by D. S. Black
Andrew suddenly realized everything's not gonna be alright.
13
Andrew forced himself to turn onto his back; then pushed his chin against his chest and looked at his strapped down body. The ties were nylon and clicked tightly around him with metal buckles. The sled itself was red. He wiggled a little. Then his heart started to pump. His mind cleared completely and for the first time since this woman entered his life, he was fully aware that she intended to kill him. Not just kill him, but make him scream and suffer. Sweat pushed out of his forehead in large droplets. Sally was dead. Tommy was dead. Barry Blackwood’s huge cock was dead. And he was about to be dead to, if he didn’t find a way out of this. He forced himself to breath slowly, one long breath at a time, then said in a low whisper: “It’s OK. Everything is going to be OK.”
Where had she come from? How did this happen? His mind was leaping from one end to the other trying to figure out how in god’s name this was happening. Where was Candy? Where was Jack? Where in Christ’s name was this woman taking him? The questions spilled over into desperate tears. He cried like a helpless child. Sally was in those tears somewhere, dripping down to the earth. So was Papa and the girls. Jack. Jody. Every person he’d ever loved and cared about flowed out of his eyes now. His last gift to the world was a tearful plea: “Let em be OK. All of them. Let em be OK. Papa. Candy. Jack. Jody. Oh and you Sally. I miss you!” He burst into pathetic sobs, causing snot to drip from his nose. “Oh Sally I loved you! I love you my queen!”
The old woman stopped for a moment and let out a shrilled cackle of laughter and then started pulling again, laughing hard and coughing up something deep inside her. Andrew bounced up and down as she pulled him up brick steps, then dragged him into an old shack. Inside it stank of dead meat and bones. Hooks hung from the ceiling and chains on the walls.
Oh jesus mother of god! His mind was screaming. He was laid out in the middle of the floor. She stepped outside and flung coals on a grill and lit it up. She then laid a cold iron onto the grill. The grill sat under an umbrella and the rain coursed off in all directions. “Let fires rumble! Baby here comes the meat!” She walked back into the shack and stood over him.
Andrew stared up at her with huge bug eyes, “You don’t have to do this. You are better than this. Come on! Put that down!” A sharp blade cut into his leg. He screamed. Writhing pain shot through his body. The hot blade sliced off his leg with ease. He watched in screaming terror as she raised it up and ran her nose down the length of his now detached blood dripping limb. Her eyes gleamed as she stared at his severed leg. Then her dark eyes looked down at him, “Hunny. We all just meat.”
Andrew’s face was white. Blood oozed out of his leg. His pulse was slowing to a slow tick. He watched helplessly as she walked out and then came back with a red hot iron. She pressed it hard against the wound, “Don’t worry boy. You aint gonna die yet.”
His screams filled the shack and permeated into the surrounding swamp land. Not a creature nearby didn’t hear his hair raising shrieks. Then he just lay there, a panting piece of dying meat. He didn’t see Sally. He didn’t see much of anything. His body fell into the arms of pain induced shock.
The old woman walked over to a small cabinet nailed to the wall. She opened it. The inside was stocked with baby food—one on top of the other. She took one out, opened it, grabbed a dirty spoon, and walked over to Andrew, “Gotta keep you alive son.” She force fed him the baby food, “There you go now. That’s a good boy.” It dripped down his face. His eyes opened just for a moment, then closed. She picked up the severed leg and walked over to a small wood bench. It was stained dark red. Andrew’s leg landed with a squishy flop. His boot was still on the foot.
She first cut the skin off. She peeled till the leg was clean of flesh. She flung the dead flesh into the woods. She then took the protein rich leg over to the charcoal grill. The charcoal was red hot. The meat sizzled as she laid it across the metal. She breathed in deeply. She kept her nose over the grille. The gray smoke flowed around her. She twirled. Then twirled again.
After the meat was done, she returned to the shack and sat down Indian style bedside Andrew. She ate the human leg with bare hands. “We just meat.” She said.
She finished the leg, chewing it down to the bone, then licking it for any residual protein. She then flung it into a pile of bones on the floor. She stared at the small mountain of white carbon. Each one represented a former life. Someone that used to dream and scream. Now they just turned slowly to bone dust.
She’d found the owner of those bones back when this first all went down. But, back then, the bones still moved inside the living flesh of the people they supported—the family was cooking when she walked silently to the edge of the tree line that surrounded the shack. She’d wondered out here after the Fever caused dead men to walk in the cities. Her belly had growled. Her mind had spun. In her right hand she held an Army issue .45 she’d picked off a dead solider. He didn’t need it, she had thought. He’s just meat now. Meat for the roaming dead. She’d shot the family dead.
That memory faded. She still sat beside Andrew, staring blankly over his body. In her mind's eyes she saw fraternity boys surrounding her. They'd pushed her and pulled her. Her clothes tore off. She'd screamed.
“Shut up! Fucking street rat!” They lobed spit in her face while each on took a turn with her on a sticky beer stained carpet. After they’d used her up, they tied her up, and loaded her in a car trunk. Her mascara, which she’d so delicately put on before the party, was smeared all over her face like pen ink exploded from her eyes. Tears created tributaries of pain in long squiggly lines that dripped down her chin. She’d been so excited. Real college boys. They’d really liked her, she’d thought. Jackie Mason, so tall and stout, had called her a real dazzler. Said she was a fine woman. She’d smiled up at his big blue eyes and fell in love instantly. But Jackie was driving the Cadillac as she vibrated in the trunk, a rag tied in her mouth, her hands and ankles bound tightly. Heavy music blared as fear took hold of her soul. She laid there, begging a deity for help, until the car came to a slow and creeping halt. The music stopped. The doors opened then closed. The trunk latch unlocked and moon light shimmered in. They stood above her with angry glares. She was jerked out with a harsh pull. Her eyes burned with fear as they dragged her naked body into an old cemetery, throwing her hard against a head stone.
“Dumb bitch.” Jackie said as he removed his member and peeded yellow onto her face. The others followed, then left her there in the dark, with their disgusting urine dripping off her. Tears fell as she laid in the dirt.
That morning a grave digger found her and she learned she’d been carried over to Sumter, SC, a little shit hole of a back woods hick town. The grave digger was a tall and thin black man with a few teeth missing. He was kind. He found her some old clothes to put on and drove her to the sheriff’s office.
She'd sat there staring at Sheriff Bass. His big belly protruded from his waist line and flopped over his belt. A large cigar dangled from his mouth. White hair sat on his head, accented by an even whiter handle bar mustache. She’d just told him the tale. He gleamed at her with menacing eyes, like he’d heard this before and resented it more every time. “It all sounds like a lot of horse shit to me, honey. You street girls get all liquored up, go out with these party boys, and then whine when you get what you knew was coming.”
She stared at the floor. It was gray carpet, recently vacuumed. She looked up and saw a black and white clock ticking. Below it and directly above the sheriff’s head was a confederate flag mixed with the palmetto flag.
“Listen. I’m not gonna lock you up, this time. I’ll have one of my deputies drive you over to the homeless shelter. Don’t come in here with bullshit like this again, ya hear?”
The image of the sheriff faded into a past that was never forgotten. She looked at Andrew and breathed out a sigh of relief. “Them days over… them days over…theys all dead.” She then took the hot iron outside and la
id it on the grill.
14
She reentered the shack and shut the door, “OK! One more to go!”
Andrew screamed as she dismembered his final leg. Tears gushed from his eyes and he begged for death, “Kill me! Kill me! Just kill me!”
“Did I say yous gonna feel some pain? Oh hells yeah I did!” She walked back outside, grabbed the iron, and walked back in.
She pressed the iron onto the bleeding nub. “Now whos the dummy? Whos in charge now, boy?!”
Andrew screamed a cry of deathly agony. His eyes were wide and fierce with pain. His veins pumped hard under his skin and bulged through his neck like long purple worms. Never in his life did he think such pain existed.
After she finished, she pushed his body onto the floor causing him to whimper. She'd unstrapped him. He started crawling on his elbows. His legs were now blackened nubs. His vision was filled with strange, black butterflies floating aimlessly.
“Gotta get rid of those now. I specially like that fat under the arms.” A long hook hung from the center of the ceiling. A chain pully system was attached to it. The metal clanged as she pulled the sharp hook down. She wrapped her hands around the cold metal. She stepped up to Andrew and positioned the hook at the center of his back. She forced it in hard. He screamed and the metal clanged as she lifted him into the air.
He hung, suspended with the hook driven into his back. His knubbed legs moved like two short table legs. He prayed for death. Begged whatever god existed, please, oh please, end it now. Make this pain stop. What had he done to deserve this torture? He never hurt no body. Never cheated no body. Oh god, please just make it sto—
The door swung open sharply and knocked the old women to the floor. Candy stood in the door way and stared at her brother. She saw his blackened nub legs. She saw the pale, white horror in his face; the life had drained out of him. His eyes darkened like a storm cloud over black pupils, and a crooked smile spread across his face. “It’s OK. Candy…it’s OK.” His face grayed while his blue eyes closed. His chin fell against his chest and his head dangled loosely to the side.
Candy fell to her knees. Pain cringed across her face. Her little brother. Look what this world did to her little brother. Behind her the old woman cackled loudly. “Let’s not let that meat go to waste dearie. We all nothing but dead meat in the end.”
“Mama! Mama! Kill! Kill! Kill!” Candy stared at the ghostly images of her girls then back at the old woman. Candy rose. Her eyes locked onto the old women. A hatchet laid on a wooden bench to Candy’s right. It scraped against the wood as she picked it up.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” the girls screamed.
The old women’s face stopped laughing. She trembled. “We all just meat honey!”
Candy looked at her girls. “Kill her?”
“Yes mama! Kill! Kill! Kill!”
“Who you talking to girl? We can work together you know?” said the old woman.
“For your daddy?”
“For daddy!”
“For your uncle?”
“We loved Uncle Andrew!”
“Who you see girl? They ain’t nothing there! Don’t do it! Don’t!”
The hatchet rose high and candy’s eyes shined with a mad glare and the blade came down fast and hard, split between the old woman’s skull, sinking between her eyes and stopping above the bridge of the nose. The ragged old body tumbled over and her blood pooled around Candy’s black Kevlar boots.
Behind Candy, a noise caught her attention. She turned. Andrew’s body jerked. Jerked again. And then jerked fast, hard, and violently. His eyes shot open; they scowled a white hot glare; a rumbling roar erupted from him, and his neck careened, and his arms flayed forward, and his entire body jerked with wild and hungry passion.
“That’s not Uncle Andrew Mama.”
“No baby. It sure isn’t.” She removed her revolver, aimed at his head, fire erupted from the barrel, and a bullet whizzed through the air and torn asunder her dead brother's brains.
Candy smiled as her translucent girls danced hand in hand in a circle around her. “Mama! Mama! Mama! Kill! Kill! Kill!” The old woman’s blood now streamed around Candy’s boots, spreading through the old shack’s blistered wood floor. Bloody axes, hackets, and knives surrounded her. The smell of dead flesh stank the room. Humidity clung to the air and bugs buzzed above body parts and bones. She exploded in laughter as she stared at the ceiling and let tears run down her red speckled face. This room represented the New World, she thought as her mind courted insanity. The bones, the flesh, the bugs, the death, the pain, the hate—it’s all that’s' left. This is all that's left when the lights are gone, the cell phones are dead, the reality shows are cancelled, the pop artists are out of business; this is what remains. May be this is all that there ever was. All the glamour of the Old World was just a thin, lying veneer hiding the grim reality of man's primal need for the gore and mayhem of the New World. May be the Fever freed humanity from its self-imposed, civilized shackles.
Candy gathered herself
(babykiller!)
and walked out of the shack, back into the New World; where she knew new horrors waited, ready and willing to show her that if she thought this was bad—she aint seen nothing yet.
15
Candy moved back down the path heading to the pontoon boat. The rain had stopped; the sun had broken through. The day was heating up, the humidity already making a stellar come back. She didn't feel much of anything in that moment. Her mind had stored the image of her brother hanging from a hook, surrounded by death, far back into the nether regions of her subconscious; a place that comes alive during dark nightmares; a region of traumatizing pain that waits for an opportune time to hit the play button; reeling the drama in the mind's eye like a digital projector.
She was closing on the clearing that led to the pontoon and the water's edge; she heard voices, male voices, stranger danger, red alert; her own primal instincts now sharpened and tuned in on the new horror frequency sent her hand straight to the handle the Colt revolver. She slunk down into a slow and stealthy walk; she edged her way to the clearing.
She saw three men. Camouflage covered their thin and rugged bodies. They stood around the pontoon. Then the men saw the hummer and smiles broke across their faces; faces that looked higher than a fucking kite; jacked up on something crazy strong; she'd seen that kind of look countless times dealing with meth heads; but this look was more intense, like they weren’t quite human anymore; they looked like primal savages with the intelligence of rabid bears.
"Mama... can't let em take the Hummer." The girls spoke in hushed whispers, their translucent bodies shivering in hot swamp air like ghostly vapor. Earth's hot steam rose, surrounding Candy with stealthy mist. She removed her revolver and quietly opened the cylinder. Three bullets left. Primal savages with insane bear intelligence or not; powerful drugs fueling their intensity withstanding; hot lead shot by an award winning gunslinger was a fix all for such circumstances.
(murderer!)
(babykiller!)
The soldiers were now sliding the pontoon on the shore. They looked to be talking about trying to secure it to the top of the Humvee. Candy aimed her revolver for one of their heads. Then the crackle a radio on one of their belts caused her to stay her trigger finger.
The man turned and looked in her general direction.
She didn't budge.
He was walking casually closer, speaking loudly into the radio. "A hell of a find, Sarge! A Humvee and a pontoon boat... Nope. I don't see em... Wait a second...holy shit!"
The rain had washed away some of her tracks and the drag marks from Andrews final ride. But, now, the radio man spotted them; then he spotted her.
Her first bullet split Radio Man's head. The two other had stayed at the Humvee and turned fast, almost fast enough. Her second bullet burst a hole through the next soldiers right eye, exited through the back of his skull and splattered his buddy red. The man fell backwards and took cover on the other side of th
e Humvee.
The radio crackled alive on the ground with questions. What is your situation? Do you copy? Hello? Tom, are you there!"
The man jumped up from the other side and sprayed an erratic spurt of bullets from his rifle; the hot lead zipped passed Candy, leaving her unscathed. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” Candy said in a soft monotone as she entered the clearing, making her way to the Hummer.
A wild voice came from the other side of the Jeep. “You just fucked up! I mean, you just fucked up big! You go any idea who you messin with!”
Candy squatted down and stared under the Hummer. The man may be jacked up and feeling strong; but that bear intelligence just failed him. She picked up Radio Man's rifle, a AR15 (seemed like everybody's carrying them these days), aimed it deftly at the man's exposed ankle and fired. Hot blood shot from his leg in a red spurt and he fell to the ground, dropping his rifle, screaming. She now ran around the hummer, quickly walked up to him, and kicked the rifle out of his reach. He was looking up at her, his big bug eyes pulsing in his skull. “You going to regret this, fucking bitch!” He spat at her. She smiled.
“You have clue what you just did? Who you just fucking crossed? You red headed, stupid fucking cunt! The Militia will have your fucking head in a goddam slin—”
She blew his brains out. The report of the rifle echoed over the smoggy land, the hot humid air, and reverberated over the black water. Somewhere a flock of birds took flight.
She examined their uniforms. This was some new hell; this wasn't the City of God guys. She was almost certain of that. They had a basic patch stitched on their arms with skulls and rifles crossing each other with only two words in bold capital lettering: THE MILITIA.
Chapter Five: Final Night in the Swamp
1
Darkness surrounds Jack while a bar of swampy moon light drifting through an open window streaks across his face. For a moment, he thinks he is still unconscious. Slowly his nervous system reminds him of the pain coursing through his body. The smell of infection is nauseating. Breathing causes exhaustion, his eyes barely stay open. How did this happen? What in god’s name was I thinking? He thinks, gritting his teeth in agony. Outside the world is dark, frogs are burping, and something is moving. Where is she? It hurts so much. The rustles grow louder and he realizes he hears footsteps. The door opens. For a moment, he sees a dark and dead figure, full of ragged and jaggedly sharp teeth standing in the doorway, staring at him, ready to eat him in his oh so vulnerable condition. He welcomed it, wanted it. He couldn’t kill himself properly, so let the dead man standing in the darkened doorway do it for him.
