"How far's that?" Sherri asked.

"About twenty miles."

"Oh shit."

"Let's get started."

Neala pushed herself away from the tree. She glanced behind Johnny and Sherri, but saw nothing in the darkness.

She led the way. Sherri followed, staying close, and Johnny kept behind Sherri. At first, she ran too fast for the terrain. She tripped, and Sherri stumbled over her, stepping on her leg.

"You all right?" Sherri asked, gently helping her up.

"I'll live."

"Don't count on it."

"Thanks a heap."

Sherri patted her rump. "Think nothing of it."

With Sherri in the lead, this time, they started running again. Neala ran more slowly than before. She tried to watch where her feet were landing, but the darkness hid all but glimpses of the ground.

The second time she tripped, she saw what did it.

A hand.

She yelped as she dived forward. The ground slammed her breathless. Rough hands turned her over, and a bony, white-skinned creature scurried up her body.

A man. A hairless man with the hollow face of a death's-head. He bit her mouth, and laughed, and wetness dripped from his eyes.

Neala heard an awful thud. The head jerked away from her. The man flopped off, onto his back. She gazed at his erection, a loathsome thing like a rigid, pale snake. Then Johnny blocked her view. The rifle butt smashed into the horrible face, breaking through it.

"It's all right," Johnny whispered. He helped her up.

Neala shook her head. She wiped tears from her eyes. Her shirt hung open, leaving her right breast uncovered. She closed the shirt. Not before noticing the fingernail scratches. They felt like burns on her tender skin.

"Did he hurt you?" Johnny asked.

"A little. I think I'm okay."

"The filthy pig," Sherri muttered. She stepped close to the body. "Christ, look at him."

Neala didn't.

"A fucking albino."

Neala tried to fasten her shirt. The buttons were gone, so she overlapped the front and tucked it in.

"Shit," Sherri said, still inspecting the body.

"We'd better get moving," Johnny said.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

When the women were done in the stream, they waded ashore. The lean one wrapped the skirt around herself, and fastened it in place. The other tied on the bushy tail and adjusted it so it hung down the split of her rump, as if it were her own natural tail.

After picking up their weapons, they lifted the arms of the corpse and dragged it into the water. The body floated behind them as they waded in, swam across, and climbed the opposite shore.

Lander waited until they were out of sight. Then he rushed to the stream. He crossed it silently, breaststroking. On the other side, he quickly caught up to them. He followed for only a few minutes before reaching a firelit clearing.

He crouched in the bushes, looking out, thankful that he'd held back from attacking the women. If one had cried outa They dragged the corpse between two heaps of foliage that looked, to Lander, like large beaver dams, six to eight feet high.

The chubby woman called out. Half a dozen figures crowded around, and lifted the body overhead.

With all the enthusiasm and cheers of a winning football team, they bore the body away.

Lander was reluctant to leave the safety of his hiding place. For a few moments, he studied the area. He saw several other tall mounds. They seemed to be shelters, huts fashioned crudely of twigs and leaves. From where he stood, he could see no one. But he heard sudden wild shouts and laughter. He had to see more.

Cautiously, he stepped into the open and dashed to the nearest hut. Staying close to it, he worked his way toward the front.

He crouched, and stared.

A dozen fires. Twice that many huts. A few figures wandering aimlessly, a few sitting by fires, and a big crowd gathered around a central fire. In the midst of the crowd, Lander saw a machete rise and fall. A cheer went up.

The crowd parted. The lean girl, the one he'd wanted to rape, made her way out of the group. Some males followed, harassing her. They seemed to want a share of her take. She laughed and waved them away.

Only one persisted. He hurried alongside her as she walked toward Lander. They talked. He held out his hand. The girl dipped something out of the bowl she was cradling. She dumped it into his outstretched hand, and he shoved it into his mouth.

They sat together at a fire, facing Lander. The girl was wet, probably sweaty. Her breasts shimmered in the firelight.

Golden.

Lovely.

Lander was hard again. He touched himself. His shaft twitched. In seconds, he could relieve the tight, aching need. His fingertips lightly stroked while he considered it.

The release would be good.

Not nearly as good, though, as pumping his load into that girl.

I won't do that, he told himself. I'm not a beast.

But still, she was so young, so lovely. He fingered his engorged organ and watched her reach into the bowl.

God, he would like to shovea The bowl, he suddenly noticed, had tangled white hair. The girl lifted it from her lap, offering more to the young man, and Lander saw its face.

The face of the old woman they'd dragged in. The woman Lander had killed.

The boy reached into the head. His hand dripped as he filled his mouth.

Lander turned away, gagging. He rushed from the hut, smashed through a thicket, shouldered a tree and stumbled away, twisting from the impact. As he landed on his back, he rolled to his side and vomited.

He crawled away from his mess. Slowly, he got to his feet. He brushed some dead leaves and pine needles off his wet skin, and thought about returning to the stream to wash up.

Go back to the stream, and keep going!

Get as far from this village of maniacs as his feet would take him. Try to find Cordelia.

What about Ruth?

Oh God, what about Ruth?

She might be somewhere in that village right now. Alive. Waiting for her turn to become food for these fiends.

Hell, there was a good chance of it. If these monsters had any sense at all, they would keep her alive for a while. Consume the dead carcasses before slaughtering more. It only made sense.

He had to go back.

Look for her, save her if he could.

The knife fell from his hands. He dropped to his knees, trembling.

What if they caught him?

What if they took him alive?

A coward dies many times, a brave man never tastes of death but once.

Shit. Fuck Julius Caesar. Fuck Shakespeare. Once is all it would take.

But he couldn't survive, if he abandoned Ruth. He wouldn't have a life afterward. Only guilt, and nothing more. It might as well end here.

The buck stops here.

The words made him feel better.

The buck stops here!

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

We band of brothers, we honored fewa The buck stops here!

Picking up his knife, he turned toward the village. In the distance, a cheer went up.

He started to run. He ran until he reached the back of the nearest hut. He worked his way along-side it. The girl was still seated by the fire, eating her grisly prize.

Others were still gathered around the main fire. One at a time, they broke away, each with a small portion of dripping flesh.

He saw no sign of Ruth. Perhaps she was kept in the darkness beyond the fires, perhaps inside a hut. Perhaps not here, at all.

A creature swung his way out of the crowd. He looked more like an ape than a man. A deformed ape, hunchbacked and legless. Though he had no feet of his own, he held a foot in his mouth. Nobody begged a bite of it, as they had begged the girl. Instead, they hurried out of his way. They seemed afraid of him. He propped himself backward against a hut, to free his hands, and began gnawing the foot.

Lander forced himself to look away from the man. He circled around to the rear of the hut, peeked to be sure nobody was nearby, then dashed across the dark space to the next one. After a quick check, he ran to the next. He crept along, staying close to it, and saw half a dozen figures gathered in front of the neighboring hut. They were seated in a circle, chattering in a language that sounded almost like German, and sharing a thigh. All but one. A girl lay on her belly between a man's outstretched legs, her mouth latched onto his erection.

Backing off, Lander rushed into the trees. He worked his way past the group, staying hidden but close to the clearing, watching them until they were out of sight.

This seemed like a much safer way of searching for Ruth, so he stayed among the trees as he continued his passage around the village.

Soon, he was directly across from the main fire. The group there had diminished to a handful. A single man was squatting near the fire, cooking his morsel at the end of his spear. A few women-two obviously pregnant-knelt nearby, tearing at a heap of entrails. Lander hurried on.

Between two huts at the far end of the village, he found Ruth. She hung inside a tripod of tall, stout poles, suspended by one foot. Her left arm was broken backward at the elbow. As Lander approached, he watched her naked body turn slowly in the breeze.

"Oh you bastards," he muttered. "Oh you fucking bastards."

He touched Ruth's face. His hand came away sticky and dripping.

He turned. Saw the bastards not far away, some sitting near fires, a few wandering about, one pair rutting in the dirt. He wanted to kill them, kill them all.

But not yet. First he would take Ruth away, and bury her.

Knife clamped in his teeth, he shinnied up one of the poles. The tripod wobbled. Ruth's body swayed and turned. Her loose foot brushed across his back.

Lander slashed the cord that held her. She dropped. Her body thudded on the earth.

She groaned.

Lander let himself fall. "You're alive!" he gasped.

"Lander?"

"Oh Jesus! Oh my God, you're alive!"

Glancing around, he saw Krulls heading his way.

Three of them. Two males, one female. They approached Lander slowly, more with curiosity than alarm. All were armed: the woman and one man with knives, the other man with a hatchet. The weapons weren't in their hands, though. The hatchet hung at the man's side, the woman's knife dangled in front of her bushy pubic mound, the other man's knife was tucked into a belt at his waist.