Twenty-nine
"Round everyone up," Richard had told his men.
"Send them into the hills. Tell them if they come back this way we'll
shoot them."
Caitlin followed the sound of voices in the
tree-covered hills behind Cyprus Ridge, but voices were coming from
several different directions now. Some had stopped to rest for the night,
although the salesman wasn't among those. If she didn't find him soon,
he'd not survive the other caterpillars in the hills, and she'd never get
to show him the dress she wore, and how well it fit.
There were other men roaming the hills as well,
hunters with guns and bows and arrows, some tracking down people like
herself carrying caterpillars and others just out hunting game. She could
hear them moving in the underbrush, and she avoided being seen by them as
they passed in the growing darkness. She avoided, too, the soft trills of
caterpillars, and their odor. She tried hard not to think about their
hosts, people like herself, and the fact that they were out hunting game
of their own.
The recent rain had announced a seasonal change in
the weather. It had cooled off and wouldn't again warm up to the
temperatures of the past summer. As fall approached, dusk arrived
earlier. The maples were turning their ruby crimson, and other trees
already showing patches of yellow and brown. Much of the cover and
protection of the underbrush would be gone soon. Caterpillars and their
hosts would be easier targets for the hunters. She had already heard
several shots during the course of the afternoon, although the world had
fallen so quiet that shots echoed among the hills for many miles. Still,
more than just game animals were being killed, and those who were dying,
animal and human alike, did so in
complete silence.
She narrowed her search to the next closest group of
voices during the course of the night. When she could make out individual
words, she could not hear her salesman among them. In the early morning
hours of the new day with the sky a beige color to the east, hunters
directly ahead were whispering about a deer moving around their position.
When she heard them, she fell silence, but so did they.
Caitlin stood without moving. They would kill her if
they had seen her. She turned to go around like the escaping deer, but
she knew it was too late when her caterpillar leaped from her shoulders
and disappeared into the grass at her feet. Only when she studied the
trees in front of her more carefully did she see the archer clutching a
bow with a quiver of arrows peeking over his shoulder. He signaled to
someone off to his right, and she spied a second man with a rifle or
shotgun crouched in a tree off to her left. She doubted if it would be
wise to turn and run. There was a third as well somewhere off to her
right and maybe behind her by now.
They converged on her, dark shapes in the dim light
of the new day. The one with the bow and arrows smirked. "What do you
say, boys? Have we cornered ourselves a deer do you think?"
The youngest of the three was breathing hard from the
excitement and looked scared. The calm, older one spoke. "Leave her
alone, Tom. She doesn't have a bug."
"No matter," the archer said. "She's free for the
picking. It would be a shame to see her go to waste."
"Kid, get back to town," the calm voice said. "You
don't want any part of this."
The youngest of the three whined protest. The archer
guffawed laughter. "You gonna turn your back on this fine young filly,
son? Stick around and as soon as we’re done with her, we’ll hang her by
her heels and skin her alive."
The young one thought it prudent to flee after all.
He ran off and quickly vanished from sight. The quiet one moved into
view, and Caitlin judged the two to be seasoned hunters. Both were lean
outdoorsmen. "Let her go," the rifleman said. "You've got willing women
in town. You don't have to be snapping at every temptation."
"You gonna stop me, George?"
George shifted his rifle to bear on the man.
The archer barked laughter, unconvinced by the
threat. "Okay, so make your move, if that's the way you want it."
"I'm not letting you get by with this. You've gone
too far."
"I won't kill her, George. I was just freaking out
the kid."
"I'm hardly convinced."
"If you're going to point a gun at me, you had better
be willing to pull the trigger. You'll have to answer for it back in
town, you know, or haven’t you noticed which of the two of us has the most
backing? I keep telling you you’re too wishy-washy for your own good.”
George fell unexpectedly silent and then sighed in
defeat. It hardly mattered to Caitlin. Whether she lived or died was up
to the caterpillar, not a hunter with a bow and arrow, or even one with a
rifle.
The archer put away his arrow, slung the bow over his
shoulder, and whipped out a hunting knife from a sheath on his belt. He
used it to gesture to a nearby stand of trees. "Over that way, little
miss pretty. If you think you can outrun a knife in the back, you're
welcomed to try."
Caitlin sidestepped toward the trees. Once within
the shadows, he drew close and touched her between her breasts with the
tip of the knife. "I'm kind of curious why an elegant lady such as
yourself wants to go for a walk in these dangerous hills dressed in an
evening gown. Are you sure you don't have a bug?"
Caitlin feigned innocence and shook her head.
"Jenkins told me he'd shoot me if I went back to town."
"Richard Jenkins? Yeah, the bastard. You'd all be
best off staying home, you know. Nobody's got food for refugees. There’s
nowhere to go for sanctuary, that's for damned sure."
"You going to hurt me?"
He studied her bare feet with a frown. He looked up
at her and held her gaze with a hard stare. "What difference does it make
what I do to you? You're fucked anyway you look at it. If you can't take
care of yourself, nobody else can afford to. You're a damned sight
prettier than most of the women we got in town, but I'm sure as hell not
going to risk my old lady's wrath dragging you in as the catch for the
day, if you catch my drift. Neither will anyone else."
Caitlin’s feelings were hurt that he’d even think
about what she could see in his eyes. “You’re a horrible man,” he said
softly.
He shrugged his nonchalance at the insult. "Hey, I'm
a good shot. They need me in town worse than they need another mouth to
feed, so what do you say we start by taking that dress off and seeing what
sort of game we've bagged this gloomy morning?”
He was leaning forward in a threatening manner, but
not in a good position to lunge at her with the knife. He clearly didn’t
think she was very dangerous. The rifleman, she noticed, had wandered
off, leaving her alone to her fate.
Caitlin lashed out with her right hand to catch his
wrist, shocked by the sudden intensity her anger. It flared from her like
a flash of light. In the next moment, the risk she had taken was a moot
point. She had caught him off guard, and she was strong enough to force
him to his knees.
"You bitch!" He wrestled fiercely with her grip, his
eyes growing wide with fear. "You've got one of those bugs! I knew it!
I should have killed you when I had the chance!"
"It's not my fault," she said mildly. "Besides, I
didn't do anything to bother you."
"You done enough, you crazy whore! Don't play
innocent with me, you worm-eating slut! You know the score, you vile
mother..."
She twisted his wrist harder to shut him up. He
gasped in pain.
"I never hurt anyone that didn't try to hurt me
first."
He relaxed, conceding defeat. "Well, now, I guess
that makes you a good girl after all, or have you bothered to keep a body
count? How about it, little girl? You got some idea of how many people
you've killed since Saturday afternoon?"
He was terrified, but he looked her square in the
eye, and it bothered Caitlin that he could be so brave in the face of
death. He was a bad man, but he was strong, and Caitlin sensed that he
was not somebody who deserved to die a senseless death. He was a man
others would depend upon for survival.
So she let him go and stepped back.
He fell backwards and sat on the ground. "You're
quick, kid. Quicker than the others I've run across. So, where's your
bug?"
"I won't hurt you," she said, feeling magnanimous and
very much superior to the hunter. "You just go away, and don't bother me
again." She searched the underbrush in the gathering dusk. "And you'd
better hurry, or else..."
The caterpillar leaped, a blur across her field of
vision. He glanced at it in astonishment, and Caitlin cried out in
protest. In a heartbeat, it was too late to do anything. She closed her
eyes rather than watch him die, then hurried around his body, filled with
guilt and trembling with fear that the caterpillar had defied her will.
Or was it just too hungry to let the opportunity slip by?
Caitlin continued on her way uneasily, wondering how
far her salesman could have wandered during the course of the
night. She heard a distant wailing, the cry of a human infant, and she
turned toward the sound rising and falling on a northwesterly breeze,
intending to help if she could.
She encountered her salesman entirely by accident.
He cut across her path in the dawn gloom without even seeing her. In
another few moments, he would have fallen prey to someone else lurking in
the bushes nearby. Caitlin could smell the sweet, metallic odor that was
not her own.
"Mister. It's me, Caitlin. I'm over here."
He couldn't see her until she was almost upon him.
He stood wringing his hands, wrought with tension. "Oh," he said in
confusion, trembling violently. "It's you."
She took his hand and led him staggering and tripping
across the uneven ground toward Orange City. Behind her, the baby's
shrill cry slowly faded to silence. It would have to wait for another
time.
When she reached the motel, the guards were gone.
Caitlin returned to the motel room and stuffed the dresses back into the
nylon bags. The salesman stood at the door, staring in horror at the
dehydrated skeleton of Deputy Richard Jenkins. "What in the name of
God..."
Caitlin brushed by without comment and led the way
back to the station wagon. The highway, too, was deserted of Jenkins’
men. Without him, they had all gone their own way. Caitlin threw the
nylon bag in back of the station wagon with the other two. "I'm going to
keep the dress I'm wearing," she said, hoping he wouldn't mind. "I don't
have anything else to wear."
The salesman gave her a crooked, sick-looking smile.
"That's fine. I told you I thought it would fit. You look very nice."
Caitlin checked to see if the keys were still in the
ignition. With a sinking feeling, she saw that they were gone. "I'll go
see if Richard has them in his pockets," she offered. "Maybe we can find
you some more gas..."
The salesman shook his head frantically. He climbed
behind the steering wheel, fished beneath the dash, and came up with a
spare. He jammed the key in the ignition and twisted. The engine cranked
over and roared to life. "Gas is fine!" he cried on the ragged edge of
panic, his hands shaking hard no matter how hard he gripped the steering
wheel. "Honest, everything's okay!"
Caitlin stepped back and watched the station wagon
back from the ditch and fishtail down the highway. Once it was gone, the
early morning closed upon her with deafening silence. She stood alone in
the middle of nowhere wishing the salesman would have kept her company a
little longer. She had frightened him, and she held out her arms from her
sides and looked down at herself in her black evening gown. To her own
eyes, she was beautiful. And it was so. She had seen it in Richard
Jenkins’ eyes, and in the eyes of the archer. They had desired her. She
brushed tears from her dirt-smeared face, telling herself that it was only
the caterpillar they feared.
It was sad. The salesman hadn't enough gas to reach
Pittsburgh. He'd just stall somewhere up the road and get taken by
someone else's caterpillar, or fall prey to the next bunch of pirates.
She hadn't made a difference. The caterpillar was using to her to kill,
and she was trying to justify her role in the killing. No amount of
rationalization was going to help. Nothing she could do to help was going
to amount to anything.
She felt cold inside knowing nothing would stop the
killing. Cooperating with Rex Hogan and Doc Kaufman was the only way she
could be of use to ordinary people. Beyond that, the battle was not hers
to fight. She was on the wrong side. She was the enemy, one of the first
casualties of the war.
The wind shifted. She heard the haunting cry of the
baby again. She turned away absently, driven by the mournful sound to
investigate. Her caterpillar met her along a deserted sidewalk. Without
breaking stride, she scooped it off the ground and hoisted it to her
shoulder. It had satisfied its hunger for the time being. Before the new
day ended, it would have to appease hers as well.
