Burnt Road: Dante

by Neal, Toby

  Melody fell asleep fully clothed and sobbing.

  When she woke, the moon was high in a clear sky, its eerie blue-white light glowing through the window.

  Melody blinked, her mind stumbling to recall where she was and what was happening. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this moment. Yoga, meditation, dance—none of her practices helped. Being raped had shown her how she could be seen as so much less than another’s desires. But still, Melody was not prepared for an end like this: a pandemic that took lives and unleashed evil.

  Snake was an evil, dangerous, vile man, with a horrible friend. And they had Dante.

  The thought closed her throat again, but there were no more tears or sobs.

  Melody stood and looked up at the moon, full and white, pockmarked with gray craters. It was stuck in a loop, a passenger in a gravitational pull.

  But Melody had a choice. She could finish packing the supplies that Dante and she had gathered and head onto Idaho alone, fleeing with Beauty and the puppies.

  Or she could go after Dante. She could risk her life and her body, and she could at least attempt to save him.

  But how?

  She wasn’t a good shot. She was terrified. She was small and weak.

  Elizabeth had done it.

  With his hands around her neck, strangling her, squeezing the breath from her, Elizabeth had killed her rapist. She had driven a knife into him and stopped his assault, stopped him forever.

  She could almost hear Elizabeth’s soft voice.

  You can do this.

  How could she live with herself if she didn’t at least try?

  Before Dante was captured, Melody had wanted to pull back from him. They were nothing special, just some fun.

  Now it was obvious that she’d been a fool.

  Pretending that he was another fling was like pretending the moon was another star.

  Dante mattered more than any man ever had, more than she’d ever thought a man could. Dante had freed something in her. He had accepted her exactly the way she was.

  And she had abandoned him to be raped and murdered.

  The thing was, Dante would accept that, too, if it meant that Melody went free.

  But Melody couldn’t accept those terms. No.

  Her heart thundered in her ears as she stared up at the moon. All she had was the element of surprise. If she showed up there now, hopefully they’d be asleep. She could sneak in and free Dante.

  If they were awake? If he was already dead?

  Melody turned back to the bed and picked up the shotgun.

  She’d kill them.

  Elizabeth had done the world a favor when she’d killed Brian, but it had been too late for Melody. He’d already hurt her. Melody had thought for a long time that he’d destroyed her security, defiled her body, and left her broken. But she’d rebuilt herself; she’d re-formed that interior rock of independence.

  When Elizabeth killed Brian, she had saved other women from his touch and his curse.

  Melody would do the same. Snake and any man with him deserved to die. Melody was going to make sure it happened. She started for the exit, her step steady, the gun barely a weight in her hand. As she tore open the door and stepped out into the night, ready to take the horses and head out to save Dante, Melody’s heart stuttered.

  What if they caught her? Raped her?

  His breath on her face, his body invading hers, his voice in her ear.

  She’d have to face it.

  There was no civilization to protect her. Really there never had been. All that was left was Melody, and her love for Dante. And if that wasn’t enough, well, that was that. But she’d have tried.

  As she rode Beauty, leading Sweetie, back toward that awful model home, anger and hate awoke in Melody like a snake uncoiling. Fear fled as she wound her way through the rocky landscape, replaced with the fuel of anger. Pure, unadulterated rage built inside of Melody now, desperate to be released: rage she’d hidden for a long time. Rage she had kept down, controlled with meditation and mind-body practices. Rage she had denied she even had, but it had been waiting. Her rapist had pushed it, forced it into her body.

  Tonight Melody would unleash it.

  The landscape glowed bright with the moon’s beams.

  Melody approached the house from the back, having navigated through the wilderness area.

  The windows blazed with light as a generator chugged along, loudly enough to cover the soft sound of the horses’ hooves on the dirt. The lamps burning inside turned the glass into a one-way mirror. Melody could see in, but no one could see out.

  She had the shotgun, a saddlebag full of shells, a crowbar she’d found in the garage, and medical supplies she’d taken from the general store. If Dante was alive, he’d need medical attention.

  Melody also carried two liquor bottles, two rags, and a lighter. Since her rapist drugged her drink, Melody had given up alcohol; even the smell of it made her sick and brought back hazy, horrible memories. But tonight, when she’d sniffed that powerful accelerant, it brought a smile to her lips.

  They would burn for what they’d done.

  There was no sign of movement inside the house. Melody dismounted on the far side of the fence and slid off her saddlebag and the shotgun, leaving Sweetie and Beauty tied to the metal railing.

  Beauty snorted, his ears flattening to his head. “It’s okay, boy.” Melody gave his side a pat before she vaulted over the fence, running in a crouch toward the house. Looking through the window she spotted a shape on the couch: a bruised and bloodied body, hog-tied, dark curls covering his face.

  Dante.

  Melody’s rage released and her vision burned red. Her hands didn’t shake. Her mind didn’t question. She just continued around the house. Looking in the bedroom window, Melody spotted Snake passed out with a liquor bottle on the ground near his hand.

  She raised her shotgun, thinking she’d just blast him right through the window. But she needed to be smart. If there were others, Melody needed to know that before she started making noise.

  Continuing around the building she discovered another man, awake, in a second bedroom. He was reading. She couldn’t see the magazine’s title but there was a swastika on the cover. She recognized him as Bent, the man she’d last seen being sucked under the floodwaters.

  Melody continued around the house, confirming that it was just those two men. Returning to the living room, she slid the glass door open.

  The air stank of blood, sweat and fear. Melody held the shotgun up, keeping the sights at the center of her vision as she approached Dante, careful to place her feet where they would be quiet and avoiding the broken glass that littered the carpeting.

  Melody reached the couch.

  Was he alive?

  Dante lay on his stomach, ankles and wrists tied at his back, his face obscured by his hair. She crouched next to him and set a hand on his shoulder. It was the one place not bruised, burned or cut. He shuddered under her hand.

  He was alive!

  His hair was crusty with blood and fluids as she pushed the tangled curls back from his battered face. Revulsion at what had been done to him activated her gag reflex, and Melody swallowed bile.

  Dante’s eyes were open, but unseeing.

  Blank. Empty.

  Oh God, where was he?

  Creaking jerked her head up. A man was coming down the hall.

  Good.

  Melody stayed low, hiding on the far side of the couch.

  Bent stepped into the living room. “You ready to go again, pretty? ‘Cuz I am.”

  Melody waited until he was just on the other side of the couch, then she stood, the shotgun aimed at his chest.

  The tall skinhead’s eyes went wide. He was wearing a pair of dirty white boxers. His bare chest was thin, the hair sparse. He was a human being, born to a mother. And Melody didn’t care.

  She pulled the trigger. Bent’s chest exploded as he stumbled backward, his arms flung wide. He knocked over the lamp and the s
hade tipped, the bulb bursting as it hit the floor. Bent landed on top of it, groaning.

  Melody reloaded, the sharp sound of the shotgun opening and closing barely penetrating the ringing in her ears.

  She walked around the couch. Bent was dragging himself down the hall, leaving a trail of blood that Melody stepped into when she stood over him and fired again, this time at his head.

  His skull shattered, sending bloody chunks flying to spatter the hallway walls.

  Melody was shoving in more shells when Snake’s door flew open.

  Their eyes met, Snake with a wolfish grin and Melody with a crazed smile.

  She couldn’t wait to kill him.

  Snake raised his pistol and Melody dove back into the living room.

  Snake’s laughter reached her through the haze of rage and the throbbing in her ears. She racked the shotgun and raised it as he came around the corner. She didn’t have time to aim, only to fire.

  The weapon’s discharge knocked Snake back and drove the butt of the gun into Melody’s stomach on the recoil. She didn’t feel it. She felt nothing but triumph.

  Snake’s neck spewed blood. He dropped his gun to hold the wound with both hands as he fell onto his back.

  Melody stood up and reloaded as he gurgled.

  Striding over to him, she aimed the shotgun at his crotch. Snake’s eyes were glassy and terrified. He kept one hand on his neck and lowered the other to cover his groin.

  Melody watched him die, watched the life leave him, pumping out to pool in a sticky dark halo around his head. She witnessed the end of him, and didn’t need to take the second shot.

  The shotgun dropped from her hand. Melody shook with delayed shock.

  She didn’t have time for that. She needed to help Dante.

  Melody crouched down and took the knife off Snake’s belt, willing her body to stay steady as she returned to Dante. Cutting the ropes binding him, she rolled Dante onto his back. His eyes were almost as empty as Snake’s. But he was still breathing. He was alive.

  She needed to get him out of this hellish place.

  “Dante.” She caressed his cheek, pushing his hair back. Her eyes roamed over his body. On his left pectoral was branded a heart shape—scorched into his skin with what looked like individual cigarette burns.

  Melody kissed his cheek and Dante shuddered. His throat worked in a swallow but no sound came out.

  She wasn’t strong enough to lift him. Dante was a solid six feet tall. He was going to have to wake up and help her get him out of here.

  But how? Either he was catatonic, or they’d hit his head so hard he was brain damaged.

  Maybe he was really gone.

  “No!” The rage holding her up came out in a cry of defiance. “You are not going to leave me!” Her fists landed on Dante’s injured chest, smearing the drying blood. “Wake up!”

  She was not going to let him go. Melody’s tears fell onto his face as she leaned over his injured body. “Dante!” She screamed again. “Dante, I need you!”

  As quickly as the rage had resurfaced it faded, and Melody collapsed next to the couch, her arms around Dante’s neck. She pulled him against her chest and buried her face in his filthy hair.

  “I love you,” she whispered into his ear. “Please, Dante. Please come back.”

  He shuddered in her arms, his eyes wide and unresponsive.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dante

  Melody’s sweet scent filled Dante’s nose in their secret place. Her hands caressed him, lightly and gently, the way only she could touch him and make it still feel good.

  “Dante, I love you. Please come back.”

  This was the first time she had spoken in his fantasy. Even as they twined on the warm, sunlit grass beside a river like the one where he’d first tasted her, Dante knew it was a fantasy.

  Reality was the couch, with Bent. He wasn’t ready to go back there.

  “Dante, please. I love you.”

  Melody was crying. He felt her tears, each separate one scalding his skin. The tears were intruding on their special place.

  She took his face in her hands, staring into his eyes, and it was like looking into the sun. He blinked, and felt one of those hot tears land on his eyelid.

  “Dante! Dante, I know you’re in there!” Melody’s voice was hoarse, scratchy, desperate.

  She was really here, with him, on the couch.

  Melody rocked him against her chest, sobs shaking both of them. He felt the dirty tweed of the couch on his skin. He felt aching bruises, strain in his tendons from being bound, burning ligature marks on his wrists and ankles, and searing pain on his chest. The soft tissue of his insides were ripped and tortured, violated and sore.

  He felt everything that had been done to him, everything he’d temporarily escaped.

  It was overwhelmingly terrible.

  “I love you.” Melody’s voice, broken and close, whispered into his ear.

  He had to be brave enough to come back to her, because she’d been brave enough to come back for him.

  “I love you, too.” His voice echoed from the bottom of a well, hollow and distant.

  Melody shrieked and held him away, gazing into his face. “Dante, oh my God! You’re awake!”

  Dante blinked, and groaned. “My angel is here. So, am I dead? No, I can’t be. It hurts too much.” The hot, sweetish iron smell of blood hit his nostrils, making him gag. He curled his head down into Melody’s chest to shut it out. She stroked his hair and it felt like she was pulling it. He shivered at the awful sensation.

  “I want to patch you up, but we have to get outside.” Mercifully, she stopped the hair stroking.

  “Yes.” Millions of stabbing micro-pains in his hands and feet meant circulation was returning. How long had they been numb, had he been bound? “I don’t know if I can walk yet, though.”

  “Maybe if you lean on me,” Melody stood up under his arm, lifting. Dante set his feet on the ground, groaning at the pins-and-needles sensation.

  “Just outside. Just away from this room,” Melody panted, half-carrying him toward the door.

  Snake lay on the carpet, a red crater in his neck. Further down the hall, Bent’s brains were spattered all over the floor and walls at the end of a bloody trail.

  “You did that?”

  “Yes, and I’d do it again.” Melody maneuvered Dante through the front door.

  “I thought you didn’t like violence.” Dante’s tongue was thick in his mouth and his heart hurt at what Melody had done for him. “I’m sorry you had to perpetrate violence.”

  “I did the world a service. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.” Melody lowered Dante onto a bench by the back door. Sweet, fresh night air wafted over his naked body, caressing every wound, making them sting and ache. “I’m going to get you some water, and clothes, and doctor you up. Don’t go anywhere.” She darted back inside the house.

  “Like I could,” Dante muttered to the two horses tied to the fence nearby. They shifted their hooves and snorted at the smell of him.

  Dante’s body felt far away: a husk, an ill-fitting suit. His mind hid from his injuries as memories tried to surface. He’d survived, that was the important thing, and so had Melody. She’d come back to save him. And had she really said she loved him?

  Melody returned with a bottle of water and a couple of pills in her hand. “They had a stash of oxycodone. Take these and drink all the water while I see what we’re up against.” She turned on the outside light, and Dante squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness.

  He swallowed the big pills with difficulty, then batted Melody’s hand away as she tried to swab the burn marks on his chest. “I just want to get out of here. I’m okay now that I’ve had some water.” Dante leaned forward carefully and stood, pushing through the last of the circulation pain. “Mostly I need a shower.”

  As if a shower could rinse away all the ways he’d been violated. But at least their filthy touch and fluids wouldn’t still be
on him, scorching his skin like acid.

  Melody helped Dante into his clothing and he limped over to Sweetie, leaning his forehead against the mare’s side, inhaling her warm, horse smell. It calmed him as it always had. The mare turned her head and nudged him with her nose, whuffling through her nostrils at his stench.

  “Yeah, I know, girl.” The thought of trying to ride made bile rush up his throat. Dante swallowed it down and untied Sweetie’s reins. “I’ll walk. We’re going back to the dude ranch, right?”

  “Yeah.” Melody had her hands on her hips, staring at him. He couldn’t see her expression in the dark, but he could imagine the worried scrunch of her brows. “You must be in so much pain, Dante. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  Yes, Dante was in a lot of pain. His body was covered with bite, burn, whip and pinch marks. His face was bruised from Snake’s fists. His teeth were loose and he’d been horribly violated, but he wasn’t structurally damaged.

  “I can walk.” He took Sweetie’s reins. “It’s just going to be slow.”

  “There’s just one last thing I need to do.” Melody went to the saddlebags on Beauty and pulled out two glass bottles, liquid sloshing in them. She put them at her feet and unscrewed the tops. The astringent scent of alcohol cut through the metallic stench in Dante’s nose. Melody pushed cloth into the bottles’ necks, getting it down into the accelerant.

  Dante felt a thrill. Yes, burn it down.

  “Take the horses and get back.” Melody’s voice was low but confident. “I don’t want the explosion to scare them.”

  Dante did as she asked, the horses following him into the darkness. He turned back, and Melody was a silhouette against the electric light pooling from the house. She lit the first bottle. An orange flame tinged with blue raced along the cloth toward the alcohol. She flung the Molotov cocktail through the open glass sliding door and it exploded, the cracking of glass and whoosh of flame a balm to Dante’s tortured mind.

  She lit the second bomb and threw it into Snake’s bedroom. Hungry fire flickered up the curtains and black smoke spilled out the broken window.

  Melody joined Dante, taking Beauty’s reins, a smudge of soot on her nose. He wanted to wipe it off, to touch her, but he couldn’t.