CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Waking up, Cordie stared through the tangled roof of bushes, and listened, afraid to move.

She heard running. She heard the jabber of voices. She heard harsh laughter. From the sounds, she guessed that half a dozen teenage kids were nearby.

The thicket no longer felt like a refuge. Now it was a trap.

She wanted to get out, to runa They might hear her, though. They might hear her crawling over the matted leaves and twigs, and get to her before she was free. Trapped in the mesh of bushes, she would be helpless. A game for the kids.

Play with her.

Taunt her, cut her, set her on fire.

She listened to their vicious laughter, their squeals.

All around the thicket.

As if they knew she was there.

She wanted to curl up on her side and hug her knees to her breasts. She didn't dare. Instead, she pressed her legs tightly together. She pressed her arms to her sides. She stared at the morning sky through a cross-work of limbs.

And waited.

The kids argued in sharp, high voices. Someone chuckled. Bushes rustled.

Cordie's rigid body trembled. Her neck ached with stiffening muscles.

They know I'm here!

How could they?

She heard the sounds of someone crawling inside the thicket. Coming for her.

She sucked in her breath and held it, trying not to scream.

All other sounds stopped.

They're listening, she thought. They're all out there listening, waiting.

Cordie raised her head. She looked down her body, past her shoes, and saw a face appear. The face of a girl. A blond girl with twigs in her wild hair. A girl with blood smeared on her lips, her cheeks, her chin.

She was young. Thirteen or fourteen. Her tanned shoulders were bare.

As the girl crawled closer, Cordie heard herself gulping quick, short breaths. Like a dog with a nightmare. Swallowing, she choked and gasped for air.

The girl moved alongside Cordie. The skin of her back was crosshatched with scratches, smudges of dirt. Her buttocks were bleeding from scratches like the rake marks of fingernails.

She sat up and crossed her legs. "I'm Lilly," she said. "What's your name?"

Cordie mumbled her name.

"What?"

"Cordelia."

"That's a weirdo name." She wrinkled her nose. "What kind of a weirdo name is that?"

"Who are you?"

"Lilly."

"You're one of them"

"Sure." Lilly scratched one of her small, cone-shaped breasts. "I've been with 'em a couple of years. It's fun."

"Fun?"

"Shit yes!" She giggled. "No school, nobody telling you what to do, fucking all the time. It's great. You'll like it."

Cordie shook her head.

"You'll love it, really."

"You're murderers."

"Sure. It's a gas. Anyway, you're supposed to come out."

"What for?"

The girl smiled and shrugged. "You don't want to stay in here." Leaning forward, she propped her elbows on her knees. She whispered, "If you don't come out, the boys, they'll have to come in. They won't like that. They'd have to crawl. So you'd better just come out with me."

Cordie shook her head.

"They'll get real mad. It'll spoil your chance."

"Chance of what?"

"Joining up. They just won't let you, if they're pissed."

"What happens if I join up?"

"Then we don't kill you."

"But what happens?

"Well, after the boys look you over, you've gotta get initiated. Then you're one of us, and you can live free in the woods like we do."

Cordie rested her head on the ground. She stared through the lacework of branches. The sky was pale and cloudless. "If I join up, they won't kill me?"

"Not if they like you."

"I have toa make them like me?"

"Right."

"And then they won't kill me?"

"You'll be one of us. That's how I joined up. That's how a lot of us did."

"All I have to do is go out there, anda and let the guys screw with me or something? And that's it. They won't kill me or anything, they just want to screw me?"

"Yeah. That's about all. Then we'll take you to the village, see. You'll have to go through some shit there, but it's nothing. Old Grar has to give you the okay, stuff like that. Nothing to worry about. Come on."

Cordie lay still, afraid to move.

God, she didn't want to go out there!

"The guys are gonna get tired of waiting."

"Okay," she said.

"You first."

She forced herself to move. She turned around, and began to squirm forward on her belly, head down.

What if the girl was lying?

What if they planned to kill her?

But she had no choice.

She kept inching forward.

Then she saw them. Three of them. Teenage boys. Squatting naked in the sunlight just outside the bushes, staring in at her.

She stopped, cramped with fear, and looked back at Lilly.

"Keep going."

She shook her head.

"Go on."

"No!"

At a sound of crushing foliage, she snapped her head forward. Two of the boys were scurrying toward her, smashing aside the bushes in their way.

"No!" she shrieked.

She kept shrieking as they grabbed her arms and dragged her from the thicket.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

"Why don't they come?" Neala said, whispering so she wouldn't wake Johnny.

"You sound like you want 'em to," Sherri said.

"Hardly." She was dressed and standing in the doorway, watching the distant Krulls. Several times, she had tried to count them. They kept moving, though-some vanishing into the woods, others appearing. She counted twenty, twenty-four, nineteen, twenty-six. They seemed to be doing nothing special. Just milling about. She couldn't see them well because of the crosses and heads.

"It's like they're waiting for something," Neala said.

"Yeah. For us. Why don't we shut the door?"

"We've got to watch."

"We can," Sherri said. She closed and latched the door. "Over here." She stepped sideways through the darkness, and lifted one of the deer skins draping the front wall. Sunlight spilled through the gaps between the logs.

So this was how Sherri spied on them, Neala thought. Anger and humiliation began to burn in her. How much had Sherri watched? The whole thing? Had it turned her on?

God, how could she sink that low! Her best friend!

Reaching up, Sherri yanked the deer skin loose. She flung it aside. "That's better," she muttered.

Neala peered through a crack. She could see exactly where she'd been with Johnny. She looked up, saw the Krulls still wandering beyond the stakes, and lowered her eyes again to the spot where she'd made love to Johnny.