CHAPTER 5 Riddick closed the door and faced the woman still rocking on her bedroom floor. She just looked so damn vulnerable! How the hell was he going to get her to come out of it? He wasn’t some psycho-tech with all their gobbledy-gook and meds. He was an on the run killer with way too many layers of self-survival instinct to make a good friend. And even worse, if he let his compassion for Zar come out, would it weaken those self-survival instincts? What if, in warming her heart from its trap of cold and pain, also warmed his own cold heart? Wouldn’t that reduce his chances of survival? Hadn’t he compromised it somewhat already in his protection and care of Jack and Imam? Caring about people is what made you vulnerable. They were weapons one’s enemies could use against you. They stopped you from being able to do the tough things that sometimes needed to be done. Something he couldn’t chance. But staring at Zar’s face and her very obvious need to be held and comforted, he knew he didn’t have the strength to walk away. Just like he hadn’t had the strength to walk away when those things on Taurus 2 had attacked Jack in the bone yard. He slowly lowered himself into a sitting position behind Zar. His long legs on either side of her and his back up against the side of her bed. Not sure what kind of reaction his touch would produce, he gently grasped her by the upper arms and eased her off her knees. She let him move her like a rag doll, though he could feel the tension running through her frame. Soon her back was up against his chest and his arms curled around her waist. She hadn’t said a word during the whole process, though he could still hear her crying. Tears dripped off her cheeks and splashed onto his crossed arms. "Zar? You have to calm down and tell me what’s wrong. What’s got a hold of you?" Her only reaction was to lay her head against his chest. The smell of shampoo she used drifting up to him. Lowering his head till his lips barely brushed her ear he murmured the question again. Silent seconds passed by and he was starting to think he had bit off more than he could chew. "Have you ever killed a child?" "What?!" Where the hell had that come from? "NO! I’ve never killed a child. Or a teenager for that fact. My confrontations have all been with grown men. Why?" No response, just a slight shiver coursing through her body. Riddick reached behind him and grabbed the comforter off her bed. Throwing it around his shoulders he closed it around the both of them. Cocooning them in each other’s body heat. "Why ask about killing a child Zar? Why??!!" A blinding thought occurred to him, what if...? "Did you kill a child Zar?" He had a hell of a time even imagining it. Especially with her obvious care for Jack. But sometimes people did bad shit when push came to shove. Or maybe there had been an accident. Her answer was so quite he had to bend nearer to hear it. "No...but I watched them kill mine." So that was it. Something or someone had dredged up a bad memory today. He had wondered, during the many times he had watched her do her domestic activities around the apartment, what kind of past she had. She seemed so motherly to Jack, and acted unlike someone who had been alone for most of their adult life. But to see your child murdered! "How?" "I can’t...I can’t! It’s taken so long to get on with life. The pain will kill me!" Her sobbing escalated at the last of her words. "You have to! Your PAIN is killing you now! You can’t last like this much longer. You’re tearing yourself up inside. Let it out!" She felt his arms around her, his solid chest at her back. The two of them wrapped in the comforter gave her a feeling of being in a different time and place. Where no one else existed but Richard, her and her pain. How nice if was just the two of them without the pain! But she didn’t think she could do it. It was just too hard to tramp down the instinct that kept her functioning for the past four years. The instinct to bury the pain so that she could lead a life. Then suddenly it seemed she had no choice. Elson Brenner’s face flashed before her eyes and the pain and memories rose up in her like vomit. "He killed my baby! Oh God! The bastard killed my whole family!" "Shhh...calm down. Tell me from the beginning." He felt her gathering her strength. And maybe dredging up the memories that had been buried down deep." "It was four years ago. I lived with my husband, Lloyd Arnett and our daughter Elizabeth on a colonial rural planet named Jessup 2. We lived about an hour out of the main community, Branson’s Hole. We had a pretty good life. Lloyd mined gypsomnite and did a little farming. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we got by fine. We were even talking about having another baby. Elizabeth was almost two. The one thing we did have was a lot of land. Land that a particular consortium wanted very badly. They offered an outrageous amount of money for it, but Lloyd didn’t want to sell. He wanted to stay, put down the roots for Elizabeth that neither he nor I had. We had both been Orion Plague babies. Orphaned in the outbreak of ’45. I figured he knew best. But the offers kept coming and getting bigger and bigger. Lloyd and I kept refusing. Then all of a sudden they stopped. I guess we should’ve known something was coming, but naively we just thought they had given up. One day, about 3 months later, 4 men showed up. Rough men, dangerous men." Riddick new by her inflection she was talking about men like him. No wonder she asked if he had killed any children! For a man who feared little, he dreaded hearing the rest of the story. He could see himself so easily in her eyes as one of those four men. "Tollis Robinson was our only farm hand. He and Lloyd went out to see what they wanted. I kept Beth in the house with me for safety. HA! Little good that did! I should’ve run out the back door at first sight of them and not stopped till I got to the forest! I did, but too late. But at the time, I figured Tollis and Lloyd could handle them. No sooner had they stopped in front of the men when one of them shot Tollis in the leg. He went down on his knees. The other three grabbed Lloyd and tied him up. I was terrified! We had no weapons in the house! I hated fire arms with a passion anyway and had never learned to handle one. And though I loved Lloyd very much, and cared about Tollis, I wasn’t going to put my baby in harms way. So I grabbed her and ran for the back door. Right into the stinking arms of a fifth man I hadn’t seen. He dragged me, still holding the baby, out into the front yard and pushed me to my knees. They made me and Lloyd watch as they wrapped a wire around Tollis’ neck. Lloyd begged them not too. Said he would sell the land to them. Give it to the consortium for free! Just leave us alone! But the animals just ignored his pleas. With a man on each end, they pulled on the ends of the wires until...until...oh God! They decapitated him! The fucking butchers cut his head off!!! I had turned Beth’s face away from it. But I couldn’t stop watching. Thinking that this was just some nightmare and that I would wake up any minute. But I didn’t wake up. And it just got worse. The man watching me snatched Beth from my arms and threw her on the ground. I was enraged and terrified. I thought for sure he’d killed her. But that wasn’t his intention ...yet. He laughed at me as I tried to get to her in a panic. Pushing me back as I came within touching distance of her. Sneering and mocking me as I sobbed. Then he kicked the legs out from under me and I landed on my back. Just where he wanted me. He pushed down his pants and knelt over me. Ripping my pants down as he forced my hands under my butt. Beth was still crying, screaming really. I knew he was going to rape me, but I just wanted it over with so I could get to Beth! But he wanted to make it a nice long rape. Something that would cause Lloyd so much pain that he started begging and crying. But he couldn’t do a thing. They had him tied up facing me. He was within two feet of me but they wouldn’t let him near me. The first few minutes I just stared at Lloyd’s face. Listened to Beth ball. But then the pain got too bad and I had to close my eyes. The bastard was ripping me apart and ramming again and again into flesh that wasn’t meant to be treated that way! It seemed like hours, but it must have only been a few minutes at most. Finally he was done, pulling out and ejaculating on my stomach. And I thought ‘Finally, it’s over! They taught us a lesson and now they’ll leave!’ But they were far from done. I could only lie on the ground. I was bleeding internally and could feel the hot blood seeping from between my legs. I was barely conscious but felt relieved that Beth had quieted at least. The poor thing was in shock by that point I think. Lloyd was sobbing. Unable to say a word. Then the head guy, a man I later learned named Elson Brenner, lit up a cigarette. He nodded to one of the other men and that guy walked over to their transport vehicle and grabbed a portable fuel container off the back. They were going to torch the place! And they did. But only after dousing Lloyd with fuel also. Elson Brenner then tossed his cigarette onto my husband. Exploding him in flames. My God! How he screamed. I could feel the heat of him even in my semi-conscious state. But, Blessed Mother, he had enough mind left to throw himself away from Beth and me. It seemed forever before he stopped making any noise, even longer before his body stopped jerking. I knew it still wasn’t over. The one who had raped me grabbed Elizabeth and took her over to Brenner. I was filled with an absolute terror at the way he was looking at her. What were they going to do to my baby?! Holding her like a sack of potatoes under his arm he came over to me. And smiled down at me. The sickness of that smile. Then he started kicking me in the stomach and the head. I fought to stay conscious for Beth. I couldn’t leave her alone with him! But he didn’t want me unconscious or dead, just yet. The other men had spread fuel inside and around the outside of the house and set it on fire. But the front wall of the house wasn’t engulfed yet. Brenner walked over to that wall and laughed as he bashed my baby’s head against it. I truly pray she died of the first blow! Because after he swung her at the wall three or four times he dropped her on the ground, and crushed her head with his boot. That was my last conscious thought. I don’t know if the injuries finally caught up with me or if I just willed it. I figured, hoped, they would kill me then, but they left me for dead instead. They probably figured the animals from the forest would make quick work of the bodies. Three days later I woke up in the hospital in Branson’s Hole. A neighbor had seen the smoke and came to investigate. He had heard of Brenner and his gang’s handy work before this. So he took me to the hospital under an assumed name. He told me nothing was left of the farm. He and a few other’s had gone to bury the bodies. I tried to will my self to death the first two days after I awoke. I had lost my baby, my husband, my friend and all my material goods. I had nowhere to go. And no matter whether I was sleeping or awake, I kept hearing Beth’s scream, the sound of her skull cracking, seeing Lloyd on fire, Tollis’ decapitation, the rape. Then a priest had come by to see me, to pray for me and with me. I so hated him on sight. Look what God had done to me and mine! He was a smart priest. He didn’t give any of that "God’s Plan" bullshit. And that they were in a better place. He just said I was alive for a reason. That I had better figure it out before throwing it away. And that I would be dishonoring Lloyd, Beth and Tollis, plus giving the murderer’s another victory, by letting myself die. That though I could never hope for a physical revenge, I could enact a spiritual one by living. And living well. You know the old saying "Living well is the best revenge." Well now I understood it also. Father Gregory gave me money to get off Jessup 2, and got me a job on Polaris Station. I took back my maiden name, Cholena, just to be safe. I came here and existed if not lived. In time I made myself bury the memories. I knew that would be the only way to have any kind of life. That’s why I wouldn’t have any pictures of them or momentos even if any had survived. About six months ago I finally started having days where I wouldn’t even think about it. But I can truly say I never had anything close to happiness until Jack and the rest of you came along. I was just sort of drifting from day to day. Now I have a reason to put up with the shitty work, the crappy life. I haven’t smiled or laughed so much in years!" Riddick leaned his head back against the side of her bed. Silent as the thoughts ran through his head. Even a hardened man such as himself was sickened at such depravity. Decapitation, immolation, rape, infanticide! And this one little woman had survived it relatively intact. Still with the capacity to care and give. It made him ashamed of himself. For a number of reasons. First, he could have been one of those men, years down the line of course. But he knew that if Carolyn, Jack and Imam hadn’t come along, he would have eventually ended up a cold hearted, ugly murderer. The only thing he was well trained for was killing. The piloting and demolition expertise he learned from the AFS came in handy, but the killing would’ve been his bread and butter. Even before getting sent to Slam City for killing an officer, he had felt himself growing colder and harder in his heart. Secondly, starting out life in a liquor store trash bin, with a cord wrapped around his neck had ensured his life would begin shitty. But neither had he done anything to change it from becoming the hell it was. He thought about the umbilical cord around his infant neck, and then he thought of the determination and grief of Zar for her Beth. He had survived, Beth hadn’t. Maybe, like Zar surviving the attack, there was a reason why he survived the trash bin abandonment, Slam City and Taurus 3. The God he so hated, but so believed in, seemed to be leading him to something. Could this woman, along with Jack and Imam be it? He needed to think on it for a while. In the meantime, he still had to help Zar. He believed she would improve now. The telling of the story would hopefully release the pent up anger, grief and pain. But one thing still nagged at him. "Zar?" "Hmmm...?" She sounded half-asleep. Probably exhausted from the emotional upheaval. She had turned her body into his slightly and now rested her cheek against this chest. "What brought all this on? Did someone, one of us, do something to remind you?" "Unnh ah...I saw him today." "Saw who?" "Elson Brenner. He came into Polaris Station today while I was on duty." Riddick’s heart picked up with fear. "Did he see you?" "Yes, but he didn’t recognize me. He just gave me a once over and walked away. Richard?" He had started to rub her shoulder as a soothing gesture both for her and himself. "Yeah?" "Will you stay with me tonight? I don’t want to be alone. And I think you would keep the nightmares at bay." He smiled in the darkness and touched his lips to the top of her head. Just like Jack. Big, bad Riddick to keep the big, bad nightmares away. "Yeah. I’ll stay. But we’ve got to get into bed. My ass is falling asleep." He was rewarded with a soft chuckle and her lifting her face up to his in the darkness, aglow with a tender smile. She couldn’t see him in the darkness, but he could see her. What the hell, go for it! Leaning down, his lips barely brushed hers. For a man of strong sexual appetites, it was a surprisingly sexless kiss. Meant to reassure, not arouse. It was the first kiss of that type he had ever given, or received. It left him feeling vulnerable in a way he had never felt before. And he wasn’t sure if he liked it. He was grateful she didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with words after the kiss. She just continued to stare up at him, or where she thought his face would be. "Come on, let’s get into bed. It’s a lot softer than this floor." She leaned away from him to stand. He found he missed her warmth and looked forward to joining her in bed. He knew there would be no sex tonight. She was way too wounded. But he knew this woman would eventually be his lover. They had shared too much this night for things to go back to the way they were. He wanted her. Her strength, her inner beauty, her capacity for joy even when life had beat the shit out of her. He would erase the memory of any other man who had touched her. Even Lloyd. He wanted to be in her world. He wanted to be her world. He put her in bed on the side against the wall. A protective gesture. If anything came through that door, it would have to go through him to get to her. And as he wrapped his arms around her, felt her back against his chest, her bottom snuggled up against his stomach, he knew he had a mission. Elson Brenner was a dead man.

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CHAPTER 6