The Devoured

by Curtis M. Lawson

  Emmett walked across the field in an almost somnambulant fashion. Slugs sped passed his head. Artillery shells exploded, raining shrapnel only yards away. Oblivious to the silent savagery around him, Emmett walked as if he were a ghost on an earthly battlefield.

  Looking first left, then right, not slowing his pace, Emmett scanned the battlefield for his father. The warriors—gray, blue, and red alike—all stumbled, stepped, or rushed out of his path in an eerily coincidental-looking manner that, of course, was anything but. The scene was a sea of eternally dying soldiers, holding in their own intestines as they thrust bayonets, gray matter leaking from their empty eye sockets while they managed to still aim their rifles. Nowhere in Emmett's field of vision (which seemed much wider than it had any right to be) could he see the golden-haired giant who had provided the base material for his own over-sized body. All at once he came to understand why his father was not here in this icy hell. That understanding was accompanied by a great fear, casting a shadow over the simultaneous feelings of relief.

  His father was, unsurprisingly, alive. The man was as strong, smart, and fearless as the Nordic gods he had told Emmett about as a child. Men like his father did not die in war. They won wars and sent others to their deaths. Emmett momentarily pondered how many of the condemned around him had been sent here by his pa.

  A species of pride, the kind of codependent pride that parents and children mutually share for the other's accomplishments, burned in Emmett's heart. Even so, those warm feelings could not burn away the hopelessness that was descending upon him. If his father was not here, in these dead-lands, then what hope did Emmett have of escaping and returning to his sick mother?

  As hope vanished from his heart, something far across the battlefield caught Emmett's eye. In the gnarled, rooted base of the massive tree that lay beyond the never-ending melee, there was something that looked like a throne carved into the tree. No, it wasn't carved. The twisting bases of the roots formed this gorgeous seat naturally. At least as naturally as anything may happen in this place.

  Upon the root throne sat a woman, skin as pale as the falling snow. Her exposed flesh stood in stark contrast to the dark bark of the tree throne. Half of her was concealed in a shadow thrown by the contours of the tree. She was beautiful, easily the most beautiful woman Emmett had ever laid eyes upon. There was something terrible and cold in that beauty. It was the same kind of beauty that one might find in an ivory monolith that served the sole purpose of reminding humanity how ugly and small they are.

  Awe and terror sent shivers through Emmett's body, far more powerful than anything the cold could evoke from him. Despite his fear, Emmett walked forward, through the freezing blood, the fallen bodies, and the crossfire of ethereal artillery. If the father whom he worshiped like a god could offer no help, then Emmett would throw himself at the feet of this realm’s queen. He was sure that's what the enthroned woman with the alabaster skin was—the queen of the underworld, the goddess of death.

  Emmett continued to walk forward, toward the throne of knotted wood. His eyes were locked upon the curves of the queen's strong, shapely body and the perfect features of her cold and uncaring face. He thanked whatever gods might be that shadows covered half of her, or else the entirety of her divine beauty might have driven him mad.

  After what may have been days, Emmett finally made it across the killing field, and within yards of the Queen. In a sloppy, tired manner, Emmett allowed his knees to give out. He fell hard against the icy ground, into a kneeling position at the feet of death herself.

  At this range he could now see that her right side was not simply concealed by shadows, but was shadow itself. Right down the middle was the goddess split. On the left was smooth skin of pure white, like ice-covered snow. Her right side was blacker than an abandoned mineshaft, and looked to have an insubstantial quality to it. Emmett imagined that her touch, from either the black hand or the white, would freeze the blood solid in his veins.

  "State your business."

  The goddess spoke without looking at Emmett. Her gaze was focused past him, toward the endless melee of the eternally dying. Emmett was grateful for this. Eyes are the windows to the soul, he thought, and intuition warned that staring into the vast soul of such a creature would do nothing good.

  "I ..." Emmett faltered. The awe and fear he felt left his tongue feeling fat and numb in his mouth.

  After a moment of silence the woman, who was death, repeated her command. There was no anger or annoyance in her voice. Just a cold, distant patience.

  "State your business."

  "I ..." Emmett gulped, but recovered his voice quickly this time. "I come to beg mercy. Mercy for my ma."

  "Your mother will have my mercy soon, Emmett Wongraven."

  Tears sprang up in Emmett's eyes. They streamed down and froze onto his cheeks.

  "No. I want her to live. I'm asking you not to take my Ma away!"

  "And what sacrifice do you offer with such a prayer, man-child?"

  "Sacrifice?" The word seemed to hang in the air, and all at once Emmett thought he now understood why his prayers to the Christian god had gone unheard. He'd offered nothing in return.

  "Hel must be made whole. Blood for blood and life for life."

  "You mean ... you mean you'll save my mom if I give you something else?"

  "Someone else."

  This time the queen of the underworld set her eyes on Emmett's so that there might be no misunderstanding.

  "Blood for blood," she spoke. "Life for life."

  Emmett nodded in agreement. Her gaze, which bore upon him with the weight of a collapsing star, had robbed him of speech for the moment. When he could finally find the words, he spoke aloud.

  "Blood for blood. Life for life."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The familiar smell of burning wood and boiling water poked and prodded at the old man's consciousness. As much as his mind and muscles wanted to stay asleep despite his nightmares, his stomach was screaming.

  It smells like food, you great oaf! Get off your lazy ass!

  This argument was hard to counter, and the old man found himself stirring into the waking world. While the smell of fire had awakened his hunger, he noticed even before opening his eyes that the air around him was warm and he had somehow found solace from the cold mountain winter.

  There was a heaviness to his eyelids, but the old man exorcised his weariness and looked upon his surroundings. The hopes that his luck had changed with the temperature were short-lived. Inches above where he lay was a slab of solid rock. Below him he could feel hard-packed earth. To either side were only inches of space between the old man and walls of more solid rock. The old man craned his neck to find that the space in front of his head was sealed off by rusted iron bars. Beyond his confines, the old man could see the inside of a log cabin, illuminated by a dancing flame somewhere outside his field of vision. The place was Spartan. No furniture from what he could see. The only decoration was a crucifix above the door.

  The course of events was unclear, but somehow he had exchanged the icy prison of snow for an earthen cage. Despite all odds, it seemed as if his situation may have actually worsened.

  In search of his revolver, his hand pressed up against his side, only to find his bare skin. Unsurprisingly, his gun-belt and his weapons had been confiscated, but also his clothes. Whoever or whatever had captured him had left him as naked as the day he’d entered the world.

  Some men may have panicked here, or called out, or wept. The old man was too measured in temperament for that. Instead he lay quietly, taking in the sounds, scents, and images around him. Through the bars near his head the old man could see shadows dancing on a nearby log wall. Judging from what he could make out of the cabin’s structure, the old man guessed that he was still in the Sierra Nevada. The smell of food cooking and wood burning told him that his captor was not far off.

  Several small sounds competed for prominence. A bubbling call said that water was coming to a boil somewher
e close. A faint sniffling sound came from the same direction as the boiling—someone with a cold. A howling sound outside bespoke either great wind or angry angels nearby. Perhaps both.

  One sound was louder than all the others. A whimpering moan, overflowing with grief and fear, reverberated from the outside of the cage and through the stone to the old man's right. It was impossible to distinguish whether the sound came from a man or an animal. Whatever it was seemed to be imprisoned in another stone box very close by.

  Sounds of food gently splashing into water and the rattle of a wooden spoon stirring against a metal pot told the old man that whoever lived here was distracted enough that he may try his luck with the bars. Being a bull of a man, he found that his broad shoulders, thick chest, and impressive height filled the space of the horizontal prison in a rather tight way. To maneuver his arms over his head in the tight quarters took nearly fifteen minutes and a whole lot of discomfort. Finally the old man got his calloused bear paws on the rusted bars. He could see where each went into a chiseled hole above them, and even saw phantoms of light through the space around where the iron met stone.

  Slowly, but with a great, controlled force, the old man pushed up on the bars. To his pleasure, there was a little give. The bars raised, all in unison, about a quarter inch before catching on to something that locked them in place above. The bars and that which sealed them shut made a slight ting sound. It was faint, but evidently enough to distract his "host" from his cooking. The whimpering thing also temporarily stopped its crying.

  All was silence for a moment. Soft plodding footsteps, like bare feet on a dirt floor, came the old man's way. A sniffle followed by a wet throat-clearing cough accompanied the foot falls. The person stopped just short of the old man's tiny cell.

  "That you messing with your cage, pup?" a voice called out with a deep, hillbilly accent.

  The voice was answered with only a louder, more emotional weeping.

  "Don't fret none. I ain't ready for you today. You even get some dinner tonight. Gotta keep you alive and well for a few more days at least."

  The old man was disturbed by the lack of malice in the hillbilly's voice. There seemed to be no hatred there, just a man telling it like it is.

  The creature in the next cell began to cry hysterically now, and this time it was a distinctly human sobbing.

  The captor walked a few more steps, stopping by where the old man was imprisoned. Once again he began to speak in that matter of fact tone.

  "Or did you finally wake up, you big sonofagun?"

  The old man didn't stir or make a noise, save for slow, even breaths. The thought that he might still be asleep was the only advantage he had right now. While it was unclear just why this man had pulled him out of a snowy grave just to imprison him elsewhere, the old man guessed that it wouldn't be for anything pleasant.

  The mountain man bent down next to the bars. His hot, putrid breath beat against the old man's head as he spoke.

  "You's awake, all right. Manage to wriggle those tree trunk arms up over yer head too."

  With the celerity of a rattlesnake, the old man's left hand struck out through the bars, ready to snatch his new enemy by the face or throat. The spacing of the bars was narrow though, and the old man's forearm got caught between the bars just shy of the mountain man.

  The rusted bars bit into his skin, making him wince. Laughter and a howl of surprised relief came from the hillbilly's mouth.

  "Wooo-eeee, you be quick as you are big!" the old man's captor said with a chuckle. "A bit too big for squeezing through them bars though, hoss."

  Unable to grasp his enemy, the old man withdrew his arm. Half sticking out, it was vulnerable to the whims of the man outside.

  "The Lord, he sure do deliver! A week or so in there'll tender up those gamey muscles. After that you'll make vittles for a fortnight."

  The man outside the cage stood up and began walking away. He continued addressing the old man.

  "Found you in the nick o' time too. These scrawny-ass other folk I got will be lucky to last me another two weeks, and it ain't like there's much eating out there this time of year."

  A sloshing liquid mixed with the nearby whimpering of the person who was presumably caged up just like the old man. Footsteps back in his direction followed. They stopped by the bars above his head once more.

  "You're lucky though. Tonight you get to eat. Maybe you’ll appreciate it, unlike the little shit next door here. Gotta keep that meat good for the next few weeks, right?"

  Something damp and hot came flying through the bars and landed on the old man's chest. After a moment he realized it was a hunk of meat. He supposed that it wasn't beef or wild game.

  "Don't get all persnickety, now. That's a good hunka meat, and I know you must be hungry."

  While his mind reeled with disgust, the smell of cooked meat made the old man's stomach growl and his mouth water. He wasn't sure how long he'd been unconscious, but it felt as though food was distant memory. More important than his gnawing hunger was his need for strength. Hunger would dull him, and if he died here, dinner to some desperate hillbilly, then his son would be doomed. For his son's life, the old man was more than willing to sacrifice one of the last bits of his innocence and engage in this heinous act.

  Without any show of emotion, the old man began to devour the hunk of human meat. Years of war and decades of living in the West had made a survivor out of the old man. A big part of outliving your competition was staying observant and alert. So the old man drove the anger and frustration from his mind, focusing on his surroundings, hoping to unearth some factor he could leverage.

  The thing whimpering in the cage next to him, he was fairly certain, was a child. The food cooking not too far off was probably the meat from one of the kid's parents. They must have been heading west, trying to beat the winter. It seemed more than a little lucky for this hungry madman that he had found the unconscious, snow entombed body of the old man amongst the vast Sierra Nevada. But as the cannibal had said, The Lord, he sure do deliver.

  A chair dragged against the dirt floor and the hillbilly sat down with a sloshing bowl of man-stew. Soft and solemn utterances escaped his lips, thanking God for his bounty. After saying grace, the cannibal slurped down his food with all the grace of rabid dog. Once dinner was done, the old man heard him walk to a deeper part of the house. The sound of footfalls ceased and was followed by a long yawn and the soft crunch of hay under a reclining body.

  The light from some flame still danced on the wall that the old man could see, but there were no sounds save for the occasional wood pop, and an inconsistent whimpering. Eventually a soft snoring joined the gentle chorus.

  Lying quiet, trapped between earth and iron, the old man took stock of his prison. Solid stone met him on the sides and up above. Hard packed dirt made up the floor. Even if he could maneuver himself to start digging at the floor, he wouldn't be able to tunnel out without his captor noticing.

  His mind wandered to the tunnels that the Chinese workers blew through the mountains, bit by bit. How would one of the rail workers get out of this situation, if trapped? They would probably die, he reckoned. Then the old man eyed the space above his, where the bars went through the stone, and he found his answer. He would need time, and more than a little cleverness in gathering the necessary tools. For now he planned to test the worth of the tool closest at hand—the whimpering child in the cell beside him.

  "Hey, it's gonna be okay," the old man said in a coarse but reassuring whisper. The whimpering continued.

  "I know you're scared. This is scary. We can get out of this mess if we work together though." His whisper was a bit louder now, but still low enough as to not to stir their sleeping captor.

  The crying slowed down to a barely controlled sniffling. The boy gave no answer yet, but he was calming down. That was a step in the right direction, and the old man could be patient, when patience was called for. He allowed the boy another few moments.

  "What's your
name?"

  "Hank," the boy replied after a few more seconds of sniffling.

  "Well listen, Hank. I need you to do me a favor. I need you to quietly tell me everything you've seen and heard. I'm guessing it'll be painful to recollect, but any chance we have at surviving lies in what you can tell me."

  "He ... the motherfucker killed my pa." The words were angry and louder than the old man had hoped for. The cannibal's snoring paused for a moment, making the old man fear that the game was over. A few seconds passed and the snoring returned with a fierceness, snorting at the apnea like an angry pig.

  The boy was weeping again, no doubt at the thought of his father being butchered and cooked only feet from where he now lay.

  "I know it hurts, Hank. It burns like hell. But we gotta stay smart and quiet. I'm a father myself, and I can tell you, the greatest honor you can do your parents is surviving this. Can you do that, Hank? Can you help make sure we both survive this?"

  Still crying, Hank's quivering voice replied simply, "Yes."

  "Okay. Now tell me everything. How you and your pa got here. Everything you've seen, heard, or smelled. Any of it could be our ticket to getting out of here."

  "That ain't enough. He's evil and I want him dead. You promise me we'll kill him."

  The old man could hear that the hatred and anger in the boy's voice were white-hot, and not likely to cool with time. It saddened him to hear that kind of venom from such a small voice, but he also understood that the need was real. If the boy didn't see his father’s killer dead, then the anger would poison him for life. If he was allowed to cut the bastard down he may be haunted by the weight of murder for the rest of his life, but such a burden was easier carried than the disease of hate-fueled madness.