto the front porch. The men seemed to
have lost interest in her.
She looked at all their gear, dumped in a jumble on the ground. Big bags
to hold the tents. Plastic boxes, with straps, to hold food and cookware. Gene's
baseball bat.
Her knife, in its sheath, protruded from the pocket of a backpack. She
removed it and tied it to her waist. Not that a knife would do any good against
four men armed with guns.
But perhaps they didn't all have their guns. The metal stock of a
submachine gun stuck out of a bag.
She gently pulled it out. It was smaller than she had expected. This
must be the BXP they had talked about, she thought.
Sheena had never handled a gun, but she had seen men use them. Somehow,
they got a cartridge into what they called the firing chamber, then they pulled
the trigger and a bullet came out. Sometimes, lots of bullets came out. It
seemed simple.
She studied the gun carefully. It had a pistol grip, and protruding from
the grip was a metal clip. This must hold the cartridges. At the top of the grip
was a small lever, next to a small green dot. When she pushed the lever, it
exposed a red dot. Red and green. Stop and go. Danger and safety. That's it, she
thought. This must be the "safety." She had heard men talk about the safety on
guns.
She held the weapon at her side, the barrel pointed in front of her, and
she turned slowly, imagining bullets spraying out of the muzzle.
The front door opened, and Akbar looked out.
"Holy shit," he said.
She squeezed the trigger, and the gun kicked in her hands. Akbar tumbled
backward, into the house.
She ran up the steps and stepped over his body. Gene stood frozen in the
middle of the room. He looked at her, wide-eyed and filled with fear.
She fired a long burst into him.
Another gun fired, and she felt something hit her foot. She whirled,
pulled the trigger again, and someone in the shadows screamed and fell.
She fired until there were no cartridges left. Then she walked out of
the house in a daze and dropped the gun next to the baseball bat.
