White Out: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (11 page)

She looked down at Tony, scowling at him.
 

No. No. It wasn't over yet. Not by a longshot.
 

She pulled on her sweater, though it was colder than the air near the fireplace, and then she recovered the second sweater that went on top of that. Annie reached for her wool hat, which had ended up near the easy chair. Pulling it on to her head, she adjusted herself, breathing deeply and watching the flames.

That was when she heard a
click
sound off, reverberating off the walls and cavernous ceiling of The Purple Cat. The click was familiar. She’d heard it before, mostly in movies.

"Hey there," a gravelly voice said. It reminded her of that guy Tom Waits, whom Christian affectionately called "The Boozy Cookie Monster." Several other voices chimed in right after, with tiny splices of laughter and broken snorting. "I don't care how pretty you are...
don't move a fucking inch or I'll paint the walls with you."

Annie’s throat tightened until she was sure she’d pass out. She studied the perimeter of the flickering firelight, looking for the source of that voice. When she found that source, she encountered only rictus grins.

No eyes. No noses. Just contented smiles, teetering on the cusp of rapture.  

Chapter Nine
 

Without warning, the men engaged them
with an animalistic lurch that caught them completely off guard. She and Tony didn’t stand a chance, especially with Tony being so physically exhausted from the day's long haul. If he had any energy left in him at all, it was nothing that would aid them in resisting the shadowy men that slithered around them in the darkness.

Why the hell hadn't they just stayed in the one place they were certain was safe? Why had Tony been so damned pig-headed about traveling? It was his fault. Everything was his fault.

The one she immediately labelled The Midget Man had her by the wrist, bending Annie's arm back behind her as he squeezed. The little shit was pinching her elbow enough that it sent a shooting pain through her whole arm, triggering a quiet whimper. He was a good six inches shorter than she was, but his strength dwarfed hers considerably. "Don't move an inch or you’ll regret it," said the Midget Man. 

Annie cried out in pain, glowering at the other three men in the group. They were on top of Tony right off the bat, he being the biggest threat to their
assault. Was this really an assault, or just a terrible prank, pinning him to the floor. One of the gleeful men got to work tying up Tony’s ankles while the other two took turns pounding him on the jaw with their balled up fists. They looked like cavemen learning to fight for the first time. "You shouldn't have come here," the Shiny Bald One said, leaning down close to Tony, baring his teeth and growling.

The Shiny Bald One looked like a wolf, with a perpetual deadness in his eyes that spoke of an instinct he could not control. As the wind howled outside, Annie couldn’t help but wonder if The Shiny Bald One would howl in call-and-response.

Ever since she was little, Annie gave fake names to people she didn't know personally. It was a tactic that a psychiatrist once told her is very common in young children to easily associate people and to recognize them by definitive physical attributes. It was also a way to find quick comfort around total strangers, if one was inclined towards shyness, as Annie once was. She knew none of these men, but she had no interest in growing comfortable with them. They'd stormed the Purple Cat and attacked them, completely unprovoked. Still, she gave them names because it was the only thing that seemed normal to her.

The Shiny Bald One.
The Midget Man. The Yeti. She hadn’t named the fourth one yet.

This, thought Annie, is what happens when the world ends. People like this come out of the woodwork, ready for such terrible deeds, ready and waiting since the
day, they were born. The rules go out the window and the craving for blood increases. Men (including women) would quickly revert back to an animal state when backed into a corner. They probably weren't evil people before the storm started, though it felt silly to give them the benefit of that doubt. Maybe they were just
okay
people, with tendencies towards bad deeds on rare occasions, only when opportunity presented itself. 

Now they were beasts, still able to walk around on two legs, living in a world full of opportunity and dread and meat and the weakest animals imaginable.
 

"Please don't hurt him," Annie begged, just as The Midget Man tightened his grip on her elbow again. She could feel something prodding against the lower side of her buttocks. The Midget Man's penis was stiffening, probably turned on by her half naked state, or perhaps even turned on by the spontaneous violence they were asserting against their captives. Men got off on all kinds of different things and The Midget Man seemed a bit more subhuman than most.
Though it had nothing to do with his size. 

"I advise you to shut your mouth," said The Midget Man. His nasal passage was congested, judging by the sound of his voice.

They went at Tony hard, swinging, batting, and kicking him into submission.

He hadn’t stood a chance, just based on numbers alone.
 

Tony's face looked like it might pop at any moment. Though the room was murky with darkness, save for the fire light, she could see that his face was mashed and covered with splotches of shiny blood. His nose was already crooked to the left, tilted on one side
as if he'd fallen flat on his face from a three story building. The Shiny Bald One eased off his barrage for a moment, leaning back. His glistening head caught the glint of the fire, and for a moment, it almost looked like his shiny scalp was covered in roaring flames; an optical illusion mixed with Annie’s own wishful thinking. He shifted aside, allowing an opportunity for The Yeti to drop his boot on to Tony's throat. The strangling noise that came from her traveling companion (and nearly her savior, once upon a time) was ghastly and unwelcome in her ears.

If The Yeti hadn't crushed Tony's windpipe with his boot, then the next dropkick would most definitely achieve that end. Though Annie didn't believe in God, not since she was a child, she couldn't help but say a silent prayer for the mangled mess on the floor, squirming with hope of a mercy that would not come—not from above, and not from below.
 

The Yeti brought his massive boot down on Tony's throat again, this time with a slow, methodic crunch that seemed to last an eternity. The giant of a man wrung his meaty paws together, delighted by his destruction. His bearded face looked like that of one of those dog-faced boys that Annie remembered seeing in old carnie photos from the twenties and thirties.
  His eyes were sunken deep into his skull, the only sign of humanity that existed on his furry face. The hair all over his head, cheeks, chin, and jaw was curled in little ringlets. She couldn't be sure, but it looked like his overgrown beard was peppered with gray hair. 

"Tony?" Annie asked, holding back on a whimpering sound that hung at the back of her throat. It would not escape, but she wasn’t sure she wanted it to. "Tony--are you okay?"

It was a moronic question, really. If he wasn't already dead, he would be so soon enough. 

The Yeti looked over at Annie, grinning as he pressed his boot into Tony's throat a third time. A raspy, rattling breath choked inside of Tony's throat. He was still breathing and Annie considered that a miracle, though she wondered how long the misery would last.

"Your boyfriend won't be okay, prissy pants. He won’t be okay ever again. And I'll make sure of that," said The Yeti. His voice was high-pitched. The typical big-man-little-voice syndrome, Annie thought to herself, trying not to laugh as the man that would be her lover grappled at his decimated windpipe, struggling for a wheezy bit of air.

The man kneeling at Tony's feet cackled and hooted at The Yeti's devious comment. In that moment, though she should have been thinking about escape, Annie labeled him as The Chuckle Machine.
 

"I promise we'll leave this place and never say a word about this," she begged.

"I said shut your mouth, bitch," The Midget Man whispered, right in her ear. She could smell that he was wearing a pungent aftershave, something cheap and offensive. It seemed odd to be so focused on hygiene at a time like this. Tony hadn't even shaved in the three weeks since the storm started, let alone applying after-shave. The Midget Man surely had a screw loose, or he didn’t quite understand the gravity of the storm outside. “Your boy toy don’t sound so good,” he added, giggling at the terrible sound coming from Tony’s mouth. It was the most painful sound Annie could ever remember hearing.

Outside The Purple Cat, the wind whipped hard now, howling against the roof and the eaves. It was well after midnight now, and Annie suspected that it would be a long time until sunrise, if she even survived that long. 
Stop thinking like that
, she kept telling herself, but it didn’t do much good.  

"Ease back a bit," advised The Shiny Bald One, looking up at The Yeti with dead-serious eyes, that wolfish expression returning in spades. Shiny's whole facial expression was something stony and unflinching, as if he was unable to emotionally respond to anything in one way or another. He might have been a cowboy in an old spaghetti western-- all business, very little talk, ready to brandish his six-shooter when the shit hit the fan. Annie was confident that he was the
de facto
leader, and so she pleaded with him directly. In movies, you always begged the leader for mercy.

"I know it wasn’t right, coming in here without asking. We were going to die out there."

"You bet your ass it wasn't right. Shit's changed, in case you haven't noticed," said The Shiny Bald One, who now stood up from Tony's crumpled body. She could see Tony’s left hand fingers spasming now, as if they were trying to resuscitate his entire being. Annie heard another rattled breath come from Tony's mouth.

Still alive.
Barely alive, but still alive all the same.

"We staked a claim here about a week ago. You're not the first bozo to come through, and you won’t be the last. Shit hits the fan and everybody goes flocking to the food. We figured that out ourselves, but we figured it out first, you see? That's the difference between men like us and spoiled brats like you and Handsome Dan over here. We're smarter than you, and that's why we survive."

"Help
us
survive, too. I promise I'll make it worth your while."

The Chuckle Machine erupted again, still not saying anything but letting his pleasure loose into the air. His hair flew about his head wildly, thin black strands that looked like they'd been dipped in grease. He reminded her of a drug-addled gangster from a classic Hollywood movie, as there was something fully off kilter about him. A real cuckoo bird, somebody like Humphrey Bogart or
Greta Garbo might have called him. 

"You'll make it worth our while?" asked The Shiny Bald One, repeating it back to her in a mocking, girly voice, even batting his eyes as if he was some sort of six foot tall doll in a pink dress. His lips pulled back to reveal a perfect set of teeth, radiating in the fire light.

Any minute now, she was sure that The Shiny Bald One would howl.  

The Midget Man was breathing heavily against the back of her neck. His aftershave violated her nostrils as he started to rub up against her, getting
bolder with each thrust. It made the hairs on her arms stand up on their ends. "You fellas mind if she makes it worth
my
while first?" 

The Yeti and The Chuckle Machine remained silent, looking over at their leader for approval, but The Shiny Bald One gave the verbal go-ahead, finally confirming himself to Annie as their true figurehead. "Have fun, but clean her up when you're done. Don’t leave it messy for the rest of us."

So the three monsters watched Annie and The Midget Man. Their bulbous eyes were the most horrible part of all; vapid stares and licking lips, sipping on booze and smoking unfiltered cigarettes while The Midget Man went to the moon and back again. 

Chapter Ten

Pain.

The uneasy terror of an all-encompassing pain that would not go away surged through Annie, sending shudders up her spine and into her neck. She could barely remember what happened to her, but her body was well aware. Throbs and yelps from every muscle, from every cell in her body. She felt ruined, left out on the floor’s slab like a hunter’s slain conquest.

Through a swollen eye, she craned her neck up at the roaring fire. The Shiny Bald One kept The Yeti on fire patrol, commanding him to stoke and feed the fire regularly with a seemingly endless supply of wood. It licked at the edges of the hearth and something deep inside of Annie wished those flames would reach out and swallow her whole. She wished it would burn her until the pain went away. She didn’t want to know the feeling of being alive anymore.

Her body was no longer her own.

It belonged to
them
.

All her life, she was told by her hippie-lovin’ liberal parents that her body was a temple, never to be sacrificed to any whim or bad judgment. It was to be honored and kept well if she were to avoid the rigors of aging. Her parents voices' felt like they were screaming in pain now, drifting through her memories in a more vivid light than she could remember the past hour, though she was glad she couldn’t remember any of it.

The smell of urine kept wafting in and out of her busted nose. One of them, presumably the monstrous Yeti, had finished his rendezvous by pissing all over her backside. The smell of his bitter urine now mixed with the salty, coppery smell of blood that was clotting around her face. She wished she had the strength to cry out to them, to beg that they at least let her put her underwear back on, to give her back an ounce of dignity before they fully destroyed her.

She could hear them speaking at the other side of the room. It sounded like they were relaxed, most likely sitting at one of The Purple Cat's many varnished wood dining tables. Their garbled voices indicated that they were eating, chewing on something tough like a raw, bloody steak.
Cavemen to the bone--gnashing their teeth and grunting joyously.

Nothing gets a man hungry like a good
old-fashioned gang rape.

That hideous word (
raperaperapeyougotfuckingrapedAnnieyougotfuckingraped
) gnarled her senses, once again forcing her to beg the God of Fire to consume her broken vessel and send her to that faraway place that everybody must know sooner or later.

No.

No, that wouldn't do.
Stop being weak, Annie. They’ll smell it on you and this whole thing will only end one way.

It was Paulie. It had always been Paulie. The reason for everything, the answer to every question:
Paulie.
She needed to get back to him even if it killed her. He was safe at home, but he wouldn't survive without his Mommy, not without her to guide him into manhood. For that single thought, Annie summoned the strength to roll over on to her side, with new darts of pain activating inside of her, reminding her how badly they’d fucked her up. She could feel the intrusion all the way into the lower regions of her stomach, simmering butterfly wings flapping at the bottom of her womb.

A voice came drifting through the wooden rafters, bouncing and reverberating, "Fine night for a fire, isn't it?" The voice sounded like The Shiny Bald One, but she couldn't be sure. The
Yeti and The Chuckle Machine had hardly spoken at all. The Midget Man's voice was something of a Munchkinland reject, so the voice she heard now had to be their ringleader.

She listened intently to the sounds: more chewing and slurping on some beverage, certainly alcoholic, and then a raging fit of laughter. The Chuckle Machine found the entire evening to be beyond delight.

"When the sun comes up, we'll head to ol’ Sanford Pepper's house. Heard from a guy down at the grange that he was decked out with all kinds of heavy artillery, some real World War Three shit." The Shiny Bald One planned aloud, adding, "Our only problem may be Pepper himself, but that's why we roll in there with gifts in hand. Some steaks, some booze, and some firewood. Of course, once we
makum' peace pipeum'
, then we'll take care of that old coot properly."

The Chuckle Machine erupted, apparently playing the part of mischievous super-villain in this vicious squad, as the Midget Man asked, "He'll have his guns blazing if we roll up on him. My aunt Betty went out with him way back in high
school and my pop said she was always comin’ home with black eyes." There was a kind of ironic pity in the little shit's voice, as though his aunt's physical abuse was far removed from the treatment he and his trio of monster pals had just dealt out to Annie. The hypocrite couldn't see what he’d been a party to. Maybe Annie was just a piece of meat to them, just like the wild animals that they'd soon be hunting when the Purple Cat's food stash ran out.

"He won't be a problem," their leader replied, sounding resolute enough that Annie quite believed him. The Shiny Bald One was the type that always had a plan in motion. Tony had been like that, before they’d stomped the life out of him.

They kept on chewing, occasionally releasing a hearty burp to attest their pleasure.

"Stop hoggin' that hooch, Dan. And stop getting your shit-lips all over it," a new voice called out. Annie assumed it was The Yeti. He spoke like a high-pitched galoot, just like he looked. Annie couldn’t help but think of Lenny from
Of Mice and Men
. She wondered if The Yeti would start petting her after his next go-‘round her vagina, maybe break her neck by accident.

"Don't use my name, Mikey!" The Midget Man shouted back at him.

Annie reached down around her ankles; though it felt like the lower half of her body was no longer attached to the rest of her. Her fingers touched a soft but muddy mess that felt very much like they were once her panties. With a lurch in her spine, biting her tongue so hard that she felt she might bite it right off, she pulled them up her shins and up around her waist. Her arms slumped to the floor again, fingernails digging into the wooden planks from the pain she could not escape.

"Use names if you want to," said The Shiny Bald One, chirping giddily to
himself. "She won't know our names long enough to tell anybody… won't know anything about
anything
longer than tomorrow. Our fun won't hold out; maybe three or four more whirls and then we'll have to throw her out with the rest of the trash. She'll start stinking up the joint, like that other one."

Her stomach soured. They seemed pretty nonchalant about the fact that she’d soon be dead.
Dead, just like...

Tony.

She forgot all about Tony in her private bursts of pain and wishing that she would die. Poor Tony was beaten to within an inch of his life, and then an inch and a half beyond that. Annie couldn't see him, as they'd dragged him away. Or was there a
him
anymore? Wasn’t it just a body now? Yes-- she’d heard his last breath while they violated her.

Getting rid of Tony was understandable, thought Annie with a sick laugh that existed only inside her head. Who the hell could get a hard-on with a dead guy on the floor? 

Annie couldn't help thinking about his wife, Vickie maybe, why couldn’t she remember his wife’s name now, and kids, waiting and wishing, thinking that Daddy would be home any minute now, no different from Paulie wondering if his own mother would return to him in one piece. Tony had been a shit, but he'd saved her.

No, she thought. Don't be naive. He brought you here, looking to score. Tony was looking to get some action and a full belly, no different from the rest of these cretins sitting around the post-rape-party dinner table, shoveling more protein into their bodies so that they could go at her again in short order. Tony was only slightly different from them. He tried to do the right thing, no matter his ulterior motives, and still, look what it brought her.

Had the whole damn world gone mad? She was almost convinced.

Annie curled up into the fetal position, trying to picture Paulie in her mind's eye, hoping that it would lull her into a calm long enough to do what she had to do. She had trouble picturing his face, terrified that her more recent snapshots of memory might intermingle with her images of him. The thought occurred to her that she might never see him again, so she cast him out of her mind, though it pained her to do so.

She wasn't sure how it happened, or when it happened, but she fell back asleep. And somewhere, nestled amidst her dreams, she found herself running through the splattered red snow, buck naked except for her snow boots, bleeding out of nearly every orifice, crying out for Christian to save her from the starving wolves, crying out for Paulie to avert his eyes. Raging monsters--hairy, howling, and clawing at the insufferable snow – bounded at her and dug into her flesh, eating until they were full. They ate her again and again, over and over, until she finally woke up.

*  *  *

Annie woke with a startle, looking up to the left, where the early morning sun was poking through the drawn shades the best it could. It was still dark, mostly from the unabating storm. But there was a warm orange glow to that light, as if the lightness of the planet was starting to win again. Annie steadied her chin on the floor, feeling around her body.

She'd been forcibly dressed while she slept. Thank God, she thought, feeling her dignity creeping back into her one breath at a time.

"Good morning, sweetie pie."

Sitting in the easy chair that, Tony had once lounged on as he commanded her around, was the little imp she’d come to think of as The Midget Man. He had been the first to put his evil inside of her, where it did not belong, and so there was a particularly nasty voltage inside of her vocal cords. She wanted to holler at him, to tell him what a shit heel he was and how he was destined for hell, but as she opened her mouth she felt that pain resume, all the way from her privates up to her eyes.

"The boys stepped out for a bit. Just a little supply run at the Pepper place," he said, his face glowing in the tiny fire that still survived inside the fireplace. He looked devilish sitting there, and now she could see that one of his eyes was lazy, drifting off to his right as if he was a hunting dog getting ready to hop on a squirrel.

She could no longer smell his repugnant aftershave, but her nasal memory would always be there, ready for her whenever she thought about what he did to her. His penetration was the
moment where her entire being had shut down altogether, when she went into a distant barn of her mind, pulling the lofty doors closed behind her. The last thing she could remember was his lowly stench, of cheap aftershave that smelled like something a ten year old might wear to his first school dance.

"When is it?"

"Morning."

"No.
The date." It was an odd request, but she couldn’t get control of her mind. Not yet.

The Midget Man couldn't contain the snarky giggle that escaped him. He said, "The date? Fuck if I know. What the hell does that matter anyway? Dates don't mean shit anymore, case you haven't noticed."

Annie groaned, reaching out her hand to push herself up.

"Hey now," said The Midget Man, fidgeting in his chair just enough to show he'd make a move if she tried to run, and with that Annie flopped back to the chilly floor. The fire was just about extinguished, so the euphoric warmth that once blanketed her ravaged body was pulling back into its shell.

"Rapist," she managed to say, though it hurt to say anything at all.

A switch inside of him flipped. His giddy persona was replaced by a virulent man, one with a scowling face and blazing eyes.

"Sure enough. Say what you will, but I'm not the one bleeding out my shoo-shoo. You go back to sleep," he said. "You're going to need to save up your energy for when the boys get back. For the time bein', I'm all tapped out," he said, grabbing his crotch and snarling comically.

He was the most evil thing she’d ever encountered, right behind The Shiny Bald One.

She pressed her eyelids together, listening to his breathing. He said something quiet, but she didn’t acknowledge it.

Annie snored, but she didn't sleep. Ever since she was a child, she had been a true night owl, so the feigned snore and sleepy eyes (to trick her parents) was no stranger to her. There was a theory that went like this: when you yawn, everybody else around you yawns by proxy.
When you snore, so happens the same. Annie was banking on that, combined with the fact that The Midget Man had been up all night with his deviant cronies, plotting the next day's apocalyptic ventures, furthering their plot to turn the world into their own form of hell.

Sinking deep into a fake snore, Annie realized that she hadn’t lost that skill.

She had an advantage over them.

Though broken and torn, Annie was well rested.