It is very difficult to say anything at all about this grippingly realistic novel without giving away the ending. Therefore, without tantalizing the reader unnecessarily, let us attempt a brief but succinct description of this rather unusual book. The story deals with a bank robbery in the course of which a young and unknown woman is taken prisoner, and used as a hostage to guarantee the gang's escape. Leader of the gang is a physically powerful, sexually rapacious and cunning man named Bud Stern and his woman companion is a tough bi-sexual ex-stripper named Nellie. Also part of the gang is Wilbur, a laconic gunman with a strongly erotic streak of cruelty in him, but the pivot man is Len O'Reilly, the explosives expert. Desperate for money, Len agrees to help Stern and his group rob the bank, but finds himself inextricably embroiled in an ocean of blood and perverted sexuality from which he cannot escape.
As a study of psycho-sexual conflict on many levels, Mr. Savage's penetrating book has already been the subject of favorable and excited comment among psychologists who have examined the manuscript. The progressive degeneration of Len's personality, the violence and the rampant, frequently perverse sexuality, make this book a valid and perceptive reflection of what American society has become in the seventies. And, because the author has transcended the lines of strictly conformist behavior in an effort to capture the very real emotions of people under stress, some of the candid language and graphic sex scenes may offend a few of our more vulnerable readers. We would like to alert them in advance, for it is not our desire to offend anyone, merely to shed a little more light on the nature of the animal that walks erect and is king of all he surveys Man!
The Publishers
CHAPTER ONE
Bud Stern paused at the door of the apartment, his big, powerful body blocking the light and still dominating the room he was on the verge of leaving. The usual sardonic smile playing around the corners of his cruel lips, he glanced first at Nellie, nodding at her confidently, and then at Len O'Reilly, studying the young man's face with concern. The kid had been under tremendous pressure for nearly a month now, and Stern was critically worried about his capacity to hold on for another few hours at least, after which he could get drunk, or burst into tears, or have a nervous breakdown if he pleased. Later, they would help him, because they liked him, but a charge man needed steady hands, and Len was shaking like a leaf.
"We move out in half an hour," Stern's deep voice rambled reassuringly. "And everything looks groovy. You two all set?"
"Ready when you are, chum," Nellie was still wearing a thin tattered bathrobe, and her sleek hips swayed like a show girl's as she sauntered temptingly across the room to kiss her lover on the lips. Stern accepted the playful probing of her tongue thoughtfully, still worrying primarily about the steadiness of Len's hands.
"I guess I know how to load a gun," snapped the young man irritably, aware that he was the object of concern from the other three members of the gang. Len O'Reilly shifted in his chair, suddenly feeling dwarfed by the size of the man in the doorway, and wishing people would stop treating him like a child. He was twenty-one, even if he did look a few years younger than the age on his driver's license. He had lost his virginity, served in the Marine Corps, and was now doing his best to support the large family his father had abruptly left in his hands. He had every right to be considered a full-fledged adult!
"Hope you know how to shoot one," said Stern without changing his facial expression or his tone of voice. "Some people sorta freeze up when the sirens get going and ferget how to pull a trigger."
"Don't worry about it, Bud!" the kid suddenly flared. "My end of the job is as easy as pie! You keep the guards off my back and I'll get that safe open for you." There was a faintly noticeable edge of tension in the young man's voice and Stern frowned uneasily. He might have known better than to bring a non-professional into a job like this but good dynamite men were getting hard to find. Maybe Nellie could get the kid calmed down...
"Well, gonna check the car out with Wilbur," he informed them slowly, his eyes sweeping keenly across the room. "Give the kid a piece of ass, Nellie, it'll settle his nerves."
The woman nodded understandingly and the door closed as Stern made his exit, leaving Len in a state of near-shock. For Christ's sake, they were supposed to rob a bank in an hour he told himself, and this was hardly the moment for Stern to start organizing his love-life! Nellie smiled at him, swaying provocatively in his direction and Len reflected that he had never once seen her laugh. She was a beautiful woman, with deep mature breasts and finely-tapered thighs, but she was also about fifteen years older than he was, and it had never occurred to the young man to think about how she might be in bed. There was something strange, something cruelly perverse in Nellie's character which kept him slightly off balance and nervous in her presence. He had heard from Wilbur that Stern sometimes entertained himself by giving Nellie to another man, and then sitting down with a cigar to enjoy watching the proceedings. Another time Nellie had picked up a Lesbian in a bar, and brought her back to the apartment to be ravaged by Bud and Wilbur. Len's sexual experience had been limited to lustful grop-sessions in the back seats of parked cars, and an occasional prostitute while in the Marine Corps, and he realized that these people were playing in the sexual big leagues while he was still distinctly in the minors. And now Stern had abruptly directed that he be administered a little medicinal screwing to steady his nerves. Somehow, the idea upset him.
"Don't worry about a thing, honey," the dark-haired woman purred at him, sinking languidly down by his side on the couch. "Everything's gonna be okay, and you're gonna get the dough you need for your family and plenty for yourself on top of it. Bud's a genius!"
"Then how come he spent five years in jail?" the young man shot out defensively as Nellie moved closer to him on the couch. He could see now that she was stark naked beneath the fragile cloth of her dressing gown, and he felt his youthful cock stirring restlessly at the sight of her low-set mountainous breasts swaying sensually at him behind the thin fabric of her robe. Nellie had been a stripper a decade before when Bud had found her, and she had maintained her stripper's body in perfect condition, and her dancer's way of moving with graceful precise motions. She leaned closer, running her hands across his chest.
"He went to jail because somebody sold him out," she explained in a sultry manner. "After that big job on the Coast, there was a reward for him, and one of his friends collected it. Nice, huh?"
Her hand crept seductively into his groin, and the woman grinned lasciviously as she detected the stiffness of his cock throbbing involuntarily beneath his pants.
"What happened to the friend?" asked Len in a choked voice, squirming a little on the couch as Nellie caressed his stiffened penis with one hand and unbuttoned his shirt with the other. Her lips brushed across his ear as she answered.
"I had a girlfriend in L.A., a hooker. We arranged to have her meet him in a bar and offer him a free ride. He was stupid, this friend, and he went back to her room, because she said she'd blow him and he thought that would be fun. He was standing in front of the mirror with his prick in her face when I got him from behind with a piece of piano wire, just as he started to cum."
"You! You did it? Alone?"
"Wilbur was there, hiding in the closet with a gun just in case I needed help," Nellie admitted casually. "But I didn't."
"Jesus...." Len felt his cock wilting at the thought, but only for a moment as she continued skillfully caressing his twitching organ with her hands.
"But that's all behind us now, isn't it honey?" she whispered in his ear. "Today, we're gonna pick up some real dough and when we get to South America, Bud knows a town where we can hole up till the heat is off. Down there they don't wanna know where your money comes from and we can have us some real fun."
Jesus, you're in over your head this time! Len thought desperately. Making love to a murderess while her boyfriend gets the car ready to drive us to the bank we're supposed to rob. But it's too late...
In his head, the young dynamite technician was trying to tell himself that he wanted no part of this woman, but his body was coming up with different answers for the same question. Before he knew what he was doing, his hands were reaching out to brush aside the lapels of her dressing gown and to caress the softly yielding globes of her enormous breasts. The dark-haired woman chuckled throatily, and unzipped his fly, fishing around in his pants until she succeeded in drawing his long quivering cock out into the daylight.
"Well, where have you been hiding this big lovely thing?" she complimented him crudely, stroking his cock lewdly and drawing back the thick leathery foreskin to reveal the glistening scarlet glans. "If I'd known you were hung like this, baby, I'd have been after you a long time ago."
"Bud ... doesn't mind?" Len managed to gasp, his hips twitching convulsively as the experienced woman stroked the spheres of his testicles.
"Bud knows that what I got between my legs ain't gonna wear out," she explained obscenely. "And he don't much care what I do with it, long as I'm available when he wants me. Which is about twice a day," she added proudly.
"Oh ... I, that seems sensible," he stammered.
"That's the word for it," Nellie agreed, her head sliding sensuously down to plant a moist, open-mouthed kiss on the bulging red tip of his cock. "What would you like, honey? I'm real good with my tongue."
Somehow, Len could not find the breath to produce an answer, and the ironic thought ran through his mind that Bud had suggested this depraved business to settle his jangled nerves. Instead, he was more nervous than ever. The notion of a woman taking the lead upset him, and what Nellie was proposing was something he had never had before. But he wanted it bad!
Taking silence for consent, Nellie pushed him over backwards on the couch so that he was stretched out on his back with his legs on either side of her body, feeling ridiculous about lying beneath her with his hardened cock standing up in her hands like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Her dressing gown had somehow come open and his eyes widened with rapidly increasing lust as he studied her crouched figure, her breasts swaying pendulously over his loins and the darkly tempting patch of black hair between her legs. But Nellie did not give him much time to admire the scenery. Instead, she began stroking him slowly and tormentingly, running her delicate fingers wickedly up and down his pulsating shaft, each down-stroke pushing the uncircumcised foreskin farther back, until the whole of his fat scarlet glans was revealed to her coolly, calculating eyes. Besides having lots of experience with this particular perversion, Nellie genuinely enjoyed it, liking the idea of having such complete and total sex-control over her bed partner. The woman chuckled lewdly as she watched Len's hips begin to flex involuntarily, deciding that it was time to turn on a little more pressure.
Of course, she was perfectly capable of making him cum in two minutes flat, but her job was to get the young man's mind off his troubles for awhile, which meant that she was free to take her time and enjoy herself. So she continued to toy with him, handling his hardened instrument with casual skill as she massaged it gently between her fingers. A new cock was an adventure for the woman, since they were all different, and Nellie had long since discovered that she enjoyed looking at them, studying them, exploring the obscene patterns of veins and ridges of naked flesh. More than that, she liked to bring a man up to such a state of trembling need and excitement that he would do anything to make her finish what she had begun. She liked to be in charge, on top, and unfortunately, she seldom got the opportunity when Bud was around. But Len is a different story. He was young and inexperienced and she could tell from the way he was reacting that he had never before had a woman accept his long fat cock into the sanctity of her mouth. In a way, he was a virgin, and the idea pleased her as she bent over him, the long dark strands of her soft hair cascading across his groin.
Len drew his breath in sharply as he felt her hot lustful breath on the sensitive skin of his genitals, watching as Nellie ran her lips softly down the length of his rampant shaft to the stout, hardened base. Then he groaned in pure carnal happiness as she sucked the sperm-filled spheres of his testicles into her mouth, one after another, teasing and tormenting them with her agilely probing tongue.
"Nellie, you're driving me up the wall!" he gasped as she fondled his throbbing manhood lasciviously, her fingers touching and caressing him lightly, but the woman's only response was a low throaty chuckly as she worked her way back up his cock, playing him like a harmonica, until she reached the tiny hole in the tip of his glans. She explored it with her tongue, boring teasingly in and sending wild electric storms of wicked pleasure up his backbone. He wiggled convulsively and then nearly whimpered with ecstasy as she lowered her head suddenly, letting the rigid pike slide obscenely past the barrier of her red lips. Instantly, her mouth tightened around the circumference of his shaft, creating a powerful suction which seemed to suck his throbbing penis farther and farther into this unnatural sanctuary. She was holding the whole of his turgid glans inside of her now, and Len knew nothing this good had ever happened to him before. He was in Heaven!
"Yes, do it like that, baby!" he pleaded, feeling the self-confidence trickle back into his body as he studied the crouching submissive figure of the woman before him, kneeling between his outstretched thighs and sucking the rampant pike of his cock like a slave! The sight of his firm but pulsating instrument protruding unnaturally from Nellie's cruelly stretched mouth sent his excitement shooting upwards like a thermometer on a hot day, and he found himself wondering how much longer he could hold out against the orgasm she was lewdly offering to him. It was all happening too fast as far as he was concerned, and he wanted this to last a little longer. God, it felt good!
Nellie was murmuring with obvious passion as she slaved over him, her head bobbing vigorously up and down as she drove the hardened mass of flesh even deeper into the back of her wildly sucking throat. She could sense that Len was sailing high and headed for a thunderous orgasm, and she slowed him down expertly by running her fingernails ruthlessly along the length of his penis, leaving slender white trails behind her in his flesh. Len's hips twitched involuntarily and Nellie took the opportunity to thrust her hands beneath his hardened buttocks, as if she were urging him to fuck even more deeply into the savagely violated sanctuary of her throat. Her tongue seemed to be tireless, and she lashed him unmercifully, feeling his bulging penis grow thicker and harder by the minute as his excitement inexorably mounted to the exploding point.
Deep in his loins, Len could feel a smoldering, fiery sensation which he understood could only mean one thing. The muscles in his taut athletic stomach hardened with tension as he lifted his hips off the couch entirely in a lust-crazed effort to ram himself even deeper into her gulping, sucking mouth. He groaned, incoherently, muttering every obscene word which sprang to his lips, half-maddened by the sight of his glistening cock thrust wickedly into a woman's willing mouth. Then, he seized her head in his hands, suddenly possessed by the irrational fear that she would ruin all his pleasure at the critical moment by pulling away from him. She had started this lewd game, and now he meant to finish it, and finish it his way by pouring the hot jet of his angry sperm deep into the back of her open throat.
"Now ... now ... now!!!!" he gasped as the moment flung itself upon them. Len could feel the hot bubbling liquid of his semen starting its irreversible flow up the narrow passageway from his testicles and out the tiny nozzle-like opening in the lip of his cock. The cum-sensation spread through his abdomen like heat, sending his athletic young body into wild, unrestrained gyrations of lust as he tried to thrust his frantically ejaculating cock even deeper into the woman's greedily swallowing throat.
"I'm cumming!" he informed her in a desire-ridden voice, but Nellie hardly needed to be informed since she was in an excellent position to appreciate the fact that he was indeed cumming. The hot sticky semen seemed to be pouring into her in endless waves and her cheeks puffed out obscenely as her entire mouth filled with the thick lust-provoking liquid. Determined not to lose a drop of the precious substance, Nellie went on sucking passionately, gulping and gagging as the young man emptied his white-hot cum into the tantalizing wetness of her mouth. His hard muscular hands were still fiercely entangled in her dark hair, ceaselessly pulling her head closer to his throbbing loins. He rested his head back on the pillow of the couch as the spasm slowly came to an end, the longest, most powerful orgasm he could ever remember, feeling his cock wilting happily in Nellie's mouth. She was still working over him, her tongue relentlessly cleaning his exhausted penis like a mother cat washing her kittens, drawing every last drop of life giving cum from his battered cock, until he was clean and soft again.
It was over. Len shook his head in amazement and sat up at the end of the couch as Nellie lifted her ravaged face from his loins, a few drops of his cum still clinging obscenely to her bruised lips. The woman smiled at him briefly and got up.
"Well, that's that," she said saucily, as if the blow job had been merely a pleasant way of killing a half hour. "And when we get down to
South America, baby, that's a favor you're going to have to pay back!" Nellie had considered the possibility that Bud would simply dump the kid or rub him out after the robbery, since eliminating him would make one less person when it came time to divide up the money. But Stern had a peculiar sense of honor among thieves, particularly after that false friend had sent him to prison, and the woman somehow guessed that the gang leader would probably give the kid his share, and take care of him, if he performed well on the job. It was of little importance to her one way or another, she decided, as she stripped off her bathrobe and began to dress. If they killed him, her share of the money would be that much greater. If they let him live, she could play her wicked sex games with him a little longer in the comfort of a South American town.
Had a little sex calmed him down? Nellie glanced over her naked shoulder at him as she took a man's suit down out of the closet and draped it over the back of a chair. Len seemed to be less nervous as he fastened his pants. Un-like the rest of them, Len was obliged to work under terrible pressure, since this was his first job, and he needed the money badly. The young man's situation would have melted the heart of a welfare worker, but to Nellie, it was just the breaks of the game. The kid's father had gone and blown himself up over at the mine because he was working drunk when dynamite technicians ought to work sober. The mining corporation had ruled that it was not their fault, and refused to pay the O'Reilly family a pension. Len, who also worked for the company, hired a lawyer to sue and the Barton Corporation got nasty and fired him as well. Len had gotten mad and thrown a punch at the company lawyer, who had picked himself up off the floor and arranged for the kid to be blacklisted in every industrial corporation in the country, and every business in the City of Lancaster. Len was prohibited from doing the only kind of work he knew and from getting any kind of job in his home town. The judge, who had several thousand dollars' worth of stock in the mine, threw Len's case out of court, and the kid was left with a mother, several younger brothers and sisters to support, and no job.
A sob story, thought Nellie as she tied a flat band of elastic around her chest to flatten her sumptuous breasts and then slipped into a man's white shirt. Anybody stupid enough to spend his life blowing up sticks of dynamite in the bottom of a mine deserves to get blown up himself. And the kid's a boy scout type at heart, she decided, watching him in the mirror as he dubiously inspected the pistol Stern had given him before placing it gingerly in his shoulder holster. He'll never be able to pull that trigger, and I hope to hell he isn't put to the test!
"Why ... why are you dressing like a man?" came a hesitant voice from behind her. Nellie had crowded her luxuriant black hair into a man's homberg, and fastened a conservative tie around her neck. When she answered, Len noticed that her voice was lower, huskier, and her whole personality seemed to have altered in a dozen subtle ways.
"For one thing, it confuses the hell out of the police," she responded bluntly. "And for another, I get a kinky little kick out of it, okay? Bud and me walked out of a job once and afterwards we went into a bar. He picked up a chick, and I took her away from him! Ho! Was he pissed off! And you shoulda seen the broad's face when I got her in bed!"
"You like girls too?" questioned Len, feeling ridiculous about asking such a naive-sounding question, but anxious to distract himself from what was going to happen in the next few hours. Besides, he had always been vaguely curious about Lesbians.
"Kid, this gal-likes flesh," Nellie responded coolly, adjusting her suit coat and surveying herself in the mirror. "And I don't much care what kind. Why once I. . . "
The door opened, interrupting what promised to be a lascivious boast, and Bud Stern appeared, followed by Wilbur, a gray-haired man in his late fifties who seemed to trail after Stern like an aging pet dog, grateful for every scrap thrown to him by his master. Suddenly Len found himself remembering Nellie's story about Wilbur hiding in the closet with a gun while she and her girlfriend strangled the man who had turned Bud into the police. Involuntarily, his hand found its way to his throat, and he gulped convulsively.
"Okay, the car's ready," announced Stern in his heavy, authoritative manner. "Are you cats all set?"
"Yeah," affirmed Len, standing up and picking up the satchel bag he had prepared.
"Good, now have we all got the story straight? Len, you're the expert in this dynamite business. You got any last minute instructions for us? like what do we do when you set the stuff off?"
"Well, the stuff we're using at the bank ain't dynamite, like I told you, it's plastic. We called it C-4 in the Marine Corps, and it's the stuff to use for this kind of a blast. Dynamite doesn't blow right, and we'd risk burning all the money inside the safe. It'll be find for these other jobs we gotta do first, but for splitting steel, you need plastic. When I set it off, just put your fingers over your ears for a minute, because it makes a racket."
"Good. You got enough of the stuff?"
"I got enough to blow up ten banks. It's light, so I figured I'd take a lot."
"You're sure you know what you're doing?" inquired Wilbur. "I think that dynamite would be..."
"Look, the kid's an expert!" Stern cut off Wilbur's objection. "Between what his old man taught him. and what he picked up in the Marine
Corps, he oughta be able to blow up this tin can of a safe. Come on, let's get going."
"Look, there's not going to be any shooting, is there?" wondered Len as he moved obediently towards the door, his satchel held tightly in his hand. "Unless we have to, I mean?"
"Why Lennie," purred Nellie in his ear. "Do we look that nasty?"
CHAPTER TWO
The Lancaster National Bank sits richly on the intersection of Vine and Burbank Streets, and it opens in the morning at nine and closes for lunch at twelve, re-opening for business at three in the afternoon. Its largest single corporate client is the Barton Mining Corporation and the armored car which makes the mile run between the mine headquarters and the bank downtown is a familiar sight on Burbank Street which is Lancaster's main drag. On the day before the employees at the mine are to be paid, the payroll of about a half million dollars comes in by armored car from the State capitol and is deposited for safe-keeping in the vault. like most bank vaults, this enclosure is ringed with steel and concrete, and protected by electronic devices which prevent anyone from getting even ciose to it. In the morning, the money is taken from the vault, and placed in a steel container behind the teller's cage which was built for this precise purpose. The money is considered actually safer there, since the container is the property of the Barton Mining Corporation, and once the money is locked inside, the bank officials themselves do not have the combination needed to re-open it, whereas they could obviously be forced to open the main vault at gunpoint. About three-thirty, the armored car with six armed guards and the assistant treasurer of the Barton Company comes to retrieve the money. The officials of the Lancaster National Bank breathe a sigh of relief for another month, and go back to the humdrum business of administering the savings of Lancaster's local gentry.
The Vice-President of the Lancaster National Bank was a pleasant honest man who had been convinced for many years that his wife did not really love him, which was probably true, since Nellie had reported to Stern that he was the least efficient lover she had ever taken into her bed. While coaxing his flaccid middle-aged penis into life, she had also persuaded him to explain how the Barton Corporation transfers its payroll on pay-day and Nellie had faithfully reported this information to Stern. When the gang leader had realized that conventional stick-up procedures were unlikely to be effective against this kind of protection system, he had gone looking for a man who was handy with high explosives. And found him.
Avoiding the patches of ice, Wilbur powered the big Merc into an Esso station on the North side of town about twenty miles from the Lancaster National Bank. The attendant puffed tranquilly on his cigar as he meandered over to be of service.
"Gimmie ten gallons," ordered Wilbur. From over his shoulder, Len inquired if the gas station had a men's room. It did and he was given directions to it. Carrying an innocuous-looking paper bag, he slipped out of the car and circled around through the back of the station where he found a large steel tank half-filled with diesel oil. A quick glance around assured him that he was unobserved, and it was only a few seconds work to attach the bomb to the bottom of the tank where it could not be seen. The device had been prepared in advance and was the simplest type of bomb in existence: a single stick of dynamite to which a blasting cap had been attached. The power was supplied by a pair of six volt batteries taped together and the timer had been fashioned from a cheap alarm clock. A metal screw had been forced into the face plate at twelve and fine copper wires had been soldered to both the screw and the minute hand, so that contact would be made when the minute hand reached twelve. It was crude, but great accuracy was not demanded on this occasion and an explosion time of three o'clock, plus or minus five minutes would suit their purposes admirably. Len glanced at his watch, discovering that his hands were not shaking, and set the timer, calculating that the blast would ignite the diesel fuel and make a pretty pink flame about two hundred feel tall a few milliseconds after contact was made. He then proceeded to use the bathroom, and returned to the car just as Wilbur was paying for the ten gallons of gasoline he had purchased.
"You get it squared away, kid?" asked Bud Stern as Wilbur took the car around a corner and headed for the train station. They were in a hurry now, but safety required that they not be stopped by a police officer for speeding, and Wilbur carefully stayed beneath the speed limits.
"It'll go up at three o'clock," grunted Len, feeling a weird tingle of excitement as he realized that he had committed a felony for the first time in his life. "I'll make it five after for the train station."
"Get it ready, we're almost there," called Wilbur.
"Hell no, suppose you hit a bump when he's priming it!" objected Nellie.
"Take it slow," cautioned Len as he positioned a cardboard box on his knees and carefully removed the lid. Inside was the same kind of device he had already used at the gas station, with the wires already in place. He removed a cigarette filter which had been insulating the twelve o'clock contact and carefully set the device for detonation at five minutes after three. Wilbur coasted gingerly to a stop in the parking zone in front of the station, and Len followed Bud Stern into the big, almost empty terminal. Covering one wall in the passenger lounge was an automatic baggage check and Stern selected number 649, inserting four quarters and getting twenty-four hours' use of a small compartment in return. Len slid the brown box into its repository and took the key.
"Get rid of the key," Stern reminded him as they strode casually out of the train station, and the young man quickly understood. That key would hang them all if they were caught. He dropped it quietly in a waste paper basket and they got back into the car.
"Now for the police station," smiled Stern grimly as Wilbur took the big Merc back into the stream of traffic. "How are your nerves kid?"
"I'm okay. There's nothing too difficult about blowing things up. I've been doing it all my life." Len was amazed at his own coolness so far, but he was telling the truth about these jobs being simple. He was concentrating all his energies on the technical problems ahead of him at each stage of the game and trying not to think about the robbery. All he had to do was put one foot in front of the other, and worry about the explosives and Stern would worry about getting them the money. It was like being back in the Marine Corps where you did your job and let the lieutenant think about the rest.
The traffic was heavier downtown, but they had allowed for this in their time-table. Nellie was sitting calmly in the front seat, looking placidly out the window at items in store windows, and Wilbur was whistling tunelessly under his breath as he maneuvered the big car through the crowded streets.
"I hope this thing doesn't kill anybody," Len lifted the briefcase onto his knees. No one commented, suggesting to the young man that Stern and his friends were not particular about whether or not they killed anyone. They had killed people before, and apparently lost no sleep over it.
"You want me to take this in, kid?" offered Stern.
"Bud, don't be silly!" Nellie's voice was suddenly shrill.
"I just thought if Len is getting nervous..."
"I'm not getting nervous! Will you stop asking me if I'm getting nervous!" Len almost shouted, feeling his self-control slip away just a little before he managed to pull it back. "And I'll take this thing in myself. I'll do my job and you guys worry about yours!"
A little angry, he opened the briefcase and set the timer for seven minutes after three. This alarm clock was not cheap because it had to be silent and he had to hold it to his ear to hear whether it was ticking. It was, nicely, and he placed it delicately back into position. Wilbur stopped across the street from the Lancaster Central Police Station, and Len noticed that there was a subtle tension in the car. None of them enjoyed being this close to a police station, and he felt a sudden sense of superiority. As far as he could see, they were as nervous as he was or worse. They were a bunch of crooks, and living in constant fear was what you got out of a lifetime of being a common crook. He, on the other hand, was going to play it smart. One job. one really big job, and that was it. With the money he got from this one hoist, he could buy a farm somewhere in South America, and never touch a gun or a stick of dynamite again. A native girl, perhaps to cook and warm his bed at night ...
He got out of the car with the brief case under his arm, his throat feeling unusually dry and dodged through the traffic to the other side. There were two policemen chatting at the foot of the steps, but neither looked up at the neatly dressed young man with the briefcase who strode quickly past them and into their headquarters. In the lobby, there were a few people sitting on benches, and a desk sergeant behind a glass enclosure working the switchboard. Len stooped, putting his face to the little window through which conversations were meant to be conducted, and waited until the sergeant had finished dispatching a car to pick up a man who was drunk and disorderly. As he bent over, he set the briefcase on the floor, and inched it with his foot behind the switchboard. The charge was small, but it would not take much of a bang to destroy this delicate mechanism and that was all they wanted to do. The sergeant looked up questioningly.
"I need an application for a driver's license," Len explained.
"You gotta be at least eighteen, kid," said the policeman patiently as he opened a drawer and fished out a blank green application form. "You eighteen?"
"I'm eighteen," he said leadenly, feeling the same mindless irritation he always felt when people took him for much younger than he really was. I'm twenty-one, you stupid son-of-a-bitch, and I'm planting a bomb under your fat nose!
"Sign here."
Len scrawled a false name across a piece of paper and picked up the application blank.
"Thanks," he muttered, and walked towards the door, studying the piece of paper attentively.
"Hey kid!" came the desk sergeant's hard voice and Len froze in his tracks. Had they spotted the briefcase? What would he do? He turned, his face reddening involuntarily, suddenly conscious of the gun he was carrying. Could he get to it before the policeman got to his? Would he even try?
"That's my pen you're walking off with," said the desk sergeant accusingly.
"Sorry, officer," Len apologized contritely, quickly returning the pen. "Uh ... see ya."
"Yeah, see ya, kid," muttered the sergeant forgetting the incident instantly. A hundred people a day almost walked off with his pen and when they got away with it, he had to buy a new one out of his own money. The phone rang and the sergeant dutifully answered it. A man had run over a dog on the other side of town. The sergeant told the caller to try the S.P.C.A.
* * *
"My name is Mary Keane," said the young woman as she slid the pass book over the marble counter to the teller. "I want to make a withdrawal." The clerk glanced briefly at the young woman's face and as much as he could see of her figure, not for purposes of identification but because she was, in a quiet sort of way, strikingly attractive, with short, honey-brown hair and dark, expressive eyes. She was wearing a raincoat which made it difficult to assess the character of her figure, but her breasts seemed to be large...
"How much, Miss?" the teller allowed his gaze to rest upon her a second too long, and then glanced at the passbook. Miss Keane had two hundred and forty-seven dollars on deposit with the Lancaster National Bank. He remembered her now. She came in once a week and deposited five or ten dollars in a savings account earning four and three-quarters percent per annum. It was a slow way to get rich.
"All of it. I'm leaving town."
The clerk would like to have chatted up Miss Keane, it was just three o'clock and the bank was nearly empty at this hour, but the manager's eye was upon him and he closed out the account without further comment. Somewhere in the distance, there was a dull, ominous noise, like distant thunder, and the manager of the bank looked up in time to see a thin stream of black oily smoke rising many miles away in the direction of the Rockies, showering into the sky like an accusing finger. He pondered it for a moment and then forgot about it. No one else seemed to have noticed.
The teller counted out two hundred and forty-seven dollars and asked Miss Mary Keane to sign a withdrawal slip. She read the blank form slowly and while she was reading, the air seemed to tremble a second time as a Shockwave rattled the windows of the bank. There was a rumble somewhere in the distance, and the bank manager frowned.
"They're blasting up at the mine," said the teller to Mary Keane. "You don't usually hear it down here." Far away, there were sirens and the employees of the bank stopped work in a few seconds and looked at each other questioningly as a third explosion sounded somewhere in the direction of the train station. The front door to the bank opened as Miss Keane was counting her money, and four people walked in. One of them, a gray-haired man in his fifties, stationed himself by the door, taking a mask out of his pocket and putting it over his face. The teller looked over Miss Keane's shoulder and saw that the other three were all donning masks as well. A big burly man walked up to the bank guard, Mr. Mosely, and pointed a gun at him. The big man took away Mosely's gun and put it in his pocket.
"Put the money inside your dress," whispered the bank clerk, absurdly worried about the fate of Miss Keane's two hundred and forty-seven dollars. "I think this is a robbery."
"It's all I have," said the girl plaintively.
"Put it down the front of your dress," urged the teller again. "They'll never look there."
* * *
It was so insanely quiet that Len found it difficult to believe that the operation had actually begun. Bud had disarmed the guard with casual ease, and Wilbur and Nellie held their guns on the two customers, and seven employees while he and Stern went behind the teller cage with the manager.
"Don't hurt anyone," pleaded the manager, but his tone was brisk and business-like. "We're insured, so you can take what you want."
"That's what we aim to do," grunted Stern. "Have your tellers put their paper cash in this bag and then get clear of the safe over there."
The manager took the soft cloth bag from Stern and handed it to the teller who had been helping Mary Keane close out her account. He smiled encouragingly as he spoke in his deep, trustworthy banker's voice.
"Have everybody put their cash in here and then bring it back," he ordered. "No coins. I don't think they want coins."
Len had seen the Barton safe before, during reconnaissance trips into the bank, and he knew what he had to do now without thinking about it. He sat down cross-legged on the floor of the steel container, and studied it for an instant. The safe had been raised six inches into the air to avoid blocking a ventilation shaft and Len felt underneath it to determine that there were no obstructions. His hand came out, having found nothing but dust, and he opened his bag. C-4 explosive plastic is white and comes in long rectangular sticks about the size of quarter-pounds of butter. Len took four sticks out and unwrapped them carefully, laying each one on the floor in front of him. There were sirens all over the city now, and the manager was looking slightly ill. Len guessed that he had turned in the alarm to the Lancaster Police as soon as the four of them had put on their masks, and he was now worried that the cops were going to come in shooting with himself in the middle. The sirens upset Len, and he reminded himself that the patrol cars were rushing to the Esso station on the North side and to the train station to investigate the explosions there. And no alarm signal could have been received at the police switchboard, because the switchboard had been blown to bits a few seconds before they parked their car and entered the bank. He had heard the explosion himself, and he found himself wondering what had happened to the desk sergeant.
"All the time in the world, kid," Stern told him reassuringly, and Len suddenly found himself liking the gang leader. He picked up the forth stick of C-4 and made a deep hole in it with a screw driver and then fitted a blasting cap into the hole. Then he fastened the four sticks together with electrician's tape and placed them on top of a phone book which would act as a damper for the explosion. He slid the charge under the Barton safe, congratulating himself on the way his hands were holding steady, and attacked the blasting cap lead wire to a hand-detonator which was powered by a square nine volt dry cell.
"I'm ready," he announced, having swallowed before speaking to make sure that his voice did not squeak. "Tell them to sit on something. Get their feet off the floor and have them put their fingers in their ears."
"All right, everybody," shouted the bank manager obligingly as if he were organizing the three legged race at a company picnic. "Everybody's supposed to sit on something and get their feet up in the air, because they're going to blow up the safe. Put your fingers in your ears!" The manager set a good example by retreating a few feet and jumping awkwardly onto a table. Everyone followed suit, and Len found himself grinning with childish delight as he crawled up on top of the teller's cage with the detonator in his hand. Stern surveyed the room quickly with a grunt of satisfaction and then sat next to the manager, his pistol still at the ready. Len found himself rubbing shoulders with an attractive sandy-haired girl who had climbed up on the teller's cage from the other side. She drew away from him in panic as their arms brushed, and the young man felt absurdly offended.
"Block your ears," he reminded her, watching her breasts rise provocatively beneath the raincoat as she complied with his order. Len swallowed and depressed the detonator. The explosion was muffled and disappointing from a dramatic point of view, but it crumpled the safe like a match box, popping the door off its hinges with surgical precision. There was no fire, and as the smoke cleared, Len saw stacks of neatly arranged bills. His body was shaking with excitement as he scooped the cash out into a leather bag he had had concealed beneath his jacket. The bag was filled with surprising quickness, and he passed it to Nellie and started quickly on a second. It seemed like a lot of work, and Len realized that it had never before occurred to him that a half-million dollars would be so heavy. He finished the second bag and then filled a third, methodically slinging the bundles of notes into the bottom of the leather container. Then he looked up to see that Nellie and Wilbur each had one bag over their shoulders and were ready to go. It was over!
"There's money in the vault," choked the bank manager, still frightened out of him mind.
"We'll come back another day," Stern assured him with a grin. "Let's go!" he ordered the gang, and Len threw the third bag over his shoulder and followed Bud out from behind the teller's cage, carrying his satchel of explosives under one arm. He was feeling absurdly happy, realizing that they had only been inside the bank for a few minutes and wondering why banks were not robbed more often. It was so absurdly easy that ...
"Stop where you are and put your hands up!"
Len shook his head, suddenly finding it difficult to focus his eyes. Standing in the door of the bank fifteen feet in front of them was a state trooper, gun in hand, blocking their path to freedom. He was pointing his pistol at Stern, who obediently dropped his weapon on the floor a look of disgust coming over his face. The State Trooper took a step forward, a triumphant smile on his features, and Wilbur shot him, almost casually, in the head. Len froze, watching the pandemonium explode around him as bullets began to fly. Outside, State Troopers spilled out of a patrol car and flung themselves around the outside of the door, firing at Bud, Wilbur and Nellie, who were shooting back. Len stood still, immobilized by fear, not even thinking to reach for his pistol, and for some reason, no one took the trouble to shoot him. He watched the State Trooper closest to him, a big red-faced man who was shouting to the others, and poking his head around the side of the bank door as he swept the area with his pistol. Suddenly a bright red spot appeared just over the Trooper's nose, like a third eye, and he stopped shouting and looked cross-eyed for a moment. Then the blood came gushing out of the third eye, and Len suddenly felt sick to his stomach and got down on one knee. He had a sense of being totally ridiculous, getting ready to vomit while Stern and the police were shooting it out around him, but the sight of all that blood spreading thickly across the marble floor of the bank...
"Hold it! Back off or the broad gets it!" Stern's voice boomed from behind him. Len suppressed the choking sensation in his throat, and looked up in time to see Stern seize the girl in the raincoat, his pistol pressed tightly to the side of her head. His head was whirling in an agony of confusion, but he managed to stagger back to his feet, the nausea slowly passing. The three State Troopers backed slowly away from the door, taking refuge behind their patrol car! No one said anything, and Len picked up his satchel of explosives and followed Stern out of the bank, thinking desperately that no one would shoot him if he did not reach for his gun. Nellie poked him in the ribs and he stumbled blindly into the back seat of the car. The whole world seemed reduced to a blur of motion as the pretty girl in the raincoat was pushed into the backseat next to him. Nellie followed and Wilbur jumped into the front passenger seat. Stern told the police that they would kill the girl if they were followed, and then got behind the wheel. The drove carefully out of town, and no one came after them.
CHAPTER THREE
Mary Keane sat at the far end of the couch, nursing the glass of whiskey and warm milk they had given her to restore some life to her half-frozen body, staring at the fire and feeling the heat from the crackling logs reach out and caress her. At the other end of the couch, the big man called Stern seemed to be lounging happily, roasting the tiredness out of his huge, powerful muscles. Feeling terribly drunk after three glasses of the potent mixture, Mary looked at him blankly as he spoke.
"Ain't nothing like a fire and a drink after a hard day's work, eh girlie?" he said carelessly, twisting his head to gaze at her. Mary felt frightened somehow by his gaze, and she nodded dumbly, unable to get up enough breath at the moment to answer aloud. As far as she could see, the immediate danger had passed, unless the gang simply intended to kill her to avoid the possibility that she might identify them later. But the state troopers had apparently lost their trail, and it was obvious that the entire operation had been carefully and competently planned down to the last detail including this hide-out. On the outskirts of Lancaster they had abandoned the big Mercury in favor of a Volkswagen microbus with snow tires and skis attached to a rack on the roof. One of the men had unexpectedly turned out to be a vivacious, talkative woman named Nellie, and the four had all put on skiing clothing and started off in the direction of the mountains. Mary had had no defense against the bitter cold of the mountains except her raincoat, but they had fed her brandy from a bottle to keep her body temperature up, even though the rest of them had stayed cold sober. Police cars had passed them with sirens blaring, and Mary had tensed with fear each time, knowing that she was still a hostage, destined to be shot down in cold blood if the State Troopers tried to block their escape. The brandy helped her forget, and after a few hours she had been still uncomfortably cold, but also drunk enough not to mind. It had seemed like the only logical thing to do under the circumstances.
"Hey, what's your name?" asked Stern again, gulping down the remains of her drink and then igniting a cigarette with gusto. "You like our little place here?" He poured Mary another glass-full of the hot milk and whiskey combination and sat back, behaving like a considerate host in his living room.
"My name is Mary," the girl responded slowly, glancing shyly at the man who had kidnapped her and then looking abruptly away. The snow had covered their tracks as they had climbed high into the freezing mountains, but Stern and his gang had been tense until they had found themselves inside this cottage. Then the atmosphere had quickly changed and everyone seemed anxious to get drunk as fast as possible. They were a long way from the Lancaster National Bank, and they were sitting on a half a million dollars in cash. Only the young man called Len was still nervous, pacing restlessly back and forth, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and still wearing his outdoor clothing as if he wanted to be ready to flee at any moment.
"Listen, we ought to get set for the night," asserted Nellie, now once again soft and feminine in tight-fitting ski pants and a parka which emphasized the lush, sensual fullness of her figure. "I wanna get under some covers and do some sleeping. And we'd better organize a watch. Somebody's gotta keep an eye on our lady friend and stoke the fire or we'll wake up freezing tomorrow."
"Don't we have a radio here?" complained Len, still pacing agitatedly back and forth, as if he expected the police to come plummeting down the chimney like Santa Claus. "I want to hear the news reports about us. It could be important!"
"Okay, okay!" groaned Stern, and Mary Keane guessed that he was reluctant to have his peace before the crackling fire disturbed. "Nellie, you and Wilbur get some sack time and I'll take the first watch, say, till about midnight.
Len, there's a radio in the car. You'll have to turn the motor on to keep from freezing your ass off, but for Christ's sake, keep a window open so you don't asphyxiate yourself."
Mary turned her head to study the serious nervous face of the young man who had blown up the safe in the bank, sensing instinctively that he was not one of the gang's inner circle. He looked young and frightened. Perhaps she ought to try to make friends with him? A girl in her position needed some friends badly, she had to take them where she could find them. On the other hand, the big man seemed to be the boss, and he was the obvious person to try to get chummy with especially since his eyes kept straying lustfully toward her. But Mary's intuition told her that there was something between Nellie and Stern, which complicated matters, and besides Stern did not seem like the kind of man who would let anything stand between himself and what he wanted in life. The situation was hard to figure particularly with her brain awash with alcohol and Mary decided she could not do much but bide her time and keep her eyes open.
Len nodded and left, balancing his drink carefully as he closed the door behind him and disappeared into a shower of white snow. Wilbur, who hardly ever seemed to speak, had nothing to say on this occasion, taking another long drink of scotch and exhaling heavily as he tossed his cigarette into the fireplace. He yawned, glancing at Nellie questioningly, and then pushed open the door of a bedroom and vanished from Mary's view. The girl looked up to find Nellie standing over her.
"You gonna want me tonight?" she asked Stern, her eyes roaming over Mary's body with interest. "Or should I hold hands with Wilbur?" Her voice was dry, casual but Mary felt a sexual tension crackling in the warm air like the burning logs in the fireplace.
"Later," replied Stern heavily, returning Nellie's gaze steadily. "But keep Wilbur company for awhile, okay? If he hadn't dropped that cop, we'd all be in jail right now."
Nellie nodded, but she was obviously reluctant to leave. With a delicate feminine hand she ran her fingers through Mary's soft dark hair, and the girl suddenly realized that the woman's act of dressing up like a man was more than a device to confuse the police. Nellie obviously liked members of her own sex as well as men. Mary repressed a shudder, knowing that she could not afford to make any enemies at all in this stage of the game, but also aware that she would not be able to hide her revulsion if the woman made a serious homosexual play for her. She began to wish she did not have quite so much booze in her bloodstream.
"Well, if you're sure you don't need any help with our little prisoner here...." Nellie murmured, running her fingers softly across Mary's face. "But I get my turn with her next."
Mary colored with embarrassment, feeling her body go cold with fear as the situation became crystal-clear to her. These two sexual deviates were discussing which of them was going to be first to enjoy the sweet mysteries of her body, and the man had just silently announced that it was going to be him. A protest sprang to her lips, but it died when she saw Nellie smile cynically and then sway across the room, disappearing into the bedroom with Wilbur.
"You can't!" Mary said in a low husky voice, turning to Stern with her hands raised in supplication. The gang leader looked at her coldly for a moment, and then slowly withdrew his pistol from inside his jacket.
"I don't know why not," he drawled slowly as he pointed the gun threateningly in her direction. "Seems to me I can do pretty much what I feel like doing, and I feel like fucking you. Now take off that damn rain coat and let me see what we've got to work with here."
It was the moment she had been dreading, but with that gun barrel pointing directly at her stomach, it never even occurred to Mary to refuse. Her drunkenness seemed to be blocking her willpower and she realized that the situation was beyond her control. She slipped the raincoat down over her shoulders, revealing the brief blue wood mini-skirt she had been wearing and feeling ridiculous about appearing in this outfit. It was obviously inappropriate for the middle of the winter, but down in Lancaster, the day had been warm enough to turn the snow to slush, and besides, she had so few pretty things...
"I like what I see," the man muttered, getting to his feet as he carefully surveyed the girl's lust-provoking young body with the eye of an expert. Mary was not tall, but her breasts were full and succulent, barely hidden beneath the neckline of the mini-dress. The hemline of the outfit barely covered the smooth supple outlines of her buttocks, revealing long, tapered legs which would have raised impure thoughts in the mind of a bishop. And Stern was no bishop!
"Please," she begged him, feeling the strength drain out of her alcohol filled body as Stern stepped closer to her, realizing that she was alone and completely at his mercy. She closed her eyes in despair feeling her head spin drunkenly and hearing his lewd chuckle as he pulled her roughly against him, his heavy, murderous hands going behind her back to unfasten the zipper on the back of her dress. Absurdly, she found herself hoping that he would not tear one of the few good looking outfits she owned and then realized that it was a thought only a drunken woman would have. But perhaps it was better this way. He pulled her even closer as he worked the garment down over the smoothly tempting flesh of her white shoulders, and Mary could feel the solid enormity of his already erected cock pressing arrogantly against her belly, and the hardness of his manhood brought her quickly back to reality despite the alcohol in her bloodstream. She was about to be raped!
Stern was undressing her slowly and methodically, and her garment melted down over her hips and fell noiselessly on the floor, leaving her clad in nothing more than a pair of pink bikini-style panties and the bra which supported her heavy but highly placed young breasts. The fire was to her back, and she could feel the heat playing on her naked flesh as Stern expertly undid the clasp on her brassiere, ripping it away almost roughly in his haste to see the full white globes of her naked breasts, shimmering with the light from the fire.
"Nice tits, Mary," he complimented her crudely, running his powerful hands coarsely over the trembling dark circles of her little brown nipples, and the girl blushed with humiliation as she realized that the tiny dark buds of her nipples were already swollen and protuberant as if she were sexually excited. Whatever else happened, she must not give this monster the false impression that she was enjoying the cruelly vile carnal subjugation he was forcing upon her. Fighting back physically was out of the question because he was her size, and armed with a pistol but she had to resist, at least emotionally, or she was lost! She could only survive this dreadful experience if she kept on fighting!
Stern dropped to his knees in front of her, running his hotly probing lips lewdly down between the two mountainous globes of her succulent young breasts and then across the flatly tempting plain of her stomach until he came to the border created by the elastic band of her panties. The female hostage drew in her breath sharply as she felt the man's prying fingers sliding beneath the protective surface of her one remaining garment, slowly but surely slipping the nylon fabric down over the richly rounded spheres of her buttocks and then letting her panties drop to the floor.
Suddenly, she was naked, and for a long time, neither one of them moved. Mary stood over him swaying slightly back and forth as she fought the alcohol in her system, her hands submissively hanging by her sides, not knowing what to say and depressed by the sinking drunken feeling that it was probably useless to say anything. She had watched this man and his friends shoot their way out of a bank, killing two State Troopers in the process, and it was foolish to pretend that he would not kill her with the same casual coolness if he decided that killing was what she merited. Stern put the pistol back in his pocket, as he knelt before her, and for a split second, the notion of making a grab for it raced through her whiskey-soaked mind. But she dismissed the idea quickly. Getting involved in a wrestling match with a two hundred pound man like Stern for possession of a pistol was just a quick way of committing suicide, and for some reason, Mary Keane suddenly found herself wanting desperately to live. For what? It was a question for which she still had not found an answer.
"Now," Stern muttered, the lust in his voice becoming hard to miss," you just relax, little girl, 'cause Uncle Bud's gonna sock it to you!" He pushed her, not hard, but firmly, and the naked girl went where he wanted her to go, sprawling backwards onto the couch, her long bare legs involuntarily spreading apart as she struggled to retain her balance. Bud Stern moved quickly, not giving her an instant to recover, pinning her spread-eagled on the couch with her buttocks poised on a pillow and her naked loins open and defenseless before his mindlessly savage attack. With a total lack of hesitation, he plunged his brutal lust-contorted face between her obscenely outstretched thighs, smacking his lips with pure carnal joy as he surveyed the moist pink flesh of her naked vagina. Mary Keane lay still, as if she were in the presence of a dangerous jungle animal, not daring to move, and shutting her eyes desperately as she awaited the inevitable assault.
With a lewd chuckle, Stern put the palms of his hands flat against the soft insides of her tanned, well-tapered thighs, his thumbs lasciviously inching their lewd way up towards the fleshy pink lips of her tightly contracted young cunt.
"Noooooooohhhhhhh!!!!" she pleaded for mercy as she felt his fingers vilely invading the moist privacy of her womanhood, knowing it was useless to protest, but unable to keep from crying out. Stern paid absolutely no attention to her, his eyes widening with rampant lust as he gazed at the tantalizing slit before him. Then he moved, his head dropping forward, and snaked the full length of his long twisting tongue into the warmly throbbing well of her pussy. Her entire body twisted convulsively and she cried aloud with shame, jerking her buttocks in a desperately futile attempt to break away from this depraved assault. The worst thing about it was the absurd position into which he had forced her. Mary's head was pushed forward by the arm on the couch, and there was nowhere else to look but down through the jiggling mounds of her large, mobile breasts to her widely separated thighs where Stern's animalistic face was buried in the moist mysteries of her womanhood. Somehow she would have minded it less had he simply gone ahead and raped her in the normal fashion, but this animalism was driving her wild!
"Oh God ... No, don't-don't do this to me," she sobbed in undisguised humiliation, closing her eyes in horror and rocking her head back and forth as Stern's tongue did its worst, spearing recklessly in and out of the involuntarily quivering lips of her lust-provoking little vagina as if he had lost his mind. The naked girl twisted and squirmed a little more, and then abruptly gave it up as a lost cause, guessing that she was probably only making it more sensually exciting for him and doing her no good at all. In fact, strange things seemed to be happening down between her widely-spread thighs, and Mary Keane whimpered with drunken surprise and shock as she felt tiny familiar tingles of something closely resembling forbidden pleasure rippling through her hopelessly violated genitals.
She gulped air, pressing her fingernails into the palms of her hands and trying desperately to inflict enough pain on herself to kill the menacing pleasure-tremors which were now pulsating deep within her vulnerable young loins. Stern seemed to sense that he had the helplessly naked girl in a difficult and dangerous position, and therefore he escalated the carnal fury of his attack, reaching up over the smooth plain of her stomach to attack the delicate softness of her ripe young breast with his cruel hands. He was not gentle, and she groaned a little with surprise and pain as he dug his fingernails into her yieldingly supple flesh, tormenting the tiny brown buds of her nipples until the whiskey-dazed young hostage was almost afraid that her breasts would explode with internal tension. His mouth and his hands worked furiously together, slavering animalistically at the openness of her poor violated cunt while he massaged her proudly sumptuous breasts. Mary Keane looked down in dismay and saw that he was watching her, his bright intelligent criminal eyes sweeping restlessly over her emotion-strained features as he waited for the surrender he knew was just around the corner.
And he was right, since the girl herself could feel it coming, and tears of shame trickled down her cheeks as she realized in despair that there was damn little she could do about it. She had always been super-sensitive there, between her legs, and Stern had instinctively done the one lewd depraved thing that was guaranteed to turn her on. He had taken the delicate pink tab of her clitoris in his mouth and was tormenting it evilly with his tongue, as the girl listened to herself panting with rising lust. She sobbed, knowing that she could hardly hope to disguise that state she was in, moaning in abject humiliation at Stern shoved her legs up in the air, pushing her knees all the way back against the fleshy cushions of her breasts. He was playing with her nakedly vulnerable body contemptuously as if she were a rag doll, opening up the entire flat plain of her crotch to his marauding mouth. She felt the hotly quivering shaft of his fiery tongue linger for a moment as he diddled her clitoris one last time, and then he ran his mouth obscenely down through the widely parted lips of her throbbing vulva, making her hips twitch with torturous sex-pleasure. Mary held her breath, knowing in her heart what was coming next, and trying with all her might not to groan aloud when it happened.
He struck, flicking the tip of his tongue into the tight little puckered hole of her anus just beneath the gaping entrance to her already ravaged cunt. The contact was wet and evilly searing, and the kidnapped girl felt her body contort as if he had just administered a jolt of high-intensity electric shock. She shut her eyes in agony, curling her lips back over the whiteness of her teeth and fought to control the wicked sensations he was sending galloping through her over-stressed young body.
"Aaaaaggggghhhhh!!!!" she gurgled, her firm resolution to remain silent dissolving as the rampant lust spread through her veins like a dangerous narcotic. Stern chuckled with perverted glee and stabbed into her again, making the tight fleshy ring tremble as tiny goose bumps broke out across her quivering stomach and the fullness of her heaving breasts. Mary twisted violently, and suddenly felt his lips break contact. Instinctively, her loins surged forward in search of his wet mouth, and she realized with horror how complete her loss of control had become. There was something about the idea of being raped and forced and brutalized by a man who had kidnapped her at gunpoint that was igniting her sexual passions in a way they had never been aroused before. She could no longer hide it from him and she had to confess it to herself. She needed it now, and she needed it bad!
* * *
Len lit another cigarette from the butt of the first and held his hands to the heater of the car, wondering why he was so nervous now when the action was over. Somehow, he could not shake the idea that they were still in danger, even though all logic told him that everything had gone according to plan and they had gotten away clean, well, almost everything had gone on schedule since kidnapping the girl had obviously not been part of the scheme. And where the hell had the State Troopers come from? Len switched on the radio, reasoning that when explosions began to occur all over Lancaster, the State Police must have suspected immediately that the bombs had been planted as diversions for something else. There was only one thing in Lancaster worth all that smoke, and that was the Boston Mining Corporation payroll. The Troopers must have put two and two together fast, and come up with a hit on the Lancaster National Bank. Or maybe it had been pure chance, who could tell?
There was rock music on the first station Len came to, and the young dynamite technician impatiently flipped the dial, looking for a news broadcast and thinking about the gentle brown-haired girl they had kidnapped. It had been strange how calm she had been, and Len remembered the quiet dignity with which she had walked steadily to the car beside Bud's hugely menacing form, looking straight ahead of herself, acting more like a princess going to her limousine than a hostage with a gun in her ribs ... Suddenly the radio spoke to him, the laconic sound of an announcer reading the news.
"The death-toll continues to mount tonight as the City of Lancaster recovers from a commando-style operation directed at the Barton Mining Corporation Payroll. The bandits, who were described by police authorities as ruthless cold-blooded professionals, killed seven people in a series of preliminary explosions which were apparently designed to distract the attention of the police from their real target. An Esso station on High North Road was detonated a few minutes before three, killing both the owner of the station and..." Len shook his head, unable to believe what he was hearing. Seven people killed! But those explosions weren't meant to kill people! They were just supposed to make a lot of noise and get the police off balance!
"...an unidentified customer who happened to be in the rest room at the time. A few seconds later at the Lancaster Central Train Terminal, two people were killed and eight seriously wounded when a bomb was detonated in a bag-check compartment, creating panic and sending a hail-storm of metallic fragments flying through the air. An eight year old boy was blinded as a result of the incident...."
The young man found his body trembling violently under the impact of this terrible news. He was a murderer! A mass murderer! It was never meant to turn out like this!
"At Lancaster Police Headquarters, a small bomb which had somehow been placed under the switchboard amputated the legs of veteran police sergeant Benjamin Foster, who died on route to the hospital. Also killed in the explosion was Patrolman Ted Miller who was crushed by a wall which caved in as a result of the explosion. Meanwhile, seconds after the last explosion, the bandits struck at the bank, collecting just over half million dollars in small cash. Their escape was blocked by a State Police patrol commanded by Corporal Gerald E. Townson, who was shot and killed while attempting to arrest the party of four armed men. After killing a second State Trooper, the bandits made good their escape by kidnapping a Miss Mary Keane of Wesport, New Jersey, who happened to be in the bank at the time of the robbery. Miss Keane's fate is unknown, and police admit that for the moment, the gang seems to have been successful in evading capture. Captain Reynolds of the Lancaster Police, who has been conferring with State and National authorities on the case, told the press tonight that the gang's dynamite mar may have been a local Lancaster resident who was recently fired by the Barton Mining Corporation after losing a bitter lawsuit. The young man, whose name was not released, has been missing from his home for several days. On the sports front, Boston today defeated the Saint Louis..."
Len snapped the radio off, a heavy sinking feeling settling over his entire body. He had never felt so awful in his life, not even when they had brought him the news that his father had accidentally blown himself to pieces. They knew his name! He was free for the moment, but he could never go back to Lancaster again, even if he did manage to escape with some of the money. He was destined to wander the world looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. It would be a long time before the police forgot about a dynamiter who had killed seven people. They would look for him forever!
The young man shifted restlessly in the front seat of the car, trying to get his emotions under control. Could they possibly get away? Bud Stern, Nellie and Wilbur were all unknown, and could walk through the customs at the Mexican border without much difficulty, but his passport was worthless to him now since they would be watching for him at every border station. And what were they going to do with Mary Keane? Would Bud kill her to prevent her from identifying him later? His mind rebelled at the idea, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that ultimately murdering the girl would strike Bud as the most logical thing to do under the circumstances. Bud and the others were all wanted for multiple murders, and none of them had much to lose at this point...
He had to protect her! It was a little foolish to start worrying about morality at this stage of the game, but he could not be a party to anymore killing. They had enough money to keep them happy in South America for the rest of their lives if they could contrive some means of getting themselves there. There was no need to kill Mary Keane!
And where was she now?
Alone with Bud Stern. Len took a deep breath and threw his cigarette into the snow as he got out of the car, noticing with pride that his hands had stopped shaking. The butt sizzled its way into the snow bank, making a circular hole in the whiteness as it disappeared. Smoke drifted lazily out of the hole, making it look a little like the opening in the barrel of a pistol. Len O'Reilly shuddered, not entirely because of the cold, and went inside.
CHAPTER FOUR
"You ready for it, little friend?" Stern asked her, casually kicking off his pants and revealing to the girl's lust-widened eyes a magnificently extended cock which seemed about as large as the cannon on a battle ship. Mary was stretched out helplessly beneath him on the couch as he arrogantly stripped off his clothing, too terrified even to contemplate making a break for freedom. Her brain was reeling now under the twin impact of the terrible tongue-lashing she had just received and the alcohol she had been swallowing steadily for the past several hours. It was too late for resistance now, and both of them knew it!
Sadistically, Stern knelt over her, putting one knee between her helplessly parted thighs and forcing two fingers into the soft wetness of her cunt. She seized his hand in alarm but he was a thousand times too strong for her, and the gang leader grinned lasciviously as he brutally lifted her buttocks clear off the couch with the convenient handle of her loins, moving her into a more convenient position.
"No please!" she begged him piteously, seeing the cruel lecherousness in his broad face as he bent down over her prostrate body, clamping his teeth firmly around the softly sensitive flesh of one temptingly protuberant nipple and biting it until she moaned in agony. But despite her horror at the situation, Mary was still powerfully excited by the obscene notion of being raped by a bank robber on a couch before a blazing fire, and her hips betrayed her, twitching blissfully as Bud Stern lowered his huge body down on top of her supple form.
"Gettin' a little hot, ain't you, baby?" Stern mocked her heartlessly, seeing that the combination of strong liquor and strange circumstances was having the desired effect upon her. "I don't know who you are, baby, or who you been in bed with before, but tonight I'm gonna fuck you until you scream!"
The gang leader watched in sordid amusement as the tortured girl turned her head to one side, tormented and excited at the same time by his obscene language. Nudging her unresisting thighs ever further apart, Stern levered up over the voluptuous nakedness of her body, taking his hard rubbery cock in his hand and guiding it steadily into the fleshy pink lips of her cunt. Stern was big in the cock department, and as he pushed the thick scarlet glans into the vainly resisting elastic circle, it occurred to him for an instant that she might be a virgin, which meant that he could have a battle royal on his hands fighting his way in. But she was not a virgin, as it turned out, just damned tight, and she whimpered with unexpected pain as the tip of the man's bulging instrument pummeled its way past the narrow rubbery opening and into the moist depths of her vagina.
"You're hurting me!" she grunted, keeping her voice down so that the others would not hear. Stern was putting her through pure hell, but the last thing she wanted was Wilbur and Nellie as spectators to this obscene performance.
Stern did not bother answering, since he knew perfectly well that he was causing her pain, but the fact did not bother him in the slightest. The intense pressure of her cruelly-stretched vagina against the massive shaft of his cock was driving him wild, and the big man was ready to settle down to some serious fucking. He let the weight of his heavy body fall forward, his hard chest smashing so violently against the softly cushioning globes of her breasts that the breath was momentarily knocked out of her lungs. Taking advantage of her surprise, Bud jerked his hips viciously forward, driving his long, pole-like cock up into her agonized cunt like a hot knife slicing through butter. He grunted in ecstasy, feeling his rampant manhood tearing through her savagely abused flesh until he struck home, and his heavy, sperm-laden testicles slapped noisily against the unprotected surface of her flanks.
"Oh Christ," she moaned quietly beneath him, now too stunned even to obey her basic impulse and scream. The girl felt skewered like a pig on a spit, knowing that she had never before in her life been as thoroughly and completely filled as she was in this moment. The man's brutally huge cock was in her to the hilt now, and she felt as though he had split her poor little vagina into a thousand tiny shreds. She lay immobile for a while, trying to catch her breath, her eyes tightly shut and her head turned bitterly to one side.
"How about that, blue-eyes?" he laughed at her. "What's the matter? You act like you never got stuffed with a real cock before!" He punctuated these lewd remarks by deliberately flexing his long fierce cock, driving it another half inch up into the suffering sex-channel of her cunt.
"Nooooooohhhhhh!" she sobbed, refusing to look him in the face, or allow him to get her involved in a lewd conversation at a moment as highly unsuitable as this one was. Despite the pint of alcohol in her system, the girl was still clinging desperately to the notion that her only salvation lay in preserving some shred of dignity and self-respect. He could rape her if he wanted to since he obviously possessed the physical power to do anything he pleased, but he would never touch the real her!
Unfortunately, Bud Stern understood with his criminal's cunning instinct precisely what was going through her mind. The girl had been on the brink of losing control once before, and within minutes he would have her back in the same depraved condition. She thought she was putting up some big brave fight, when her lush young body had already surrendered from the waist down! Stern could feel the narrow, contracted passage of her violated cunt begin slowly to loosen and spread as he plunged his thick pike back and forth in it. Her hips were once again twitching convulsively and he knew from long and lewd experience that it would not take him long to turn his protesting prisoner into a squealing, squirming mass of desirous flesh. He had done it before, with much less promising subjects!
The truth of the matter was that Mary Keane had already lost the battle, even though she was only half aware of it herself. There were powerful shooting sensations rushing blindly up and down her backbone, and her thighs were now beginning to twitch uncontrollably, jerking frantically up against Stern's muscular legs. Without realizing the significance of what she was doing, her hands fluttered mindlessly over the broad surface of the man's back, and to a casual disinterested witness, she would have looked very much like a passionate woman giving her body wholeheartedly to her lover.
And, in fact, there was a witness to this depraved scene, but unfortunately he was neither disinterested nor casual. Len O'Reilly shut the door very quietly behind him, hanging his overcoat on a peg in the hall and rubbing his hands together to take away the sting of the cold. He sauntered into the living room where the fire was roaring merrily, not seeing Stern and Mary Keane immediately because their bodies were shielded by the back of the couch. He caught sight of them as he moved forward to warm his hands in front of the fire and froze in his tracks.
"Oh! Oh, sorry, Bud, I didn't realize..." he stammered uneasily, backing away in an agony of embarrassment, but to his amazement, there was a lecherous smile on Stern's face as he lifted his face away from Mary's ravaged lips and returned Len's gaze.
"Nothin' to be sorry about, kid," he replied affably. "Jus' doing what comes naturally. Take a seat and wait yer turn!"
Stunned, the young man stumbled backwards into an easy chair and sat down heavily, his mind whirling with amazement and rising lust. Stern was fucking the girl with long, steady, powerful strokes now and Len could see the thick glistening shaft of the man's cock skewering wetly back and forth. Was she being raped? The girl had not looked like the kind of girl who would strip off her clothing and allow herself to be fucked senseless by a gunman who had kidnapped her, but there was a certain amount of first-hand evidence to indicate that this was precisely the case. For one thing, her voluptuous young body was twitching and writhing wildly and Mary was groaning incessantly and incoherently. Were they groans of pain? Was she struggling to escape? There were signs of some kind of violent emotion all over her body, wherever Len's hungry eyes happened to fall. The tiny brown buds of her nipples were super-extended and apparently as hard as nuggets, digging fiercely into Stern's chest like the buttons on a coat. Her face seemed contorted, as if she were in acute pain her nostrils flared wildly and the veins in her neck stood out like cords. Len swallowed, realizing despite his comparative lack of experience in sexual matters that Bud Stern had successfully whipped the girl into a frenzy of unbridled, unsatisfied lust. In short, he was fucking her senseless!
And the best was yet to come. Enjoying the idea of performing for an audience, Stern reached down beneath her nakedly squirming body, seizing the smooth cheeks of her buttocks in his harshly demanding hands. The soft mounds of flesh were churning wildly as he gripped them, and he pulled her lust-stricken body even closer to his loins, feeling the moistly clasping hole of her pussy flowering open to receive him. It was clear that the time of pain had long since passed, and that Mary Keane was now feeling nothing but ecstasy. Her eyes were tightly closed and her back was sharply arched since she was thrusting her hips and loins with fierce desire up against the man who was fucking her against her will. Deciding he would show the young bomb expert a technique he did not know, Stern slid his lascivious fingers further over the succulent half-moons of her buttocks into the moist crevice surrounding her anus. Deliberately lifting her off the bed so that Len could see what he was doing. Stern poked his thick middle finger into the soft rubbery flesh of her rectum.
"Ooooooohhhhh!" Her anguished voice, low and pleading, seemed to tremble in the warm air, but the only response was a lewd chuckle from Stern. Still keeping her suspended in mid-air, he pushed his invading finger in even further, knowing that he was filling her with pain and humiliation and not caring in the slightest.
"Noooooohhhhhhh!" she groaned more insistently, her eyes popping open in outrage as Stern poked a second finger into her defenseless ass-hole. "Don't, please!" she begged uselessly.
"You better get used to it, sweetie," Bud warned her threateningly. "Because after I get this entrance all broken in the way I like it, I'm gonna turn you over, and try the back door!"
There was no answer from the girl but an anguished sob, and Len realized with sudden clarity that she was being forced into this obscene performance against her will. Stern was not giving her a minute to recover, working his fingers around in circles, stretching and pulling the rubbery softness of her wildly offended rectum as he continued to skewer furiously into the front of her hopelessly violated body with his cock. She was hopelessly, completely impaled now, her ravaged loins bouncing back and forth between the assault from his probing fingers and the violence of his rampaging cock. For a moment, there was an almost unbearable buzz of tension in the air as Stern waited to see whether she could be made to accept this viciously unnatural assault on her maidenly virtue. Even Len leaned forward curiously despite himself, wondering how she was going to react.
"You bastard," she breathed and then Stern smiled with triumph as he felt her begin to screw her rectum back against his invading fingers. He kept pushing them deeper and deeper into her moist warm rubbery depths as her cries of righteous indignation slowly turned to lustful murmurs. Soon, Mary Keane was twisting and jerking once more beneath him, squealing and panting as the gang leader began to turn on the heat.
He's winning, thought Len O'Reilly morosely as he watched Stern double his pace, worming his hotly pulsating cock into the moist mysteries of the ever widening passage of her vagina. He can do anything he wants with her, anything at all. And I bet she wouldn't even let me kiss her cheek...
"Ooooooohhhhh!" Came a long, low, peculiar groan which shook Len out of his melancholy introspection. He looked up in time to see the girl wrap her arms around Stern's thick, bulldog neck and wind her finely tapered legs around his plunging buttocks. Stern seemed to sense that something was about to go, because he yanked his fingers free of her ravaged anus and pulled her knees up as far as they would go, opening the whole flat plane of her loins to receive one pile-driving pelvic thrust after another. Len thought his cock was going to crawl out of his pants with unsatisfied desire.
"Yes ... yes ... now!" she called in a girlish, faraway voice, and for a moment Len felt enormously sorry for her, reduced to this pitiful condition by a kidnapper in the bizarre presence of another man. Her lovely young body jerked up towards Stern a few more times as the sweet, open lips of her cruelly stretched cunt seemed to milk the man's giant cock, and then the explosion came!
"Oh God, I'm cumming!" she announced in a strangled voice. "I hate you ... cumming ... so ... hard..." she moaned, and Len felt his cock tingling with long-suppressed desire as he watched Bud Stern suddenly complete the act of cumming himself, his great potent cock spewing an endless stream of steaming white cum into the upper reaches of her vagina. Then, for a long moment, the two bodies lay silently intertwined.
"like it, baby?" he inquired lewdly as he raised his big body up on his arms, doing a push-up over her bruised and battered form.
"I hate you," she told him succinctly, turning her head bitterly to one side, but not bothering to close her legs.
"Ah come on, anybody else every make you cum that hard?" the gunman taunted her unmercifully as he stood up, his cock now soft and slowly deflating as he pulled it free of her beaten, ravaged body.
"No, but I hate you anyway," she insisted, her voice remarkably clear and cold after all that she had been through.
"Well, Len," observed the gang leader as he carelessly climbed into his pants, "You wanna take the next watch? You can fuck our little friend here all you want, but don't forget to throw a long on the fire once in a while. And don't fall asleep! I'll have Wilbur spell you about two in the morning."
"You..."
"I'm gonna get some sack time, buddy. Wake me if anything funny happens." Stern buckled his pants, threw his shirt carelessly over his shoulder and walked deliberately out of the room, not even bothering to glance at the ravaged and battered body of the young woman who lay stretched out on the couch before the fire. There was the distinct click of the door as he disappeared into his room.
Len gazed at the lush succulent body of the naked hostage and felt his cock throbbing inside of his pants. Mary Keane seemed to be staring blandly at the ceiling. There were drops of white cum on her legs and tears on her cheeks as Len rose to his feet and stood over her.
"You're a real hero, aren't you?" she accused him bitterly, turning her head away as he stood desirously over her.
"What do you mean?" Len wanted to fuck her, to take his clothes off and shove his burning hot cock up into that steaming pussy the way Stern had a moment ago, but he knew he could never rape a woman. The girl seemed to know it too, instinctively, realizing that Len was not the type to crash a party.
"Why didn't you stop him?"
"Why should I? I'm not yur guardian angel!" he snapped back at her. "Besides, it didn't seem to me that you were putting up too much of a fight!"
"What did you expect? He only outweighed me by a hundred pounds or so," complained the girl sharply, pulling her legs together to hide her cum-soaked pussy and placing the palms over the flaccid little buds of her nipples. "Look, if you're not going to rape me, could you cover me up?"
Len remembered his manners with a start, pulling a wool blanket off of a shelf over the fireplace and spreading it delicately over the girl's exposed body. The desire to make love to her had not passed, but somehow he could not picture himself simply pulling down his pants, taking out the hot throbbing length of his cock and trying to stick it into her. The shock of learning that he had been the instrument of violent bloody death for all those people was still too recent and he could not bring himself, just at the moment, to commit any new crimes. Besides, the girl seemed in a way to be tougher than he was. Of course, he could overpower her physically, almost as easily as Bud had, but could he dominate her emotionally the way the gang leader had obviously been able to do? Somehow it seemed unlikely. Stern had forced her to cum against her will, a thing which seemed almost impossible.
"Your name is Mary Keane," he commented with a studied attempt at being casual as he sat down cross legged on the floor next to the couch, lighting himself a cigarette. It suddenly occurred to him that it had been rude not to offer the hostage one, and he clumsily rectified his error, by stretching his hand in her direction with the lighted cigarette between his fingers. She poked one long bare arm out from beneath the blanket to accept his belated offer, and for a brief moment, Len saw one delicate breast, and the sight thrilled him in an odd way. It was ridiculous since he had seen her totally naked only a few minutes before, but there was something erotic about this fleeting glimpse...
"How did you know?"
"I heard it on the radio," the young man admitted simply. "They said you were from New Jersey."
"That's where we lived when my old man died," said the girl in a dreamy, sing-song voice, gazing at the ceiling. "He was a sergeant in the Army, and before New Jersey we were in
Georgia, and then in Japan for three years, and before that in Alaska, and Germany, and the Panama Canal Zone when I was in eighth grade and a bunch of forts in the South when I was in grammar school. We never sat still long enough to say that we were from anyplace, really."
"It must have been ... uh ... interesting, seeing all those different countries," Len suggested hesitantly, taking a puff on his cigarette and hoping that this would be the beginning of a pleasant conversation. It was absurd thinking that they could ever enjoy anything remotely resembling a friendly relationship, given the fact that he was a member of the criminal band which had kidnapped her, but Len's family responsibilities had kept him away from the company of people his own age for a long time, and he was frankly a little lonesome. And this Mary Keane from New Jersey whom they had captured was a tantalizingly beautiful young woman.
"We never had a dime," Mary recalled, the bitterness ringing unmistakably in her voice. "I was always re-sewing one of my mother's old dresses into something I could wear to the enlisted men's club. When Dad died we split up. I had a cousin who owned a beauty shop in Lancaster and I came out West to work for her, but she gave me a hard time from the moment I walked in the front door. I thought I was going to learn how to be a hair-dresser, and she thought I was better at scrubbing floors. I was getting ready to go back East when you boys came along. Just what I needed!"
"I'm sorry, really," said Len sincerely, realizing that Mary's financial troubles were about as bad as his own had been before the robbery. "We never intended to hurt anyone or take any hostages, but we also didn't figure on having the cops on our backs quite so fast."
"Look," the girl said impulsively, sitting up and wrapping the blanket around her breasts. "I'm ... I'm kinda scared, if you want to know the truth ... what's your boss going to do with me? Besides raping me whenever he's in the mood?"
Len twitched nervously under the stress of her direct questioning. It was the same worry which had been tormenting him all along.
"I ... I'm not sure..."
"What I'm worried about is this," Mary Keane continued recklessly. "He's keeping me now because the police could still catch up with you and he could need me as a hostage. But if you manage to get away clean, how can he possibly let me go? That's when I get it, isn't it? A quick bullet in the back of the head, after he's screwed me one last time just for old times' sake?"
"I don't think it'll be that way at all," Len was protesting, but the stark logic of what she was saying confirmed all his earlier fears and suspicions. And whatever else happened, he did not want another body on his conscience. It bothered him plenty to know that he had killed all those people with his home-made bombs, but he hadn't really meant to kill them, and he hadn't known who they were. They were strangers who happened to walk by the dynamite at the wrong moment in history, but with Mary Keane, it would be different. They had sat before an open fireplace and smoked cigarettes together. He had seen her naked, and felt the hot pangs of human desire for her voluptuous young body. How could they put a pistol to her head and blow her brains out?
"It'll be that way unless you stop them," the girl told him flatly. "You're going to be my guardian angel whether you like it or not, because you're the only one of this bunch who's civilized."
"I'll ... I'll take care of you, don't worry," Len assured her, patting the girl's hand in a clumsy attempt to make her feel better. "I'll talk to Bud in the morning and we'll work it out."
Their eyes met and Len saw that the girl was exhausted. He was tired himself, but he would have to stay on his feet and awake until Wilbur arrived to relieve him.
"You don't suppose there's somewhere I could sleep?" she asked tentatively, knowing she could never doze off unless she felt more protected than she did here in the open living room. Mary had already observed that there were only three bedrooms, all leading off of the living room and two of them already seemed to be occupied.
"You ... you could sleep in my bed, I suppose, but I'm not supposed to let you out of my sight," puzzled Len, sincerely wanting to help, but fearful of disobeying Stern's orders.
"There's no place to go from that bedroom but out the window and into the snow, or back in here," Mary observed. "I suppose you could keep my clothes if you're worried that I'm going to climb down off this mountain in my stockings."
Len nodded dully and helped her to her feet, leaving the brief mini-dress on the floor where Bud had dropped it when he had stripped it licentiously off of her trembling young body. The girl wrapped the blanket more tightly around her nakedness, and walked into the one remaining bedroom. She curled up in a ball the moment her blonde hair touched the pillow, and Len spread another blanket over her tempting figure and backed quietly out of the room. He thought about kissing her delicately on the cheek, but after the treatment she had gotten from Bud Stern, he decided it would be a little ridiculous, and he simply closed the door behind him.
Mary lay quietly in the empty room, the alcohol now almost completely gone from her system. Being fucked half to death by Bud Stern had at least had the beneficial effect of clearing her mind. For most of the afternoon, she had been too frightened to think very clearly, and when she had started drinking to fight off the cold, it had gotten even worse. But now, her head was clear at last, even if she was very sleepy, and she tried to sort out the situation. Wilbur did not count, since he was completely loyal to Bud Stern, and would fuck her or kill her with the same lack of concern, once the boss had given him the go-ahead. There was no point in wasting any time with him. It was important to keep on the good side of the lesbian woman they called Nellie. She might not be worth much as a friend, but she could be a dangerous enemy. Mary shivered in the darkness at the idea of being the object of a homosexual assault by another woman, and hoped that it would not come to that.
The key to the problem was Bud Stern. The big man had been a successful criminal for a long time, and he undoubtedly did not make a practice of leaving alive witnesses who could identify him. He might enjoy fucking her, but he was not the type of man who would get sentimental about it. The swing-man had to be Len O'Reilly, who was obviously the kind of person who could be swayed by his emotions. To Mary, he looked a little weak in character, but after all, he had managed to get through a major bank robbery in one piece, so he was not a coward. But would he ever stand up against Bud Stern? Or use his gun against the rest of the gang? It was hard to say. Should she make a play for him? Get him to fall in love with her? Let him come into her bed?
It was a possibility she decided she would have to consider very carefully. The girl twisted beneath the blankets, feeling sleep creep over her despite her fears and worries. She was in a very difficult position, but she was not going to die without a fight. She would have to use every advantage she could lay her lands upon. If it meant using her innocent body, she would give it a try. She wanted to live!
CHAPTER FIVE
"You must have had one hell of a night last night!" came a woman's voice from somewhere in the mist. Mary Keane would probably have passed it off as merely the tail-end of the nightmare she had been having ever since Len put her to bed, but there was the richly enticing aroma of coffee in the room, calling her back into consciousness. Mary decided that at this moment she would sell her soul for a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and her eyes popped open. Dressed in a loose-fitting, filmy dressing gown, Nellie was sitting at the edge of the bed, placing a steaming mug of black coffee on the nightstand. It was day and the morning sun was melting the icicles outside her window. There was no sound from the rest of the cottage except for the rumble of a man snoring somewhere in another room.
"Oh! Where is ... ah ... everybody?" she had almost slipped and asked where Len was, but the girl realized in time that she had better build up her system of alliances in secret. There was no point in disclosing her hand this early in the game. But what did Nellie want?
"Still sleeping it off," responded the older woman in her rich throaty voice. "Len fell asleep in front of the fireplace and Wilbur decided to let him stay there. Bud woke me up at six with his snoring and I decided I needed some company."
Mary pulled herself up against a pillow, carefully drawing the blanket over her naked breasts. Whatever else, she must not make an enemy out of this woman, she reminded herself, Nellie was beautiful but dangerous, sensuous and sexy but it was also obvious that she was really as hard as a nail. Mary had no particular desire to provoke her into a display of her warped sexuality, but she realized that it might be difficult to avoid.
"I'd like a cigarette if you've got one," she said meekly, taking a tentative sip of her coffee and Nellie obligingly produced a pack and tossed it next to the coffee on the nightstand.
"Keep 'em. When we were fixing this place up, I made sure we had the necessities of life in case we had to spend the winter up here. We got lots of booze, lots of smokes and plenty of food, so make like you're on vacation."
Mary inhaled deeply on her cigarette and surveyed the figure of the brown-haired woman sitting on the edge of the bed. Nellie's dressing gown was thin and nearly transparent and the blonde girl could see her darkly-colored nipples right through the fragile material. Nellie would naturally be aware of this fact, which meant that she was deliberately displaying her succulent low-set breasts. The older woman's hand was also resting casually on Mary's thigh as the two of them sat looking at each other curiously.
"I'm glad there's another woman here," the frightened hostage said finally, taking another gulp of her coffee and trying to think of something pleasant to say even if it did not happen to be the truth. "I'd hate to be marooned up here with three men all winter."
"Why?" asked the dark-haired woman as if she were genuinely surprised. "What were you planning on doing all winter?"
"I was going back to New Jersey and see if I could get unemployment insurance and be miserable until Spring," Mary replied honestly, giggling a little since her answer was a little ridiculous even if it was totally accurate. Nellie returned her smile, moving a little closer to her on the soft springy mattress.
"See? You're better off with us. If we're stuck up here all winter with three men, we can have all the sex we can handle. Doesn't that appeal to you?"
"Well..." Mary blushed a little, knowing the other woman was trying to get a rise out of her. "I don't mind sex, but I like to chose my own boyfriends, not have them kidnap me at gun point."
"So? You gotta take life the way you can find it, girlie," philosophized the lesbian woman, reaching up to stroke the young captive's long blonde hair. "And with your looks, you must have lots of offers, right?"
Despite herself, Mary found that she was warming up to the ex-stripper, even if she did suspect that this was merely the prelude to a homosexual pass. The woman could be charming when she wanted to be and the kidnapped girl recalled once again that she could not afford to make any enemies at this stage of the game. Sooner or later, this gang was going to have to decide whether she lived or died and she was going to need all the votes she could get.
"They all wanted to take me to bed, and nobody wanted to marry me," she confessed ruefully as Nellie moved even closer, her hand still caressing Mary's long lovely hair.
"I can understand why you turned them on," commented Nellie, her eyes dropping lustfully to the blanket-covered mounds of the girl's sumptuous breasts. "With a body like yours, you must have had to beat off the boys with a club. Did you ... ah ... ever have any girlfriends?"
"Girlfriends?"
"You know what I mean," said the other woman steadily, looking her straight in the eye. Mary realized she could hardly dodge the question or pretend she didn't understand. Nellie was obviously a woman who had lesbian moods and this was apparently one of them.
"I guess I do," she admitted with honesty. "I've never had that kind of girlfriend, no."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. Never felt the urge, I guess."
"Well, you should try it, baby," purred the older woman seductively. "It's a whole different trip."
Nellie's hand slid down from Mary's golden hair over the softness of her shoulder and the kidnapped girl repressed a violent shudder as the blanket dropped away from her breasts, leaving her naked to the waist. Her mind was a jungle of conflicting emotions as Nellie's fingers danced lightly over the softly yielding flesh of her breast, gently caressing the flaccid brown circles of her nipples. On one hand, she hated the idea of surrendering the mysteries of her womanly young body to the degenerate lusts of an experienced lesbian woman. On the other hand, she was a prisoner here, a hostage whose life hung by a fragile thread. If she thrust Nellie away now, the older woman's feelings would surely be hurt and Mary could find herself paying a heavy price later for those hurt feelings.
"I don't want to..." she said haltingly, stalling desperately for time. Suppose Len woke up, walked in and caught them at it? A scene like that could destroy the delicate exchange of confidence they had begun the night before after Bud Stern had brutally ravaged her defenseless young body.
"It doesn't make much difference what you want, so just relax," advised Nellie gently. "Let me do all the work and you just sit there and have fun. Since you haven't got any choice, you don't have to have a guilty conscience, right?"
Mary Keane closed her eyes, realizing that a lewd sex-encounter with the dark-haired lesbian was going to be inevitable. Of course she could put up a physical battle, but where would it get her in the long run? A few more bruises! There was a rustling on the bed as Nellie slipped beneath the covers beside her and the next thing she knew, the woman's arms were around her waist and their lips were pressing softly together. Mary felt her nipples reacting strongly as their breasts touched in the course of their kiss, Nellie's tongue slipping lewdly between her lips and probing experimentally inside of her mouth. She resisted for a moment and then surrendered with an unfamiliar shiver of something like lust, parting her lips enough to allow Nellie's darting tongue to enter. Their tongues met, dancing wildly inside the hostage's mouth and the girl felt her tiny brown nipples beginning to tingle with a force she had never known before. The sensation was totally different from what she would have imagined and Nellie's hands were soft and tender as they started to wander lustfully over the exposed skin-surfaces of Mary's provokingly naked body. The bed covers somehow landed on the floor as Nellie crawled on top of the girl's outstretched figure, running her hands obscenely from one proudly protuberant nipple to the other.
"Oh Nellie...." she groaned, feeling the blood surge angrily through her arteries with growing passion as the lesbian's fingers began their slow march up the sensitive flesh of Mary's inner thigh. She tried to move away, but somehow ended up by sprawling her legs accommodatingly while Nellie stroked the desire-swollen lips of her vagina, one of her fingers even daring to invade the moistly clasping opening itself. Mary heard the other woman chuckle evilly and knew with a sudden rush of humiliation that she was being used vilely ravaged by a perverted wicked woman who would stop at nothing to satisfy her own warped desires! But somehow under the circumstances, there did not seem to be much she could do about it. And whatever it was, it was catching!
"Hmmmmm, I see we're all wet down here," commented Nellie lecherously, her index finger playing lightly over Mary's trembling pink clitoris while her middle finger explored lasciviously between the fluttering lips of the girl's slowly opening vagina. "Don't tell me this isn't starting to turn you on, baby, because I'm not going to believe you."
But Mary was hardly in a position to tell anyone anything. Flat on her back with her thighs apart and her knees slightly raised, she was fighting a losing battle to ward off the swarm of perverted desires and fantasies which threatened to overwhelm her brain. She gasped with wonder and dismay as Nellie knelt over her, slowly and seductively stripping away the fragile material of her dressing gown, brazenly exposing the nakedness of her superbly-formed body.
"How would you like me to do it to you?" she asked tauntingly, knowing that the young hostage had long since lost the power of making these obscene choices. "You want it with my tongue? Or shall we do it cunt to cunt?"
"Nellie ... please..." Mary Keane found herself begging for mercy, her face scarlet with a continuous blush. She did not care what the experienced lesbian did to her at this point as long as she did something and did it fast so that they would not have to talk about it. Nellie smiled, mentally chalking up another victory for herself, and then lithely lowered her silken-skinned body down on top of Mary's fitting the moist warmth of her loins to the triangular patch of the younger girl's throbbing pussy.
It was an electric moment. Mary could feel the other woman's hotly twitching clitoris, now expanded and rigid like a short penis, pressing lustfully against the tingling pink lips of her vagina. Giving in completely, the desire-stricken blonde raised her legs in the air and spread her smooth white thighs even further apart. Their hips began to surge back and forth together like two well-oiled pieces of machinery in a natural fucking motion, and Mary felt her mind fading off into one long continuous erotic fantasy from which she could not escape. Her cunt was empty but her tiny pink clitoris was being sensually caressed and the kidnapped girl realized with a shock that lesbian love was better than she had ever dreamed possible! Losing control in a big way, she clasped her arms tightly around Nellie's slender waist and fucked back at her, realizing that she was being given the ride of her life! Not even Bud Stern had excited her so furiously. In one corner of her shattered brain, she understood that what she was doing was worse than a sexual sin. It was a crime against nature and she had no excuses! This wantonness had struck her like lightning from a blue sky and she clutched with savage desperation at the lithe sweat-soaked nakedness she held in her arms. like a woman possessed, she thrust the succulent mounds of her softly sensual breasts against Nellie's even larger bosom, discovering with every passing moment that she had more sensitive places and erogenous zones than she would ever believed possible.
"Aaaahhhhh!" she groaned, suddenly. It happened, much harder and much faster than she expected and the sensation rippled through her over-stimulated body like an electric shock.
"Oh! God, I'm cumming!" she managed to gasp, the ecstasy visible in her face. "Oh Jesus, how hard I'm cummmmming!"
Mary squirmed spasmodically on the bed, the ecstatic juices flowing forth from her spasming cuntal passage as if someone had turned on a faucet. She nearly fainted as the full force of the orgasm swept through the nervous system of her inexperience body and she tried to make it go on forever, digging her fingernails fiercely into Nellie's buttocks lest the older woman break away from their lewd embrace before she was finished.
"Did you like it, cookie?" murmured Nellie sardonically, slowly disengaging as Mary's violent cum began to fade. "Bud told me you were the hottest little bitch he'd ever fucked, and I see he wasn't kidding. For somebody who never took an all-girl trip before, you got there pretty fast!"
"Never ... I ... never had ... anything ... like that..." panted the naked blonde hostage, sprawled spread-eagled on the bed, no longer bothering even to close her legs and hide the moist "V"-shaped patch of pubic hair in her loins. The girl's mind was completely shattered by what had happened to her! She had been prepared to submit to Nellie's bizarre lusts as a way of safeguarding her life, but it had never occurred to her that she herself could be vulnerable in the slightest to the pleasures of lesbian sex. She had just been proven catastrophically wrong!
"Well, you learn something every day," chuckled Nellie, changing her position so that her buttocks were resting on the mattress next to Mary's shoulders and her head, propped up on one arm, looked down over the hostage's naked loins. "And today you're going to learn at least two things, because I ain't finished teaching yet."
Mary noticed that Nellie was panting hard as she spoke, and realized with a pang of guilt that the older woman had not yet had her own orgasm. The kidnapped girl somehow found herself wanting to help, but not knowing exactly what to do. She was new at this lewd business and she had a lot to learn. And the lesson was about to begin.
With a lustful grunt, the slim-bodied ex-stripper lowered her head and ran her hot searching lips over the flat smoothness of Mary's stomach. The girl took a deep breath, sensing that this was going to take them even farther into the world of illicit carnal pleasure, and knowing that there was no backing out now. Nellie inched closer, burying her lust-twisted face in the hair-lined furrow of Mary's vagina, her tongue wantonly spearing out to invade the soft moist warmness of the young woman's trembling cunt. The blonde girl's body jerked with sudden shock as the other woman's wetly probing tongue slithered delicately into the crevice of her quivering woman hood. The sensation was exquisite and for a few moments, the kidnapped girl was too overwhelmed to do much more than sprawl on her side and gasp for breath.
Then she got adventurous. Lifting her head off of the pillow, Mary found her gaze locked on the thick dilated lips of the other woman's vagina. Nellie had apparently just emerged from her bath, since her skin was soft and sweet-smelling and her rich brown pubic hair was fluffy and moist. With the flames of degenerate passion once again flickering in her loins, Mary could hardly believe the thoughts which were raging through her lust-warped brain, but she suddenly found that she was possessed by an overwhelming desire to do to Nellie precisely what Nellie was doing to her.
"I want to ... I want to kiss your...." the blonde-haired hostage gasped, but she was unable to bring herself to use the obscene word.
"Say it, baby," urged Nellie thickly, lifting her lips momentarily from Mary's churning loins. "You'll never be able to do it if you can't even say it!"
"I want to kiss your cunt!" groaned the agonized girl, gazing with hypnotized fascination at the velvet-like flesh of Nellie's wetly gleaming vagina. She had never seen another woman's genital organs so close before and the sight of the hidden mysteries tantalized her powerfully. Taking a deep breath, she bent forward, parting her lips lasciviously and trembling in ecstasy as she took the burning organ of Nellie's clitoris between her teeth, tasting the flesh of another member of her own sex for the first time.
Nellie groaned in pure carnal bliss as Mary applied a long melting kiss to her sensually twitching vaginal lips. Remembering the lewd thing which Bud Stern had done to her and how profoundly it had excited her, the blonde hostage hesitantly ran her index finger daringly over the tightly clasped orifice of Nellie's anus. The other woman's body jerked in response and Mary knew she was on the right track wondering where she was getting her erotic inspiration from, the young woman slowly inserted her finger into the narrow opening, sucking Nellie's clitoris into her mouth at the same time and lashing it furiously with her tongue.
The brunette muttered vaguely, but her lush experienced body adapted almost immediately to this bizarre invasion and the groan changed quickly into a gasp of pleasure. The two women went at each other like a pair of maniacs, thrusting their tongues deeply into each other's cunts and finger-fucking each other's anus. They came almost together, Nellie for the first time and Mary for the second, both of their supple bodies covered with a fine layer of glistening sweat and the mattress almost soaked with cuntal fluid.
"Wow!" groaned the blonde-haired captive as she sprawled backwards on the bed, her long, finely tapered legs still spread lewdly apart. "I never knew it ... it could be like that!"
Nellie brushed the long dark hair out of her face and sat up nakedly, a sardonic satisfied smile on her face.
"Honey, that was just the beginning," she drawled as she ignited a cigarette and threw the pack to Mary Keane. "Bud said that you had a hot streak in you a yard wide and a mile long and I guess he was right. We'll have to have a session together, eh? All three of us! My friend Bud knows some tricks you wouldn't believe and it turns him on to see me working on a girl."
Mary finished off her mug of coffee and propped herself up against the back-board of the bed, trying to analyze the situation. Was Nellie's feeling for her strong enough to be counted upon in an emergency? Or was it all perfectly physical? Were these people capable of fucking and then killing? In short, was she buying an insurance policy for herself by putting out for them like the lowest whore on the street, or was she wasting her time? She had to find out! If they were really going to murder her when this was all over, then her best bet was to make a dash for it now. As near as she could determine, she was somewhere in the Rockies in what looked like a private skiing lodge. She could be miles and miles from the nearest source of assistance, but even the desperate chance of a naked dash through the snow was better than the certainty of a bullet in the brain...
"How long do you think I'll be staying with you?" she asked delicately.
"Hard to say," said Nellie casually. "You're out ticket in case the cops find us and we need you as long as there's a chance of our being picked up, or at least until we get out of the country."
"And then?" Mary's heart was in her mouth as she asked the question. It was foolish to hope for an honest answer, but she thought she would at least be able to pick up a clue from the woman's face. "And then?"
But Nellie never answered. There was a movement at the door and suddenly Len O'Reilly was in the room with them.
"Nellie, Bud wants..." he began, evidently bringing a message. "Good God!"
The look of dismay in the young man's face was terrible to see as he realized what the two women had been doing. It hardly took a Sherlock Holmes to deduce the fact that the two of them had been fucking each other's brains out with vile lesbian lust, and for a moment, Len just stood at the door, staring dumbly at their nakedly glistening bodies.
"Care to join us?" asked Nellie smoothly, not even bothering to cover the lush mysteries of her body as she rose majestically from the bed and walked toward the young man, her enormous breasts jiggling temptingly. Mary's face burst into an embarrassed blush and she ducked quickly under the covers, unable to look the explosives' technician in the face. "What did Bud want anyway?" inquired Nellie calmly.
"He wants to have a meeting," the young man managed to choke. "In the kitchen."
"What about our little playmate here?" inquired Nellie casually as she slipped back into her dressing gown. "Don't look so tragic, Len. I only fucked her. I think she still-likes boys and so do I."
"I don't care what she-likes," he snarled hotly. "I don't care much about filthy sluts and Bud said to leave her here. He said we've got to talk business."
Nellie nodded, smiling at the two of them sweetly and waltzed into the hallway, secretly delighted at the commotion she had caused by successfully seducing their youthful hostage.
"Look, Len," Mary began, not knowing what she could possibly say to explain her indecent behavior, but knowing that she needed the young man's friendship more than ever. "It wasn't..."
"Sure, I know," he sneered angrily, standing at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the outline of her sumptuous body beneath the blanket with that curious mixture of lust and irritation she always seemed to arouse in him. "You were raped, I suppose? Couldn't help yourself? Seems to me you get raped pretty regularly!"
"I ... I know it looks terrible," Mary stammered, still looking away from him in shame. "But I didn't volunteer for it, really. It's just that I'm so frightened and..."
For a moment, their eyes met, the girl begging for forgiveness as if they were already lovers and the young man trying to hide how badly she had hurt him. Their brief conversation the night before had started him dreaming of impossible things. She was a poor girl with no family to support her and he had a share in a half a million dollars coming to him. It was impossible to think that a romance could blossom out of a kidnapping, but still, life on a ranch in South America could be good and perhaps...
"Hey Len!" came Wilbur's shout from the kitchen. "Come on, kid, you can fuck her later. We're supposed to be having a meeting."
Len nodded sullenly and walked through the living room into the kitchen where Bud, Wilbur and Nellie were all waiting for him. The woman had changed out of her dressing gown into a pair of tight-fitting slacks and a wool sweater while Bud Stern was lounging with his feet on the table and a cigar protruding from one corner of his mouth.
"Sit down, kid, we got serious things to discuss."
Len nodded, feeling the air of tension in the room and suddenly realizing the obvious truth that he was a murderer in the company of murderers. He had always thought of Bud and Wilbur as rough customers, men who could kill at the drop of a hat, but it struck him that as far as the police and the general public was concerned, he was as bad as any of them. How many people had he murdered with his bombs? He hadn't meant to kill any of them, but he had always known it was possible that people could die. And they had died. A sobering thought.
"What's happening?" he asked, lighting a cigarette to hide his nervousness. "Wilbur caught the early morning news and heard all our names on the radio," Stern announced heavily. "They figured out who you were from circumstantial evidence, I guess, like the fact that you just dropped out of sight the day we made the hit, but how they got the rest of us is beyond me. We didn't leave any finger prints and ... well, I suppose they had a closed circuit television on us, but I figured the masks would hide our faces well enough..."
"You figured wrong," commented Nellie tersely. "What do we do now?"
"We've got problems and that ain't all. Tell 'em what else you picked up, Wilbur."
The older man grunted emotionlessly, as if the idea of speaking aloud displeased him in some vague fashion. He talked with his eyes focused on the table in front of him, not looking at anyone.
"Just traffic on the short wave police band and maybe it's got nothing to do with us, but there's a lotta cops wandering around these mountains and I'm getting the picture that they're looking for someone. like us, for example. If Mister Dynamite here hadn't blown up half of Lancaster, the heat wouldn't be this bad."
"Shit, you wanted the cops distracted, didn't you?" shouted Len in a rage. It was the first time anyone had suggested that he had some fault to bear in their present situation. "And Bud picked out the places, I didn't!"
"Sure, sure, kid, don't worry about it," Stern tried to calm the quarrel before it began. "Just a pity you made those charges so strong, that's all. Sticking up a bank is small potatoes and you get a couple of local cops on your ass for awhile afterwards but when you blow up ten people, the feds get to work and you wind up on the most wanted list...."
"There was only seven!"
"Three more died in the hospital," snapped Wilbur, still looking steadily at the table before him.
"Listen boys, this is getting us nowhere," objected Nellie, a contemptuous smile playing around the corners of her mouth. "We've got to decide what to do."
"We could split up the money and part company," offered Len, not really liking the idea himself and frankly hoping to find himself out-voted.
"Hell, no!" decreed Stern heavily. "We went into this together and we'll divide up that dough in South America, the way we agreed. But we'd better get our asses out of here. They may be checking those lodges out one by one, looking for us, and they'll have photographs. I heard a helicopter go over the house this morning and the sooner we're over the border into Mexico, the better I'll feel."
"How about the chick?" muttered Wilbur. "Seems to me she's outlived her usefulness."
"What are you suggesting?" snapped Len immediately.
"I'm suggesting we don't leave her behind to tell the cops which way we went," the gray-haired gunman stated blandly. "What's your idea?"
"We should take her with us," decided Stern, glancing back and forth between Len and Wilbur and realizing there was a potential conflict ready to break out. "We can still use 'er as a hostage and I don't feel like bumping her off just yet."
"But we will if we have to," put in Nellie with that icy murderousness which made the blood in Len's veins run cold. "This is no time to get sentimental."
Len felt his brain suddenly reeling. You just fucked her, he was screaming mentally at Nellie. You just got up out of her bed and now you're talking about killing her if it gets inconvenient to have her around. How can you be that way?
"Look, I think we should move tonight, as soon as it's dark," Stern was saying. "We get down off this fucking mountain and haul ass through the night to the Mexican border and find some place to hole up for awhile until we can get across in Mexico. I used to know a spot, years ago when I was running grass up to L.A."
"Can we get out of here?" inquired Wilbur. "We got some snow last night and we could be socked in."
"Could be, but with chains on that bus, we should make it."
"I'll take a walk down the road if you want," offered Len suddenly, desperate to get away from the others for awhile so he could think.
Ten people, he was saying to himself. You killed ten fucking people. They're going to kill Mary!
"Yeah, see if there's any snow drifts we might not be able to get through," advised Bud Stern in what passed for his fatherly manner. "Do you good to get some fresh air."
CHAPTER SIX
Mary wrapped the cover tightly around her naked body, wondering where the gang had hidden her clothing. Taking away her garments was an effective and easy method of keeping her from escaping, since the snow outside the cottage was piled high and she could hardly get far barefoot and dressed in a blanket. Was it worth trying to get her hands on a gun? Perhaps Len's, since he seemed the most inexperienced? Her father had taught her how to use a pistol, and she was reasonably sure that she had the guts to point one at a person and pull the trigger if it came to that, but the young blonde woman disregarded the idea on tactical grounds. There were too many of them, and the three professionals were all too fast on the trigger to suit her. No, she would only end up getting killed. And she wanted to live!
Something moving outside caught the girl's eye and she walked to the window in time to see Len O'Reilly trudging down the road, his face drawn and worried. What was happening? Was he leaving? No, they would hardly let him go now, even if he wanted to desert his share of the money. She had to find out what was up!
Moving silently on her bare feet, Mary Keane stepped out of the bedroom, hearing the low rumble of voices from the direction of the kitchen. No one had specifically ordered her to stay in her room so she meandered through the living room, inching her way closer and closer until she could distinguish what the three were saying.
"The kid's in rough shape," Nellie's throaty voice was cool and matter-of-fact.
"He'll be okay," asserted Stern. "He ain't cut out for this line of work, but he's a good kid and he'll make it."
"One more person we could just as well do without," commented Wilbur. Mary felt her muscles tighten as she waited for Bud Stern's response.
"I know what you're thinking, Will, but we ain't gonna do it," decreed Stern. "The kid's earned his share of the dough and I say he gets to enjoy it."
"And the broad?"
"We'll drop her off on the other side of the border," suggested Stern.
"Sure, and let her tell the cops which way we went," insisted Wilbur.
"We can lay a couple of bucks on her to keep her mouth shut," suggested Nellie with a yawn. "If you don't wanna use the traditional method of making sure she don't talk."
"I never kill anybody I don't have to," muttered Stern, relighting his cigar. "And we've got plenty of money. Plenty! There's more than a half-million, as near as I can figure, and nobody will ever be able to trace it! All small bills! Friends, we are never gonna have to work again!"
Mary Keane had heard enough and she decided to get back to her room before someone discovered that she was eavesdropping. The notion of a half-million dollars roared through her brain as she paused by the open fire and indulged in a daydream. This whole horrible situation could finish in one of two ways. The gang could logically conclude that it was madness to let her go. No matter how much money they gave her. They could never be sure that she would not go to the police, and that would always endanger them even though they would have a head-start. Or it could end another way since it had now occurred to her that she stood very close to more money than she had ever dreamed of before. For the tough but poverty stricken daughter of an Army sergeant that much money was well worth a little serious consideration.
She wandered back into her room, feeling the warmth from the enormous log which was crackling in the fireplace. There was no point in making plans, but she could keep her eyes open and her wits about her. Moving to the window, she scanned the landscape for Len, but there was nothing to see but the crystal whiteness of the Rockies in winter.
* * *
"I still say we oughta bump 'er off," commented Wilbur, his eyes glowing a little with sexual interest as he watched Nellie's retreating figure. The ex-stripper had pronounced herself fatigued and was returning to her room for a mid-morning nap.
"I don't like to think about it," admitted Stem uneasily. "I dunno, I guess I'm getting soft in my old age, but ... we'll worry about it when the time comes."
"What the hell is the problem, chum?" probed Wilbur. The two men had been together for a long time, and they could read each other like a book. "You ain't taking a tumble for that little blonde, are you?"
Stem snorted in disgust, his eyes flashing dangerously.
"Are you kidding? She's young enough to be my daughter."
"But you fucked her?"
"Why shouldn't I fuck her? I figure on fucking her some more, too, because she'd got the juiciest little cunt I ever struck my poor old cock into, but I can't think about fucking and shooting the same person at the same time, that's all. You call that taking a tumble?"
"Not exactly," mumbled the other. "So she's a great lay, is she?"
"The best, and I'm aiming to make an entrance in the rear door before much longer. Looks like the tightest thing I've seen since our escape from that fucking bank."
"Wouldn't mind a little action myself," drawled Wilbur, getting to his feet and rolling up his sleeves. "Seems to me we got a couple of hours before we gotta get ready to leave. Course, I'm not as romantic as you are."
Stern nodded and then looked up sharply at the word 'romantic' The two men exchanged curious stares for a moment and then both of them broke into grins.
"You're so goddamn romantic that the girl sometimes needs plastic surgery afterwards, Bud good-naturedly accused his partner. "But no rough stuff today, alright? We got a long drive ahead of us tonight, and I don't want any wounded passengers."
"Spoil all my fun, will ya?" laughed Wilbur as they moved together towards the door.
The two men chuckled lewdly, remembering other occasions when they had debauched women together. Sometimes the girl had been a willing participant, like Nellie, but sometimes she had not been willing at all, and there was a savagely sadistic streak in Wilbur's character that came out strongly whenever he found himself in control of a frightened unwilling female. Bud Stern enjoyed a little friendly roughness, but Wilbur was downright dangerous.
Mary Keane was sitting on the edge of the bed, frankly daydreaming as the two men entered. She was still wrapped loosely in her blanket, and she pulled it tightly around her as she suddenly saw Wilbur standing before her.
"Hey, you got my blanket," he said, his face twisting into a lewd grin.
"Your blanket?" answered the girl uncomprehendingly.
"Yeah, that's my blanket," rumbled the wiry, gray-haired man menacingly. "And I want it back now."
"But I don't have anything to wear!" the girl shouted back at him angrily. "You ... you bastards have stolen all my clothes!"
Bud Stern and Wilbur exchanged meaningful glances, and the gang leader nodded shortly as if he were giving the other man permission to go ahead with something. Wilbur's vicious grin widened as he slid the belt out of his pants.
"So we're bastards, eh? Seems to me you need a little lesson in manners, girlie, and Uncle Wilbur is just the man to give 'em to you. Drop that blanket on the floor!"
"NO!! "
The belt flickered through the air so fast that she barely saw it, but when the stiff leather curled around the soft flesh of her flanks, the stinging pain convinced her that it was all very real. She was being whipped, and it hurt too bad to stand! She fumbled with the blanket and reluctantly let it fall away from the nakedness of her voluptuous young body. Wilbur studied the fullness of her ripely succulent breasts and the tempting triangle of her blonde pubic zone before issuing his next command. The girl was a little too spirited for his taste, and the experienced criminal thought he knew how to render her somewhat more submissive.
"Down on the floor, girlie," he ordered, raising the belt threateningly over her. "Down on the floor and crawl! Nobody calls Wilbur a bastard and gets away with it, especially seeing as how it's true."
The belt slashed again, viciously, and the girl's scream rocked the quiet air as she tried unsuccessfully to dance away from the stinging lash. A welt rose up on the tender skin of her buttocks, and Mary Keane was on her hands and knees, sobbing with a combination of pain and humiliation before Wilbur could raise his arm to strike again.
"Don't hurt meeee!" she beseeched them, kneeling slavishly between the two men with her long yellow hair tumbling sensuously over the whiteness of her shoulders. "Please ... I'm sorry I called you a bastard."
"Well, now, I'll have to think about accepting your apology," drawled Wilbur laconically as he settled himself comfortably on the edge of the bed and leaned back against a pillow. "Why don't you crawl over her and ask me again, real nice this time?"
"There was obviously no choice. Tears of shame and humiliation staining her cheeks, Mary crawled over in front of him, placing her head between his knees. What was the point of all this, she was asking herself, furiously trying to drive away the fear long enough to give herself a moment to think clearly. Were they just amusing themselves or was this merely the prelude to something even worse?
"Mighty nice," Wilbur commented cruelly as he reached out to take Mary's blonde hair in his hands. "You're a mighty nice-looking girl, and I've just figured out how you can get me to forgive you."
Mary swallowed hard and said nothing, not even daring to look him in the eye. He tugged on her hair and pulled her even closer so that the softness of her cheek was resting against his thigh. With her hair in one hand and his belt in the other, he was clearly the master of the situation. He could give her any bizarre brutal order he wanted now, and she would have to obey. But what did he want?
"You ever suck cock?" he asked her brutally, his grin broadening lasciviously as he forced her to look up at him. The question hit her like a sledge hammer. She knew what he was talking about immediately, of course, but the thought filled her instantly with revulsion. She had read articles about these perverted practices, but she had never experienced the slightest desire to experiment with them.
"No!" she spat at him, but the instant the defiant word was out of her mouth, she realized that it had been a mistake. The belt fairly whistled through the air as he brought it down across the naked flesh of her back, making a cruel red streak which ran from her shoulder to the curvature of her right hip. Her frail body twitched forward involuntarily, and she found her face rubbing against the hardness of his genital organ beneath his pants.
"Now you're getting the idea, he snickered at her accidental gesture. "You can start any time now, baby. I'm ready when you are, and if you ain't ready now, you better get ready fast!" He raised his arm threateningly, and the girl hunched forward in an agony of fear. Whatever else happened, she could not bear the lash again against her naked skin.
"What ... what do I have to do?" she whispered, defeated at last.
"Well, I'd suggest you start by opening my zipper," he advised her sarcastically. "Unless you think you can suck me off right through my pants."
Fearing the sting of his vicious belt even more than the vile perversion he was forcing upon her, Mary's white hands fluttered to his belt, and she unfastened him without difficulty, drawing down his zipper and then fumbling beneath his underpants to release the throbbing shaft of his rapidly hardening cock. She drew his penis delicately out of his pants, holding it softly in her hands, but cringing at the notion of placing her red lips around this short, stubby instrument. The man was clean but it was the thought of using her mouth as a sexual instrument which repelled her so thoroughly.
"Get a move on it, baby," came a harshly commanding voice from behind her as she felt Bud Stern's hands on her buttocks. "I wanna see you doing some sucking and I wanna see it fast!" He pinched her buttocks as he spoke, and the girl realized with a sob that they could hurt her in any number of ways if she refused to obey. Wilbur took her hand and forcibly wrapped it around the thick bulging shaft of his penis, pushing it down in order to reveal the scarlet glans at the tip. The naked girl found herself staring at it with numbed fascination as if it were the head of a snake and she were a hypnotized bird.
But she was not permitted much time for contemplation. Almost immediately, Wilbur's hands were at her lips, forcing her jaw apart, and she yielded with a dull resignation, knowing that she was physically trapped between two strong men who were in a position to enforce their will upon her. She hesitated for an instant, appalled by the certainty that the man was going to plunge his hardened rod into her unwilling throat! With an animalistic groan, Wilbur brought the whip down against the side of her leg, creasing the sensitive flesh of her thigh, and Mary leaped forward, her mouth opening to emit a scream of protest. It was all the opportunity Wilbur needed, and he flicked his hips quickly forward, ramming the thick pole of his flesh deeply into the moist cavern of her mouth.
"Aaaaggghhh," she groaned, the sound of her voice distorted by the presence of his giant cock-head sliding wetly up and down the full length of her tongue. The unnatural deed was done in an instant, and Wilbur clapped his muscular hands on either side of her head to hold her in position, her hips beginning a slow, undulating motion. With a lewd chuckle, he began driving his stiffened pike in and out of the warm cavern of her mouth, never retreating quite far enough to give her the opportunity to throw him off. She was a prisoner!
Bud Stern was too excited to stay out of the act, and he moved in close, fascinated by the perverse sight of a man's short fat cock penetrating a young woman's cruelly stretched mouth. It was a scene he had witnessed before, naturally, since he frequently ordered Nellie to satisfy Wilbur's lewdly unnatural lusts in this degenerate manner, but for some reason, it never failed to excite him. There was something savagely erotic about the way Mary's heavy succulent breasts jiggled helplessly as Wilbur plundered her open throat, and Stern ran his fingers lightly over her tiny brown nipples as he knelt behind her. The girl was groaning miserably in unwilling submission as Wilbur saw vilely into her, thrusting his turgid organ deep down towards her tonsils, punishing her deliberately, and Stern made matters worse by running one lewdly exploring hand between her legs and playing obscenely with the tiny pink bud of her clitoris. To his surprise and delight, she was already moist between the legs.
"Well, is there anything that doesn't turn you on?" he taunted her mockingly. "How about a quickie in the behind, baby? You like that sort of thing?"
Mary tried to shake her head and groan a negative, but she realized with a surge of hysterical fear that what she liked made very little difference to a man like Stern. He was going to fuck her from behind in the rectum, and with a cock like his, he would surely rend her delicate anal flesh. She could feel his lewd fingers exploring beneath the pink inner surfaces of her thighs and her naked body began to tremble violently. With a sudden stroke of clarity, she realized that she had to finish with Wilbur as quickly as possible so that she would be free to concentrate all her energies on fighting off Bud Stern. The thought was awful, but she had to suck him as hard as she could and make him cum as soon as possible. Behind her, Stern was already twisting and poking the supple resilient skin of her buttocks. There was not a moment to lose!
She began to blow like a madwoman, and the man's bulbous cock reacted immediately by twitching with sudden pleasure. Mary had never before performed this lewd and unnatural operation on a man's genital organ, but she was learning fast, and somehow instinct guided her into doing what was right. She was doing her best to please now, running the slippery surface of her tongue wetly over the smooth, moist head of his thrusting cock, even daring to invade the tiny open slit of his glans and feeling it expand as his lust increased by leaps and bounds. Wilbur was going wild now, half off the bed as he wormed his way back and forth into her desperately sucking mouth, and the girl wrapped her fingers around the stout base of his penile shaft, more to keep her balance than anything else.
There was a real hardness hidden deep in Mary Keane's heart, and it showed itself now as she deliberately administered to Wilbur the best blow job of his entire life. She had forged this toughness in a dozen army camps around the world, working in commissary snack bars and fighting for survival in run-down schools for army brats, and she knew that she needed all her guts to get her through what was ahead of her. They wanted her to drop lower than a whore, to fuck and suck like the lowest, most perverted slut on the street, and she had to do it if she wanted to survive. She had to suck cock as if she loved it, to coax this cold-blooded murderer to shoot the vile spray of his hotly sticky cum down into the virginal sanctuary of her throat, and she knew that she had the strength to do it!
Her blonde head was bobbing furiously now, slavering moistly over the thick shaft of throbbing male flesh, and she sensed instinctively that the man was racing towards an orgiastic conclusion. Wilbur was muttering and moaning above her, pronouncing every dirty obscene word in his extensive vocabulary of perverted phrases, half-maddened by the carnal vision of a magnificently voluptuous young woman kneeling slavishly before him and taking his short fat cock between the lush red ovals of her lips.
Behind the girl. Wilbur could see that Bud Stern was wildly excited himself. His pants were already open, exposing the gang leader's truly enormous cock as his hands roamed eagerly over the tempting mounds of Mary's gently rounded buttocks. The knowledge that Bud was going to fuck her in the ass filled Wilbur with that final bit of erotic excitement he needed to push him over the brink, and suddenly he felt the heat blazing in his loins, a sure sign that the end was near. The girl was still sucking him like an expert, and Wilbur abruptly understood his leader's reluctance to put her out of the way. She was a real hot little bitch, and it would be fun to keep her around for awhile. Eventually, of course, they would have to take certain measures...
Mary felt it coming, and she tightened her lips furiously around the thick shaft of his instrument, afraid that he would somehow retreat from the brink of an orgasm, and she would have to start all over at the beginning and inch him gently forward again. The cock she held between her lips suddenly began a wild jerking motion, and Mary took a quick breath, knowing that it was about to happen. A gram escaped from her cruelly stretched lips as he began to cum, and her Adam's apple bobbed frantically as the hot sticky jet of semen sprayed vilely into the back of her throat. The girl had no particular desire to swallow the man's hot syrupy cum, but he was holding her head in a vise-like grip, and she quickly found that she had no option in the matter. It was swallow or choke to death and Mary Keane chose to swallow.
Bitterly, she clasped her lips in a tight, elastic ring around the man's wildly jerking instrument, sucking with all her might. It made no logical sense, but somehow she wanted to punish him for the bestial humiliation he had inflicted upon her, and in the madness of the moment, this seemed like the best way to hurt him, to suck him absolutely dry! Wilbur's cock jerked and twitched in her cum-filled mouth and the girl gulped desperately, impelled by a savagely obscene desire to suck every last drop of lust-provoking semen out of his body and into hers as if this gave her some kind of insane victory over him, some kind of revenge for what he had done to her. Wilbur's short thick cock began to wilt slowly as she milked him dry, and with a grunt of satisfied pleasure, he pulled her head slowly away from his deflated instrument.
"Honey, you are going to be a first-class little cock-sucker when you get a little more experience behind you," he complimented her crudely. "You gonna fuck 'er in the ass, Bud?"
The gang leader's answer was a savage growl, and the girl felt herself pushed roughly forward onto the bed so that her torso was stretched out on the mattress as far as her hips, and her buttocks were suspended vulnerably in the air. Mary choked down the last few drops of Wilbur's viscous sperm, filled her lungs with air and began to scream.
"Baby, you can yell all you want," Stern advised her grimly, "'cause there ain't nobody up here but us chickens." He punctuated his remarks by opening her tightly clenched buttocks with pure brute force, despite the girl's desperate attempts to hold them together and prevent him from sodomizing the delicate flesh of her rectum. But he was far too strong for her, and she felt his fingertips scraping lewdly at the tiny puckered hold of her anus, probing her defenses.
"Aaaggghh!! " her scream rattled the windows, and the two men laughed sadistically at her obvious terror. Wilbur was pinning her white shoulders to the bed, leaning on her with all his weight while Bud poked his stout middle finger directly into her defenseless orifice.
"What's going on?" came a puzzled voice from somewhere over her shoulder as the agonized young blonde writhed in agony, impaled on Stern's thick middle finger like a butterfly on a pin. She was too miserable to bother pleading for mercy, cringing away from the young man in horror and subjugation and knowing that she would never be able to look him in the face again. If he could only stop Bud Stern from doing what he obviously intended to do! But it was useless to expect Len to stand up to this hardened criminal.
"Wha ... what are you doing to that girl?" he asked again, his voice trembling with some uncertain emotion, and she could not tell for the moment whether he was angry or aroused or frightened or simply unhappy.
"Well now, sonny, what does it look like I'm doing?" snorted Stern irritably, obviously annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his perverted sex-play. Wilbur gazed at Len's face, not bothering to disguise the depths his dislike for the younger man. For a moment, they froze, all four of them, like wax figures in some bizarre tableau, the three men crouched around the nakedly vulnerable body of a young woman about to be sodomized. Wilbur and Stern were obviously both waiting for Len to make himself scarce, and it was difficult to say what was going on in the young man's anguished mind.
"You can't," he said finally in a choked, strangled voice. "Fucking her is one thing, but you ... you can't do it like that!"
"Listen, kid ... Wilbur began, but Stern cut him off.
"Get it straight, Len," he warned the young man, his voice low and angry. "I can do anything I damn please to this chick! And right now, I'm fixing to spread that little ass for her, so disappear."
Mary Keane twisted her head around to look at Len, amazed that he would have stood up so long to Bud. She was grateful for his efforts, but it was useless. Len was out-numbered, and besides, he was not really very brave. Their eyes met for just a moment, and then her glance flickered away, pain in her eyes.
"No..." he replied hesitantly, sliding his hands beneath his jacket and producing his pistol. "No, I'm not going to let you do it. It's not right and besides, you'll hurt her!"
There was a moment's shock. Something about the nakedness of a pistol in the room changed the atmosphere, chilling the four of them as if a window had suddenly been opened, and the harsh cold wind of the Rockies had suddenly blown in to numb their flesh. No one moved for a minute, and then Bud Stern grunted with disgust and got to his feet, his once-hardened cock now losing its erection and becoming flaccid. He tucked it carefully into his pants and Mary Keane turned her head in time to see Wilbur's short fat penis disappear behind his fly. Suddenly, she had a ridiculous fantasy-imagine rushing through her consciousness of the three men all fighting, fully dressed but with their cocks out, and she realized in the same instant that a man somehow needs his genitals safely covered before he can think of violence.
"You're asking for trouble, kid," rumbled Stern, scratching the back of his head casually as he strolled in Len's direction. Mary Keane froze, feeling the fear steal over her body as she crouched between Wilbur's knees, too terrorized to move. Then the gray-haired man swung one leg easily over her blonde head and stood up, leaving her alone and naked on the bed. Instinctively, reacting like a child, she crawled beneath the covers as if the thin fabric of the blanket would somehow protect her when the bullets began to fly.
"Ain't much point in waving a gun around, Len," observed Bud Stern dryly. "We all know you ain't got the guts to use it."
Len's face was white now, and he backed away slowly as the two killers closed in on him, not rushing but meandering slowly in his direction, their hard deadly hands hanging loosely by their sides but ready to kill at a moment's notice. Mary Keane watched her rescuer's hands shaking noticeably as he tried to cover both men with the same gun, swinging it back and forth as they approached him. He'd like to be brave, she was thinking, but he just hasn't got it in him. He gets all set to be a hero, and then his hands start shaking. He was never cut out to be a dynamite man.
"I ... I wouldn't be too sure if I ... were you," Len stammered, his back to the wall. Mary saw that he could kill them both now if he could shoot just fast enough. Probably they were both armed, but if he could fire at once and hit him, he could shoot the other man before he got to his gun. If he could bring himself to pull the trigger. Then they could deal with the woman, Nellie, and they would have a half million dollars in small bills to split between them.
If he could pull the trigger. She looked at him again and saw that he was not going to pull the trigger under any circumstances. He was all right when it came to preparing a C-4 bomb which would kill people when he was not around to see, but staring a man in the face and shooting him down in cold blood was not Len's cup of tea. He was looking at her, almost as if he was waiting for her orders. Did she want Stern killed for having tried to sodomize her? For an instant, it seemed that she could order the big man's death simply by telling Len to go ahead and pull the trigger. But if she told him to shoot and he shot too slow, or not at all, they would certainly kill her for her pains. The moment was one of nature's great opportunities to keep her mouth shut.
Stern moved. It was a flash, a visual blur, but the big man flung his heavy muscular body like a missile across the few feet of empty space between himself and the nervous young man with the gun, his hands going instinctively for
Len's arm. The young dynamite man had only a split-second to make up his mind and fire, and the time was not enough. Stern hit him like a ton of bricks and Wilbur piled on an instant later, his hands reaching out for Len's throat as the pistol went spinning across the floor towards the bed, the hammer cocked and safety off, but the bullet still in the chamber and not in Bud Stern's chest.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" someone screamed and there was a cry of anguish as Len's body was thrown back against the wall with incredible violence. Stern's knee slammed into the young man's groin and Len doubled over like a pencil snapped in two. Wilbur straightened him up, almost tenderly and then pounded a hard, merciless fist into his face, driving his head back against the wall.
"Aaaaiiyyhhh!" Len screamed in agony as he spat blood, but Mary Keane found herself staring at his pistol. The weapon was lying on the floor and she had only to reach down and pick it up. Her father had once owned a pistol just like it and she knew how it worked. There was a difference between herself and Len, and the difference was that Len would always hesitate a fraction of a second too long whereas she would fire as soon as she made up her mind to and got her target in her sights.
They were beating the living daylights out of Len, punishing him brutally with their fists, and the girl bent nakedly over the side of the bed, her fingers scampering across the wooden floor in the direction of the pistol. A half a million dollars, she was thinking...
"Hold it, honey," came a woman's sharp voice, and Mary looked up into the barrel of a gun. It was Nellie and Mary popped quickly back into bed, Len's scream still ringing in her ears.
"Bud! Wilbur!" the dark-haired woman shouted desperately as the two men pounded Len into semi-consciousness.
"Bastard pulled a pistol on us," gasped Stern, out of breath with the violent exercise. "Lost his head over that broad..."
"Bud, let it go!" Nellie shouted. "There's a couple of squad cars coming up the drive!"
"What?" the room suddenly became quiet. Wilbur released Len's body and the young man slumped to the floor in a daze.
"The police," said Nellie. "I think they've found us."
CHAPTER SEVEN
The word "police" was like a bucket of cold water on Bud and Wilbur and they disappeared immediately, taking Nellie with them. Len O'Reilly sat up, bracing himself against the wall, watching the room slowly stop rotating around his head. Outside of the cottage, he could hear the nonchalant chatter of strange voices as several policemen exchanged unexcited comments while trudging from their squad car up to the front door. Only half conscious, Len probed delicately with his tongue, exploring the inside of his mouth as he counted his teeth, looking for the source of the blood taste in his mouth...
"Len?"
He ignored the voice, finding the exact spot at which Stern's fist had split his lip. He licked it, tasting his own blood. Somebody was knocking at the door and he wondered vaguely what had happened to Bud and the others. Had they slipped out the back way, taking the money with them. No, behind the cottage was a steep hill with no cover. They would be seen. So they were inside somewhere.
"Len!"
The girl was on the bed looking at him expectantly. What does she want? More bravery? Len shook his head, almost feeling his brain shiver. They had abolished the death penalty, so life imprisonment was the worst they could do to him. Perhaps parole in thirty years or so? He would survive being arrested the same way he had survived the escape from the bank, by being so obviously helpless that no one would take the trouble to shoot him. And the meek shall inherit the earth, or at least outlive the unmeek.
"...find my clothes!" the blonde-haired girl was saying to him urgently. "We can get away with the money." Len listened to her for a few seconds and then found his head hurting him too much to permit him to concentrate. The money was stored in the living room, together with the explosives ... they could hardly get far and at the moment, it did not seem worth the bother. The sun was shining on him through the window, and he found that his head did not hurt when he held perfectly still. Len closed his eyes and concentrated on not moving. One of his ribs hurt whenever he took deep breaths and so he took shallow breaths. They would fix everything in the prison hospital.
"There's a policeman at the window," said the girl in a strange calm tone, and for a moment in his dream-like condition, Len imagined that he was listening to a radio show about cops and robbers. What would happen next? Would they catch the bad guy? But wait, I'm the bad guy, he told himself in a state of demented hysteria and then felt obliged to giggle at his own foolish humor.
"Oh, excuse me, folks," said the policeman at the window, and Len opened his eyes, squinting against the brightness of the mid-morning sun, and saw a policeman tapping lightly on the glass. Mary was still sitting on the bed, obviously naked beneath the blanket she had wrapped around her and the policeman looked embarrassed. Len discovered that his nose was bleeding quietly and he wondered what on earth the policeman thought had been going on? A naked woman? A bleeding beaten man...
"I'm the dynamite man!" he proclaimed insanely to the astonished cop. "She's the beautiful prisoner and I make things go boooooommmmmmmm!" Len tried to laugh but his rib began to hurt as soon as he took a deep breath and the mood passed immediately. He thought about standing up and tried to support himself on one arm, only to find that hurt too. I'll make them come and get me in a stretcher, he decided, watching the policeman look at him with a perplexed expression and then turn to Mary Keane.
"Could you open the door, Miss?" he asked, politely ignoring Len's antics. "We're checking on..."
"My husband's had a little too much to drink," Mary interrupted him, a worried smile fluttering onto her face. "It's our honeymoon and perhaps you could come back later."
The situation was becoming absurd. Len wondered why Mary did not run to the window, throw up the sash and fling herself into the policeman's arms, but decided that there had to be a reasonable explanation which would become obvious as soon as his head stopped hurting. He heard running footsteps in the corridor, and wondered if someone was going to explain to the poor perplexed policeman that they were murderers who had escaped with a half a million dollars. It was Bud Steiner, and he stepped quickly into the room, maneuvering his big powerful body around the door frame with the same deft agility he had shown while beating the hell out of Len a few minutes before. He paid no attention to either one of them, quickly raising the sub-machine gun he held in his hand to his shoulder and firing almost immediately as he saw the policeman. Sub-machine guns make a great deal of noise and the pain in Len's head was excruciating. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears to shut out the deafeningly painful burst of fire, hearing the tingle of glass shattering and the scream of the policeman as the rain of bullets caught him full in the chest and knocked him over backwards into the snow.
"Fucking policeman," Stern said fiercely as he strode to the window and looked out. He glanced down, snorted with satisfaction and then ducked away from the window as a burst of gunfire tore into the room. "Got us blocked," he said to Len, picking the young man's gun up off the floor and handing it to him. "You get up there and keep 'em from getting around behind the cottage, got it? And keep an eye on the chick! She's our ticket out of here."
Len took the gun and looked at it blankly, as Stern rushed out of the room to organize the defense. Outside there was the sound of gunfire as people shot at the cottage, and from the other two bedrooms, he could hear Wilbur and Nellie returning the fire. Just like the movies. Len was supremely disinclined to move from where he was. Why stand up and get killed?
"He said to keep them from getting behind the cottage," said Mary Keane and Len stared at her in disbelief. The girl's face was flushed with excitement and as she balanced on the edge of the bed, tying a knot in the blanket she had wrapped around her breasts, absurdly, the young man felt a sudden tingle of lust for her deep in his loins. Everyone else had had her but him, and now it was going to be too late. He was going to jail for thirty years, and he would never never get to fuck her!
"Who's side are you on?" he asked incredulously, getting to his knees and experimenting with the motion of standing up.
"I've hurt you enough," she breathed at him. "Watch out, they're shooting."
"You...?"
"I don't want them to take you away," she told him flatly. "Can you stand up?"
"Yeah." He did so slowly, feeling each bone. From the next room, there was a sustained burst from the submachine gun and outside there was a scream. Len staggered to the window and looked out, thinking what a horrible thing a man's scream was. Women's screams were different somehow.
"Find my clothes and the money and maybe we can run," suggested the girl from behind him, a tense urgency in her voice. Len jerked backwards as a bullet buzzed in the open window like an angry hornet, and he considered the situation, his mind clearing rapidly. Outside, there were two police cars parked across the road and four or five policemen were huddling behind the car, shooting at the house. And that was the only way out. He had made a reconnaissance earlier that morning of the area, and there was no other avenue of escape, just the twisting narrow road which led down the side of the mountain.
"You'd go with me?" he asked, feeling a little like a teenager asking a coed for a date for the junior prom. He suddenly remembered how she had told the police that they were on their honeymoon. He liked the idea of going on a honeymoon with her.
"Yes, but we've got to do something!"
Len felt his body go cold, quickly and then become warm again as he felt her touch his arm. She'll go with me, he told himself in amazement. We could spend my share of that money somewhere together. I could fuck her whenever I wanted to, that's what she's really saying. It would be crazy to let them take me now!
"What can we do?" she persisted.
Len thought about it, feeling his mind come slowly back to life. He could shoot at the policeman with his pistol, but even in the Marine Corps he had not been much of a shot and his contribution to this raging gun battle could hardly have much impact on the outcome. It occurred to him that he still had a substantial quantity of plastic explosive, and a lot of dynamite left in his bag. What could he do with it. He ran into the living room, suddenly possessed with a sense of urgency and pulled the satchel out from behind the couch. He unzipped it rapidly and laid a quarter pound of C-4 plastic on the floor between his knees, noticing that his hands were not shaking. A shadow threw itself across him and he glanced up to see Nellie, looking mannish in her ski pants and jacket, watching him quizzically.
"Make them light," she advised, understanding immediately. "It's a long throw."
Len nodded without replying, now too intent upon what he was doing to conduct a conversation. A good dynamite man survived by thinking only about dynamite when he held it in his hands. He made a hole in the plastic with a screwdriver and then fitted the blasting cap with about ten seconds worth of fuse. The moment he finished this crude bomb, he laid it carefully aside, quickly fabricating two others just like it.
"Don't trip," he said to Nellie as he handed her one, and took the other two himself. "It goes off real easy."
"What do we do?" asked Nellie, a slight tremble in her deep alto voice as she followed Len into the bedroom where Bud Stern and Wilbur were standing near the window, their pistols poised and ready to repel a police attack.
"It's a standoff," snapped Stern, glancing up at them sharply. "They must be waiting for help."
"I made three bombs," Len said, feeling like a clever student as he showed Bud the quarter-pound sticks of plastic. "But I don't think I can throw them that far."
"I can," offered Wilbur, and he took the butter-shaped explosive from Nellie. "I used to play a lotta ball. Always had a good arm."
"You have to light it and throw right away," explained Len. "There's about five seconds of fuse on 'em."
"Okay, look, you draw their fire from the window," suggested the stocky gray-haired gunman, "and we'll toss these from the door. As soon as I toss the third one, we rush 'em, okay?"
"It's the only way," agreed Stern and he motioned Nellie into place by the window. Len followed Wilbur into the hallway, wondering how many times in his lifetime Wilbur had experienced moments like this, times when he was blockhead in a cul-de-sac like a cornered rat who had to kill if he hoped to escape. The gray-haired man was calm, business-like, as if he had been through this kind of thing in the past, and knew precisely what the odds were. Len dug in his pocket for his cigarette lighter, and held it up. Len opened the door, shielding his body with it, and struck the tip of the fuse into the dancing blue flame of Len's lighter. As soon as it fizzled, he opened the door, poised for a split second to take careful aim, and then threw it hard at the two police cars about a hundred feet away. It was a moment of comparative calm with no one shooting at anyone, and Len could make out puzzled expressions on the faces of the police as the package of death-dealing explosive sailed through the crisp mountain air, bounced on the roof of one of the squad cars and exploded with a deafening crash. Wilbur did not wait to see what had happened, and Len flicked the lighter into the flame a second time, and the second bomb went sailing after the first.
"I can't see. Too much smoke," he complained after the second explosion had split the air, suddenly flinging the door wide open and rushing out onto the porch with the last of Len's bombs in his hand. Len followed him, gingerly, staring hard at spreading patches of crimson in the snow near the two patrol cars as the wind slowly began to disperse the smoke. One of the cars was on fire, sending a column of inky black smoke up toward the sky. There was a body lying beside it and Len felt his stomach turn over suddenly as he realized that the policeman was missing his head. Another policeman was still alive, and sat up abruptly as Wilbur advanced on the wreckage with a bomb in one hand a cigarette lighter in the other. A shot rang out from the house, a single, well-aimed shot, and blood spurted from the trooper's chest. He raised one hand slowly, shaking his finger back and forth as if he were trying to explain that this was all a terrible mistake, and then pitched forward onto his face.
"Jesus, we got 'em all," came an incredulous shout of triumph from the house and Len could see Bud Stern climbing out of the window, his submachine gun freshly loaded and held at the ready. Len felt something inside of him pop as the tension broke and he gave way to an overpowering need to vomit, throwing up profusely in the corner of the porch. It was undignified, but it probably saved his life because in that moment a policeman with a rifle stepped around the corner of the building leveling his weapon at the two men, Bud and Wilbur. It was no longer a question of surrendering and Len looked up from where he was kneeling in misery in time to see the three men shooting at each other furiously. It all happened in a split-second, and when the air cleared, Stern was standing in front of the cottage alone.
Wilbur was lying on his back in the snow, a geyser of red blood spurting obscenely from a hole in his chest, his face as ashen and gray as his hair. The policeman was crumpled, his face buried in the snow and his arms wrapped tightly around his stomach where Bud Stern had shot him.
"Is he...? " called Nellie from the window.
"Yeah," muttered Stern thickly, his eyes sweeping cautiously from Wilbur's body to the corpses of the policemen near the burnt-out squad cars. "He's dead. Everybody out here is dead."
"There must be an easier way to make a living," said Nellie, her mouth set grimly, and she closed the window and began to cry.
Len O'Reilly threw up again, feeling Mary Keane's soft hand on his back as he crouched on the porch, retching as if his stomach would never be the same again. Bud took the plastic explosive from Wilbur's lifeless hand, and walked back into the house without looking at Len or Mary. Inside, they could hear Nellie sobbing.
* * *
"I don't think they ever got a message off," declared Stern soberly as he hunched his big body over the wheel of the Volkswagen bus, a plastic coffee cup in one hand and his trusty submachine gun in his lap, ready for action if they were stopped by a patrol. "Otherwise we'd have been hit by now. I'm sure of it."
"You mean they haven't got a line on us?" asked Len hopefully from the back seat. Mary Keane was sitting quietly by his side, looking out the window as if this were a family outing, while Bud propelled the vehicle through the night, cautiously avoiding exceeding the speed limits.
"I mean it might take them awhile to find those two squad cars and figure out what happened," Stern replied tersely. "Eventually they're going to come up with the fact that there was a Volkswagen up there since somebody must have spotted us driving in. And if it doesn't snow, they can work it out from the tire tracks."
"Can we get another car?" wondered Nellie. It was the first time she had spoken since Wilbur's death. Her voice was level and controlled again, but she had been through a bad few hours, and Len realized how close she had been to Wilbur. Once again, the young man remembered the story about Wilbur hiding in the closet with a pistol while Nellie strangled the man who had sent Bud to prison. He remembered how Wilbur had shot the State Trooper as they prepared to leave the bank. They were like a family. In the midst of all that blood and carnage, Wilbur's death was hurting them both deeply.
"We could pick up a car," responded Stern slowly, weighing the notion. "But we might drive around half the night looking for a buggy which would take us all the way to the border, or get picked up for stealing a car, which would be fucking ridiculous. At least this one isn't hot yet, and I'd rather spend my time getting us as close to Mexico as I can before the sun goes up."
As if to punctuate his remarks, a police car passed them unexpectedly, traveling at a high speed, and Len saw the knuckles of Bud's hands turn white as he clenched the steering wheel. But the faces of the law were evidently going somewhere else. A VW bus with skis strapped to the roof and filled with tired people was too familiar a sight to merit any particular attention.
"Probably going home to have dinner," Stern suggested with a weak attempt at humor. "Anybody wanna listen to the radio?"
No one did, but Stern turned it on anyway, twisting the dial quickly through the police band in the hopes of picking up some communications of relevance to them. Finding nothing, he reverted to the normal kilocycle band and tuned in some dull classical music. Their voices muffled by the sounds from the radio, Stern and Nellie chatted quietly.
"Are you comfortable?" Len asked the blonde-haired woman who sat by his side. He would like to have put an arm around her shoulder and drawn her close to him, but somehow it did not seem the moment. As the fabricator of the bombs Wilbur had used against the police, he was to blame for another six deaths, at least partially. What was his total now? Sixteen? The exact number was hardly important, but could he possibly hope that the girl could ever love a man with that many deaths on his conscience? Surely she would recoil in horror if he tried to touch her!
"I'm okay," she murmured. "A little cold, maybe."
"Shall ... shall I put my arm around you?"
"Yeah ... if you want to." She snuggled close, resting her blonde head on his chest while Len told himself how absurd he was for feeling so insanely triumphant. He was a multiple homicide and this girl had been ravished nakedly before his eyes by Stern and Nellie and Wilbur. And now he was trembling with excitement because they were huddled together in the back of a VW, with three sweaters apiece to keep out the cold. Now, he had finally put his arm around her. At this rate, they would be kissing by sometime next summer if he stayed out of jail.
"You ... you could have acted differently when that cop tapped on the window," he reminded her in a whisper, trying to get a little conversation going in the hopes of making the night somehow fly by a little faster.
"Could I?" she challenged him. "You were armed, and besides I wanted to avoid a shoot-out if possible. I guess it wasn't possible. I thought perhaps they could bluff it through."
"The police had our descriptions. There was no chance of getting away."
"Except with your bombs. What made you decide to fight? I thought you were ready to give in."
"I was," he admitted ruefully. "But I thought ... well ... if you wanted to stay with me for awhile, it was ... worth taking a few more risks."
"We're in Texas," announced Stern from the front seat, turning his head to make sure they heard. "So far, so good."
"Where are we headed?" Len inquired, pulling Mary a little closer to him and stroking her long golden hair.
"I know a guy who runs a kind of motel near the border. He owes me a couple of favors from years ago and anyway he ain't the type to call the police on us, so we can land on him whether he wants us or not. We can hole up there for awhile and work out a way of getting through into Mexico. We'll have to buy a car, too."
"Can we be sure one of his regular guests won't spot us and notify the fuzz?" Len questioned nervously.
"Friend, this guy don't have regular customers. He keeps about a ton of marijuana in the cellar and a string of Mexican girls on the side for the amusement of his irregular customers. Besides, the place is in the middle of nowhere. If we can make it there, I'd say we were safe. At least for the moment."
"Is that how it's going to be?" asked Len bitterly. "We'll always be safe for the moment, if we're lucky, but never any longer? Are we going to be running for the rest of our lives? We are, aren't we?"
"You get used to it," said Stern heavily. "I don't remember promising anybody this would be fun."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Len could feel the tension positively radiating out of Mary's body as Stern killed the motor. Out of one corner of his eye he could see Nellie fumbling in her purse and he guessed that she, was withdrawing her pistol. A second later, there was a dull click, barely audible, which confirmed his suspicions. But why?
"I'll just check with Frank and be right back," promised Bud, opening the door of the VW and jumping down awkwardly, his legs obviously cramped by the long journey. The explanation for the gun popped suddenly into the young man's mind: it was merely a precaution. Bud had to leave Nellie alone with them and all the money it was tucked beneath his feet and it was a perfect opportunity to overpower the woman and hijack the whole bundle. Except that it would never have entered Len's mind to try such a wild scheme at this advanced stage of the game. He had a reasonable degree of confidence that Bud and Nellie were going to be fair to him and give him his share, even though they might insist upon keeping Wilbur's, and he was still too scared to think about going it alone just yet. But it disturbed him to know that he was not yet considered completely trustworthy, even though it had been his skill with explosives that had saved the day on two previous occasions.
"I thought it would be warmer in Southern Texas," complained Mary, sitting up and shaking her head. She and Len had both caught a few hours of uneasy sleep in each other's arms and it was now early morning. Len rubbed the steam from the window and looked out into a very ordinary motel courtyard. In the foreground stood a garish neon sign which proclaimed, "Frank's E-Z Slumber Motel", and then below it in red letters, "No Vacancies".
"I hope this place has heating," muttered Nellie, gazing into the back seat at Len and Mary. The brown-haired woman's eyes were red with lack of sleep. "I want about a quart of whiskey in me and then three days of sleep."
"When can we cross the border?" Len asked.
"When Bud remembers where that crossing is. We sure as hell can't go through customs with all that cash and all your dynamite."
"We could ditch the dynamite."
"Why? We might need it again," observed Nellie. "Here comes Bud."
Stern opened the door of the van and pulled himself behind the wheel, his face a mask of tiredness. It suddenly occurred to Len that he might have offered to help with the driving during their mad flight across the Southwest.
"Okay, there's a cabin out back we can use and a place to get the VW out of sight. Frank doesn't seem to realize how hot we are so we should be safe here for a couple of days. That'll give us time to rest up and see if we can find our way over into Mexico. I figure we'll walk over and then buy a car on the other side, maybe a stolen one, so it can't be traced. I got a friend, a good Mex, who might help..."
The gang leader fired the VW motor into life, and maneuvered behind one long, grim row of concrete motel rooms, all identical and half empty-looking despite the sign's assertion that the motel had no vacancies. At the end of the row, there was a dirt path which led into a clump of trees, and the van's stiff springs protested as Stern powered the vehicle in and out of a series of murderous potholes in the road. After about two hundred yards, they came into a clearing occupied only by a gray box-like affair which looked like a cross between a neglected tombstone and oversized cinder block with windows. There was a general sigh of disapproval.
"If it's got a bed, it'll do," groaned Nellie. "I guess we couldn't expect the Hilton."
They tumbled out, and when Mary Keane picked up one of the leather sacks of money to transfer it to the cabin, no one objected, as if somehow she had become a member of the gang rather than a hostage whose life hung by a thread. Inside, it was dreary, incredibly dreary, but the place had a feeling of solidity about it, and Bud patted the thick concrete walls with approval. There were only two rooms, each heated by a gasoline stove and each equipped with a sagging double bed and a pile of moth-eaten blankets.
"We have to mount a guard," said Nellie, looking forlornly about her at their dismal accommodations.
"It's worse than useless," declared Stern, throwing his big body on the nearest bed with a groan of tiredness. "Nobody could stay awake for more than a few minutes."
"How about sweetie-pie here?" Nellie nodded in Mary's direction. The blonde-haired girl was staring listlessly out a dirty window at the least interesting clump of trees in all of Southern Texas and she did not bother to turn around when Nellie referred to her.
"We could tie her up," muttered Stern, obviously in the final stages of exhaustion, but pulling himself into a sitting position to deal with the problem.
"Haven't you done enough to me!" Mary screamed suddenly, whirling on them furiously. "You've fucked me every which way, you've dragged me half-way across the country, you've risked my life in your stupid gun fights! I want to sleep in a bed, Goddamn you! Len ... Oh Len, for Christ's sakes, do something!"
Len O'Reilly shook himself awake and glanced at the second room. Despite the presence of a bed, the room had obviously not been built for sleeping, since its two windows were high off the ground, and the door to the main room locked from the outside. An idea struck him.
"Look. We'll put the money in here. Mary and I ... oh ... we can sack out here, and you lock us in for the night," he proposed. "That way nobody can play any tricks on anybody."
Stern was too tired to object. He collapsed back into the sagging bed, and Nellie tenderly covered him with a blanket. Mary Keane spun away from them, angry at herself for that thoughtless outburst of temper, and walked into the room she was to share with Len O'Reilly. She threw herself on the bed, kicking off her shoes, reminding herself for the hundredth time that she was in no position to make anyone angry at her and listening as Len dragged the bags of money in and slung them carelessly in a corner. The leather bags, heavy and stiff with cold, had become almost a burden on them now, as if they had been condemned for their sins to carry these cumbersome objects wearily across the face of the cold earth without ever being able to stop long enough to enjoy the contents.
Len shut the door behind him, closing out Bud and Nellie, and Mary caught a sudden whiff of sulfur as he touched a match to the stove. It hissed into life and the room gradually began to grow less frigid and she could hear him rubbing his hands together as he warmed them in front of the gasoline fire. The bed was already made, but Len threw another few blankets on top, whistling tunelessly under his breath as he prepared the room for the night. Then he snapped out the light and the girl heard him unzip his pants and stretch them meticulously over a chair, acting out of pure habit since the crease had long since disappeared.
"Are you okay?" his voice came to her in the darkness, seeming deeper and calmer than she would have expected. It suddenly struck her that Len might be as hurt and as frightened as she was. Perhaps she had been needlessly hard on him, when in fact perhaps the exact opposite psychology was in order. She had to build him up so that he would be strong enough to stand up to Bud and Nellie. It was going to be a job!
"Yeah, as long as I'm still alive I guess I'm all right," she answered quietly. "I'm not as fragile as I look. But how are you? They really beat the hell out of you, didn't they? And it was all because of me."
The bed sagged as Len crawled in beside her, slipping quickly beneath the covers. She did not turn her head to look at him, but the girl was grateful for the warmth, if nothing else.
"I ... I couldn't let them do that to you," he said, and she could tell from the tone of his voice that it embarrassed him just to mention the fact that Stern had tried to assault her virginal anus the day before.
"I can take anything but that," she told him earnestly. "Please ... promise me one thing.
Promise me you'll never let him do that to me. I mean, any woman can be raped, but if he ever took me there, I ... I'd never be able to look myself in the mirror again. Don't let it happen to me! I know he wants to do it and he'll try it again the first time he gets the chance."
"I've still got my gun," said Len, trying to put more courage in his voice than he felt inside of him. "If he tries it again, I'll kill him, believe me! I'll kill both of them."
He put his hand on her flank and caressed her softly as he spoke and Mary Keane held very still, knowing this was inevitable and that she would have to go along with whatever Len asked of her. She was tired, but so far into tiredness that she had long since stopped feeling the fatigue. Whatever he did to her, it was better than the lewd and unnatural practices of which Bud and Nellie were so fond. And so much had happened to her since she had walked into the Lancaster National Bank to withdraw her pitiful savings that she had lost the will to resist. She murmured indistinctly, not wanting to put it into words, but somehow hoping to give him the idea that he could go ahead and do whatever he wanted. For the moment, at least, the fighting was over.
Len O'Reilly sensed her surrender, gazing down at her voluptuous young body with a reverence which was almost religious. He had seen her naked, bathed in sweat as Bud Stern fucked her into oblivion, but all of that was behind them now. As far as he was concerned it had never happened, and the bizarre lesbian incident with Nellie was also water under the bridge. All those things meant was the fact that the girl had a powerfully sensual character, a reservoir of lust which was now at his disposal. She was still wearing the mini-dress she had on the moment they had kidnapped her, and he unzipped it carefully, drawing the zipper all the way down her back until he could see the tops of her panties. Repressing a shudder of violent desire, he pushed it gently off the creamy whiteness of her shoulders and unfastened her brassiere.
"Don't tear anything," she begged him submissively. "This is all I've got."
Her simple statement sent a tingle of desire down his backbone. Her words meant clearly that she was giving in, surrendering completely. He nudged her hips up off of the mattress and she rolled over on her back and raised her buttocks off of the sheet to allow him to strip her totally naked without offering the slightest resistance. Len felt his cock jerk suddenly into life as he viewed the loveliness he was about to possess. Of course he had seen her before without her clothing, in fact, she had been nude for most of the time they had spent in the cottage in the Rockies, but the knowledge that all the secret mysteries of her womanhood were now his for the taking filled him with a kind of rampant sexual desire unlike anything he had ever know before.
"Ooooooohhhhh," she crooned softly as he respectfully stroked the full mature globes of her breasts, provoking the tiny brown buttons of her nipples to harden. Mary had decided to submit to Len's lovemaking as a means of self-defense, but he was so unexpectedly gentle, that she found herself reacting with pleasure to his caresses in spite of herself. She realized he would probably stop if she asked him to, since the young man was still too much of a gentleman to rape a woman, no matter how many men he had killed, but for some reason, Mary felt no overpowering desire to make him stop. She found it impossible to resist a shiver as the man's hand trailed exploringly down between the sumptuous orbs of her breasts, across the flat smooth plane of her stomach until his searching fingers came to rest on the satin-like softness of her pubic triangle. She did not resist as he nudged her thighs further apart, his thumb sweeping carelessly over the soft moist flanges of her cuntal lips. He was kneeling majestically over her, wearing nothing but his jockey shorts and the young woman perceived that his penis was already firm and fully erected beneath the white cotton material.
My God, he's huge, she thought, quickly closing her eyes and turning her head away. Who would ever have thought. . .
Len felt his heart beat increasing by leaps and bounds as he knelt over the naked girl, his hands going wild as he explored the tempting hollows and secret indentations of her spectacular young body. He bent over and kissed the tip of one of her breasts, fastening his teeth over the turgid little nipple and playing with it in his mouth until she rewarded his efforts with an involuntary groan of unconcealed pleasure. Not content, he ran his tongue down into the valley between her two proud breasts and then licked his way lecherously down to her loins, feeling her buttocks begin to grind impatiently as he began to turn on more and more pressure. For Len, it was important that he do more than merely fuck her. Wilbur, Bud and Nellie had all possessed her sexually, one way or another, but he wanted something deeper, the kind of absolute surrender he knew she had not given to any of the others. And he sensed that she was ready. The terrible events of the day had prepared her in some perverse way to give herself wholly and completely to him. He had saved her today from being sodomized and she was ready to allow him to collect his reward.
"Oh Len, Lennie, what are you doing to me?" she murmured without really needing an answer, since it was fairly obvious what he was doing to her. He was lighting her up like the fuse on a pound of dynamite, and she could already feel the hot interior of her unfilled vagina beginning to pulsate with honest naked need. Without thinking about it or asking herself why, Mary spread her legs even further apart, the movements of her body betraying her gathering desire. It seemed to be more and more difficult for her to lie still, and her supple body twitched restlessly as he worked over her, his thirsting mouth marauding back and forth between the aching mountains of her breasts and the throbbing wetness of her open cunt. The lust-stricken girl was only vaguely aware of what was happening as he inserted himself between her lasciviously outstretched legs, knowing only that there was a ravenous hunger building up inside of her which could only be fed on sex. Her mind, weakened by fatigue, was filled with a thousand uncontrolled erotic fantasies which she would not banish no matter how hard she tried. She wanted it, and she wanted it now! What was he waiting for?
Len grinned down at her, knowing that he was on the verge of achieving what had been denied all the others, her complete and utter surrender. Mary's face was almost contorted with unbearable need, her mouth was open as if she were begging for a kiss and her body was bathed in a fine coat of sweat. The young man could see the pinkness of her vagina, open and moist as if her genitals were calling to his cock, speaking in a strange silent language only bodies could understand. Quickly he divested himself of his underwear and hovered over her delectable form like a starving man confronted with so many good things to eat that he cannot decide where to begin. The desire to ram the trembling shaft of his iron-hard cock into the welcoming softness of her cunt swept over him, but he fought against it. There was too much to chose from, and he was in no particular hurry.
"Oh ... take me, Len ... please," she begged him piteously, thrashing back and forth on the mattress so violently that her breasts jiggled enticingly. They caught his eye, and in an instant, the young man was possessed by an overwhelming desire to possess her there. He moved forward, climbing boldly over her lust-stricken young body until his buttocks were resting lightly on her stomach and the long, throbbing pole of his cock extended out between the mountainous spheres of her breasts. She opened her eyes once and looked at him questioningly, and then shut them again almost immediately as if understanding that this was not the moment for detailed explanations. She was no longer in a position to deny him anything. Len's hands were trembling with anxiousness as he reached down and pushed the softly resilient mounds together, kneading and stretching them between his powerful fingers until the girl whimpered with pain. Then he pushed the two large, yielding spheres harshly together, shoving them with all his might so that they met in the middle, trapping his cock in between them. The result was a kind of artificial cunt, a vagina of the breasts and the girl crooned with delight as the young man began to saw back and forth with a gentle rocking motion. As he fucked her in this bizarre manner, he continued to stroke the tiny bursting points of her nipples with his thumbs, stimulating her even more while he gratified his own warped sensual desire. With each powerful forward thrust, the bulging scarlet tip of his cock appeared high on her chest, depositing a glistening drop of semen there which sparkled obscenely against the whiteness of her skin.
The sensation was exquisite and he forced himself to stop several times to avoid cumming prematurely. He had much more to do before he was finished and he had no intention of ruining it all by shooting his steaming sperm into the softness of her breasts. But he kept it up mostly because of the incredible effect this bizarre perversion seemed to be having on Mary Keane.
She was going out of her mind! Her blue eyes were open and she seemed to be staring at the grayness of the ceiling, her pupils glazed with lust. Behind him, Len could feel her ass grinding ceaselessly into the unresisting mattress, her legs reaching out and flexing desperately. She needed to be fucked in the worst possible way, and the young man might have put her out of her agony by taking her then and there if his eyes had not chanced to fall on her lips. She was moving her mouth without saying anything, and Len suddenly realized that there was something he could do to demonstrate precisely how far he had established a hold over her. If she would go for this, then she would go for anything. Her mouth was driving him wild, and the thought of thrusting his lust-stiffened pike down her throat nearly caused him to ejaculate there on the spot.
He disengaged from her breasts, releasing her softly resilient spheres one by one as if he were reluctant to let them go, and inched his way up her torso until his buttocks rested lightly on her chest and the broad scarlet tip of his cock tap-danced against her chin. Then he rose up over her so that she could clearly see what he was doing. Wilbur had forced her into this obscene act, and force was always easy to apply with a defenseless woman. But Len wanted her to do it voluntarily and that was more complicated.
Slowly he wove his fingers into her long blonde hair, lifting her head off of the mattress so that the bulging tip of his penis was aimed directly at the soft ovals of her lips like a pistol about to fire. But he resisted the temptation to ram himself home. The rest was up to her.
Her eyes fluttered open, widening with shock as she viewed the mammoth object which loomed menacingly in front of her and for a long instant, Len thought she was going to back away. Then, unexpectedly, her mouth dropped invitingly open and her head bobbed obediently forward. The young man groaned in ecstasy as he felt the moist surface of her lips brush tenderly across the sensitive flesh of his glans. For a moment, he thought she was going to content herself with kissing his cock wetly and then pull away, but he was wrong. She was going for the whole trip and she proved it by sucking his manly instrument in past the tightly rounded ovals of her lips. He had never in his life experienced a sensation quite like this and Len shivered with lust as he felt her begin to use her tongue on him. Mary's lips were soft and smooth and she used them with considerable skill, moving up and down the long shaft of his cock and taking as much of him into her as she could. Len assisted by supporting her blonde head, slowly flicking his hips forward in a languid fucking motion.
"Jesus!" he muttered, somehow unable to believe that such pleasure was his after all the misery he had been through. The girl was sucking him in earnest now, eating cock with a moist nibbling motion of her mouth as her tongue licked and curled around him. Len stepped up the rhythm of his fuck-strokes, now suddenly filled with the desire to cum in her mouth. Before he had planned only to let her suck him for a while and then take her in the normal way, but now he realized that if he was going to master her completely, it was going to have to be this way. She would have to coax him into cumming, and then swallow his sperm. It was the only way she could wipe away what the others had done to her. It was a vile, perverted act, but somehow Len felt that it would make her almost a virgin again, at least in his eyes.
For some reason, the thought of what they were doing to each other was driving both of them wild, and Len lost control of himself completely. His loins were boiling with-desire and he was driving his cock deeper and deeper into the girl's choking, clasping throat, feeling every nerve in his lust-stricken body screaming for satisfaction. The pressure was building up in his loins and his penis suddenly seemed to be growing and expanding to an impossible size as the electricity shot down his backbone from some secret nerve cluster in his brain and he started to cum.
Once it started, the Russian Army could not have stopped him. There was a waterfall in his loins which seemed destined to go on forever and the hot white liquid bubbled out of his testicles and down the narrow tube of flesh in his penis with incredible force. Mary groaned as the needle-like spray of semen flooded powerfully into the back of her throat, but the girl did not give up doing what she was doing. Despite the fact that she had to swallow to keep from choking, she went on courageously sucking his wildly ejaculating cock as if it were the most delicious thing in the world. Her Adam's apple bobbed as she drank him down, draining the hardness from his rapidly deflating penis, and her throat worked gluttonously in her desperate mindless struggle not to lose a drop of his precious sperm.
"Oh God, Mary..." Len groaned as the orgasm slowly passed, but the girl fastened her delicate hands around the base of his cock and kept him from pulling away from her. There were tiny little rivulets of sperm and saliva trickling obscenely from the corner of her mouth, but she sucked him doggedly until his cock began to thicken again in the warm buttery interior of her mouth. When he was full-sized and hard again, she released him, but with an air of reluctance. Exhausted, Len threw himself down beside her, gazing at the lust-ravaged face of the unusual girl. She swallowed convulsively, choking down the remainder of his sperm.
"Mary ... I ... no one ever ... did that for me before," he managed to gasp, overcome by gratitude.
"You'll probably regret it before we're finished," she warned him mysteriously. "You have to protect me now, right?"
"I'll take care of you," the young man promised solemnly. "Don't worry."
"I'd feel so much better if they weren't around," the girl was lying on her side facing him and she tossed her head as she spoke, indicating the next room where Bud and Nellie were sleeping. Her hands were still softly caressing his rigid penis and Len pushed her over on her back and poised himself between her legs, his cock probing for the emptiness of her vagina.
"I guess we're stuck with them," he replied, finding it difficult to concentrate on what she was saying in the renewal of his passion.
"One stick of dynamite would get us unstuck," she suggested, but he was already fucking her as she spoke, and if he heard what she said, it failed to register on his brain.
CHAPTER NINE
There was no news on the radio, and after three days, their nerve endings began to get a little bare. Mary and Len made love frequently which helped to pass the time, but after that first time in bed together, the act seemed to have become strangely and savagely physical. His need for her was insatiable, like a never-ending thirst, and the small stark room they inhabited echoed frequently with sounds of her moans and cried of passion as he worked furiously over her naked body, taking out the anger and frustration he felt within him on her defenseless flesh. Often, she cried in pain, because he had hurt her. Sometimes she cried with an orgasm and the cries sounded alike.
Nellie sat in the other room and looked out the window at the mountains of Mexico in the distance, sometimes clear, sometimes covered with haze and cloud. Stern drank, never enough to put himself out of action but just enough to remain slightly tipsy and slightly irritable all of the time. Nellie cooked for the four of them, mostly things out of cans, and they ate their meals in sullen silence. The question of what was to become of Mary Keane hung over the table like a permanent cloud, and the girl never left Len's side. The young man routinely complimented Nellie on her cooking like a dutiful son and someone once proposed a game of poker, but there was little real conversation between the four of them. More frequently, Bud and Nellie would talk quietly in the main room, mostly an exchange of monosyllables, while Mary and Len retreated to their cubicle.
A man was to come from Mexico who would guide them across the border at a point where the guards would not surprise them. The man was under a heavy obligation to Bud Stern for something which had happened a long time before, and the message had been passed through Frank, but there were delays. He would come next week at the soonest, and in the meanwhile, the motel owner would keep them supplied with cans of food, bottles of whiskey and cartons of cigarettes. In the main room of the cabin, the air was permanently blue as Stern chain-smoked his way through the day, twisting the dial of the small battery-powered radio in hopes of hearing some news of the efforts of the police to track them down. For a short time, a crisis in the Middle East forced them off the airwaves. On the third day, the announcer said that the "Lancaster City Gang," as they were now being called, had escaped from their mountain hideout in a blue VW van, mentioning that concerned citizens should watch out for the group who were armed and considered extremely dangerous. The announcer gave their names, calling Len, Reilly, instead of O'Reilly and mentioning that Wilbur was dead.
The van had been hidden in the forest out behind the motel, and Len began to get nervous.
"I think we ought to move it," he suggested. "Dump it someplace where no one will ever find it."
"Go do it," agreed Bud without much interest. "But I can't see who's gonna find it out there."
"Frank said there was a campsite somewhere near here," Len argued. "Those campers might be having picnics in the woods and come across it. And how about the River? It should be somewhere near here! Maybe we could just walk across it some night when it's dark."
"Let's wait for the guide." objected Bud. "He knows the way."
"He's taking his time getting here. Why don't I take a good look around and see if I can find a good place to slip across? The rio isn't that deep."
"Do whatever you want, kid, but the money stays here and so does the broad. Don't bring any cops back with you." Len bristled but he felt Mary's steadying hand on his arm and he backed away from the quarrel. He nodded at Stern and the two of them retreated to their tiny room.
"I can't go and leave you behind," he explained to her. "He's half in the bag now and
Nellie is as cross as a bitch. There's no telling what they might get up to."
The blonde girl swallowed, obviously weighing the few options open to them. There were many things to think about: the money, the river which stood between them and spending it, the chance that Stern might kill both of them when they got to the other side. As things stood now, it was two against two, but when the guide arrived from Mexico, the balance would be tipped in the favor of the older couple. If there was some way of getting across that river sooner...
"Go!" she said slowly, a plan forming in her brain. "There's a few hours yet before dark, and you could check on the VW and then look for a place where we could wade across the river. Who knows, if you find a place and they drink themselves into a stupor, we might be able to slip away..."
"With the money?"
"Of course."
"Jesus, he'd come after us with blood in his eye, and Bud is not a guy who forgives that kind of thing too easily. We'd never sleep comfortably again as long as he's alive..."
"As long as he's alive?" she prompted, slipping quickly into his arms, and pressing her full breasts temptingly against his chest. "Of course, that's something else we could talk about. But why don't you take a look down by the river and see what you can find."
"I hate to leave you with him. I really would kill him if he tried to touch you again!"
"Dear, it's all right. This room locks from the outside. You can lock me in and then slide the key under the door. When you come back, I'll slide it back out, okay?"
"I don't know...." the young man was dubious. He was accustomed to having life shove decisions at him already made. Now he was being asked to play the hero again, and the prospect always made him uneasy.
"And when you come back, we'll make love again," she purred at him seductively, her lips brushing against his neck. "I think I'm going to feel a little bit sexy tonight."
The decision was made. Len glanced at his watch, realizing that he did indeed have a few hours before sundown. As an ex-Marine, he felt fairly confident in the woods, and the knowledge that Mary would be waiting for him, offering him the sweet sensual delights of her fascinating body filled him with courage. He locked the door behind him carefully as he left, and neither Nellie nor Bud noticed as he slipped the key beneath the door before leaving.
* * *
A few hours passed slowly. Mary Keane glanced out the window, noting that the sun was sliding quickly toward the horizon, and her watch told her that it would shortly be dark. Quietly, she slipped out of her dress and her brassiere, and put on one of Len's shirts, leaving it partially unbuttoned in front. Then she took a deep breath and knocked on the door which Len had locked. It took a moment before anyone heard her, and she realized from the sound of their voices that Nellie and Bud had both been drinking heavily all afternoon.
"Who ... whadya want?" came Stern's slurred voice, and the girl heard him shuffle to the door and try the handle.
"I've run out of cigarettes," Mary explained. "Could you let me have some of yours?"
"Sure, baby, for you anything!" he laughed drunkenly. "What the fuck's wrong with this door?"
"Len locked me in. Here, I'll slide the key underneath. See it?" There was a rustle as Stern bent over to retrieve the key, and it took him a few tries before he succeeded in fitting it into the keyhole.
"Why'd he lock you in?" he asked vaguely as he opened the door, his eyes widening a little with lust as he saw how scantily the girl was dressed. Mary stepped into the room, nodding cheerfully to Nellie and threw herself into an easy chair, helping herself to a cigarette and igniting it with Bud's lighter.
"Oh, you know how jealous Len is. He behaves like a baby, sometimes. Honestly, I don't know where he got the guts to go through with that bank job," she complained carelessly. "And he got all upset when he saw me having a little fun with you two back in the Rockies."
"Fun ain't necessarily over," drawled Nellie, swaying a little as she walked, and she sat down on the arm of the easy chair, running her fingers through the young woman's golden hair.
"Yeah, and it seems to me that you and me got a little unfinished business," leered Stem, his voice slurred by the alcohol he had consumed. "I was having a go at the rear entrance if I recall correctly. And you were screaming bloody murder."
Mary Keane tossed her head and favored the drunken gang leader with a saucy smile, knowing from the significant bulge in the front of his pants that he was getting steamed up again with the recollection of his uncompleted attempt to sodomize her. She reached out deliberately and stroked his penis through his pants, winking at Nellie at the same time.
"Well, let's just say that after three days with Len, a girl gets lonesome for a real man," she told them in a low, steady voice. "Or for that matter, a real woman."
Had he been somewhat more sober, Stern's keen mind might have told him that there was something strange about the girl's abrupt change in attitude, but his mental processes were not functioning any too clearly at the moment, and Nellie was equally fogged by liquor. Mary seemed to be issuing them an open invitation to do what they wanted with her voluptuous young body, and Stern decided he would worry about the vagaries of feminine psychology some other time. Right now, he felt like fucking!
The blonde-haired girl laughed, a touch of hysteria in her voice as the two of them dragged her onto the bed and ripped off her clothing, but she made no move to resist, even though Bud maneuvered her quickly onto her stomach, and she knew in advance what this meant. He was going to pick up where he had left off when Len had interrupted him the day before, and the thought of it sent shudders through her desirable young body, but there was hardly any choice left to her now. She had to go through with it!
"Give it to her, baby," urged Nellie obscenely. "First you and then me!"
Mary put her hands over her face and tried to choke back a groan as she felt Bud Stern's hands coursing eagerly over the smoothly inviting cheeks of her buttocks, prying them wickedly apart. Nellie unzipped his pants for him, reaching into his fly to draw forth the long, stiffening shaft of his penis and leading the bulbous tip directly to the tightly contracted little hole of her anus. Mary moaned despite herself as she felt the harsh pressure of the man's invading cock against the softness of her rectum, pushing her fist into her mouth to keep from screaming until the moment for screaming arrived.
Stern punched forward, his mammoth cock now as rigid as a railroad spike. Mary felt the incredible pressure against the delicate ring of her anus, and then a horrible spasm of pain as his invading shaft burst past the flimsy defenses of her anus, plunging deeply into her ravaged backside. With a supreme act of her will, she accepted the pain, fighting back the howl of anguish which was building in her throat. She vibrated her buttocks wildly as if she were trying to throw him off, but her desperate movements only served to let his huge penis slip deeper and deeper into the outraged channel of her anus.
"Oh, God..." she whispered as he wormed his way even farther into her cruelly stretched backside. She felt as if her backside was being penetrated by a baseball bat, and Stern never seemed to be satisfied that he had gone into her far enough. He probed deeper, and she could hear him panting in ecstasy as he began to fuck, drawing part of the way out and then surging forward again with renewed strength. The pain was subsiding slowly, but the humiliation was still terrible, and Mary found herself wondering if she could ever face herself again in the mirror after what was being done to her.
"How 'bout that, little lady?" he called to her mockingly as she lay prostrate and pain-wracked before him. "Told you I'd stretch that little ass-hole if it was the last think I did!" He seized her hips with his hands, digging his fingers viciously into her flesh as he fucked her savagely, flinging his loins forward with one bone-crushing blow after another. The picture they presented was erotic and intriguing at the same time, with the hugely muscular form of Bud Stern poised menacingly over the defenseless white body of the blonde hostage, his super-hardened pike driven obscenely six inches into the frail flesh of her rectum. Nellie, beside them on the bed, was drunkenly trying to divest herself of her clothes, hoping to be next, laughing insanely as she watched her lover sodomize their tantalizing young captive.
Suddenly from outside of the cabin came the sound of a twig snapping under a man's foot and Mary Keane raised her tear-smudged face to the window and saw that it was a few minutes past sunset. The noise she had heard would be Len returning.
She screamed!
"Aaaagghh!" she wailed, putting every ounce of strength she had in her body into the act of screaming, trying to make it the most bone-chilling scream in history. She gasped for breath, filling her lungs and screamed again.
"Wait ... jus' a min..." Stern muttered uncomprehendingly, and Mary realized with a horrible shock that the scream had shocked him off the edge into an unexpected orgasm. He was cumming, right then and there, his powerful body crumpled with ecstasy as he shot his hot searing cum into the depths of her offended rectum.
There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, and Mary twisted wildly as if she were trying to escape.
"Nooohh!" she yelled with all her might. "No, not there! Please, I love Len! Don't do it to me! Oh, Len, where are you!"
The door flew open with a crash, and it would have taken a high speed camera to record the events of the next few seconds. Len had his gun out and at the ready as he came roaring into the room in time to see Bud Stern pumping the last drops of his lewd cum into the unnatural sanctuary of her rectum. Nellie jumped up, stark naked but realizing that somehow the scene was going all wrong. She spotted the pistol in Len's hand and dove for her own, banking on Len's fatal tendency to hesitate when the chips were down. The young man did hesitate, tearing his eyes off of Mary's ravaged body with difficulty and finding that his hands were trembling so wildly that he could hardly hold the gun straight. Nellie reached her own pistol on the top of the dresser when Len's weapon discharged accidentally, a result of his trembling hands.
He had not intended to shoot, but the bullet did its work anyway, slicing into Nellie's throat as she stood nakedly facing him, her rich, deep breasts heaving with murderous excitement, the pistol in her hand. She gurgled as the blood gushed out of her throat and took a step towards him, far from dead. Len raised his pistol, holding it in both hands, and shot her again at point-blank range, deliberately this time. He had aimed at a spot between her breasts, but his hands were shaking too badly, and the bullet wandered to the right, clipping the outside of her aorta and dropping her like a stone as her heart stopped short.
"Stop! No!" shouted Stern, putting his hands on Mary's bruised buttocks and trying to pull himself free of the girl's brutally ravaged body so that he could defend himself. The alcohol was drained from his system in an instant, and the big man was abruptly cold sober, fighting for his life.
But Mary Keene clenched her abdominal muscles with all her might, tightening the tiny fleshy ridge of her anus as hard as she could and trapping Stern inside of her. "Len! He's trying to kill me!" she screamed pathetically. "Len, get him! Shoot him! Pleeese!"
From the confused perspective of Len's shocked mind, it was very difficult to tell what was going on at this moment. Bud Stern was actually doing his level best to disengage from Mary's body, but they were thrashing around together on the groaning bed with such violence that it was impossible to tell what was happening, and it looked as if the gang leader was merrily continuing to fuck her sodomistically. The room was whirling around Len's head as the blood oozed out of Nellie's lifeless body, and Bud Stern finally yanked his deflated cock free of Mary's bruised rectum, leaving a trail of sticky white cum which stretched obscenely from the tiny brown circle of her savagely abused anus to the flaccid tip of his cock. Without knowing precisely what he was doing or why, Len raised the gun and aimed it as well as he could at Stern's massive chest.
"No!" the big man cried hoarsely, holding his hands up in front of him as if he could fight off the bullets with his fingers or slap them away like flies.
"Kill him!! " screamed Mary Keane. "He fucked me in the ass!"
"Noooo...." Len squeezed the trigger, feeling his stomach start to heave and knowing that he was going to be sick in another instant. The bullet went low and hit Stern in the gut, doubling him up with a wild scream and sending him rolling off the bed. Len staggered around the edge of the bed, feeling the sickness in his stomach rising higher and higher, the nausea sweeping over him like a plague. Bud had rolled on top of Nellie's naked corpse, and he propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her, apparently realizing for the first time that his companion was dead. All of a sudden, he looked sober, ignoring Len as the young man stood over him, his hands shaking so badly he could not aim the pistol just yet. There was a long moment of silence while Len fought for control over his quivering muscles and Bud looked at the woman who had shared his violent life.
"Hell of a way to make a living, Nel," he said with a strange sad tinge in his voice, and then Len shot him in the back of the head.
* * *
The toilet was stopped up, adding the stench of human excrement to the other bad smells in the room, the foul odor of vomit from where Len had thrown up after murdering Bud, and the blood from the bodies of his two former friends. All three scents, shit, vomit and blood blended together to create a strange, pervasive stink of death in the air, and Len knew that he wanted to leave as soon as his head cleared.
"I want to get out of here," he mumbled, sitting up on the bed. He realized he had passed out after the shooting, and for an instant he found himself wondering if it always happened that way. Was he the only weak man in the world or did others feel nauseous when they pointed a pistol barrel into human flesh and pulled the trigger? When the hero in the movies had just finished gunning down a half dozen bad guys, the camera never showed him losing his lunch afterwards.
"You were so BRAVE," said Mary, sitting beside him on the bed and wiping his face with a washcloth. "We can go now. I don't want to stay here either. We'll find someplace else to hide."
"I ... we won't have to hide much longer," Len said slowly, pulling himself up to a sitting position and fumbling for a cigarette to take away the evil taste in his mouth. "Look at this!" He fumbled in the back pocket of his jeans and came up with two passports, both bearing the harp seal which was the symbol of the Republic of Ireland. Mary Keane opened them quickly, finding the first belonged to a twenty year old Irishman named Kevin Murry. The picture was a little blurred as passport photos frequently are, Kevin's hair was longer than Len's and there was a vague similarity in appearance between the two men, not much, but perhaps enough to fool a disinterested customs guard at an obscure border station. Or perhaps not. Quickly, Mary opened the second passport, finding that it belonged to one Judith Murry, formerly Judith Shannon, wife to Kevin Murry. As nearly as she could tell from the picture, she and Judith Murry were the spitting image of one another. No one would ever suspect that this was not a picture of Mary Keane!
"Where ... where the hell did you get two Irish passports?" she asked in amazement. Len's hands were still visibly shaking, but he managed to make contact between the glowing match and the end of his cigarette. He smiled like a puppy who has been patted on the head.
"I stole 'em," he said proudly. "I went out to check on the VW and see if anybody had taken it away. Instead, I found these two kids, Irish hippies, I guess who were camped out in it. They had knapsacks and one of those little stoves and the whole works. I guess they figured on staying a few days out there and then hitchhiking on down to Mexico. Anyway, I got a look at the girl, and when I saw how much she looks like you, I realized we could maybe use their passports to get across the border. So when they went out to look for firewood, I snuck into the VW and took 'em out of their backpacks. Can you do an Irish accent?"
Mary studied the two passports carefully, thinking hard. She could either play the game Len's way or ... or she could go on playing her own private little game.
"Look, we'll need a car," she told him slowly. "Because we can't carry that money across the border on our backs. "I'll go down to the town with this passport and buy one, something for a few hundred dollars so nobody will get suspicious. I'll bring it back here and we'll have to put the money into the seats and hope they don't search the car too carefully at the customs station."
"They won't," asserted Len confidently. "They check you coming back for drugs, but we aren't coming back. Going into Mexico they just look at your passports." Obediently, Len crouched before one of the three leather bags stashed at the foot of their bed, opened it and extracted four hundred dollars which he handed to Mary.
"And what do I do in the meantime?"
"How much dynamite do you have left?" she asked him bluntly.
"Enough to blow up almost anything we feel like blowing up," he answered, puzzled. "What do you figure on doing with it?"
"I'll explain everything later," she said briskly, getting to her feet and walking to the door. "I'll be back with the car as soon as I can."
* * *
"But ... but, I can't!" he wailed, gripping the steering wheel of the old Chevy so hard that his knuckles turned white. "We ... we don't know them and they've never done anything to us! We can't just execute them like animals."
"Okay, let me explain it again, honey," Mary Keane said softly, wiggling into his arms and rubbing the sumptuous mounds of her breasts against his chest. "We're sitting on a half a million dollars, and all we have to do is drive it across the border tomorrow. The customs people won't think of looking in the seat, and those passports should get us through. But then what happens? Kevin and Judith Murry wake up and discover their passports are gone and report to the local police. In the meantime, somebody discovers Bud and Nellie back at the cabin and puts two and two together. Irish passports can't be too common down here, and the guy at the border will probably remember that we went through. So where are we then? They know about where we are and the heat really gets turned on."
"Yes, but ... I can't ... in cold blood Len was close to tears.
It was shortly after two in the morning, and they were parked in a 1969 Chevrolet which Mary had purchased late the previous day. It had taken them several hours to pack all the money into the seats where it was unlikely to be discovered. Then they had assembled what little baggage they had, including Len's remaining explosives, and driven to a grassy clearing a hundred yards or so from the glen where the VW was hidden. Then Mary Keane had announced her plan.
"Don't you see, darling! As long as you're alive, the police will always be after you! We'll never be able to rest because you've killed too many people and you've stolen too much money. We have to make them think you're dead. Sooner or later, they're going to find Bud and Nellie, and if they can find what they think are our bodies too then the trail stops here. The police know we were in a VW, and they could even have the license numbers..."
"But two innocent...."
"Honey, except for Bud and Nellie, all the people you've killed have been innocent," she reminded him. "It's tough, but it's them or us, and we won't have to look. As soon as the charge goes off, we can be on our way. Mary Keane and Len O'Reilly are dead, killed in a mysterious explosion, and Kevin and Judith Murry go on their honeymoon in South America. We won't even have to get married because we already are as far as our passports are concerned. The police will find our papers down there in the VW and wonder who killed us and what happened to the money. And we'll be over the border in a few hours with new lives ahead of us."
"Gee, Mary, I. . . "
"Call me Judy," she urged him, running her hands over his chest in a way that she knew excited him. "I'm your wife, Kevin, and as soon as we get to a nice hotel in Acapulco, I'm going to prove it to you. Do you remember how nice it was that time I let you take me in the mouth? How would you like that every day, and other things, too?" She unzipped his pants as she spoke and began caressing his slowly stiffening rod, knowing she had to get him excited if he was going to work up enough courage to add two more violent murders to the weight he already carried around on his conscience. "Come on, honey, we haven't got much more time."
"Okay, I'll do it," he gulped, sensing somehow that this was one crime too many, that it would be hard to recover from this one because it was going to be so deliberate, so calculated. But Mary's logic was impossible to refute. If the police thought he was dead, he would be home free, and he thought he knew of a way to blow up the VW in such a way that the bodies would be unrecognizable. The police would identify the two horribly mutilated corpses from the documents found lying miraculously undamaged a few feet away, his driver's license and Mary's. They would find his fingerprints on the car, too, and that would help to confirm the automatic assumption that the dead man in the VW was Len O'Reilly. The mangled corpse beside him would naturally be taken for his hostage, Mary Keane. It would be years before anyone thought of looking for two wandering Irish hippies.
He hoisted the satchel gingerly onto his lap, gathering up the remaining twelve sticks of dynamite and three leftover squares of C-4. It would blow the VW to bits and make one hell of a racket, he meditated as he attacked the blasting cap and picked up the copper wire which would take the current from the detonator to the charge.
"This is the thing I'm not supposed to touch, right?" asked Mary quietly, as Len taped the small rectangular detonator to the steering wheel of the car so it could not touch anything accidentally, and attached one end of the copper wire to it.
"Right, I'll unravel the copper wire as I walk down to the VW, plant the driver's licenses and then tape the charge underneath the van. As soon as I attach the wire to the fuse, this detonator becomes live. We'll have to wipe our fingerprints off of it and toss it in the bushes as we leave."
"Hurry, baby, the sooner we get across that border and into a nice warm bed in a comfortable hotel, the sooner we can start forgetting all of this. And the sooner I can start showing you what a good little Irish wife I can be."
Len kissed her, running his hands through the softness of her long blonde hair and deciding that, if there was a woman worth killing for, it was Mary Keane. He got out of the car, carrying the charge in the satchel and allowing the copper wire to unravel as he made his way towards the VW through the underbrush. There were no lights anywhere, but the half full moon guided his footsteps, and he crept silently up to the camper. He glanced inside and saw two bodies huddled inside sleeping bags and curled up on the floor of the camper on top of air mattresses. The poor kids were probably suffering badly from the cold, not having realized how chilly it could get in a bad winter even in this part of the country. He could not see their faces, and he was glad.
Setting the satchel on the ground, he carefully slid his wallet into the front seat of the vehicle with his identity papers, calculating that the blast would not destroy it there. Then he deliberately threw Mary Keane's driver's license into the bushes where it would be discovered by the police. That done, he dropped to his knees and crawled beneath the VW, pulling the satchel of charges behind him. There was a metal beam running the length of the car, and he quietly taped the charge to the bottom of the chassis, positioning it so that it would blow straight up, splitting the vehicle in two and probably dismembering Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Murry, whose identities he and Mary were about to assume.
Once the charge was in position, he adjusted the electrical fuse and took the copper wire in hand. As he moved it before his face, he noticed that his hands were not shaking, not in the slightest. His fingers were steady as he undid the screw, and he congratulated himself on the battle he had won over his nerves as he slid the copper wire into the opening, making contact and completing electrical circuit.
Then the charge detonated, exploding twelve sticks of dynamite and one half pound of C-4 a few inches from his face, blowing up to kill Kevin and Judith Murry instantly and blowing down with such force that Len O'Reilly simply disappeared from the face of the earth, like his father before him. The Volkswagen split in two as a tower of fire spirited towards the sky, but the wallet in the front seat was hardly singed. Len would have been proud of the whole job. Especially the steadiness of his hands.
THE END
EPILOGUE
"On vacation, Miss Murry?" the customs official studied the Irish passport carefully, simply because he had never seen one before, and then glanced at the blonde colleen in the 1969 Chevy. She was as pretty as a four-leaf clover, and had there not been fifteen other cars lined up behind the Chevy, he would have conducted a routine customs search just as an excuse to chat with her a little longer. Someone had once told him that Irish women had the loveliest voices in the world.
She nodded, smiling at him, and the customs man caught a glimpse of her knees and shapely thighs as he returned the passport.
"Which way are you headed, miss?" he inquired helpfully.
"Acapulco," she responded shortly, reminding herself to work out some reasonable imitation of an Irish accent.
"Take the first turnoff to your right," he advised her helpfully. She smiled at him again, sending shivers down his spine, and the Chevy gave way to a Mercury carrying a family of seven.
Mary Keane/Judith Murry felt the heat of the sun as she drove the big car down the wide Mexican highway which would take her to the golden beaches and lush hotels of Acapulco. Her first task would be to find an apartment with a garage so that she would get the money out of the seat of the car and spread it around in a variety of banks over a period of time to avoid suspicion; then she would have to buy herself some pretty clothes and spend some time acquiring a nice tan. Since she was now officially dead, at least according to the seven o'clock news on her car radio, she decided it would be unwise to return to the United States, but then missing the winter in New Jersey would not be much of a sacrifice. There was Paris and London and Rio and Rome, and a half a million dollars would buy a lot of airline tickets.
The radio also mentioned that the bodies of two other members had been found dead, Nellie and Bud Stern, and said that the police believed that the two had murdered each other in a drunken quarrel. She sighed, a minor pang of regret passing through her mind as she recalled the strange violent couple. She would not have brought them back from the dead for anything, of course, but she had learned a lot from the two of them, and she would be extremely fortunate if she ever found a man as good in bed as Bud Stem had been. And Nellie had introduced her to a fascinating new world of female love which she would have to explore further once she was settled in Acapulco. It was too bad, but Bud had been stupid, wanting to sodomize her so badly that he had failed to see how she was setting him up to be killed...
The countryside was greener here, and Mary waved gaily to a peasant strolling down the road with a burro. She was beginning to defrost again and the warm sun improved her spirits enormously. Despite all, she felt just the slightest fleeting pang of guilt about Len O'Reilly. Of course, he was too big a dope to survive for long in a cruel mean world, and somebody ultimately would have killed the poor jerk and taken his share of the money away from him, but she was sorry that it had all ended that way. The morning news report had mentioned only two bodies near the VW, not three, which meant that Len must have been completely atomized into nothingness by the blast.
It was just as well because one extra corpse would have aroused the curiosity of the police, and the sooner they forgot about the matter, the better. The Lancaster City Gang was gone, all dead, and the money was gone, too. Mary found herself wondering if Len had had time before the blast to realized that she had her finger on the detonator button sending him to his grave or it he had popped out of existence still thinking that she loved him passionately. Practically, of course, it made no difference, and Mary Keane was not very sentimental about such things, but she would have prepared him to have died happy. If he had not provided her with the opportunity to pulverize him by crawling under the VW with all that dynamite, naturally she would have had to use a gun on him which would have been upsetting. It was better this way, since she could never have taken him with her into Mexico. His picture was known to too many policemen, and the passport photograph of Kevin Murry, unfortunately, was not quite close enough to do the job. And poor nervous Len did not have the steadiness for the life of a fugitive. He would eventually have done something stupid and given them away.
Besides, Mary Keane could never stand a man with shaky hands.
