Ник Картер - War from the Clouds

“Then, you must consider yourself a virgin, Elicia. In your mind, you are. You gave nothing of your own free will. It was taken from you. In God’s eyes, you are still unspoiled, if that’s the way you must look at it.”

A fraction of a smile crossed her lips, and then she was sad again. She looked at me, holding my eyes with hers.

“For many months before the Marines came,” she said, speaking as though to a priest, in confession, “I had certain thoughts, certain feelings, that I could not control. In spite of all that has happened, I still have those thoughts and those feelings.”

I understood perfectly. The girl was a woman, she had thoughts and feelings about sex. She had had them since she was at least twelve or thirteen. Because she had had them, she felt that what had happened to her was God’s will, that she hadn’t had her virginity taken from her. She believed her previous thoughts had actually caused the rapes to occur.

“The thoughts and feelings you had and are still having,” I said, “are natural thoughts and feelings. Every human and every animal alive has those feelings. They shouldn’t be sources of guilt, though. In God’s eyes — and in mine — you’re still a virgin, still unspoiled, or whatever the word is.”

She moved closer, seeming to understand what I was trying to say. Or wanting to understand so badly that she was fooling herself.

“I know what thoughts are natural,” she said, “and what thoughts are not. What I am feeling now, for you, is natural. If I am a virgin still, I want you to be the one to receive the fruits of my virginity.”

Not even an American high school girl, with all her modern boldness brought on by the national yen for honesty and forthrightness, could have put it more plainly. And very few American high school boys would have turned down such an offer. But I was years away from high school. And I couldn’t give as much as I would take.

My silence was my answer. Elicia sat gazing up at me for several seconds, then her eyes fell. I let her think it all out. She would consider all the possibilities. Perhaps I thought of her with disgust, had even lied when I had said that she was still unspoiled, that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Perhaps I thought her beneath me, since I was an obviously important American government agent and she was a lowly Nicarxan peasant girl. Perhaps...

“You think me still a child,” she said in a low voice, cutting my speculations short. “Well, I am not a child. I have experienced much growing up in the past three months. And yesterday was my birthday. I now am eighteen, legally a woman.”

“Happy birthday, Elicia,” I said, smiling.

She frowned. “Make with jokes,” she said, turning the frown to a womanly look of shrewd knowledge. “All right. Time will pass and you will learn the truth about me, about my womanliness.”

She got up without another word and went to help Antonio search for lunch.

When we stopped for our evening break, Antonio and I searched for food while Elicia disappeared into the jungle. She had spent the afternoon trying to impress me with her womanliness. Each time I neared her on the trail, she lowered the bodice of her blouse to expose more of her ample breasts. She bumped against my hips with her wide hips. She carried more and more of our belongings, including all of Antonio’s stolen firearms. Now, as we neared exhaustion and she was showing signs of weariness from all the extra effort, she had disappeared.

I found a narrow trail leading down to a grove of banana trees and followed it. I had picked a number of ripe bananas when I heard the splashing just beyond the grove and a wall of vines. I put down the bananas and went to investigate, the Volska rifle slung over my shoulder.

The splashing continued and, when I reached the wall of vines, I heard a low singing. It was Elicia. Her sweet, clear voice rose on the dark jungle air, singing an old Spanish love song:

I wondered if she knew that I was near, was listening, perhaps even peeking at her in the stream. No, I decided. She had no idea that I was near. Her singing was too soft, meant only for her ears. She wasn’t putting out a mating call, not yet.

I turned away from the wall of vines, knowing what lovely sight and lovely activities lay beyond it. I had seen this girl in the nude, under extremely vicious circumstances. Seeing her in the nude here, in the stream, and knowing what was going on in her mind and her body, would have spurred me to foolish and damning actions. I may be a killer and an important government agent, but I am no heel. Not on purpose, anyway.

Dinner was a delight. Antonio had found all sorts of fruits and vegetables to add to my bananas. Elicia, however, was the most pleasant of all. She had bathed in the stream and had found orange blossoms to rub against her skin. She smelled good enough to eat, and I had the distinct feeling that she would be better than the fruits and vegetables we were eating. I had trouble keeping my eyes off her, but I decided to merely enjoy the fragrance and the nearness of her, and let it go there.

We rested only two hours after dinner and went on in full darkness. I lost my sense of direction and had no idea which side of Mount Toro we were on. Antonio seemed to know exactly where we were going and, in spite of Elicia’s continued game of playing woman and bumping into me in the darkness, giving me the full benefit of her womanly fullness, we made good progress.

It was nearly midnight when Antonio stopped ahead of us on the trail and held up a hand for quiet. We hunched in the jungle, unable to see much more than our hands before our faces. I was about to ask Antonio why we were stopping when all hell seemed to break loose on the trail.

First came a high, discordant warbling, as though a thousand maniacs had just had their cages rattled. Next was a thundering and thrashing all around us, not unlike a stampede of heavy animals. Perhaps elephants or rhinoceroses. We were struggling to get our weapons lined up when lights appeared from all around us and the swarm descended.

Elicia let out a piercing scream. Antonio bellowed. I was opening my mouth to add to the general hubbub when strong hands grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me. I got out one yell before a rough cloth sack was yanked down over my head. I felt the cord being tied, a little too tight for comfort, around my neck. Other hands were on my legs and feet and torso. One probing hand even found the bandage over my wound and sent rivers of pain through my nervous system.

And then, as though a switch had been thrown, the jungle was silent. We were carried along the dark trail for the better part of an hour, circling around to cause us to lose our sense of direction, then dumped onto hard ground. When the sack was taken from my head, I found myself tied to Elicia and Antonio, side by side, in a thatched hut much like the one Pico had put me in. The ceiling, however, was considerably higher, and a bunch of half-naked Indians were standing around us in a circle. Flame torches were attached to hangers on the walls, well out from the flammable thatching.

From the circle of Indians stepped an enormously fat man with all sorts of flowered and feathered regalia adorning his body in strategic places. Most of him was exposed and he looked as though he had been wrapped in a macadam parking lot. I had never seen such expanses of human skin on one skeleton.

“I am Botussin,” he said in a deep, rich voice with only a touch of growl in it. “I am chief of the Ninca.” He motioned toward a tall, lithe brown man who was incredibly handsome, who wore a single eagle feather in his long hair and whose privates were covered by a soft lambskin pouch. “This is my son, Purano, heir to my throne. Now, you will provide us with your names and the reasons why you have invaded the Ninca lands, then you will be handed over to our spearchuckers, for execution. You talk now.”