Ellen never knew what it was that awakened her about an hour before dawn. Perhaps it was the cacophony of snores coming from Pop and Cash. She shivered in the early morning coolness and gazed around. They were all asleep, even the vicious little Vito, who had finally come to her after the others were asleep – sneaking over toward her like a jackal coming to feed after the lions were gone. She bore a bruise on the right side of her cheek where he had hit her with his closed fist after she had not responded with an orgasm as she had with Pop and Cash.
She ached all over her body, with most of the uncomfortable throbbing coming from her battered and bruised vaginal area. Dazedly she gazed around her, still not awake enough to recall the events that brought her here, much less remember the multiple rapes of her virginal loins. It seemed that there was something missing, then she remembered… there was a fourth member of the gang – Billy, the leader – asleep in the other room.
Or was he asleep. Pinching herself to awaken further, she listened and caught the sound of a snore coming from behind the closed door. It was only then, with a sudden surge of panic and hope that she fully realized that all of her captors were asleep at the same time.
Stealthily, she swung her legs off the soiled bare mattress and put her feet on the floor. Pop snorted, coughed, and turned on his side before resuming his baritone harmony of snores. It took two attempts to get to her feet; the first time her wobbly knees and wearily trembling legs failed to support her. With the cunning born of the trapped animal, she knew exactly what she would say if someone awakened and discovered her standing upright. She would tell them she had to go to the toilet. The naked young girl was halfway across the room before she remembered her tattered clothes. For a moment she deliberated about just leaving them, but from somewhere summoning up courage she didn't realize still existed, she padded over to the corner, stepped across Cash's nakedly sleeping figure, and grabbed her clothes.
At the door, she paused and looked behind her to make sure they were still sleeping. Satisfied, she went to the stair landing and quickly put on her ripped and tattered tee shirt and tight, hip-hugging jeans. It was only then she realized she had left her sandals behind… something she dismissed as being unimportant. No force in the world could get her back into that foul loft with those sex-crazed criminals.
All of her instincts screamed at her to run down the stairs, but some rational voice in her mind made her tred lightly on each stair and to tred well off center. In spite of her precautions, the stairs creaked so loudly that she was sure the men couldn't help but be awakened; in her mind's eye she could see them stirring, could almost hear them shouting warnings at each other.
At the bottom of the stairs it was pitch-black and she had to whip her mind to remember the details of the ground floor. Even so the terrified young girl bumped into the pickup truck and then felt her way like a blind woman toward the door.
"Dear God," she prayed silently, "please, please don't let there be a padlock on the door."
Her hand brushed across the rough wood of the inside of the garage door and encountered just a latch, which she quickly lifted.
The door, when she opened it, creaked so loudly that even the frogs outside were momentarily silenced. Ellen no longer cared about the noise. It was the hour before the dawn and the moon had long since set. The night was coal black and the dirt road leading to the abandoned warehouse was only a barely perceptible glow in the darkness. There was no doubt in her mind that escape was not only possible, but very probable.
She began running down the dirt path as fast as her long legs could carry her, expecting at any moment to hear the shouts and the sudden sound of pursuit behind her.
By the time the terrified young girl reached the gravel road leading back to the highway, she was already panting for breath and her side felt as though it had been caught in a vise. The sharp rocks on the gravelled roadway cut into the tender soles of her unshod feet, and within seconds she was bleeding from a multitude of painful cuts.
As Ellen ran, she welcomed the pain; that was her punishment for the betrayal of her body – for the lewd things she had done, for the mindless, whore-like enthusiasm she had shown for Cash and Pop once she had realized the pleasure their long hard maledom could bring a woman.
She ran in the darkness with the brittle stars a crown above her head and the lights of the far-off city shining like the promise of Camelot. Ellen didn't mind that she left behind a trail of blood from her feet, that her heart was pounding so rapidly it seemed about to burst into a million pieces, that a hot poker was in her side. She mentally embraced the pain, and thought wonderingly about the almost erotic, masochistic pleasure she was deriving from running barefoot in gravel. It was with something akin to regret that the young girl reached the relatively smooth surface of the concrete main highway. She stopped, her breath coming in great rasping gulps. Obviously, if pursuit started, they would assume she would head to the left toward the city lights some five or six miles away. Although her escape had been successful up to this point, she really didn't believe that she had another hour – and it would take that long to reach the city. Besides, the eastern horizon was already becoming a dirty gray color as the sun raced toward a Florida dawn. It would be light in another twenty or thirty minutes.
And so, with the wisdom of the hunted, she turned away from the protection of the lights still far-off and began running toward the right and the uncertain darkness.
The girl hadn't taken two steps before she heard the angry shouting behind her and the faint sound of running footsteps in the gravel. At a distance, she saw the warehouse where she had been held captive, fully lighted now and the lights of what was obviously the pickup truck pulling out of the garage.
Fear lent wings to her feet and she began running as though she were in an Olympics try-out, her bleeding feet completely ignored. As she fled, she rejected the suggestion from her brain that she hide. There were only sand dunes here… and they were out of the question because her footsteps would be plainly visible when the sun came up shortly.
Ellen paused for a second, her chest rising and falling painfully as she sought to get breath into her tortured lungs, and turned around to make a reconnaissance of her pursuers. As she watched, the lights of the pickup truck swung wildly off the gravel road, turned left, and began heading toward the lights of the city. She watched it, rejoicing, wanting to cry with relief, but then her mind took over and told her that these men were smart in the ways of the hunter and the hunted. It would take them only a very short time to realize that they had missed her – that she was either hiding or had gone in the opposite direction.
Quickly, then, she began running again. She ran for about three or four minutes, then paused for breath at the top of a small rise in the road. Then horror descended. Above her pained gasping she heard it.
The sound of running footsteps behind her!
They were still at least a quarter of a mile away, but the young girl was running into the blackness. It would be only a matter of three or four minutes before whoever it was that was chasing her was able to catch up. With the exception of Pop, all of the convicts were in top physical shape; she could never expect to outdistance them – conditioned as they were to years of hard labor on the chain gang.
Panicked, she stood still… agonizing over the question of whether to attempt to hide or continue running until they finally ran her to the ground like a poor defenseless rabbit before the hounds.
Then, as though the heavens had answered her prayers and mute questioning, she saw the lights of a car – still far away – on the highway ahead of her.
Now she began running as though there was no tomorrow – which, of course, there wouldn't be if she fell captive to the convicts again. With superhuman powers of strength she never had drawn on before, she began sprinting toward the approaching lights… knowing even as she did so that the relentless pursuing footsteps had drawn even closer during her few seconds of indecision.
It was obvious that her pursuer knew she was in front of him and that he had only a few moments to recapture her, for his pace had increased alarmingly. Still, though, the terrified young girl would die before going back again, and so she exerted previously untapped powers of physical energy.
The lights grew closer… the unknown pursuing convict grew closer!
Then Ellen was running up a small incline. The lights had momentarily disappeared. Even before she reached the top, she realized that the running man behind her had dropped into the gully and was now only a couple of hundred yards away.
When she topped the hill, she saw the car coming toward her, and with a sudden sob of joy she knew that it was even closer than the escaped convict behind her. At once she began waving her arms frantically and ran out toward the center of the highway so the car could not swerve around her.
There was a sudden squeal of brakes and the car came to a stop in front of her.
Only a part of Ellen's rejoicing mind realized that she was screaming at the top of her voice, "Help me… oh, God! Help me!"
She saw the startled face of a well-dressed middle-aged man and a young girl. Frantically, Ellen dug at the rear door handle and sighed with relief when it opened.
Without hesitation, she jumped in and locked the door, then impulsively bent forward and jammed her fist down on the lock of the girl's front door… oblivious of the wildly excited barking of a German shepherd dog alongside her.
"Help me… Oh, God! Help me! I've been raped… escaped convicts… raped… they're going to kill a senator," Ellen screamed, causing the dog to bark even louder.
"Oh, my God!" the man exclaimed, staring at her in disbelief. Then, without saying anything else, he accelerated the car. When the German shepherd continued to bark loudly and excitedly, he shouted, "Shut up, Rex. Make him be quiet, Sylvia." The dog immediately fell silent.
Ellen lay limply back against the rear seat, her chest rising and falling in short, puppy dog-like pants as she tried vainly to get her breath back. "Watch… watch out for a pickup truck," she said. "They're inside, and they're chasing me. Oh… don't let them stop you. They'll kill me."
The young girl in the front seat turned around, staring wide-eyed at the sobbing, gasping figure behind her. She watched as the events of the past 24 hours abruptly caught up with the hysterical Ellen who sobbed loudly once, gasped, and then slumped unconscious against the dog.
"She's fainted," Sylvia said.
The man, grim-faced, said nothing for a moment, then asked, "Did you hear her say they were going to kill a senator?"
Sylvia nodded.
The driver accelerated even faster as he saw a ferrety looking individual in convict clothing waving his hands in the middle of the road.
Vito dove for his life when he realized the driver was not going to stop; he hit the sandy side of the road and rolled over and down into some wild berry bushes. In pain, he cursed the driver and Ellen – Ellen, especially – while, at the same time, he felt the cold tendrils of fear wrapping around his mind and body. Billy's fury was already terrible to behold; he had sworn to kill Vito and Cash both if the girl got away. From the look on Billy's face, there was no doubt that the gang leader meant it.
The little convict wanted to weep, to run. He climbed painfully to his knees, praying to his own special God that the car would miraculously run out of gas or have an accident right now.
Instead, he saw the lights of the automobile rushing toward the dawn of a new day.
In the back seat, Ellen fought to surface to consciousness. Dimly, the flickering images of memory came to her like brilliantly etched cameos. Then, feeling the warm fur of the German shepherd beside her, the painful cuts on her bare feet, and the leather seat comforting beneath her, she momentarily came to again.
Tears began streaming down her face. During the hours of her captivity and brutal rape, she had wished many times that she were dead.
When she had been sent into the kitchen, she had looked vainly for a knife so she could kill herself. It was not until she was running to freedom that the truth came to her in a blinding revelation. Life was all that mattered – to live, that was all important. To exist, to accommodate… because if one can exist through seemingly endless suffering and woes, then one comes away wearing a cloak of majesty… and with this – boundless hope for tomorrow.
She had learned many things about herself this night… things which she would hide from herself for a long time to come. But one day her mind would trot them out and she could look at them objectively…
She raised her head and saw through tear streaming eyes, that night had gone and a new day had come.