He was reaching for the bong when Wanda said, “Maybe I should have a talk with her.” She shrugged when Chad showed her a puzzled look. “Hey, why not? She might feel more comfortable talking this shit out with a woman.”
Jim passed the bong to Chad and said, “I agree. Let Wanda talk to her. Open up some new channels of communication and see what happens.”
Chad accepted the bong. He put the lighter to the bowl, covered the carb with a fingertip, and inhaled a lungful of smoke. He held the smoke inside for a full twenty seconds before blowing a white stream at the ceiling. A few moments later he felt some of the tension go out of his body. He did a few more hits and felt even better. At some fuzzy point the sitar music gave way to the Velvet Underground. Chad was aware of laughter, but his sense of the ongoing conversation became garbled and disjointed. He hardly noticed when Wanda stood up from the table and left the cabin.
Allyson’s fingers were starting to cramp from all the hours she’d spent chopping vegetables for Camp Whiskey ’s cooking crew. A big feast was in the works for the evening and all day long the mess hall’s kitchen had been a bustle of activity. But now it was late in the afternoon and the other women she’d been working with had knocked off for a final break before the last big pre-dinner push. They hadn’t invited her to join them outside, which was typical of the way she’d been shunned from the beginning. Though Chad denied it, she suspected the thinly disguised ill will toward her was a result of Jim’s lingering distrust of her.
Allyson’s life prior to arriving at Camp Whiskey had not been an easy one, but she was pretty and personable and so had always managed to find a way to fit in wherever she went. This ostracism was something new. Being surrounded by people who would barely talk to her or look at her was worse by far than merely being alone. It hurt her in a fundamental way that she’d never truly experienced before. And, of course, they all knew of her past in the porn industry. Someone-
Jim, she thought, her blood boiling.
– had decided to share this bit of information with his inner circle. And the juicy tidbit had filtered down through the grapevine until everyone knew about it. Chad ’s apparent unwillingness to stand up for her made it worse. It was almost as frustrating as her several failed attempts at seducing him. He didn’t seem at all interested in her physically anymore, and Allyson was beginning to feel it was pointless to keep trying.
Thinking about it caused her to grit her teeth and start chopping the carrots faster. She wielded the gleaming blade in her hand with a swift efficiency. Something about the task made her recall how easily the axe blade had punched through the flesh of the men sent to retrieve Chad and Jim. She imagined the blade in her hand pressed to Jim’s throat. Saw his eyes go wide as she eased the sharp wedge of steel into his flesh and drew blood, his pleas for mercy going unanswered as she made him pay dearly for the humiliation she’d suffered. But the fantasy brought no real satisfaction. Her wounded pride aside, she ached to fit in and be accepted. Ached to have Chad like and respect her again.
She didn’t realize her eyes had filled with tears until she heard the sound of boot heels on the kitchen floor. She wiped her eyes with the back of a hand and looked up to see Wanda Lewis entering the kitchen from the mess hall. The woman was tall and slender, and possessed of a striking prettiness that made Allyson want to touch her. Which was just odd. Allyson had performed sexual acts with women before, but never outside the context of porn films. Hetero was her default orientation and she was happy with it, so it was a strange thing to feel that little tingle of arousal every time she saw Wanda’s face.
There was a small, enigmatic smile teasing the corners of the woman’s mouth as she approached Allyson and placed a hand on her arm. “Come for a walk with me, Allyson. I’d like to talk with you about some things.”
Allyson looked into the taller woman’s luminous green eyes and felt something melt inside her. Maybe Wanda had approached her as a peacemaker. Perhaps she’d even been sent by Jim for that very purpose. The prospect of being accepted at last by the inner circle made her heart skip a beat. She felt like crying again, but she managed to keep the tears at bay. She dared not get her hopes up too soon.
She let go of the knife and wiped her hands on the dirty apron tied about her waist. “Okay.” She untied the apron and tossed it over the back of a chair. “I’m about sick of this women’s work bullshit anyway.”
Wanda smiled again and moved toward the screen door at the rear of the kitchen. Allyson followed her outside and noted at once the mixture of disdain and curiosity playing across the faces of her co-workers. Most of them puffed at cigarettes and pretended not to notice her, but one man, a soldier who’d moved away from the nearby woods to talk to the gathered women, looked her in the eye for a moment. A flicker of some unreadable emotion passed over his face and disappeared.
Allyson hurried to catch up to Wanda, whose long strides had nearly carried her to the edge of the woods in the time Allyson had paused to study the soldier’s expression. She stepped through the line of trees and put an extra spring in her step as she glimpsed Wanda’s back in intermittent flashes through the maze of trees. They were moving along a winding, ill-defined path. She moved quickly along lengths of bare ground, then had to take her time negotiating areas covered with thick bramble and blocked by low-hanging branches.
She was nearly out of breath by the time she emerged into a small clearing. Wanda was standing in the center of the clearing with her back turned. She moved closer to the other woman and said, “It’s…kind of…nice out here.” She laughed once, a sound rendered brittle by her live-wire nerves. “If you’re into the whole back-to-nature thing, I mean. I’m not, really, but I’m trying to get used to it.”
Wanda laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about that, Allyson.”
She turned around and Allyson gasped at the sight of the gun pointed at her chest. Her knees went weak and her stomach did a slow roll. “Wh-what…is this?”
Wanda moved closer. “Get on your knees, Allyson.”
Allyson knew she should turn and run. A mad dash back into the woods was her only chance of escape. But the sight of that looming gun barrel was so intimidating. The strength drained from her legs and she dropped to her knees. Wanda’s smile broadened as she approached Allyson and placed the warm gun barrel against the center of her forehead.
She laughed at the sight of tears spilling down Allyson’s cheeks. “Poor little thing. Did you really think I brought you here for some heart-to-heart, girl-to-girl talk?”
Allyson was shaking uncontrollably by now. The steel biting into her flesh felt like the cold finger of God, the Almighty laying His judgment down on her. She’d done a lot of bad things in the past and now the time of reckoning had come.
Wanda pressed the gun harder against Allyson’s forehead, making her look up into her leering face. “I’ve been assigned by my Mistress to act as your executioner. You shouldn’t never have fucked us over, bitch.”
Allyson’s eyes blinked in confusion. “Wh…?”
Wanda’s forefinger began to exert pressure on the 9mm’s trigger. Allyson knew she was an instant away from dying. She should be praying to God for forgiveness in hopes that He might show her some mercy once she crossed to the other side. But instinct sent her mind scrambling to make sense of w hat Wanda had said.
It almost seemed as if…
BLAM!
Allyson screamed as the shot rang out, the blast echoing in the clearing as Wanda toppled backward and fell hard to the ground. Allyson remained frozen for a moment, unable at first to comprehend that she was still alive and that the person who’d meant to kill her had been struck down. Then she gasped as she heard heavy footsteps moving past her toward the fallen woman.