Chapter 16

Frank and Tanya reached the steps leading up to the door of the cabin. Frank stopped for a moment to catch his breath. Tanya caught up with him and waited, panting, her beautiful breasts heaving up and down against the sheer, transparent fabric of her blouse. Her body was heated enough from the exercise of climbing for the last two miles, but her nipples were hard from the cold air and almost poking through the fabric.

Six more shots came from inside. After ducking down, they realized neither of them were the targets.

Pulling his big .45 out, Frank burst through the door into the kitchen. He saw someone backing out of the bedroom holding a gun. Beyond him, he saw Béla sitting on the bed, holding her stomach and bleeding profusely through her fingers, her face was full of pain and rage. She began crawling toward the gunman.

‘Jesus!’ Frank thought, amazed at the sight of her moving with her belly tore up like that. ‘She has absolutely no fucking sense of self-preservation!’

He raised his Peacemaker and fired two rounds into the man’s back.

Frank and Tanya rushed into the bedroom. Frank looked from Béla to Jake.

“Béla! Jake!” he yelled. “Are you two alright?”

‘Jake?’ Béla thought, suddenly alarmed.

She looked over at him. Sometime since she last looked at him, Jake had regained consciousness and pulled himself into a sitting position against the wall. He was staring at her, now, horror written on his face.

“No!” Béla cried. “Jake?” How much did he see? she wondered, terrified of the answer.

She felt light-headed and the room began to spin. The look of horror on Jake’s face hurt worse than the bullets in her belly. ‘This would be a good time to faint!’ she decided, and collapsed onto the bed, unconscious, unwilling to endure any more agony.

Tanya rushed over to the bed and turned Béla over, exposing her ripped-up stomach. “Oh my God!” Tanya cried, “Her guts are hanging out! Help me, Frank!”

Frank was untying Jake. He looked up. “She’ll be alright in a little while, Tanya,” Frank said, trying to soothe her. “She can’t die.”

“Yes,” Jake said, still staring at the monster he had once loved, “she can. If you cut off her head, she will die. “And you should do it before she wakes up!” he snarled, he face filled with fear and revulsion.

He began to shake, then turned away from them, heaving his guts out onto the floor.

Frank waited patiently until Jake had finished throwing up, then pulled him roughly to his feet. He savagely backhanded Jake as hard as he could with his fist. Jake slammed against the wall, blood and vomit flying across the room.

Shocked, Jake stared at Frank. He’d never seen Frank look so enraged. Frank struck him again, knocking him against the other wall. Jake crashed to the floor, then Tanya was between them, screaming at them both.

“Stop it! God dammit! Both of you!”

She turned on Frank. “What the Hell’s the matter with you?”

Frank shoved Tanya out of the way. “I won’t hurt him anymore,” he told her.

He reached down and pulled Jake to his feet, his face full of disgust.

“I’ve known Béla for thirty five years!” he snarled into Jake’s face. “She’s never done anything savage unless someone she loved was hurt!”

He shoved Jake back against the wall, then grabbed him, again.

“If you can’t stand watching what she was willing to do because she thought those men hurt you, then you don’t deserve her!”

He spat into Jake’s face, then turned away. Then he turned around, again.

“She loves you more than she loves her own life! If you do anything to hurt her, either emotionally or physically,” Frank continued, his voice quieter, but sounding more deadly, “I’ll kill you myself and face her wrath! And she will kill me just as certainly as she murderously butchered that man on the bed!

“For you!”

Later, Béla lay curled up on the bed, staring at the far wall. Frank had field dressed her stomach. He knew that would be enough for her to heal herself. It was the first time he’d actually had an opportunity to look inside of her. She had a lot less intestines than a normal person would have, and most of her abdomen, surprisingly enough, was muscle tissue. It was almost like she was another species. He would love to dissect her, but knew she probably wouldn’t appreciate it, even though it probably wouldn’t kill her.

Frank had only been able to find two bullets inside of her. They were both pitted and scoured like they had been dropped into acid, almost like they were being digested. Another thing about her that he thought was fascinating; her blood, deep inside her body was much more acidic than the blood near her skin. He had to wash it off his hands because it stung his skin like a jellyfish, only worse.

He concluded that her entire torso was capable of digesting anything that managed to get inside of her. He also noticed that when the acidic blood deep inside her body mixed with the blood near the surface, it clotted almost instantly. Short of completely severing an arm or a leg (or her head), it would be almost impossible for her to bleed to death.

Frank and Jake weren’t speaking to each other, mostly because Jake was embarrassed, believing his love for Béla wasn’t strong enough to accept her willingness to butcher so casually as he’d witnessed. That she had done it for him, he didn’t doubt. But the cold-blooded violence she was capable of frightened him beyond reason.

Tanya left the kitchen, stepping outside to go to the outhouse. She was glad to get away from the oppressive emotions the others exhibited. Suddenly, she tripped. She tried to catch herself, but her legs weren’t working right. As she fell, she looked down at herself. There were two expanding red spots on her abdomen.

‘I’ve been shot!’ she realized.

She pressed the light button on her watch three times, then passed out from the pain that was blossoming through her abdomen.

Frank finally convinced Béla to get up. He took the bandages off her stomach. There was scar tissue, but other than that, she was healed. He helped her dress and guided her into the kitchen with the others. She didn’t want to go.

“Jake’s in there,” she explained, frightened of his earlier reaction.

“That’s all right,” Frank told her, “I told him I’d kill him if he didn’t behave.”

Béla looked up into Frank’s face. He looked down at her.

“You’ve always been so good to me,” she said softly, “and I’ve let you down so badly.”

She hugged him tightly for a moment. Frank wished she still loved him, but now, finally, he had a girl to love who did love him. He guided Béla into the kitchen.

“Jake, fix us something to eat, will you?” Frank asked.

“Sure,” Jake said.

He got up, not looking at Béla and began getting cans down to prepare a meal.

“I will do it!” Frank told him quietly.

Jake didn’t answer. He didn’t really believe that Frank would kill him if he broke Béla’s heart – Frank was too civilized for that, but he didn’t want to argue, especially not with Béla in the room right with them.

“What’s that beeping sound?” Frank asked, distracted. A quiet, high-pitched beep like one of those new electronic oven timers was faintly calling from inside Tanya’s purse.

“I don’t hear anything,” Jake said, his mind in too much turmoil to hear much of anything outside of his own rampaging thoughts.

Then he heard it, too. He followed the sound over to Tanya’s purse and picked it up, glared studiously at it for a moment without opening it, then handed it to Frank, saying, “Tanya must have a beeper.”

“There’s no service up here,” Frank told him, opening the purse and looking inside. Nothing inside the purse was beeping or blinking. The sound had to be coming from inside the stiff lining of the purse, itself.

“What the hell,” Frank murmured, then pulled on a thread, opening a hidden compartment.

Frank reached inside and pulled something out. It looked like a circuit board for a computer. A light was flashing. As the light flashed, something on the circuit board beeped.

“It’s a bloody transmitter!” he said, angrily. “Tanya’s been broadcasting our location!” He looked around, angry at her seeming betrayal. “Where the hell is she?”

“I think she went to the crapper,” Jake said.

Frank stormed out of the cabin and into the yard, stopping suddenly at the startling sight of Tanya lying on the freezing ground. Her transparent blouse was dark and wet, and she was lying in a slowly expanding pool of blood.

A mosquito whizzed by his ear. It had been a long time since he heard a sound like that and, although he knew it was a useless gesture, he ducked anyway.

As Jake started out the door, Frank yelled, “Stay inside! Somebody’s shooting at us!”

Jake stopped and backed up just as something smacked loudly into the doorframe right next to his head. He ducked back inside the cabin.