My Name is Stab

Chapter Twenty Eight - A New Sister

I picked up the sliced remains of my trousers and fished in a thigh pocket for one of the high calorie food bars that we were expected to keep in there. I also collected my fighting knife that had been thrown into a corner. Without a word, Mike handed me a canteen of water.

Then I went over to the little girl. She looked, understandably, utterly shocked but relaxed a little as I cut her bonds and rubbed at her wrists and ankles.

"Hungry?" I asked. It was a stupid question. These days everybody was hungry all the time. But the question served a purpose and she responded with a nod. I carefully broke the bar in two and gave her half.

"Take small bites, chew it carefully and drink lots," I cautioned her as I sat down next to her and we started to eat. "You can have more later but I guess you've not been eating properly for a while so you need to take it gently for now or you might be sick."

She nodded and we ate together in silence. I was happy to see that she was following my instructions.

"My name is Theodora," I began when we had finished eating but then I paused.

"No," I corrected myself. This girl had been through pretty much the same as Theo - I could see it in her eyes. She needed the complete truth. "In fact I've got two different names. Theodora is quite a nice girl whose family were horribly raped, killed and eaten by that lot over there. Oh, and she used to have a little sister until that lot raped and killed her and then made Theo eat her too."

Suddenly, on impulse, I added, "Theodora would quite like to have another little sister."

I smiled down at her and received something like a smile back. I held out an arm and she cuddled into my side.

"But the other me is called Stab and I am not a nice person. I decided quite a while ago that I was going to get my revenge on the people who did those horrible things to my family."

Suddenly there was a commotion from the back of the house. Mike stepped sharply outside, returning a short time later holding Jacko in some sort of arm lock. He had been trying to run away.

"Look what I've just found," he said with obvious relish.

"Oh yeah!" I said. "He never did anything to me. What about you?" I asked my new little sister. "Did he do anything nasty to you or anyone you care about?"

"I don't know," she answered in a small voice. "I don't think so."

"OK, we don't care," I told Mike. "You can do what you like with him."

"OK, take off all your clothes and you can go," Mike said to the lad.

"But..."

"Three..." Mike began. "Two..."

I've never seen anybody undress so fast.

"Off you go, then," Mike told him.

As Jacko ran towards the kitchen door, Mike shot him in the back of the head. "I lied about letting you go," he said to the corpse.

"Why the thing with the clothes?" I asked.

"You need something to wear and he's about the right size. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the view for one second but you are slightly... distracting."

Only when he pointed it out did I remember that I was still naked from the waist down.

Except for my ball-breaking combat boots, of course.

"Why didn't you warn me that everyone could see my bottom bits?" I pretended to whisper to my new little sister as I pulled the trousers on.

She gave a brief giggle which was an utter delight to hear.

We sat together in silence for a few seconds then she said, "You kicked him... in the..."

"Testicles," I told her, "or balls if you want to be a bit rude!" I added, again in a pretend whisper.

She giggled again.

The poor baby didn't even know the vocabulary yet. "When you want, I'll tell you all about sex... the proper, lovely stuff and not just the vile, broken stuff that that lot were doing. It might help you to understand what was going on."

"Good!" She snuggled deeper into my side and was quiet for a bit.

"Will you teach me how to do that kick?"

"I'll teach you as much of that stuff as you want to know... or I might get Mike to do it. He's much better at that sort of thing than me." I nodded across to Mike who was performing rudimentary first aid on some of the people we had shot.

Performing first aid so he could torture them for longer. Yes, 'The Beast' really was coming out to play.

"As you've probably guessed," I said, "Mike's a friend of mine. He's a soldier and he's quite firm and severe and a bit frightening but he's a good person, really. And, as you saw, he's taught me quite a lot of the soldiering stuff, too.

She nodded.

"But Mike's got another person inside him, too. He calls him 'The Beast'. You can probably guess from the name what 'The Beast' is like but I can promise that he won't hurt you."

I looked down to her and her eyes told me that she trusted me.

"But he is going to do some very, very nasty things to those men." I nodded to the huddle of terrified gang members.

She gave a sleepy murmur of satisfaction and we cuddled together in silence for a couple of minutes. Then I felt her burrowing deeper into my side. I looked down to see that she had fallen asleep.

I stood up gently, lifted her and carried her through to the living room where I kicked a putrid sleeping bag off the sofa and, after checking it looked adequately clean, lay her down. After pushing some detritus aside, I found a blanket in one corner which looked as if it hadn't been touched since 'the day'.

As I was shaking the dust out, a beautiful little teddy bear fell out - more a work of art than a child's toy - the sort of thing that would have been quite expensive before 'the day'. Though my new little sister was really too old for a teddy, I thought she might appreciate it in the circumstances - and if she didn't want it, I might want to keep it... or was that Theodora... or was the line between the two of us starting to blur?

After folding the teddy into the sleeping child's arms and covering them both with the blanket, I kissed her on the head.

"Last time," I promised Theodora as I shoved her firmly back in her box and headed for the kitchen. She would want to know that it had happened but I wasn't going to let her watch.

Time to finish what they started all those weeks before in the kitchen of our holiday cottage.