Mad River

back down the road, and they were there in less than ten minutes. When they got close, they swerved off into a field so they could come up to the house on the far side of the detached garage. At the garage, they peeked in a window and saw a black Jeep; the other space was empty.
    “Probably somebody home,” Becky whispered.
    She looked down at her handgun, a revolver, not yet used. Jimmy had loaded it for her, said, “There’s no safety, so it’s simple. Just pull the trigger.”
    “Don’t shoot anybody if you don’t have to,” Tom said.
    She nodded and said, “We gotta hurry. We’ll try the back door. If it’s locked, you gotta kick it in.”
    The door wasn’t locked. They went through into the mud-room, and then into the kitchen, the floorboards creaking below their feet, and a woman called, “Will? Will?”
    Becky was leading with the muzzle of the gun and she and the woman got to the door between the living room and the kitchen at the same time. The woman was maybe thirty-five and blond and thin, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a white blouse and blue jeans and soft slippers and every single detail of that crystallized in Tom’s eye as the woman blurted, “Who are—”
    Becky pushed the gun toward the woman’s heart from two feet and pulled the trigger. The trigger blast from the .44 Magnum was violent and deafening, and the woman toppled backward and died.
    Becky said, “Jesus, I did it.” And she said to Tom, “We gotta find the medicine and get out of here.”
    But then they both stopped and looked down at the dead woman’s face, and Becky said, “She was pretty,” and they both looked for a few more seconds, and the silence in the house was deep and pale, as though the sunshine were pulling back.
    Becky was trembling, and her face was flushed; she was hot. Power of the pistol. Tom looked at her, and at the woman’s body, then said, “Give me the gun.”
    Becky handed it to him, almost absentmindedly, still focused on the dead woman. Tom took the gun, then ventured, “Listen . . . you wanna do it?”
    Becky was puzzled. “What?”
    “We’ve got a little time. You want to go back in the bedroom?”
    Her mouth dropped open, and the disbelief was right there on her face, quickly followed by scorn. “Are you crazy? You geek, I’d never . . . jeez, you sick fuck.”
    She started to turn away, and never saw Tom’s hand coming.
    Tom was tall and thin, but he had a bit of muscle and a little reach. The palm of his hand hit her square in the face, like a tennis racket hitting a ball, and Becky flew backward onto the kitchen floor. Tom put the gun on the kitchen counter and grabbed Becky by the neck and dragged her screaming and sputtering blood from her nose, back through the house to a bedroom, where he threw her on the bed. She rolled facedown and tried to crawl away from him, but he crawled on top of her and started pulling her clothes off.
    She fought, but he raped her; and he enjoyed it. A lot. He enjoyed the sex, and he enjoyed the open-handed beating he gave her before and after. After he did it once, he had an impulse to apologize, but felt the sex coming back up, and remembered the way she’d whimpered, and sitting astride her hips, looking down at her, how wonderful she looked, all naked, and that got him going again, and he beat her again and raped her again, and finally he was done.
    He pulled on his shirt and pants and said, “Don’t tell nobody about this,” and left her there. On his way out, he stepped over the dead woman’s body, picked up the pistol, got the dead woman’s purse off the cupboard, found her car keys, and went out to the Jeep.
    •   •   •
    BECKY HEARD HIM GO. Pushed herself up, staggered into the bathroom, looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was a mask of blood. She washed it off as well as she could, remembered to look in the medicine chest, got lucky, found a half-used bottle of OxyContin prescribed by a dentist, took it, along with a tube of Mycitracin, took some clean sheets from a linen closet, thinking to make bandages, and was walking to the door when she heard the vehicle pulling into the driveway.
    She looked out and saw a black Ford F-150 coming in.
    Nearly panicked, she looked around, then ran into the bedroom, opened the bedroom closet, saw the 12-gauge pump shotgun. She knew shotguns—most males out on the prairie, including her father, had one. A box of shells was right there on the