As she estimated that the time grew close for her assailant’s next visit, Eva didn’t think she was ready to take him on. But when he brought her another flower, something snapped inside. Although she’d promised herself she wouldn’t use her body as a weapon against men again, she dropped her blanket when he handed her the flower, exposing herself intentionally in his dim light.
He grinned stupidly.
She indicated he should take his shirt off. It was important that he took his shirt off first.
He did so clumsily, over eagerly, then she indicated he should remove his trousers.
He started, and as soon as his trousers were down around his ankles and he attempted to remove his first leg from them, she lashed out with a vicious kick to his groin, her heel connecting hard.
He doubled over, as expected, and she followed up with her knee to his face.
But he was big and strong, he would have been a lineman had he played American football, and Eva had been weakened by lack of exercise, lack of nutrition, and her repeated injuries. Her knee caught him how she wanted it to, but he didn’t go down. He didn’t fall. He stood, dazed, but he stood, and Eva knew it was now or never. He would never trust her again. He would never let her get the best of him again. This was her only shot.
Hampered by his pants around his ankles, he reached out to grab her, but instead of trying to flee his windmilling arms, his hands that could knock her flat, she rushed him, got inside his grasp, and put one hand on his chin, the other in his eyes. He didn’t try to push her away and pummel her senseless, like he should have, but made the fatal mistake of trying to grab her naked, lithe form.
Eva pushed hard and up, her fingers clawing his eyes, her hand pushing his neck back, and just like in the textbooks and in her sparring matches, just like the Lieutenant Grenadier had showed her when he tried to teach her a technique she already knew, Eva’s assailant began to fall backwards.
Surprised, his arms flailed in the air and he went down and Eva struck him in the face with the flat of her palm and his nose finally burst open, blood spraying.
He howled.
Slipping out of his grasp, she knew she needed a weapon to kill him. He was too strong. Even now, blinded by blood and pain, he began sitting up when he couldn’t keep a hold of her. She’d thought ahead of time of what weapon she might use, and as it was the only thing available to her, she grabbed his pants that were still around his ankles and whipped his belt out from them. He flailed blindly, trying to hit her.
He sat completely up, his meaty hands wiping blood and tears from his eyes, and Eva circled around behind him.
“Where’d you go?” he growled angrily, his hands moving away from his face to leverage himself up. She knew she couldn’t let him stand. The belt went over his head and around his neck.
He grabbed for the belt instinctively, giving Eva the precious time she needed to cross the belt in the back and pull with all of her might.
If he’d gotten to his feet, if his legs hadn’t been tangled in his trousers, he could have rammed her into a rough stone wall and it probably would have knocked her out. She would have been dead then, or worse.
But he still sat on the ground, grasping at the belt around his neck, and Eva used her knee in his back for more leverage.
She knew enough before she attacked him to cross her arms before she put the belt over his head, then cross the belt as she pulled. It helped as he frantically reached behind himself and grabbed the straps. Trying to pull the ends of his belt apart, he only tightened them more. His thick arms and panicked defense kept him from reaching farther back to where her sweaty hands threatened to slip, to where her tired arms ached from pulling for her life, and he reached back to his neck, foolishly trying to loosen the belt.
If he’d turned his head quickly to keep his windpipe from collapsing, and then focused on hitting Eva instead of loosening the deadly strap, he might have lived.
She pulled and pulled, the three or four minutes it took to for him to pass out feeling like forever, and he finally slumped.
Not trusting that it wasn’t a trick, knowing that he had to be dead and not just unconscious, she continued to pull on the ends of his belt, her knee in his back pushing also, and she felt something give.
She relaxed her grip and pushed him forward with her leg, using the belt to guide him face down to the ground. His body complied.
She knelt on his back with her right knee, tightened her grip, and pulled again.
In the dim light she saw his face purpling, but no sound came out of his constricted throat.
She pulled more.
Her arms unable to continue, she relaxed and hoped he was dead. She released the belt and carefully felt around for a pulse on his bruised and fleshy neck. She couldn’t find one.
Eva moved quickly now, worried that somehow someone had heard them, worried that he wasn’t completely dead and would come to his senses soon, worried that she simply wouldn’t have enough time to escape.
She put his shirt on and it covered her like a short dress. It felt unbelievably good to wear clothes again. She looked down at the impossibly long sleeves and rolled them up almost all the way to her shoulders to give herself complete freedom of movement. She found his key in the trousers around his ankles, took it, took his light, and took the belt from around his neck. She coiled the belt in her right fist and inserted the key into the lock with her left hand, just like she had seen him do several times before.
Only the door didn’t open like it always had for him.
An alarm sounded instead.
6
Eva froze.
She’d watched him opening the door several times, making sure she understood exactly what he did, and she copied him.
But the door didn’t open.
She saw light through the opening and heard running. She tossed his light away from her, into the far corner where the toilet pit was, and she crouched against the wall next to the door, far enough away that she couldn’t be seen through the opening.
Light came to the opening, illuminated her tiny cell, and there was a cry of anguish. The light disappeared and she heard running again.
She didn’t know how long she had, only seconds maybe, so she pulled the key out of the door lock and tried to insert it another way. But it wouldn’t go in. She flipped it around, but it was clear that she had put the right end in the first time. It didn’t go either way from the back. She turned it back around, put it in the way she thought it went, and it engaged just like it did the first time, but it wouldn’t unlock the door.
She heard yelling.
Just as panicked as her assailant had been when she got the belt around his neck, Eva knew she was going to die now. She took a breath, decided it was okay if they killed her, and she felt better. With her head clear, ignoring the shouting and running she heard outside her door, she could make a plan.
She went to the toilet pit and picked up the light, not immediately seeing a way to extinguish it. She tucked it inside her assailant’s pants where it glowed dimly, and she moved back against the wall on the side of the door that opened.
And waited.
Eva didn’t have to wait long. She saw light through the window in the door, heard more cursing, heard something go into the lock, and the door started to move.
She gave the guard no time, thrusting into the opening of the door as soon as it was wide enough, her leathered fist crashing into his face and knocking him backward.
She was outside of the cell. His light lay on the ground and he fell heavily and she punched him down on his face again and his head smacked sickly into the rocky floor.
The booted foot of one of his companions kicked her in the side and she crumpled, falling away from the blow. Ribs were cracked and she couldn’t breathe.
She looked up. There were at least two guards with the first, and they shone a light in her face
, blinding her.
She didn’t care. She wasn’t here to escape. She wasn’t here to live. She was here to fight.
She launched herself at the light.
Also by Bernard Wilkerson
The Worlds of the Dead series
Beaches of Brazil
Communion
Discovery
The Creation series
In the Beginning
The Hrwang Incursion
Earth: Book One
Episode 1: Defeat
Episode 2: Flight
Episode 3: Maneuvers
Episode 4: Insertion
Episode 5: Envelopment
Episode 6: Ambush
Episode 7: Feint
Episode 8: Counterattack
Episode 9: Withdrawal
OR
Get the Omnibus edition (episodes 1 thru 9)
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