ONE #2
The force of it made her cry out as her muscles screamed in protest. Her shoulder threatened to pop out of joint as she was spun around to face him.
Inches from his face, his rage was palpable.
A rage that said she would pay for running.
Her heart began to pound in her chest, as if it too was trying to escape.
“Stupid rebel tramp,” the soldier snarled at her. “You really thought you could get away?”
Slowly, other details began to form in her mind. He was not alone as she had originally perceived. Behind him stood two other soldiers each carrying a musket. Both looked at her with a mixture of timidness and curiosity. Something more deviant blazed in the first soldier’s eyes.
They were young, seemingly near her late brothers’ ages.
The other two soldiers cautiously approached.
“James, let’s go. We’re starving. Don’t need to be wasting our time with this girl,” one tried to reason.
“Yeah, look at her. I’ve seen dogs with more fat on them. If she had food, she wouldn’t look like a ghost,” The other soldier scanned the area. Probably watching to see if she was truly alone.
“You’re right—I don’t have any food. Today was the first drink of water I’ve had in a while. You’re welcome to the creek. Please, just leave me be,” Maggie tried to remain as calm as possible, but the waver in her voice gave her away.
The soldier they called James sneered at her. He still gripped her arm, which was past throbbing and starting to go numb. He came nose to nose with her. Maggie flinched.
“We’re hungry, and you’re going to show us the supplies you’re hiding. All you Confederate scum think that we’re stupid. We’re stuck down in this god-forsaken piece of land, fighting off you lot. You think you can run from us? Try again.” James threw her back up against a tree.
She was cornered. They stood in the way back to the cabin. But she knew she would never make it that far, anyway. She gripped the bark of the tree.
“Sir, as I’ve told you, there aren’t any supplies. You can check the fields. The crops are gone, and there’s no food to be found. All I can offer you is water from the creek.”
James gave a half-laugh. “Oh, that’s all that you can offer, is it? Well, ‘darlin’, I don’t think that is going to be enough for us.” Turning to the other two soldiers, he pointed at Maggie. “Search her.”
They looked at each other. “Search her for what exactly?” One asked.
“Just do it. Anything she might be hiding. You can’t trust these traitors for a single second.”
Maggie blanched and gripped the bark harder, wishing she hadn’t dropped that bucket.
The older-looking of the two soldiers hesitated for a moment. Then, he handed his musket to his companion and slowly approached her. He stopped when he was inches from her and turned back at the man they called James.
“I can almost see every one of her ribs. I don’t see how she’s hiding anything. Let’s just move on…” He stopped at the look in James’ eyes.
James approached them, coming nose to nose with the soldier. “I said search her,” he said through clenched teeth. He glanced over at Maggie. “Fine, if you can’t do it, I will. Grab her arms. Wheeler, set down the muskets and come on the other side of her.”
The younger soldier gulped and clumsily leaned the muskets against a tree. Coming around, he grabbed her right arm and loosely held it.
Seeing the panic mounting in Maggie’s eyes, James grinned.
“You say you’ve got no food, no supplies. But you’re going to give us something.” Anger flooded through her, surpassing fear as Maggie thought back on the years she’d suffered since her father and brothers left. Rearing back, she spat in Jame’s face.
“I owe you nothing,” she said, venom in her voice.
His grin gone, he wiped the spit from his eye and then slapped her across the face. Hard. The sting cut across her cheek, sending an instant burn across the left side of her face. Her eyes began to water.
James stooped down and roughly began to pat down her legs, traveling up her torso and down her arms. Finding nothing, he gripped the neckline of her dress and tore it down, exposing her shift.
“Ah, what do we have here? What did I tell you, boys? Can’t trust not one of these rebels.” His eyes fastened on her mother’s cross necklace. Hidden underneath her dress, Maggie had all but forgotten it was there. Reaching out, he aimed to grab it.
Maggie could only see her mother’s face, giving it to her right before she died. It would be the last piece she had of her. Using the advantage of the soldiers’ loose grip, she tore out of their arms and shoved James backwards.
Almost instantly, he was on her again, pushing her back harder into the tree, one hand against her face and the other against her lower chest. She could feel the bark digging into her spine and scalp.
“I told you to hold her!” He screamed at the others. They frantically regained their grip on her arms, tightly this time.
James let go and stepped back. When he pulled his knife from his belt, her heart dropped into her stomach, and fear coursed through her. He was going to kill her.
I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! Mama, give me courage.
With one move, he sliced through the thin chain, cutting the necklace off her, the blade running down from her chest to her breastbone. Blood erupted from the blade’s path, staining her shift crimson. Maggie screamed as the pain exploded from a stinging sensation into a lightning strike.
“Not so brave now, are you?” James bent over and retrieved the necklace from where it had fallen, grasping it in his palm.
The others let go of her arms, and she fell into a heap on the ground, groaning. The gash seeped blood, and she pressed a hand to it.
“O-okay, James. You’ve got what you wanted. Now let’s just go,” one of the soldiers stuttered.
The leaves crunched as though one or two were backing away.
“The only thing I got was property that’s rightfully ours,” James replied. “But I do want something else...”
And then she felt his hand on the hem of her dress. He slowly raised it up her legs, relishing in the horror that flooded her body.
She wanted to be anywhere else. She wanted to scream and rake her nails across his face. But she couldn’t move. Breathing frantically, she tried to shut her mind out from what was about to happen. Stories had traveled of the enemy attacking women. She just never thought a man would savage her.
Suddenly, his hand was gone from her dress.
A heavy thud shook the ground, and she heard a whoosh of breath.
Opening her eyes, James lay a few feet away, crumpled on the ground, blood already oozing from a dent in his head.
She glanced up at a new sound. A tall man, a new stranger, fought one of the soldiers with his fists.
The younger soldier didn’t aid his comrade.
He stood back, his mouth gaping open, and appeared ready to flee.
With a final blow to the head, the man rendered the older soldier to the ground, unconscious.
The younger soldier dropped the musket he was holding and threw his hands up in surrender.
“Don’t hurt me,” he begged. “None of this was my idea.”
The man motioned around at the carnage. “But you didn’t try to stop it, did you?”
Now on his knees, the younger soldier began to sob. “N-no, I didn’t. I am so sorry. It was James. You don’t know what he’s like. I tried to get him to go.”
“What’s your name?” The man demanded.
“B-Ben. Benjamin Wheeler. Please, sir. I have a mother and sisters at home.”
Sighing, the man slowly shook his head. “Leave your musket and go. Before I change my mind. God forbid that someone attacks them just as you participated in the acts against this woman.”
Instant relief swept the soldier’s face. “Thank you, sir. Thank you!” He leapt up and was gone, running through the forest.
Now alone, except for the unconscious soldier and James—whom Maggie thought might be dead—the man turned to face her.
Impossible.
He was a Union soldier. An officer from the decorative nature of his uniform. He stood still for a moment, assessing her from a distance, and then moved to come closer.
Weak and still on the ground now in a pool of her own blood, Maggie knew she couldn’t run.
She had escaped one devil just to face another.
Black spots began to dance around her eyes, the world tilting.
Dirt still under her nails from her mother’s grave, she dug her fingers from her one free hand into the soil to anchor her.
Before succumbing to the darkness, she wondered who, if anyone, would dig her grave.