Free Death Trance by Graham Masterton

'Leave her alone, she's only thirteen! For God's sake, what kind of people are you? Leave her alone! If you want to hurt anyone, hurt me, but for God's sake, leave her alone!’
    She clawed at the man's face and snatched at the swinging dogtags around his neck. He tried to twist her away, but the string holding the dogtags snapped, and they dropped on to the floor, and disappeared into the wide crack between two of the floorboards.
    'You total bitch!’ the man told her, and punched her in the mouth with his gloved fist. One of Marmie's front teeth was knocked down her throat and the bridge on the right-hand side of her jaw was snapped in half. As her mouth filled with blood, she began to choke and gag.
    Without even turning to see what had happened, the man with the axe hefted the weapon so that he held it close to the blade. Then, with three crunching slices, he cut through Issa's hair. Issa moaned, staggered and almost fell but the man holding her arm behind her back hoisted her to her feet again.
    Now the man with the axe slid his right hand into the front of Issa's yellow- and white-striped T-shirt. He cupped Issa's breasts for a moment, his chest rising and falling heavily. Then he lifted the axe blade again, sticky with blood and hair, and used it to slice the T-shirt open from neckline to hem.
    Marmie, weeping, her mouth running with blood, tried to protest. But the man turned and came over to her, indicating with an upward jerk of the axe that she should get to her feet. She did so unsteadily, almost to the point of collapse.
    The man ripped open Marmie's blouse too, with rough, sawing tugs. Although Marmie closed her eyes, she could hear the irregular harshness of his breathing behind his mask. She felt the roughness of his gloved hand tugging at her bra and then the coldness of the axe blade against her skin. She kept her eyes closed as the axe sawed into the waistband of her jeans and cut the elastic of her panties.
    She could scarcely move her feet as the men half-pushed, half-carried her into the bedroom. She could see the nightmare for herself in the full-length mirrors in the closet doors, the masked intruders as faceless and frightening as characters in a Japanese No play, her own white, nude body held between them. She cried, 'Dear God, don't kill me!’
    Issa was dragged into the bedroom too. Then both of them were forced onto the bed, guns pressed so hard against their foreheads that they imprinted scarlet circles in their skin. One of the men disappeared briefly and then returned with a length of nylon cord snatched from the clothesline outside. They tied Marmie and Issa face-to-face, their arms clutched around each other, and their necks, arms and ankles ferociously and painfully lashed with cord.
    'Issa, don't cry, my darling. They're not going to kill us,’ Marmie promised. Issa's naked body felt so cold as it pressed against her, she was so close that all Marmie could see of Issa's face was one madly staring eye, red-rimmed with tears. Her shorn hair was in clumps, sticky with her brother's blood.
    'Don't cry, darling. Whatever happens, they're not going to kill us.’
    She felt the weight of the first man press down the springs of the bed behind her. She strained her neck against the binding cords and saw a second man climb onto the bed behind Issa. She could see that he had taken off his tracksuit pants and that he was brandishing himself in his fist as if he were holding a cudgel.
    She cried aloud as the first man penetrated her but the silent cry she uttered inside herself when the other man penetrated Issa was by far more painful. For a few minutes there was a terrible, intense quietness in the room, interrupted only by the grunting of the men and the jostling sound of the bedclothes. Issa held her mother tight, every muscle in her body as rigid as high-tension wire, and Marmie prayed that the girl was too deep in shock to understand what was happening to her.
    The men finished their ritual with