Lookout Point
This excerpt is from 'Feast of Consequences', also on inkitt.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Walter Peterson should have been hearing the usual woodland sounds in this hottest month; but the high-pitched ‘chirping’ of woodland insects, and the songs of birds were no longer heard. The birds had gone, days earlier, driven out by smoke, and the insects had gone too... if they could leave as easily as the birds did; or they had just gone silent, or were under cover, waiting for a death they could not anticipate from the fire charging up behind him.
Instead, he heard raised voices, male and female, from some distance away; the former laughing, the latter, complaining, swearing.
There should have been no one up here with the woods being closed, so he was wary, not sure what he was walking into. All of the parks and forest roads were closed, and people were told to stay out of the woods for their own safety as well as because of the extreme forest fire threat.
He saw them then, as his senses focused on where the sound was coming from. Two men, both standing over a young woman, holding her down as they began to undress.
It was obvious what they intended for her.
He was out of breath from all of his activity, covering the ground as fast as he could, putting as many miles between him and Hopkins as possible; that inhuman hell-hole of a prison, and the men he'd killed a few hours before; that guard; Hudgkin, and the prisoner helping him... and that fire, advancing behind him, chasing him down.
Instead of slowing his pace to be sure of what was happening before he walked into a whole lot of trouble, though not nearly as bad as what he’d just left, he quickened it, knowing what he must do, even as he saw it and heard it.
There were two men and they were pulling a girl, a youngish woman around after throwing her to the ground. No woman deserved what they intended to do to her.
All he thought about were his sisters and the difficulties they were already facing because of him being convicted of those four murders, but at least they’d escaped most of it now, and would not face this, as long as they kept far away from him, and the people around him.
He felt the anger rising within him just as it had a few hours earlier as he had killed Hudgkin with that spade, and that other prisoner; Brendl, and many times before that in the last month, with others he'd been forced to kill, to defend himself.
He had never known such anger before; could taste the hard, metallic taste of it in his mouth, pushing him along to the point where he saw nothing else but two men in his focused vision, and what they were doing to a helpless girl who could have been one of his sisters, but wasn’t.
But she might have been.
They’d found her somewhere not too far away, and despite all the warnings to stay out of the woods, had brought her here to this desolate place to rape her. He didn’t know who she was, and he didn’t care. No woman needed to be beaten around and treated like this.
They’d chosen their place, well. Up here, miles from anywhere, there would be no one to see her struggles, hear her screams, feel her pain.
There were no campgrounds close by, and all of them had been closed after the forest fire risk had been extreme for a few weeks, and then someone had discarded a cigarette, or had set a fire deliberately—it may even have been a lightning strike as they'd said—and now the first major forest fire had already burned a million acres or more, and hundreds of small and not-so-small rural communities.
The girl was fighting them off her, or was trying to, but she was fighting a losing battle against two grown, naked men holding her down.
They were laughing at her pathetic efforts to resist them, too serious in their intent to notice anyone else approaching them in that open area, and thinking they were alone.
She watched, feeling that man pushing his hands into her clothes as she threw herself around, shouting, cursing at them.
She became quiet when he hit her again, causing her to taste blood, and put more weight on her arms and on her head as he fumbled more under her clothing, but she could kick, even with both feet tied, until his friend came back to her, this time with a knife and began to cut her clothing off her. He knelt upon her legs, holding them down, slicing up her shorts, and her panties; up both legs and through the waist, pulling them out from under her, tossing them aside, before pushing his hand between her legs as she tried to stop him, clenching herself hard to deny him entry. Then he began on her sweatshirt, down the front, and then her bra; cutting it first at the front between her breasts, and then the straps, tossing everything to one side, along with his sheath knife, after wrenching them from under her, to leave her naked other than for her sneakers and socks.
“I told you she had tremendous tits, Wilbur!” Alec put his hands full upon them. “We’ll be bouncing around on these for a while as we stoke up that tight little cunt of hers. We could be here for a few hours.”
They’d have to stuff some of her clothing in her mouth to do that, or they would risk being bitten, with their heads close to hers.
Alec couldn’t wait for his brother to get on with it, and for his turn with her.
The first man moved to between her legs, retrieving the knife to cut the rope from her ankles as he held her legs down, putting his hands and all of his weight on her knees to stop her kicking, now that her feet were no longer tied, pushing her legs wide apart to give him access to where he needed to be.
He was hurting her, but he intended to. It was just the beginning of what he would soon be doing. He had never had such a hard-on as long as he could remember. Maybe the exercise getting up here had fired him up, as well as the thought, all the way up here, of what they would soon be doing to her, watching her breasts move in that shirt of hers and seeing her legs in those too short, shorts, imagining sliding his hand up the legs of them, then tearing them off her along with the rest of her clothes.
Damn Hal, for wanting it done this way. They should have trussed her up better and taken her to a motel where they could have spent the next couple of days fucking her as many times as they wanted to, without concern for the weather, or where the fire might be in another hour or two, or of climbing up to this impossible place, and then rushing over what should have been done leisurely, and maybe fucking her only three or four times, each.
They could have bought some liquor and made sure she was semi-comatose; except he didn’t mind the violence of her struggling. It only excited him more.
He was fully aroused for her as his friend pulled at her arms, kneeling on them, leaning over to handle her now exposed breasts as she spat at him, itching to have him close enough to bite and draw blood, but he knew what she intended. She was not the first one.
She swore at them, knowing the unbelievable pain she would feel when they raped her and took turns doing it. They were already being rough with her, hurting her by what they were doing, fumbling, groping, trying get some fingers into her at first to get started.
He hit her again to get her to lie still as he focused on keeping her legs far apart and trying to get his stiff part into her.
None of them saw Walt until it was too late.
Walt had no intention of standing around and letting this happen to any woman, even if she could swear like a trooper—who could blame her—but he also knew better than to give any warning. These men were no better than the two he’d just left behind a few hours earlier. No, they were worse.
The man between her legs, fighting to keep them apart, focused only upon what he was doing to open her, intending to follow his fingers with his erect member, getting a start on that, pushing into her as she continued to writhe about, trying to stop him. Her struggling only exciting him more in the violence of it. That man would never know what it was that stopped him. He was as good as dead already.
