The Savage

by Frank Bill

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  Angus held a grin of shit-eating and lipped, “Mother. Fucker.”

  * * *

  The land sat uneven and scorched in places where field grass once spread. Bones of hog and cow lay in the daylight spread out over the grounds and the wind stirred with a future for the young. With hair clean but messed from going uncombed, Dorn smelt of lilac and his T-shirt was scented by soap. The months had been hard, the loss of his father and the Widow even harder, but now Dorn looked out from the wood-slatted porch that connected to the barn-red farmhouse with a tin roof. The brindle hound, which Sheldon and Dorn had agreed to name Fury, lay on his side, at ease, resting. A soft rise and fall from his rib cage. Dorn’s arm hung and clutched around Sheldon’s shoulders as she sipped hot tea. Her locks beyond shoulders, the cheeks of her face sharp and smooth.

  Sheldon swallowed and questioned, “Think it’ll come again?”

  Within the house in a back bedroom Sheldon’s brother lay. His mind rattled. Worse off than a soldier with PTSD. He slept most of the hours that filled a day. Given medication from a doctor who worked for the government. Going around helping those in need. When he was not sleeping, Dorn and Sheldon worked with him, read to him, and took him on walks through the woods when his confidence wasn’t questioned.

  “The darkness? The neighbors killing neighbors?”

  Sheldon’s brother would never be right in the head. Not from the scarring of what he’d incurred. He’d need care till the day he passed.

  “All of it.”

  Dorn and Sheldon had begun cleaning up her family’s farm. Received a great deal of aid from the county, state, and federal government for all that had gone wrong. And there were others all over the United States that received the same. Regardless, they had each other. And they had skills. For food, Dorn had been hunting wild game and fishing the Blue River. Filling the freezer with meat. He’d gotten an old tiller’s engine running and they’d worked the soil, used seeds Sheldon’s father gathered and stored for the following year’s planting, and made a garden.

  “I can only hope not. But if it were to occur, we’re more prepared than before.”

  “Think you could kill again if you had to?”

  Each suffered the aftereffects of what they’d been dealt. Having nightmares of the slaughter. The enslavement. Waking in cold sweats and shaking. Each embracing the other. Soothing and reassuring that it was only a dream.

  “I hope I never have to take another human’s life again, ’cause I care none for that dark place it took me, but if it comes down to fending for you or your brother, I’ll do what’s gotta be done.”

  Sheldon turned to Dorn, pressed her face into his chest, and they embraced, an uncertain world lying out in the distance, knowing they’d always have each other.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing a book is a solitary endeavor, but it cannot be done without support from family, friends, fans, agents, editors, and publishers. I’d like to thank my father, Frank Bill Sr., and my stepmother, Julie Bill; my mother, Alice Weaver, and stepfather, Tom; Carrie Bill; Brandy and Casey Robertson; Jack Bill and John Bill; Terry Crayden; Sharon Crayden; Gayle and Israel Byrd; Amy, Jamie, Abigail, and Eli Pellman; Bob and Donna Pellman; Becky and Dennis Faith; Denny Faith; Matt and Allison Faith; Stephanie Bill and Stephen Glaspie; Rhonda Abbott; Thad and Dana Holton; Kevin and Rebecca Reed; Larry Byrd; my big brother, Donnie Ross, and his wife, Amber; my friend for life, Lou Perry, and his wife, Molly; my other brother, Rod Wiethop, and his wife, Judy; Steph Stickels; Barbra White; Brandon Crayden; Jim and Ella Baker; author Kirby Gann and his wife, Steph Tittle; strength coach James Steel; Life Is Good buddy Jake Patrick; photographer Christian Doellner; Joe and Mary Lou Trindeitmar; Sara Trindeitmar; Tammy and Tony Kruer; Laura and Alan Muncy. To my coworkers—George Savage, Greg Ledford, Kirk Vormbrock, Casey Heishman, Ted Kessinger, Randy Brightman, Glenn and Tammy Beanblossom, John Clark, Gary Miller, Roger Tharp, Darrin Harris, Larry Brooner, and everyone else I work with—I really appreciate your support. Thanks to the authors Christa Faust and Benjamin Whitmer for their early readings. Also, thanks to Ray Wylie Hubbard, Scott H. Biram, Lincoln Durham, and Tyler Childers for reading my books and for making kick-ass tunes! Huge thanks to my kick-ass book agent, Stacia Decker, and bad-ass film agent, Shari Smiley—your efforts are greatly appreciated. Thanks to my hard-as-nails editors, Sean McDonald, Emily Bell, and Jackson Howard—your input really helped reshape my words and make this one gut-punch of a book; and, of course, a huge thanks to FSG—you’re the best publisher!

  ALSO BY FRANK BILL

  Crimes in Southern Indiana

  Donnybrook

  PRAISE FOR

  THE SAVAGE

  “Think Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale set to the tune of Hank Williams Jr.’s ‘Country Boy Can Survive.’ Inventive, clever, and so topical in terms of today’s American divisiveness, The Savage is set to become one of the year’s most discussed books. As compulsive and chilling as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.”

  —Ace Atkins, author of The Fallen

  “Frank Bill traverses the dangerous terrain of an America lost, where memory is as strong as might and where the door of humanity opens wide, exposing all the beauty and ugliness that hide inside. And in The Savage, Frank Bill makes this journey the only way he knows how—with truckloads of heart and soul.”

  —Michael Farris Smith, author of Desperation Road and Rivers

  “The Savage strips away the comforting illusions of civilization to expose the seething heart of the beast within us all, portraying the lives of everyday men and women surging headlong on the implacable rails of capital-F Fate. I don’t think I’d thrive in the world Bill conjures here, or that I’d even want to, but it’s a thrilling, transporting place to visit, and you will not want to leave until you’ve reached the blistering end.”

  —Kirby Gann, author of Ghosting and Our Napoleon in Rags

  “A postapocalyptic revenge tale with Southern Gothic overtones, Frank Bill’s The Savage starts at a fevered pitch and quickly becomes downright typhoidal. With unrelenting action and a cast of characters that makes The Walking Dead look tame, this isn’t just primal and gripping storytelling, it’s twenty-first-century mythmaking. Good luck putting this one down.”

  —Christopher Charles, author of The Exiled

  “Written in unflinching prose, The Savage is Frank Bill’s brutal exploration of a kill-or-be-killed world in the perhaps not-so-distant future. Rife with the shocking violence we’ve come to expect from Bill, The Savage is a gritty portrait of stripped-down America thrashing as it teeters on the razor-thin line between survival and depravity.”

  —Steph Post, author of Lightwood and A Tree Born Crooked

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Frank Bill is the author of the novel Donnybrook and the story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana, a GQ Book of the Year and a Daily Beast best debut novel of fall 2011. He lives in southern Indiana. You can sign up for email updates here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Part I: The Salvaged

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Part II: The Savage

  Cotto

  Angus

  Cotto

  Angus

  Cotto

  Angus

  Cotto

  Angus

  Cotto

  Angus

  Cotto

  Angus

  Cotto

  Angus

  Cotto

  Angus

  Cotto

  Part III: Sirens of Light

  Rage and Fire and Brimstone

  Epilogue<
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  Acknowledgments

  Also by Frank Bill

  Praise for The Savage

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2017 by Frank Bill

  All rights reserved

  First edition, 2017

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bill, Frank, 1974– author.

  Title: The savage / Frank Bill.

  Description: First edition.|New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017012725 | ISBN 9780374534417 (paperback) | ISBN 9780374710910 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Dystopias—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Short Stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.I436 A6 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012725

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