by Frank Bill
But he did not. He only bowed his head in acceptance with daylight peeking behind him, the sounds of bird, squirrel, and unseen wildlife within the surrounding woods. Sergio walked the path, placing one foot before the other, imagining himself upon a high wire, crossed the grooves of dirt where ATVs, horses, and booted feet had trodden, concentrating upon the air he pulled into his nose, pushed from his lungs, and out of his mouth as though a vacuum being started and stopped; he thought of why he’d come upon the decision as he did, growing tired of the struggle, the fighting, murdering, killing, and what it settled or created, nothing but more of the same. Blood. Bodies, death of others and no future for quiet, for rest, only unrest. The loyalty he’d discovered within Manny and Bellmont McGill was much greater than what he now held for Cotto, who was unrestrained, lost in the old-world ways; the man would rather gut you, toss your entrails to starved coyotes, than have words.
Before he even trod close to the large gate constructed of rough-cut cedar, Sergio was stopped by four men armed with Bushmaster rifles who looked upon him. One man questioned, “Why the hell do you trespass without warning?”
Sergio spoke. “Scar holds the answer.”
Two of the four men nodded, their eyes glancing to the surrounding woods, feeling the burn of unseen but camouflaged sight upon them. “Bring yourself.”
Within the recesses of morning, blemishes of bruise and disfigurement were viewable upon Sergio’s face as he was led into the encampment. And one man uttered, “The Mutts had their way with you.”
“Was lucky to extend my breathing to now.”
Outside the encampment, surrounding the perimeter, the others waited for Cotto’s command. He sat with the Mutts, remembering how Manny had taken down the King. And now he’d do the same with Scar and her rural militia types. One step closer to capturing Dorn. Using Sergio to open the encampment, create a distraction of disorder and the unexpected attack.
From his side pocket Cotto removed a detonating device. Smiled. Waited for Sergio’s outline to disappear into the encampment. Walked with him in his mind’s eye. Waited. Waited. Imagining Dorn learning the young to hone the land and its ways. Cotto’d not been this anxious since being left by Manny to run his own clique of bangers, to transport drugs from the south, across the border and into the United States.
Cotto pressed the button.
An explosion did not ring out. He pressed the button once more. The signal the Mutts had been waiting on did not come. Before Cotto and his men and the doped-up boy soldiers could move, the ground opened up all around them. Men came camouflaged, pointing Bushmaster rifles; the air around them lit up, was peppered like sections of firecrackers at a Chinese New Year celebration. Complexions parted and split. Blood sprayed around Cotto from the veins of limb and face, warmed the land. Some of the young boys fired their rifles. Others ran. Mad, scared, and screaming. Some were shot point-blank without discernment. It was hell and it had broken loose with the slaughter of Cotto’s men as they returned rifle fire. They were surrounded.
It was a trap, Cotto cursed to himself. With the HK33 assault rifle strapped across his torso, he grabbed at one of the boy soldiers, motioned for several others to follow him. Looked to Ernesto, motioned with fingers to a thicket of trees. Ernesto motioned with his head until a bullet pierced his jaw and his face became a puddle of blood. Cotto ran toward the thicket of trees, kids followed. The ground exploded all around him. Heaving hard, pressing his back into the bark, he rummaged into his pocket, removed a vial of dope. Inhaled hard to clear his thoughts. To level the hazed anger that adrenalized in his head. Ears rang with rifle fire. Thoughts of Van Dorn saturated Cotto’s mind. He’d become obsessed with this young man and his skills, overlooking what was beneath his nose this entire time, this fucking mole. And here he sat. Ambushed. This was not how he’d envisioned his situation. Several of the boys turned, opened fire at their surroundings. That’s when Cotto caught a glimpse of Van Dorn, the Sheldon girl, a loping young man, and a feral hound fleeing toward the woods, away from the firefight. This was his moment to pin them each, take them back to his encampment.
PART III
SIRENS OF LIGHT
Oh, my God above, save this faithless, wretched sinner
Oh, my God above, I don’t see myself in this here mirror
I see rage and fire and brimstone
—Lincoln Durham, “Rage and Fire and Brimstone”
RAGE AND FIRE AND BRIMSTONE
No words were spoken at first. Only actions from a raised hand. A slap. The reverberation of sting. Stabs of pain. The embrace of arms that hugged with the wet of eyes.
Van Dorn felt the urge to ball his fist or raise his palm to the opposite sex. Kindle his emotions just as she had, across her skin. Feelings were that of roots that’d dug in. Overlapped. Braided a bond. Connecting with another. This he understood.
With that bonding came the parting of root by a blade or a weighted edge. Severed. That’s how he’d felt of the Sheldon girl. A deep connection to her that’d been split when he’d viewed her with the tatted man. When he’d laid sight to her outside of the encampment, he knew she’d felt the same weight bearing down upon her as she swelled his cheek with her sentiment.
Inside the encampment, they were left alone except for the dirty hound and the young boy he’d saved. Each lay with a belly filled by nourishment and lost to exhaustion and worry for what the world had become. Van Dorn sat rubbing the swell that warmed his features from the slap he’d taken. His mind undressing and dressing visions of the Sheldon girl being enslaved. Crying out his name. Footfalls descending the basement stairs of the Widow’s home. The rush he met. Grabbing the fuel to bring flames about the structure. His forced departure and the glimpse of the Sheldon girl standing with that pallid man of ink. “Why?” was all he could ask. “Why did you lead the same man who’d enslaved you to my juncture of safety and quiet?”
“’Cause you abandoned us. Me. And my only way of finding you was leading the man named Cotto with his savages to your home, hoping you were still taking shelter within. When you ran, I found opportunity, ran and tracked you to here.”
Seeing the .30-30 in the Sheldon girl’s grip, something he never believed he’d hold in his possession again, Van Dorn grimaced and then smiled as she gave it to him and he asked, “Where? How did—”
“I get it? Told you I tracked you. Know of all the terrible you found. The boy and girl who lay with the slaughter of your mule, Red, the crazed Pentecost with his daughters and their strife with snake venom. Seen it all.” The Sheldon girl paused and asked, “What about this Scar, is she of trust?”
Van Dorn placed his index finger to his lips. Leaned to the Sheldon girl. Cupped a hand over her ear. Inhaled her scents of electrolytes and earth, there was still that hint of powdery skin and feminine softness beneath the surface and he whispered, “This female, the daughter of Bellmont McGill, she’s as crazed as Cotto. The one from whom you escaped. The death of her father has willed worms of madness in her brain. We need to make a plan of departure. Escape.”
Sheldon sat back. Eyed him. Studied the walls that surrounded them. Leaned to his ear and cupped her hand in the same manner, “Then let us leave. Together.”
She and Van Dorn took turns speaking in this way as he shook his head. “Not that easy. Can’t just up and walk out. These are vengeful folk. Kind who’d just as soon place a bullet in your skull if you can’t carry your own weight. I watched them let others be tortured for no damn good reason and then killed them.”
“So what’ll we do?”
“Scar’s got moles within Cotto’s people. She’d been waiting on him to smoke out the man who’d murdered her father and Cotto’s. But Cotto followed you.”
“Dammit.”
“They spotted him as quick as they spotted you. One of her moles beat the two of you here. Alerted her. They let the mole be viewed exchanging intel with her and her men. Planted a seed of deception. If it takes, the mole will return with Cotto and his
men using him as bait, that is, if Cotto lets him live. If Cotto snags this pod, the seed sprouts, the mole returns, then Cotto will be the bait. When all hell breaks loose, we part ways with this tribe of crazies.”
“Where to?”
“Things have changed. I was coming back for you and those that’d been taken. But now you’re here. The others, I don’t know. But ole man Polk’s place seems close enough. Regardless of if he’s alive or not, he has supplies buried in a storm shelter that’s hidden. A well that’s fed by a spring. We can rest. Plan. Seek out others like us.”
“What if it’s been sacked and looted?”
“I have my doubts. But if so, that’s the chance we take.”
“What of the others that Cotto has enslaved? My mother? Neighbors? The boy soldiers?”
“Like I’ve said, I don’t know. But we need others like us.”
“Those that wanna help rather than hurt.”
“Yeah.” Van Dorn paused. “Look, I’ll get you a pistol or a rifle. We’re to be armed at all times in case shit hits the fan. I’ll get some extra ammo. Other things we may need. We’ll be ready when the time comes, only question is, can you take the life of another if need be?”
Lean and whittled by survival, she sat on the dirt with caked denim, T-shirt, and work boots; her face was stern with confidence, and she smirked. “Can I kill?” She laughed. Shook her head. “If that’s your question, after watching the murdering of my father and the enslavement of my family, then, yes, yes, I can kill whatever blocks my trespass.”
All Dorn could do was sit up straight and strong with a vengeful smile about his lips.
That morning, when the air was lit up by carbine, dirt was rifled into specks, leaves and limbs splintered. Blood watered the wilderness and Van Dorn and the Sheldon girl took to the woods. Leaping and dodging booby traps and trip wires with August and the hound following. Taking to a direction far from Scar’s encampment with eyes following their departure.
* * *
Angus sat staring at the nightfall out a busted window of glass to his right; before him a fire burned. The structure in which he sat was worn and whittled. The walls beset by rot, mold, and the gathering of bugs, some digging, others shelled.
The fireplace was constructed of barnacled stones. A greasy iron spit sat before the bouncing of orange flames with the turning of several shapes, meat once the color of beets that had been roasted to tan, dripping and sizzling.
Angus’s arms were bound behind him by wire, a leather dog collar had been placed around his neck. A chain attached to it. The other end of the chain connected to a crooked stud of the bare wall.
Glancing over to his left at Mick, who sat beside Hershal and Withers; each was mongrel in appearance with a shaggy beard, skinny, and a loam-smeared face. Each slurped and sucked on the game, cleaning it from its bone. Before Hershal lay an axe, before Withers lay a machete.
Off from them was an open door frame, two hounds sat gnawing on the bones of what appeared to be dead cattle. Their heads black and tan, their bodies ticked of white and blue-gray with legs of caramel and powdered sugar. Blue-tick coonhounds.
Hershal dug his hand into Mick’s mess of hair, jerked at him. “Quit pigging the damn shank of tender wounded fuck.”
“Fuck you, Hershal. I eat how I wanna eat.”
“Bastard, in a moral world you’d have manners.”
Angus shook his head. Felt idiotic for falling into such a situation. He needed to get into these mongrels’ heads. Light their fused tempers, get free of them, and find medicine for Fu. He’d been hidden within Fu’s cabin, upon his acres for years. Training and learning of Asian ways. He even carried out his purpose, his test, and yet here he sat facing another.
“Manners would entail pedigree, something none of you has ever known.”
Withers looked to Angus. “No one is speaking to you, ’loper. Lucky Alcorn told us to keep you restrained or I’d give you a beatin’ you wouldn’t soon forget like the others we’ve wrangled.”
It don’t take much to fester up an inbred, Angus thought; he’d hired and worked side by side with many when running his father’s logging company, then sold crank to them after he sunk the business.
“Release me, see how long it takes to have your brain tanned like the hare you’re slopping up. I’ll show you my pecking order.”
From the dark door opening came Alcorn, the collage of tattoos about his hands. “Withers. Leave the ’loper be. He’d kill you before you could unbuckle your denim and drop a deuce.”
“We can see about that.”
“No we cain’t. He’s bloodied one, he’ll be our ticket to more food, territory, and power for our race, our color of people, to rule within the madness that is plaguing this land.”
Withers slowed the chew of meat in his mouth. “You’ve offered these declarations to all us white skins before, said that about all of those that we’ve enslaved, ain’t one brought us anything other than a hot meal and embarrassment amongst the other rural clans and colors of people.”
Alcorn looked to Angus. Dug his dirty fingertips into his chin whiskers. “This one differs. Possesses real skill.” Pausing, he questioned Angus, “Are ye a Christian?”
Angus smirked to himself, thinking this was the brains behind the band of heathens.
“Of what does it matter?”
“In these times it matters plenty.”
Angus laughed. “I find doubt in your words.”
“Why do you laugh about such a question of the beliefs from the good book and the Almighty Himself?”
Fu had taught Angus more than how to use his body as a weapon. He’d trained him to use his mind. Fighting was ten percent physical and ninety percent mental.
“That book has brought rules to govern men and women, rules that none seem to heed except when they wanna curb those rules to meet their selfish gains. You’re either weak or strong. Run in the light or slither in the dark. Falter in the rain or prosper in the shine. Like life or death, they’re cycles of nature. Positive and negative forces, it’s not about a God or deity, every man fears death, all God does is coax man’s yearn for something he can’t explain, place an ease to his fear of dying and forgiveness to his weakness and sinning.”
“Remove your tongue, nonbeliever.”
“I was learned by a man who taught the elements. The positive and negative ways of being and living. How one can outweigh the other, disrupt the natural order of life. The book you speak of has been taken out of context, twisted to make others follow another so that one can absolve himself of wrongs and live a life of hypocrisy while man, woman, and child follow his doctrine of lies.”
Withers and Hershal came from the floor. One wielding the axe, the other the machete. Hershal barked first, pistols tucked down their fronts. “Tired of your tongue, ’loper, how about I remove your head that throaty gutter you keep spilling ill words of respect from?”
Angus grimaced. “That’d be an interesting thing to see you fail at after I take that axe from your grip and break it off in your anal cavity.”
Withers pointed the machete at Angus and accused him. “You’re a goddamned Antichrist, ain’t you? Come here to fill our heads full of jargon. Mislead and defy us of our beliefs so we’d fail.”
Angus thought to himself, The almighty disciples for Christ have figured me out. He chuckled. “First off, I tried to turn away, abandon your layer. You wouldn’t allow it. Second, I’m a man of flesh and bone, removed of ignorance. I was once toxic and heathen, unruly with little guidance; now I’m just determined.” Angus held pause, needed to keep the meter running, keep the pulse of blood jagging their hearts, guide them to create mistakes. He looked to Alcorn, “For a man who calls himself a Christian, you’ve got some unruly ink about the tops of your paws.”
The man raised each hand to Angus. “Like you, I was once a sinner. A man with wicked ways about him. All the time drinking. Robbing gas stations. Casing persons’ homes. Stealing their wares to pawn for cash for
my cause. Then came the collapse, the tides of Rapture, and I realized the error of my poor choices in life.”
Angus smirked. “Let me guess, all this madness is the work of the devil, and God is coming back for His minions, His sacred soldiers in this time of dark, and He shall offer the light?”
“Don’t mock me, ’loper; when the sirens ring over the land and fire falls from the sky, he will come, and when He does, we’ll be the ones laughing at men such as yourself.”
“You’re as misled and ignorant as these other two butt-fucking inbreeds you’re bedding with. You realize the man you follow was sacrificed on another continent, not on this land here where Indians and criminals roamed and settled?”
Hershal was slobbering with anger. “Ain’t none of us bedding with one another, you son of a bitch.”
“Coulda fooled me, way you keep battin’ eyes at your boyfriend Withers there. Shouldn’t have hocked the female for food, would’ve saved some face, looks to me you’re battling fantasy of same-sex coitus.”
Hershal began to raise the axe. Alcorn reached at him. “He’s tightening your restraint, Hershal, needling into your scalp.” He pointed to his temple with a gnarled digit. “He’s of the clever, let him use his smarts again tonight in the cellar. We can all dine on fresh swine afterward if he survives.”
* * *
Gunshots rimmed the trees midway and lower. Bark and root combusted and flaked with the explosion of carbine. Van Dorn and the Sheldon girl hugged tight to the land, leading August and the mongrel hound. Bootheels and paws dug into soil and leaf, snapping twig and limb. The pant of adrenaline, each armed and alarmed to the sounds that men and children create when playing war. Baying and rearing in the air, only they weren’t playing. They were killing one another.
Tread indented the ground and Van Dorn pointed and spoke with a winded voice to the Sheldon girl, “Keep movin’, they’s a hive of footfalls coming up the rear.”
Looking back, the Sheldon girl caught a glimpse of a string of what looked to be young boys. Some with faces painted skeletal, others with what appeared to be masks stringed and stitched by skin, armed with guns and cutting up the distance.
