The Weapon - Apocalypse - part 19
By Diana the Valkyrie
Sally gets raped


Sally:

I was having the greatest fun I'd ever had. No boss breathing over my
shoulder, Duncan just let me get on with it. No big computer to wrestle with,
we kept track of everything with a spreadsheet. And best of all, no Big
Company rules and regulations like we had a Imperial Oil, dress code was
casual, unless you decided you had to dress up for a meeting with a customer,
hours were flexible, and no-one checked to see if you were making personal
phone calls. And because we were trusted, we were conscientious about not
abusing that trust. Sure, I made personal phone calls, but if I hadn't, I
would have burned up a lot more time that I could spend working.

Morale was top notch. We all knew what our Mission was. Rescue the babies. We
weren't working for some faceless mass of shareholders, or for the government,
or for some plutocratic boss. Fiona sent us pictures and video of what was
happening out in the Rescue Centers, and she wrote a weekly newsletter to tell
us what was happening. One of the boys in the Accounts department set up a web
site using this, so everyone could see it and show their friends, and believe
me, we did, because we were bloody proud of what we were doing. And there was
a section of that site devoted to The Weapon, giving some facts and figures
about her, and lots of pictures and some video of her carrying a supertanker.
And you can imagine how popular that was!

And because we were all so focussed, we worked very hard, and very long hours.
My social life plummeted to nothing. By the time I got home, I was so strung
out from the day's exposure to adrenalin, it was all I could do to boil an egg
and flop into bed. Because oil trading is a fast and frenetic activity; you're
on the phone all day, on the screens all day, and it's absolutely bedlam.

Well, you know, a girl has ... needs. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was
horny. But not just horny, even more than that, I was lonely, and that was a
much bigger hole in my life. Horny I can take care of myself if need be,
lonely needs other people. Lonely? In a crowded office, with a dozen people
screaming into phones all the time, talking to other traders eight hours each
day? Yes, lonely. Because "ten gasoline contracts, August, $250" isn't social
intercourse, it's business.

I wanted to talk to someone about a movie we'd both just seen, about books
we'd both read. I wanted to have someone to laugh with, someone to tell my
triumphs to. And my tragedies. Someone with a shoulder to cry into, someone to
cry into my shoulder. Someone to have fun with. And maybe, just possibly,
someone to make babies with. Working at Pretty Flamingo, made you think about
babies.

If you looked at me, you'd never guess. People don't go around with an "I'm
lonely" notice round their necks. I'd laugh with the people in the office,
tell jokes, make lewd comments about the post boy, all that. But was there
anyone there I could talk to about my hopes and dreams? No.

So I did something I'd never have thought I'd do. When I got home in the
evening, I was too tired to do very much, but I had the energy to fire up my
computer and get onto the web. And I got this email, "Want to meet Singles in
your area?"

Now I know this is a spam, and I know you shouldn't reply to spam. But hey, I
was tired, lonely, and I'd had a couple of glasses of wine, and I went to the
web site and signed up. I reckoned, it was only $10, and if I was wasting $10,
then, well, so what? The price of a couple of hamburgers. I could afford it.

Of course, I did exaggerate slightly when it came to the questions about
physical attributes and suchlike. And under "Occupation", I didn't put down
"Crude oil trader", I've found that people think it's a bit intimidating. So I
put "Sales and marketing", which is true. After all, I was running a
department with exactly that name. Exaggerate? Well. If I call myself a
blonde, you might think about a bright butter-yellow colour, or ash-white.
Less complimentary people call my hair "light mouse colour", or even less
flattering terms. And yes, I did say I was pretty, so what? Beauty is in the
eye of the beholder, and I like the way I look.

I might have added an inch or two to my height. And a couple of other
measurements. Well, if anyone comes at me with a tape measure, I can always
say I went on diet. I was honest about my age; I am the right side of thirty,
although only just. And I put up the picture of me, taken at Francine's
wedding, a few years back; it had taken me all day to get ready for that, and
I looked absolutely wicked. And that was rather dishonest of me, because I've
never looked as good as that before, and I probably never will again. Still.
It was a real photo. I mean, am I supposed to pick a photo that shows my bad
side?

I got a pretty good response. No, I got one hell of a good response. I guess I
shouldn't have added those inches, maybe. Oh well. It's nice to have the
choice. But how to choose?

I phoned up Francine and asked her advice. She burst into peals of laughter
when I told her what I'd done, but when she sobered up, she told me to forget
the pictures, go for the ones that sound like I could actually talk to them.
The ones who seemed to have interests outside of beer and football. The ones
who have seen all the Marx Brothers movies, and read Lord of the Rings. The
ones I could actually relate to; after all, I wasn't just looking for a roll
in the hay, what I really wanted was something, well. Long term. Maybe even
the Big M, with babies.

I picked a dozen likely-sounding ones, and started an email correspondence
with each of them. That's not really an exciting social interaction, but it's
a start, and you can get a bit of a feeling for whether you want to actually
meet. After a few weeks, I'd got that down to a shortlist, and I kind of
hinted to the top three that I might be interested in getting together.

The first one I dated seemed to meet all the criteria; seen the films, read
the books. It was only when he looked blank when I mentioned Frodo and Bilbo
that I realised that he'd been lying. I mean! Adding a couple of inches and
pushing the "blonde" envelope a bit is one thing, but telling straight porkies
about what you've read, films you've seen, that sort of thing? He took me to a
movie down the West End. It was one I hadn't seen, and as we left the theatre,
I still hadn't seen it. I mean, I had seen it, but it was all loud bangs, car
chases, car crashes and people shouting at each other. And it just went
completely over my head, I could not have told you the plot of that film.

He seemed to like it, of course.

I shook hands goodbye, and got a taxi home; I didn't see any point in raising
his hopes a single millimeter.

The second one was a lot better. He not only had watched all the good movies,
he actually remembered some of the great lines, and we played at Humphrey
Bogart and Lauren Bacall, we played at Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont, and
we did a few good Fred and Ginger sequences. I thought, hey, this is pretty
good, huh? I could really like this guy. He took me to see the Mikado, and
yes, obviously I've seen it before, who hasn't? But it's different every time,
and it's just so totally, utterly silly! I had a great time, and afterwards I
invited him back to my flat for coffee, and we all know what that's a
euphemism for.

He said he had to get back home to his wife.

I'm not sure what happened them. I think my mouth might have opened and closed
a couple of times, I know my eyes focussed on his ring finger, and saw the
important thing that I'd failed to notice before, and I know that we shook
hands and I got a taxi home. Again.

The third one was different. Very different. He was more the outdoorsy sort of
a person. Your big-dogs-and-marmite sort of a person, whereas I'm more
gin-and-jags. His idea of a date, was to take me for a brisk cross-country
walk at the weekend. Well, that's not entirely me, but walking is good
exercise, and you can talk while you go. We met at Berkhampstead, and set off
across the fields; he had an Ordinance Survey map, a compass and a GPS. I had
a bottle of water and a haversack; I was wearing sensible shoes, a sensible
skirt and a sensible sweater.

We clambered over a style; he held out his hand to help me balance, which I
felt was kind of gentlemanly of him, and set out along a footpath that was
marked on the OS map with a red dotted line. On the other side of the field
there was another style, and I held out my hand to help him balance as he went
over it, just to establish that I wasn't some helpless fainting Jane Austen
heroine. That led into a wood, and it was after we'd gone a couple of dozen
yards into the wood that ...

Well.

I must have had a sheltered life. My mother had always impressed me with the
importance of never taking sweets from strangers, but no-one had ever warned
me about going for country walks through the woods with what I rapidly
realised was not only a complete stranger, but I didn't necessarily know his
true name, and I certainly didn't know his address, and he was quite a lot
bigger than me. He showed me his fist, and it looked as large and hard as a
house brick. He told me that he was going to fuck me here and now, and I could
either lie back and enjoy it, or not, it was all the same to him, but that it
would be a lot more painful for me if he raped me.

My first thought was, this cannot be happening. My second thought was, oh yes
it is. I thought of running, but I didn't think I'd get very far before he
caught up with me, what with his longer legs and my skirt. I thought of trying
to fight him off, but, well, he must have had nine inches of height and maybe
twice my weight. I didn't know what to do.

He told me not to scream, or else.

Ah, thanks for the cue. We must have been miles from any other human being,
but if that's what he didn't want, then that's what he'd get. I took a deep
breath, and put everything I had into the loudest scream I'd ever done. It
sounded like a whisper.

I tried again. Thinking back on it, it must have been a good sized scream, but
to me, it still sounded too quiet. I wanted 150 decibels, I got maybe 90. He
grinned at me. "Go on, scream again," he said. This sick bastard was getting
off on me screaming, he wanted me to be terrified and show it. This wasn't
about sex, it was about his power, and my helplessness. His strength and my
weakness.

He got what he wanted. I was terrified. I've seen his face, he's going to rape
me and then he'll have to kill me. I turned, tried to run. Yes, I know it was
hopeless, but I did it anyway. He grabbed me before I'd gone two steps; I
turned and clawed at his face. My nails got his cheek, and I inflicted a nasty
scratch. Maybe the police would be able to find him after he murdered me. he
held my wrists in his hands. I said, "We can still pretend this was all a
joke, I don't know your real name, I don't know where you live, I won't go to
the police, and even if I did, what can I say, a man threatened to rape me,
but he didn't? Let me go now, and it'll all be OK."

He laughed. "Go on," he said, "beg me, like the others did."

Others? Ohmygod, this is a serial rapist. How could I have gotten myself into
this?

"All right," I said, dejectedly. "You win. I'll take off my skirt and tights.
You can fuck me, you will anyway, I might as well give up." He grinned, and
let go my wrists. I stood on one leg, leaning on a tree, to take off my shoe.
I handed it to him, and as he leaned close to take it from my hands, I kicked
him in the balls as hard as I could. He went down like a felled tree, and I
took off across the forest as fast as I could run.

But I was wearing only one shoe.

I got a good start. I got over the style, and I was running back across the
field as hard as I could, I reckoned that my best bet was to get to where
there were other people before he could catch me. And anyway, if anyone saw a
woman running across a field pursued by a man, just maybe they'd be concerned
enough to come and see what it was all about.

So I was haring across the field as hard as I could go, running for my life
but when I looked round, I saw that he was hot on my trail, and catching up
fast. So I tried to run faster, but it isn't easy running across a field
wearing one shoe.

I sprained my ankle, and went down like a ton of bricks.

Normally in that situation, you just lie there until someone helps you up. But
with a rapist coming at me like a steam train, I didn't have that luxury, so I
got up and started running again. But the pain was awful, and even though my
head was telling my ankle, forget the pain, we need this in order to stay
alive, my ankle just wasn't obeying. So I stopped trying to run, and just
stood there in the middle of the field screaming and screaming as hard as I
could, just maybe we were close enough to some people who might hear me. And
you can scream better if you aren't running. And now the trees weren't
absorbing the sound.

But no-one came. And the rapist was rapidly closing the distance.

I was thinking, there's so much I haven't done, so many places I haven't been,
so many people I haven't met, and it's just so bloody unfair.

I'm too young.

I'm not ready.

It's not fair.

And then a thunderbolt came out of the sky, all white and gold, slammed into
him and knocked him down, and he stopped moving. And when the thunderbolt
slowed down, I saw it was Wendy.

"I heard you scream," she said, "so I came as fast as I could. Would you like
to hold Mattie?" She knelt down on the grass next to me, and handed me a baby.
I cuddled the baby close to my body, and cried. Wendy put her arms round me, her
cape floated around me, shutting out the world from my view, making a small,
private space where me and Mattie could nestle, as I rocked the baby back and
forth, holding her, protecting her just as Wendy was protecting me.

"Thank you," I said. Such an inadequate phrase. How do you thank someone for
the greatest possible gift you can receive? You can't, not really. "Thank you,
Wendy," I said, through my tears.

She held me until my crying subsided to sniffles. She had her arms round me,
and she was singing some song, I think it was a lullaby, I don't know why she
was singing a lullaby. But it was nice, her voice in my ears, her smell in my
nostrils, her powerful arms around me and her cape keeping out the world. I
began to feel a little bit safer than I had. And with that feeling, came the
realisation, I really was safe now, there was nothing that the monster could
do with Wendy there.

After a while, she took Mattie back from me, and put her in a sort of
baby-carrier on her back, then she picked me up in her arms, like a cradle,
and we rose slowly into the air, not very high, and we flew back towards
London.

"Is there anyone at your flat?" she asked. "No," I replied sadly, "I live
alone." "Then you can stay with us for a while, you don't want to be alone
right now." And she took me to where she lived with Duncan.

I wasn't sure how she was going to manoeuvre me through the front door, and my
ankle was throbbing too painfully to walk. Imagine my surprise when she headed
straight for a window, which opened as she approached, like a giant cat-flap.
Although thinking about it, if your normal means of locomotion is to fly,
that's what you'd want. She put me carefully in an armchair, told Duncan about
my bad ankle, gave me the baby to hold and then flew out again. The phone
rang, and Duncan answered it. He listened for a minute, then turned to me.

"It's Wendy. She's gone to pick up the guy who attacked you." "He's a serial
rapist," I told him, "he said there had been others. And I saw his face, so he
would have had to murder me, too." Duncan nodded, and spoke into the phone.
"Take him to the police, Wendy, tell them he's a rapist, probably a serial
rapist, possibly a killer, give them Sally's name and address, she'll be
willing to make a formal complaint." I nodded.

Duncan make me a large mug of cocoa; hot, sweet and full of chocolate. I
sipped it while I played with Mattie, who soon fell asleep. Duncan took her
from me and put her in a basket.

"Duncan, she saved my life." "She's the Guardian of Humanity, that's what she
does, Sally." "Sure, but I'm not exactly 'humanity'". "Of course you are.
You're one of Wendy's babies." I thought about that. I knew she wasn't exactly
human, I knew she was some weird sort of space alien that just happened to
look like a woman. "Why does she do it?" "It's what she does, I don't
understand it either, just accept it." "How can I thank her for this?" "You
can't, not really. Some debts are just too large to pay." "But there must be
something I can do." "Help her to look after her babies, that's all she's ever
asked for." "I already do, don't I?" "Yes."

I sat there quietly, thinking about what could have happened, what had already
happened to some other unlucky victims, and how fragile life is. "Duncan,
could I go out to one of the Rescue Centers and help there?" "You could, but
I'd rather you didn't. You can change nappies and teach reading no better than
anyone else. We can hire people like that locally, it helps the local economy,
the people looking after the babies speak the local language and come from the
local culture. You'd be at a big disadvantage. But in the position you're in,
you're creating the river of money that's driving the whole thing, and you're
a lot more use to Wendy where you are now."

Then Wendy crashed in. I don't mean that literally, she came in through the
window cat flap thing. But one minute, I was talking with Duncan, the next
minute it was like a tornado had entered the room. I hadn't really had much to
do with her before, being in Sales and Marketing, plus I hadn't really much
interest in babies. I mean, on an intellectual level, I knew we were doing
something fine and noble, but I never really had a personal interest in
babies, you know what I mean? Anyway, about Wendy. She has a presence, I
hadn't really noticed before. You don't really take much notice of her when
she's on the carpet playing with a baby, and when she's out doing the amazing
things that she does, you don't actually see her doing them. But when she
comes into a room, everything stops, and all heads turn towards her, she's
immediately the focus of attention.

Now she was standing in front of me, no, not standing, hovering a few inches
above the ground, I had to crane my head right up to see her face. Her hands
were on her hips, her cape flared out dramatically behind her, fluttering like 
it was caught in the wind, and she was talking to me. I was so distracted by 
her charisma, I had to ask her to repeat what she said.

"I asked how your ankle was."

"Oh. Um, it hurts, actually, it's throbbing now. Ow!"

She smiled, and sat down at my feet. She took my foot in her hands, and said
"I think we need to take your shoe off." I winced. "Must we? That is going to
hurt a lot." "No, Sally, it won't hurt at all." "Yow yow yow. It hurts even if
I just think about it, taking off my shoe is going to be agony!" She sat
cross-legged on the floor, my injured foot in her lap, and smiled up at me.
"Trust me, Sally?" I didn't have to think very long; I nodded. She held up her
index finger to show me her fingernail. Then she used that fingernail to slice
through the tough leather of my sensible walking shoe, and the pieces of shoe
just dropped to the floor. I felt a feathery touch as she ran her fingernail
round my calf, cutting through the stocking, and then we could see my naked
foot, the ankle looking very swollen.

Duncan brought a bowl of warm water, soap and flannel, and Wendy carefully
washed my foot; soaped it, rinsed it and dried it on a fluffy towel. Then she
wrapped an elasticated bandage round it, giving it support. "Should I go to
the hospital, get it X-rayed, in case it's broken or something?" I asked. "No
need," she replied, "I already X-rayed it. It's a bad sprain, you won't want
to walk on it for a few days, but the bandage will make it feel a lot better."

I smiled down at her. "Thank you," I said again, inadequately. She grinned
back. "You're welcome. And you can sleep in the spare room." She picked me up
again, and flew upstairs carrying me in her arms. She sat me on the bed,
helped me undress, and tucked me in. And then she gave me a long hug, and a
goodnight kiss. I closed my eyes as she left, and after the exhausting day I'd
had, it wasn't too surprising that I fell asleep immediately.

I stayed with the McCraes (she called herself Wendy McCrae) four days; by that
time, I was at least able to hobble around without too much pain, and fend for
myself. I got used to the noises that they made sometimes; at first the
muffled screams I heard made me scared, but then I realised that nothing bad
could happen with Wendy around, and what I was hearing was, well, I'm not a
virgin, I knew what it was. I guess I'll always have a thing now about people
screaming. But I did kind of wonder what they did together, what with her
being some sort of space alien. None of my business, really. Duncan seemed
happy, so did she.

Eventually, she flew me home. The first time she flew me, was after I'd been
attacked, and I was in such a total state of near-panic, I didn't really take
in what was happening. But this time was different. Instead of holding me
cradle-style, she put an arm round my waist and held me close to her body, my
head against her shoulder. We floated out through her exit window, and zoomed
up into the air, she told me we were two thousand feet up, and travelling at
100 mph. It was exhilirating, like skiing down an endless mountainside, the
wind blasting into my face and through my hair, a fantastic feeling of power,
I felt like I could do anything, fly anywhere, I felt free.

She touched down on the landing in front of my flat; I opened the front door
and invited her in. She floated through the door, and looked around at my
humble abode. "Nice flat," she said, "Sally, do you think you'll be alright
now, I want to get back to Duncan." I looked up at her, and said, "I'll be
fine. Wendy, I really can't thank you enough for everything you've done for
me," and I moved forward to hug her; she came down to ground level so that I
could. She gave me a card, "If there's anything you want, you can phone me on
this number, just assume that I have a mobile phone." I looked up. "I hate to
ask, you've already done so much..." "What is it?" "Well, maybe one day, some
time, like occasionally, er ..." I was too embarrassed to ask. "You want me to
take you flying?" She knew! I nodded. "Please?" I said. She laughed. "Sure, of
course I will. You know, for people who can't fly under their own power, you
humans surely do love to fly!"

She left. I cleaned up the kitchen a bit. I made myself lunch. I sat and ate
it, looking over at the computer occasionally, wondering if I still had the
nerve to get back into the meat market. I fired it up, and answered some email
from some of the guys who were still possibles. I suggested to a couple of
them that they might like to take me out someplace, maybe a theatre, or a
cinema. Not out in the country, I thought, but where there's lots of other
people. I wasn't going to be someone's victim again, but hell, that didn't
mean I couldn't get back into the dating game. And now I had a secret up my
sleeve; if I ever got into really bad trouble, then if I screamed really loud,
a white-and-gold thunderbolt would come and bail me out.

But you know what? I don't feel lonely any more.