1999
Stanovc, Kosovo
There were two types of people in the world – those who became who they were because of their parents, and those who did it in spite of them. Alice knew which one she was.
The text message still burned in her head as Alice got out of the truck. ‘What are you doing there? Come home.’ She had deleted it as soon as it came in this morning, but it buzzed in the back of her head anyway… floating, glowing letters, letting her know that her parents thought she was an idiot. Alice could see their point, if not their reasons. The way they saw it, her family had more than enough money for her to live on – she didn’t need to do anything to increase the family fortune, that would be the responsibility of her brothers. They just wanted her to settle down with a nice husband who wouldn’t embarrass them.
They still wanted her to marry. Her parents were in complete denial. She’d be dead in less than a year.
If she hadn’t had it tied in a tight braid, Alice’s hair would have swayed back and forth down as far as her hips. It would all be gone soon if the doctors had their way, but she didn’t really see the point of suffering through that much misery for just a few months more of life, months that she would spend bedridden anyway. She would fade away if her doctors had it their way, but she didn’t blame them – it was their job to offer her advice to keep her alive. It wasn’t their fault that nothing could. Given the prospect of a quick death or a lingering one, Alice would prefer to burn out and have used her life meaningfully.
The village of Stanovc was a hellhole… the buildings shelled-out ruins. The only people on the street were bleeding, carrying loved ones, or crying. The Serbian army had been through her just recently, and it was still an active conflict zone… it was dangerous to be here. She still wasn’t leaving though. This was why she and the others had come.
That was another way there were two types of people in the world – Those who could look at suffering people and no nothing… and those that couldn’t. Alice knew which one of those she was, too. Most people, those selfless enough to join Doctors without Borders in the first place, asked not to be sent to places like the site of an active genocide.
Alice? She had volunteered.
Yelling a few prepared phrases in Albanian as loudly as she could, Alice ran towards the injured, alongside a half dozen others doing the same.
“No, please… don’t! What do you want?”
The blonde teenager backed up against the wall of the abandoned building he had ducked inside. She was young, pretty, innocent… and that was what the soldiers wanted. Her innocence. Her youthful body. Her vulnerability. The poor, Albanian girl had barely any idea of what was going to happen to her… she had heard stories of horrible, horrible thing, but she didn’t have the context to understand it – her upbringing had been too sheltered.
The soldiers were going to give her that context. They couldn’t care less about her sheltered upbringing or about anything that she thought or wanted. They just saw a pretty blonde that they had been taught to think of subhuman… slender and beautiful and deeply desirable. They saw a chance to tear off a piece on the side. They saw a victim… and nothing was going to stop them from having their pleasure.
“What do I want…” one of the soldiers growled as his hands played with his belt. “I want that mouth on my cock. It’s absolutely fuckable.” He wasn’t so much talking to her as the other soldiers, and the casual disregard for her made the young blonde shiver. She knew what the words meant, at least in general terms. It meant something bad, something so wicked no girl let a man do it… But these men were strong and had guns, and they were in no mood to argue with her. She gasped as the man’s cock came out. She had never seen one before… now she was going to see them for the rest of her life.
The soldier laughed coldly as he approached her. “Come on, cunt,” he said. “You know what to do.” She shook her head in horror. No, she didn’t… she had no idea what to do, but a moment later he was pushing her down, and she smelled the rank odor of his cock. She struggled, but he took her hair and forced her face down toward it. She struggled back against him, but his fist curled in her hair and yanked her further down. “Stop fighting bitch,” the soldier spat. “Open your mouth.”
She gagged at the thought, and felt like she’d rather die… but death wasn’t an easy as that. He pulled her head down, pushing the nasty, greasy thing against her lips. “Suck it you dirty cunt,” he ordered… then reached down and slapped her across the face, a stinging slap that brought tears to her eyes. “Suck on it,” he repeated.
She heard other girls screaming… the sounds of pain, of gunfire, of explosions. The horrified shrieks of women. This was happening everywhere, all around her. She wanted to run, to squirm out of his grip and flee into the streets… but she felt sure that if she did, she would get shot. She reluctantly put her mouth on the flesh, only to have the soldier shove it deep into her throat. Her eyes wide, the girl gagged and fought, but the cruel soldier barely seemed to notice her resistance – he raped her mouth viciously.
And he wasn’t alone. Other hands were on her now, pulling at her skirt and painfully ripping at her panties. Fingers slid down between her legs, insistent, demanding entrance. She began to cry as one of them was roughly shoved up her dry ass… then a second later, a soldier pushed brutally into her other entrance.
And laughed.
“The little cunt’s virgin,” he said. “She’s gonna be one tight little fuck.” Someone spat on their hand, and she felt them rubbing it against her… then she felt the pain. A sharp agony like nothing she had ever felt before… more painful and horribly embarrassing than she could have possibly imagined. She screamed almost soundlessly around the shaft of flesh gagging her as one of the men shoved his cock into her pussy from behind, tearing at her insides like the cruel weapon that it was.
She just kept screaming, raped at both ends, helpless to stop them from preying on her. The man in her mouth grunted, and suddenly her mouth was full of this horrible tasting liquid. She gagged and nearly vomited as the men laughed at her discomfort and fear and the pain they were causing her. The man behind her pulled out, and she thought it was over.
Then it was back… but at her other entrance this time. Now with her mouth free, her screams of agony reverberated through the room as her asshole was thrust into, a flesh-tearing thrust that seemed it would split her in two. Then he was moving inside of her, ramming himself back and forth, and she sobbed in anguish.
The bleeding, weeping girl was was still being used, but already most of the soldiers who had crowded around her were looking around. To their way to looking, this bitch was already pretty well used… and there was a lot of fresh meat in the town.
The “securing” of Stanovc had turned into something between a massacre and an orgy, just the way the soldiers had known it would. After shelling the town, the military had moved in with the police, to find and arrest the “rebels” that had been “causing trouble.” The fact that there were no rebels… and plenty of pretty women… wasn’t lost on those in charge. As soldiers ran through the streets and into homes, girls were dragged into corners or just assaulted in the middle of the streets or in doorways. Normally, the officers would have been supposed to stop such things… but if anything they participated more.
Free Albanian cunt for the taking was the order of the day. Not one of them cared for these subhuman bitches. They didn’t belong here, and the fact that they were made them fair targets as far as anyone was concerned. Their feelings of rage and helplessness might have been misplaced, but they directed all of it into their desire to hurt and degrade the women of this town… and since no one in charge was objecting to the brutal rapes of even the young women, the men rightly assumed that everyone else was an equally valid target for their sadism.
An older woman, maybe in her late thirties, had been backed into a corner in her own house. She was very beautiful, a petite brunette, and her body would be attractive to any man – nicely curving hips, short but well-formed legs under her print dress and a very full bosom that she tried to shield with her small hands as she backed away. Normally the beauty of her body and the terror in her eyes would have inspired protection from the men around her. Not today.
“Please, no. Please,” she begged softly, her eyes welling up with tears. No one paid her begging any heed. One of them simply reached back and closed the door to her home, cutting her off and leaving her alone with three soldiers… and totally at their mercy.
“You deserve worse than just being fucked,” one snarling soldier said. When he looked at her, he didn’t see a person… just an Albanian set of holes, and the twisted, broken body of his best friend, shattered by a landmine. It didn’t matter to him that she hadn’t been the one to lay the mine, or even that it hadn’t been Albanian in the first place. He just hurt, and wanted to make someone else hurt as well… Just as his friend’s death had been horrific, he wanted to make the rest of her life just as packed with horror. Slowly, reached to his side and slid his military issue knife from its scabbard.
She looked to the other men, eyes wide, silently begging for mercy… but the other men didn’t look concerned. They just looked excited, and the thought of mercy never crossed their minds. “I’m gonna fuck this one good,” one of the others said as he adjusted his hard cock in his pants.
Step by step, they backed the woman up until she was against her table, the man with the knife gesturing at her. “”Pull up the dress, bitch,” he said.
She shook her head in denial, her eyes wide and uncomprehending. She had seen the other girls, from the young to the middle-aged being stripped and raped with callous nonchalance. She decided she would not go easily, as so many of them had. “Fuck you,” she said, jumping up and running for the door, only feet away. She screamed as one of the men grabbed her hair, jerking her head back.
Then they were on her, ripping at her clothes, tearing open her dress, feeling her, groping her. One ripped at her panties, and she felt his fingers penetrating her. She cried out in disgust and horror, but that just seemed to spur him on. His fingers forced their way into her tight pussy and, when they could go no further, he shoved hard, tearing at her tender flesh. She screamed in pain as the soldier forced all his fingers inside of her, forming a fist that it seemed would rip her open. Then he was jamming that fist into her vagina, tearing the skin. The pain was immense, and she barely noticed as the other men bared her breasts and felt her body.
“Push her onto the table,” the man fist-raping her ordered. She was picked up and laid back on the desk. She was crying, biting her own hand to try to alleviate the agony she felt in her battered pussy.
“Cunt is useless now,” her rapist hissed to his fellow soldiers. “Turn her over… we’ll fuck the other side.”
She cried as she was forced onto her belly, and her body roughly dragged to the side of the desk. She could feel her butt cheeks being forced roughly apart, and then there was something there, at her nether entrance, something big and wet and demanding. She screamed as her ass was violated, torn brutally open as the soldier leaned his entire weight onto his cock. It ripped into her, tearing her asshole wide open and she vomited as she felt it drive deep into her body, ripping at her inner tissues.
But the agony had only started. When the first man finished her already assaulted pussy – swollen tight enough again from its vicious treatment – was raped as well. And the third man pinched and tore at her breasts as she was fucked, and then used both battered entrances one after the other rape her as well. Then she was dragged up to her feet, and the soldiers began to hit her, beating her mercilessly with their fist, breaking her skin and bruising her, for no reason other than they wanted to.
When they were finally tired of her, she didn’t look nearly as pretty anymore. In fact, it was a wonder she was still alive… they had intended to beat her to death. They didn’t take too much notice of the fact that she was still breathing, however… their interest in her was past. They left her laying on the floor, a sobbing heap of bruises and blood. “Let’s go get us another one,” the leader said with a laugh. And they left the room in search of another victim.
No Albanian girl that the army found was spared. Every one of them that fell into the grip of a soldier was raped and abused. One of them practically got crucified, her hands and feet nailed to a desk as she screamed for help or mercy. Neither was coming. So thoroughly bound in place, she was stripped, but once they had finished raping her soldiers began to just hurt her, over and over. She was beaten, her breasts cut with knives, her nipples bitten to the point one looked like it might come off. She screamed helplessly as she was slowly tortured to death, her young body ruined… but she didn’t die. She bled and suffered, but miraculously, she didn’t die. Tired of tormenting her, one of them raped her ass with the broken-off leg of a chair, forcing it deep into her tight ass and leaving her there, bleeding and nailed down, already having forgotten her before they were out the door.
These women were less than human to the soldiers. Nothing could be done to them that they didn’t somehow deserve. One girl was so terrified that she messed herself, and instead of reacting with disgust, her piss and shit were spread all over her. She cried as she was thus degraded, her clothes torn and her body smeared with her own excrement, and even that didn’t protect her from rape: she was dragged down and assaulted even then.
Shane saw all of it.
He wasn’t Serbian, but he could pass as one – he had the kind of face that could appear any one of a dozen races or nationalities. Speaking the language was harder, but thankfully he had help with that. He watched with an amused smile at the depravity around him. He stepped over the twitching body of one gang-raped woman as he left the house… the soldiers had shot this one when they had finished, but she was still alive, even leaking blood from three punctures just as surely as cum from three holes. All of them were still alive. An entire day of brutality, and not one dead girl.
It was happening again, just like it was supposed to.
Shane looked at the time he was keeping… an hour left if his information was good… and if it wasn’t, he had no idea what he was doing here. He had plenty of time… so he went looking for a victim of his own. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d raped a girl… in fact, sobs around me and unanswered pleas for mercy just spurred him on… and if everything went to plan today, it certainly wouldn’t be the last. He wandered through the camp, looking around idly… and he found a pretty thing soon enough. Black haired, doe-eyed and fat titted, she crouched down between two buildings, not so much hiding as just seeming to stare in shocked incomprehension.
She began to cry as she saw him approaching, but that didn’t matter… not now. Shane grabbed her, forcing her against the wall and feeling her full breasts through the fabric of her blouse before ripping it, and her bra, off of her. Her large, pale breasts bounced free as she began to sob. “No, please, sir. Please, sir. Please sir,” she kept repeating as he carelessly groped her tits. While her tears were pleasant, he was far too excited to enjoy them… given what was coming, he felt like a kid in a candy store, and he wanted to get on with it. He reached down and took her skirt’s waistband, ripping it open… and when she tried to cover up her exposed panties, he brought up a fist and drove it into her face. She screamed, both hands coming up to protect her split lip and softly bleeding nose, and Shane took the opportunity to rip off her panties and expose her lush black cunt hair.
Shane shoved his hand between her legs, forcing his fingers up into the folds of her pussy. She cried as he forced his way up into her slit and then found the opening of her cunt. Pushing her back against the wall, he drove his fingers hard up into her cunt… she was damn tight and cried out as his fingers go deeper. He shoved again, and his cock jumped as he felt some flesh in her give way beneath his fingers. A virgin… or she had been at least. Until he had torn it out of her.
“On the floor, cunt,” Shane growled… in English. She didn’t understand him, but it didn’t matter… he just grabbed her long hair hard enough to elicit a cry of pain and yanked her down to the cobbled stone, crawling on top of the sobbing girl. Cock already out, he found her opening, tightened his muscles… and slammed deep into her, ripping into her cunt all the way with one hard stroke. She screamed and writhed and cried, and all of that just made this rape all the better… he fucked her so hard he thought he might be permanently damaging her tight hole, but he didn’t care in the slightest. Unlike the soldiers, he wasn’t doing this because she deserved it in his mind. He was enjoying this because he knew she didn’t.
He fucked her hard for a few minutes, hurting her just to hurt her, but he really didn’t feel the need to cum… or perhaps more accurately, he didn’t feel the need to waste a load on this worthless bitch. He was done to with her. Pulling out and letting her curl into a ball, he stood with his cock still raging and kicked her between her legs before turning around and walking off… hopefully, someone else found her and continued treating her like a whore, but he was finished with her.
A minute later, he passed a girl that was standing in the middle of the street, sobbing. Her dress was in disarray, but it didn’t look like she’d gotten anything but a good groping. Shane was going to fix that. He grabbed her by her tousled brown hair. “On your knees, slut,” he growled, forcing her down to the street before grabbing her mouth, inserting his fingers and forcing her mouth open. Shane kicked her in the stomach just for the hell of it, and while she wretched and cried, he pulled out his cock and forced it to her lips.
She was crying but cooperative enough. She sucked on Shane’s cock obediently… but that wasn’t nearly enough for him, so he shoved it deeper and deeper until she was chocking on it. He didn’t stop until she fell back, nearly unconscious. Then he abandoned her to go looking again.
The city was like a scene out of a horror movie, or a fucked-up drawing of the tortures that waited in hell. Dozens of soldiers had girls and were doing anything they wanted to them. One man had decided he wanted to pierce the tits of a girl, but they had nothing available but a few pencils… so he used those, jamming the thick wooden shafts into her breasts and making her scream. She and some others were just laying on the ground, bleeding and sobbing, and others were still staring in horror, waiting helplessly, not yet the target of the men’s out of control lust.
A blonde caught Shane’s eye… a tall, skinny thing. Worked for him. He wanted a fuck an ass, and hers looked like he would be incredibly tight – that was all that mattered. He didn’t hesitate – he just walked right up to her, the girl too scared and shocked to resist as he spun her around and pushed her down over the railing of a nearby fence. He ripped her skirt off then, brutally enough that it dragged her around and left deep red marks on her skin, making her scream. Her panties were cute, blue things… He ripped them to shreds before spreading her ass cheeks, his cock in his hand.
His plan only lasted for a second as he caught a glimpse of her cute cunt. So tight looking, so smooth… he wanted to fuck that, too. So he did. The blonde screamed as his cock pierced her, driving deep into her teenage twat, and as he raped her, Shane ripped at her blouse, wanting to expose and use every inch of her. Then he pulled out, putting his cunt-slicked cock to her ass and leaning his weight into it. It didn’t want to fit, but he countered that by simply not giving a shit if it hurt her. Shane could feel her starting to give, even as her cries became more desperate… as she begged for mercy. The only mercy he gave was shoving harder.
She started screaming as they both felt her ass being forced open. Then there was a sudden tearing, and then he was deep inside her, and the blonde was letting out a horrible, keening wail.
Shane fucked her ass, hard and brutal, purposely slamming himself as deep into her with each thrust as physically possible. And this time, he didn’t hold back – when he came, he shoved himself deep, shooting off buried balls deep in her ruined ass as he marked the bitch with his wad. He had barely begun walking away, leaving her lying there as another soldier walked up to her exposed asshole when his cock began to grow hard again.
Still plenty of time left. Shane watched the brutality as he walked, admiring the mess. It wasn’t just the women… it was like the town itself was a target of the men. Furniture, doors, walls, and windows were smashed, cobbles were smashed with hammers, power poles were toppled. The soldiers seemed to be taking out their anger on the whole place – town and inhabitants. His musing was interrupted as he saw a girl poke her head out of the building, looking both ways for soldiers of police, and not seeing him. Then she made a gesture and four women dashed across the street with her, into the abandoned building.
His heart beat faster. That was what he was waiting for. He followed.
The girls must have seen him because they hid… but the house wasn’t very large. They had slipped down into the basement. Moving with deliberate slowness, he slipped down the stairs and into the dark… and found eight terrified eyes looking up at him. Four girls, not one of them older than 20 if he had to guess. All terrified. All his. He cracked open a chemical light and tossed it down at them, lighting up the four girls in its garish glow as he pointed a pistol at them, smiling as they clutched at one another in their fear. Two of them were brunette, one of them damn beautiful. The third had bright orange-red hair, with freckles on her face and neck and disappearing under her little top. Her tits were nice and straining against the thin fabric of her top. The fourth had curling, dirty blonde hair perhaps one of the most wickedly sexy pairs of lips he had ever seen, tall and slender with barely any tits but amazing legs.
All four began to sob as he closed the door and walked towards them.
“Go ahead and scream,” Shane said, letting his voice slip into a language they could understand. “Let everyone know you’re here and become fresh meat for the soldiers. Be my guest.” He reached out and cup the redhead’s huge boobs in one hand. “Or be quiet… and you’ll just have me to worry about.” They all looked terrified, but the sexy brunette nodded quickly, and the others followed her lead soon after. It made Shane want to laugh. These girls would do anything, anything at all, to avoid the dangers of a gang rape.
“Ok…” the brunette whimpered. She had tears in her eyes, but her fear of the others has overridden her fear of Shane. The idiot. She would have been better off running. “Whatever you want.”
Shane pulled her to him and kiss her, forcing his tongue between her lips. She wasn’t willing, and thank all the gods for that because it would have bored him if she was, but she clearly wasn’t going to fight him either. Instead, she kissed back, a wonderfully clumsy little reluctant kiss. When he pulled away, he bit her lip on the way out, just to make her whine a little. “Now kiss her,” he ordered, pointing at the redhead. “And make it good, or I start yelling for the others.” He smirked as his cruelty as the brunette he had been kissing, leaned over to kiss her friend. The redhead resisted for a moment, and then their mouths opened and met… they were apparently going to be good little bitches and give him a show… trying to keep him happy.
Shane pulled the slim blond over to him, cupping one of her little tits before he began ripping a hole in her t-shirt. She lets him, looking down in shame and blushing but not resisting. That only spurred him on, and he tore her top the rest of the way open and roughly pull down her bra. Her tits were nice, honestly: very small but beautifully shaped, with a very dark color around her nipples. He rubbed one, making it get hard for him as he watched two girls make out for his pleasure.
“Start touching, you two,” he ordered the pair. “Make it good, or I get the others.” They looked over at him in abject misery and terror for a few seconds before they began touching one another… but hesitantly. Shane narrowed his eyes. “That’s what you call making it good?” he growled. “Get some action going… I want you two to look like a pair of dykes in heat. Get those tits out and start licking them, or I’ll start calling for the others, and I promise they’ll get you naked real quick.”
The two girls were actively sobbing now, big, salty tears running down their faces. That was perfect… made more so as their hands found each other’s breasts and began to squeeze and pull. He slid his hand up the thigh of the blonde, seeking the nexus between her legs and groping her little pussy right through the shorts she wore. He pulled her against him and kissed her as well, very aggressively and roughly and wet. She obediently let him, even as his fingers slid past her shorts and pushed aside her panties, finding her silky-furred slit and beginning to force his way into her. She moaned in pain, but she didn’t try to stop him – she just cried softly and whimpered, trembling against him, but if she was hoping to inspire compassion she was mistaken – her revulsion and fear were just egging him on.
He pushed deeper into her, harder now, and her kisses became almost frantic. She wanted to please him, to make him happy so that he wouldn’t hurt her.
What a joke. What else was a woman good for if you weren’t going to hurt her? He was going to fuck this little bitch, and enjoy every second of it. He pulled his fingers out of her cunt and grabbed her shorts, beginning to yank them down her legs as he looked at the other three, all shooting gazed off at him in obvious horror. He slowly smiled as he grabbed the blonde hair and pulled her up the staircase, opening the door and yelling out. “Fresh pussy in here,” he yelled in Serbian. “Come and get it!” Then he turned and smiled down at them, enjoying the horrified, betrayed gazed of the three other girls. He barely had time to ram his hand back between the legs of the blonde before men began pouring in and down the stairs, and then the screaming started – as he watched from the top of the stairs, he could see the redhead get stripped and raped right below him, her screams echoing through the basement.
The blonde he had picked was crying hysterically now, but he didn’t care. He roughly felt up her cunt, moving further between her legs to grope her ass as well. Then he turned her around, sliding his hand down to her ass again, and forcing three fingers at once up into her tiny asshole. It required him to really, really push, and she covered her own mouth with both hands to keep from screaming… moaning and writhing against me and we both listened to her red-haired friend scream in agony as her cunt bleed from her own brutal rape. It horrified her, and spurred him on – he finally took out his own cock, pushing it against the blonde’s ass and beginning to push, holding her firmly against the wall so that he could watch his own rod sink into her unwilling ass one inch at a time.
She couldn’t hold it in any longer… she was screaming now too, and her ass is trembling as it was forced to accept Shane’s thick cock. Her anal ring grew larger, and blood began to ooze from it as his cock head is forced into the opening. She was so tight and unwilling… but that was precisely how a woman should be for a man. Shane slammed forward, and her ass ripped over, her resistance failing as his cock drove deep into her, causing a keening wail of anguish that made his cock tremble inside her even more than her clenching hole did. Then he just started to fuck her, hard and deep as he could – slamming into her little ass hard enough it banged her against the wall with each thrust.
Below him, the other girls were getting very much the same. One of the brunettes, the long-haired, beautiful one he had forced to put on a show, was being mauled by four men, hands dragging at her breasts and pussy as the soldiers argued over who would get to fuck her first. The other brunette was already spread on the ground, a man on her fucking her as she cried helplessly.
Shane pulled out of his girl’s ruined ass and tossed her to the ground on her back, at the edge of the stairs. He found her cunt with my cock and slammed it home, sending her into another paroxysm of agonized cries. He raped her cunt, every bit as hard as he had raped her ass, raking her small breasts with my fingernails and leaving swollen welts on her body.
It was a damned good fuck… but still just a distraction, an appetizer. The alarm on his phone went off… five minutes. He slammed her even harder, making himself fill her pussy up before he kicked her down the stairs, sending her tumbling down into the eager group of men waiting. “Sloppy seconds,” he said, smiling as the blonde realized that none of it had mattered, that she was going to get gang-raped anyway. She had been born with a cunt between her legs – she deserved what she got.
Then as the first soldier drew a weapon, he leaned back against the wall to wait.
Alice had finished bandaging the dozens of knife wounds on a naked, barely conscious girl and was just wrapping up her naked form in a blanket, tears filling her blue eyes. Who could do this to another person? And why wasn’t anyone doing anything to stop them? It made her want to vomit. It wasn’t like Alice was unaware that the world could be a cruel place, nor that she hadn’t seen it before – it just bothered her this much every single time. When she had been studying medicine, they had tried to teach her how to detach from her patients, how not to care. It was a lesson she had never learned… and Alice very much doubted she’d learn it in the life she had left to her.
In truth, she was surprised the girl hadn’t bled to death before she had found her. She was pale, and barely breathing… she’d lost a lot of blood after those monsters had finished with her and left her to die, but she was still alive. In fact, while she had found several badly injured women and beaten men, she hadn’t seen any bodies yet. She would thank god for small favors, but she didn’t believe in a god. What kind of God would allow things like this to happen?
Gods didn’t make the world this way: People did. And it was up to people, like her, to change it.
Then Alice heard the screaming… horrible, pained, terrified screams. Screams of those fearing death.
In an active warzone, they were only supposed to attend to people away from the battle. Help save lives after the fighting. They weren’t supposed to put their lives at additional risk by trying to save anyone… but Alice was already dead. Those screaming women weren’t, yet. Maybe she could…
She hadn’t even realized that she was already running. The screams were coming from an abandoned building… still holding her backpack, Alice rounded the corner of the broken door, finding the staircase and pounding down it. Two girls lay on the floor, unmoving. A third was… was still being raped. Her eyes focused on Alice on the stair, wide with terror and pleading. And a fourth girl was on her knees with a gun to the back of her head, a soldier snarling at her. She didn’t remember lifting her bag to throw it at him, but she came back to herself in time to choose to stop if she wanted to.
She didn’t.
The bag hit him in the head, and the gun went off… missing her as he stagged. The redhead scrambled away, running for the stairs even as the soldier turned, pointing the gun at Alice and shouting.
Time seemed to slow.
She saw the yawning abyss of the barrel of that rifle, seeming impossibly large.
She saw the furious look at the Serb’s face, the bloodstains on his uniform.
She heard the redhead scramble up the stairs… and heard another set of footsteps walking back down towards her.
She saw fire blossom in that void, an explosion of death aimed directly at her eye.
And she saw the bullet streak towards her, faster than her eyes could process… but visible anyway.
Then she didn’t see it, but she felt something… push… on that bullet. It felt horrible, an awkward tearing in her soul, a sickness to her stomach that made her feel like she was going to vomit.
And then, time resumed.
The bullet tore past her face close enough that it opened a friction burn on her right ear, and she felt it drag her hair with it as it struck the wood of the staircase behind her. Someone stood on the staircase right next to her… a man in a Serbian army uniform, holding a silver coin between his fingers. Even as she watched, the coin dissolved into ash and seemed to blow away in the non-existent wind.
“Gotcha…” the man whispered… in English.
Then his fist flashed for her face, and Alice’s world went dark.
Waters churned, and mists roiled on the way to the first gate, but they grew more and more furtive over time, the mists swirling in an almost agitated way. Even so, it was more than an hour before unnatural silence of the running water and mists was broken by a voice.
“Raven?”
The mists swirled again, and Jackal appeared from the mists… almost a man, but not quite, a humanoid made of out of shadows and smoke with the toothy head of a jackal. He faced against the flow of the river, waiting for someone to flow downstream… no one had. Not for more than a day now. “Raven?” he asked again.
No one answered him.
The mists swirling in time with the beating of his heart, growing faster and faster as he grew more and more angry. She should have been back by now. One day. That was the rule that she had set herself… one day, every five years. It had been longer than a day, hadn’t it? Jackal wasn’t good with time… he wasn’t good with anything but death, but he felt it had been. He had promised… he had promised to wait here for Raven… but where was she? She was supposed to cross back over… right… here…
His form faded into the mists and swirled over the water, surging back towards the real world and emerging in the darkness of a ruined basement. He sniffed. Death was thick in this city, but none of the death. Many that should be, but without Raven, their souls were trapped here. Most would become trapped in their bodies, unable to live or die. Perhaps a few would recover, given the time. He sniffed again, eyes focusing on the bullet in the wall. He could smell the destiny on it… smell Raven.
This bullet had been meant for her.
A whimper. Jackal whirled to find a soldier, still holding a pistol, kneeling in the middle of the floor, looking at Jackal with terrified eyes. He was speaking, or trying to, but his terror stole his words as the giant shadow a predator loomed in the dark room with him. He rushed at the soldier, the darkness of his body every bit as solid as a stone as it pinned him down to the ground, making him blubber. “Where is she!” he growled. “WHERE IS RAVEN!”
“I felt it,” he whispered. “Oh gods, I felt it. I didn’t miss. I didn’t. Oh, God, what happened?”
“WHAT,” he shouted into the man’s face. “HAPPENED TO RAVEN! YOU… YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KILL HER!”
“He took her,” the man whimpered. “I don’t understand… what is happening…”
Jackal had promised Raven many things. One was that he wouldn’t take anyone beyond the Veil… not unless they resisted. Not unless they refused to go.
He made an exception for this worm.
Raven would understand. Once he found her.
Comments