Nile's Cruelty

Gretchen finished off Beni's drink, waiting for him to crawl out of the luggage again. Leaning back in her chair, she considered going back to the Americans and Jonathan and their poker game, just to put up a good face. The guy was giving her five hundred dollars or...was going to, at least. Her stomach twisted with sudden apprehension as she realized that, after traipsing around the desert for ten days, she would have to share her living space with Beni Gabor. Granted, it would be for very long. Just until she figured out what remote location she was going to purchase a ticket for. And she knew it was better to feed off his money and have to tolerate him than to spend her own. Knowing Beni, he would unwisely choose some expensive tourist hotel to shack up in until his small fortune ran dry--and she would get out of there long before his funds ran out and he had to sneak through a window to avoid his bills. Beni Gabor was nobody's mystery.

Across the deck, she noticed a young woman by the animals. She seemed enthralled with one of the camels, which made the spectacled broad a bit of a loon in Getchen's book. Even so, something about the opposite woman made her sigh wearily, because she was much too tired to seethe in jealousy or longing. She wondered if that other woman was married. A fleeting glance from the lady made Gretchen doubt it. In those wandering eyes, a pretty, girlish naivete persisted that was unmistakably virgin. Gretchen doubted she had a husband, or a lover--at any point. She was no one to judge; she knew that, between the two of them, her promiscuous vocation had earned her the less-desirable road traveled. She couldn't even remember a time when she was ignorant of the red light district, or didn't know what blow job was. It had become her business...and yet, still, in some estranged, normal part of the world, women like that one went through a natural course of life, and married when they were supposed to marry and slept with who they were supposed to sleep with. Had she really made it so far from the mainstream that--

A loud, cursing splash interrupted her thoughts. Her head jerked up in curious startlement, but whatever it was, it had careened overboard from the opposite side of the deck. Gretchen was not so interested as to stand up and walk around the mound of luggage to see, so she leaned back in her chair again, staring up at the moon. She really wasn't much of one for nature. She had grown up in Hell's Kitchen; her parents had fantasized about a little green farm out West, but Gretchen was never given the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of the prehistoric world, and so sought comfort in the harsh angles of the industrialized man-made. Even so, she was fascinated by the heavy, pearly rock hanging precariously in the blue-dark sky. So fascinated that, at first, she didn't hear the heavy, foreboding footsteps of wet boots on wood flooring.

They came from the opposite side of the deck, but they were nearing. She glanced up towards the couple about four tables down, just in time to catch the horror show of a black-swathed form slit their throats open in the deadly silence of skill. A gasp lodged in her throat so that she couldn't scream, but her mind somehow transmitted the instinct to get up, to run to the others. The more people, the less likely her death. If nothing else, Gretchen could be lost in a crowd. She rushed to the gamblers, her heart pounding in the rhythm of murderous footsteps. Each breath she knew, knew was her last, until--

Fire. The hot crackling ignited the joy riders' interest; the game and money no longer mattered, and Gretchen no longer had anything to warn them about. In the fifteen seconds it had taken her to reach them, the entire boat had become a battlefield. One stoic warrior had become a dozen, a hundred, a thousand it seemed. She didn't know what to do. She stood helplessly in the midst of the chaos, and then a hand latched her elbow and dragged her down beside it.

"The hell're you doin'!" Daniels shouted more than asked, loading bullets into his guns. She knew he wasn't listening, so she didn't waste the breath in an answer. Gulping in the smoky air, Gretchen found herself ironically longing for a cigarette. She almost never smoked, but--

A shout, a scream of anguish. She let out a yelp in startled response, twisting her head in every direction to catch a glimpse of something, of anything. Burns jumped up and dragged a table to barracade them from the inevitable onslaught; that monocled man cowered beside her, fidgeting as if with a spasm at every tiny explosion, at every emptied cartridge.

"Run down and get my Colt."

The words drifted in vague clarity through the mess around them. She turned and stared at her trigger-happy client.

"What?"

Not even a breath. "My Colt's in the room downstairs. Go get it."

Gretchen scoffed, jerking her head towards the professor. "Make him go get it."

Daniels's jaw clenched, and he whirled around to stare her in the eye, "Woman, if you don't go get my goddamn Colt I'm gonna pop you right in the mouth!"

"Do it," she retorted. If he thought that was the worst threat she'd ever gotten, he was kidding himself. "I'm not risking my life for your fucking gun."

But he shoved her away from the table with a searing glare for good measure, and suddenly she was back in the mess. People--men and women--and all these animals were racing towards, her, pushing past her and careening overboard, into the Nile's redemptive muddy water. Her head was spinning again, and she could hear Daniels yelling, and everybody was yelling, and she was backed up against something that was like a wall, but too short, and she was...

"Lady, you gotta get off this boat."

Blue eyes. She'd seen dozens of blue eyes, but somehow she remembered his. The American Legionnaire's eyes were a kind of blue she didn't think really existed in most place. It was a distant, imaginary blue...and it was boiling, right now. Urgent. She gasped suddenly, realizing she had been staring at him unnaturally long.

"Get me off!"

She hit the water with a splash. It took Gretchen a moment to realize he had thrown her overboard, and that she was underwater. The painful burn of water down her nose and swishing in her throat filled her mind with the anxiety of forgetting to take a breath beforehand; the current was pulling her towards the shore. It occured to Gretchen vaguely that she didn't know how to swim, but when her head surfaced and air was choking into her lungs, she forgot the importance of reality. Her arms and legs flailed in an off-kilter water-treading; she spent an eternity fighting the grim, scummy waves and praying that she didn't get attacked by a crocodile or hippo or some damn thing. The brown water engulfed her, dragging at her feet and shoving at her body. She pushed forward until her toes scraped slick, silty sand. She heaved for her breath and crawled to shore, her mind a daze of Nile and blue eyes and I forgot Daniels's gun...

She rest her head against the welcoming, dry land. Bugs buzzed and hovered over her skin and her hair clung to her face in matted locks that reeked like the river. She pushed herself up on shaking arms and turned to watch the boat drift by, a floating inferno awakening the quiet wilderness. There were people...so many people around her. Someone was touching her shoulder and she looked up, eagerly grasping the waiting hand. He pulled her up with an endearing, crooked smile.

"Where are your American friends?"

Gretchen snorted, leaning against Jonathan's soaking body. "You like them a hell of a lot more than I do."

He breathed a sigh, arching his back. "Oh, now I wouldn't say that too hastily. They made off with...nearly all my money, and--"

"Hey! Hey! O'Connell!"

Gretchen squinted into the night, her gaze colliding with a familiar form prancing about on the opposite bank. Her breath caught as she noticed her Legionnaire only a few yards away.

"It looks to me like I've got all the horses!"

The forms across their watery barrier began to take shape, and make sense. Gretchen's stomach dropped. If Beni was over there...so were the Americans, and then, so was Daniels and...so was her five hundred dollars.

"Hey, Beni! Looks to me like you're on the wrong side of the river!"

Her heart thumped in heightened irritation against her ribs. Well, it looked as if Gretchen had landed herself on the wrong side of the river, too.