The Savage

by Frank Bill

  But viewing the mule made Cotto wonder what troubles the boy could’ve crossed into. These people of the rural land were maybe more savage than he and his men when there was nothing else to lose. And that brought even deeper desire to catch him. Dorn was planning to be everything Cotto believed he was; he’d be a defining asset to his young soldiers.

  Before the Sheldon girl could turn and run, the front door of the home unbarred. A female came from within. Her face an expanse of abuse, nose and lips plumbed by something durable. Crusted red with eyes raccooned, she shouldered a lever-action .30-30 on the Sheldon girl.

  Viewing the actions through his binoculars, Cotto muttered, “I shall call her the ugly bitch.”

  The Sheldon girl seemed to be surveying the rifle that the ugly bitch wielded upon her. There was an exchange of words between the two. Then the Sheldon girl raised her hands, palms facing the ugly bitch. Cotto caught something within Sheldon’s features, a smirk about the corner of her mouth, and though he couldn’t hear it, she bared teeth with rage and attacked the ugly bitch. Clawing and punching and kicking her until she dropped the rifle, caved in, and fell into a fetal position. A warrior, Cotto told himself. A numbness for her skill lubed Cotto’s insides.

  Picking up the rifle, the Sheldon girl thumbed the hammer of the .30-30, stood over the ugly bitch with anger wetting her face, demanding words Cotto could not make out. As he adjusted the focus of his binoculars, fingers trembling with excitement, trying to decipher her lip movements, it looked as though she were asking Where? Where did you get this? By this Cotto thought Sheldon was asking the ugly bitch about the rifle.

  The ugly bitch reached for something Cotto could not see. He caught the reflection of a blade. The Sheldon girl screamed. Then came the rack of gunfire. The ugly bitch’s brain was thrown from the rear of her skull like guts dropped in a slaughterhouse’s slop trays.

  Cotto wanted to clap, to laugh with joy at the fast action of violence that came unexpected but was needed in order to survive the situation. This girl is a beast!

  The Sheldon girl chambered another round, her arms pulsed and quaked and she entered the house. Within seconds gunfire erupted once more. Cotto stood in the tree, waiting, unnerved, anticipating her exit from the house. Knowing the gunfire was from the same weapon. It had cast the same echo, but did the Sheldon girl pull the trigger?

  ANGUS

  Eyes blinked open to the tilt of floor level. Reek of animal carcass and the laughter of madmen. A vibration of pain welted Angus’s skull. He lifted his neck, glancing at the worn black boots; his pistol lay from his reach. The boots were a barrier between the two, so he pulled himself back to standing. From the opening where the men had come wobbled a pink-haired female; she had potato-skin knees, arms vibrating, inked with daggers, eagles, and swastika tattoos, and the color of bruises lined each of her sockets. Then came the quick view of the laughing man who stood over his left shoulder. A pip-squeaking stabber not much taller than two and a half bales of hay that’d been twined and stacked, with wilted skin that held the gloss of a turnip’s insides, he wore boots with three-inch soles to add height to his sunken demeanor.

  Angus twisted his attention to the two men in front of him. Smiling, they offered their gums of decay. Each was wormy and fidgeting. One veered a pistol sideways at Angus; the crud between his knuckles was earthy and human. The other kneeled, reached for Angus’s pistol, stood studying it.

  Smirked. “This here’s one of them plastic-type constructions.”

  The female lay off to the left, still unconscious. The man with the pistol trained on Angus spoke. “Thought you’s fitting yourself up to a beauty nap.”

  Angus knew if he kneeled and ducked all at once, he could spin to the man over his shoulder, take whatever steel he plowed the rear of his skull with, and use it, blanket himself from gunfire with the torso, or maybe they’d not shoot one of their own; it was a gamble.

  Inhaling deep to situate his nerves, Angus stood before the misfits aligning his frame, reached, and felt the bulbous knot that leaked crimson from the rear of his head. Tested their movements, reflexes. They’d not moved him. Taking in the textures of the two men. Ragged cotton and denim. Damp flesh pocked by tats, scabs, and open wounds. One holding Angus’s pistol was barefoot, the nails of his feelers were glazed by grease or oil, each looked as though he’d had leeches burnt from his frame after rolling in cresol from a woodstove. The man holding the gun on Angus said, “You some kinda mute?”

  The stringy female came from behind the two men, bare feet smacked the dirt floor. Slapped forward. The female’s vision appeared possessed, the blacks in her eyes were expanded to dismiss all color, and she stuttered a duck whine. “G-g-got any salt?”

  The man holding Angus’s pistol told her, “Nip that talk from your tongue, Okra.”

  The female kneeled down and started touching the unconscious female, rummaging and picking through her hair as though she had burs in her locks. “Why for, I think I’ve discovered me some salt.” She giggled.

  And Angus questioned, “The fuck you plan to extort from us?”

  “Whatever it is can be offered.”

  Shaking his head, Angus clenched each hand into bone-hardened hammers at his sides, told the man through gritted teeth, “We’s just looking for a place to bed down. Let me get the female from the ground and we’ll be particles in the wind.”

  The man wrinkled his flaky unibrow, motioned with the pistol, and told Angus, “Sure, just scoop the ole gal up and be on with your travels. Stupid shit, done trespassed into the wrong territory!”

  Angus glanced at the female, her locks strung from her head to Okra’s chafed lips as she jerked and chewed. The man holding Angus’s pistol turned it toward his right eye. Closed his left to look down the barrel.

  For a split second, the other man glanced at Okra, his orbs golf-balled, and he shouted, “Set your raggedy ass back from that piece of meat, ain’t no salt, you’s chewing her goddamned lengths, making a tangle of her skull.”

  The female was coming to. Her shoulder quivered. Cuffed hands behind her back were halted from reaching at her hair as she tried to jerk. The man training a pistol on Angus kicked Okra in the ribs. From standing, Angus reacted. Palmed the man who held his pistol. Speared the .45 into his eye. Clamped his hand around the trigger and fired. Face. Skull. Eyehole. All separated like a spoiled tomato flung against a windshield.

  Angus kicked him backward. Dropped his dead weight down onto Okra. The other man screamed, “You son’ bitch!”

  Angus felt the other shape behind him. Felt the movement coming. Anticipated him. Dropped and spun into the other man with the gun. Knew he’d get jammed up. Didn’t shoot. Centered his weight. Shinned the side of the man’s bony knee. Knocked him off balance. Dart of steel came from overhead from the one who stood over Angus’s shoulder. Angus mashed the gun wielder’s face. “Ahh! Dumb fuck!” the man shouted as he released the pistol.

  Angus reached for the pistol that fell from the man’s hold. Spun and scurried backward. Looked up over his shoulder to the man who’d hit him in the rear of the head; he stood with batting lids, confused by the sudden exchange of actions. Angus shot once at the steel wielder. Splintered one knee, caused each to bend, a crowbar hit the floor. The pale-skinned smudge of blood and screams stutter-stepped and fell toward Angus. Kneeling, Angus rolled, his weight somersaulting into the two female’s bodies that lay piled behind him. The metal wielder tumbled, Angus pulled his knees to chest, kicked the metal wielder backward.

  Then came the squalls of Okra, “No! No!” followed by her teeth breaking the skin of Angus’s neck. A rabbit punch of knuckles marred the side of his face from the gun wielder, who crawled to his opposite side, hollering, “Shot my brother.” Taking the glancing fists, Angus pushed his .45 into the attachment of mouth and teeth that quickly flung and pawed at the barrel. Pulled the trigger. The pawing body of Okra went limp; right temple, eye, and cheek had combusted into smears and streaks. Flowering the cobw
ebbed walls like lengths of spruce spit from a wood chipper as the female’s shape fell sideways and wetted onto the floor like car wash suds.

  The explosion shell-shocked the drums of the breathing’s ears. Decibeled the chorus of chaos. As the rabbit puncher sat staring at the parceled skull of Okra, Angus maneuvered around on his ass, drove the .45’s barrel into the rotted mouth of the puncher. The puncher gagged. Slapped the pistol from his mouth, hinged a right knee to his chest, and thrusted a heel at Angus. Kicked him backward. Angus dropped the .45, got to his feet. Looked to the pistol, then back to the slog of pale-skinned heathen who glanced at the pistol and up at Angus, who extended his right hand, fingers facing the puncher; he bent toward himself. Each man held the ring of gunfire jarring within his ears. Worn and wavered, Angus needed sleep, was redlining on exhaustion, but managed to tighten his hands to fists. Told the man, “See what skills you hold for quarrel!”

  From the floor, the crowbar wielder moaned, “Beat that sum bitch, Mick, marble him black and red.” The man bared what passed for teeth. “You’ve killed my sister, one of my brothers, wounded my baby bro. Gonna make you dent and bleed. Soak yur ass in kerosene. Throw you to the meat cellar for a bonfire of flesh and bones.”

  On the floor the female jerked, her hands cuffed behind her. She hollered, “Where the hell have you taken me?”

  “Six Flags, honey.” Mick laughed.

  Not looking down, Angus told her, “Hell.”

  “Uncuff me, you bastard. Done caused enough death.”

  “Sure has,” Mick said.

  Angus came with a left jab to the side of the man’s face. Palmed the underside of his chin. The man crimped and stutter-stepped back. Eyes blinked fast. Angus followed. Flung a low roundhouse into the side of the man’s shin. Something cracked. Pant, pain, and drool creviced from the corners of the man’s mouth. He came with a wild right cross, which Angus evaded.

  On the ground the female rolled onto her ass. Scooted toward Angus and bicycled kicks at his ankle. Angus stomped her feet. She screamed, “Bastard!”

  Angus twisted a right hook into Mick’s ribs. The man spit blood, clenched Angus, tried to suffocate his barrage, reared his head back, and came forward, stapled Angus’s nose. Crimson oozed from his nostrils; the man delivered tight rabbit punches while his body pressed Angus backward, the hurried breath of an outhouse’s shit hole in the summer wafted from the man’s mouth. Angus cut an elbow just below the man’s eye, then beneath his chin, chattered what mineral- and raisin-tinted teeth he held, sidestepped, and dug a knee into the man’s kidney. Eliminated his wind.

  The man buckled and cringed at Angus’s attacks. Spit red and took another elbow across his forehead. Followed by an uppercut that crumpled him to the floor.

  Angus kneeled and took up his pistol. Glanced at the array of bodies, Okra’s malformed flesh. The opening in the steel wielder’s knee. The half-garnished skull of the man who picked up his Glock. Angus’s ears still rang, the taste of gunpowder hovering in the air and iron on his tongue. The female was going mad with insults. Mick wept for his fallen sibling, the side door swung open. Outdoor light peeked in with a man who towered thick and aged, being guided by the barrel of a shotgun that he scanned the area in front of him with. Angus raised the .45 at the man. Was rushed by the one he’d just laid a beating on. Squeezed the trigger, fired once. The thick man backpedaled and ducked out the entrance. Tin siding clunked with a quarter-sized rip. The man screamed, “Mick the Stick, you and your brothers still returning wind?”

  The man blanketed his arms around Angus. Wormed his right leg behind his footing. Tripped him backward to the dirt floor. The slam of weight to his chest, air coughed from within, exhaustion was numbing his every morsel of being as the female scooted toward Angus, kicked at his features from the side with her foot bottoms. Mick punched at Angus, left and right, repeating the back-and-forth as he screamed and drooled to the wiry man, “They’s not, Josiah’s been knee shot, Grudge and Okra has been delivered to they Maker!”

  With a heated fury, Mick blistered and bruised Angus’s face. The female continued to kick and kick, cursing him. “Wasn’t for you my daddy’d be alive, you murderous fuck!”

  Angus’s complexion was a rotisserie of jags, bumps, and welts as he took the assault, reached through Mick’s punches, grunted, and laced his fingers into his ratty knots with his left and right hands, pulled Mick’s face down to his own. Lips parted and he engulfed the oily nose of blackheads, bit down. Mick screamed, “Ahhh! Ahhh!”

  From the door opening came booted clomps tracking across with footfalls and the pant of menace, stopping at the two men on the floor, the length of sawed-off metal formed into a point with a duct-taped handle wrapped by a beefed-up man’s digits. Seeing this aged shape, the female quit kicking. Sat with a creak in her neck. Ache in her spine from being cuffed, she rolled to her side and looked up.

  Blood nostriled from Mick’s nose and oozed out of Angus’s mouth with a built-up three-fifty small-block engine’s pulse, Angus’s muscles pumped, and the hacksawed barrel of the 12-gauge pressed his ear, conducted thoughts that ran rampant in his mind. Knowing somewhere along the line these people had gone from crazed lunatic to fucking turbo-charged insane.

  The leader looked to the dead on the ground, strewn about as though oversize action figures, he told Angus, “Release my follower’s nose ’fore I split your pan across the damn dirt.” Shaking his head, he continued with “Of the years it took to create a congregation of men and women, turn them from white-trash misfits to Aryan Christians with the knuckles of my hands that I bled, beat, and killed others for, you’ve decimated a small percentage of them within minutes.”

  Tight clamp of jaw released Mick’s nose. Hands fanned out. Angus’s skull reared to the ground. Mick spit and blew crimson from his mouth and nose, punched Angus with a one, then a two.

  The man looked to the female and back to Mick. “And who’d be this feisty menstrual of a female?”

  Rolling Angus facedown, Mick told the man, “Far’s I know, she’s traveling with him. But she spouted something of he killed her daddy.”

  Mick stood up from Angus’s shape. The leader clumped over Angus with shadow, the barrel’s rough end digging into the rear of his head, Mick stepped from each, seized two pistols from the dirt, held each, one in his left, the other in his right, until the man ordered him, “Quit dicking about, find some twine or baling wire to figure this shitheel’s hands as it appears he’s a helluva brawler. Could make a powerful Aryan representative.”

  Glancing from his eye’s corner, his peripheral taking in Mick’s bristled face while the stern-eyed leader leaned over him, Angus searched for that split second in a fight, waited for that one opening that could change everything, listened to the tall shadow of a man speak at the female, telling her, “You seem to be a feisty gal; keep that spirit ’cause they’s men here and others who hunt that can muster a firm loaf and butter you up a few shakes be it night or day, just hold your wet for us to deal this devil to the meat cellar and let him earn his keep and honor our clan.”

  COTTO

  Cutting higher and higher above elevation, the sun gave heat to the shadows that cowered. Manny and his men kept themselves shielded behind the peasants. Manny eyed the spread-out peasant, Ricco. Nudged Cotto, told him, “Grab the dead’s ruck of dope from his body.” Cotto didn’t hesitate. Reached and tugged the thick and weighted pack. Manny barked at Ernesto, “You see what direction the carbine flash came from?”

  Chub, Minister, and Cotto kept corralled behind the peasants. Looked over their shoulders. Were using them as protection. Ernesto pointed two fingers to his eyes, then to the northeast, where in the far distance a wall of stone lay with breaks around it. Manny pulled his field glasses from his ruck, saw the reflective glare of glass dancing around with what appeared to be two shapes. He twisted and looked behind them, a silhouette was running in their direction. The one who’d been tracking them from the rear.

  Turning back
around, he mouthed to Ernesto, “Dust is being kicked up, moving toward us from both directions.”

  Holding the glasses, Manny was tired and worn. Eyeing Ernesto, he finished with “My guess is they’s two in the rocks and maybe three or four in the vehicle that is bringing a storm for us.”

  Ernesto held his pistol at the ready. “Do they look of gringos?”

  “Cannot tell, but I’d say they’re connected to the owner of these rucks of dope that the peasants tow.”

  Ernesto’s face glimmered with the sweat that began to pour from him like a beef-greased skillet; he wrinkled one eye into his cheek. “How would they know our position of travel?”

  Manny reached into his pocket and removed a cell phone. “They’s a tracking device within this cell, the same cell of the men who normally transport the peasants and the dope. My belief was they never got their call for transport, checked in on their transportation, found the house Cotto and I torched.”

  “You’ve known all along?”

  “I know that if I am smuggling drugs, I can’t trust anyone, so I’d wanna know where my product was at all times until I get it to the customer and I get paid. I know the bodies of the men that took my wife from me would have been found in the charcoaled remains of the torched house. So, yes, I knew it was only a matter of time. They’ve been wrangling us, signaling with the lights, shifting us from our route to here. That’s why we needed the C4, it’s part of my plan.”

  Ernesto smirked. “Your plan?”

  “To dethrone the King. We need only one of the approaching men alive.”

  “To show us the way?”

  “Yes.”

  Cotto’s father told him, “Stay close, my son, and when you shoot”—there was a hesitation in his words, but it was not fear, it was that of a methodical and precise leader, passing from his rimmed-out orbs to his son’s—“you do it to wound first, then we kill those men who need it, ’cause they will have no pity for any of us by the time we’re done with them.”