Posted by PK on November 01, 2001 at 17:14:46:
Amanda led Belinda into the clearing around the cabin. Carol was still there, rotating on the
spit like the scene from 2001 with the Strauss waltzes. Orbital mechanics. Somewhat more
constrained....
"Hey, honey, I'm home!" Amanda trilled.
Beside and slightly behind her, still carrying the camera, Belinda pulled up short at the scene
in the clearing. On the short walk here she had avoided thinking too hard about what would
happen next. She was fairly confident by now that Amanda wouldn't simply kill her in cold
blood. It didn't seem her style, somehow, and there were of course practical reasons why she
wouldn't. They had spoken briefly on the way.
"I thought that sort of thing only happened in films," she had said. "You know, one person
fighting a whole bunch of others and winning. I didn't think it was possible in real life."
"It isn't, not the way they do it. One person can't take on a whole gang of equally well trained
fighters, not even me. Not without a machine gun, certainly not if they can all leap about like
Spider Man. You can't get kicked in the teeth, thrown against walls and hit on the head with
chairs repeatedly and then spring up again like a cartoon character. That's why Jackie Chan
played it as comedy."
"But you took them all out in about two minutes. They had sticks and you..."
Amanda cut her off distractedly. "Knew how to fight, they didn't. In real life fights like that
have to be short. You don't win by taking it on the chin for ten minutes, you avoid getting hit
at all and strike to kill or disable as fast as possible. Kneecaps, throat, inner elbows, solar
plexus, bridge of the nose, whatever's exposed and vital or painful. A headbut to the nose
doesn't kill but your opponent is blinded by pain for long enough to open him up. If you're in
close, a knee to the crotch or heel on instep can do it. Then there's momentum, PD, all that
pop-psych stuff."
"PD?"
"Psychological dominance. I got that from a Modesty Blaise novel. They knew they couldn't
win. Not without reason, of course, they were hopeless."
"Which you knew, of course."
Amanda shrugged minimally. "Body language and common sense. None of them moved well
and it wasn't likely they knew how to fight as a team. The tricky bit was not killing anybody. I
a serious fight I'd have gone for shots to the trachea. Throat," she explained. "Fatal."
"Karate?"
"Amongst other things, yes. Whatever works."
Whatever works, right. Belinda couldn't help feeling there was a bit more to it than that. She'd
seen martial artists, real experts, not the ones in the films. Impressive but not scary. Amanda
obviously knew all the right moves. She was big and strong, about six feet tall and built like a
heptathlete. That would be a deadly enough combination to explain her offhand defeat of a
group of frightened and desperate people. What was the difference between the
rationalisation and the reality? Belinda was not convinced by Amanda's reasonable
explanation. She was more than half convinced that Amanda would have won whoever they
were.
Now, watching the Huntress approach Carol, Belinda felt her facile upbeat mood change
drastically. She had known what she was about to see, she had seen it before on a monitor.
The woman on the spit, seen it on TV before. Special effects. The reality was something
else. She was close enough to smell Carol, feel the heat of the fire. She had known but she
hadn't KNOWN.
Amanda talked to Carol. She was as close to the fire as she could stand. "Still with us?"
Carol blinked.
"I got them for you. Couldn't kill them, sorry." She made a vague gesture of apology. "Did the
best I could. Want to know how?"
Carol blinked again. Amanda explained what she had done and what she intended to do.
"That okay?" Carol signalled assent. "Okay. Look, I've got to lower the spit now so you'll
really start to cook. Oh, I brought a guest, hope you don't mind. Belinda?" She beckoned.
Belinda came obediently forward and let the dying woman see her. She stood unmoving as
Amanda lowered the spit and basted the glistening female body as it turned. She was sure
that Carol was still alive and felt an overwhelming urge to help her somehow. Too late, she
knew, even if there was anything she could do to stop this it was just too late. Guilt and moral
terror flooded her, she couldn't breathe. At that moment, if the Huntress had come to slit her
throat she wouldn't even have tried to resist.