Chapter 6

Ellen never knew what it was that awakened her about an hour before dawn. Perhaps it was the cacophony of snores coming from Pop and Cash. She shivered in the early morning coolness and gazed around. They were all asleep, even the vicious little Vito, who had finally come to her after the others were asleep--sneaking over toward her like a jackal coming to feed after the lions were gone. She bore a bruise on the right side of her cheek where he had hit her with his closed fist after she had not responded with an orgasm as she had with Pop and Cash.

She ached all over her body, with most of the uncomfortable throbbing coming from her battered and bruised vaginal area. Dazedly she gazed around her, still not awake enough to recall the events that brought her here, much less remember the multiple rapes of her virginal loins. It seemed that there was something missing, then she remembered... there was a fourth member of the gang--Billy, the leader--asleep in the other room.

Or was he asleep. Pinching herself to awaken further, she listened and caught the sound of a snore coming from behind the closed door. It was only then, with a sudden surge of panic and hope that she fully realized that all of her captors were asleep at the same time.

Stealthily, she swung her legs off the soiled bare mattress and put her feet on the floor. Pop snorted, coughed, and turned on his side before resuming his baritone harmony of snores. It took two attempts to get to her feet; the first time her wobbly knees and wearily trembling legs failed to support her. With the cunning born of the trapped animal, she knew exactly what she would say if someone awakened and discovered her standing upright. She would tell them she had to go to the toilet. The naked young girl was halfway across the room before she remembered her tattered clothes. For a moment she deliberated about just leaving them, but from somewhere summoning up courage she didn't realize still existed, she padded over to the corner, stepped across Cash's nakedly sleeping figure, and grabbed her clothes.

At the door, she paused and looked behind her to make sure they were still sleeping. Satisfied, she went to the stair landing and quickly put on her ripped and tattered tee shirt and tight, hip-hugging jeans. It was only then she realized she had left her sandals behind... something she dismissed as being unimportant. No force in the world could get her back into that foul loft with those sex-crazed criminals.

All of her instincts screamed at her to run down the stairs, but some rational voice in her mind made her tred lightly on each stair and to tred well off center. In spite of her precautions, the stairs creaked so loudly that she was sure the men couldn't help but be awakened; in her mind's eye she could see them stirring, could almost hear them shouting warnings at each other.

At the bottom of the stairs it was pitch-black and she had to whip her mind to remember the details of the ground floor. Even so the terrified young girl bumped into the pickup truck and then felt her way like a blind woman toward the door.

"Dear God," she prayed silently, "please, please don't let there be a padlock on the door."

Her hand brushed across the rough wood of the inside of the garage door and encountered just a latch, which she quickly lifted.

The door, when she opened it, creaked so loudly that even the frogs outside were momentarily silenced. Ellen no longer cared about the noise. It was the hour before the dawn and the moon had long since set. The night was coal black and the dirt road leading to the abandoned warehouse was only a barely perceptible glow in the darkness. There was no doubt in her mind that escape was not only possible, but very probable.

She began running down the dirt path as fast as her long legs could carry her, expecting at any moment to hear the shouts and the sudden sound of pursuit behind her.

By the time the terrified young girl reached the gravel road leading back to the highway, she was already panting for breath and her side felt as though it had been caught in a vise. The sharp rocks on the gravelled roadway cut into the tender soles of her unshod feet, and within seconds she was bleeding from a multitude of painful cuts.

As Ellen ran, she welcomed the pain; that was her punishment for the betrayal of her body--for the lewd things she had done, for the mindless, whore-like enthusiasm she had shown for Cash and Pop once she had realized the pleasure their long hard maledom could bring a woman.

She ran in the darkness with the brittle stars a crown above her head and the lights of the far-off city shining like the promise of Camelot. Ellen didn't mind that she left behind a trail of blood from her feet, that her heart was pounding so rapidly it seemed about to burst into a million pieces, that a hot poker was in her side. She mentally embraced the pain, and thought wonderingly about the almost erotic, masochistic pleasure she was deriving from running barefoot in gravel. It was with something akin to regret that the young girl reached the relatively smooth surface of the concrete main highway. She stopped, her breath coming in great rasping gulps. Obviously, if pursuit started, they would assume she would head to the left toward the city lights some five or six miles away. Although her escape had been successful up to this point, she really didn't believe that she had another hour--and it would take that long to reach the city. Besides, the eastern horizon was already becoming a dirty gray color as the sun raced toward a Florida dawn. It would be light in another twenty or thirty minutes.

And so, with the wisdom of the hunted, she turned away from the protection of the lights still far-off and began running toward the right and the uncertain darkness.

The girl hadn't taken two steps before she heard the angry shouting behind her and the faint sound of running footsteps in the gravel. At a distance, she saw the warehouse where she had been held captive, fully lighted now and the lights of what was obviously the pickup truck pulling out of the garage.

Fear lent wings to her feet and she began running as though she were in an Olympics try-out, her bleeding feet completely ignored. As she fled, she rejected the suggestion from her brain that she hide. There were only sand dunes here... and they were out of the question because her footsteps would be plainly visible when the sun came up shortly.

Ellen paused for a second, her chest rising and falling painfully as she sought to get breath into her tortured lungs, and turned around to make a reconnaissance of her pursuers. As she watched, the lights of the pickup truck swung wildly off the gravel road, turned left, and began heading toward the lights of the city. She watched it, rejoicing, wanting to cry with relief, but then her mind took over and told her that these men were smart in the ways of the hunter and the hunted. It would take them only a very short time to realize that they had missed her--that she was either hiding or had gone in the opposite direction.