Just as quickly as he came the man then went back to his newfound purpose. He picked up the rope and hastily tied a small noose in one end of it as he walked back to the monster. The monster was still unconscious and the man dragged him to the tree, the blood still slowly oozing from the wound. He then set the monster there with his legs comically splayed out, his back against the tree. The thing was starting to come to now, choking on the blood in his mouth.
The man was now working with a resolve he never knew. It was almost like he stood there watching it happen, instead of being the source of it all. He bound the monster’s wrist with the rope and twisted it behind him and back around the tree.
The monster was half waking, still dazed as he spit the blood and bits of teeth from his mouth. “What are you doin’?”
The man didn’t say a word but went on with his work, grabbing the other hand and wrenching it behind him. Using all of his strength he then cinched the rope around the other arm as tight as he could, the monster making a loud groan as he did. With that the man proceeded to tie a knot he knew would never be undone.
The monster was starting to shake off his foggy slumber. “Let me go!”
With the monster bound to the tree and the woman glued to the ground, the man now had some time for himself. His arm was still bleeding and he took off his coat and pulled back his shirt sleeve, both were soaked in blood. Even with his heavy coat and shirt to protect him he could see there was one deep gushing wound and several cuts. The man took his pocket knife and removed a length of his shirt tail and bound his injuries, stopping the bleeding.
The monster was completely back to his senses by then. “Let me go asshole!”
Before going back to his work, the man stopped a second to get a good look at the thing. It looked like a man, about his age he thought. Overall he was large and shaggy, his unruly hair and beard untouched in years. He was dirty and disheveled and the overwhelming stench of his body odor nearly made the man vomit.
“Let me go asshole!” The monster spoke like he was accustomed to his orders being followed; he didn’t quite yet comprehend that his words now meant nothing.
Without replying he bent down and looked over the thing’s bullet wound. The monster was losing blood but the man knew he would live long enough for what he had in mind. Then the man went back to his work never saying a word.
Even now the monster thought himself in charge. “GET OVER HERE AND CUT ME LOOSE ASSHOLE!”
As he walked back to the pile, the man briefly checked on the woman who still stood there about thirty feet away. She had not moved even an inch, just as she was told.
The man then picked up the kerosene and turned around. When he did the monster saw his face again, and somehow, at that very moment, the thing knew what all of this was about.
“I didn’t kill that boy!”
Without responding the man promptly walked right back to the monster throwing a large dose of kerosene in his face and right into his lying mouth.
The monster’s face was doused with the kerosene, he was choking on it and his eyes were on fire. He now understood he was no longer in charge. “I didn’t do it! You don’t want to do this mister! I didn’t kill that boy!”
The man paid him no attention as he silently flung another couple of large splashes on the monster’s chest and arms. He then made sure the monster’s groin and legs got their fair share. The man then stepped back placing the nearly empty can on the ground.
The monster was desperate to stop what he now knew was coming. “Don’t do this! You don’t want to do this! I didn’t mean to kill that boy! You don’t understand! Me and him were going to be friends a long time! I just wanted him to shut up that’s all! I just wanted him to shut up! I gave him something to calm him down but it wasn’t working! He wouldn’t stop crying! I had to shut him up! I had to! I didn’t mean to hurt him but I had to stop that crying!”
He was glad the monster wouldn’t stop talking. Every word out of its bloody, monstrous mouth only fueled the rage inside the man, now glowing white hot.
The man looked around and saw a tall clump of dried grass near him and pulled a large fistful out of the ground. He then fished through his front pocket and produced an old friend, his trusty cigarette lighter recently filled to the top. He flipped open the chromed metal lighter, it making that distinctive sound, and set the bundle of grass on fire.
“DON’T DO THIS! PLEASE DON’T BURN ME! I DIDN’T MEAN TO HURT HIM! I DIDN’T MEAN TO!”
The man then calmly walked over and dropped the bundle straight into the monster’s lap.
“NO!” The monster sat there squirming, straining against the rope that held him to the tree. With a muffled pop the fire started in his groin and spread quickly. The monster was still silently squirming, staring down at the fire in his lap. In a few moments, and to the man’s satisfaction, he finally started screaming.
The man took a few steps back, briefly checked on the woman again, and then turned back to the show.
The fire had crawled down his legs and up to his chest and was rapidly spreading. The monster was struggling and still screaming, and the screaming soon turned into an earsplitting howl.
When it reached his beard and face, the monster began frantically shaking his head trying to snuff the fire out. The flames completely consumed him, the air filled with the stench of roasting flesh and hair, that inhuman howling and that crackling, burning sound.
The monster continued to writhe and twist on the tree, unable to break loose, like it mattered now. Then with a few more moments of anguish, the thing went still and silent but the fire kept burning, the monster completely engulfed in the flames.
He stood there watching the agonizing show, whatever it was inside him nearly contented but not yet full.
With that done he turned to the third. She still stood there right where the man told her and had watched it all, helpless to do anything. If she even wanted to do anything the man didn’t know. She just waited there watching him in fear because she most certainly couldn’t run.
He approached her again and now had the time to look her over. She was a lot younger than he thought. She was a skinny young thing, nineteen or twenty, just barely a woman.
Like the other two, the woman was filthy, she smelled like she hadn’t bathed for a while now. Her long mousy brown hair was greasy and stringy and hung there limply around her head. It was topped with a gray knit cap that kept it out of her sunken hollow eyes. She wore several shirts and light jackets of different sizes, colors and patterns, layered protection from the cold morning air. Around her waist hung a long and heavy brown wool skirt and under that baby blue leggings, and rounding out her ensemble were black leather men’s work shoes that were at least two sizes too large.
But her most memorable feature was rigidly locked around her ankles, a handmade set of leg irons that impeded her movement and were without doubt the only reason she still stood there looking at the man. An eighteen-inch length of steel rebar was the foundation of the device. Attached to either side were two roughly formed steel cuffs welded to each end with both having a padlock through it to fasten them shut. The girl had stuffed odd assorted rags between the cuffs and her ankles and result was a colorful arrangement that jutted out from the ends in an almost flowerlike display. The whole contraption was covered with a patina of rust and crud and appeared to have been there a very long time.
While rudimentary in design the restraint was quite effective. It was crude in execution but more than up to the job. It held her legs rigidly a foot and a half apart and the best she could possibly manage was a slow awkward waddle, running impossible.
For a few seconds they just stood watching each other without a single word between them, and then the man pulled his gun from the holster again and held it there at his side.
“I’m not with them,” the woman nervously informed him, trying to sound composed standing right in the midst of the death and suffering she just witnessed.
At tha
t moment the man wasn’t concerned with anything she had to say, except the answer to one question. “What were they arguing about at the campsite this morning?”
“I told you, I’m not with them.” She didn’t realize that her very life depended on the answer.
Immediately the man put the pistol right in her face and she knew she was about to be shot, because she was.
“Tell me what they were arguing about!” The man could barely control his anger and the woman could plainly see it, that rage inside him still burning hot. He stood there holding the gun on her; the woman quaking with fright, and the man knew if she gave that stupid answer again he was going to take her life.
And she knew it too. “The boy, all right!”
“What about him?”
“She was mad. The boy wouldn’t stop crying so he gave him her last sleeping pill … and …”
“And what?”
She sheepishly stared at the man not wanting to say it.
“AND WHAT?!” The man’s anger completely overtaking him, his own hand shaking, the hammer cocked, the safety off. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep from killing her and he didn’t care.
“She wanted to … to eat him.” Her eyes overflowing.
Without another thought the man walked to where the bride lie, she was already dead with her blood soaked in the ground around her, in death still clutching her throat. The man pointed the pistol down at her face and squeezed the trigger, each slug tearing it apart until suddenly the gun wouldn’t fire anymore. The pistol was now empty with the slide locked back; the bride’s face an unrecognizable mass of splintered bone and bloody pulp.
The woman watched in terror and wondered if she wasn’t next and the man didn’t know for sure she wasn’t. Whatever it was inside him was still in control.
He coldly walked back to her exchanging the empty magazine with a loaded one and then slammed the slide down on a fresh round.
He stopped about eight feet away, casually pointing the pistol at her. “What about you, were you hungry?”
“No … no …” She put her trembling hands up between her and the gun. She thought she was going to die now, and maybe she would, but for the moment the man still had questions.
“What was the boy’s name? Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say …” the tears returning to her eyes.
The man already told her what he wanted to know and wasn’t going to ask anymore. He took the pistol in both hands bringing it up to his eye. He then took steady aim right on the bridge of the woman’s nose.
“I don’t know his name! If he ever had one I never heard it!”
“Where did he come from?!” the man screaming over the top of his gun.
“He was with this woman.”
“Woman?”
“Yes, they killed her, and the boy was with her.”
“They killed her!” The man didn’t think it possible to get any angrier but now he knew he could.
It took everything inside the man to keep from killing her, the rage inside again white hot, but he wanted his answer so he tried to remain calm. “You want what he got?” The man gestured with his pistol to the slumped over remains of the monster, still smoking there on the tree, the charred husk of the thing slowly burning itself out.
The woman started wildly shaking her head and it reminded him of the agonizing end of the monster when it died.
“Then you better tell me the whole thing! AND NOW!”
She carefully chose her every word, unsure of how the enraged man might respond. “They spotted her three days ago, this woman … I don’t know … thirty, thirty-five. We followed her and that boy for nearly a day. I think they wanted to see if she would lead them back to a camp, or wherever they were hiding. Finally she got tired of waiting and took that rifle …” the woman’s grimy finger pointed out the scoped rifle on the ground. “… and she shot her from real far away, shot her in the back …” She stopped like she was done.
“Keep talking!” The man’s anger was still growing.
“There’s nothing more to say.” The woman hastily wiped her eyes. “The boy tried to hide but he found him … he took the boy and she took everything the woman had with her.”
“Everything?”
“Yes, even the clothes off her back.” She instinctively touched the cap on her head as she said it, as if her hand was confessing something her mouth wouldn’t dare.
The man understood the language. “Give me the cap.”
The woman just stared at him.
“Give me the cap!”
She took it off and meekly offered it to him.
He looked it over and there embedded in the fabric on one side was a delicate fanned pattern of reddish brown spots. The man wadded up the cap and threw it back in her face. “You’re not with them, huh?”
The woman began crying again, like she could turn it on and off at will, “I didn’t kill her!” she pleaded with the man once more wiping her runny eyes. “My head was cold, that’s all! I took it, okay, but I didn’t have anything to do with killing the woman … or that boy!”
The man just looked her up and down appreciating what a wonderful little actress she was. He thought if this had been the old world that such a performance would have earned awards and accolades.
Once again he brought the pistol up, aiming it right between her eyes. She was violently shaking now because she could clearly see in the man’s face that their conversation was ending, and so was her life.
The man stood there applying steady pressure to the trigger as he was taught and was now only waiting for that sound to come, that sound of his pistol as it fired, the sound of his gun going off and her dying.
As they both waited in the silence for that sound to come, he could hear in its place the faint ringing patter of droplets on metal. The man looked down and could see there underneath her skirt a slow steady dripping, ping, ping, ping, came the delicate sound from the steel crossbar of her shackles.
And with that sound the man found the rage was gone, completely sated, and he no longer had it in him to take her life. She hadn’t killed the boy, that fact he intuitively knew. Her only crime was in not caring about what happened to the mother or the child.
The man lowered the pistol, the fury inside him now entirely gone. “Get out of here.”
The girl continued staring at him, not knowing what to do.
“I said get out of here, before I change my mind!”
The girl turned and hobbled towards the pile of belongings the man had dumped on the ground. She awkwardly bent over trying to pick up some much wanted items.
“I said get out of here! I meant right now!”
She didn’t hesitate again or turn to look back as she limped away as fast as her burdened legs would allow. Eventually she reached the crest of a small hill and at last felt safe enough to turn around. She lay in the grass just barely peeking over, trying to get a better view but hoping not to be seen herself.
The man was no longer concerned with her and was busy gathering their possessions and stacking them in neat pile on the ground, including two unwanted items he had in his pocket. He then doused the collection with the remaining kerosene and set it ablaze.
The woman helplessly watched and began crying real tears over all of those treasures burning up in the fire.
He then went to the tree where the monster was. For several minutes he stood there doing something but she didn’t know what, the smoke obscuring her view. After that the man headed east carrying his rifle and the only thing of theirs he kept were a few small pieces of clothing.
She waited there for the longest time not knowing if he had actually gone or if he might return, thinking that it might be some type of trick. She wanted to go down to see but was afraid of what would happen if caught there again. She just waited there in the grass frightened, unsure what to do.
After more than an hour, the fire had burned itself out and she found enough courage
to get up and cautiously hobbled back to the site.
Her first stop was the bride who was laying in the grass still clutching her throat, but now her face was gone. The girl went through her pockets hunting for one small valuable she hoped was missed, at long last finding it, a small silver key.
She wiggled the key and with some effort was at last able to break loose the long frozen lock. Then she promptly undid the other. Free of her shackles she smiled, the first time in longer than she could remember. The woman wondered if this was what it was to be happy. Her legs unbound, she quickly raced to see if anything remained but only found disappointment. All of her possessions were completely destroyed. Nothing remained but a pile of ash, burnt metal and plastic. Even the wheelbarrow was badly burned and warped.
Saddened with her loss, she walked over to see what the man had done to the monster. His blackened body still slouched over and smoldering, still tied to the tree with his arms twisted back around it, like they would be forever. Above the monster’s body the man had carved into that tree “CHILD KILLER” as a final telling verdict for any that saw him.
As she stood looking at what remained of the monster, the woman knew she should feel something for her father but couldn’t, or her mother either. She felt nothing for them at all. She did feel sorrow over the loss of her belongings but conceded it was a small price to pay for the gift she was given. While the stranger had destroyed everything she owned, he had also set her free.
The man arrived back at the camp early that afternoon. The boy was still sitting exactly where he left him. He sat down on his own bed opening his bag of medical supplies. As he tended to his injured arm, he wondered if Joshua could forgive him or would ever speak to him again. He sat there and continued to watch the child and hoped he could be forgiven, but the boy wouldn’t look him in the eye. When at last he did reluctantly look up, then the man knew. The man knew the child had disobeyed him and had gone to the other campsite.
Joshua (Book 1) Page 31
