A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 105

At last Claudia succumbed to panic. Screaming, on the edge of hysteria, she kicked out at them wildly; one of them whipped around and bit her naked ankle; the sharp little teeth were like a razor cut. She screamed again and kicked, trying to dislodge it, but for a few dreadful seconds its curved teeth were buried in her flesh.

At last she sent it flying into the darkness.

The rat hit the billy can containing her treasured water, and she heard the metal clank against the wall and the liquid splash onto the earthen floor. She crawled to the overturned container and wept with despair.

After long hours of horror and dark terror, the rats consumed the last of the maize and disappeared back through the roof.

Claudia sank to her knees, exhausted both physically and emotionally.

"Please God, let it end. I can't go on."

She toppled over on her side and lay in the dirt, shivering and sobbing softly to herself, and at last dropped into the dark void of oblivion.

She woke with something tugging at her hair and a strange grinding sound very close to her ear. Still groggy with sleep, it took her long seconds to realize what was happening to her. She had slumped over sideways, and one cheek was pressed to the dirt floor. She lay for a moment, enduring the sharp pulls on her hair and the grinding crunching in her uppermost ear, and then the terror came back to her in full force.

A rat was chewing off her hair, cutting it with those sharp curved incisors, gathering it for nesting material. So great was her horror that it paralyzed her. She could not move. Her whole body tingled, her stomach knotted with cramps, and her toes and fingers curled with the strength of revulsion.

Suddenly she w4 no longer terrified. Her fear changed to anger.

In one lithe movement she rolled to her feet and began to hunt the loathsome creature.

Relentlessly she pursued it around the cell, following it only by sound, the tiny scratch and patter of its feet. She no longer kicked out wildly but deliberately aimed each blow at the sound. Twice the creature tried to climb to safety, but each time Claudia heard it and used her whole body to sweep it from the wall and knock it back to the floor.

This killing anger was an emotion she had never experienced before. It heightened all her senses; it rendered her hearing so acute could visualize each movement of her prey; it quickened that she her physical responses so her kicks were fast and powerful, and when one of them landed on the warm furry body, the shrill squeal of pain and fear from the rat inflamed her.

She cornered it against the door of the cell and again stamped on it. She felt the small bones break under her heel, and she stamped again and again, sobbing with the effort, keeping it up until the carcass was soft and mushy under her feet.

When at last she backed away and sank down in her corner, she was still trembling, but no longer with terror.

"I've never )9 killed anything before, she thought, amazed at herself and this secret savage side to her nature that she had never suspected existed.

She waited for a feeling of guilt and disgust to overwhelm her.

Instead she felt as strong as though she had come through some ordeal that had armed her and equipped her to overcome whatever dangers and hardships lay ahead.

"I'm not going to give in, not ever again," she whispered. "I'm.

going to fight and to kill if I have to. I'm going to survive.

In the morning when the wardress came for the billy can Claudia confronted her resolutely, thrusting her face only inches from the black woman's and keeping her voice measured but firm.

"Take this out." She indicated the rat's carcass with her foot.

The woman hesitated and Claudia said, "Do it no w!" The wardress picked up the mangled carcass by the tip of the tail and glanced back at Claudia with a measure of respect in her dark eyes.

Carrying the empty billy and the dead rat, she left the cell. len she returned a few minutes later with the refilled billy can and the bowl of maize meal, Claudia subdued her thirst and maintained her new attitude of calm authority as she indicated the sewage bucket.

"That has to be cleaned, she said. The woman snapped a retort in Portuguese.

"I'll do it." Claudia did not waver but held the other woman's gaze until she broke the eye contact. Only then did she turn her back and offer her manacled hands to the wardress.

"Undo these," she ordered. Obediently the wardress unclipped the key from her webbing belt.

Claudia almost cried out as the handcuffs came away. The blood rushed back to her hands, and she held them to her chest and inst the pain, horrified massaged them tenderly, biting her lips ago by the condition of her swollen hands and torn, bruised wrists.

The wardress prodded her in the small of the back and gave an order in Portuguese. Claudia took up the handle of the sewage bucket and, brushing past the woman, climbed the stairs. The sunlight and warmth and clean dry air were like a benediction.

Claudia looked around the stockade quickly. It was obviously a women s prison, for a few dispirited feminine figurer, lolled in the dust beneath the single ebony tree in the center. They were in ragged loincloths. Their naked upper bodies were so painfully thin the ribs stood out clearly beneath the dusty dark skin, and their breasts, even those of the younger women, were empty and dangled as loosely as the ears of a spaniel. Claudia wondered what their crimes had been or if their mere existence had caused their captors offense.

She saw that her bunker was only one of a row of a dozen or so.