Despite the local tolerance for their ways, it was a long while before any semblance of normality could resume for the Hopkins Bend refugees, who were wary about anything that might attract federal attention. They knew it would be necessary to adhere to the societal norms of the outside world for a time. Thus it was that more than three long years had passed since the Bakers had last tasted human flesh. But this dark period was coming to an end. The government seemed to have no further interest in tracking down Hopkins Bend survivors or investigating their activities. Jodi found this a little hard to comprehend at times, but she wasn’t complaining. Things were going back to the way the good lord intended.
The hardwood floor creaked and Jodi glanced up from the task of chopping vegetables to see Delmont Morgan enter the kitchen. Delmont was married to Arlene Baker, one of Jodi’s cousins from the Bedford branch of the clan. The Morgans, in fact, were distant relations of the Bakers, a thing not uncommon in these parts with the way so many of the old families were intertwined. Delmont was a mountain of a man at six and a half feet tall and his big frame rippled with muscle. He had a bit of a gut from all the beer he drank, but that did nothing to diminish his appeal in Jodi’s eyes. He and Jodi had been hooking up on the side ever since her arrival in Bedford. Arlene had shortly thereafter suffered a crippling “accident”.
Jodi felt heat in her loins as her gaze lingered on his crotch.
Delmont looked at her and chuckled. “You wantin’ it?”
Jodi licked her lips. “Yeah.”
She cried out as he spun her about and kicked her legs apart. The kitchen knife was still clutched in her right hand. She thought about putting it down, but decided she might as well hold onto it. This would be done soon enough.
About that, she was not wrong.
Jodi braced her hands on the edge of the counter as Delmont pulled up her dress. The sound of his zipper sliding down sent a shiver of excitement through her body. She shivered again as she felt the head of his penis prodding her sex. Then she gasped as the engorged organ slammed into her. She was dripping wet, as she always was for Delmont. He grunted like an animal as he rammed into her again and again. Her arousal was so intense it made her feel faint. Her shoulders ached and her knees quivered from being pounded so hard, but she loved every second of it. Being fucked by Delmont was like being fucked by a wild beast.
Jodi was facing a sliding glass door that opened out to the patio. It slid open as Delmont was beginning to approach orgasm. She could tell his moment of release was imminent. But now someone was about to spoil the moment.
Sienna Baker, her younger sister, came into the kitchen and threw the door shut. It slid along its track at great speed and slammed back into the frame.
Jodi scowled. “What have I told you about doing that? You’ll break the damn glass someday.”
Sienna approached the L-shaped counter. As was her custom, she was clad all in black. Today she wore a lacy black sleeveless dress, torn black stockings, and black flats. Her long, naturally blonde hair was dyed a shade of black darker than the inside of the devil’s heart. “I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.”
Jodi grimaced.
Her sister was a moody bitch. She remembered well what being a teenaged girl was like and so she tried not to let it get to her most of the time. She also cut her slack in consideration of all she had been through with the loss of their father and the uprooting from their hometown. Most of the time, however, Sienna didn’t choose to express her angst while watching Jodi take it from behind. She loved the girl with all her heart, but the truth was she was more than just moody—she was deeply weird.
Take this terminally bored look on her face, for instance. It was not what you would expect from someone who had just walked in on a sex act. It was creepy. Even a smirk or snide comment would be better than this dead-eyed look of hers.
Delmont, apparently, felt the same way. “Goddammit, you spooky bitch, you’re killin’ the mood here.””
Sienna reached across the counter and plucked the knife from Jodi’s hand.
“Put that down, Sienna. You hear me?”
Now, at last, Sienna smiled. “I will in a minute. I have to do something first.”
She extended her left forearm, turning up the meaty underside to drag the fine edge of the blade across her tender flesh. The cut was shallow and barely more than an inch long, but bright red blood flowed in a trickle to the side of her arm and dripped to the floor. Sienna immediately made another cut just below the first one. And then yet another one right below that.
This all happened within a few seconds. As usual when Sienna did something intended to shock, there had been no chance at all to intervene.
Jodi sighed as Delmont belatedly pulled out of her and zipped up. “Sienna…please put the knife down.”
Sienna smiled.
And put the knife to her throat.
Jodi gasped. Weird and creepy Sienna might be, but she was blood and she meant the world to her. This was probably just an attention-seeking thing, but even the idea that she might kill herself right in front of her eyes terrified her.
Sienna quickly backed away as Jodi approached her. Her eyes sparkled with dark delight as she appeared to revel in Jodi’s distress. A cynical person might say Sienna was playing up to her reputation as the creepy girl everybody talked about in whispers, but Jodi knew the unfortunate truth. Her sister wasn’t pretending at anything.
Jodi’s voice shook as she said, “Baby, please…give me the knife.”
She took a step closer to her sister.
Sienna held up her free hand in a halting gesture. “Stop right there or I’ll open my carotid and bleed out in about two minutes. And there won’t be a goddamn thing you can do to stop it.”
“Okay, I’m stopping. See? Please don’t hurt yourself.”
Sienna’s unnerving dead-eyed look was in place again. Her lips moved minutely as she said something that wasn’t audible.
Jodi shot a frustrated look over her shoulder at Delmont. “Please turn that goddamn radio down.”
Delmont chuckled as he silenced the Christian music station. “It’s funny how you listen to all that Jesus music and take the lord’s name in vain all the time.”
Jodi scowled. “Don’t make fun of me. I’ve got enough to deal with here.”
Delmont chuckled again, but he made no further comment. With the radio off, the wails of the woman in the basement could be heard again. She wasn’t screaming quite so shrilly now. There was a lot of whining in between some wretched-sounding sobbing.
Delmont frowned. “Her gag came out again, huh?”
Jodi nodded. “Yeah. Ought to sew her damn lips shut.”
Delmont headed for the basement door.
Jodi frowned. “What’re you doing?”
He glanced back at her. “What do you think? I got a load I didn’t get to shoot.”
Sienna cleared her throat. “Hello? Young girl in crisis here. Remember?”
Delmont smirked. “Have fun coddling the fruitcake. You ask me, you should let her kill herself. But something tells me she ain’t got the guts to do it anyway.”
And then he was gone, slamming the basement door behind him.
Jodi sighed. Delmont wasn’t the only one who still needed to get off.
She looked at her sister. The dead-eyed look was still in place, but a corner of Sienna’s mouth twitched as she tried to hold back a smile.
Jodi shook her head. “Is this some kind of sick joke? Are you just fucking with me?”
Sienna shrugged. The knife was still at her throat. “Everything’s a joke until it isn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You tell me.”
Jodi put a hand to her forehead. A headache was coming on. She could see the conversation going in circles like this endlessly. It was one of the standard ways Sienna liked to torture her. So was the self-mutilation. The torn stockings hid multiple tiny scars on her legs. She wanted to lash out at her and tell her to stop being so stupid, but she worried even the slightest misstep could be the thing that finally pushed the girl over the edge.
A shrill scream rang out from the basement.
It was followed by Delmont’s muffled laughter.
Both Baker sisters ignored the sounds.
Jodi dropped the hand from her forehead. “What can I do for you, Sienna? I’ve tried so hard to help you, but you just won’t let me. I’m at my rope’s end here.”
“That’s where I’d like to see you.”
“Come again?”
Sienna’s expression hardened. “I’d like to see you hanging from the end of a rope.”
Jodi flinched at these words.
There was a cruel satisfaction in Sienna’s dark eyes. “Speechless at last.”
Jodi wiped away tears. “How can you say hateful things like that? You know how much I love you.”
“That makes it even better.”
The tears came faster now, but there was a surprising new feeling behind them, a dawning resignation as she finally accepted that Sienna not only didn’t want to be helped, she couldn’t be helped. Her sickness of the mind and spirit had progressed too far.
“Go then. Get out of this house and never come back again.”
Sienna removed the knife from her throat. The vaguest hint of a smile ghosted the edges of her mouth. “Thank you.” She approached Jodi and put the bloody knife in her hands. “I’ll just get some things from my room and I’ll be gone.”
She walked out of the kitchen.
Jodi stood utterly still for a long moment. And then she staggered back over to the counter and held onto it as the grief poured out of her.
5.
The rear of the car ahead of her was coming up fast. Jessica had to give the steering wheel a hard wrench to whip the old Ford Falcon into the right-hand lane. A horn blared behind her. A glance at the rearview mirror showed a heavy duty truck with tinted windows right on her ass. She had narrowly avoided collision from two directions. Both drivers flipped middle fingers at her.
Jessica fought an urge to antagonize both of them. Betting into a road rage-fueled driving duel with either of them would increase the odds of attracting law enforcement attention, which was the last thing she wanted. She had no way of knowing whether anyone was actively seeking her apprehension yet, but she needed to err on the side of caution.
Fuck you, Zelda, and whoever hired you. I needed this shit like I need a hole in my head.
Jessica relaxed her grip on the wheel and blew out a big breath. She knew she had to get a grip on her emotions, but that wasn’t easy so soon after fighting for her life. She was still jittery from the adrenaline the brawl had pumped into her system. On the one hand, this was good because it was helping her cope with her various physical discomforts. But she needed to calm down soon to have any hope of getting a handle on things She applied some pressure to the brake and decelerated to a more reasonable speed (at least in the eyes of the law).
Her first impulse after fleeing the scene had been to go directly to her father’s house. She wanted to explain what had happened face-to-face. He needed to know the pictures the assassin had taken were posed and that she’d had nothing to do with that man’s murder. She didn’t believe he’d buy the story anyway, even with the photographic “proof”. Or so she hoped. In truth, she was a troubled person who’d done a lot of questionable things. So maybe he would believe she’d gotten fucked up and done something horrible. Was that really so far outside the realm of possibility?
No. You know it isn’t.
Not with her well-documented past of substance abuse. In the end, however, she had opted against it. If people were looking for her already, they’d be keeping an eye on her father’s place. As much as it pained her to accept it, she couldn’t go there.
An exit ramp was coming up. Jessica glimpsed a blue road sign with icons indicating the presence of motels and convenience stores. She hit her blinker and applied pressure to the brake, slowing as she neared the ramp. Up ahead a little ways past the ramp, sunlight glinted on the windshield of a highway patrol cruiser parked at the edge of the grass median. Its presence made her extra glad about her abrupt decision to pull off the interstate. It might be a good idea to avoid the main arteries altogether for a while.