Out of Africa: Sheena Defeated

by Torrent

“Good looking, ain’t she?” said Louie, nodding toward the dark-haired young woman lying spread-eagle in the jungle clearing.

“Yes, quite,” said the Brit. “But forgettable. Sheena is different. Once you’ve seen her, you’ll never forget her.” He wiped his round, flabby face with a large white handkerchief. The heat was unbearable. He wondered how his grandfather, who had been in Central Africa with the Colonial Service in the ’30s, could have stood it.

The woman moaned and tugged at the bonds that secured her wrists and ankles. A small, untidy man had been looking down at her intently. Now he used her return to consciousness as an excuse to kick her in the side. She groaned and flinched. He prepared to kick her again, but the Brit called out, “Enough of that, Dooley. We want her in reasonably good shape. When you go after a jungle goddess, you need live bait.”

“Dooley’s a good man with electronics, but he’s hell on women,” said Louie, in a soft North Carolina drawl. “Last night, he and a couple of the others raped that poor girl ragged. If our little Miss Rosie really is Sheena’s girlfriend, we’re going to have one highly pissed blonde superheroine on our hands.”

“Yes, Sheena will be ‘pissed,’ as you put it,” said the Brit. “But it really won’t make any difference. She is extraordinary, but ‘superheroine’ is a bit of a stretch. A dose of K24 will do to her what it would do to you or to any of us knock her out cold for at least half an hour. After that, there will be seven of us and only one of her. And finally, though I hope it doesn’t come to this, she is as vulnerable to bullets as any creature of flesh and blood.”

Louie scratched his balls and thought as deeply as he was capable of thinking.

“If she’s as smart as you say, why should she walk into our trap?”

“Because we’re smarter,” said the Brit, with a skeptical glance at his huge young partner. “I’ve left just enough clues to lead her here, but they’re not so obvious that she’ll suspect an ambush.” He looked at his watch, then added, “You’re in charge, Louie. I’m going back to camp for tea.”

He disappeared into the bush, and the woman on the ground started moaning again.

“His Majesty’s gone,” said Dooley. “Can I pop her again?”

Louie knelt over the woman and slipped a beefy hand beneath her khaki shorts. Her eyes fluttered open as he massaged her vulva.

“She likes it,” said Dooley, with a crooked grin. “I think she liked it last night, too.”

“Yeah, right,” said Louie, removing his hand and licking his fingers. “She liked it so much you had to gag her to stifle the screams.”

Dooley was hurt. “Her trying to scream didn’t mean she didn’t like what we was doing. We just didn’t want to wake up the goddamn Brit.”

Louie rubbed his chin. “Okay, you’ve got forty minutes. Do whatever you want, but don’t leave any marks.”

As he rose, he looked down. The woman was awake, her eyes filled with fear.

“Sorry, Rosie,” he said softly, “but these boys are lonely and far, far from home. And besides, you ain’t got long to live. Pretty soon, it’ll all be over.”

# # #

Ten hours later, at two o’clock in the morning, it was Louie’s watch. He wore earphones and sat hunched over a pair tiny TV screens. Two miles away, where Rosie lay stretched out in the moonlight, cameras mounted in the trees and microphones hidden in the bushes were silent sentinels.

The Brit seemed to have a pretty smart plan, Louie admitted to himself. Sheena would see and hear no sign of an ambush when she showed up.

If she showed up. Louie was doubtful. His experience with good-looking blondes, though limited, didn’t jibe with the Brit’s assessment of Sheena’s intelligence. She could be wandering hopelessly upriver in the jungle. Hell, she might still be back in Basoko, wondering if Rosie had simply ditched her and taken a bus to Kisangani. Lawton’s trail of “clues” looked awfully hard to follow an empty canteen dropped here, a pair of bloody panties left there, no two clues any closer than a mile apart.

His musings were interrupted by a sound. Did it come through the earphones, or was it something here in camp? He looked around. Nothing. Everyone was asleep. Then he heard it again. It sounded like twigs breaking. His eyes darted back to the TV monitors. There it was: a shadowy form emerging from the brush at the edge of the clearing. But it wasn’t Sheena.

It wasn’t anything human.

“Mr. Lawton,” Louie called out. “we got a problem.”

Within seconds, the Brit was peering over Louie’s shoulder. Dooley quickly joined him.

“What is it?” Dooley asked.

“A panther,” Lawton said quietly. “A black leopard.”

“Is it going to eat her?” Dooley asked hopefully.

“It had damned well better not,” said the Brit. “Or I’ll hunt down the bloody beast and skin it for a rug.”

On the TV screens, they could watch, from two different angles, as the dark cat sniffed the woman’s right foot, then worked its way up her leg to her crotch.

“Yeah, kittycat,” said Dooley, “I’d like a whiff of that, too.”

“Shut up, you bloody fool,” snapped Lawton. “Louie, you stay here.” He turned and called out, “Michael, Gene, Akbar, get the BXP’s and come with me. Tremain, keep watch over the gear.”

“What about me?” asked Dooley.

“Stay here and be ready to use the hot button,” said the Brit. “But only if the beast actually attacks her. You understand?”

“Sure,” said Dooley.

He and Louie resumed watching the TV screens.

“Christ, I wish we had this on tape,” said Dooley. “A fuckin’ panther eatin’ a girl. How much you think people would pay for that?”

# # #

But the panther, though hungry and clearly interested in this immobilized, 122-pound piece of fresh meat, did not begin eating Rosie. It explored her body with its nose and its tongue. Something wasn’t right. The cat sniffed the metal locket that lay on the ground, at the end of a leather cord around the woman’s neck. It had a peculiar odor. Then, in the woman’s hair, and on her lips, there was another scent faint and old, but familiar. The panther had encountered it a few months ago. It belonged to another animal like this one, a human female. But she hadn’t been helpless like this one. Far from it.

Suddenly, the cat realized it wasn’t alone. Something was observing it from beneath the trees. The panther crouched and prepared to defend its prey.

“We meet again, Black One,” said Sheena, as she stepped into the moonlight. “You were wise not to harm her. Now, you must return to the forest. This is no meal for you.”

The big cat hesitated, growled and retreated. It wanted no fight with this creature who carried a long metal tooth at her side.

Sheena knelt beside Rosie and softly caressed her cheek.

“Your ordeal is over, my love,” she whispered. “The men who did this to you will pay with their lives.”

# # #

Louie and Dooley watched with mouths agape. Sheena, the semi-mythical jungle queen, had appeared, after all. The blonde hair, the long legs, the leopard-skin bikini here was everything Lawton had led them to expect. And even in the dim light of a half moon, they could see that she was spectacularly beautiful.

Dooley broke their reverie. “She’s talkin’. What’s she sayin’?”

“She’s telling Rosie that she’s going to kick some serious ass when she catches up with us. Which should be soon, since Lawton and the others are on the way there. What about the button?

“I got it,” said Dooley.

“Well, push the fucking thing.”

“Not yet,” said Dooley. “Not til she’s closer to the locket. We want to be damn sure we nail her.”

“Hell,” said Louie. “She’s moving away. We’re going to miss our chance.”

Sheena was standing now, and seemed to be listening. She must have heard the men crashing through the jungle in a rush to rescue Rosie from the panther.

“What should we do?” Louie asked, a note of desperation in his voice.

“Just wait a bit,” said Dooley. “She’ll try to get her little lesbo bitch free so they can make a run for it. Then, bingo!”

Dooley was right. Sheena again knelt beside Rose. She pulled her knife from its sheath at her waist and cut the leather thong that held Rosie’s right wrist to a stake in the ground.

Before moving on, Sheena couldn’t resist bending down and brushing her lips against Rosie’s.

It was a fatal kiss.

Dooley pressed the red button on the transmitter. Two miles away, the locket lying next to Rosie exploded.

Sheena recoiled, stunned by the sudden loud noise. In horror, she saw blood gushing from Rosie’s right ear. Then the powerful tranquilizing gas released from the rocket reached her, and she toppled backward.

Lawton and the others arrived seconds later. Akbar rushed forward, raising his assault rifle and preparing to bring the butt down on Sheena’s upturned face.

“Stay back,” Lawton roared. He had warned the men not to damage the jungle girl. It would hurt her price on the market. And he had also warned them about the K24. If they moved in too quickly, the gas would disable them, along with the intended target.

Overexcited, Akbar had ignored both warnings. Now, rifle raised, he hesitated, staggered backward and sank to his knees. He glanced at Lawton, with a look of shame and confusion, then dropped the gun and toppled forward on top of Sheena, like a fallen lover.

Lawton gestured to Michael and Gene to stay clear of this touching scene.

“How long before it disperses?” asked Gene.

“A minute or two,” said Lawton. “Then we’ll get cuffs on our prize, and you can try to revive Akbar, the poor, dumb bastard.”

“She’s moving,” Michael said nervously.

Sure enough, Sheena was squirming beneath Akbar. She pushed him off of her, sat up groggily and shook her head.

“Quite extraordinary,” Lawton muttered to himself. Then, in a louder voice, “Take a deep breath, men, then hold it. Rush her and drag her over here.”

Gene and Michael charged the blonde just as she had gotten to her feet. Michael grabbed her from behind, pinning her elbows together. Gene slammed his fist into her belly.

Her knees buckled, and she made a retching sound.

Michael picked her up, tossed her over his shoulder and hurried over to Lawton.

“Lay her down,” said the Brit. He handcuffed her wrists behind her, then rolled her over onto her back.

The three men looked at her silently for a long time.

“What a body,” Gene finally said.

“What a mouth,” said Michael.

“What a very expensive piece of merchandise,” said Lawton. “Remember, we didn’t come all this way just for a piece of ass or a jungle blow job. She is worth ten million quid if we get her to our buyer alive and in good shape.”

“So, no fucking?” Michael said sadly.

“Quite right. No fucking.”

“And no rough stuff?” asked Gene.

“Right again. No rough stuff.”

“Dooley’s going to be very disappointed,” said Gene.

“Your friend Dooley can go fuck himself,” Lawton snapped.

“Or Rosie,” suggested Gene. “He can fuck Rosie. She can be the consolation prize. You know, until we get back near to civilization and have to get rid of her.”

“Is she still alive?” Lawton asked.

Michael walked over to the woman who was to be Dooley’s plaything and pressed two fingers against her neck.

“Still pumping,” he said. “But probably not for long.”

Chapter 2

It was a little past daybreak, and the men had slept only a few hours. But they were wide awake now and ready to examine their prize. Lawton barked out orders: “No, by her wrists. Then loop the rope over that limb. We want her stretched as tightly as possible. That’s right.”

Sheena was soon strung up, with her legs spread and her ankles secured to stakes driven into the ground. She had been stripped, and her body, wet with sweat from resisting her captors, glistened in the sunlight that filtered down through the forest.

Louie whistled. “Jesus, she is really fine,” he said.

“Yes, quite lovely,” said Lawton, running his hand along Sheena’s arm and down to her left breast. “Excellent muscle tone. A few battle scars, but otherwise in top-notch condition.”

Sheena’s head nodded forward. They had drugged her when she put up a fight. Now she struggled just to remain conscious.

“Can you hear me, my dear?” Lawton said loudly. She looked up.

“This scar,” he said, pointing to her shoulder, “how did you get it?”

Sheena mumbled a response.

“Sorry, my dear, but I didn’t catch that.”

“Salonga,” she said softly.

“Ah, yes,” said Lawton. “Salonga.” He turned to Louie. “It’s a national park, on the other side of the river, about two hundred kilometers south of here. Looks like a bullet wound. Who did it? Poacher?”

Sheena nodded.

“And this?” Lawton asked, running his fingers along four parallel white lines that ran from her lower back, around her waist almost to her navel.

“Cat,” said Sheena.

“Leopard?”

She nodded again.

“In Salonga?”

She shook her head. “Ituri.”

Lawton turned to the men. His face was filled with pride.

“What did I tell you?” he said. “We have captured a true heroine, a woman of rare courage and strength, as well as beauty.”

He looked up at the sky. “But enough gloating. Time for a good breakfast, then we break camp and begin our journey.”

“You want me to untie her?” Louie asked.

“No, leave her here for the moment,” said Lawton. He smiled at her. It was a kind, solicitous smile. “We’ll be back shortly, my dear, and we’ll bring you a scone, if you promise to behave.”

They wandered off all but Dooley.

He stepped out of the shadows and cupped his hand under Sheena’s chin.

“Morning, cunt,” he said softly. “Who needs breakfast when there’s hot pussy just hanging here?” He slid his hand down to her crotch and pushed three dirty fingers into her vagina.

“Why . . . do you do this?” Sheena asked. Her voice was just a whisper.

“Because I want to.”

“No, why have you captured me?”

“Oh, that. Because we can sell you for a lot of money. You know about money, don’t you, sweetheart?”

Sheena knew about money. She knew how it drove men crazy just as her body drove them crazy.

“Do what you want with me,” she said. “But let my friend go.”

“You don’t understand,” said Dooley. “We’re going to do what we want with and with your lesbo lover. And what’s going to happen to her will be just . . . .”

He paused, grinned, and said, “ . . . too fucking awful for words.”

Sheena closed her eyes. She wore the look of someone beyond hope.

Dooley stepped behind her and unzipped his pants. Then he put his arms around her. He pinched and twisted her nipples until she cried out in pain. Then he slid one hand down her belly and massaged her vulva.

She struggled and moaned.

“You like it, don’t you bitch?” he whispered in her ear. “Just like your little cunt, Rosie. She liked it when I twisted her tits and rubbed her pussy, too.”

“Please,” Sheena begged.

Dooley jammed his hardened prick into her moistened vagina. Her body stiffened, then trembled.

He fucked her slowly, all the while whispering words of abuse. And when he came, he bit the back of her neck until he tasted blood.

# # #

Lawton was furious. Had he not needed Dooley’s technical expertise, he would have ejected him from their party and let him try to find his way back to civilization on his own. Instead, he whacked Dooley across the face with a riding crop.

None of the men except Gene was close to Dooley, but they all agreed that striking a man in the face broke an unwritten rule. What’s more, it invited trouble. Dooley was difficult under the best of circumstances. Now, he’d be looking for his chance at revenge.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Chapter 3

It was Lawton himself who provided the means for Dooley to get even. They had been making slow progress through the jungle, when the Brit called a halt. Then, ignoring the rules he had set for the others, he took advantage of a few moments alone with Sheena to remove her halter and lick her splendid nipples. He didn’t know he was being observed by Akbar and Gene, who quickly reported the news to Dooley.

To make matters worse, much worse, for Lawton, Dooley had bugged the Brit’s satellite radio and had recorded several interesting conversations.

So the confrontation, when it came, found Lawton with only one sure ally, Michael, a fellow Brit.

They sat around a campfire in a clearing near the river. Dooley waved his hand toward Sheena and Rosie, who were tied together on the river bank.

“These two cunts, they don’t mean nothin’ to me, Lawton. I’d as soon snuff ’em as fuck ’em. But the blonde is the big lottery ticket, and I don’t want to queer the payoff.”

“Kind of you,” Lawton said dryly.

“But here’s the deal,” Dooley continued. “We know you’ve been foolin’ around with this jungle honey, while tellin’ the rest of us to keep hands off.”

Lawton, who was sitting on a fallen log, straightened up with a look of indignation.

“That’s a dirty lie,” he said.

“Yeah. Well, tell it to Akbar and Gene. They seen you chowing down on her tits.”

“That’s right,” said Gene. Akbar nodded his assent.

“Do I detect a whiff of mutiny here?” Lawton asked.

Dooley snorted. “Whiff? What you detect, mother-fucker, is a whole shit-load of mutiny!”

“Well, so what if I licked her lovely titties?” said the Brit. “I did no damage. She’s as good as new which we all know wouldn’t be the case if you had a few minutes with her. The point, after all, is ensure that she’s sold for our asking price.”

“Yeah, well, that brings me to my next point,” said Dooley. He pulled a tape recorder out of his backpack. “We’re all supposed to be in this thing together. All for one and one for all, right? But here’s you talking to your pals back in Kisangani.”

He punched the play button, and a voice that was tinny but unmistakably Lawton’s said, “I don’t think we’ll get there any sooner than Tuesday. We’re still in the jungle. After that, we’ll be coming up the Opala Road in three Land Rovers. Michael, I and the package will be in one. The others will be following.”

Another voice said, “Check. You’ll be in the lead.”

“Right,” said Lawton. “At the market, there will be a lot of congestion. All you have to do is block the road with a truck after we get through. I don’t need much time five or ten minutes at the most.”

“Do we kill them?” asked the other voice.

“No. I don’t want any bloodshed if you can possibly avoid it. Just slow them down. Five minutes or so, and we’ll at the airstrip. Julian is bringing in the Aeronca.”

“And the girl . . . .”

“The package,” Lawton corrected.

“The package. You’ve got it?”

“We’ve got it.”

Dooley stopped the recording.

“This was Lawton talking this morning,” he said quietly. “He was planning to cut us out of the action.” He turned to face Lawton. “You were going to fuck us, you British mother-fucker.”

Lawton made a wry face. “Don’t you know it isn’t polite to eavesdrop on private conversations?”

“So what do we do, gentlemen?” Dooley asked.

“We kill the son of a bitch,” snarled Gene. “And Michael, too.”

Louie tried to calm things down. “Listen,” he said. “Lawton tried to screw us. That’s clear. But he’s the only one who knows the buyer. Without him, we don’t have shit.”

“Wrong,” said Dooley. “We’ve got the jungle cunt. We’ll find a buyer on our own.”

“Oh, right,” Louie said sarcastically. “You hang around with lots of billionaires with kinky tastes.”

The discussion dragged on for half an hour, until Louie agreed to throw in his lot with Dooley.

“Okay, you’re right,” he said wearily. “We can’t trust him. So we’ll take the girl and do the best we can to unload her.”

“After we kill Lawton and Michael,” Dooley said with a crooked smile.

“No, we ain’t going to kill them,” said Louie. “You heard what the Brit said on the radio. He told whoever he was working with not to shoot us leastways, not if they could avoid it. Well, let’s give him the same break he was going to give us. We take Sheena and all the guns and equipment.”

“And Michael and I?” said Lawton.

“You get a knife apiece and a can of mosquito spray. And you can have, Rosie, too, for amusement. If you’re as smart as you think you are, you should be able to figure out how to get out of this fucking jungle.”

Michael turned pale. “We’ll never make it,” he said.

“You’ll have knives,” Louie said. “Carve yourselves a fucking canoe.”

# # #

With Lawton out of the way, leadership of the party fell by default to Louie. He was the biggest, physically, and though no one ever accused him of being smart, he had common sense. Dooley, his only potential contender, was full of angry energy that made the others uneasy.

Louie knew this energy could be useful, if he could figure out how to keep Dooley focused on the task at hand: getting out of the jungle, finding the Rovers, then finding a buyer for the babe. This meant he’d have to make some concessions. The most crucial was allowing Dooley to sexually torment Sheena. Dooley would have to understand that he couldn’t get too rough. But so long as he inflicted no permanent damage, Sheena was his to play with.

Trouble was, Sheena was taller and stronger than Dooley, and despite the handcuffs and the drugs they kept injecting into her, she might be difficult to handle. Louie tried to explain this to Dooley as they followed the river east.

“What, you think I can’t handle the bitch?” Dooley asked angrily. “All I want is twenty minutes alone with her the next time we stop. I don’t want you around. I don’t want Gene or Akbar or Tremain around, either. Just me and the cunt.”

Louie looked up into the sky, then at his watch. “Hell,” he said. “It’s too goddamn hot. We’ll break now. There’s clouds moving in. Maybe we’ll a little rain.” He dropped the packed tent he was carrying and unhitched his backpack. “Gene, Akbar, we’re taking a break. Dooley’s gonna have a little fun with Jungle Bitch.”

They watched as Dooley shoved Sheena from behind. “Move, cunt,” he barked. Her wrists were shackled behind her, and Dooley held the end of a nylon rope that was looped around her neck. They disappeared into the forest, headed toward the river.

“I got a bad feeling about this,” Gene said.

“Gotta cut him a little slack, Gene,” said Louie. “I don’t want him exploding on us.”

(To be continued.)

Chapter 4

Separated again from Rosie, Sheena had given up hope. She thought she was beyond fear, as well, but now she discovered she was wrong.

It wasn’t the small, foul-smelling man behind her that frightened her. It was what lay ahead: the river.

She was accustomed to danger. She had faced the jungle’s fiercest predators. Some she had defeated in battle. Some she had stared down. Some she had even befriended.

But the river toward which she and this evil little man were headed was the home of creatures that could not be intimidated, could not be negotiated with, and could not be defeated at least not without high-powered guns. And she had nothing, not even a knife. Already, she could hear their low voices.

Without realizing it, she had slowed her pace, and now Dooley slammed a fist into her kidneys.

“Keep moving, bitch,” he barked.

She stumbled forward, then turned to face him.

“Where do you take me?”

“I told you, cunt, we’re going for a swim. Ever been fucked underwater? You’re gonna love it.”

She started to answer him, but he cut her short with a vicious punch to the belly. She fell to her knees, and he strode past her, through the brush, to the river bank.

“Here we are, sweetheart,” he said cheerfully. “Last one in is a rotten egg.”

He yanked the rope and dragged her by the neck to the edge of the river. Even as she fought to breathe, she heard the low, reptilian voices full of excitement, and hunger.

Dooley bent over her and loosened the rope around her neck. “Don’t want you choking to death on me, honey,” he said. “That would spoil all the fun.”

Her hands were useless, but her legs were free. She quickly brought up one knee and smashed it into the side of Dooley’s head. He toppled into the water, and she scrambled back onto her feet.

Dooley came out of the river roaring with anger just in time to catch a kick in the face.

Again, he was in the water. Blood spurted from his nose, which had been flattened by the force of the blow. He wore a look of surprise and dismay.

Sheena had no intention of allowing him to gather his senses. As he tried to pull himself out of the river, she kicked out again, but missed. Suddenly, she found herself off balance and fell onto her back.

Now, it was Dooley’s turn to use his legs. He raised a booted foot, then slammed it into Sheena’s exposed stomach. She groaned and curled up on her side. He kicked her savagely in the back.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” he screamed. “You broke my fuckin’ nose.” Again and again, he kicked her. Then he grabbed the rope, leaped into the river and pulled her in after him.

The water momentarily revived her, and she struggled to escape. But with her wrists bound and Dooley squeezing her throat and pressing all his weight on her, the situation was hopeless. For twenty seconds, thirty seconds, forty seconds she held her breath. They stared at one another, their faces no more than two feet apart, hers underwater, his dripping blood into the river. Then she could hold no longer, and her breath came rushing out in a fury of bubbles.

The air was replaced by water, which quickly filled her lungs. Her body shuddered, then her eyes rolled back and she went limp.

“Good-bye, bitch,” Dooley said hoarsely.

They were his last words. The crocodile had glided up to him unnoticed. Now, with a quickness that belied its great size, it lunged forward and snapped its jaws shut on Dooley’s head.

The croc retreated slowly backward, into the river, its stateliness marred only by Dooley’s wildly thrashing arms and legs. Then, it and Dooley disappeared, leaving only ripples on the surface of the greenish-brown water.

# # #

Gene arrived seconds too late to see his friend go under. But he saw Sheena floating face down only a few feet from the bank. And he saw two crocodiles swimming toward her.

He jumped into the water, grabbed the girl and pushed her onto the shore. He followed clumsily, his hands and feet desperately seeking purchase on the wet mud. He rolled onto the bank just as the first croc raised its head.

“Get the fuck away,” he yelled.

He dragged Sheena from the edge of the river, but the crocs now were clambering onto land, too.

“Help,” he screamed. “Help me get her out of here!”

The crocodiles moved fast. For a fraction of a second, Gene considered leaving Sheena and making a run for it. Then greed kicked in. He grabbed the rope around her neck and swung her over his shoulder. He felt a tug at his pants leg, and heard a loud rip as he pulled away, leaving a croc with a mouthful of wet denim.

Chapter 5

No matter how hard they pressed her, Sheena wouldn’t tell them what happened to Dooley. Maybe she didn’t know. She was in shock when Gene got her to camp.

“You think she killed him?” Louie asked, after Sheena had been allowed to go to sleep.

“Yeah, somehow I think she did,” said Gene.

“With her hands cuffed behind her?” said Akbar.

“Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I think she managed to off the poor son-of-a-bitch without using her hands.”

“Crocs got him,” Tremain said quietly. “They almost got the girl. Almost got you.”

“Yeah,” said Gene. “Could’ve been crocs, but I still think she had something to do with it. You know what they say the bitch talks with animals. Maybe she put ’em up to it.”

Louie shook his head. “That’s a lot of bullshit. She don’t talk to no animals. That’s all part of the hype.”

Akbar laughed harshly. “So you think Lawton was gonna get an extra million or two because he convinced some S&M billionaire that she’s Dr. Doolittle?” said Akbar.

“I dunno,” said Louie. “I don’t know what Lawton was thinking.
But I know what I’m thinking. We’re down to only four of us, and we’ve got to find out way out of this jungle. We’re gonna need the bitch’s help. She’s gonna have to carry stuff. And she’s gonna have to give us directions. Lawton kept saying follow the river. But I don’t even know for sure what river we’re followin’. This one sure as hell ain’t the Congo, ’cause it ain’t nearly big enough. Must be some kind of tributary.”

“They call it the Tuposo,” said Sheena. She was awake, sitting up on the blanket they had tossed over her. “It flows into the Lomami, and the Lomami flows into the Great River.”

“The Congo?” asked Louie.

“Yes.”

“So we’ve been going in the wrong direction,” cried Gene. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ. We’ve been going upstream. If we want to get to the Congo, we should be going downstream!”

Louie rubbed his head. He was confused and irritated.

“Downstream, you will die,” Sheena said.

“How so?” said Louie.

“Guerrillas. Men and boys with guns and machetes. They will kill you, all of you.”

“Lawton paid off all the military types,” said Gene.

Sheena rested her head against her knees. She was very tired, and she didn’t know why she should save these men from their own blundering.

“What about it?” said Gene. “Didn’t he fix it?”

“Sheena,” said Louie. “Why can’t we work it out with these guerrilla guys? We got money. Hell, we got our own guns.”

She looked at him for a long while.

“They will kill you and take your money and your guns,” she said, at last. “And they will take me.”

“To fuck?” asked Louie.

“To fuck, yes. And maybe to sell. Maybe to kill. Maybe to eat.”

“Eat?” Gene said. “Jesus, they eat people?”

“They eat the forest people, the little people,” Sheena said quietly. “And they eat monkeys and apes. I live in the forest. They have heard about me. Some of them would be proud to kill and eat me.”

Louie sighed heavily.

“Okay,” he said. “I guess we can rule out going downriver. What happens if we keep going upstream?”

“It will be very difficult,” she said. “But you will come to open land. I have never seen it, but I am told the forest ends and there is tall brown grass as far as you can see.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Akbar. “I’m sick of this fuckin’ jungle.”

# # #

Gene and Akbar didn’t like the idea of removing the handcuffs from Sheena. It was Louie’s idea. He tied one end of a rope around her right ankle and attached the other to his belt.

“She ain’t gonna get away,” he said. “She sure as hell ain’t gonna pull me through the forest. But she’ll be able to carry some of this shit.”

They put a backpack on her and piled two heavy canvas bags onto her shoulders. At first, it was just a cruel joke. They wanted to see how far she got before she stumbled and fell, or just dropped from exhaustion.

She didn’t fall. She didn’t get tired, at least no more tired than the rest of them. They were impressed, but only Louie expressed any admiration.

“You’re one strong broad,” he said, walking beside her.

Sheena said nothing.

“How long before we get to this grassland?” he asked.

“Three days, maybe four. I’m not sure.”

“And it’ll be safe? No guerrillas there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Shit,” said Gene, coming up behind them. “For a queen of the jungle, you don’t know a hell of a lot.”

“Come on,” said Louie. “Give her a break. She’s never been there before. She’s queen of the fuckin’ jungle, not the fuckin’ savanna.”

“I say we turn her into the just plain queen of fucking,” said Gene. He jerked the rope that connected Sheena to Louie. She stumbled, and the heavy bags landed on top of her.

“Cut that out,” yelled Louie. “Leave her alone.”

Akbar and Tremain caught up with them.

“What’s going on?” Akbar asked.

“Louie’s playing the role of hero, that’s what’s going on,” said Gene. “I say we take a break and fuck this bitch’s brains out. But Louie thinks he’s her protector. Or maybe he wants her all to himself.”

“I ain’t protecting her, I’m protecting our investment,” Louie said defensively.

“So you think it would hurt our investment if we fuck her ass and force her to give us blowjobs?” said Akbar. “I mean, we’re not selling a virgin. We’re selling some kind of jungle babe.”

They argued for a while, then Louie shrugged and said they could do what they wanted with her. He picked up his gear and said, “Take as long as you want, but I’m going on ahead. You bastards will just have to catch up.”

He was angry at them, at himself for not standing up to them, and at Sheena for . . . . for what? For being what she was: beautiful, sexy, strong.

He just hoped she was strong enough to survive whatever they had in store for her.

# # #

No longer drugged and handcuffed, Sheena felt she could handle this situation. With the big one gone, the other three men didn’t pose much of a threat. She had prevailed against such odds often in the past.

But Gene didn’t give her a chance. While she watched Louie disappear into the bush, he removed the baseball bat he carried strapped to his backpack and hit her on the back of the neck. She staggered forward, and he hit her again, this time behind the knees. She collapsed, and the men were on top of her in an instant.

They took turns raping her. Gene preferred fucking her anally. They flopped her on her belly over a fallen log, and he pressed his prick against her tight little anus while Akbar knelt on her extended hands.

“Too tight,” Gene complained. He rummaged in his backpack and pulled out some suntan lotion. “We sure as hell haven’t needed this in this fucking forest.” He squirted lotion on the business end of the bat, then jammed it into her ass. She awoke with a scream as he worked it inside her.

He pulled out the bat and resumed fucking her.

“Much better,” he said, pumping slowly. “She just needed a little breaking in.”

Tremain followed Gene, but stuck his prick in her pussy. It was wet, whether from lotion dripping from her anus or from sexual excitement Tremain didn’t know or care.

Akbar turned her over so he could look into her face as he raped her. But she was unconscious again, which took away a lot of the fun. “Wake her up,” he said. Gene poured the contents of his canteen over her face, but she remained motionless.

“You think she’s alright?” Akbar asked, after he had unloaded inside her.

Gene felt her neck. “Yeah, she’s okay. But we’ll have to take turns carrying her til we catch up with Louie. She’s not going to do any walking for a while.”

“Or sitting, either, after what you did to her,” said Akbar. They all laughed.

# # #

Despite the battering she had taken, Sheena did walk. And she carried the heavy load of gear that the men piled onto her shoulders. The three men laughed and joked, and every now and then one would jerk the rope tied to her ankle and send her tumbling to the forest floor.

Silently, she would struggle back to her feet, and the men would again pile a disproportionate share of the load on her. She didn’t complain. She just vowed that, when she got the chance, she would kill them all including Louie, who, when they caught up with him, would not look her in the eye.

Chapter 6

The next day they came to a clearing in the forest a manmade clearing. Hundreds of acres of trees had been cut down, and their burned remnants had been pushed to one side of the clearing. No heavy equipment had been left, but the men saw its traces everywhere: the deeply scarred earth, the deep ruts left by huge tires and caterpillar tracks.

“Mining?” asked Gene.

“Yeah, probably,” said Louie. “Left a hell of a mess, didn’t they?”

Sheena scanned the desolate scene, and for the first time since they had captured her, she wept.

Louie patted her clumsily on the shoulder.

“I know what you mean,” he said. “I’m no fuckin’ tree-hugger, but the bastards who done this oughta be shot.”

They crossed the raped and ruined land and soon found themselves back in the jungle. But the vegetation was thinner here. They were coming to the end of the great forest.

“Look, you can see big bunches of sky,” Louie said. He opened his arms and sang, “Good morning, Mr. Sunshine.”

“Fuck the sunshine,” said Gene.

Louie dropped his arms and frowned. “Yesterday, you were sick and tired of the fuckin’ jungle. Now, you complain about the sun. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“He’s a horny bastard,” said Akbar. “He wants to get back inside Sheena. We all do. You should try it, too. Make you feel better.”

“I feel great,” snapped Louie. “I don’t need no woman to feel good. I mean, I ain’t queer or nothing, but I don’t need pussy to make life worthwhile.”

But Akbar’s suggestion stuck with him. He hadn’t had sex in a long, long while. He had felt up Rosie’s pussy, but that didn’t really count. Neither did jacking off every few days in the forest.

He wanted a woman. He wanted Sheena. But not as part of a gangbang with these assholes. He wanted to be alone with her, and he wanted her to want it, too.

He was deep in thought when Akbar called out, “Look, we’re almost out of the jungle.”

Louie looked up. Sure enough, the trees had thinned to the point that he could see well into the distance and that distance was filled with open grassland.

Sheena looked at this vista and shivered. She had spent almost all of her life in the jungle, where the eye became accustomed to the vertical. Here was a horizontal land, broad and flat. It made her dizzy.

“What’s that over there?” Gene said, pointing.

“A building, some kind of ranch house or something,” said Louie. He grew excited. “And in front of it. Is that a truck?”

Akbar pulled out a pair of binoculars. “No, not a truck. An SUV. And it’s one of ours a Ford Explorer, I think.”

“All RIGHT!” Louie roared, as they exchanged high fives. “An American truck, not another British shitwagon.”

They hurried toward the house. It was made of timber and mud, with a corrugated tin roof. A porch ran the width of the house. A big wooden cistern loomed on one side of the house, and in back was an outhouse.

As they approached the porch, Gene pulled out a BXP submachine gun.

“Put that away,” Louie said. “We didn’t come here to shoot anyone. We just want to borrow their truck.”

He knocked on the front door, and it swung slowly open. Louie stepped inside. Everything was very neat. Two big stuffed chairs with cream colored antimacassars, a wicker couch, small tables with kerosene lanterns.

He went into the kitchen. It was clean and neat, but there was a nasty smell. He discovered the odor came from a small refrigerator. It had been connected to a generator outside, but the generator evidently hadn’t been working in a long time.

“Whew,” said Gene. “Let’s get out of here.

“Something’s wrong here,” Louie said. He opened the back door and stepped outside. Another strong, unpleasant odor greeted him. It came from the outhouse.

Gene followed him out. “Fuck, don’t they ever clean their goddamn shithouse!”

“I don’t think that’s the problem,” Louie said. He took a deep breath, held it, and opened the door of the outhouse.

Three badly decomposed bodies were crammed inside.

“Jesus,” Louie said, gagging.

He backed away, trying to breathe.

“Get back in the house,” he yelled, as the others came out the back door.

They gathered in the living room, and sat quietly for a while.

“What do you think happened to them?” Tremain asked at last.

“Marauders of some sort,” Louie said. “Maybe guerrillas, like Sheena was talking about. What do you think, honey?”

Sheena said nothing.

“Well,” said Gene. “Can’t do nothing about them. Meanwhile, there’s canned food in the kitchen and some kind of local cola in plastic bottles. And the Explorer. If we can’t find the keys, I can hotwire it.”

“What about gas?” Louie asked.

“The auxiliary tank is full. Can’t tell about the main tank til we crank her up.”

“Any idea where we are?” said Tremain.

“No,” said Louie.

“Then what the fuck good does it do to have a vehicle if we don’t know where we are and where we’re going?” It was the most Tremain had said on this entire trip. He sounded like a man who was about to snap.

“Okay, okay,” said Louie. “Let’s think this through. If whoever lived here had a Explorer, they must have left tracks when they used it. There may not be a regular road, but we’ll find where he drove it. And we’ll follow those tracks, and I’ll guarantee you we’ll eventually get to a town.”

“Then what?” said Tremain. “We get to the nearest town, the folks there recognize the truck, they figure we must have killed the owner, so they shoot us.”

They bickered back and forth.

Sheena got up and walked out onto the front porch. The men seemed to have lost interest in her.

She looked at all their gear, dumped in a jumble on the ground. Big bags to hold the tents. Plastic boxes, with straps, to hold food and cookware. Gene’s baseball bat.

Her knife, in its sheath, protruded from the pocket of a backpack. She removed it and tied it to her waist. Not that a knife would do any good against four men armed with guns.

But perhaps they didn’t all have their guns. The metal stock of a submachine gun stuck out of a bag.

She gently pulled it out. It was smaller than she had expected. This must be the BXP they had talked about, she thought.

Sheena had never handled a gun, but she had seen men use them. Somehow, they got a cartridge into what they called the firing chamber, then they pulled the trigger and a bullet came out. Sometimes, lots of bullets came out. It seemed simple.

She studied the gun carefully. It had a pistol grip, and protruding from the grip was a metal clip. This must hold the cartridges. At the top of the grip was a small lever, next to a small green dot. When she pushed the lever, it exposed a red dot. Red and green. Stop and go. Danger and safety. That’s it, she thought. This must be the “safety.” She had heard men talk about the safety on guns.

She held the weapon at her side, the barrel pointed in front of her, and she turned slowly, imagining bullets spraying out of the muzzle.

The front door opened, and Akbar looked out.

“Holy shit,” he said.

She squeezed the trigger, and the gun kicked in her hands. Akbar tumbled backward, into the house.

She ran up the steps and stepped over his body. Gene stood frozen in the middle of the room. He looked at her, wide-eyed and filled with fear.

She fired a long burst into him.

Another gun fired, and she felt something hit her foot. She whirled, pulled the trigger again, and someone in the shadows screamed and fell.

She fired until there were no cartridges left. Then she walked out of the house in a daze and dropped the gun next to the baseball bat.

Chapter 7

Sheena staggered through the tall grass, dizzy and confused. Had she killed all of them? She tried to remember what happened at the house. Three or four had gone down, but which was it? If three, then one was still alive. But maybe she had gotten them all.

She suddenly realized that her left foot hurt. The pain was intense, and when she looked down she saw the bloody crease where a bullet had slashed across the top of her instep. How far could she get with this injury? And even if she hadn’t been wounded, how far could she get in this alien environment? This wasn’t her beloved jungle, with its chimps and bonobos, its snakes and okapis, its glittering insects and brightly colored birds. She was on the savanna, a mostly treeless domain filled with predators and scavengers she had rarely or never encountered in the forest: lions, cheetahs, hyenas and jackals. She had defeated large predators in battle, one-on-one, but that was in the jungle, where tactical retreat was just a vine or a tree limb away.

Here she was naked and vulnerable, and predators traveled in packs.

As if it had eavesdropped on her thoughts, a lion roared in the distance. Another, much closer to her, answered with what sounded like a cough.

She turned slowly, scanning the horizon. There was a copse of trees perhaps two miles to the northeast, but that was in the direction of the lions. To the southeast, about a mile away, was a rocky outcropping. Its steep sides would be difficult for a lion to scale and impossible for hyenas or jackals. She started off in that direction, wincing each time she put weight on her left foot.

Halfway to the rocks, a herd of giraffes crossed her path. Despite her pain and danger, she couldn’t help smiling at their rocking gait.

They passed within a dozen yards and seemed uninterested in her.

But as the dust they had kicked up settled, she turned and saw, not a hundred yards to her left, a pack of hyenas. They were moving toward her but seemed in no hurry.

Maybe they hadn’t seen her. If she got down and crawled on her hands and knees, she would be hidden by the grass. But her pace would be so slow that they might stumble upon her before she reached the rocks.

Better to make a run for it.

She took off as fast as the pain in her foot would permit. A few seconds later, she heard a raucous outcry as the hyenas detected her and gave chase.

She knew she should keep running and not look back. But she couldn’t resist. The two fastest beasts were well ahead of the rest of the pack and only fifty yards behind her. She tried to run faster, slipped, fell and scrambled back onto her feet. The ground was rocky here. Only a few more yards and she would be at the sheer stone face. She was already searching for hand-holds in the cliff when a hyena hit her from behind and knocked her face down. Its momentum carried it head-first into a boulder, and it howled in pain.

The second hyena was on her in an instant, its powerful jaws closing on her upraised forearm. Sheena screamed, and with her other hand plunged her knife into the hyena’s neck. It relaxed its grip on her arm and collapsed on top of her.

Sheena struggled to her feet and backed up to the cliff face. The other hyenas had caught up and now arranged themselves in a semicircle. The largest, a 150-pound female, addressed her: “It is useless to fight us. There is no escape. Accept your death. Accept your death in peace.”

The others took up the chant: “Accept your death. Accept your death in peace.”

They were right, she thought. Resistance was futile. She was exhausted and hurt. They would tear her to pieces. Better to allow one terrible bite from those jaws then blackness.

Slowly, she sank to her knees. “I am ready,” she whispered.

She closed her eyes and tilted back her head to expose her throat to the leader of the pack. The beast moved forward, its jaws agape.

Something told her to open her eyes. She looked up. A few feet above her, the root of some long-lost tree protruded from a crack in the stone.

“Wait,” she cried. The startled hyena stopped and even took a step backward.

Sheena leapt with all the strength that was left in her. She grabbed the root and pulled up her dangling feet a fraction of a second before the furious hyena bitch snapped at them.

Now, with the beasts panting and grunting below, she searched for a way up the rock face. She found a ledge above the tree root and used it to pull herself up. Now she could use the root as a foot-hold. Slowly, painfully, she made her way up the side of the cliff. She was trembling with exhaustion and covered with sweat when she reached the top.

She lay for several minutes and looked at the angry and confused hyenas, only twenty feet below her. Then she turned to examine the high ground on which she found herself. With horror, she realized that the stone cliff she had climbed was only one face of the plateau. Further to the southeast, it sloped gently back to the grassland.

All the hyenas had to do was work their way around the outcropping until the cliff disappeared. Then they could walk right up and enjoy the feast they had barely missed.

A wave of dizziness and despair brought her to her knees. She was weak and sick.

A shadow crossed the ground near her. She looked up, into the blinding sun. Was something up there? She couldn’t tell.

Then she felt a sharp bump on the back of her head and realized she had fallen backward. Two dark shapes glided across the sky above her, then another and another. She closed her eyes and used the little strength she had left to turn onto her side and curl up in a fetal position.

The vultures landed with small, clumsy hops nothing like their grace while airborne. Soon there were seven of them. One waddled over to Sheena, lunged at her behind and came away with her leopard-skin thong. Another sank its beak into her shoulder and jerked her onto her back. Now her face, breasts and belly were exposed and defenseless.

The others greedily closed in.

# # #

The first rifle shot only sheared off the tail feathers of one of the birds, but the sound startled all of them. The next shot took the head off the vulture that had bitten Sheena’s shoulder, and the third ripped through the breast of another.

Suddenly, the survivors lost their appetites and scrambled to get airborne.

The shooter walked slowly to Sheena, cursing and sweating. It was Louie.

“I don’t know why I go to so much trouble to save your sorry ass,” he said irritably. “You tried to fuckin’ kill me.”

Sheena gave no response.

“Aw, shit,” said Louie. “You mean I’m going to have to carry you all the way back to the truck?”

Carry her, he did. And after they were back in the Explorer, he drove until he found a little clinic in a village by a lake. It was run by a bunch of white do-gooders from Europe, and they wanted to know who Sheena and Louie were, how she had been hurt, and where they were headed.

“She’s my sister,” Louie said, unconvincingly. “We was hunting, and we had an accident.”

“Does your sister usually hunt in the nude?” asked a slim doctor with a reddish beard and a Scandinavian accent.

“All the time,” said Louie. “Actually, she loves runnin’ round naked. Sort of a religion with her.”

They gave her a shot of penicillin and bandaged her foot, her shoulder and her forearm. Two days later, when she was strong enough to travel, a young woman of the village gave her a long, multicolored cloth to wrap around her.

“So you’ve gone native,” Louie said, with a grin, as they drove away.

“Where are you taking me?” Sheena asked. She sounded tired and beaten.

“To America, sweetheart. I’m going to make you a fuckin’ star at least in my little corner of Carolina.”

Chapter 8

Louie was true to his word. Sheena did become a star or at least a major roadside attraction in the mountains of western North Carolina. Young lawyers and bankers from Charlotte and football players from Knoxville came by the carload and paid $25 a head to see “Sheena, the Jungle Queen” wrestle a black bear from the Great Smoky Mountains. She and the bear put on a convincing pretense of combat, and customers all agreed they had never seen a girl that good looking outside of the movies and the Victoria’s Secret catalog.

For those willing to pay $100 and wait til after midnight, there was a special show three times a week. Louie would dress up in a safari hunter outfit, and Sheena, wearing a brass collar and with her wrists tied behind her, would kneel submissively before him and give him a blow job. For $250, customers could join in the fun. One especially busy night, a dozen men took turns fucking her vaginally, anally and orally. When they finished, she lay on her back onstage, exhausted and semiconscious.

“I don’t know much about jungle queens,” one of them drawled, dropping a $50 bill on her semen-covered belly, “but I know a cum bucket when I see one.”

Louie felt kind of bad about that, but he soon realized that Sheena got a perverse pleasure from her degradation.

He ordered a lot of bondage and S&M gear over the Internet, and soon he was raking in more than $5,000 a night. He had to put limits on the rough stuff, though, after one exuberant customer tried to beat her with a chair.

Louie felt protective of her, and not just because she was his meal ticket. He also was getting unbelievably great sex. He had never been happier in his life.

Which made it all the more painful when she disappeared. He woke up one morning at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, actually and she was gone.

So was the bear.

The sheriff’s office sent over a couple of officers, and they took Louie’s report without much enthusiasm.

“Look,” one of them said. “You been runnin’ this one-girl cat house for months, and we’ve been lookin' the other way . . . .”

“Damn right, you been lookin' the other way,” said Louie. “I’ve been payin' your boss two fuckin’ grand a week to look the other way.”

“Well,” said the officer, “what are we supposed to do if she just decided to up and leave? It’s a free country. What grounds do we have to go after her and arrest her?”

“Grounds,” yelled Louie. “She stole my fuckin’ bear. That’s grounds enough, ain’t it?”

# # #

Louie never did find Sheena. The sheriff wasn’t much help. Getting the state police involved was out of the question. He had never paid them a dime.

Over the next few years, there were scattered reports from hikers and hunters of a blonde woman slinking through the woods or swimming in a stream. But no one got close enough to get a good look at her, much less catch her.

Then the sightings became rarer and ceased altogether.

Bears must have got her, some locals said. Or mountain lions, said others. “More likely, mountain men,” said one old timer. “There are some real weird bastards livin’ in those woods.”

Little did he know how right he was.

THE END?