The Many Deaths of Ms. Croft

Putting a hand to her brow to shade her eyes, Lara sat up and sighed contentedly before reaching over and grabbing the sports bra lying beside her. She was no stranger to the hardships of a frugal life--after all, the millions ritiritish pounds in interest pouring into her accounts ever year meant nothing in the wild lands beyond civilization, where she sought treasures of old. However, Lara's mindset was different from that of a less monied person. Urgency was rarely a factor in her life, except in times of dire, direct peril; for the most part, she was usually content to slide through the days and hours easily and unnoticed, pausing here and there when something caught her interest. She was apt tddenddenly stop in the middle of something that required her immediate attention, in order to enjoy some small distraction that others might call petty in the face of other matters. Here she was in the middle of the Arizona desert, miles from the nearest prying eyes--well, human eyes; that scorpion was certainly getting a show--and the thought had struck her almost an hour ago, as she mounted the top of a dry, smooth cliff, that she hadn't found time to laze beneath her sunlamp in over a month. Enjoying the feel of the flat stone against her buttocks, and thwly-wly-bronzed gleam of her skin, she stretched the bra over her head and pulled it down around her breasts. She was far from witnesses at the moment--but the hike she had planned would change that. Wriggling into the blue-camo spandex leggings she'd chosen, she tied on her boots and strapped her pack onto her back, ready to resume the journey she'd begun in a temple in India.

An hour's steady marching brought her past a sign that said, "WARNING: PROPERTY US GOVERNMENT. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT." Aperlperly intimidating sentiment, to be sure, but all the soldiers in the American Army couldn't completely cover the wide perimeter of this facility; armed force backed by lethal intent was less a factor in its protection that was the intense isolation. Certainly, a vehicle traveling this close would have been noticed--but a lone woman on foot? Impossible that she would have made it this far without collapsing from exhaustion. The chances of some soldier on patrol stumbling onto her were so vanishingly small as to be discounted as impossible. It was with confidence that Lara walked along the base of the tall cliff to her left; on her right, a steep
rise gave way to a sun-baked plateau.

A rounded chip of supersonic metal smashed into Lara's head, just above her right ear; the impact caused it to to flatten sot itt it created a shockwave within her skull forceful enough to explode way much of the left half of her face. Flesh, bone, and near-liquid
chunks of blood-streaked brain hit the cliff wall with a dull splatter; Lara stumbled in confusion, horribly conscious but not quite alive. One eye bounced to the rocky desert floor; the other ran with tears of pain that the adventurer was not fully away of. Lara's shoulder and the remains of her head bumped into the cliff a moment later as her body instinctively tried to right itself; her nervous system fell into shambles and she stumbled to the ground, hair torn from her ponytail-holder streaking against the rock as it clung in the sticky blood. She made small noises in her throat, the remnants of a scream that had never reached her conscious mind. Some four hundred yards away, a patrol sergeant clapped a private on the back, congratulating him for his sharp eye and precise aim. Lara's newly-tanned body stirred and rustled as a tacky pool of spreading crimson leaked from her head.

"Wonder what she was doing out here," the private asked, standing behind his sergeant as the noncom leaned over roll Lara onto her back. The front, left quarter of her head was simply gone, scooped out and vomited all over the rock. The sergeant grabbed her rucksack and sliced through the straps, tossing the leather bag a few yards away. Lara's remaining eye slowly focused on him, and the remnants of her brain struggled to put together a question to ask him.

"Don't matter none," the sergeant grunted. "Get her boots, son, and pick up that ruck she was carrying when you're finished." Knife in hand, he grabbed the front of her sports bra and yanked it down, stretching the neckline to bunch beneath her breasts. His eyes didn't linger on her body, the way they might have on something he considered to be a human being, as he lifted, pulling the sports bra away from her skin and arching her back into the air. Lara blinked as her field of view suddenly shifted, then blinked again as blood ran into her eye. As the private knelt to undo her boots, the noncom made two quick cuts in the folds of material in his hand, and the sports bra suddenly snapped away from her body. Taking a crabwalk step sideways, the grizzled sergeant began pulling the nylon material of Lara's stretch pants down around her hips, tossing the ruined bra behind him. Vaguely, Lara felt a wave of indignation brush through her, and anger at whoever was daring to touch her so. The private finished the boots and peeled off her socks, then both grabbed a side of the stretch pants' waist and skinned them off of Lara's legs. Quickly and efficiently, the pair stuffed her clothing and equipment into her rucksack, then tossed the whole bundle into a burn bag for later incineration.

They turned to leave, the sergeant lighting up a cigarette. Behind them, Lara's naked corpse twitched and jerked, her throat convulsively swallowing with a rhythmic pattern of dry clicks. By the time the coyotes found her, only her right foot was still making small shivers. Her skin was ash-pale as they sniffed her, licking at the bloody wound in her head; darker discolorations on the high parts of her exposed body marked where the sun had burnt her dead flesh during the day.

The coyotes feasted on her for a week. When they were finished, nothing remained to show that she'd ever been there.