Wildlife - A Dark Thriller

by Menapace, Jeff

  “’Bout fucking time your balls was in plain sight.” She turned to Harlon and then back at Tucker, addressing them both. “It’s past three. Get to taking care of that fan boat while you still got the light.”

  Chapter 24

  Ethan and Noah Daigle had been in the same room, the same bed, and the same binds ever since they’d first entered the Roy home. They’d been given water but no food. When they’d needed to urinate, Harlon told them to piss the bed—and they did. When they’d needed to defecate, Harlon told them they could shit the bed if they wanted, but didn’t recommend it on account of the smell they’d be locked in with. Both boys held it.

  Now, the room ripe with the smell of urine and sweat and fear, Ethan and Noah had new roommates. Two women and a man, all three bound by the wrists and ankles as they’d been, save for being tied to the headboard of the bed.

  The new occupants had entered the room in three very different states.

  The man, small and lean and what Ethan guessed at roughly seventy, was pleading continuously, begging Harlon and Ida to let them go as mother and son set about tying them up. He’d offered money, promises to keep quiet, anything. Harlon and Ida just continued without acknowledgment as if the man were babbling a foreign language.

  The older of the two women, petite and an equally fit-looking seventy, the man’s wife no doubt, cried non-stop—sobs when the binds were cinched tight, sniffles when there was a brief lull, and back to sobs when the binding would resume again with merciless force.

  And then there was the younger of the two women. Ethan guessed her maybe twice his fifteen years, if not younger. No guessing was needed to see that the woman was a spitfire, constantly shouting obscenities at Harlon and Ida. When Harlon paused for a moment to declare that he should have “kicked this bitch down the hatch with her fucking boyfriend,” Ethan came to the frightening conclusion that there had been a fourth. More frightening still, was the way Harlon had confessed to dispatching that fourth. Ethan knew all too well what lay beneath that hatch.

  And so now, after an hour together in the room, after the man had plead himself hoarse (he had not stopped when Harlon and Ida had left the room, merely continued pleading towards the locked door with futile hope); after the older of the two women had cried herself dry; and after the younger of the two women had used up every obscenity she knew (she too had not stopped after Ida and Harlon had locked them in, often bickering with her father as he’d told her to stop so that they might listen to his reasoning, she telling him he was wasting his time, they were screwed); all three were spent. And it was time for introductions, to share how they’d all managed to find themselves in this communal hell, and most importantly to Ethan, how they were going to escape.

  Chapter 25

  The fan boat was moved around back as planned.

  “Look at this here,” Harlon said, still on board. He hoisted the crossbow in one arm, the big grappling hook in the other. “Guess this explains how they moved the tree.”

  “Leave it be,” Tucker said. “We got to cover it yet.”

  “Leave it be? These here beauties are now mine, little brother.” Harlon grinned like a kid with new toys as his head volleyed between crossbow and hook.

  “Fine, take ’em,” Tucker said. “Can we get to covering now?”

  “Patience of a bullet,” Harlon muttered, tossing the crossbow and grappling hook onto the bridge. “Here, what’s this?” He bent and came up with a notebook, started leafing through it.

  “What’s it say?” Tucker asked.

  “Hard to tell. A lot of chicken scratch.” Harlon flipped to the front page. “Dan Rolston—that’s the name on front. I’ll betcha that’s the guy I booted down my hatch in one piece. I reckon the nerdy little fella was keeping a journal of his trip.”

  “‘Booted’ into your hatch, huh?” Tucker said. “Told me you had to shoot him and he fell in.”

  Harlon glanced up from the notebook. “What, you keeping a journal too? It happened like I said.”

  Tucker just shook his head. “Let’s get to covering.”

  Several green and beige tarps were soon draped over the full length of the boat, cloaking it to even the keenest eye. It became, as Harlon had predicted, invisible from the river.

  “I reckon we take care of Sam first while we still got the light,” Harlon said as they waded their way around front, knee-high boots sloshing in the dark water. “Can’t see Mama approving of us running that saw indoors.” He chuckled. “Once Sam’s cut up, and we drop him down the hatch along with Ron and Adelyn, we can go inside and deal with the others. Don’t need daylight for that. We can snuff ’em tonight and get to cutting first thing in the morning.”

  Tucker grunted and continued wading ahead of his brother.

  Harlon flashed a cagey eye at Tucker’s back. “Meant what you said, did you?”

  They reached the short ladder leading up to their bridge. “’Bout what?” Tucker said.

  “Killing them folks along with the Daigle boys and feeding them to my flock.”

  Tucker stopped as he was preparing to climb the ladder. He looked back at Harlon. “Of course I did. You ever know me to lie?”

  Harlon grinned. “Sure have.”

  Tucker frowned. “Lie to family?”

  Still grinning, Harlon said, “I can recall a whopper or two you told Jolene when you and I come stumbling in at dawn.”

  Tucker’s frown darkened. “You don’t get to talk about Jolene just yet.”

  Harlon looked away and nodded. “Okay, little brother. Still, I gotta wonder if it don’t warrant asking—from me, not Mama.”

  Tucker now turned completely and faced Harlon. “Well, go on and ask then. And get it over with sooner than later. I’m getting tired of answering the same questions from my own damn kin.”

  “Just seems you turned a quick corner on the whole ordeal is all.”

  “Seems I had nowhere left to turn.”

  Harlon chuckled. “Always did have a clever way of putting things, little brother.” His smile dropped suddenly, Harlon’s typically carefree face the rare spectacle of grave. “We don’t have a choice, you know. We didn’t go looking for none of this. Hell, you think I wanted to give up my room?”

  Tucker nodded slowly, his gaze on the river, mind somewhere else. Finally, he said: “Should have thought it through better with them Daigle boys.”

  Harlon gave a quizzical tilt of the head. “Just made a fuss about all that—tired of being asked by kin, you said.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant involving them from the start. Making them watch me kill their mama, you their daddy. We could have never let them go after such a thing—don’t know how we thought otherwise.”

  Harlon’s eyebrow went up. “Don’t know how you thought otherwise.”

  “Say again?”

  “Maybe we didn’t talk it through well enough at the time, but I’d be lying if I didn’t think we were all on the same page.”

  “So you were fixin’ to kill those boys after?”

  Harlon shrugged. “I suppose I was.”

  Tucker looked out onto the river again.

  “Oh, come on, little brother—just what the hell were you planning to do with those boys if you weren’t fixin’ to kill ’em?”

  Gaze still on the river, Tucker said, “I don’t know. I was so crazed about what happened to Jolene and the baby, I couldn’t think about anything but inflicting pain on that family. I wanted Ron and Adelyn to die, I know that, but I never really considered those boys.”

  Harlon gave a humorless snort. “And yet you made ’em watch when you cut their mama’s throat.”

  “I did make ’em watch, yes…I felt like they needed to be punished for what’d been done. I guess it’s the after I never gave much thought to…or was able to give thought to.”

  Harlon splayed his hands. “And so now what? They been punished enough in your eyes? That it?”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Maybe it was, not
is. Said you come around.”

  Tucker took his eyes off the river and placed them on his brother. “I have.”

  Harlon sighed. “Don’t think of it as murder, little brother. Hell, us Roys, we might be some crazy motherfuckers, but we’re no murderers. We didn’t seek these folks out like a bunch of psychos. All of this—all of it—is other folks’ doing. We did what needed to be done, and we were in the right. Now we just gotta clean it up, is all.”

  “Don’t mean we got to enjoy it,” Tucker said.

  Harlon gave his brother a curious look. “Enjoy it?”

  “Haven’t seen concern one on your face since this all began. Hell, I should drop dead in the water if you aren’t having a little fun.”

  “You know me, little brother—I can find a good time in the most peculiar of places.”

  Tucker shook his head. “It’s like Daddy said—some things you gotta do; don’t mean you gotta like ’em.”

  “Maybe you don’t remember Daddy the way I do.”

  “Said it though, didn’t he? Said it to me the day I asked him about lying to get Uncle Jake free; send that other man to jail.”

  Harlon nodded. “He said it…but don’t you go fooling yourself into thinking Daddy was all broken up about it. Uncle Jake and him were on the town later that night, celebrating the result until the whiskey and their peckers were sucked dry.”

  Tucker glared at his brother. “The pair on you, suggesting Daddy sought the bed of another.”

  Harlon burst out laughing. “Just where did you come from, little brother? Never did understand why you was so faithful to Jolene. Not like she would have dared leave if you wanted to wet your pecker in some other piece of ass, ya pussy-whipped little—”

  Tucker blasted Harlon with a hard right hand, launching his brother backwards into the river with a hefty splash. Harlon surfaced with a gasp, wiping water and blood from his face.

  Tucker pointed a threatening finger at his downed brother. “You can call me pussy-whipped until you’re hoarse for all I care. But you refer to my Jolene as a ‘piece of ass’ again, Harlon Roy, and I will make sure you don’t come up for air next time.”

  Harlon smiled. “You feel better now, do you, little brother?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Still smiling, Harlon got to his feet and began massaging his jaw. “I remember you packing more of a punch. Maybe Mama’s right—maybe you have gone faggot.”

  Tucker started up the ladder. “Keep talking, you one-legged gator-fucker.”

  Harlon burst out laughing again.

  Chapter 26

  “Escape?” Liz whispered. “And how are you planning on doing that?”

  “Noah and I are fixed to this damn headboard. Try as we might, we’re not going anywhere. But you folks aren’t fixed to anything. You could get to your feet if you wormed around enough.”

  “And then what?” Russ said. He gestured over his shoulder, to his wrists bound together behind his back. He then pecked his chin at both his wife and daughter, bound in identical fashion. “Our hands are useless tied up as they are—” He then gestured down towards his feet; they were cinched tight together at the ankles, no slack for even the tiniest of shuffling. “Our feet too. You don’t think they’d hear us hopping around in here like giant rabbits if we managed to stand?”

  “Harlon and Tucker are outside. Hear that chainsaw buzzing? That’s them. As long as it keeps on buzzing, they’re as good as deaf.”

  Softly, her first words since being in the room, Vicky asked: “What are they doing with a chainsaw?”

  Liz and Ethan exchanged a glance.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mom,” Liz said. “It’s like Ethan said; as long as it keeps making noise, it could help us.”

  “What about the old lady and the kid?” Russ asked. “They’re right out there, aren’t they?” He motioned towards the door with his chin. The sounds of television and the smell of cigarette smoke beneath the door were constant.

  “She’s got that TV turned up pretty good,” Liz said.

  Ethan smiled at Liz, grateful for her comradery during a moment when it was all easy to succumb to hopelessness.

  Russ remained a trickier ally. “Okay then—we get to our feet; they can’t hear us hopping around; then what? Our hands are still useless behind our backs. Mine especially.”

  “Why yours especially?” Ethan asked.

  “Arthritis,” Liz said.

  “I’m all thumbs when it flairs up,” Russ said. “And tied up like we are, believe me, it’s flaring.”

  Ethan heard nothing after “thumbs.” He was thinking of his friend, Casper Cole.

  Casper Cole, who was caught stealing a case of beer from the back of their local distributor when he was fourteen.

  Casper Cole, who was promptly handcuffed and tossed in the sheriff’s cruiser while the sheriff went inside to talk to the shop owner.

  Casper Cole, who was not afraid of what the sheriff might do—a “boys will be boys” slap on the wrist was most likely—but terrified of the hiding he’d get from his drunken old man when the sheriff took him home.

  Casper Cole, who then desperately managed to break his own thumb, slide his damaged hand out of one of the cuffs, and then crawl out the open cruiser window on that muggy summer night to leg it anywhere but home to his daddy.

  “I have an idea,” Ethan said. “I’m not sure you folks are gonna like it though.”

  ***

  Ethan told them about Casper Cole. A silence followed. Not one of comprehension, but of cold realization. Ethan was serious in his proposal. And that proposal held far better prospects than the absolute nothing they’d produced thus far.

  Question was: whose thumb?

  Russ immediately volunteered. Liz immediately opposed him, claiming it should be her.

  “I am not breaking my daughter’s thumb,” Russ said.

  “What, we should do yours?” Liz said. “You just said your arthritis is flaring up, and that you’re all thumbs when it does. We break one of those thumbs and what’re you left to work with? Do the math, Dad.”

  “I am doing the math. We need you and those two boys as fit as possible to lead us out of here. With my hands and your mom’s knee? We’re going to be anchors either way.”

  “And I can throw that argument right back. Youth will allow us to push on despite. It should be one of us three.”

  “Uh…” Ethan said. “This is gonna sound bad, it being my idea and all—” He jerked at the straps that kept he and Noah’s wrists fastened to the board above their heads. “But unless one of you wants to climb up onto this bed and back your butt into me or Noah’s face so you can get to our thumbs, it might have to come down to you three, though I’m assuming Mrs. Burk is out.”

  “Yes,” Russ said instantly.

  Ethan nodded. “One of you two then.”

  “Dad…” Liz said, her tone giving every implication that the matter was no longer up for discussion; she was the parent on this one.

  But Russ needn’t even speak to reclaim his status. He looked hard at his daughter; a stern, immovable face Liz remembered when Russ would drop the hammer during her ever joyous teen years of know-it-all-dom. And Liz felt her mind—already defeated by her father’s gaze—drifting. What she wouldn’t give now to be back in those moments, being reprimanded by her father…safe at home. And although they’d have been strangers at the time, Dan would still be alive, waiting to meet her a decade later.

  Oh God, Dan.

  Not just gone but…what happened to him after…

  A sudden thought hit her without warning, striking like a sucker punch to her core, and she marveled at the morbid complexities of the human mind, its subconscious taste for the macabre. That thought was: Is Dan truly gone? As in: Did the alligators finish eating him?

  Liz dropped her head and shuddered.

  “Elizabeth?” Russ said.

  Liz slowly lifted her head. Her father’s stern face was still there, more so. She gave a defeated nod. �
��Okay, Dad.”

  Russ exhaled slowly, a strange sense of relief washing over his face despite the truth that he was about to have his arthritic thumb snapped. Perhaps it was the relief only a father could ever know.

  “Okay…” Russ said with another sigh. “Okay.”

  Vicky finally spoke. “Suppose this works, and we do manage to get free. How would we get back without a boat?”

  “We could do it on foot,” Ethan said. “Work our way through the swamp.”

  “On foot?” Liz said.

  Ethan nodded. “Both Noah and I know the way.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant,” Liz said. “Wouldn’t we be vulnerable to wildlife?”

  Ethan shrugged as much as he could with his hands above his head. “You ask me, the wildlife here—in this house—is far more lethal than anything we’re gonna find out there.”

  There was a moment of pause as everyone digested the comment. The chainsaw continued its merciless buzzing outside, sometimes idling, sometimes revving high right before meeting a resistance that would briefly dull the roar and allow the horrifying reality that it was cutting into something. Something not a tree.

  “Alright, let’s do this,” Russ said. “Ethan? We’re all ears.”

  Ethan looked hesitant.

  “Ethan, son, it won’t be long before that sawing out there stops—” Russ then flicked his chin towards the door. “Or the old lady decides to check in on us. Let’s go.”

  “My friend Casper was cuffed in front on account of the sheriff not seeing him a threat; just trying to give him a scare…”

  “Ethan,” Russ said impatiently.

  “My point is that Casper could see what he was doing. He was able to pop it close to the wrist by lookin’ at it. Tied up the way you are, hands behind your backs, you’re gonna be doing it blind.” He looked at Liz. “Grab the whole thumb—as far down as you can. When you’re ready, give it one good jerk down and towards the rest of his fingers. Bend it back the other way and you just broke his thumb in half. Got it?”