Jayla didn’t know what the tiny airplanes were, but she ran from them. The one that waggled its wings at her, the one that flew circles around her and her sister as they fled south on Wood River Trail, unnerved her the most. Something, or someone, was tracking her.
She ran along the trail, pushing the wheelchair in front of her, trying not to tip her sister out, and trying not to lose the hard-won goods tucked around the girl. Those items, her Daddy’s hiking stick, her empty can and can opener, and her water bottles, could mean the difference between life and death. She didn’t know.
Hunger still gnawed at her, exhaustion and fear overwhelmed her, and her feet hurt like they’d never hurt before. She didn’t know how long she could continue.
Why couldn’t people just leave her and her sister alone?
She couldn’t see the little gray airplane for the moment, but she did see a thick tree line. She pushed Jada’s wheelchair off the path toward it. The wheelchair suddenly stopped dead in the soft ground at the edge of the trail, and Jayla lurched forward, running into the back of her sister’s head.
She pushed on the chair, but it wouldn’t budge. She wanted to sink to the ground in despair, but she had to get under cover before the little plane returned.
Turning the wheelchair around and dragging it backward behind her worked. She still struggled with it in the loose dirt, her strength fading quickly, and she stumbled once when she watched the skies above instead of the ground behind her.
Relief came when she reached more pavement. Turning the wheelchair forward again, she ran for the shelter of the trees, listening for the sound of the tiny airplane and not hearing the whinnying of a horse until it was too late.
Hands grabbed her, a hand clamped her mouth shut, and hands separated her from her sister. She fought but had no strength. Someone laughed. He laughed the same type of harsh, cruel laugh she’d heard in the hospital.
“No,” she pleaded when the hand over her mouth was dropped.
“What’s wrong, little lady?” a man asked with mock concern.
“Please,” Jayla cried.
“Oh, we’ll take good care of you. You just hush now.”
She fell to the ground, her legs giving out from fear and exhaustion and malnourishment. The hands held her as she went down and they pulled her back up. She tried to look at her captors.
“Why you ain’t nothing but skin and bones,” one of the men said, several teeth missing and wearing a scraggly beard like he hadn’t shaved in weeks. He smelled.
“That’s how I like ‘em,” her other captor said. He could have been the first’s brother, they looked so alike. “Nice and skinny.”
There were three others. A boy close to her age holding the reins of several horses and two other men inspecting Jada.
“Leave her alone!” she screamed and she suddenly found strength, pulling free from one of her captors. “Get away from her, you pigs!”
Grabbed again, she struggled and screamed until one of the men by her sister yelled, “Shut her up!”
A hand covered her mouth again. She tried to bite it, but the man knew how to hold her mouth so she couldn’t. He’d done this before.
“This one’s got some fight left in her,” one of her captors exulted.
She was dead.
She and Jada would die. She’d been so intent on the little airplane that she hadn’t even recognized the trap she ran into. Had they been lying in wait for her? Did they have anything to do with the airplane? Or was it a coincidence? Were they hiding from the same thing? Why were they there? What were they going to do with her and her sister?
The jests grew more vulgar and she wished they’d just kill her now so she wouldn’t have to experience the horrors they described.
The two who held her started to drag her into the trees.
“No, no, no,” she cried, muffled, into the hand that held her mouth. “No, please, no.” But no one listened. Her whole body went limp and they almost dropped her, putting their arms under hers for a better grip.
She heard Jada cry out and she tried to scream. Not her sister. Not again.
Why, God? she cried in her mind. Why?
The two men pulled her into the trees and set her down, holding her tight. She squirmed, but one pinned her arms over her head, keeping his free hand over her mouth. She prayed and prayed, begging for it to be over, begging for the fear to go away. Her bowels released and what little was left soiled her pants. One of the men swore in disgust.
A knife came out and she felt it on her skin and she cried in fear. She closed her eyes in anguish, but not seeing made it worse. She opened her eyes again and tried to focus on a distant point, tried to will herself away, to distance herself from what was about to happen to her. She found a focal point in the clouds she could see through the tree tops. Her Daddy had told her that her mother had done that during labor. She would find a focal point and aim all of her will and concentration on that one point to escape the pain.
Jayla focused on the clouds, the now ever-present gray skies that had become a symbol of man’s suffering.
“No,” she begged one last time through the fingers that smashed her lips to her teeth, and she saw the sky above the tree tops turn black and Jayla could hear engines.
The knife, a long hunter’s knife, pressed against her throat and bit her skin.
“You make a sound and I will cut you to pieces.”
She couldn’t nod. She couldn’t move. The blade would slice her throat. Instead, she blinked her eyes in acknowledgment. The hand came off her mouth.
The one without the knife crawled away from her to the back of a tree. She could just see him peek around the trunk. He jerked back immediately and swore.
“It’s the aliens again,” he hissed.
“I thought they went away.”
“They’re back.”
Jayla held perfectly still.
A shot rang out, a cry followed, and the sound gave Jayla unexpected hope.
The echoing of the shot died away and everything grew quiet again. Even the engine noise was gone, and Jayla feared that whatever she had seen was now also gone.
“Come out of the trees,” a strangely accented voice yelled.
The man with the knife pressed it more firmly against Jayla’s throat and held his finger over her mouth. But terror gradually gave way to hope and she knew she only had to survive a few moments more, and either she would be rescued or she would be dead.
The man behind the tree put his hands in the air and slowly walked out of Jayla’s field of vision. The one with the knife didn’t move.
“I surrender,” the first one called out.
“Where is the girl?” the strangely accented voice yelled.
“What girl?” the first man answered and a shot slammed into the tree, startling the one holding Jayla down with the knife.
He straightened up, turning his head away from her, the knife coming off her throat and Jayla’s hand came up, almost instinctively, to grab his hand to keep him from killing her.
She grabbed the knife instead.
She screamed in pain. She screamed to let whoever had shown up know where she was. She screamed again when she felt the knife pulled out of her hand, skin and muscle and bone separating as the blade cut through them. She felt a blow to her head and everything went dark, then light, then dark with bright spots.
She heard another shot and a heavy weight fell on her and she screamed again until everything went completely dark.
She woke briefly and knew she was being carried by a running man. She glimpsed his face in the haze. He was black, older than she was, but not old, his eyes set in grim determination.
She awoke again when she received an injection. Pain receded.
“Lady, what were these men going to do to you?”
“Huh?” Jayla coul
dn’t figure out what he was talking about. He had a strange accent.
Strange Accent repeated the question.
“You talk funny,” Jayla answered and laughed. “I talk funny, too,” she said and her words sounded hilarious to her. She laughed again and it felt good.
She couldn’t understand the conversation that followed.
“You a speaka da English,” she tried to quote in an Italian accent. Everything sounded all weird but the joke was funny and she laughed again.
“I apologize,” Strange Accent said. “We gave you too much medication.”
“Nah,” Jayla said. “Feels good.” She slurred ‘good.’
“Lady. We need you to focus. Can you see those men?”
Jayla looked. Two men, one who had held her and one who had gone to Jada, knelt on the ground with their hands on their heads, next to a funny lump in the grass. The boy who held the horses knelt on their other side. The horses were gone. Shame. They were pretty horses.
“I see ‘em.”
“What were they going to do to you?”
Everything came back in a flood. Her good feeling disappeared instantly.
“They’re pigs! They’re animals,” she screamed. “They’re monsters.” She tried to get up, to get at them, to claw their faces and maim their bodies, but gentle hands restrained her.
“Were they going to rape you?”
“Yes! They’re rapists! Rapists!” She screamed the word and began sobbing. An arm went around her and held her. She looked up and the eyes that belonged to the arm were the eyes that had rescued her. “They were gonna hurt my sister,” she moaned.
Strange Accent stood while Rescue Eyes stayed next to her where she lay on the ground.
She tried to watch what happened next, but Rescue Eyes held her close and kept her from doing so.
“You stand accused of rape. How do you plea?” she heard.
“No, it wasn’t like that. She’s my girlfriend. We were just having a little fun.” She didn’t know which man spoke, but it didn’t matter.
“Liar!” she screamed.
Rescue Eyes still held her close and murmured something in his language to her. She didn’t understand the words, but she liked his voice. It made her feel better.
“He’s a big fat liar, pants on fire,” she whispered to him.
Strange Accent was reading. “All capital offenses including murder, rape, enslavement, and plunder are to be punished by summary trial and execution by order of the Ambassador, Stanley Russell. Do you understand?”
There was crying and screaming and swearing, then talking in the funny words Jayla didn’t understand. She could make out the boy begging over all of the noise and thought he shouldn’t beg. He would be fine. He didn’t do nothing wrong. He just held the pretty horses. The other ones were the liars and the monsters and they all looked like the old man from the mountain and she remembered hitting him with her stick and she wanted to hit these men with her stick, to make them leave her and her sister alone.
She heard three shots and she must have fainted.
She woke lying down inside some kind of vehicle that looked nothing like she’d ever been in before. Her hand didn’t hurt, but tubes stuck out of it and a clear bag hung over her head. Rescue Eyes was right there, next to her, holding her other hand. She smiled at him.
“You’re pretty,” she remembered saying before she passed out again.
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