Helplessly, automatically, Rane inched toward the kitchen. She knew where it was. She and Keira had been left in it when they were rescued from their father.
Rane shook her aching head, not wanting to think about that. She did not know where Keira was or what was happening to her. She cared, but she did not want to think about it now. She was not even sure where her father was.
She worried about him because he was obviously sick. He might hurt himself and not even know it. The car rats might
hurt him because he could not respond to their orders. But as worried as she was about him, she could not keep her mind on him. She was so weak, so sick with hunger, and the kitchen seemed so far away.
She was not sure how far she had gone across the vast room when someone stopped her. "Where the hell do you think you're going, sis? What's the matter with you?"
"I'm hungry," she gasped.
"Hungry? Shit, you're sick. You're soaking wet."
Rane managed to look up, see that it was a deep-voiced woman who had stopped her, not a man as she had thought. Of course. She smelled like a woman. Rane shook her head, trying to remember whether men and women had always smelled noticeably different. But she could not keep her mind on the question.
"Please," she begged, "just give me some food." "You're probably not even strong enough to eat."
"Please," Rane wept. She had done more crying in the past few days than she had in the past several years. She could not recall feeling so utterly helpless before. What would happen if the woman prevented her from reaching food? She was already in more pain than she thought could result from hunger.
"You get back to your place and keep from underfoot," the woman said. She was large and blocky. Rane at her best could not have gotten past her. Now, all but helpless, Rane felt herself dragged back to her place at the wall.
"Stay put!" the woman said, then stomped away in her heavy boots. Immediately, Rane began crawling toward the kitchen again. She could not help herself.
She had her hand stepped on once, painfully, and someone shouted at her and cursed her, but no one stopped her again.
She reached the kitchen, noticed peripherally that someone had found a gunport there alongside the sink. A bald, shirtless man stood before it, firing mechanically. The man had enough hair on his body to cover several heads.
A gorilla, Rane thought. No more human than the things he was firing at. Jesus, was anyone negotiating with her grandparents or were they all here trying to kill Eli's people? How long had the siege gone on? Two days? Three? More? She could not remember.
She managed to drag herself upright by using the handles of the large refrigerator, then stand while she pulled one of
the doors open. There was little food to be found. A few fresh vegetables -tomatoes, a limp carrot, two cucumbers, green onions, green beans.
She ate everything she could find. By the time the shooting let up and the hairy man on the other side of the kitchen had time to pay attention to her, she had opened the other side of the refrigerator and found several steaks probably
intended for the night's dinner. The steaks were raw, some of them still icy. There was some cooked meat, too-what
was left of a pair of large roasts scraped together onto one platter.
Without thinking, Rane chose the raw meat. Its coldness disturbed her but the fact that it was raw did not even penetrate her consciousness until she had cleaned the bone of the first steak and was beginning the second. Raw smelled better than cooked, that was all.
Finally she began to feel stronger, aware enough for her bloody hands and the bloody meat she held to startle her. She had never liked her meat even medium rare, had always eaten it well-done or, as Keira said, burned. But this meat, except for its coldness, was the best thing she had ever tasted.
Now the car rat saw what she was doing, and, amazed, came to take the second steak from her. She did her best to bite off one of his fingers. If her bound hands and feet had not restricted her movement, she would have succeeded. As it was, her unexpected swiftness and ferocity drove the car rat back.
"Goddamn," he said staring at her as she tore off a piece of steak. "Goddamn, you and your whole family are crazy."
He was an ape. Heavy brow ridges, flattened, broken nose, body hair no one would believe. But now that she had eaten, now that she felt stronger, she realized he smelled interesting.
She finished her steak while he watched, repelled and fascinated. Then she wiped her mouth and smiled. "I won't hurt you," she said, knowing he would laugh.
He laughed humorlessly. "Damn right you won't, sis." "I was hungry."
"You were crazy-are crazy."
He liked her. She could see it as clearly as though that wary face of his were leering.
"So?" she said, shrugging. "Who the hell isn't crazy these days?" One of her father's patients had said that to her-a young thief with skin as smooth as Keira's except where acid had scarred him. He had been brought to the enclave hospital for special treatment and had laughed at her when she tried to talk him out of leaving the hospital and going back to his gang. He could not get even with the acid thrower, he said, until he was with his own again. This in spite of the fact that his own had run away and left him writhing on the ground.
"You're crazy!" she had screamed at him.
"So who isn't crazy these days?" he had demanded.
"I'm. not," she had said. "And I never will be. Co ahead and flush yourself down the toilet if you want to!"
Her father had only just begun letting her volunteer at the hospital. The boy's self-destructive stubbornness had upset her, but she had comforted herself with the knowledge that she was stronger than he was. He could have healed completely and gotten work in one of the enclaves. She had told him she would talk her father into helping him. But he had chosen the sewers. She was stronger and smarter.
Or was she merely untested?
She knew the disease organisms were pushing her toward this repulsive man. And she was yielding to them mindlessly. Stephen Kaneshiro had resisted, had not raped her. She could resist, too.
Deliberately, she took another steak. She was not very hungry now, but the meat still smelled good. It was not hard for her to tear into it as messily as possible. She let blood run down her chin and arms, chewed with her mouth open, occasionally smacking her lips. Eventually, she heard the ape make a sound of disgust and stomp away.
The shooting had stopped. Rane was alone in the kitchen- happy to be alone. She thought she might be able to get out the back door if she could get free of her cuffs. She bit pieces of fat from the steak and rubbed them on her wrists. Nothing in the kitchen would be likely to cut the cuffs. Very likely, nothing in the house would cut them. The plastic
only looked flimsy. But she thought if she did not fight them, she might be able to slip them. She had seen her father try
to do this and fail. But it seemed to her he had not used his muscles effectively, and he had had no fat to help him. She had to try. Anything was better than just sitting and waiting to see what her captors or the disease organism would do to her next.
Several minutes later, as she was freeing one hand through flexibility and control that amazed even her, a young white- haired woman caught her.