"Why'd you do it?" she whispered.

"What does it matter?"

"It matters to me."

"Look I said I'm sorry."

"I know. I don't want another apology. I want to know why. You're my best friend, Sherri. How could you stand here and spy on me like that?"

"We're all going to die here. You know that, don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"You think your johnny will wave a magic wand and-Presto!-we're home again?"

"Hardly."

"Those people out there-those things-they're going to get us sooner or later. And it won't make a damn bit of difference why I watched you, will it?"

"It makes a difference to me now."

"Suit yourself," Sherri said.

"Tell me."

"Just let it go."

"I can't. Not if we're going to stay friends."

"Shit."

"Okay. If that's all it means to youa"

"You have no idea what you mean to me. Not the slightest."

The words frightened Neala.

"I love you."

She looked at Sherri, stunned. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. And when I saw you, this morning, standing out there in the sunlighta I just couldn't help myself. I couldn't stop watching." She made a sour laugh. "You probably thought I was hankering after Johnny, huh? Surprise surprise."

"I can't believe this."

"Believe it, Neala."

"But those guys you're always talking about-Jack and Larry. Wesleya"

"I'm bi."

"I go either way."

"I know what it means. I just nevera" She shook her head. She felt disgusted and afraid.

"I'd hoped you might be that way, too. I thought, you know, I'd find out on our camping trip."

"What were you going to do, seduce me?"

"Only if youa You've got to believe, I never would have forced myself on you. I love you. I'd never do anything unless you were willing."

"Boy."

"I'm sorry."

"All these monthsa"

"Sorry," Sherri said. She stepped away from the wall. "This would be a great time for an exit, but I think I'll pass on it."

Neala watched her move across the room, and lie down in a corner. She turned again to the wall. She peered out the crack.

I love you.

The words were like a heavy stone in her stomach. She felt betrayed. As if her friendship with Sherri had been a nasty trick. Not a friendship, at all, but a game Sherri had played to stay close to her. To sneak intimate moments: a glimpse of her body, a casual touch, sometimes a quick, happy hug.

Her face felt on fire as she remembered their weekend in San Diego, last month. After a day at SeaWorld, the motel room. Calling to Sherri from the shower because she'd forgotten her shampoo. Sherri's little joke. "If I was a guy, I'd climb in and lend a hand." Not such a joke, after all. A suggestion.

God, she must've prayed I'd ask her to come in, anyway.

It must've been torture for Sherri.

The whole weekend. Being so close to her, but never close enough.

She remembered other scenes from that weekend, now. The times they changed clothes in the same room. The night Sherri had given herself a breast examination, probing and massaging herself as she chatted with Neala, urging her to do the same.

If she'd offered to perform the examination herself, Neala would've been suspicious. Sherri'd been too smart for that. She played the game well.

She hadn't been subtle, but she'd misdirected Neala like a skillful magician.

"Get a load of this number," she'd said, pulling a sheer, black negligee from her suitcase. "Wesley picked it up at Frederick's. Horniest son of a bitch I've ever met." She dropped her bathrobe onto the bed, and slipped into the negligee. "Cute, huh?"

"What there is of it."

"Well, it's the only nightgown I've got, kiddo I just brought it in deference to your modesty. I usually sleep in the raw."

"Don't let me stop you."

Sherri did a lot in the raw, that weekend. Neala just assumed she liked the free, natural feel of it. Now it didn't seem that way at all. Sherri'd been displaying herself, trying to entice her.

Well, she hadn't been enticed.

Sherri had a fine body, big and firm and nearly flawless. But it had one flaw, for Neala.

It was the body of a woman, not a man.

She just couldn't get worked up about it, and that must have been terrible for Sherri. The weekend must have been a torment. All the time they spent together, for nearly a year, was obviously filled with pain and frustrated desire and hope. Constant, unfulfilled hope that Neala would finally respond.

God, the misery Sherri had put herself through!

Neala looked across the dark room. She saw Sherri in the corner, lying on her back, an arm over her face.

She went to her.

She sat down beside her.

"My turn on watch?" Sherri asked.

"No."

"What're they doing out there?"

"Just waiting."

"Gonna starve us out."

"Hey Sherri."

"Huh?"

"I'm sorry."

"You? What for?"

"I'm just sorry I couldn't be what you need."

"Yeah. Me too."

Neala reached down, and took her friend's hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

They stripped Cordie. Then two boys held her to the ground while another tried to mount her. She twisted and kicked. He battered her legs away, got between them, and clutched her thighs to hold her still. He thrust against her. The head of his erection prodded, missing, missing, then finding the split of her vagina and plunging in. She cringed, and closed her eyes tightly.

"Look at him," Lilly said. "They don't like it when you shut your eyes."

She kept them shut. The boy pounded into her with quick, hard strokes.

"You'll be sorry," Lilly warned. "It's an insult shutting your eyes. You want them to kill you?"

Cordie opened her eyes. The boy's face was above her. He watched her with narrow eyes. His bloody lips were drawn back, baring his teeth. He grunted loudly with each thrust, blowing putrid breath into her face.

She turned away. Lilly was squatting beside her, next to the boy who kept her right arm pinned. Another girl, this one chubby but small breasted, stood behind them. Her pubic hair was shaved. As she watched Cordie, she rubbed herself with the knobby end of a bone. The bone looked slippery and fresh. Its end disappeared inside her. Cordie quickly looked away, back to the face of the boy gasping above her, then away.

The boy pinning her left hand was younger than the others. He watched her with eager, wild eyes. Behind him stood a slender girl with a stump where her elbow should have been. A small, dried hand hung around her neck on a thong, its brown fingers curled as if about to clutch something.

The boy was pumping harder now, about to come.

Cordie stared at the girl's withered hand. She tried hard to concentrate on it, to figure out whether it was a left hand or a right hand, to keep herself from thinking about the boy grunting and sweating on top of her, dirtying her insides with his filthy cock hisa A left hand.

The girl's left arm had the stump.

Thereforea The withered horror dangling between her breasts-was it her own severed hand?

The boy suddenly thrust deep and stayed, tight against her, head thrown back and mouth wide, his body twitching as he throbbed inside her. Cordie was sickened by the feel of his jerking cock, the spilling seed. She gagged.

The boy pulled out of her. He stood, pointing at his shiny erection and making a comment in a language Cordie didn't know. Then he stepped back, hands on hips.

The boy on her right let go of her arm.

Cordie whimpered.

"It's part of the test," Lilly said.

When he was on top of Cordie, about to enter her, she clenched her fist.

"Hit him," Lilly whispered, "and you're dead meat."

So she lay beneath him, her free arm tense but motionless at her side, as he rode her to a climax.

He stood. He pointed at his dripping cock, said something and stepped away. He stood at the side of the first boy, and folded his arms.

The one at her left released her other arm. Cordie glanced at Lilly, kneeling close by. Lilly was flushed and breathing hard. The girl behind her was writhing on the bone she held in both hands. The one-armed girl stood motionless, her bare skin glossy with sweat, her fierce eyes meeting Cordie's.

Jealous!

She's jealous, Cordie thought. Of me.