Savages

by Natalie Bennett

  “You better not get yourself killed,” he teased, attempting to break the tension between us. He rolled his shoulders and looked upwards at the clear sky. “Sometimes I forget how sheltered you’ve been. I’m going to give you one last bit of advice.”

  I readied myself for another rant and received something much simpler—also, a tad confusing.

  “They don’t do anything for free. They don’t give without receiving. The worst thing you could do is make a deal with one of them that you can’t retract.”

  What? “You’ve been telling me for the past how many hours that I should move as quickly as possible to figure out what’s going on. Wouldn’t making a deal be doing just that?”

  I rolled my eyes when he pinched the bridge of his nose dramatically before answering the question.

  “Romero isn’t called the devil for shits and giggles. He’ll eat your soul and then shit it out.”

  Frowning, I studied his body language and for the first time noticed how distressed he was.

  “Why are you so afraid of him?”

  “I know you’re not afraid of anything, Cali, but in this case, I really wish you were.” He paused for a few seconds before continuing. “I’ll find a way to contact you after a week or two. If I can’t, I’ll assume you’re dead. If shit goes bad, try and get back to the compound. Never let your guard down and don’t let them get in your head.”

  “And if I can’t find them?”

  “That’s not probable. You just go straight. You see that?”

  I turned ever so slightly in the direction he was pointing, never seeing his other arm move. It happened so fast all I felt was the blade piercing through my skin and an odd tingling sensation, followed by an intense, searing heat.

  “Why did you do that?” I instinctively wrapped my arms around my middle and backed away, glaring up at him.

  “I’m sorry; it had to be done. You’re the perfect picture of health. They’d never believe you were out here on your own. I have to get back, and you need to go. We don’t know who could be out here.” He rushed past me, getting back in the car with the bloody knife in his hand and peeling off before I could fully process what had just happened.

  “Shit,” I muttered, pressing a hand to my side. Blood seeped through the small hole in my shirt, running down my stomach and staining my fingers crimson.

  Knowing my only option at this point was to get out of the open, I looked towards the treeline and began to move towards it.

  Five minutes into my foray, I deeply regretted wearing jeans. It was so damn hot my thighs began to sweat.

  I made it to a small creek and rested my sticky hand on the nearest tree, pausing to catch my breath and evaluate my situation.

  Tito didn’t even tell me exactly where to go. How the fuck was I supposed to walk straight when there wasn’t a straight path? “Damn,” I hissed, pulling up my shirt so I could get a better look at the stab-wound that was starting to hurt real fucking bad.

  I pressed around the tender area, trying to determine just how deep it was. If he hit something vital, I would have already bled out.

  I had no damn clue if that were true or not, but I was going with it.

  There was too much blood for me to see anything. Wading into the shallow water, I slowly crouched down and scooped some into my hand. I did my best to clean the area off.

  So focused on myself and how unsanitary the water was, I ignored nature’s blaring warning that something was wrong.

  There was no sound. No birds, no bugs, and no tiny creatures scurrying through the undergrowth. Not even the wind carried. It was utterly silent.

  I was still examining myself when I heard the rapid sound of footsteps, as if someone were running. Not a millisecond later, a solid body was barreling into me from behind. The abrupt impact gave me no time to brace myself and sent us both to the ground.

  “Fuck!” I screamed, getting a mouthful of murky water. I ignored the pain shooting through my side and focused on the man damn near straddling my back.

  “I been watchin ya fer a good minute now,” he confessed with a thick accent.

  When his weight lifted away, I attempted to move but he quickly grabbed hold of my ankles and flipped me onto my back with a little splash. Swallowing a yelp, I blinked up at a bear of a man with a head of unruly brown hair.

  “What do you want?”

  “Got what I want.” He flashed me a smile of stained black and yellow teeth before turning around. He started walking in a different direction than I had been going, dragging me along behind him.

  “Let me go!” I yelled at his back, twisting and turning in every direction, clawing at the ground in an effort to break free.

  “Calm down, darlin. We’ll be home soon,” he laughed.

  Home? Where the fuck was home?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Most people had a morning routine.

  The fortunate ones got to sit down and read the paper in a comfy, cozy house and enjoy a cup of espresso. They sat in some plush ass chair in the fleece robe or plaid pajamas they had slept in. Maybe they propped their slipper-clad feet up in the process.

  Thank fuck that wasn’t me. Espresso tasted like pig shit, and I slept naked.

  The unfortunate ones had to figure out if they were going to be able to drink a glass of water or eat that day. Then they had to double check that the boogeyman hadn’t snatched up a family member in the middle of the night.

  They couldn’t even piss in safety.

  Gotta say I’m real fucking glad not to be one of them, either. Having to worry about my life while my dick was in my hand would really fuck up my day.

  Then, there was me.

  Every morning, I looked out at a world that had rotted and gone cold. A world responsible for taking away the parts of me that ever dared to care. I had nothing left anymore but a cyclone of endless rage constantly churning thorns and venom through my veins.

  I didn’t give a shit if someone’s family member went missing in the middle of the night. I had my own people to take care of.

  If I wasn’t so deranged, I might have pretended I wanted to change. I was better off like this, and I refused to hide from what was inside me. In my anarchy, only the strong survived. I had the scars beneath my ink to prove it. The bodies buried all around my domain only solidified it.

  The weeping that burst through my monitor and had me turning away from the window, putting an end to my daily morning reflections, sealed the deal.

  Without bothering to look, I bypassed the screen and left the room. The warehouse was silent now that I was away from the monitors; not even the woman’s cries could be heard.

  I made my way down to the lower level of the building, reminding myself I still needed to get rid of the dead redhead on my bedroom floor.

  Beyond a metal door that sat alone at the end of a short hall was my unhappy new friend. The door groaned and squeaked when I pushed against it, slamming shut with a loud bang after I stepped through.

  I glanced around the barren room, noting that the pliers had been moved from their resting place on the wall. That meant Cobra had come in after I left the night before.

  Looking towards the woman restrained in the center of the room, I began to approach her with slow, measured steps.

  Her husband’s naked body was directly across from her. His arms were still tied to the poles that had pulled them from their sockets, his tibia stuck clean through his right leg, and dried blood coated the back of his thighs and ass. He’d bled out sometime the previous day after he was fucked for a solid hour and then had his wrists cut open.

  The woman stopped wailing and started trying to swing her suspended body in my direction. I had purposely secured the ropes around her so there was no give in them, making sure she couldn’t find a way to ease her discomfort or look away from her husband’s brutalized asshole.

  A fresh line of drool hung from the side of her busted lip. On the floor beneath her head lay Cobra’s handiwork—a small pile of blood
y, broken teeth.

  She looked up at me with swollen green eyes I wanted to carve out of their sockets. The blind would see a helpless woman made to dress like an old-style nun, hanging from the ceiling. I saw a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.

  “Do you remember where David is now?” I interrogated.

  “I’ll never tell you.” She tried to sound strong, but with spittle flying from her mouth and her voice almost gone, I was severely unimpressed.

  “That’s funny. I swear a few hours ago you said you couldn’t remember.”

  I grabbed her cheeks and squeezed, applying pressure on her tender gums. Her pained bleat was a fucking delightful sound. I knew she would never tell me where her precious prophet was. None of them ever did. I’d lost count of how many people I had killed trying to get a solid answer. The motherfucker had his followers brainwashed.

  These people’s weak, corruptible minds believed his interests and theirs were the same. The Order wasn’t a religious group; it was a widespread cult with a made up doctrine that revered David like a god. They had their own convenient definitions of sin that matched their bullshit religion, which made the fact that David used a fucking cross of all things as his insignia comical.

  I used the symbol in a much more appropriate way. It was my endearing way of saying fuck him. I could never embrace that shit. The only god I believed in was myself and death, and she had always been on my side.

  As I watched blood begin to pool between the woman’s lips. I wondered how many children she had helped steal. How many men and women were killed in front of her. It wasn’t that I cared—I was just curious.

  I was still squeezing when Cobra and Grimm walked in, carrying sandwiches.

  “Get rid of her. We have a problem,” Cobra announced around a mouthful of food.

  “Lena still hasn’t come back,” Grimm clarified.

  “Well, that doesn’t fucking surprise me.” I let go of the woman’s face to retrieve the Browning knife I kept in my back pocket. With one fluid motion, I flipped it open and inserted the seven-inch blade into the side of her neck, then just as smoothly pulled it out.

  She gurgled, choking on own her blood. Her body swayed, twitching involuntarily as it died. I placed the palm of my hand over her heart and shut my eyes. It was beating in an erratic tempo, fighting so desperately to cling to a life that was already lost.

  I expelled a quiet breath and opened my eyes to watch the blood run down her face, turning her honey brown hair a vivid maroon before dripping in a steady pattern onto the concrete floor.

  Death was such a beautiful thing. She could take everything in the blink of an eye, or draw the suffering out for as long as she desired.

  I wiped my knife clean on the woman’s habit and then turned to face my brothers. “I guess we need to go find Lena, then. I’ll get her down later.”

  “I’ll drive, you eat,” Grimm replied, tossing me a sandwich on our way out of the room.

  We searched the only place someone could get lost—the woods that sat twelve miles down the road. The longer we were out playing find the needle, the more our irritation grew.

  I could admit that for the most part, society had kept its shit together. We weren’t considered part of that society. We didn’t live in the fancy fucking houses that had twenty-four seven patrols and a fence to keep people like us out. You know the ones who tie up Daddy, terrorize the kiddos, and then fuck Mommy to ramp up the despair? We are those people.

  It was dumb to go anywhere alone if you weren’t someone people knew not to fuck with. I wanted to believe Lena didn’t come across someone that fucking stupid, but the evidence was not in her favor.

  “I don’t think she’s out here,” Grimm said, breaking our companionable silence.

  “Do you think that’s human?” Cobra pointed to a flattened plant with a small amount of fresh blood on its leaves. Looking beyond the plant, it was obvious someone or something was recently dragged through the dirt.

  Guess we were about to find out which one it was.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He secured a chain around my neck and knocked me on my ass before walking away.

  I immediately wrapped my hands around the thick metal and pulled to no avail, agitating the raw skin on my palms.

  “This can’t be happening to me.” I gritted my teeth and tried again, yanking with all the strength I had.

  “It’s not going to give. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  I stopped and looked across the barn in the direction the voice had come from.

  A girl who looked to be a few years younger than me was chained to the adjacent wall. The sun filtering in from outside bounced off a long, chocolate brown hair and illuminated a pair of cognac colored eyes.

  Various flower and henna tattoos were inked on her bronze skin.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked, taking a good look around.

  “Two days, maybe three. She was here before me.” She gestured to a dead girl strapped down on an old table near the back of the barn.

  The rancid smell emanating from a quad of rusted oil drums lining the front wall was self-explanatory, as was the rotting torso lying in front of them. Only the head was left; the rest of whoever it had once been was either in one of the barrels or someone’s stomach.

  “He’s coming back,” she warned quietly.

  I pressed my back against the wall to give myself a full view of what was going on, wincing from the sharp pain in my side. The lumberjack entered the barn with a hacksaw in one hand and a little boy’s in the other.

  We watched in silence as they walked right by us to the table in the back.

  “Grab the buckets, Dex.”

  The little boy did as he was told, taking off and returning with two round, bloodstained pails. He sat them down by the edge of the table before climbing up on a stool so that he could watch the man I assumed was his dad work.

  “Remember to keep your hands off,” the man warned the kid as he began sawing into the dead woman’s arm.

  You could hear the blade sliding back and forth, cutting through bone and muscle.

  “I saw that man stab you,” he said after a minute. “Shame. If I wasn’t a married man, I might keep yer for myself.”

  What a goddamn nightmare that would be.

  “I acquired Arlen over there when her uncle was kind enough to stop and offer me a ride. That’s him.”

  He gestured towards the decapitated torso lying by the oil drums. I glanced at Arlen; she was now staring down at the ground.

  Generally, I didn’t feel bad for people, but I hoped for her sanity’s sake she didn’t have to watch that happen.

  The man resumed his sawing, occasionally saying something to the kid as he stripped the body down and tossed random bits into the buckets.

  “Now, yer never wanna eat the brain. It ain’t good fer nothing but C-J-D. That’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,” he explained, loud enough for us all to hear. “Ribs, well, who doesn’t like a good barbeque?” he joked.

  “The forearms are tough meat. My wife likes to use those chunks for soup. The shoulders need some work to make tender but once yer do then yer get a nice blade steak. Oh, and anything on the back is gonna give yer some good choice cuts. Now, can either of yer pretty ladies guess what my favorite part is?”

  He glanced between me and Arlen with a disgusting toothy smile as he flipped the body onto its stomach.

  The arm he’d been working on dangled by a small band of tendons that slowly pulled apart.

  “It’s the buttocks!” He laughed and slapped the dead girl’s ass. “Put it in a slow cooker for a few hours, and it reminds me of my momma’s Sunday roast.”

  Neither of us said a word. I had no idea why he felt the need to share all of this, but it was information I never needed nor cared to know.

  I’d heard all about cannibals before. They refused to be simple outliers, and no one else would accept them. The Savages didn’t exactly have an open-door policy, and there was no way in
hell they could live in Centriole—the megalopolis.

  Like everyone else though, they usually cliqued up in groups; safety in numbers and all that jazz.

  They were unable to get food through connections or other means, so animals and people were their only options.

  Nevertheless, hearing about something and seeing it were two entirely different things.

  I listened to his heavy breaths as he grew tired and began to sweat. I turned away when he started to strip down individual bone, using the claw of a hammer to pull and pry.

  After another stretch of silence, he began to whistle as he worked. Tuning out the noise around me, I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling.

  A giant cockroach darting down my arm woke me up.

  I smacked it off and watched it take off across the dirt floor. The chain around my neck clinked at the sudden movement, instantly reminding me of where I was.

  Looking out the open barn door, I saw it had begun to drizzle. The hazy blue-gray sky signaled it was early dawn.

  I’d lost a full day thanks to a cannibal.

  I took my first real breath and had never been more grateful for having a strong stomach. The smell of decaying flesh was so potent it burned my nose hairs.

  Just for the hell of it, I tugged on the chain again, knowing it wasn’t going to magically unlock itself or come off the wall.

  “He keeps the keys on a belt loop,” Arlen flatly commented.

  She seemed resigned to the fact that we would be sautéed like fillets and then eaten with a side of flesh rolls. I was determined that wasn’t going to happen. This was just a minor setback I should have foreseen.

  Every time I thought I was finally getting somewhere, this bitch called life decided she would try and break me down again.

  I thought she would have fucked off by now and realized it would never happen.

  I had already been to hell and back and now it was a part of me. There wasn’t much she could throw my way that I wouldn’t overcome. I think she forgot all the cards I’d already been dealt.