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  RAVE REVIEWS FOR

  J. F. GONZALEZ AND SURVIVOR!

  "It pushes your eyes off the page and then pulls them back, forcing the kind of visceral relationship between writer and reader that the best horror writing can produce"

  -The New York Times Book Review

  "Fans of Jack Ketchum are definitely going to enjoy Survivor. You need to buy this book."

  -Cemetery Dance

  "Quite possibly the most disturbing book I've ever read in my life."

  -Brian Keene, Author of City of the Dead

  "J. F. Gonzalez is a writer to watch."

  -Bentley Little, Author of The Policy

  "[T]his is extreme horror, unflinching and uncompromising."

  -Chiaroscuro

  HER TURN IS COMING

  Lisa tried not to watch, tried to drown out the sounds of what was going on, but she felt drawn to the scene as it was being filmed.

  As the assault continued, Lisa had feigned unconsciousness for what felt like hours. Lisa had never heard anybody scream in pain the way Debbie screamed. The screaming went on for a while and was punctuated by wet slapping sounds.

  Somehow, Lisa managed to suffer through the ordeal of listening to Debbie Martinez being brutalized while she cowered in the comer, trying to drown out what was happening. For the first time since her ordeal the thought of the fetus in her womb didn't come up. It's never going to be, she had thought, her heart heavy with sadness. Brad and I aren't going to have our baby, %w'11 never get the chance to make a baby again because when they're finished with Debbie they're going to-do the same to me.

  Lisa didn't know if Debbie was dead or alive until the three men left. She heard them packing the camera and lighting gear up, and she heard the blond guy ask, "Is it okay if we leave that one here until tomorrow or the next day?"

  SURVIVOR

  J. F. GONZALEZ

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you: Dave Nordhaus for taking the bait the first time with Maternal Instinct, and Shane Ryan Staley for pulling it off; to Bill Relling and Bob Strauss for the editorial support when I needed it. The biggest thanks go to Gilbert Schloss for coming to the rescue when nobody would step up to the plate.

  The following people also need to be thanked for various reasons, primarily for their friendship and support during the writing of this novel; in some cases for sending me money when I needed it or for providing technical support; in others, for their sheer wonderfulness: Cathy and Hannah, Joe and Lucy Becker, Jesus and Glenda Gonzalez; Gary Zimmerman and Bonesaw; Sean Wallace, Mary Wolf, Brian Hopkins; Matt Schwartz, Del and Sue Howison; Ramona Pearce and Salpy Manjikian; Trish Chervenak, Wrath James White, and Khaled Hosseini, MD, for providing me with answers to my questions as they pertained to their individual fields (and I hope I didn't mess up too badly); the California Highway Patrol and LAPD; Andrew Vachss and the Zero; Monster.com; the city of Las Vegas and the Luxor Hotel; John Graff; Kevin Johnson, Gord Rollo, Garrett Peck, and Brian Keene for their support and friendship; to Coop for helping stage the first "antireading"; and for my readers who believe in me.

  A tip of the hat to G. Hof, Zack Venable, and Buddy Martinez for inspiration they never could have imagined. And to Zack, Richard Long, Angel Garcia, Justin Grave, and William Smith-any longtime buddies and partners in crime. Your secret's safe with me.

  SURVIVOR

  Prologue

  October 5, 1955

  Lititz, Pennsylvania

  Their neighborhood was deserted. Nobody had seen her get off the school bus at the corner of Lincoln and Elm on the outskirts of town, heading toward Rothsville Road. Bonnie Febray clutched her books to her chest, her skirt flapping against her shapely legs as she commenced her walk home. The autumn wind blew brittle leaves along the sidewalk, and she could sense the approach of fall as the skin along her arms rose to goose pimples at the sudden cold. She hugged herself. Football season was already well under way, and it was going to be a good year. She was head cheerleader this year at Warwick High School, she was dating Richard Swiegert, star quarterback of the team, and this was her senior year.

  I'm on top of the world!

  Traffic along Rothsville Road was light. There was a small development, about a half a mile from the White Swan restaurant, where Rothsville Road curved into Newport Road, and that is where she had gotten off. She lived just four blocks down Elm Street, the direction in which she was headed now. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was three-thirty PM. Mom was supposed to be at Kenny's game this afternoon; they were playing Cocalico in the Middle-School Division. They would get home about the same time Dad arrived home from work at Armstrong, and by then Bonnie would be home, clothes changed, showered and fresh, the smell of sweat and sex scrubbed off her. She felt her skin flush with excitement and a rising sense of shame as she drew closer to her destination. She cast furtive glances around the neighborhood. Bobby Martin and his snot-nosed friends from up the street weren't playing on their front porch-that was a good thing. She paused as she approached her home, looking around to see if anybody was around. She was fairly confident no one was paying attention to her, so she quickly walked past her house and darted up the sidewalk, heading to the Smith house, a cute brick home with a porch swing on the covered porch.

  She darted up the steps to the porch and knocked on the wooden screen door. Her heart was pounding. Her stomach fluttered. Nerves. She didn't dare risk glancing back over her shoulder. There was really no reason to be ashamed. If anybody asked, she would simply explain that Mabel wanted her to stop by and help her with the bake sale that the First Methodist church was having next Sunday. It was true; Mabel had asked her to help her prepare a batch of chocolate-chip cookies and a cake two weeks ago. Bonnie had run to the store for ingredients while Mabel took her kids, a son and a daughter, to the Lititz Recreation Center. That's how it had started.

  Now they were lovers.

  Footsteps approached from behind the door and Bonnie felt her stomach sink further into nervous despair. When it swung open, revealing Mabel's blond, slender figure, Bonnie smiled. "Hi! Um, I can't stay long, but-"

  "Come on in." Mabel smiled as she opened the door, and Bonnie quickly scampered inside.

  Behind closed doors, they embraced. Kissed. Tingles of quivery sensation raced up and down Bonnie's spine. She felt her nipples harden. Why can't Richard make me feel like this? she thought as Mabel's hands and tongue explored her mouth, her breasts.

  Mabel smiled at her between kisses. -ibis is surprising. I wasn't expecting to see you today."

  Bonnie smiled, the shame and embarrassment of what she was involved with-and with an older woman!rising to the surface. "I was thinking about you at school."

  "That's nice."

  Bonnie kissed her. "l don't have much time."

  Mabel took the girl's hands and pulled her toward the rear of the house, toward the basement. "You've come just in time. I've got something to show you"

  "What?" For the first time, Bonnie noticed that beneath the red bathrobe Mabel was nude. Had she been playing with herself before Bonnie showed up?

  "A new game" Mabel pushed the door to the basement open and smiled. "Come. You'll enjoy it"

  Bonnie followed Mabel down the wooden stairs to the dimly lit basement. It was finished, but crudely so. The walls had been finished with rough concrete, wooden beams exposing bare insulation along the ceiling. The rear of the basement had a dirt floor, and it was here where Mabel was leading her. There was some kind of weird contraption on the dirt floor ... it looked like a mishmash of black rope and silver chains.

  Mabel led her to the strange contraption and smiled. She motioned toward it. "Let's get you out of those clothes."

  Bonnie began slipping out of her skirt and blouse, eyeing the bundle of leather on th
e floor. "You're not going to whip me again, are you?"

  "No, silly! It's a bondage harness."

  Bonnie slipped out of her bra, her perky breasts firm and supple. She kicked her shoes off and hesitated before pushing her panties down her legs. Mabel had slipped out of her robe and Bonnie saw that she had, indeed, been engaged in pleasuring herself. The skin along the back of the older woman's upper thighs and buttocks was bright red. Flagellation had been the first thing Mabel had introduced the younger girl to, and Bonnie found that she had actually enjoyed it.

  "Let me help you slip into this," Mabel said.

  Bonnie stood still while Mabel trussed her up. She wound the leather straps around her waist and hips, then around her legs, binding them together. Another strap was wound up between her legs to another series of crisscrossing straps that bound her arms up. Mabel raised Bonnie's arms above her head, securing them together. Then she attached a metal ring to a section of the strap that lashed her wrists together, and another that bound her ankles. She helped lower Bonnie to the dirt floor. Bonnie felt the cold dirt along her ass as she waited, her excitement rising as she watched Mabel secure both ends of the harness to metal hooks in the ceiling. Then she began hoisting her up off the floor.

  Bonnie grinned as her body rocked to and fro. They had played a similar game before in the bedroom Mabel shared with her husband, only instead the older woman had tied Bonnie to the bed. Are we going to-"

  "Umm, hmmm," Mabel smiled. She inserted a red ball gag in Bonnie's mouth and secured it with a leather strap behind her head. "I'm going to eat you up!"

  Bonnie felt the cool air at her puckered nipples. Mabel kissed each breast, chuckling as her teeth nipped lightly at the skin. Then she worked her way down her navel to her thighs. Bonnie sighed, eyes closed, the feathery, sensual feelings creating such a vertigo of feeling that it was like a whirlpool. And when she felt Mabel's hand part her legs, felt a finger work its way into her warm wetness, she sighed.

  For a moment she was lost in the sound and sensation of Mabel's hands and lips. She felt herself getting wetter, felt her heart race, unmindful now of the shame she knew such a relationship would bring to her family should they find out. She didn't care. The way Mabel treated her made her feel a thousand times better than any boy she had given herself to.

  Mabel's lips ran kisses from the hollow of her throat, up her face, and lightly kissed each closed eye. Bonnie opened her eyes as Mabel's working fingers reached her G-spot. Mabel leaned over her, her lips over her right eye. You have such beautiful eyes, honey."

  "Mmmm." Bonnie could taste the leather of the ball gag; it made her quiver in anticipation. She opened her eyes as her lover's warm breath brought more feathery sensations to her face as she licked at the tender area of her upper right eyelid.

  Mabel's lips moved over Bonnie's right eye in a kiss as her fingers worked their way in and out of her pussy harder. 'then, just as Bonnie felt the first shudder of orgasm, Mabel's mouth pressed down over Bonnie's open right eye and began to suck.

  What the fuck? Bonnie instinctively flinched at the sudden pressure being applied to her eye and the feathery sensations of pleasure turned into a sudden about-face of panic and pain. She felt Mabel's tongue brush against the fluttery skin of her eyelid, heard the moist sucking sound grow more frenzied as she squirmed and her mind shot into panic mode. What the luck is she doing, what the`

  Then her right eye exploded into extreme pain.

  Bonnie Fabray was beyond panic-now she was petrified. She struggled wildly in the bondage harness, rocking it in its secure straps as Mabel held her head in place between her hands, her mouth forming a perfect suction cup over her eye socket. Bonnie could feel the older woman's teeth and tongue pull at the orb as her mouth sucked at her eyeball the way a child will draw a thick chocolate milk shake through a straw. The pain exploded as Mabel jerked her head back in a spray of blood, a flap of skin between her teeth, and the vision in Bonnie's right eye went watery blurry.

  She wasn't even aware she was trying to scream through the ball gag. Mabel spit the flap of skin-my eyelid, was that my eyelid?-onto the ground and went at her again. Bonnie howled through the gag, trying to flail her head as the older woman clutched her face in her hands. Warm blood spattered her cheeks. The pain rocked through her face, echoing to the back of her skull. Her panic reached overload; she wasn't even aware of Mabel's tongue and teeth as her right eyeball was simultaneously sucked and pulled out of the socket by the combined force of Mabel's mouth and teeth.

  Another explosion of pain, this one so great that everything went black.

  Then, sudden consciousness.

  The first thing she was aware of was the ferocious pain in her right eye. Even opening her left eye brought fresh waves of pain through her face. She tasted leather on her tongue, felt the straps that bound her arms and legs together, and felt gunk in her left eye. She forced it open, agony rocking through her face, and through tear-blurred vision she saw Mabel Schneider standing before her.

  Mabel Schneiders face was bloodied, but she was smiling. She was chewing something, and as Bonnie felt her gorge rise, Mabel stepped forward and swallowed something. "I just love your eyes," she said, as she leaned over Bonnie Febray again for seconds.

  PART ONE

  Maternal Instinct

  August 2, 1998

  Southern California

  One

  They had set off at noon that day, heading north from Al- iso Viejo on Interstate 5 toward Cambria, where they were planning on visiting Hearst Castle in San Simeon. They stopped in North Hollywood for lunch around two P.M. at a Coco's restaurant that they spotted from the freeway. It was their first real vacation in over a year, they had been looking forward to it for two months, ever since Brad began to make the plans. Lisa was looking forward to it. She knew it was going to be a romantic weekend, and she was going to use the opportunity to tell her husband that she had just found out this morning that she was pregnant.

  They had been married for five years and had been trying to get pregnant for the past two. After a year of no results from their attempts, they had sought the help of a fertility doctor. After a series of tests, it was concluded that: a) Brad had a low sperm count, and b) Lisa's irregular periods made conception much more difficult. So be gan a nearly yearlong quest to correct the problem with modern medicine. Numerous drugs and injections were undertaken, and then once a month, when Lisa ovulated, they both went into her ob-gyn for an IUI. Of course, they tried on their own every chance they had; for six months nothing happened, and then she had her last insemination two weeks ago. And with that came the news she had been hoping and praying for.

  It was hard to keep the news a secret. She had taken a home pregnancy test Monday, and had gone into her doctor's on Wednesday for a more definitive test. The doctor's office had called this morning with the results. "Congratulations!" the receptionist had said. "You are definitely pregnant." When Lisa heard the news she allowed herself a small cry, and then quickly gained control of her emotions. Brad had gone into the office briefly to finish some paperwork on a case, and she decided to tell him over dinner tonight, in Cambria. She wanted to be with him when she told him, letting her emotions convey her happiness; she wanted the setting of a nice romantic dinner to relay this wonderful news.

  As they made small talk at the restaurant, Lisa played out the scenario she had in mind for telling Brad, and reflected on the last few years of their married life. She had felt a sense of despair during the past year they had been trying to have a baby. There were thousands of women who had babies that didn't appreciate the life they had helped to create. She grew angry whenever she heard a news story about a baby being abandoned in a trash can. What the hell was wrong with people? There were thousands of couples that would give anything to adopt a child, and these selfish bitches dump their kids like so much trash. It was pathetic. And then there were children that grew up in disadvantaged homes. She knew that she and Brad would be able to provide for their
child above and beyond providing food and shelter. As lawyers, they both had a combined yearly salary of just under three hundred thousand dollars; their child would never have to worry about being hungry. She knew that any child she and Brad had would be well taken care of, both in love and in security.

  While Lisa usually didn't like to discuss personal stuff at work, she had let it slip to her coworker, Danielle, that she and Brad had reservations for Hearst Castle this weekend. "San Simeon?" Danielle had said, smiling. "How romantic!"

  One of the senior partners had been walking to his office, and he'd turned to Lisa and Danielle. "Did I hear somebody mention San Simeon? If you're going to Cambria, may I recommend Bonito's? It's right on the main drag, across the street from the post office. It has a very elegant atmosphere and great food." "

  "I'll have to keep that in mind," Lisa said, grinning.

  *When are you leaving?" The senior partner had approached her, his features open and friendly. He had been one of the partners responsible for her recent promotion to junior partner, and his office was directly behind hers. They usually traded good-mornings in the coffee room, and lately they'd been working together on a case. His name was George Brooks.

  "Tomorrow morning," she said, looking up at George. "My husband and I had been planning this off and on for a few months. We finally locked in the reservations last month.*

  "Sounds wonderful," George said, his features sunny, carefree. He looked immaculate in his white shirt and blue satin vest. "You driving up 101? It's a beautiful drive.

  "Yes, it is," Lisa had agreed. "We're going to take a nice, leisurely drive up"

  "How long does it take to get up there?" Danielle had asked.

  "Four hours," Lisa had said. "Brad has a few things to do tomorrow morning, then we'll probably leave from there, around ten or so."

  "Sounds like you're going to have a good weekend," George had said, nodding at her."Have a good time." He had turned and headed to his office.