room that had tripped her.
The floor smacked her palms, her knees. It knocked them out from under her. It hammered the breath from her lungs but she managed to keep her head up as she skidded.
Wheezing for air that clogged her nostrils and throat with its-heavy reek of corruption, she belly-crawled until her hands slipped on gooey muck.
‘Gonna end up same as yer fatso friend,’ Jim said from somewhere behind her.
She thrust herself up to her knees and scurried forward. Her hands swept across the mat of congealing blood, but didn’t find Helen.
‘How’d ya like yer skin peeled off? I’ll do that for ya.’
Did he move her? Abilene wondered. Where the hell is she?
Then her right hand jammed beneath something tight against the floor. Whatever it might be, it was too heavy for an arm. She must’ve pushed her hand under Helen’s side or leg. With her other hand, she reached out higher. She touched something sticky and yielding that made her want to pull back. She resisted the urge and felt along the mushy bulges.
She flinched, cried out, as her left foot was stomped.
The pain jolted her body. Her left hand rammed down into glop. Her right hand wedged deeper into the crease between Helen’s body and the floor, fingertips poking something that clinked.
Keys?
‘Guess I gotcha, huh?’
The weight lifted from her foot. Fingers clutched her ankle and pulled. As her knee began sliding backward, she jerked her right hand out from under Helen and hurled herself forward. She dropped across the body, flung her arm out and grabbed hold. Her fingers hooked into cool flesh. Helen’s side? Her rump?
Clinging to it as Jim tugged at her leg, she pulled her left hand out of the clinging slop and groped along Helen and found the knife.
Her swollen forefinger wouldn’t close, but she wrapped her other fingers and thumb around the upright handle.
Clutching it hard, she released her grip on Helen.
She yanked the blade out as Jim dragged her backward.
She didn’t resist him.
She slid off Helen’s body. The floor pounded her chest. As she skidded along, she raised both arms overhead. She passed the knife from her left hand to her right.
Does he know I’ve got it?
He must know he left it here.
But maybe he isn’t thinking about that. Not yet. Maybe.
‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ Abilene gasped. ‘Just don’t hurt me. Please.’
‘Please please please,’ he mocked her. ‘That’s what she kept sayin’. Gal sure didn’t wanta come in here.’ He stopped dragging Abilene. He twisted her foot. She yelped and rolled over quickly onto her back.
‘I really like you, Jim.’
‘Ya won’t much when I start ya’ squealin’.’
Her legs were nudged apart. She felt the knife blade scrape along the inner side of her thigh. It eased higher. She sucked in her breath and shuddered.
Dear God.
Get him now!
A swing and a miss and you’re out.
But the blade went away. A sharp tug at her skirt lifted her buttocks off the floor for a moment before the fabric split. The point pushed under her waistband, then tugged again.
‘Ain’t very sharp,’ he muttered. ‘Gonna hurt like hellfire, skinnin’ ya with it all dull.’
‘You don’t want to do that,’ she said.
‘Sure do. But I gotta pork ya first. I don’t pork dead folks.’
He moved forward, his knees nudging her thighs farther apart.
She felt both his hands on her belly.
Where’s the knife?
Between his teeth, maybe.
He ripped open the front of her blouse.
She heard buttons skitter across the floor.
His hands slid up her body. They clutched her breasts, squeezed.
A swing and a miss and you’re out.
She swung.
She swung her right arm up from her side as hard as she could and the knife lurched in her grip as its blade struck something in the dark beyond her chest and kept on going.
Jim squealed.
His hands leaped from her breasts.
She felt a bump against her belly. His knife. He’d had it in his mouth, all right.
‘My eye!’ he shrieked.
Abilene clamped her legs tight against him and sat up fast. She felt his knife slide down her belly to her groin. She grabbed its handle. Her three-fingered grip wasn’t much, but it was good enough.
She drove the blade forward. It punched into him and he bellowed and blood washed over her knuckles. It was still buried in him to the hilt when she slashed the darkness with the knife in her good right hand. The knife jerked when it hit him. His bellow changed to a gurgle. A hot stream hosed Abilene’s right breast.
The body viced between her legs twitched and writhed.
She pulled out the other knife.
She rammed both into him at once and the impact threw him backward. As he fell away, the blades came out of him.
She scurried clear, then crawled back to him. A thrashing foot kicked her face, but she didn’t mind. She straddled him, sat down across his hips. His twitching body thrust up against her. She heard him choke and gurgle. She heard his limbs smacking the floor.
She pounded her knives down.
She jerked them out and hit him again. And again. And again.
Soon, he was only moving because of the blades jolting him.
Sometimes, they got stuck in bone. But Abilene always managed to yank them free.
Finally, a blade broke.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
‘Hickok!’
She was gasping for breath. Instead of trying to speak, she tossed the handle of the broken knife. It clacked against the floor.
‘You in here?’
‘Yeah!' she blurted.
Quick footfalls.
‘Where’s Jim?’
‘Here.’
A beam of light criss-crossed the darkness beyond the shower room entrance.
‘Don’t do anything to her, Jim,’ Vivian pleaded. ‘We won’t hurt you.’
‘Not if she’s okay,’ Finley added.
Abilene squeezed her eyes shut when the brilliant glare hit her face.
