I knew I couldn’t afford that luxury.
“What are you doing here?” I croaked.
“Just fuck me!”
She sounded impatient to get it over. The next thing I knew she was on top of me, her breasts in my face, trying to cram my flaccid cock inside her. We tussled like that for a while, but she was dry, and her clumsy and increasingly frantic attempts to force penetration removed any remaining traces of desire on my part. My prick had collapsed to a little bundle of slack flesh, as though trying to make itself invisible. I rolled her off me and pushed myself up on one elbow, looking down at her.
“You’ve got to fuck me!” she cried with a mixture of petulance and fear. “You’ve got to!”
“You don’t even want to.”
“Just do it!”
She heaved herself up with surprising energy and started wrestling with me again. I pushed her off.
“Cut it out, Ellie!”
“What’s the matter?” she cried in what sounded like real distress. “What am I doing wrong?”
I stroked her hair.
“It’s not you,” I said. “It’s the whole thing that’s wrong. I haven’t even spoken a word to you, and here you are climbing into my bed and trying to rape me. What the hell’s going on?”
She fixed me with a determined stare. Just as she had been trying too hard to be sexy, now she was trying too hard to be adult.
“Sam sent me. I’m supposed to bring you to see him. But first we’ve got to fuck.”
I ran my eyes over the chunky, pubescent body which wore its womanhood like a badly fitting prom dress.
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know! You’ve just got to do it! If you don’t, he’ll say it was my fault and he’ll beat me up.”
I looked her in the eyes. There was no doubt that she meant exactly what she said.
“Has he beaten you before?” I asked.
But she was already regretting her candor.
“Listen, you going to fuck me or what?”
I got out of bed.
“Consider it done.”
“But we
I started to get dressed.
“So? Who’s to know? Is he going to give you a swab test or something?”
I tossed over a light cotton bathrobe I found lying on the floor, which she must have discarded before I awoke.
“Listen, Ellie, I’ll tell him you fucked me all ends up. I’ll swear you were the best piece of ass I ever had in my life and you made me come ten times in a row. And if he lays a finger on you, you come straight here, OK?”
She pulled on her robe with a sniff of disdain.
“I don’t need nobody to look after me,” she said in a tough little voice. “I can take care of myself
Even though she had been acting under orders, I got the distinct impression that Ellie felt resentful that her advances had been spurned. I followed her out into the open spaces of the hall, barely illuminated by the early- morning light. There was no one around. Ellie marched resolutely across the boards to Sam’s door and knocked four times, a little rhythmic figure that sounded like a code.
“Who is it?” said a voice inside.
“Me,” Ellie replied.
“Phil there?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
There was a loud thump. The door opened a crack and Sam’s ferrety features appeared. He inspected us for a moment with a beady eye, then threw the door open. The automatic rifle in his hands was pointing right at us.
“Come on in,” he snapped. “Close the door after you. Ellie, put the bar on.”
The girl picked up a length of wood from the floor and slipped it into the metal brackets bolted to each side of the door frame. Only then did Sam lower his weapon.
“Hi, Phil,” he said tonelessly. “Did Ellie show you a good time?”
“She sure did! Best wake-up call I ever had.”
Sam smiled coldly. He nodded at Ellie.
“Get in the bedroom.”
She obeyed without a word. Sam laid the rifle down on the sofa and waved me to a chair.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said.
“I kind of figured we might.”
He sat facing me on the sofa.
“We’re going to have to move along a lot faster than I was planning. It’s too bad. It’s way better to let the whole thing grow on you gradually, until you’re not just ready for the truth but
A look of power took possession of his face for a moment, then faded.
“In my dreams, it was all so different! You were ready, open, desperate! And then we’d have done the whole thing right, with a big hit of acid. The stuff you can get these days is twice as powerful as anything we ever had! It completely rewires your brain, lets you see the truth that’s been staring you in the face all along. But there’s no time, and anyway I need you straight.”
He leaped to his feet.
“Remember I told you Mark’d gone to Friday to find out what happened to Russ and Pat? Well, it turns out the news wasn’t good. They called late last night. They’ll be back soon, Phil, and they won’t be bringing flowers.”
I stood up.
“Look, Sam, I wish you all the best in whatever doctrinal disputes you may be having with your followers, but you’ve got to understand that none of this has a fucking thing to do with me. Just tell me where my kid is, give me the phone and let me call a boat. I’ll be out of here in an hour, and you guys can hash out your exegesis of Blake’s later epics to your hearts’ content.”
He stabbed me with his eyes.
“I gave you Ellie,” he said quietly. “She’s my woman, Phil. No one else around here has had her. I mean, I’m trying to bond here!”
I didn’t say anything. Sam shrugged.
“You want the phone? It’s next door.”
I walked through to the middle room and looked around at the exercise equipment, the pool table, the wall- bars where Andrea said that one of the women had been tortured. Then I saw the twisted mess of plastic on the floor, and the bullet holes in the boards themselves.
“I guess I kind of lost it when Mark called.”
I turned around. Sam was standing in the doorway, the gun in his hands.
“He said a lot of bad stuff about me,” he went on. “A load of insulting bullshit. After a while I’d had enough, so I picked up this baby and …”
He pointed the rifle at the remains of the cellular phone and mouthed a soft explosion.
“Well, that was really smart!” I said. “Now if they do come back and try and make trouble, there’s no way you can call for help.”
“We don’t need help, Phil.”
He went over to the far wall and opened the doors to what I had assumed was a cue rack. Inside were about twenty weapons like the one he was carrying.
