Bentley Little - Dominion

They hurried back into the garage to try the phone.

The line was jammed.

They moved the car out of the garage onto the driveway, tried again.

Still jammed.

On the next block over, they found another car with a phone. A Mercedes.

Jammed as well.

"Shit!" Kevin slammed the car door. "What the fuck are we supposed to do now?"

"It was a long shot to begin with," Penelope told him.

"So let's find a CB," Jack said.

Kevin nodded, although clearly whatever hopes he'd harbored of finding a way to communicate with the outside world were dashed. "All right," he said. "Let's go."

They traded their car in for the Mercedes, which had a double gas tank, both of which were full. A gang of small children threw rocks and bottles at the car as they drove up and down streets looking for a semi or a pickup that might have a CB radio. At one point a group of naked, obviously menstruating women, wielding homemade spears constructed of broom handles and trowels, cha them for nearly two blocks before the car finally out them.

After a several false starts they finally found a roofri company truck with keys still in the ignition that hadl CB.

They turned on the power, turned on the radio.

Every channel was filled with the sound of drunke babbling.

"Hello!" Penelope tried. "Is anybody out there?"

"Is anybody out there?" came the mocking reply.

They sat there for a half hour, taking turns, trying eac| channel, hoping against hope that someone some^j where--a trucker out of the valley and on the road haps--would hear them and answer, but the only responses they received were the jeering and increasingly obscene replies of the bacchantes.

Finally Kevin hung up the microphone and turned off! the CB, discouraged. "It's getting late," he said tiredly^f "Let's hit the road.

We don't want to be caught out her after dark."

"You're right about that," Jack said.

Penelope nodded, starting toward the Mercedes.

How long would tonight last? she wondered. Tell hours? Twenty?

They drove back to Holbrook's in silence.

April smashed the empty wine bottle against the forehead of the man she was riding, and reached her orgasm as she knocked him into unconsciousness. His fluttering eyes closed, blood gushed from the broken skin, but his organ stayed hard, and she pressed herself all the way down on it until the last shudder of ecstasy passed through her body.

She rolled off him, onto the blood-soaked grass.

The others were going to strike tonight.

She knew of their plans, though they had not told her of them, and while she wanted to be involved, wanted to share in the fun, she did not entirely approve. It was her upbringing, she supposed. She was a maenad, she was one of them, but she had been raised apart, in a considerably stricter environment, and while her true nature had eventually won out, there was still a part of her that sat back and judged, that hated what she had become.

Maybe there was more of her mother in her than her father.

Whoever her mother had been.

Or maybe there really was something to be said for environment in that old environment versus genetics debate.

Of course, everything would have been fine if it had involved only her, if she had been on her own. She would have been having the time of her life, and she'd be jumping into all this with both feet, not looking back, not having any regrets.

But there was Dion.

He'd wanted better.

He deserved better.

She tried to tell herself that there was nothing better, that being a god was the pinnacle, the apex, but she not believe it.

Maybe for her that might be true, but nc for Dion.

She wondered if it had something to do with having given birth. She wondered if Felice felt the same way| about Penelope. She'd have to ask.

If she ever saw her again.

She had not seen much of the other maenads the past! two days. And she wasn't sure if she wanted to. She'd felt closer to them before the Resurrection, when they'd been just friends who drank together in bars.

She missed that camaraderie, that feeling that she had finally found soul mates, people who understood her, who had the same needs and desires she did.

But now she felt like an outcast. Ostensibly, she was one of them. Born of the same line and all that. But she felt different from them, apart, and she knew that it was because of what they'd done with Dion.

She wished she'd never been Called. She wished they'd never left Arizona.

She had caught Dionysus sleeping yesterday, lying on the grassy ground between the trees, a huddled group of women acting as his pillow, and she had stood there for a while, watching him. In sleep he looked more like Dion. The changes were still there--the size of him, most obviously --but sleep softened his expression, blunted his intensity. His face was by no means innocent, but his features were relaxed, and she could see in the dozing god her son.

She'd left before he'd awakened.

They'd been avoiding each other ever since the Resurrection. She didn't think Dionysus observed any taboos regarding incest, but the part of him that was Dion most certainly did and was no doubt responsible for maintaining the distance between them. She, for her part, had been purposely staying away from him, although the reasons were complex. As a mother, she was disgusted and repulsed by the thought of having sex with him. But as a maenad, she ... She wanted him.

She closed her eyes, feeling in the back of her skull the dull throb of an oncoming headache.

"Are you going with us?"

She opened her eyes, turned her head, saw Margaret and Sheila walking up to her on the left. Both were bruised and bloody. Bath were grinning.

"You want to be in on the raid?" Margaret asked.

April shook her head.

"You haven't even fucked him yet, have you?" Sheila said.

"I'm not going to."

"You're one of us!" Margaret said. "Act like it!"

"I'm his mother!"

Sheila giggled. "Not anymore."

"Fuck off," April said. "Both of you."

"You're not what we'd hoped," Margaret said.

"Nothing ever is."

The two sisters turned away without speaking, walking back through the meadow the way they'd come. April saw a slice of red on Sheila's right buttock where the skin had been peeled off.

A part of her wanted to join them tonight.

A part of her wanted to kill them.

The man next to her moaned groggily, stirred.

She lay there for a moment, then picked up the bottle, smashed it again against the man's head. He sank back into unconsciousness.

She climbed back on top of him.

Night.

The four of them lay in silent darkness within the back bedroom of the house. The night outside was filled with cacaphonous noise: the full-volume blast of private stereos defiantly playing their owners'

favorite music, the wailing of high school band instruments, the electrified amplification of amateur and semiprofessional guitarists, the racing of engines, the shouting of celebrants, the screams of victims.

Penelope imagined pockets of people like themselves, throughout the valley, waiting for the raiding parties that would rape them and kill them and tear their bodies apart. At least-the four of them knew what was happening; at least they knew what they were up against. She could not imagine what other people might think.

Jack cleared his throat. "The only good thing about all this," he said, "is that these bacchanals are very public. It's not as if they're sneaking around and we have to worry about where they are and whether they're going to creep up on us."

There was a rustling of the sheets on Kevin's mattress on the floor.

"But it can't last much longer, can it? I mean, people from outside will find out. They'll send in troops or something and it'll all be over."