“He’s going to need it. But lay off his face.”
“Stop that, baby. You’ll get your kicks in the woods.”
Someone pulled the girl off him; she had been smothering his face with her body. McCall noticed now that they were out in the country; the streetlights were gone. The headlights of the second car gave him an occasional glimpse of the black countryside.
The car careened, and McCall knew that they had turned off the main road. From the bumpy ride, they were traveling on a dirt road now.
“How much longer?”
“We’re almost there.”
“Where we taking him?”
“Over by the shack.”
“You going to give it to him in the shack?”
“Hell, no, then we’d only have to clean it up. We need it in a couple of days for the bash.”
“What bash?”
“Tell you about it later.”
“Here we are.”
“Is this deep enough in the woods?”
“Whoever comes here except us?”
“You’re going to love this, Snoopy.”
The car screeched to a halt and the door flashed open and the men piled out. One reached back and grabbed McCall’s ankle, as if to drag him from the car.
He kicked. The man yelped, backing away.
“Well, looky, looky,” the girl in the rear seat said. “Look at all this room they left us. You want to make out, fuzz?” and she grabbed his hand and put it on her body. A fist struck him in the groin and strong hands clamped on his legs.
Struggling, trying to kick, he was hauled from the car. The second car had pulled up and emptied, and it seemed to McCall that the entire student body of Tisquanto State fell on him.
“Where’s the rope?”
“Who’s got the rope?”
“Here.”
Through the wall of flesh lying on him McCall caught glimpses of other naked bodies shifting about in the moonlight, breasts, buttocks, genitals; and where faces should have been the grotesque monster-masks. It was like some witches’ sabbath.
“Okay,” the leader’s voice said. “You men, hold on to him. You girls — strip him.”
McCall rocked suddenly to his knees and sprang toward one of the men. He failed to arrive. Three others tackled him and brought him down with a crash. They were young and powerful. He felt panic for the first time. Could they actually be going to kill him? Four held him down, two by his legs, two holding his arms over his head.
“Get his pants off,” the voice said. “You. You’ve had plenty of practice.”
One corner of McCall’s brain, the residence of the neutral observer, remarked that at no time had any of them used a name in talking to others. This had been well planned.
The rest of him squirmed. But they held him fast.
Small fingers worked on his belt, unzipped his fly. He wriggled and twisted and arched his back trying to escape the soft little hands, but he was like a big insect caught in a bigger spider web, he could only struggle in vain. He stopped fighting to conserve his strength for what lay ahead.
He felt his trousers stripped off.
“Jacket, shirt.”
He put up no resistance as two girls removed his jacket, his tie, his shirt, his T-shirt.
“His shorts.”
The girl-hands ripped his shorts off.
He was naked except for socks and shoes. McCall had the silliest thought: he wished they would take those off, too. To be left in the raw, all but your ankles and feet, was somehow too grotesque to bear.
“Wow,” said one of the girls. “Oh, wow! Look at the way grandpa’s hung. Bigger even than you, Bobby.”
McCall heard a smack and the girl’s yelp. “No names! Don’t skid again.”
They yanked him to his feet. McCall blinked. Oddly, he did not mind his nudity now. In the country of the altogether-naked, the man with shoes is king... he almost laughed at the conceit. They were in a clearing. The moon was almost directly overhead.
“I want a joint,” one of the girls said.
“There’s some in the car.”
“Where?”
“Glove compartment.”
The girl hurried off, everything bouncing in the moonlight. When she returned she was lighting a cigarette. From the acrid odor, it was marijuana. The headlights of the second car filled the clearing like a stage set.
“Tie him to that tree,” the leader ordered.
He was hustled over to a young maple. They began lashing his legs to the tree. He grabbed one of the men by the ear and twisted. The man fell back with a shriek and sat down hard. He got up slowly, picking gravel out of his rear end.
“That’ll cost you, Mr. McCall,” he said in a very quiet way.
“He’s so damned cute,” a girl with blonde hair curling from under the mask said.
They finished tying him to the maple.
The girls crowded around. The one with the marijuana cigarette came closest. She rubbed against him. “You’re sweet,” she said. “Too bad there has to be a time and a place for everything. Here, have a drag.”
McCall averted his face. She tried to jab the joint between his lips. Two of the other girls laughed and tackled him from the sides, working on his jaws to get his mouth open. He bit one of them.
“The hell with you, Fuzzy Wuzzy,” the girl with the joint said. “You won’t smoke it, it’s going to smoke you.”
She rammed the lighted end into his groin.
McCall strained against the ropes as if he were in the electric chair. The girl stepped back breathing hard and fast, eyes glowing.
“All right, all right,” one of the males said. “You’ve had your jollies. One side.”
Where the cigarette had touched his flesh McCall felt a flow of lava. He chewed the lining of his cheek, deliberately diverting the pain.
“Now,” the commanding voice said, “we all take our licks. One crack a piece, ladies and gentlemen. Line up.”
“Who’s first?”
“I am. Ready, Mr. McCall? Lesson number one—” McCall felt a jolt under his heart, a heavy, heavy blow. He raised and twisted his head, breathing in. If this is the worst I can take it. I’ve got to take it. Brace...
“Next? Not his face, gentlemen. Just his body. Where he won’t advertise.”
They struck him one by one. Once McCall heard himself grunt, and he shook his head. He found himself sagging against the lashings.
“I don’t hit hard enough,” the girl who had burned him was tittering. “So I’ll just tickle.”
She began at his ribs, working down, ruthless, a demon. McCall watched himself from a distance, writhing, shrinking, fighting hysteria. He had always been ticklish, and this witch in female skin seemed to know his most sensitive zones. Through his helplessness a sense of outrage began to take shape, an anger at the humiliations, a slaver of yearned-for revenge. He fought them down. That wasn’t the way. Somebody was talking to him... I had better listen.
“We don’t want to have to get tougher with you,” the commanding voice was saying coldly. So they were through with him, and this was the moral lesson, the sermon at the end of the black mass. “But don’t ever think we won’t if we have to. And what’s going to make us feel we have to is if you keep snooping around ’Squanto where you’re not wanted. We can settle our own problems, we don’t need any help from Governor Holland or his muscle-head. Dig?”
He found himself staring into the mask.
“It’s all fouled up on this campus, Mr. McCall, like on all the other campuses. We’re going to clean it up — straighten the Establishment out. We don’t want interference from upstate. We’ve got hangups enough without you. And if the governor calls out the National Guard there’ll be so much blood spilled in Tisquanto he’ll never hold another elective office.”
“Dig, brother?” somebody jeered.
“You can go back to your governor and tell him he’s the system, and you’re the system, and we don’t dig the system.” A hint of warmth had invaded the cold voice. “We want respect around here. We’re not sheep or kindergarten kids, we’re grownup people. We’re sick of being told what to study, where to go to bed, whether to smoke pot, how to arrange our lives. It’s public money that’s being spent in this institution, and we’re going to have a say in how it’s spent.”