The Gristle & Bone Series (Book 1): The Flayed & The Dying

by Roach, Aaron

  “Your dad’s not coming back, girl,” Lou sneered as he resumed his place in front of the fire. “Not alive, at least.”

  Riley gave Lou the finger, to which he responded with a barking laugh.

  “Hush baby,” said Molly, taking the pup from Riley’s hands. “Ignore him. He’s a bully and we don’t give bullies the satisfaction of our attention, remember? Come on, go find me the duct tape and two small sticks. Let’s see if we can fix Little Brother’s leg.”

  Riley ran over to the Sullivan’s designated area of the cavern and began rummaging through their supplies. While she looked, Molly tried to calm the whimpering animal in her hands. Little Brother had almost doubled in size in the days since they’d rescued him from Darby, and she and Gabe had grown as attached to the pup almost as much as Riley had. It broke her heart to see him suffering.

  “Shh,” she cooed, “I know, I know, it hurts. We’re going to fix it though, real soon.” She brought him up and nuzzled her face against his. “It’s okay.”

  Little Brother seemed to calm with her affections, and soon Riley reappeared with a grey roll of tape held in her hand, as well as a few sturdy twigs taken from the pile of kindling for the fire.

  The two Sullivans walked outside and into the fading day. Despite the waning light, they could see better out there than they could inside the fire-lit cave. They sat down cross-legged on a patch of grass near the entrance, and Molly rested Little Brother in her lap.

  “This is going to hurt, buddy,” Molly said, keeping her tone happy and light for the pup’s sake. Little brother gnawed at the fingers that held his paw and whimpered as she grasped his injured leg. Molly cooed, “One, two, three.” She shifted the bones until she felt them snap into place and the pup let out a piercing squeal. Quickly, she placed the sticks around the leg and bound the whole thing tightly with duct tape until she was sure the splint was set, and the bones wouldn’t come loose again.

  She hoped it was enough.

  “Mom,” said Riley next to her, “there’s something over there.”

  Molly snapped her head towards where Riley pointed and swore fearfully when she saw rustling in the trees. She stood, holding Little Brother protectively in her arms and shoving Riley behind her. Before she could tell her daughter to run inside, a massive deer emerged from the thicket of trees.

  “Help us out with this, would you?” the deer said in Gabe’s voice.

  Gabe and Bishop came out of the forest walking single file with the buck draped over their shoulders, with Gabe supporting its front half and Bishop carrying the hind. The way they held the creature gave the illusion the deer was still alive, dancing some macabre dance of the dead.

  “Neither of us had a knife - rookie mistake,” Gabe grunted from beneath the carcass as they drew closer. “So we couldn’t field dress it. This thing weighs a ton.”

  Riley ran past Molly and threw herself at her father, who tried not to fall with the weight of the deer still on his shoulder. Riley talked a mile a minute and in a matter of seconds, she told him everything: about Lou, and the food, about Little Brother, everything.

  “Wait, what?” Gabe said, trying to process the information. When Molly came up to him, his face was questioning, “Lou hit you?”

  “Other way around, dear,” she said, leaning up to kiss the cheek that wasn’t covered by deer.

  Gabe looked down at Little Brother in her hands, his eyes squinting angrily at the makeshift cast, “He do that?”

  “Yup,” Riley answered for her. “And he tried to fight Mom. James and Andy stopped him, though.”

  Gabe looked at Molly who shrugged, “We had a small disagreement, that’s all, hon.”

  “Let’s put it down here, Bishop,” Gabe said over his shoulder.

  Both men grunted as they heaved the carcass up and dropped it heavily on the ground next to them. They took a moment to stretch out their sore muscles and catch their breaths before Gabe spoke again, slipping his guns from his shoulder. “Hold this, will you, Bishop?” he said, handing the rifle over. Bishop nodded and took the weapon while Gabe slipped slugs into his shotgun. “Wait here,” he grumbled angrily as he marched past Molly and Riley and entered the mountain.

  Inside, the other cave dwellers fell silent as they registered who he was and the expression on his face. He came up behind Lou, who still hadn’t seen him, just as he was saying, “…maybe I’ll eat their fucking dog too.”

  Gabe leveled the barrel of the shotgun at the back of Lou’s head and waited until Lou looked up and saw the wide eyes of James and Andy staring behind him across the fire. He turned, slowly, and when he saw Gabe and the gun pointed at his face he tumbled backwards off his seat, stammering for words.

  “I’ve had a rough day, Lou,” Gabe said darkly before Lou could speak. “I had to kill a man today.”

  “Gabe, I…I didn’t mean…”

  “Get your knife, Lou.”

  “What, why?”

  “Get your fucking knife!” Gabe shouted. Everyone else in the cavern took a step back from his intensity.

  Lou scrambled across the dirt towards where he kept his belongings. He moved his bags around, looking for his knife, when he saw the handle of his pistol sticking out of a side pocket of his backpack. He reached for it when the cavern clapped the sound of a gunshot at him and earth was thrown up a foot away from his reaching hand. He looked up to see Bishop standing at the mouth of the cave, lining his sight down the scope of a rifle at him.

  “Gabe said a knife, Lou. You won’t be needing that.”

  Lou moved his hand away from the pistol and reached into his pack to pull out a knife.

  “Outside,” ordered Gabe from behind the shotgun.

  Together, Gabe and Bishop marched Lou through the crack in the rock, followed closely by the rest of the cave dwellers.

  “Gabe, I didn’t mean what I said,” Lou tried to explain. “And Molly hit me first, what’d you expect…”

  Gabe cut him off before he could continue. “Lou, I don’t care what you said to my wife that made her hit you. It was a disagreement, emotions were high, I get it. You’re forgiven for that. But you kicked my dog, Lou. You shouldn’t have kicked my dog.”

  Lou didn’t have a response for that and so he shut his mouth.

  As they approached the dead deer, Gabe ordered Lou to get on his knees. “Cut,” he demanded.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cut it open and take out the insides. The guts.”

  Lou did as he was told. He cut the buck’s belly open and piled the slithery intestines and organs in a bloody heap next to him.

  “Now skin it.”

  Lou lifted a flap of gristle and began cutting, tearing away great strips of skin and fur and adding it to the pile while everyone else watched. When the job was done, Gabe walked around to the other side of the carcass so Lou could see him. He pointed with his shotgun at the heap of intestines, fur, and bowels at Lou’s side.

  “That’s your ration, Lou. It should go well with your pasta and apples.”

  With that, Gabe lowered his gun and bent down to pick up the now dressed carcass. He dragged it inside where he would finish butchering it himself.

  The others followed him into the cave, walking past Lou, who sat next to his pile of innards stewing in quiet anger.

  At the back of the crowd, Bishop walked next to Molly in silence, his eyes cast to the ground. He hadn’t said a word to her since the day he’d killed her son.

  “Molly…” he hesitated, searching for words.

  “I heard about Nathan,” Molly answered before he could find them. She turned to face him, her expression was nothing but sadness and pity, “I’m so sorry, Bishop. So, so sorry.” With that, she pulled her son’s killer into a hug, where he broke down and sobbed softly into her shoulder.

  -60-

  When Ms. Jaycee turned to write on the whiteboard, Sophia began crawling through the crowd of children who whispered and asked where she was going. She ignored them and made he
r way to the exit, only stopping once she was out in fresh air. It wasn’t that she didn’t like school or Ms. Jaycee, but her classmates in the camp were aged three to sixteen and the lessons reflected that. They went from reciting the alphabet to learning about Federation history within the space of an hour and she couldn’t help but feel it was a waste of her time. So, she left.

  With her slingshot in its usual place in her back pocket, Sophia headed towards the fence that bordered the camp where she hoped she would see Ward and Litz on patrol on the other side. She walked along the fenceline, picking up the occasional stone and adding it to the collection of ammunition in her backpack. The bag was heavy on her shoulders, weighed down from so many stones. She didn’t mind; she told herself it was good exercise, to make her strong enough to fight the monsters and the bad guys Ward and Litz had warned them about. She hefted the bag higher so that it rested more comfortably on her shoulders, and then saw something out of the corner of her eye that made her stop – a break in the fence’s chain-link pattern.

  She leaned in close to see that someone had cut the wire so that there was now a slit there, almost imperceptible to the eye unless one were looking directly at it. She lifted the edge of the cut, daring herself to go further. She hadn’t been outside the camp since she and Kat had first arrived, and she had grown sick of the place. It smelled, there were too many people, and everyone just seemed angry, or sad, or worried.

  And Ward and Litz said there weren’t any more dead things around…

  Sophia looked around to make sure no one was watching her. Though there were people about, none were paying her any attention. She smiled and pushed her way through the slit to the other side. There was a fifty-foot clearing between the camp’s perimeter and the forest beyond. She sprinted across the gap, laughing at her own boldness, until she broke into the brush and was surrounded by trees and foliage. Safely within the cover of the woods, she came to a stop, closed her eyes, and willed her beating heart to calm. The smile remained on her face as she pushed into the trees and continued her adventure.

  Sophia had been walking for about an hour, humming softly to herself, when she saw a turkey pecking at the dead foliage around a squat bush. It was a fat bird, similar to one she’d drawn in art class when she was in first grade, surrounded by stick-figure pilgrims. Her stomach growled as she watched the thing and she remembered Thanksgiving dinners her mom had cooked a long time ago, when she was still part of a happy family. She felt a lump in her throat and swallowed it.

  Those were a child’s memories, and she wasn’t a child anymore.

  With one hand, Sophia reached into her back pocket to remove the slingshot, and with the other she reached into her pack to pull out a smooth stone the size of her thumb. Without taking her eyes off the turkey, she loaded the stone onto the leather pad and drew the elastic back. She exhaled and let the stone fly.

  The bird seemed to deflate like a balloon as it was struck, feathers flying into the air. It waddled a few steps before collapsing onto the forest floor. Sophia ran up to it, loading another shot as she closed the distance. The bird was still alive, barely breathing, and she put a stone through its head to put it out of its misery. With the bird dead at her feet, she looked around and found a small broken branch nearby. She picked this up and began snapping off its protruding twigs and limbs until it resembled a walking staff. That done, she knelt to remove the lace from one of her shoes so that she could tie the turkey to the staff by its feet. She tied off the knot and smiled at her handiwork before picking up the stick and slinging the dead bird over her shoulder.

  Sophia looked up through the canopy of leaves to see that there were several hours of daylight left. Overjoyed with the thought of food not from a can or cooked en masse in the camp’s mess hall; she continued into the forest, intent on prolonging the hunt.

  By the time she decided to head back to camp a couple hours later, Sophia had the turkey, a rabbit, and two squirrels dangling from the wooden stick. Her load-bearing shoulder was sore from the dead creatures’ collective weight, so she paused to swing the staff over onto the other. Then, as she resumed her walking, she registered a groaner in her peripheral charging at her from the side. Before she could move out of the way, she was tackled to the ground hard. Sophia screamed and kicked out at gnashing teeth, losing her unlaced shoe in the groaner’s mouth in the process. She scampered backward frantically through dead leaves, trying to put distance between herself and the thing, only to feel an undead hand grasp her by her hair and yank her back down to the ground. She looked up to see a second groaner dragging her towards it, snarling hungrily as it reeled her in by her hair. She snapped her head away hard and felt her hair yanked out by the creature’s hands. Her head freed, she swiveled, only to see an open, slobbering maw from a third groaner closing in, inches from her face. She brought her arms up instinctively, expecting biting teeth, but the pain never came. Instead, the rat-tat-tat of gunfire filled the air, followed by yelling and the sounds of running feet.

  “Hey! Are you okay…Sophia? What are you doing out here?” It was Ward.

  “Is that Soph? Is she hurt?” Litz said, running up from behind to look over Ward’s shoulder. “Did it bite you, Soph?”

  Sophia stared at them in shock, her mind still reeling. Before she could find an answer to their questions, Ward was yanking her up onto her feet, patting the dirt and leaves from her body and checking her for wounds.

  “What the hell are you doing out here, kid?” Litz shouted, his expression a mix of anger and concern as Ward continued his examination of her.

  “She’s good, Litz. No bites.” Ward said, coming back upright. He looked down at the girl, “Kat is going to hear about this, Sophia. How the hell did you get out of the camp?”

  “I…I found a cut in the fence,” she stammered.

  “Hey fellas, look at this!” interrupted a voice Sophia didn’t recognize. The soldier, Lowell, by the name printed on his breast pocket, was pointing at a length of rope that weaved across the forest floor. One end of the rope was tied around a tree while the other was tied around a dead groaner’s neck - the one with Sophia’s shoe in its mouth.

  “These two have it too!” Lowell said, pointing at the other dead groaners. “They were tied up like dogs! How the hell do you get close enough to tie a rope around a groaner’s neck?”

  Ward bent down and put his hands on Sophia’s shoulders. “Soph, you need to tell me what you were doing out here, now.”

  Sophia started telling him about the cut in the fence, about her hunt, when another smaller voice interrupted, scared and pleading. “Hello? Is someone out there? Help!”

  The soldiers brought their rifles up and directed their aim towards the sound. A heartbeat later, a disheveled young woman with a bruised and swollen face came shuffling out of a makeshift shelter they hadn’t realized was there until now. At the sight of the soldiers, the girl fell to her knees and broke into relieved sobs.

  -61-

  When the soldiers began firing, Don ducked low and watched the events unfold from behind a downed tree. He could only look on as the soldiers rescued the child from the groaners, and he felt his fury building as his Delilah revealed herself to them a few moments later.

  Don still had the pistol he’d taken from the dead Boston cop tucked into his waistband at his back, and he cursed himself for not having used it when he had first seen the child trampling through his woods like a naïve fawn. He should have killed her then but had thought it would be fun to watch his stooges feed on the disrespectful brat. Instead, her screaming had attracted the soldiers’ attention and now his stooges were dead, and his Delilah was freed.

  Don felt the acidic tang of worry at the back of his mouth as he watched the soldiers escort the brat and the Delilah through the trees towards an old logging road where a Humvee waited in the distance. The worry dissipated however, when he realized there was no way they would be able to identify him. When he had taken the Delilah, he had come up from behind, knocking
her out cold as she made her way back from one of the camp’s mess halls one evening. When she had awoken, she was in his shelter, in the dark. He had never revealed his face to her and never mentioned his name.

  And the child had no idea he had been following her.

  Don smiled. Neither the brat nor the Delilah would be his downfall. He would simply have to wait a few days until the danger passed and then he could resume his fun again.

  As he watched, the soldiers returned and began sweeping the area around his shelter, looking for evidence and clues to his identity. Knowing there was nothing for them to find, Don dipped silently further back into the trees and then made his return to camp. As he eased his way through the fence’s cut, he suspected it would be the last time he would be able to use it.

  Don shrugged. He would just have to find a new place to bring his Delilahs.

  -62-

  The two pickups weaved slowly through the abandoned traffic of the highway, the passengers keeping a wary eye out for bandits and the dead. They passed all manners of deserted vehicles, from minivans to luxury sports cars to commercial trucks. Some were covered in bloody handprints. Others were ransacked with doors that hung ajar and everywhere belongings lay strewn across the asphalt. Occasionally they would pass a groaner trapped inside a vehicle, who would come to life as they rolled by, reaching from behind windshields or fighting against seatbelts that held them down.

  The trucks continued onward without stopping.

  Seated in the bed of Andy’s pickup, Lou peered over the cab at Bishop’s truck ahead, where Gabe and his wife could be seen chatting quietly.

  He hated them.

  At Lou’s expense, the Sullivans had somehow assumed leadership over the cave dwellers. Ever since the incident with their damn dog and the deer, his opinion seemed to count for shit among the rest of the group, while the Sullivans’ ideas were greeted with enthusiasm and encouragement.

  It was Gabe’s idea that brought them all the way out here to this abandoned stretch of highway.