Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

When the fire had built to a crackling blaze that gave off real warmth, he knee-walked to Marguerite, unlaced her boots, and pulled them off.

“Get undressed,” he said.

She started working dully at the zipper of her jacket.

Monks lifted Mandrake out of the pack. The rain had soaked through the back of his snowsuit. That would be another blow to his resistance. Monks pulled the wet clothes off and rubbed him down quickly with his pajamas.

Marguerite had managed to get out of her jacket and was struggling to pull her sweatshirt over her head. Monks freed her from it, then unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them off. He had expected that she would be wearing warm underclothes, but she was not, or even a bra and panties, maybe because of her assignation with Hammerhead. He took her by the hands and pulled her to sit close to the fire. Then he picked up Mandrake and laid him in her lap.

“Put your arms around him,” Monks said. “It’ll warm you both up. I’m going for more wood.”

He made three more trips, scouring the dry areas under trees and overhangs, stoking the fire each time he returned to the cave. Finally, he decided that they had enough firewood to last another couple of hours.

He sank back against a stone wall and pulled off his own sodden clothes. Marguerite was cradling Mandrake like a Junoesque Madonna with child, her long black hair spilling down over both of them. Her eyes were closed, her head still sagging in lethargy, but her skin was starting to take on the flush of returning warmth. The lure to warm his own half-frozen flesh was too much to resist. He knelt and clasped her-just for a few seconds, not long enough to risk that the chill might set her back.

Then, astoundingly, he felt the tickle of arousal in his groin.

He moved away in quick embarrassment and got to the other side of the fire.

It brought a whole new level of meaning to the term survival instinct.

Monks squatted at the cave entrance like a savage, gazing out into the quiet night, the rifle resting across his thighs. It was just past five A.M. The fire was subdued to embers, which he kept at a careful level, evenly filling the space with warmth and helping to dry the clothes that he’d spread out on rocks and sticks. Marguerite was more animated, helped by the heat and a couple of candy bars that he had coaxed her to eat, the high-sugar fuel that her depleted body needed. He hadn’t been hungry himself, although he should have been ravenous, and he realized that his appetite was killed by the methamphetamine. But he knew he needed food, and forced himself to chew the tasteless bread and baloney.

Rested, he worked to balance the complex equation of factors and probabilities they faced. The storm seemed to be subsiding, at least temporarily. The visible fire was a risk, the more so as the snow diminished, but the heat was essential, and the longer their clothes could dry, the better. But if the snow stopped, they were going to leave a trail that, come daylight, would be highly visible. A man on a vantage point, with optics, could probably see it from miles away.

If Marguerite was feeling strong enough, it was time to move on again.

He set the rifle upright against the wall and got out the insulin and syringes. He drew a three-unit shot and knelt beside the little boy nestled in her embrace. She had been wetting his mouth every so often, and she watched with anxious eyes as Monks pinched up a fold of skin over Mandrake’s abdomen and slid in the needle.

“Are you up to starting again?” he asked her.

“I guess so.”

“If you’re not sure, we’ll wait.”

“No. I’m okay now. This helped a lot.”

“Then let’s pack up.”

Monks gathered her clothes and gave them to her. They were far from completely dry, but at least they were no longer soaked. Without the pelting rain and wet snow, body heat would help to dry them further. He got his own shirt and jeans, and then realized that she hadn’t moved. Her head was bowed, her face hidden by her hair.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“He’s looking for us.” Her voice was muffled and tremulous. “He’s getting into my head. That’s how he’ll find us.”

Monks stared at her in disbelief. “You mean Freeboot?”

“He’s telling me I should just wait here. He’ll come get me.”

He knelt beside her and gripped her wrist.

“Marguerite, you’re imagining this,” he said. “You’re stressed out, maybe feeling guilty. But Freeboot’s not getting into your head. He might have made you believe he can do that, but he can’t, not really. Nobody can.”

“You don’t know him.”

It was the same insane conviction that Monks had heard from Glenn.

“You can’t stay here, are you kidding?” Monks said. “If he doesn’t find you, you’ll die. If he does, he’ll-God knows what he’ll do.”

She shook her head, with childlike stubbornness. “No. It’s all okay, he forgives me.”

Monks squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, trying to think of a way to cut through the invisible spiderweb that Freeboot had strung around his followers.

“What about Hammerhead?” Monks said. “You think he’ll forgive you?”

“He wouldn’t dare cross Freeboot,” she said, looking up scornfully. “Besides, I can make Hammerhead do anything I want.”

“But you’ll have to start sleeping with him again. And the other maquis. Right? Anybody who wants you, isn’t that the deal?”

She bowed her head again, averting her eyes.

“But you only want Freeboot, really,” Monks said. “He uses you like a whore for his men, and he plays around with other women.”

For thirty seconds, she was silent and still. Monks was abruptly aware of the piney fragrance of the fire, the dark flush that the heat had brought to her skin, the golden-downed bumps of her spine the length of her long graceful back.

Then, in a low voice, she said, “He says he has the right to every woman he wants, because he’s the alpha male. He was fucking around tonight. I knew he was going to. I got pissed.”

“Was that the business he had to take care of?”

“He does it all the time. There’s these big parties every couple of months. Everybody from camp goes down to the flats to score dope.”

Monks had figured out by now that “the flats” referred to the rest of the world outside the camp. But while he didn’t know much about drug deals, he had never thought of them as social events.

“What kind of parties?” he said.

“People around here get permits to grow medical marijuana. It’s supposed to be for their own use, but other people come up from the cities. Bikers, black gang guys. They bring crank, crack, whatever, and everybody trades. And there’s always young girls around,” she added venomously.

So that was where Freeboot had been while his son was dying.

“Did Motherlode go, too?” Monks asked.

“Yeah,” Marguerite said, still caustic. “She kept saying that as soon as she stocked up, she was going to come back and be with Mandrake. She’s full of shit. All she cares about is her dope.”

There was no point in asking if Glenn had gone. Monks knew the answer.

“Marguerite, you did the right thing,” he said. “For Mandrake, for me, for yourself. Keep on doing it. We just have to make it a little farther, and then Freeboot can never touch you again.”

She shook her head. “I was wrong. I belong to him. You go on, I’m staying here.”

Options flashed through Monks’s frayed mind, including herding her at gunpoint. But what could he do if she refused-shoot her? He decided on one more try at reason. If that didn’t work, he could only hope to make it out himself and send back help.

“What can Freeboot do to you from far away?” he said. “How can he hurt you?”