Chapter 9
Even after her orgasm had faded it seemed to take forever for the dog's prick to shrink. Sharon tried to help the frantic animal, but the dog only became more frightened.
The hound twisted and turned. The steel-hard bone that ran down the center of his prick stabbed at the exhausted sides of Sharon's vagina. The knob stayed engorged, the blood trapped in it by the relentless grip of her cuntal sphincter. At one point, the dog turned halfway around. His tail whacked against Sharon's ribs.
Her muscles felt useless, heavy as sandbags. Her arms barely worked. Sharon turned herself around slowly. The swiveling, twisting motion of the dog prick reamed a wide cone of pressure that started at her belly and wound up at the small of her back. The pressure it put on her bladder nearly made her piss. Sharon clamped her pelvic muscles down to keep the urine in. She knew it would mean the dog would be stuck in her for a little longer, but she didn't want the whole coursing pack to be sniffing at her crotch again. She hoped the frothing gushes of her cunt-juice had wiped away whatever was left of the bitch's heat-scent, but if it still lingered . . .
She leaned back on her elbows. The dog jumped back and forth, his forepaws hitting her breasts as he swung. Sharon spoke softly, soothingly to the tired, frightened dog, and he calmed down. The Saluki weighed only forty pounds, but it was forty pounds too much when he lay down between her thighs. His long body reached from her crotch to her throat. Sharon petted him and waited.
She couldn't tell if it had been fifteen minutes or half an hour. The youthful restlessness in her was impatient, but Sharon had learned to put up with a lot in the last two-and-a-half days. She stroked the dog's sleek, bony back and felt his prick-knob begin to shrink.
She didn't realize how weak she was until she tried to stand. The last trembling shiver of sensation in her cunt, when the dog's bony prick had shrunk enough to slip out, had nearly knocked her out. Sharon had to wrap her fingers around the slats of the stake bed truck to haul herself to her feet. When she managed to lock her knees rigidly enough to stay upright, Sharon peered over the roof of the cab.
The single taillight of the sheik's car moved up, down and sideways in front of the truck. The car's headlights cast only a pale, sickly glow. Since before the war, no one used any more light in the nighttime desert than was absolutely necessary. The truck itself ran nearly blind, depending on the driver's memory and the watery starlight to pick out the clearest path on the crude road.
Sharon looked up. The black-velvet sky was covered with stars. The curving sweep of the Milky Way caught her eye first. It was like an old friend. She checked the sky again, making sure of her first impression. They were heading a little east of north. If the course had been steady, Sharon guessed they would pass over the Jordan to East Palestine, somewhere north of Jerusalem. She looked back. The slight rise and fall of the bare ground had hardly a trace of a track. If it had been flat, she could have seen the scars of passage for miles, even in the dimness.
Ahead rose more hills, with nothing visible beyond. It had to be the river or the sink of the Dead Sea past the ridges. A hound nuzzled her hip. Sharon reached to stroke its head idly. She didn't want to cross the river, or head up toward Lebanon, if that was the destination. There were villages nearby, she knew. Whether friendly Arabs, unfriendly Arabs, or Jews, she didn't know. Sharon had heard a new kibbutz was planned near the river.
The truck slowed. The lurch of a rear wheel in a rut nearly threw her across the bed. Dogs slipped and skidded on the planks. The truck nearly overran the sheik's bouncing, jolting car. The suddenly applied brakes fought to throw her forward. Sharon swung a leg over the side of the truck bed and dropped cat-like to the road. She froze, a dark blot against the pale desert. One of the dogs whined. The truck rolled on, picking up speed. Now for those rumored caves in the foothills.
Chaim Gavno hummed a Russian folk song under his breath. It was high adventure. He kept the stolen horse trotting steadily along. Sunrise was approaching. It had been easier than the young immigrant could have imagined. He'd kept the big We-bley revolver clubbed in his fist while he whispered to the horses. No one in the Arab village had stirred. Even the few half-starved sight hounds the richest man in the village kept for sport had ignored him. Knowing every house of the village, he'd stolen a bridle from the local chief before taking the off-black mare from the stake. Now he jogged up and down and thought of the praises the kibbutzniks would shower on him for rescuing the prettiest girl in the Negev. He dismounted only to check the dim crossroads. As soon as he'd cut the tracks where the bald tires of the six-by-six overlaid new, deep-cut auto treads, he'd followed. Chaim kept imagining the wink of a taillight on the horizon, but its nonexistence didn't bother him. He saved the horse. Chaim knew he would need a last burst of speed to gallop past the two vehicles and set up an ambush. His thoughts swelled bigger and bigger. I may become the first hero of a brand-new nation! He patted the hilt of his knife and squeezed the reassuring grip of the revolver.
"You let him do WHAT? Son of the Lion! Son of an ox!" Major Charles Weiss roared. The red-haired man worked his fingers as if he were strangling David ben Ari. "Don't you desert assholes understand? Have you lost the power of thought?"
David hung his head. He'd been cursing himself since five minutes after Chaim had left, but he'd respected his duty too much to leave his post to report the other boy's absence. "At least he is armed, sir."
"Bloody stupid rotten idiots! Farmers! Yokels! Cactus-headed lizards! The last thing we need is a boy with a gun playing Wild West! We have three hundred Arabs surrounding the forty of us. We need everyone here, and everyone calm." He scowled around the bedroom of his little house. Katrina had locked herself into the only other room as soon as David awakened them. "We have other women, other children to think of!" The major's voice was anguished. He hung his head for a moment, then grabbed a shirt from the crate by the door. Tucking his shirttails into the shorts he'd slept in, he ordered David to bring the "staff car," a creaky, ancient military jeep. "I have to find that boy before he gets us all killed. Hurry!"
David stopped at the door. "Major, what about your daughter?"
The major stared levelly at the young man. "What about the other two sentries?" He couldn't bring himself to answer the question.
The caves were harder to find than Sharon thought. She finally settled for a haphazard heap of sun-bleached rocks. She took a small stone in her right hand and poked a withered branch around until she was satisfied that no unfriendly neighbors had yet found her day-shelter. She tore her fingers moving one slab out of the way. The sand beneath it was wet. She gouged enough grit from the indentation to fill her mouth with moisture, then wiggled into the tiny parcel of shade. She looked down at the road. If even a single friendly-looking car passed, she was ready to run to it. If unfriendly . . . well, I have plenty of rocks, she told herself. She stacked a cairn of hand-sized stones in easy reach.
The gray of pre-dawn turned bluish. Was it her tired eyes, or did she see a shape moving to the south? Sharon squinted. A hillock hid the motion briefly. Robes flapped around a lone figure on horseback. She looked from her cool nest to the road. Too far.
Sharon took advantage of the next dip in the rider's road to sneak nearer. She was less than twenty feet from the tire-tracked path. The few footprints she'd left on the road split off a good fifty yards further on. She tightened her grip on the biggest rock. The easy, loping beat of hooves on sand came closer. They were still distant enough to be out of synch with the puffs of dust.
The rider passed. His hood was drawn up across the lower part of his face. Sharon waited until he was just abreast of her. She gathered her legs and sprang, pitching the rock with all her strength.
The rider toppled. The rock struck his head with the sickening impact of a melon bursting on a sidewalk. The horse bolted.
Sharon ran up to the prone form. The hilt of a knife projected from the sash at the rider's waist. Sharon grabbed it. She stabbed again and again, slashing, tearing, cutting like a madwoman.
Chaim rolled over, his back arching in a rictus of agony. The hood fell away from his face.
Sharon screamed. Forever.