by Steven Novak
“They are.”
“Then why…I mean…why are we…”
He turned to face me, dropped to one knee, and put his hands on my shoulders. Strangely, being eye level with him made me feel better. He probably knew it would. “We’ll be alright. Trust me. I spent more time in that city than I ever should have. I know my way around.” He squeezed my shoulder in a reassuring way, placed his hand on my cheek, and patted gently. He probably knew I would like that, too.
I stopped asking questions.
A few hours later, buildings began to rise from the horizon, massive things, dark silhouettes against a sky of gray. I’d never seen anything like it, so many of them in one place, an ocean of steel and stone, burnt and crumbling. It seemed to go on forever. We were so close, just miles away. If we kept moving this way, we would reach it by nightfall. My feet stopped moving. My eyes stopped blinking. I really didn’t want to go to the city.
When Blueeyes realized I wasn’t keeping pace, he chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a city.”
I shook my head. “Not this close.”
My eyes moved to a single building rising above the rest, so impossibly tall the clouds swallowed the top. My lips felt dry, head heavy. I might have taken a step backward.
“Listen, Megan, there’s no—” The sky roared, lightning flashed. Blueeyes looked up. “Damn it.”
He scanned the surrounding area, settled on a small row of buildings a few hundred yards in the opposite direction, and pointed. “Looks like you won’t have to worry about the city until tomorrow. We’ll wait out the storm over there, leave first thing in the morning.”
I didn’t argue.
By the time we reached the buildings, the rain was falling: a soft drizzle, the calm before the storm. The area was a mess: gimp corpses everywhere, upturned cars, collapsed walls reduced to piles of rubble. The place looked different than it had from a distance. The closer we moved, the more I realized something was wrong. I’d seen rubble. I’d seen dead gimps and destroyed buildings before. I’d seen a lot of them. There was something very fresh about the way everything was laid out, as if the dust had just settled.
Blueeyes noticed it too. His hand fell to my chest. “Wait.”
He moved away from me, softly stepping up to a gimp corpse a few feet away. Once there, he dropped to one knee, reached forward, and rolled it onto its back. His finger instantly went to the hole in its head and to the spatter of bullets in its chest. He poked and pulled back blood. That’s when I smelled the smoke.
Blueeyes smelled it, too. “We’re getting ou—“
I heard the gunshot before I saw his knee explode. Blood sprayed from his leg, erupting in every direction, chunks of bone sent skyward. Blueeyes’ leg folded backward, cracked, and bent in a way legs aren’t meant to bend. When he hit the dirt, he snarled.
“Get down, Megan!” Screaming through his teeth, he lunged forward, snagged the fabric of my pants, and dragged me to the dirt.
Another gunshot. The ground beside us split, stone and sand. Blueeyes crawled on top of me as the gunfire increased, pelting the surrounding area in rapid succession, ricocheting off steel, mauling earth. His back ruptured in two places. His arm tore open. With his arms around me, we rolled across the dirt and behind a nearby car. A volley of gunfire pelted the frame, shattered the windshield, and flattened a tire. Blueeyes was already reaching for his shotgun, struggling to load it, hands slippery with blood.
“Fuckgoddamnitfucksostupidsostupid.” He was talking to himself, growling under his breath, cursing through gritted teeth.
His hand went to my head and shoved me face first to the dirt. “Stay down!”
He rose for a second, fired through the shattered windshield, ducked momentarily, and fired again. Everything was happening too fast, too loud, too much all at once. Blueeyes fired again. A spray of bullets crisscrossed the hood of the car, tearing it to pieces, gunfire ringing in my ears. Above me, a headlight exploded. Bits of glass scattered across my hair. Through half closed eyes I peeked at my friend; his chest was soaked in blood, his neck painted red. A chunk of his hand was missing. His fingers wouldn’t work. While trying to reload, he dropped his gun. I needed to help him, needed to do something more than what I was doing. Reaching over my shoulder, I grabbed Pointycrunch, tore him from my back, and loaded an arrow.
Blueeyes noticed what I was doing, knocked him from my hands, and shoved me to the ground. “Damn it! Stay down!”
Something hit his chest, sprayed his face with blood, and tossed him backward violently. His eyes closed, face contorted. His hands went to his chest, crimson pouring through the cracks in his fingers. Without thinking I retrieved Pointycrunch, rose above the hood of the car, and let loose. It was a blind shot, a silly shot. I didn’t know what I was aiming at, maybe nothing. The gunfire continued, tore the bumper from the car, and lifted a section of steel from the side. It was everywhere, all at once. A cloud of dust and bits of shrapnel rose around us. I could taste it; I swallowed it. It coated my throat and wormed its way into the spaces between my eyes and up my nose. Instead of breathing, I coughed. Blindly, I grabbed another arrow, loaded, and fired again. I barely felt the bullet that tore open my shoulder, at least at first. The impact knocked me back and deposited me in the dirt beside Blueeyes. The pain came all at once, so much that I thought I was dead. I had to be dead. It spread quickly across my shoulder, down my side, and into my legs. When I tried to move, I couldn’t. My lower half locked, froze in place. Instinctively, my hand went to the wound and pressed into mushy flesh, warm blood trickling down my arm. I screamed and cursed louder than I’d ever screamed or cursed, so loud the words transformed into something guttural, animalistic. I wasn’t myself anymore. I was a wounded animal, target practice.
When Blueeyes rolled toward me, a pair of arms wrapped around his neck, massive and muscular, skin like dark steel. Another set of hands snagged his arm. A third wrestled the shotgun from his hand. Suddenly, he was airborne, thrown to the dirt, pulled in the opposite direction, and slammed roughly. Someone stomped his leg and cracked the side of his face with the butt of a rifle.
“No!” When I reached for him someone else grabbed my arm. Fingers clutched my hair and tugged violently, tearing it from my scalp in clumps. Arms coiled around my waist, lifting. My feet left the ground and a shoe feel off. I kicked, wiggled, and reached behind me with my good arm, scratching at whoever had me. The more I struggled, the tighter he squeezed. I couldn’t breathe. Someone punched me in the stomach and laughed when I belched blood. A random hand emerged from nowhere and smacked my head so hard the world began to spin. Everything twisted and bent, blurred. I was surrounded. A sea of men converged, filthy hands grabbing my legs, pawing my chest, and pulling at my clothes. There were so many of them, so many angry faces and leering grins. When someone poked my wounded shoulder, I bit so hard I nearly swallowed my tongue.
“Calm down, princess! Calm down!”
At first I didn’t recognize the voice, hard to discern among the men. The noises mashed together in such a way that this one was without distinctiveness. Everything was one. One made no sense.
A hand covered my mouth, clamped tight, and pulled my head back. I felt his lips near my ear, inches away, acid breath on my neck. “I told you I was going to hurt you, Megan; told you it couldn’t be helped.”
Bloodboots. He found us.
His face touched mine, cheek-to-cheek, scratchy stubble against my skin. The sea of cackling men parted and I spotted Blueeyes. He was twenty feet away, on his knees in the dirt. Two men held him firmly, stretching his arms in opposite directions while another choked him from behind. A boot kicked his stomach. A fist punched his face so hard bloody teeth hit dirt.
It was instinct alone that caused me to bite Bloodboots’ palm. I dug my teeth deep through sweat and flesh until I tasted blood. When his hand moved away I screamed. “Nonononono! Stop! Please stop!”
Instead of stopping, they hit Blueeyes harder. The group swarmed, hands punching, legs
kicking: a wall of all consuming violence. In the group I recognized Scarface, grinning as he hammered my friend, face contorted in such a way he hardly looked human.
The voice of Bloodboots stabbed my ear. “You want them to stop, princess?”
I nodded, overcome with emotions and unable to speak, choked with tears.
“You want me to tell them to leave him alone? They’ll listen to me. Those are my men, my monsters. If I tell them to stop, they’ll stop.”
It was awful, the sound of flesh on flesh, blood-wet, cracking knuckles. It wouldn’t stop. I would have done anything to make it stop.
Bloodboots was unrelenting. “Ask me. Ask me to tell them to leave him alone.”
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, and couldn’t look away. When I closed my eyes, I still heard it. They were killing him. Blueeyes was dying. He was dying and there was nothing I could do to help him. They were going to make me watch.
What emerged from my mouth was incomprehensible, a gurgle and a scream, something without definition. “S-s-stop top-stop-op!”
Bloodboots snickered. “Come on, you can do better than that. Ask me nice. Say, please.”
“Ple-pea-se-leasplease!”
It wasn’t a word, just sounds and nothing more, desperate pleading from someone with nothing left. It was all I had to offer.
Bloodboots snickered. His mouth moved from my ear. “You heard the little princess, you sons of bitches! Step away from the man!”
I’m not sure how I managed to lift my head, not sure how I even moved. Everything was limp, rubbery. My head weighed a thousand pounds, neck useless. Whatever fight I had left in me was gone. Through teary eyes I watched as the mass of flesh parted, slowly, one-by-one, laughing between labored breaths. When they were gone, there was only Blueeyes. His head hung loosely on his neck, chin resting on his chest. He remained upright because it’s what the men holding his arms wanted. If they’d let him go he would have crumpled. Every part of him was puffy, blue and purple, ripped to pieces and drenched in blood.
When I tried to talk, Bloodboots covered my mouth. “Shhh.” I didn’t bite him, didn’t even try. I just cried. Blueeyes looked at me lazily through blood-clumped hair, his face a mess of mauled flesh. I cried even more.
Bloodboots chuckled. “You’re one tough motherfucker, aren’t you?” He was talking to Blueeyes now, watching as my friend struggled to meet his gaze, body racked with pain. “Help him out, Darrell. I want him to look at me when I’m talking to him.”
Scarface moved behind Blueeyes, snagged a handful of his hair, and pulled his head back. I could almost feel Bloodboots smile. I didn’t need to see his face to confirm it.
Maintaining his grip on my waist, he moved us closer to my fallen friend. “You’re the one who let the howlers loose, aren’t you? Just to rescues this bitch?” His arms tightened, fingers digging roughly into my flesh. “What are you, her daddy? Is this your daddy, sweetie? Are we hurting your daddy?”
When I didn’t answer, he squeezed tighter, mashed his chin against the hole in my shoulder. I yelped, kicked, and wiggled, which accomplished nothing. Even in his beaten haze, Blueeyes heard me screaming. When he reacted, the beating began again.
“Someone hold this brat for me!”
Two men pried me from Bloodboots’ arms and stretched me horizontally, cackling through unkempt whiskers. The man holding my upper half brought me to his face, licked my cheek, then licked his lips and smiled so goddamn ugly. The moment Bloodboots took a step toward Blueeyes, the crowd stopped punching, parted, and let him through.
The leader of the mob dropped to one knee, reached forward, and lifted the beaten face of my friend. His voice went cold, changed into something deadly serious, every word punctuated by anger. “My friends died when you did that, lots of them. My little brother died when you did that. But you didn’t think about that, did you? You didn’t care about my little brother. You didn’t give a shit.” He moved his head closer, eyes narrowing. “All for this stupid little girl. My brother died for a worthless little bitch.”
Blueeyes’ head jerked and his jittery lips parted, his unsteady gaze settling on the man kneeling before him. His voice was nearly a whisper. It was all he could muster, all he needed. “Touch the girl and I’ll kill you.”
“Excuse me?”
Blood poured from a gash on his head and over his nose, mouth and chin. When he spoke, he spit, scarlet venom. “You heard me.”
Bloodboots shook his head, then grinned. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Your face is a fucking mess, you’re missing half your hand, you’ve got three, maybe four bullets in you, and you’re threatening me?” He laughed out loud. “You don’t win, stupid. You aren’t walking away from this.”
He moved even closer to Blueeyes’ face, barely an inch between them. “Don’t worry though, I’m not going to touch the girl. Not really my thing.” With a hand, he motioned to the group. “They’re going to hurt her though. By the time these sickos are done with her she’ll beg me to put her out of her misery, and I’ll give her what she wants. Don’t worry, we won’t make her dinner. She won’t be touching my lips. She’s not worth it. You know what I will do, though? No? No ideas? You’re going to love this. The moment she turns into a gimp, or a biter, or whatever the hell she’s going to be, I’m going to kill her again. This one’s going to die twice and I’m going to enjoy every…fucking…minute.”
Blueeyes’ hands turned to fists. His face went black. When he screamed, he snarled. His hand shot forward, fingers snapping at Bloodboots’ neck, teeth chomping, eyes wide.
“Kill yo—” The butt of a rifle put an end to his attack, cracked his skull, and planted him face-first in the mud. When that didn’t knock him out, it cracked again. On cue the crowd swarmed, vicious, attacking with disturbing glee. They beat him for a solid minute, smacking him with steel, stomping on his head, and stabbing his back. When the knives weren’t enough to hold him down, they began to put bullets his back. They were mauling him. At some point I closed my eyes. If my hands hadn’t been pinned to my sides I would have covered my ears. If I’d had a knife of my own I would have cut my ears off.
The abuse didn’t stop until Bloodboots ordered it to stop. “Alright, alright, alright! That’s just about enough, gentlemen. Back off! Give the man some room!” He looked at me and grinned. He was in charge. He was in control. He wanted me to know that.
The huffing crowd retreated, forming a semi-circle around their plaything, clothes spattered crimson, breathing ragged and ready. At the center of the group was what remained of my friend, painted red, sticky, and puffy. He wasn’t a man anymore. He was a broken thing, a lump of meat with a heart. A section of flesh covering his skull had peeled away and folded over, an awful wet slab flapping in the breeze. Somehow, despite everything they’d done to him, Blueeyes moved. His back creaked, lurched, and bent into a shape vaguely resembling straight. I’m not sure if he even knew I was there, if he could hear me crying, begging him to stay down. He wouldn’t have listened anyway.
Bloodboots sighed, scratched his head, ran his fingers through his hair, and mumbled under his breath. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He watched as Blueeyes continued to stir, limbs bent and broken, open wounds breathing the diseased air of a world gone mad. Head bobbing loosely on his neck, he tried to speak and failed, choking on blood. When he finished spitting out his insides, he tried again.
His eyes moved lazily to Bloodboots and remained there, impossibly steady. “G-go-gonna ki-il-kill you la-last.”
“Motherfuck…” Bloodboots had enough and reached for the gun hanging on his hip. He retrieved it from the holster and aimed. I heard it click, heard the round slide into the chamber.
I’ll never forget that sound.
In the moment before Bloodboots fired, Blueeyes looked to me. He wasn’t sad or angry; he wasn’t fighting back. He knew it was coming and there was nothing he could do. What little remained of his voice cracked. “Cl-close your ey-eyes.”
I could swear I saw him grin.
I did as he asked.
I heard the shots, two of them, probably aimed at his head. Bloodboots laughed. The rest joined in. Someone cheered. There were more shots after that, insult added to injury. I stopped counting. It was a party, the highlight of the day, the joyous signaling of more to come. They enjoyed every minute of it.
And just like that, my friend was gone.
17.
I’m not entirely sure when I passed out. At some point I just went to sleep. Unconsciousness rolled in, enveloped me, and carried me away. When Blueeyes died everything went fuzzy and distant, the reflected memories of someone else. I didn’t care anymore. Blueeyes was gone, along with Mother and Father. The only people I’d ever loved, all of them were gone. I remember being tied, legs bound, arms behind my back. I remember the smiles, the cackling, dry lips and rotted teeth, faces caked in filth. I remember seeing Pointycrunch, watching him as they carried me away, losing another friend. There was a truck; they tossed me in the back, stuffed between slimy bags packed with unknown meat, an unbearable stench. There were flies crawling on my face, swarming the bags—so many flies.
“Too late to head back. We’ll hole up for the night at that place you noticed on the way up.” It was Bloodboots. “No one touches the kid until I have a talk with her, understand?”
I wasn’t looking forward to that.
The drive felt short. I remember wishing it was longer. I knew what was coming, knew what awaited me when we came to a stop. I wanted to drive forever.
The door of the truck swung open. A massive hand smacked my face. “Wake up.” When I didn’t respond it smacked me again.
Scarface pulled me from between the bags of meat and tossed me over his shoulder. A soft drizzle tickled my face. Lightning cracked. The clouds lit up. A storm was growing, the sky angry. The clouds devoured what remained of the falling sun. All that was left was a glimmer, obscured by the silhouette of unfamiliar buildings. The air smelled like sulfur, burning things I couldn’t quite place. Things I wanted nothing to do with. Scarface lugged me through a doorway and into a dimly lit room with high ceilings and concrete floors. There were small fires scattered around the interior, emptied bags and cooking meat. The area was constructed in a hurry. Nothing seemed finished; everything was unorganized. The smell was awful. As we moved further inside the men watched, toothless grins cast in dancing shadows. Their eyes followed intently, unblinking. I watched them swallow, lick their lips, and grin in a way that sent shivers along my spine.
