Getting By
Prologue

Sweat trickled slowly down the side of my face and the fly returned to drink from the droplet of precious moisture. Irritating as it was, I dared not make a move to shoo it away. The ant under my thigh had finally wriggled over onto its back and was busy biting and stinging my bare flesh. This, too, I ignored.

The men in the camp had not bothered to post guards, but at least one of them was ex-military. That one kept scanning the brush around the campsite, and I was glad that one of my five finger 'purchases' had been a camo kit.

I couldn't see Garcia, but I knew where he was, just as he knew where I was. Like me, he was almost naked. He was armed with crossbow, shotgun, and knife. My weapons were similar, but I carried an M16 instead of a shotgun. Our bodies were painted the same colors as the surrounding brush, in random patterns, and even the keenest eye would have trouble differentiating between us and the scrub that screened us.

Each time the ex-military guy looked the other way, I eased the crossbow closer to firing position. Finally, with the stock on my shoulder, the string cocked, and a bolt in the groove, I let out my breath, struggling to keep my rage under control as Ruth screamed under her rapist and Crystal fought with one of the others not five feet to my right. I knew who Garcia would be targeting, so I aimed, took a deep breath, let part of it out and slowly squeezed the trigger.

At this range, the crossbow was as accurate as a handgun and the bolt went straight up the rapist's ass, disappearing inside him as it tore through his internal organs. Nobody but Garcia and the military guy knew what that muffled click meant, and when the rapist went stiff and collapsed upon his victim, they stood around laughing and telling him to get off so they could have a turn. The military guy drew his sidearm and started in my direction. Garcia's bolt took him through the neck and he went down without a sound. The others didn't even notice.

The guy who had been wrestling with Crystal died silently under my knife before the Gunny took up his shotgun and I clicked my M16 to auto and hosed down the rest of them. When it was over, one guy, trailing guts and blood, tried to crawl away. It may have looked cruel, but my shot to his head saved him hours of suffering. The sun, loss of blood, and the coyotes would eventually have finished him off, but not before he had suffered untold agony.

Ruth was sobbing as we rolled the rapist's body off of her, and Crystal clung to me like she would never let go.

I suppose I had half expected a conflict or two like this ever since I woke, starving, from the fever that nearly killed me, to find the world around me in shambles. That was why I had acted as I did, and why I didn't feel too guilty about hoping that at least one of the men had planted his seed in Ruth's womb.

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