The Devil's Punchbowl

CHAPTER 61

Caitlin has been walking so long that her feet are numb. If she hadn’t had to kick so hard to get the roof open, she would still be running, running along the road until she reached a town. She could do ten miles if she had to. But the bruises in her heels are to the bone-she can hardly take the pressure of her own weight on the asphalt.

Six times she’s seen the lambent glow of headlights in the sky, then raced into fields beside the road before the lights appeared. As the sound of the engines grew, a frantic compulsion to leap out of the field and flag down the driver would grow in her chest, but each time she fought the urge into submission. Over and over she hears the voice of Tom Cage telling the story of the poor girl who escaped from Morville Plantation and reached the sheriff’s office, only to be driven back into forced sexual slavery by squad car.

Before her feet became numb, Caitlin had found herself sobbing every few minutes. Nothing she did could block the memories rising out of the dark. The rape wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was Linda hanging from the Cyclone fence, her dress tucked as modestly around her legs as she could make it, a last attempt at dignity from a girl who’d had all dignity stripped away from her. Caitlin’s memory of heaving Linda’s legs out through the window is growing vague. The sight of a Bully Kutta hanging suspended from a dead knee seems beyond comprehension, something Caitlin dreamed in a fever. But it happened, she tells herself. I did that. It’s like those soccer players who survived that plane crash in the Andes. You do what you have to do…

Sooner or later, I’ll come to a place that has a phone. If not, I’ll just keep on until I drop or the sun comes up.