Carry the Flame (30 page)

He hadn't been dwelling on how strange everything was. He'd just been noticing the disconnects. But all that noticing was forcing him to think, and he couldn't help thinking the wrecking yard might be nothing more than a big shell game. And where was the prize in a shell game? No secret about that. It was always under something. Just like water.

Find it,
he told himself,
and you've got a good shot at finding iddy biddy bitch.

Chapter Fifteen

B
edlam in the sidecar drowned out the Harley's throaty rumble. Jaya had suffered the shriveling desert heat quietly, but now banged his elbows against the cage and began to babble. When Hunt glared at him, the fifteen-year-old gripped his own arms, as if to still himself. But then he started rocking raucously from side to side, and his gibber grew louder. Esau, holding his master's hips, watched to see what he would do.

Four times Hunt had stopped the old motorcycle, grabbed one of the steel canisters stored inches from the kid, and made a splashy show of satisfying his thirst. Four times Hunt shared water freely with him while Jaya begged. Four times Hunt leaned into the cage, seized the teen's neck and warned him not to touch a drop, “Or I'll punish you in the name of God Almighty.”

The clamor in the sidecar now ended in a frenzy: Jaya grabbed a canister, twisted off the top in a single frantic motion, and drank greedily, gasping loudly between gulps.

This time Hunt shut off the Harley, easing off the seat without haste. They were surrounded by endless reaches of white sand and undulating waves of heat. Hunt once told his slave that a temperature of 137 degrees had been recorded in the Great American Desert. The dead zone only became hotter since anyone had seen a working thermometer.

Hunt grinned, looking pleased that the heat had wreaked horror on the kid. He drew his short knife, the one he used for paring his nails and other cuts of a precise, implacable order.

Esau trailed his master around the motorcycle. Hunt unlocked the cage once more. Oddly, Jaya appeared happy, or relieved, legs a-sprawl in his chopped-off pants.

But when Hunt swung the door open, Jaya shrank back. The creaking metal might have shaken him from a stupor.

“Don't hurt me,” he croaked. He held out the canister to Hunt, who swatted it away, letting the last drops drain.

“Get out,” he ordered, brandishing his knife.

Esau watched his master step back, perhaps to give the boy room—or the chance to make another mistake. The sun felt corrosive, like it could blister the backs of beetles.

Jaya didn't move, his fear palpable. Esau had suffered similar dread many times, but the slave also anticipated the youth's punishment—and the wanton role he himself would play. Pleasure filled his belly and weakened his legs. They trembled, and he wondered if Hunt was shaking, too, as his master had on the bike when he first warned the youth about touching the provisions.

Jaya stared at the slave's obvious arousal. The boy looked scared. Esau smiled at him. The kid turned away, like he wanted to explode from the cage and never stop running.

He was young and strong.
A man,
the slave assured himself.
Not a boy, not anymore.

“Fair skin, fair hair, fair game,” Hunt said, marking the moment when the punishment would begin.

He leaned into the cage and coolly knifed Jaya from his knee to his foot. The kid bled profusely but uttered no cry. His blue eyes appeared dry, large, unblinking, already retreating to the mortal anonymity of sand.

Esau watched his master grip the red blade in his mouth sideways. The slave had never seen anyone do that. He wanted to kiss Hunt where the steely edge parted his blood-reddened lips. In that sudden madness, he wanted his master to cut him, too.

Instead, Hunt dragged the boy out. The youth seemed drained of resistance, or fearful that to fight would only add to his terror. A moment later he vomited, spilling clear sickness onto the sand. The water that had swelled his stomach left him steeply fated. Any fool could see that.

Hunt slammed the cage door and stepped away from the bike, staring at the bent-over boy. He whipped him around and jammed his face against the metal bars. Then he forced the kid's arms up and cinched his wrists to the cage with tightly wound wire. When he wailed, Hunt grabbed his silky hair and jerked his head back. “Dead or alive, your soul is asunder,” he whispered, though no one but Esau and the youth could have heard him. The sun had silenced the land and almost all its trespassers.

The Harley's engine cooled and ticked—the only sound before Hunt tore off Jaya's shirt. Esau stared at the bite wounds on the boy's back. A beast had attacked him. Ragged cuts, barely scabbed.

Hunt slid the tip of his knife under a crusty red pane on the kid's shoulder blade, prying open an inch of dried wound—till it broke off and the bite bled.

“Damocles. Remember him?” Hunt said, still whispering.

The slave now understood the damage and his master's cruelty, but could not stanch his own accord. Helplessly, his hand fell and he squeezed himself when Hunt placed the blade back between his teeth and kissed Jaya all the way down to the base of his spine. A trail of red cuts appeared, each as precise as the next. Small drapes of blood hung from all of them.

Hunt opened his mouth and dropped the moist knife into his hand. With great care, he sliced off the boy's pants and knelt behind him, gripping his pale buttocks. Esau stiffened. He felt like steel reaching for the sky.

His master spoke loudly to him: “I'm a spy in the world of sin. We find the blight and destroy it.”

Hunt rose and shed his boots and pants, leaving only his shirt to shield him from the sun. Esau, cued by his master's desire—and fired by his own burgeoning needs—stripped off all his clothes. He wanted the full pleasure of skin on skin, and though the kid's back bore those wretched wounds and fresh blood, they didn't unman the slave. They made him seethe.

The three of them stood naked, or nearly so. Nothing remained of mystery. Only completion. Esau's hands moved purposely as he watched his master return to his knees, lavishing his lips on the boy's softest skin. A worshipper, an acolyte at an altar.

Hunt scooped up fine white sand and with sacramental care spilled it carefully over an exposed cheek, as if aware, in the midst of his mesmerizing display, of the pain of a single displaced grain. Sand clung to the damp spots, sparkly in the bright light.

This unexpectedly consuming vision dropped Esau to the ground. His legs had never stopped shaking, nor his hand moving, but the white flow on the boy's perfect bottom keeled the slave forward till his brow smacked the sand and his semen left gummy gray dashes.

Hunt told him to sit up. Esau steadied himself with a breath before settling back on his heels.

“You've nothing left for the boy,” his master said dismissively. “Nothing to test his needs, his sickness and sin.”

Hunt turned back to Jaya. The slave felt his master's judgment keenly. But with his seed now squandered, a swift unwelcome clarity made him see that Hunt's disdain did not arise from a need to test Jaya further. It arose from his own inability to immediately gratify his master with the same voyeuristic thrills that had driven his face to the sand.

Although numerous men in the Alliance, including His Piety, had forced themselves on Esau, he himself had never committed rape. As he rested on his heels, drained of desire, he sickened at what he now saw plainly: a boy—not a man, no matter how dearly he had wished otherwise only minutes ago—was brutally bound to a cage and about to be assaulted even more savagely. Hunt wasn't a spy in the world of sin. He was a spy in a pitiless world of his own making, ducking in and out of desire under the clumsy cover of faith.

The slave stared at a distant mirage, wishing it could wash away his treacherous understanding—and all it might portend.

Hunt rose to his feet and pressed against the boy, who cried out. Esau had never known for certain what his master did when he journeyed from the base and left him in the coarse hands of other men. But now the evidence was as indisputable as the slave's irrepressible jealousy, which fueled his revulsion and sparked his only hope.

He walked to Hunt and took hold of his master's hardness, as he had many times. Hunt gave him a smile of forgiveness, and said, “Yes, do it for me.” Hunt then used both of his hands to spread the kid open.

The slave knew the warmth his master desired most. But with Hunt in his firm grip, Esau tried to lead him from the youth, whose wrists bled from the wire, and whose slashed leg and foot spilled a steady red stream onto the sand.

Jaya, momentarily free from Hunt's grasp, mule-kicked him, catching his shin. Hunt ignored the boy's blow and struck Esau across the face, yelling, “Don't you dare.” He pushed his slave away and turned back to Jaya, reaching through his legs to crush his testicles.

The kid's agony tightened Esau's own groin. His Piety had committed the same violence when he raped the slave in the church office. Esau wondered if the cleric had taught Hunt the same crippling technique, and how the lesson might have been learned.

Jaya convulsed, howled, and thrashed against the cage, rattling it loudly before all his weight hung from the wires. Hunt grabbed the boy's hair again, pressed his teeth to his bare neck and bit him hard enough to leave marks.

Esau glanced at Hunt's pants on the ground. The butt of one of his guns poked from the pile, which lay right behind his master. The slave gazed at his own clothes, inches from his side. He reached down slowly and felt around his pants and shirt without taking his eyes off Hunt. If his master looked at him, he'd say he wanted to get dressed. But he knew Hunt would never accept the lie—once he held a knife.

Still reaching blindly, Esau found the handle of the long steel blade his master had given him. The slave straightened. He stood at least five steps from Hunt, whose knees bent to force open the boy's thighs. Jaya squirmed, tried to resist, and Hunt yanked back his head, shouting threats into his ear.

Esau closed his eyes. Foolish, but he could move no other way. When he opened them, Hunt started to turn his head. Esau lunged and sank the blade into his master's back, feeling it glance off a bone.

Hunt didn't fall. He stared at Esau. If he was surprised by his slave's attack, he didn't show it.

Esau backpedaled, frantic and stumbling, naked and starkly crazed with fear, shocked beyond measure that his master lived.

Hunt took one step toward Esau before dropping heavily to his knees.

He's dying! Esau thought, nearly hysterical with hope. But Hunt now reached for one of his pistols.

Esau tried to race away, hitting deeper sand in seconds. Cursing it wildly, he thought of hurling himself to the ground and rolling, but Hunt was an excellent shot. His only hope was distance—or his master's death.

In silence punctuated by his own panicky breaths, Esau heard Hunt cock the hammer of a revolver. Then a grunt and a shot. Esau clutched himself, expecting piercing pain. When he wasn't struck, he looked over his shoulder. His master was pitching forward with two inches of the shiny knife tip sticking out of his chest. The boy was pulling back his bloody foot after mule-kicking Hunt again, this time driving the full length of the blade into the rapist.

“Help me!” the boy cried.

Esau stared at his master. So did the youth, twisting as far as he could, shredding his wrists as he tried to wrench them free.

Both of them froze when Hunt's head rose.

“Get that one,” the boy screamed, jabbing his heel at the other handgun. It lay on the sand a couple of feet from Hunt, whose eyes blinked open on Esau.

T
he Mayor and his hairless emissary, Linden, walked toward a round pit near the rear of the City of Shade. Late afternoon light spilled across their path, throwing long shadows from the tanker truck and van baking nearby in the sun. The self-styled officials were trailed by two guards.

The pit was divided into two large cells by a concrete wall. One side imprisoned the girls from the caravan, except for Bliss; the other held the adults and boys.

Ananda had spent a long night listening to the Mayor snore—yet hoping he wouldn't awaken and hurt her. He did sleep till morning, but the new day brought little relief. As guards herded them from his chamber—and she relished the possibility of leaving the Mayor's side for good—he announced that a few “lucky girls” would sleep with him again that night.

At least water was plentiful. The city had more of it than anywhere she had ever been.

Solana stopped finger-combing her black hair as soon as the Mayor and his entourage came within view, then scrambled to her feet, shouting, “How long are you going to keep us here?” Maureen Gibbs simply swore at him, anger sharpening her pointy features, perhaps scaring her nine-year-old son as well; he clung to his mother's arm. Her two daughters were jailed on the other side of the wall.

The Mayor ignored Solana's question, and shook his head at Maureen. “If you insist on cursing me, I will insist on taking your children where you cannot see them, and where I cannot guarantee their comfort, or even their safety. I have been a most gracious and accommodating host. I give you food and water and—”

“It's
our
food,” Maureen yelled, interrupting him, which the Mayor ignored.

“—and a fine roof over your heads. The finest in the world. I am generous with our shade.” The Mayor's tone hardened. “But if you insult me, I can enforce the most rigorous discipline.” He stared at Maureen, as if daring the furious woman.

Her husband, Keffer, stepped to her side and placed a cautionary hand on his wife's shoulder, which she shrugged off. But Maureen said nothing more, and the Mayor turned his eyes to all of them.

“There will be a great fight tomorrow night.” Girls all around Ananda tensed-up. Imagi grabbed her arm, and M-girl pulled them both close. The Mayor must have noticed the reaction he caused: “Do not worry, you girls will not be fighting. In the big fight of the night, your leaders, Jessie, and the one called Burned Fingers, will battle my two Komodo dragons.”

What? The animal that ate that girl?
Ananda backed into the wall, dragging Imagi and M-girl along, before she realized she was retreating on her mother's behalf.