Chapter 21 #2
He was broad-shouldered and strong. Still, I imagined Einar snapping that short, pudgy neck with ease just for its owner speaking those words.
I felt a misplaced smile tug at the corners of my mouth, the swelling of pride when thinking about the only man who could rightfully claim what the Dutchman just had.
With that, the synapses of my brain began to function in their proper order again and belatedly I realised that Einar wasn’t there to save us and that, to put it simply, we were utterly screwed.
“Like hell I will,” I spat out angrily, and to my great surprise, my voice didn’t shake.
The man chuckled, revealing a set of large, yellowed teeth.
“Feisty. I like that.”
“The other one is cute as hell too,” his smaller, more rotund partner remarked. “And a lot meeker. I’ll be happy with her. Come here, darling, don’t be scared.” He stepped forward.
I tried to shelter Monika behind me, awkwardly so due to her lanky height. I raised my palms towards our assailants, gesturing for them to stop. To my surprise, they did.
“Look, how about this,” I spoke firmly in as commanding a way as I was able under the circumstances. “Let her go and then you can both have me, willingly. Or unwillingly. Whichever you prefer. You let her go and I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”
Monika whimpered. Likely she wanted to protest but could not quite bring herself to do it. I didn’t turn to see her, too afraid to take my eyes off the men, but I could feel her tensely petrified presence behind me.
“Well, that sounds fun, but it wouldn’t do at all, would it?
” the taller man said. “You see, we want to take you with us to keep. We are a residence of sixty in Bonifacio, but fifty of us are men, capiche? And men get bored and restless living on their own ... But don’t worry, cuties, we’ll take good care of you.
Bonifacio is a fortress. We can withstand any number of infected.
And we have guns, rifles, semi-automatics, grenades, everything.
Stores of petrol too, and plenty of supplies. You’ll be safe with us.”
He spoke mildly enough, but there was cunning to his grin and malice in his tone. Even were I inclined to let myself be allured by the promises of safety and abundance—and I was not—I instantly harboured a deep, visceral mistrust of him and anything he said.
“Can we refuse?” I asked blatantly.
“What do you think?” His laugh was like cawing. “Beautiful, but not awfully bright, are you?”
I hesitated, heart hammering, each fibre of me resisting. But I forced myself to say calmly: “My offer still stands. Let her go, and I’ll come with you willingly.”
“Oh no, no thanks. We’ll be taking you both. We don’t mind a bit of unwillingness.”
They both took two steps closer in unison.
Monika screamed, and I stepped back instinctively, bumping into her.
My eyes swam, and for a moment I thought I would pass out from the rapid rush of my blood.
I scanned my surroundings in a frenzy, looking for a convenient stake-like branch or a sufficiently large, jagged-edged rock in the stream.
As if materialised from my imagination, two arrows pierced the chests of each of the intruders in quick succession.
They stood still for a moment, their faces blank with surprise.
The arrows protruded from their bodies, but no welling of blood could be seen on their leather jackets.
The taller one fell first. Almost as soon as he did, the short man spurted blood from the corner of his mouth and then followed suit.
He thrashed feebly on the ground, making gurgling sounds not unlike the bubbling of the stream.
Pierced lung. Not the fastest way to die.
Monika collapsed to the ground right after they had, shaking and sobbing. I felt queasy and weak in the knees myself but had no time to dwell on that. A large figure came into sight from behind the nearby shrubbery, rushed towards me, and squeezed me tightly.
“Einar,” I exhaled in relief, burrowing my face into his chest.
He reeked sharply of acidic terror, his shirt wet with nervous perspiration.
“You’re all right. You’re all right,” he kept repeating as if to assure not only me, but himself of the fact.
I mumbled something in assent, holding onto him as if for dear life, wanting to thank him but not finding the right words. Looking up, I saw the concern evaporate from his face, his eyes now gleaming cold with fury.
“Are you mad coming here unarmed?”
He held me firmly at an arm’s length, his fingers digging painfully into my shoulders.
“What the hell were you thinking?!”
His voice shook with rage, but somehow it made me want to hug him rather than argue with him.
“We just came to do laundry. I am sorry, Einar, I really am!”
I tried to pry his fingers off with my own, but they wouldn’t budge.
“How could you be so careless?! Never mind those two, but what if roamers came after you?”
He had never raised his voice at me before, but just then he started shouting at me in earnest. But his eyes darkened, signalling that he was more present, having overcome the initial shock.
“We cleared this whole area!” I protested.
“You-can-never-be-sure!”
“I made a mistake, I know it. I’m sorry. Stop yelling at me!”
“I’ll stop when I see fit!” he roared.
My face crumbled, and suddenly my own jumbled soup of emotion spilled out of my eyes.
“Could you please see it fit to stop now?”
Shockingly, that did the trick.
“Ah.” He exhaled, deflating instantly.
His grip on me relented, and he embraced me anew, stroking my back slowly.
“Aye. I could.”
He sat on the ground and pulled me onto his lap. I curled against him like a cat, grabbing tightly onto the fabric of his shirt with the effort to suppress sobs.
A few minutes had passed when the dying man’s mortal throes ceased at last. Meanwhile, Monika progressed from her own reserved weeping to wailing like a siren, and we both rushed to her to try and pacify her.
Having succeeded somewhat, we hoisted her up between us—very awkwardly and unevenly—and, leaving the corpses and our laundry behind, we led her back to the settlement.
Out of the trees, across the plain, and through the wooden gates that creaked complainingly upon opening.
Albert stood right behind, pacing and puffing agitatedly at a cigarette, a part of our most recent loot from a fury-infested lodge.
He stopped as the guard shut the gates behind us, and threw the cigarette to the ground, stomping on it. He had a hard look on his red face.
“What the hell happened!?”
Gulping visibly, Monika took a shaky step forward and told him in a trembling voice, broken by sobs.
Albert’s facial colour progressed from agitated, bright red to white with fear and then purple with rage. I grew increasingly uneasy just watching him. Einar put his arm around my waist and held me firmly, wordlessly telling me to stay out of it.
“How dare you risk the life of our child like this, woman?!” Albert spat out in his rounded-vowel accent, spoken hard from deep within the throat.
He marched closer to Monika and stood mere inches away from her, his eyes level with hers, spittle flying from the tight, uneven gash of his mouth and landing on her face.
“You don’t go anywhere without asking me first! Do I mean nothing to you? Does our child mean nothing to you?!”
My ears registered the sound before my eyes comprehended the movement of his hand, colliding flat with her face. Monika stumbled, but she didn’t say anything and didn’t seem surprised.
My blood turned to lava, bubbling with indignation out of my mouth in the form of the filthiest expletives I could think of in any language I knew. I made to lunge forward, but Einar held me fast, not letting me do so.
“Is that really necessary, Albert?” His steely voice interrupted my outburst. “It’s hardly the gals’ fault they had been ambushed.”
“None of your business, my lad,” Albert retorted. “And you shut up too!” He turned to me. “Shut up or I’ll make her pay for choosing such a foul-mouthed friend to associate with. We’re going.”
Holding Monika’s arm, he dragged her away.
“That swine,” I sputtered angrily like a faulty engine. “And you! Why the hell didn’t you intervene?”
Einar wasn’t looking at me when he replied. Instead, he seemed wholly transfixed by the gate guard, who was stretching his muscles in a slow, bored manner on the makeshift raised wooden platform that allowed him to see over the fence.
“Well, my own reaction wasn’t all that admirable either, when I first found you by the stream,” he replied vaguely. “I’m not sure I’m the one to criticise.”
His eyes were still fixed on the guard, who now stood on one leg while holding the other extended behind him. I was quickly losing what patience I had left.
“That’s different, you didn’t hit me! How can you be so blasé about this?”
In an effort to force him to meet my eye, I attempted to push him, ramming into him with both my arms extended. Frustratingly, he didn’t move even an inch, but he finally looked at me, his expression at once grave and amused.
“Because I knew,” he admitted with a heavy sigh. “I’ve seen him slap her before.”
The words were like a bucket of icy water thrown into my face.
“What? You knew? And did nothing?”
His eyes once again evaded mine, but at least they didn’t turn back to the guard and his yoga.
“Albert believes that granting women equal rights was the biggest modern mistake. That it was the turning point and all that went wrong afterwards was its direct result ... It is his view that we now have the opportunity to set the world right by returning to traditional family values and radical patriarchy. According to him, men are supposed to be women’s superiors, as is natural due to their physical advantage.
They are to expect obedience and to punish the lack of it in any way they see fit.
And now, free from any laws telling him otherwise, there’s nothing stopping him from living out his beliefs. ”