The Savage

by Frank Bill

  To Ernesto, Manny questioned, “Can you circle back behind us, go unseen, take out the one who has been tracking us?”

  Ernesto replied, “Can a tarantula not cross the desert in silence for his kill?”

  “Then go, bring me his fucking head.”

  Ernesto kept low to the ground, distanced himself from the kneeling Manny and peasants.

  To Chub, Minister, and Cotto, Manny said, “Act as if you’re a peasant, keep your guns from eyeshot but at the ready, calculate your targets, when I release the peasant’s locks with my hand, you do as I, react. No wasting of ammo. Clean shots. Wound them, confiscate their arsenal, and search the vehicle, then we can decide on who fucking lives.”

  And to the peasants, Manny said, “Any of you run, you die here.” From that day of waiting on the unknown, Cotto practiced patience. Becoming composed. Dissecting. Learning. But viewing the Sheldon girl come from the house of slaughter, all he could think of was Dorn. Was she leading him to Dorn? Or was she playing with him, his mind? Knowing he was watching her every movement, studying her instincts to survive?

  Cotto was rattled as he watched her carry the rifle, a pack strewn diagonal across her body, and a pair of binoculars. Cotto believed Sheldon was armed with more than a rifle as she trailed through the tall grass, making her way toward a thicket of cedar that swallowed her.

  Scaling down from the tree, Cotto was careful. Coming across the field at a trot, passing the cars, he descended the porch, glimpsed the dead, their outdrawn shapes of disfigure and decomposition. Traced Sheldon’s steps into the home only to view what appeared to be a young man. Who lay with the rear of his skull goring a wall of books. The floor was putrid with its stink of all things human and non, coating the tiles with prints and slips, smears and artifacts of what he believed to be the butchering of vertebrae. And questioned, Dorn, could he have delivered this bloodbath? If so, he held real grit, something deeper and darker than Cotto could have imagined, and that grooved a shiver into Cotto. Increased the course of his adrenaline.

  Stepping from the home, heartbeat redlining, he maneuvered past the dead outlines. Took caution, following in the broken lines of knee-high grass that the Sheldon girl had walked through. Grazed past the cedar, scraping his grainy skin, inhaling traces of the girl’s scent, nerves jittering; he attuned his ears for sounds, stepped from the cedar, from the diminished needles whose color had transpired from green to a tanning orange to the outgrowth that had fallen from other trees, searched the ground for her steps, indentions, and breaks; eyeing them, he tracked her veering of foot. Came to a road that he crossed only to search the opposite side for her travel.

  Traces of her flesh traveled within the air, the sweaty soured lilac and berry, she was close. He stopped. Listening to the distant mash of her feet to the earth, sniffing, he moved forward with the caution of a feral dog in search of food scraps, not wanting to be seen.

  Passing a massive, perfectly triangular-sized opening within the earth, peeking down into soiled walls of root that haired out like parasites, he found the outlines of hide, marred and filthy, sharp bone glistened from gum and flies, seeped, grooved, and laid their flutter and squirm in the digs of decomposing canines. Turning from the trapping pit, Cotto could hardly contain his emotion, seeing the onslaught left by Dorn. To be young and possess such skill astounded him. What the young man could offer to others, to pass on, was limitless. What this meant to Cotto: power to rule.

  Cotto distanced himself from the grotesque shapes of carnage. Knowing how close he was to the creator of this savage obstruction, he maneuvered with caution.

  ANGUS

  A shiver of awkward befell the leader’s stiff hold as if he were an aged bull trying to hoof a frozen pond for water; with arthritic hands he constructed a double slip knot from a thick braid of rope, lassoed one end around Angus’s neck, drew it tight, the other end around his wrists behind his back, keeping him connected and restrained from any pull of limb or the area between head and shoulder that would draw a taut stringing choke, while Mick kept a clear bead on Angus with one of the two pistols.

  Standing, the Aryan bore down with the sawed-off, turned to the female. Prodded the scuff of black about her one eye with his booted foot. It appeared almost synthetic or unreal with its bruising as she winced in pain. Bending down, the Aryan sniffed her, drove a finger about the hemline between shoulder and chest, began scouring her until he came to the unsupported weight of skin where mothers feed their newborn. She cringed, bared the white about her gums, and spit, “Remove your touch from me!” He slipped a tongue from his ulcered lips and battery-corroded teeth. Ran it over the lids of her eyes.

  Angus jerked, the rope went tight. He gagged and coughed. Thinking that regardless of what had befallen the female, she was a spent, unappreciative cunt.

  Mick pouted a laugh. “Silly son a bitch still carry some spurs in your boots for scrapping, don’t you?”

  The Aryan looked over at Angus, tilted the barrel toward the side of his head; fumes of whiskey spilled from the man’s lurching shape. Angus eyed the man’s profile, the peer of light drew his features now without any shadow as he noted the smooth scarring above his eyes, a nose that had been busted and swelled more than the count of fingers and toes on a hand or foot, never set properly, and the stench that spilt from his gristled pores, from hulky limbs that were dressed with the ink of swastikas, eagles, and skulls ranging all about as though ruined and faded stars, dotting the raw flesh of forearms, biceps, and malformed hands. He’d been a fighter or brawler or defender of whatever belief he stood for.

  Coming to his feet from the female, the Aryan looked to Mick. “Get this infringer to his feet.”

  The man whose knee Angus blasted, Grudge, lay with blood dripping to the dirt and whined, “What of me?”

  The Aryan told him, “Quit your damn yammering, we get some kerosene to your wound, get you bandaged when we get this slab of chops to the cellar. Don’t need the others looking down upon me ’cause one of my followers held no taste for pain nor pugilism before the eyes of God.”

  Grudge looked to the Aryan, his lookers going clockwise with confusion, and Mick shouted, “Quit offering yourself to that of the weak, that’s what Aryan Alcorn’s speaking at you.”

  Kneeling down in his faded maroon Fruit of the Loom T-shirt with tiny worm-sized holes across the chest, Mick drew Angus to his feet. The Aryan reached and squeezed Angus’s arms, shoulders. Ran a thumb about the curves of skin that’d been beat, swelled, and healed. Pursed his raggedy lips, pushed back the oily gray and black threads of his hair, scratched the curved bristles of insect-legged beard with the 12-gauge’s barrel. Stood his ground, looking into Angus’s eyes, into his soul as though a lion defending his territory, until Angus coughed words.

  “Odds are a stacked and jagged concern, as you’re not gonna end me.”

  Showing crooked and broken enamel the shade of leaf-stained water, Dillard Alcorn motioned with his shotgun toward the mess of female about the floor and said, “Correct you are, too damn squirrelly and gamey for ending, you’re like I once was, what I wanted my spawn of followers to be, fighters. I see it in your hide, you’ll bring damn good hawking amongst the beggars and thieves when night blankets our land and the Lord watches over us.”

  Angus winked one eye small, left the other big. “Beggars and thieves, the hell are you spitting, Aryan?”

  Alcorn laughed. “You’ll see. It took near thirty years of confronting the damnations, battling for what I believed, seeing whites, blacks, chinks, and gays mingle, adopt, and breed, infecting this land, thinking they could do as they pleased and call it freedom of choice, telling me what I believed was wrong, hateful, even demeaning, but in a world that takes till they’s no more to take from the Aryan skinned, they bottomed out. Now that the world has run bankrupt and wild, well, me and a host of others can run it even madder than McGill’s Donnybrook in something we call the meat cellar, where men and women tend to get crazed as leprous wolves with hunger
in they blood, and it don’t matter what color your skin is or who you worship, seeing as the prize is to breathe for another day, to entertain all who attend and bring respect to their clan and their followers and earn territory.”

  Mick’s eyes glistened wild and bulbous as he nudged Angus: “You’re nothing more than a pawn for nourishment, we’s doing some bidding of our own, you just happen to be white and can square your punches.”

  Donnybrook, the bare-knuckle free-for-all that he’d fought in. McGill, the creator, a man who was something like a God amongst the working folk, that is until Angus fed Bellmont his ending. To have devised something crazier than the ’Brook, that placed a trickle of angst into Angus. “Talking crazed, this ain’t about whites and blacks, this ain’t about race. I was looking to rest my mind, in search of medicine.”

  Mick whipped Angus’s face sideways with a pistol. “Don’t wanna hear that sap stringing from your yapper, you’re a trespassin’ murderer who stopped at the wrong property, now you earn your existence. They’s no more of the money masters, of the government or politicians, rules or laws, now each man regulates his own symbi, symbi—”

  “Symbiosis, you stuttering retch of skin,” Alcorn chimed. “You can’t pronounce it, don’t speak it. Quit offering yourself and our race to appear more ignorant than you are.”

  Mick’s face kindled red. Alcorn looked to Angus. “You say you wanted to rest your head, but you travel with a lone female.”

  Angus swallowed hard. “Some horde removed her father, husband. Allotted themselves the Mutts. I spared her of befouling.”

  “Ahh. Cotto Ramos and his band of mercenaries. His father once muscled for me, he wasn’t a Christian but he was a man of his word.” Alcorn stepped sideways, pointed down at the female, and said, “Woman’s got an awful plumbed complexion, looks as though you roughed her up a bit. Must’ve garnered yourself a hell of a workout ripening her features, sure she didn’t seek shelter with another because of your pugilistic ways?” Alcorn chuckled and paused, looked to his wounded and deceased flock, and finished with “Or did she get untamed on you like my followers?”

  As he tried to come at the Aryan, the rope cut into Angus’s wrists and neck. He squeezed out the words, “Fuck! You!”

  Lowering himself back to the ground, the Aryan turned from Angus, chuckled, “No, fuck you. I care little of you and your troubles. I’m about to find out what kinda warm this hen has got under that pelt.”

  Seated on her ass, the female shouted, “Keep your distance from me!”

  Laying the 12-gauge to the dirt, the Aryan reached at her chin. Gripped her mouth, firm and tight. “You’s a frisky bitch. Once we’ve bridled you, maybe we’ll bring you out tonight, let you watch the contusions and hurt get raised about this cocky son of a bitch.”

  She jerked her face and screamed, “Don’t lay your prints upon my skin!”

  On his knees, the Aryan unbuckled his pants at the waist, and with the lot of dead kin surrounding him and his wounded watching, he told Mick, “Get him to the meat cellar. Wasted enough time with words. He’s gonna need that rest he told us he come to find.”

  Mick steered Angus to the door, stabbed a pistol into his shoulder blade, told him, “Move it.” He could feel Mick’s eyes burning holes into the rear of his skull, could hear the begging of the female bouncing about the interior. Termiting his brain with rage, offering an emotion of weakness and nausea, as he was unable to do anything. He was helpless.

  Stepping out the door, to the heat of the sun, Mick walked Angus past his Tahoe, where he knew the scabbed stock of his rifle lay, his ruck of ammunition, something the inbred racists hadn’t discovered yet. Something that if he could grip, he’d use to make new inhaling holes in each of them as he could still hear the faint screams and pleas of the female.

  Mick led Angus to the rear of the house, where a doorless frame was an entrance. “Keep movin,’” Mick demanded.

  Planks of floor creaked from the shuffle of feet, Angus took in the stacks of outdated newspapers and beer cans that ornamented the corners, walls had been beat and cracked, tools lay strewn about. More axes, sledgehammers, chain saws, and cans of discarded fuel. Scrapes of wallpaper had been peeled and torn, even blackened as though someone had tried to burn the vinyl widths from walls but never finished. They entered what looked to be a large room where partitions and dividers had been mauled out, only two-by-fours and frayed wires remained, drywall chunks and chalky dust littered the floor’s curled linoleum like explosions of frozen smoke. There were counters with busted saucers, plates and mugs that reeked the air with spoil. Leaving no hint of vitality. Just a bleak surface of survival, or what had once been.

  From one room to the next they passed. Then came the jagged cutout of floor, a fifteen-by-fifteen square of give. Angus stopped. Glanced past the uneven saw of wood and textile, took in the piles of corrupted bodies, limbs curved and unnatural in their origins. Pallid torsos buried by unknown hands. Earthen parapets scraped and smoothed by the scents of damage. Of those who’d not survived the meat cellar. Angus could only imagine what had taken place here and he felt the tug and pull to his throat and wrists. The back-and-forth motion of teeth, a drywall saw, and the release of the rope. But before he could react he was kicked in his lower back. Plunged forward, nearly twenty feet to the cushions of rot.

  COTTO

  Tension gathered and hardened within Cotto’s gut. Watching the gritty particles mushroom up until the vehicle halted with the smear of dust across the truck’s nicked windshield. Doors ground open from the driver’s and passenger’s sides. Three shapes maneuvered from the diminutive vehicle. Men stood with aviator-style sunglasses over their eyes, straw hats rolled on the sides like tongues, unshaven, with cutoff shirts frayed at the shoulders. Straps hung loose at their leathery elbows and ran down to the small rectangular weapons that they pointed toward Cotto, his father, Manny, and the others, who kept a trembling peasant before them. Manny’s left feeler clawed into the rear of the peasant’s skull, posturing him as though a puppet shield against any bullet fire as he held the .45 in his right.

  These men were not of Latin, Spanish, or Mexican blood. They were American.

  And the driver spoke. “You know what we want.”

  Cotto’s father knew it made little difference if they blended in with the walkers and he laughed. “Guess you found Raúl?”

  “What was left of him,” one of the men from the passenger’s side said.

  The driver told Manny, “You’ve fucked with the wrong person, quit now and maybe you’ll get to breathe a little longer.”

  Cotto fought the shiver of his nerves from within. His limbs rattled and shook as he kneeled, listening to and watching the bravery of his father even though he was supposed to pick a man, hone in on a target to shoot. Fighting to keep the 9 mm in his grip steady. Listening to Manny, taking in his words, while staring death in the face and having no care in the world. It dawned on Cotto in that moment, it was confidence in one’s skills and beliefs that mattered. Manny held a vision, a goal to replace the life he promised Kabeza and Cotto. What Cotto didn’t realize until later was the opportunity his father had given him regardless of the odds.

  “Maybe it is you who fucked with the wrong person and will get to breathe a little longer.”

  The driver smirked. “That how you see it, killing a Mexican law officer, burning his home and taking property that does not belong to you? That’s not how the man I answer to does business on this side of the border.”

  Manny laughed. “Really? Does he believe in taking a peasant’s money, raping his wife, and murdering her? Leaving her corpse in an alleyway like trash with bugs denning into her decomposition?”

  The driver and the passengers held a distraught appearance about their complexions, and the driver said, “What the Ox does is not a reflection of how we pass business in the States.”

  Manny was buying time, Cotto could see this, listening to him navigate this man from what he’d come to do, by m
entioning the murder of Kabeza, seeing the faces of these men, maybe they too had wives, he was getting into their heads, pulling their thoughts and concentration from being enforcers or soldiers to being husbands for a brief moment. Manny had created an opening, his opening, something that would lessen these men’s reaction times. And then it came, the echo of a carbine.

  In one motion, Manny released the peasant’s hair, pushed his frame forward. Dropped, pointed, and pulled the trigger once, then twice; denim and knee exploded, bone and blood curled and expanded like kernels of popcorn as the left shoulder of the driver opened up. At the same time, behind Manny, Chub, Minister, and Cotto pulled from their dirty and ragged cotton the pistols they’d been gripping and opened fire. The other men dropped before getting a shot off. With them went their grasps on the automatic weapons. One of the peasants stood and ran. Manny turned. Didn’t flinch nor hesitate. Pulled the trigger, drew an entry point into the rear of the peasant’s skull. His face combusted with the bullet’s exit. Smeared the ground with pieces of expression as he dropped.

  Stepping toward the men, Chub, Minister, Cotto, and Manny kicked at the gringos’ automatic weapons. Aimed their pistols down at the faces of each of the men and Chub mouthed, “Who lives?”

  Manny laughed as he kneeled. Peeled the glasses from the driver, took in the expanse of his pupils that had dilated into supersize tadpoles as his body shook. Manny said, “This one, I think we’ve bonded.”

  And the driver said, “Wait!”

  But it was too late. Gunfire erupted all around them. The lives of the passengers ended. Chub and Minister took to the truck, searching its interior, making sure it was clean of other men.

  From behind Manny came footfalls. A peasant screamed. Manny, Chub, Minister, and Cotto turned to view Ernesto smirking. Blood rolled from his elbows to his digits, which curved into a clamp, carrying the head of a man. “I’ve brought you what you asked for, Manny, just like the old days.”