SARI AND THE EXPEDITION

BY LOR OLDMAN

[ part 3 ]

By the fifth day of the expedition some semblance of respectability had been restored to the scores attained by the depleted team. The entire group had redrawn the maps of their territory under the guidance of the eleven year old girl. They had succeeded in solving the riddles in the treasure hunts and had completed the half dozen tasks set by the organizers. The penultimate day involved the use of some fairly elementary pieces of equipment to measure temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, and air pressure. They had also to collect samples of soil, water, rock and air. Sari had been doing these exercises from her first days in preparatory school. There was safety in numbers, Sari had decided. Consequently, the tasks were performed by the entire team rather than by individuals or pairs as they had been on the first two days.

"We can put some soil in a little box," stated one of the boys sagely, "and some water in a bottle, and pick up a bit of rock. But how the hell do you take a sample of the air?" When Sari explained about atmospheric displacement and told him to take the lid off and shake a jar about for a few minutes, he stared disbelief and demanded, "Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?" And the other boys laughed.

Sari had no way of knowing how it happened, but suddenly in mid-afternoon she found herself in the company of the two New Yorkers, the boy from Chicago and Shalem Hoser. The other three boys, she suspected, had been threatened with violence if they followed. The girl and the boys had wandered into a shallow gulch. The passage had become extremely narrow and rough. She surveyed the scene and decided. "We’ll make for that plateau." She pointed to an accessible slope leading to the top of the escarpment. "We can take our bearings from there."

The boys allowed her to lead for a quarter of the distance. She had left her school jacket behind in the bus. There were traces of perspiration on the underarms of her white blouse and along her spine. Her skirt seemed, if anything, shorter than it had been on their previous viewing of it. The immaculate legs were seen to fullest advantage from below on the climb. And the spotless panties appeared as a flash of whiteness in the bright sunlight. When they reached the first plateau, a shelf with a deep indentation in the solid rock, Bret Stack caught up with her, held her by the arms and pinned her against the rock face.

"This is as far as you go, baby," he snapped. "We have needs that have to be met, and you are all that’s available at this point in time, so I reckon we’ll have to make do." Sari struggled and kicked, but he kept a fast hold on her. He inclined his head to the others. "What do you think, guys? Will she do?"

"I reckon!" replied Grossland. Hoser and Louis laughed.

Sari was forced to the ground. Her head banged the hard rock and, while she did not lose consciousness, for several seconds she was dazed and confused and consequently debilitated. Stack threw himself on top of her. She fought and wriggled free from his grasp. Hoser and Grossland pursued her and brought her back into the close confines of the narrow cleft in the rock. Louis took hold of her wrists and Hoser her ankles. She was stretched out and held as fast as if by ropes and chains and straps. Yett Grossland bared her chest and Bret Stack pulled her panties down to her feet. Hoser yanked them free and threw them aside. Sari twisted and turned. She snarled threats.

"Yeah, yeah, sweetheart," sneered Stack. "You’ll report us to the feds and we’ll get ten years inside." He caressed her shapely legs and brought his hand up to her crutch and rubbed while Grossland mauled her small breasts. "But by that time we’ll have screwed the ass off you, and we’ll all have the memory. So you may as well lay back and enjoy the ride, baby!" He undid his belt and flies and pulled his pants down to his knees. He took over from Hoser, spread her legs and hauled her hips along the rough rock to meet his. Sari could not help but notice that he was every bit as well endowed as Louis. She felt his hardness being introduced to her moistness. She felt her hymenal membrane stretching. She braced herself for the boy’s thrust into her. Tears flooded her eyes. She screamed. "O, Lor! I am sorry!" She felt Stack hardening…

….and then the world around her suddenly and inexplicably exploded into primeval chaos for a split second of eternity. A golden brown shadow burst above her head. Bret Stack’s scream ripped at her nerve-endings. She felt him being lifted from her, sucked away, as it were, up into the hot, dry atmosphere. There was a strong animal smell and the stench of freshly drawn blood. Her wrists were released. She sat up. A massive growling, grunting puma, as long as Stack was tall, was rolling about agitatedly on top of the boy and ripping at clothing and flesh. The three other boys, trapped inside the narrow enclosure, were frozen with fear. Hoser was quaking uncontrollably and Grossland had wet himself. Jackson Louis could only gawk with eyes that had never been wider; saliva dribbled from his gaping mouth.

"Stop it!" yelled Sari. She lunged at the beast, flung her arms around its thickset neck and tried to pull it free from the boy. She could scarcely focus because of the tears. "Oh, please stop. Please! Please don’t kill him!"

The beast halted its attack after a couple of minutes. It twisted a blood-sotted face to the girl and bared its teeth. She shrank back in terror. The animal grumbled its dissatisfaction, cast an apathetic glance at its bleeding prey then eyed the other three boys. There seemed another eternity of inaction, broken only when Davis Carter fired the single shot. It was meant to be aimed into the vacant air, but there was the sound of a stinging ricochet from the uneven rock, a glancing disturbance of the dust, and the pellet nicked the rump of the cat. The cougar spun round on the spot, sprang upwards to the rock ledge and disappeared.

Bret Stack lay silent. Sari bent over him. She ripped off her blouse and wrapped it around his gashed neck. Very gently, she turned the boy on to his back. His eyes were half closed. She searched frantically for a pulse; there was none, but blood continued to pump from his torn veins.

"You!" She yelled at the boys. "Give me your shirts! Now!"

She was giving Stack mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when Davis Carter and the other three boys finally reached the shelf.

"Are you all right?" Carter demanded. When Sari rewarded him with a withering look and continued with her ambulance efforts on the injured Stack, he barked orders to the six boys. There was a first aid box next to the driver’s seat on the bus, and a stretcher under the floor at the rear. He removed his safari jacket and draped it over the all but naked girl.

"Bret!" Sari soothed tearfully. "Don’t leave us." She hugged the boy. "Please hang on! Please don’t die! We’ll get you to hospital!"

Stack grunted and closed his eyes. "Oh, please don’t go!"

There was an atmosphere of subdued resignation about the camp on their last evening. An air ambulance had removed Stack to the emergency unit of the nearest hospital. The latest word Carter had received was that the boy had horrific, life-threatening injuries, that he was fighting for his survival and that everything humanly possible would be done for him, but that it would be fruitless to hope too much for a full recovery. Things were bad! That bad!

Jackson Joe Louis appeared by Sari’s side. "I’m sorry!" he said. The girl sat apart from the others. "Truly and really sorry!" he insisted. His moist eyes refused to be averted. She looked exquisite. She had scrubbed the blood from her and put on fresh clothes. And there was a seemingly resolute tranquillity about her, an almost mysterious appearance of being in accord with everyone and everything around her. It was a state of mind beyond the limits of the boy’s comprehension. "I can’t blame you for being…." He searched for the words; he felt sincerely regretful, but did not know how to express himself. It was a totally new experience for him; he had never before in his life felt the need to apologise for anything, especially to a girl. This was different, completely and overwhelmingly different.

"Sceptical?" suggested Sari. In an inexplicable way she really liked this big, clumsy coloured boy. She emitted a long sigh and wondered, if things had been otherwise, could she have felt for Joe Louis what she felt, deep down inside her, for Lor Oldmann.

The boy produced the torn panties from her first confrontation. "I think you should have these." He attempted to stammer more words of apology.

Sari eyed the garment for a long time. "No! I think you should keep them, Jackson," she replied after the prolonged silence. "It may serve to remind you of what might have been had you gone about it differently." She softened and smiled. "And it may be lesson material for you in the future – to reinforce the message that there is much more to love than self-gratification!"

Jackson Louis shifted uncertainly. He found it difficult to concentrate in the presence of such an attractive female, even one so young. He stuffed the garment back into his pocket. "Look," he said with determination, "I am really sorry for what has happened." There was truth in this little packet of life, as Sari’s school motto proclaimed, and there was an earnestness on the boy’s face. "I would rather die right now than do anything else to hurt you. I swear it. I would give anything not have done these things to you. If there is ever anything I can do for you, anything at all, I’ll do it without question or complaint. That is a promise!"

Sari gave a quiet laugh. "Like your promise not to rape me?" She instantly regretted the words; the boy was so remorseful, there were tears in his huge eyes. Her heart melted. "I’m sorry Jackson; I should not have said that. I believe you!" She smiled on him. "And hereby forgive you your trespasses." She laughed. "And acquit you of all guilt." She stood. She kissed his cheek. She watched him retreat to join the others around the campfire that Davis Carter had lit. A strangely deep longing had crept up on her. She wanted Lor Oldmann. She needed Lor Oldmann. Her shoulder started jerking with a persistence that shattered her apparent composure; there was a stirring in the abyss inside her and a surging churning in her stomach. She joined the boys at their barbecue, but was aware that she was staring at Jackson Joe Louis. The inner disturbance intensified as the prairie night closed in on them. Sari felt sick, but it was the kind of sickness for which there is no known cure. She was hungry, but it was the birth of a hunger that does not go away with eating. A tug-of-war was being contested in her mind, and for once she had only the vaguest notion of what she was about to do for it. When the boys split up for the night, Sari called out, "Jackson, can I speak to you for a bit?" She had never before felt so unsettled – nor so sensual. "I need your help tonight!"

Davis Carter had already offered to occupy her tent again while she slept in the locked bus. She refused, insisting that the day’s traumatic effect would be sufficient safeguard. "The boys have had enough excitement to last them a while," she said.

Jackson Joe Louis woke with the early morning coldness in Sari’s tent. He appraised the girl. She was naked except for the brief panties with the school crest and the Latin motto. It was another entirely new experience for him: to have passed the night with a girl who was still a virgin in the morning. He leaned across and kissed her gently on the lips. Then dressed. And left. There was a germinating sense that, in some odd way which he still had difficulty in understanding, he had acquitted himself with honour. Sari had been sublimely satisfied – several times in the night. Nor was Jackson Joe Louis complaining! But then, he was an expert. And Sari had proved to be a zealous learner.