He stepped closer. The crows parted for him without complaint. They knew what was going to happen and they had no interest interfering.
“Stay back,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Think of how amazing it will be when the other crows appear, when they take to the air as one and descend upon the fresh kill. Maybe I’ll let you live long enough to hear the deafening drone of their thousands of flapping wings. It will sound like angels coming to carry you away.”
“You’re fucking crazy.” She was trying to sound tough but fresh tears muddled her words.
“Don’t worry, though, I’m sure you won’t last very long when they start feeding. They’ll clean you right down to the bones. Then I’ll take a few of your bones and carry them with me. They will keep me company when the Dark Time comes. They will remind me of the time we’ve had together. Of the smoothness of your flesh. Of the wetness inside you.”
She crouched at the edge. Her hands gripped at the sides of her head and she cried. “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t do anything to me. Please.”
He was almost within an arm’s reach of her. He paused again. He could knock out all her teeth and then fuck her mouth before gutting her and letting the crows at her. He could hear the choked gagging noises she would make and he grew eager to have her again.
“Don’t worry about your father, either,” he said. “I will place him by your side. You may think I’m a monster but I’m not heartless. I would have gladly let him live if you hadn’t made this all so difficult. You could have been mine. You could have stayed with me and survived the End of Everything. Instead, you’re going to die on the side of this mountain. But not before I have you one more time. Not before you give me what I want.”
He stepped toward her, cast the light on her face. It was hidden behind hands grimed in dirt and blood. He reached for her head with his injured hand. The fingers had swelled up even further and blood trailed down the back of his hand and dribbled off his wrist onto the back of a crow.
A monstrous scream rose in the air like a piercing siren through a town falling before a tornado.
For a moment, Victor thought it was coming from the girl and then he realized what was happening and when he looked behind him, he gave the bitch the chance she needed.
Caleb launched out of the wall of bushes with the scream still croaking out of him and Mercy Higgins jumped to her feet and smashed Victor in the side of the face with her flashlight.
As Victor turned back to her, the crows took flight.
FORTY-EIGHT
She begged for him not to hurt her and that was factual but not altogether true. She didn’t want him to wreak any more pain upon her, but she knew her pleas would only encourage him and that’s what she wanted. Get him close enough and then attack. A strong enough hit could give her the time she needed to run. After that, well, it was time to see just how tough a bitch she could be.
The scream might have been in her mind. It came from the bushes just as she adjusted her grip on the flashlight and pounced up and toward him and that scream could have been her desperation for this to work, for her to have a chance to survive.
But it was Caleb, somehow finding his way back down the mountain and right to this very spot. That wasn’t good because what the hell was she going to do against both of them? But when Victor turned his head, Mercy was immediately thankful that the other asshole had tracked her down.
The flashlight’s silver plastic casing reflected in the moonlight and a thick puff of hot air from her frantic breathing obscured it for a moment before the head of the flashlight connected with Victor’s cheek and his head snapped to the side as if from a massive punch.
Then the crows took to the air in unison. For the length of a snapshot, they hovered at waist height and Mercy saw Victor turn back to her with blood running down his cheek and behind him was Caleb lurching toward them, his mouth a beastly rictus full of spit. Then the crows were up and the moon was blacked out. Mercy was lost in a darkness alive with flapping wings and human hands desperate to claw her flesh and rip her wide open.
Feathers brushed her face from all sides and she thought of being smothered beneath rolls of silk. To die in such comfort was uniquely disturbing. Then the thought was gone and Victor’s fingers were tearing at her face and entangling in her hair.
She screamed but her shouts were lost in the incredible thumping beat of the crows’ wings and somewhere under that was Caleb’s distorted screech. She managed to hit Victor in the head a few times more with the flashlight before it fell from her hand and was gone, but his grip on her hair tightened and his other hand groped at her cheek, found her nose, and squeezed.
This scream rang in her mind as one whitewashed wall of pain that obscured everything else. She clawed at his hand but his fingers squeezed harder and then snapped to the side. The breaking of her nose was more intense than her anguished scream and for several seconds the pain was too great to process even as some mammoth wall of misery. She was merely nothing, only pain. When some semblance of rational thought returned, she wanted to sprout wings and fly off with these crows or even jump from the cliff and plummet to her death. Either flee or die. One or the other. She could not endure this pain any longer. It would drive her insane.
You could fall and not die, but it wouldn’t be long before these crows found you and began to feast. They’d probably start with your eyes. Can you imagine what that will feel like, having your eyes pecked right out of your head?
He had broken her nose but he wasn’t letting up on it. He snapped it back in the other direction and then back and forth again. He didn’t want to simply cause her pain--he wanted to rip her nose right off her face.
So, show him that he can’t do that to you. Mom again. Show him you’re a real, tough bitch.
The pain was hot flashes of bright lightning in a humid summer sky. Blood coursed over her lips and down her throat in a wave and she wondered if she could choke to death on her own blood. Of course she could. It wasn’t only flowing from her nostrils; it was gushing down her throat from inside where she couldn’t possibly stop the flow.
Toughen up, you bitch! Toughen up! Hurt him! HURT HIM!
Somehow she found the power to throw her hands at his face and in the darkness found the soft flesh of his cheeks where her nails dug in and then discovered the pulpy blobs that were his eyes and jammed her thumbs into both of them.
His grip fell away and it was like massive rains that cooled a scorching day. She tried to pop his eyeballs, tried to push hard enough to get those jelly orbs to burst and gush over her hands, but she couldn’t do it and a moment later he was tearing her hands free from his face.
The moon was still hidden behind a living cloud of black wings or maybe she was trapped in the dark abyss inside her mind where she had retreated to withstand the pain in her nose. What was left of her nose, anyway.
Hands hot and wet (with my blood on them) groped at her throat. She stumbled back--the edge! the edge!--and felt her feet tangle together and slip forward. Those strong hands pushed her down, down, down, and she fell for hours and days, dropping through an eternal night and she couldn’t even scream, could only accept that this was it, this was THE END of her and how fucking tragic and pathetic was that?
Then her back smacked the ground and she knew she had fallen only a few feet. Relief and horror gripped her with equal hostility. Her end was fast approaching but not as fast as it might have been.
The hands were no longer around her neck. They were nowhere else on her body, either.
She either opened her eyes or the dense flock (murder) of crows thinned out enough for the moonlight to streak through the flying shadows. Victor was gone.