The Savage

by Frank Bill

  “You … you raise questions like that of … the Sheldon girl who crossed within my misery only moments before you. Why must you hunt and bring harm to all these characters I’ve known? Enslaving my wife, making me do deviances for you. All you’re doing is placing these people’s backs to a wall and they will not surrender, they will duel till they’ve nothing left.”

  “Maybe if you’d have made known sooner the whereabouts of Jarhead Earl and the prophet, you’d still be in the company of your wife. Now what words did you offer the Sheldon girl?”

  Bill wheezed. “How was I to know that it was he you searched out? You spoke only of Chainsaw Angus at first, a man who has been wiped from this earth. Unseen for years.”

  Enamel nearly chipped with the grit of Cotto’s anger-streaked tone. “Your words to the Sheldon girl—” Pausing, he clenched one hand into a fist, the other gripped and rested on his sidearm, and he finished with “What did they convey of Dorn, his direction, did he travel alone, armed, what did you offer her?”

  Bill’s nerves rattled with fear. Fear of living. Fear of dying. With the venom browning his veins, poisoning his stream of air, he no longer recognized which was worse. “Th-that this young man known as Dorn, he’s of some form of devilry. He’s of one with the serpents.”

  Standing up, Cotto shook his head. He would have this young man as his own, a master warrior-soldier, much like Cotto and his father. Eyeing each of the Pentecost’s daughters, the fallen and the lone breather, taking her curves of skin, pallid as goat’s milk, he aimed his rifle end between Bill’s eyes, his finger tickled the trigger, and the girl’s eyes ignited like fresh embers with an abundance of air. “You have gone blitzkrieg in mind, Pentecost. I will not repeat myself, the Sheldon girl, what exchange did you have with her?”

  “They’s nothing to be told as you’ll only refer to me as a fool. The boy held snakes as though he’d magic bound within his marrow, we’d a standoff, a test of the spirit, he was the victor. I was bitten in abundance, he fled with a ragged ’loper of a boy I’d kept for you and your soldiering.”

  “Where, where would they seek shelter?”

  “Remove the rifle from between my sight, let me recollect in peace.”

  “Cipher me an answer or I shall splay you into pieces and let you rest in that manner.”

  “You are an evil just as Van Dorn, only a different shade.”

  Exactly! Cotto thought to himself. Dorn reminded him of himself. Only younger. More skilled.

  “I am a perversity unlike anything you’ve ever known, now speak to me of shelter and not sins or blasphemy!”

  “To the west of here, amongst stones, they’s military types of bunker. It was a donation from the army back in the mid-seventies for the youth of a church, a place that pastors and their minions could take their young to camp in the summers and be left to God and nature, learn their Bible scriptures from the Methodist teachings. It’s no longer used. Word is it’s now fortified by Scar McGill and her militia that grows by the day.”

  “Bellmont’s daughter? How long have you known of this?”

  “Learned of it not long after your last encroachment. They’s also word that the militia clans are seeding in numbers. Been enslaving men of strength and skill. Building fighters. Men starved like animals until they victor in bare-knuckled battles. They’ve grown heathen and restless without McGill or the taverns and their back-lot brawls. You’re gonna have a sack full of pissed-off serpents when you least expect it.”

  Cotto said, “Tell me more of these clans.”

  “They’s the Aryan clan. The Chicken Foot Tharp clan. The Methodists, and many more. They’re a mixed mass of men and beliefs who once fueled the counties with weed, whores, guns, and old-time religion until the dark came and crippled the rules and laws. Now they’ve regrouped and are creating their own clans that are about their own devices, tossing men into pits, forcing them to do harm to each other or be shot face-first, the man who wins is the man who can eat and bring his owner territory. It’s savage.”

  Bill halted his words, sweat taffied his frame, he’d a deep hurt, an ache that pulled him in and out of reality, and he told Cotto, “Some say this chaos, it is the result of the Donnybrook fallout. New game. New rules. Similar to those in the cities who start fires in abandoned houses. Hide and watch them burn from a distance, cheap entertainment. Others preach this new system is an offshoot of the Disgruntled Americans, as these people are looking for a new outlet, a new decree, a man to follow.” Bill waited, let his sayings curve his tongue, swim about Cotto’s intellect, and he told, “But it shall not be you.”

  Gunshot filled the area. Hearing was deaf and the particles of bone, skin, and the muscle for human thought was splayed about the girders, planks of wall, webs and the faces of the Pentecost’s daughters, as the only one who could muster a scream cried for her father. “No!” she shouted. “Why?” She turned at Cotto. Wanted to do something, a defense mechanism, he sensed it. Then she cowered within his demeanor. And began to bawl.

  Pink had broken the surface of complexion, expanding over Cotto’s cheeks, forehead, and nose. It was anger, and to the girl he spoke, “Hide or flee, it makes no difference, me and the Mutts will return and take you. But not until I’ve found this Van Dorn and pressed his skills and his worth onto my own soldiering horde.”

  ANGUS

  Without light from day the shower of heat coated Angus. The stink of men bearing torches and guns, smelling sulfurous and rancid, their reams of tobacco drool running from furred lips and down chins. They pushed their fighter into the squared pit, egg-shaped head with hair removed glaring like a full moon of nicks and jags beneath flames from above as he came from hands and knees. Appeared as though shaved with a dull razor, cankerous scabs oozed, one side of his lower lip bulged out as the other’d been bitten or chewed off.

  Dumas, the scavangerous announcer, stood in bloodstained carpenter pants and a moth-holed flannel devoid of sleeves and about ten years of unshaved whiskers; he watched from the wall as each man sized the other up.

  Angus ignored Dumas, studied the handmade jewelry around the neck of the fighter that hung about his torso like unspent shell shot with barbed wire threaded through shriveled hides of dander. The bulk of man removed the human necklace, tossed it up to his keepers. He trembled with hurt from both hands, which were nothing more than swells of damaged bone and cracked cartilage. Angus took note of his hurt, his inner ruin, his weakness.

  Knife wounds, bruises, and laceration was all he had of a chest. Angus knew why the denim sheathing his legs was no longer blue or faded. He knew it was muddy with the blood of battle.

  Tensing his fists, he glanced above the pit, taking in the Aryan Alcorn, who stood with his followers, greasy and grimy; each kept a weapon either in hand or tucked in his waist. Christi kneeled like a mistreated stray, so out of tune with the reality she was surrounded by, her arms crossed at the wrists and bound behind her, half-clothed but looking even more ragged and despondent, her one eye soldered shut, the other wandered like a light in search of a barge on a river in dark, and on the opposite side of the pit stood the keepers of the man who stood before Angus. They numbered five in count, thin as malnourished dogs, veiny and warty, their heads shaved except for the centers, which boasted spikes of lock laying or standing. A pistol or sawed-off in hand; their eyes hemmed as each wore a chicken foot calcified from twine around their necks to signify their clans’ label.

  Lowering his vision to the man’s feet, Angus focused on the stance that weighted the dead floor of limbs and torso; he was grounded, not arched on his heel or the ball of his foot. From the wall Dumas announced, “Here before us the Alcorn clan shall cross with the Chicken Foot Tharp clan in the meat cellar. Dueling till one man can no longer release air from his lungs, victor takes the weaker man’s cap, gets to eat and live for another day while bringing his owner territory.”

  From the opposite side, one of the Mohawked men came forward and asked, “Who is it that represents
your skin, Aryan?”

  “Pardon my ignorance, Corbin, but I’ve not acquired a name from our trespasser.” Pausing, Alcorn glared down to the rear of Angus’s skull. “What label did your mother give you at birth, brawler?”

  Feeling the Aryan’s words shimmer down his spine, the eyes from the other side burning into him, Angus smirked and said, “Angus.”

  There was a mute stupidity that fell over every keeper standing above. Alcorn spoke once more. “The unbeaten Chainsaw Angus? One to have robbed the Donnybrook, to have lynched the life of Bellmont McGill?”

  “’Less they’s more than one of me, you’d be correct.”

  A madness came from his mouth. “For the church of my Aryan followers, don’t know if I should shake your calloused hand or cut it off. McGill gave us much, could’ve been even more had he not mixed races, if he’d grouped with his own skin, of course the real question is would we be doing as we are if he was still breathing, or was it because of him that we’re doing as we are?”

  Heated by anger, Mick spoke through gritted teeth, “Have you forgotten this Angus killed my kin?”

  “So he did. But at this juncture every organism is expendable, and in the meat cellar all wrongs are wiped from memory.” Alcorn eyed Corbin and Corbin nodded. And they bellowed together, “FIGHT!”

  COTTO

  He’d tracked her through the night with the words of the Pentecost severing the binds of theory within his psyche. People are looking for a new outlet, a new decree, a man to follow. But it shall not be you.

  They can look all they want, battle amongst themselves, but when I finish what I’ve begun, they will not know what has taken them, Cotto thought to himself. More blood will soil the earth and it will be that of the rural. They shall lower themselves to my ways, and Van Dorn will be the first.

  Kneeling with a small light, he fingered ATV tracks, inhaled the scents in the air. Meat. Vegetable. Woodsmoke. Somewhere near was nourishment. An excitement pursed within Cotto. His imagination danced with visions of killing, taking out more men, taking in more women for whoring and more children for soldiering. And his neurotransmitters rang hard to a glow within his barbaric brain, imagining Van Dorn teamed with the Sheldon girl, their combined skills, once enslaved and doped, would be of great use in the field of slaughter. Of drilling the others into killing machines. Only younger. Faster and deadlier.

  In the sky above, the moon was glowing coral and shifting across the sky. Cotto bear-hugged up the girth of a tree, his frame numbed by endorphin overload, making his way through the maze of rough limbs until he could see the land in a wider, fuller view with his night vision. Studying the landscape, he found a shimmer of smoke several football-field-lengths away. Could make out the shape of the Sheldon girl crouching beside a tree for rest not more than fifty to seventy-five yards to the west. Lowering his night vision, he pulled his vial from his pocket. Removed the cap. Finished off the powder. Waited a bit. Watched the darkness fade. Looked to Sheldon once more, she was moving with caution.

  Climbing down, Cotto followed, took to the land once more, treading the direction of the indentions, which soon became a path that he veered from, but still held the scents of food and the girl in his nose, Van Dorn in his mind feeding his hunger to rule, along with the chemical taste that drained down his throat.

  With morning came a dampness about the bark of timber and the mold of the ground with leaf and twigs as Cotto watched squirrels jump from branches overhead, bridging them from one tree to the next. Letting the colors of wilderness come into view. Cotto sat, his frame beginning to ache; muscles sore, growing tight, he studied the expansive hillside where the wafts of smoke were dying down. Taking cover behind a mass of cedar, he watched through his binoculars, men upon stoops of pallet, drawn to knees, and like him, they were watching for movement within the surrounding terrain. When one looked away, Cotto moved to take in the sanctum. Watched the Sheldon girl climb the hillside, young, frail, dirt-covered, and possessing the .30-30 rifle in her hands; men whistled from one tree to the next like the squirrels who jumped overhead until a group surrounded her.

  Pause was shared between the two along with words. The pointing of fingers. Cotto lay upon the foliage of ground, glanced at what they pointed to—trip wires, traps for the trespassers, the unwanted like him.

  One of the persons left after several minutes of speak. Walked through the open cedar gates to the ridge of bunkers nestled into the rocks. Cotto could make out only the rooftops. The rest was hidden by molded cinder. A female with uneven locks of hair returned with Van Dorn. Cotto could hardly contain himself. The female wore a Ray Wylie Hubbard T-shirt. She was thin. Veiny with the complexion of Ivory soap. Cotto’s heart raced. His pressure rose and he kept watch while they stood eyeing each other. No words were exchanged. Only a stare-down. A hand raised at Dorn’s face from Sheldon. A slap echoed from Dorn’s flesh, waved the land. Followed by an embrace that lasted for what seemed like minutes until all walked back into the encampment. The boy had a weakness. Sheldon.

  Cotto sat, waited. Manny would’ve been proud, proud to see what his son had accomplished. At his skills of tracking. And what he would do next to build his strength for ruling.

  Careful and quiet, from his pack, Cotto pulled a leather-bound tablet of unruled pages. Began making drawings of the area. From the direction he’d traveled. Roads he’d crossed. Where the Pentecost lived. How far he’d trekked to this location. Then began sketching a profile of Dorn. Lean. Muscular for his age. The darkness to his locks and the bone structure of his face. Sharp as a Bellota cane knife. There was a rugged purity to his form. Stopping. Taking a deep inhale, Cotto placed the bound booklet back into his pack. Waited. His stomach ached for nourishment, felt hollow as he watched evening sway in. Movement came from afar, it was the powdery pigmented female. She was accompanied by two men, each armed with pistols and shotguns. They walked through the woods in a southeasterly direction. Cotto followed. Stayed hidden amongst the brush of briar and rotted tree. Halted every so often. Kept his trounce and distance unnoticed. Waited for the falls of foot to quiet, then pick back up. Feeling as though he were being watched, the paranoia of being ripped open by unknown carbine, blade, or booby trap.

  Limbs pained and Cotto’s mind ran with madness; he was jonesing for a fix. Had run out of cocaine. Stopping, he watched the female and her men squat at a run-down cabin the shade of weathered barn wood. Looked to have been standing since the 1800s, with a roof of thick bark. She sat upon the small porch, a door in the frame’s center, windows on each side. The two men bent to her left and right flanks, each homing in on the landscape; one chewed and spit tobacco as the other sprinkled the same into a crease of tissue. Then rolled and licked the length. Lit a cancer stick with a wooden match. Through his field glasses, Cotto tuned in a close-up of the female. Recognized her to be Scar, McGill’s daughter. He’d met her only once when visiting Manny. The Pentecost was correct in his intel. There was a bunker of people. And they were being led by Bellmont’s daughter.

  Sweat grained down Cotto’s brow with the swarm of gnats, heat weighing just as heavy as the wait to overthrow her and capture Dorn and Sheldon. Cotto grew manic as he lay on his gut, torso buttering over the ground, watching. Then came the tromp of footing through the woods. From the right of the cabin it sounded like a freight train pushing over tracks, growing louder and louder. Scar’s men raised their rifles. One stood, the other kept kneeled. From the green and tan brush sprung a man who stopped just ten feet from the aiming men. Cotto’s heart tightened with anger. He blinked repeatedly through his bloodshot sight. Adjusted the focus on his binoculars.

  Remembering those he’d brought across the border. Those whom he employed, those whom he dealt into the United States. This man he viewed was one of his own. Handpicked. Sergio. A mole. A fucking mole.

  Cotto’s belly burned a rage so deep and repulsed, his blood bubbled acidic and oxidized. Questions engulfed his thoughts. As he balled his fist, a slobber foamed from hi
s jaws, and he reassured himself these questions would be answered not with queries but with spasms and distress.

  ANGUS

  There was the grunt, pant, and heave from the nameless gouge of disfigured man who charged Angus with a lineman’s power. Standing upon the dead bodies until the last second, Angus circled to his right, pruned a hooking left uppercut to the man’s ribs. The man’s face met the dirt wall. He chewed and spit soil. Angus shuffled around to the man’s back. Dug a cross behind his ear. Then a hook to his kidney. Legs gave. The man dropped. Lungs hugged for air. Snorted and slobbered like a heifer.

  Coming forward, Angus hammered the man’s shoulder with his knee. Felt the stoutness of skin, muscle, and bone give.

  The man growled and barked on all fours. Twisted into Angus, reared on his knees, clamped hold of Angus’s legs beneath his pits. Dug his footing into the mounds of flesh, muscle, and dirt, charged Angus into the ground flat. Eyes blinked and the wind was removed from Angus’s lungs.

  The man pressed to standing, taking with him Angus’s legs, which wrapped around the man’s waist, with both arms bent at the elbows and shelling his head. Angus’s neck careened into the rot of the soil and body parts, the man dropped his weight down into Angus, punched wild and crazed at Angus’s face.

  Deflecting the attacks, Angus felt the swelling ache of bruise, reached through the ground-and-pound assault, caught the man’s wrist, pulled it to his chin, tucked and tugged, swiveled his hips, hooked his legs around the side of the man’s neck and shoulder, arm-barred the man’s left between knees, applied pressure until cartilage creaked, muscle tore, and the bone snapped like a stick being stomped for kindling.

  The man went soft as a cotton pillow, bared his teeth and rage with sounds that held no structure for words, only syllables of hurt, “Aghhh! Arrrr!” and the spittle that grossed through his teeth and down his lips.