Pigs

by Daniel James

  The impolite grunts grew steadily louder somewhere over the wall, the fleshy scoffers sensing another meal.

  Colquitt and Jensen had caught up, entering the opposite maintenance passage to the right of the stairs, hoping to run down Wyndorf before Isaac and Roach stole the kill. Colquitt’s patience with his severely wounded benefactor was razor thin: he kept having to hold Jensen back from flinging himself ahead down the murky passage into a possible ambush. But Jensen’s footsteps were starting to falter, and every third or fourth step he needed to post his arm out to the walls of the pen just to help push him on. He had to keep going, he was so close now. He took steadying breaths to try to muffle the mania screaming in his warped brain, and began his well-rehearsed litany of control, remembering his dominance over his fear, pushing his swinophobia back down deep into the cellar of his primal responses. He slowly exhaled, slowly inhaled, and tried not to think about the cold hard fact that along with the bloated and cruelly starved beasts in there was also the very aetiology of his stomach-churning dread. The violent nemesis who had shaken his life to bits and pieces like a demented child thrashing a matchstick house. He was getting woozy from the pain now, the arrow still protruding through his shoulder like some extreme tribal decoration, but he kept pace with Colquitt.

  Isaac and Roach were about halfway through the tunnel when a huge thud came from the wall panel to their right. Roach spun and almost chewed the thick wooden siding to sawdust with his rifle. Isaac brought his knife up and nearly flung himself at the wall. A disgruntled oink followed. It was only one of the boars bungling into the confines of the shelter. They hadn’t moved more than three feet away when another soft thud, this one with an added shoe scuffle, came from behind them. Roach turned just in time to glimpse the pipe thwacking against the side of his head with a dull, sickening clink. He dropped like a safe had just fallen on him.

  Wyndorf howled in delight, his tightly combed hair now a raven’s nest of wild black straw, a crazed refugee from hell. “Like cracking an egg. C’mon, Zack!” Wyndorf kept hold of the leftover scaffold piping, and with the cat-footed grace befitting a sneaky cutthroat, he sped back toward the pen’s wall and used one toe to spring himself up and over, back into the pigs’ domain. “Come and get some bacon to go with all that runny yolk,” his exhilarated voice challenged.

  Isaac rushed to check on Roach but couldn’t get a good look at the severity of the head wound through the tangles of sweaty hair. He felt for a pulse. It was slow but steady. Wyndorf continued to cackle, the glass-cutting pitch threading through the brewing commotion of excited wild boars. Isaac didn’t hesitate. He bit down on the blade and leapt against the high fence, throwing himself over into the thick shrouds of darkness. The red generator lighting was even weaker in here, and Isaac briefly wondered if he would even see his death coming. Tentative steps took him further from the safety of the wall, deeper into the pen’s tunnel offshoots. Thoughts of Maggie and Will now mingled with those of Ludlow being torn apart by charging hairy monsters. Somewhere, in one of the maze tunnels, Wyndorf giggled in fright, the humorous japing one makes when almost hurting oneself through folly. One of the pigs nearly running him down?

  “Think about how much you want to stick me with that teensy little blade of yours. You could drag my death out for hours with that li’l pig-sticker. Be real mean about it. I really was generous with that bitch and runt of yours. I used a muhhh-uch bigger blade on them. Made it too quick. I guess I got excited.”

  Isaac tuned him out, worried his words would distract him from a rampaging bulk of teeth and tusks. He could make out a T-intersection up ahead. Palm sweat itched against the wooden knife handle. He approached the intersection slowly, constantly checking to make sure a boar wasn’t lumbering toward his rear. He was about to enter the potentially disastrous fork in the road when a figure sprang from the shadow-swaddled corner of the wide pen, moving with the speed of an ejector seat, a terrifying shriek of merriment scaring the life out of Isaac. Wyndorf swung wildly with the pipe, aiming to separate Isaac’s bottom jaw. Isaac backpedalled, the whoosh of the piping caressing his face with a cool breeze, the scent of damp steel in the air. But he stepped back in quickly, his slashing knife only shredding the filthy white cotton of Wyndorf’s work shirt. Wyndorf tried again with a backhand swing, tenderising Isaac’s right upper arm with a flash of bright electrical agony. The pain was extraordinary, yet at the same time it made his arm feel limp and like a phantom limb. He changed hands with the knife until the sensation returned to his dead arm, thrusting and arcing the blade toward Wyndorf who danced around the strikes, taunting him and enjoying himself.

  A wet, steaming grunt stole their fierce, blood-lusting attention. One of the hungry monsters stood at the mouth of the T-section, owning the tunnel with unchallenged territoriality. The pair of them became frozen in amber for a stretched moment, waiting for the clock to restart their survival instincts. Wyndorf, giddy as a schoolboy on the first day of summer, tried for a departing swing, aiming to bash Isaac’s kneecap, then sprinted away from the massive pig. Isaac barely managed to hop back from the knee strike, and was about to try to climb back over the fence into the maintenance passage when he realised his arm was still a buzzing wet string. Hearing the fleshy tractor with a mouth pounding the mud-sloppy floor behind him, he turned and fled down Wyndorf’s route.

  Just up ahead, Wyndorf’s sense of gamesmanship was flipped on its head when the second of the boars angled out of another of the corridors, tossing him over its huge, powerful flank. It quickly ambled around to muscle itself into a dominant position over its catch, intending to turn him into a human trough. Its warm breath was like a fine mist on Wyndorf’s face and arms. It was about to chow down. Then it stopped, its gluttonous eyes absorbing the other possible meal hurrying toward it.

  Isaac skidded on the slippery ground and almost lost his footing, mortified at the thought that the second behemoth might change its mind about Wyndorf and choose him instead, trapping him between two charging garbage disposals. In that brief window between life and death, Wyndorf clambered back to his feet and used the pipe to fend off the grotesque thing guarding him, aiming for its face but clobbering its battering-ram shoulders. Isaac moved like the wind through the dingy, dank pen complex, the beating trotters at his back never too far away. Behind him, Wyndorf clobbered the relentlessly aggressive creature, only serving to make it mad. He ran for the fence and hurled himself at the horizontal struts, climbing it better than any scared squirrel or cat.

  Isaac watched the annoyed hog turn from its lost meal, and felt his bladder tighten. It was settling for him instead, even if it would be sharing him with the one breathing down his neck. His right arm was beginning to feel like something resembling functional, and not a moment too soon. A bit further up in the pig hotel, the third resident stomped out of its den, an equally huge silhouette slamming about the place, stirred up by the meddlesome intruders.

  With the three pigs converging on him from different angles and cutting off any alternative escapes, Isaac shook his arm out and went at top speed toward the high fencing. He slipped in something wet, dropping him onto his back and knocking the wind out of him like a sledgehammer to the stomach. Alarm bells rang inside his head, and he sensed his death piling in, smothering him in filthy, blood-drenched fur and flesh-chomping, bone-mashing teeth. Somehow, he was up again, moving without the need to breathe, a distant part of his heightened state filling in the blank of what he’d slipped in. It wasn’t mud or excrement: it was the pool of Ludlow’s leftover gore. He shut the fact out and tried again for the fence, feeling a dozen small aches waiting to bloom into tender grievances. He made it to the top of the reinforced fence as the hungry prisoners skidded into an inelegant pile-up, their collective impact almost bucking him from the top of the wooden panel.

  Isaac realised he had dropped his knife in the muck just as he heard Wyndorf say, “Glad you made it. Let’s finish this.” Wyndorf had used the fence to jump and reach for the aluminium
walkway suspended over the pen network. He was leaning almost casually against the handrail, the light turning him into a red-skinned devil taunting one of his hell-sent subjects as they attempted to climb up out of the pit.

  Isaac could hear Jensen panicking somewhere over on the opposite side of the tunnel, seriously wounded but still adamant in his endeavors. Isaac gingerly stepped up onto the fence, fearful of it wobbling and dropping him back onto the menu below. He carefully leaned forwards, letting his hands catch the cold, clammy bars of the walkway, hoisting himself through the bridge’s guard rail. Wyndorf moved in before Isaac was even standing, swinging the pipe down like an axe splitting a log. Isaac half-rolled, half-fumbled out of the way, the weapon clanging against the walkway with a bright clash, reverberating all the way up to Wyndorf’s shoulders. Using the bars, Isaac quickly pulled himself upright before Wyndorf took a second cheap swing. Isaac fired a brief glance to his right, hoping to use his elevated position to catch a glance of Jensen and Colquitt behind the wooden perimeter. He spotted them twisting back to catch the display up on the bridge, and shifting back toward the steps located at the bridge’s midpoint.

  Wyndorf was acting like a trapped animal, soon to be pressed in from both sides of the walkway. He lunged in at Isaac, big crazy swings, sapping his energy with every two-handed swipe. Isaac was hobbling backward, the pipe clinking off the guard rails or swooshing through the air, when he hip-checked the metal trolley positioned behind him near the gap in the railings. Something heavy landed on the walkway with a deep resonating clang. He realised it was the captive bolt gun. Wyndorf was panting like a sprinter nearing the finish line, so great was his determination to take Isaac’s head off, and didn’t notice the possible shift in his fortunes.

  Isaac swooped down to grab the strange-looking combination of DIY drill and high-tech pistol. Upon seeing Wyndorf’s fatalist smile and arms arcing backward for another overhead chop, he urgently moved in low and jammed the muzzle against Wyndorf’s knee. He squeezed the trigger and the gunpowder cartridge launched the .22-calibre steel rod like a piston, shattering the center of Wyndorf’s patella.

  With an ungodly howl, Wyndorf forgot about his killing stroke, and the steel pipe bounced and rattled onto the walkway before jouncing off into the pigpen below. He fell on to the walkway stiffly and awkwardly, somewhere between backward and sideways –any way which would keep his destroyed kneecap from attempting to flex. Lying on his side, he grunted and slobbered through the pain, then segued into wet, insane tittering and hollering.

  Jensen finally made it to the top of the steps with tremendous effort, looking like death warmed up, and brushed past Colquitt. Isaac still had a few moments to finish this here and now before Jensen demanded Colquitt remove him from the equation. He straddled Wyndorf’s weak, struggling form and wrapped his hands around his throat, his thumbs sinking into the man’s Adam’s apple, poised to crush it inwards like firm cardboard. Wyndorf’s eyes bulged in his red-lit face, his choke increasing the hot hue of his cheeks and veined forehead, his tongue thrashing about in his silent mouth like some grotesque, muscular deep-sea leech. Isaac realised his eyes were watering, the tears tickling down his cheeks as they sluiced away from his pained and desolate snarl. Would Maggie and Will know he was doing this? Watching him fail in his vow to be a better man? Isaac imagined he could hear her voice, soft and musical but firm, beseeching him not to add more sorrow and rage to the cycle by making this violent choice.

  Was killing him necessary? He had already caught him and beat him, and was now holding his life in his hands. It felt like such an empty and worthless victory, a runner-up prize. But couldn’t that still provide some thin semblance of justice? Of gratification? Then it all fell into place for him. The taunting, the crazed enjoyment—Wyndorf wanted this. His little showdown between the two of them, no matter who walked away afterward. Isaac wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. The denial made him feel a little lighter. He removed his vice grip from Wyndorf’s throat and watched him sputter and gag away from the verge of death.

  Jensen was only ten feet away now, each step more laborious than the last, his hands holding on to the rails for dear life. Isaac saw the great void in his eyes, one which rivalled his own, and a thick, sharp sliver of guilt reopened that festering wound: he had been culpable in the utter, irrevocable ruination of this man’s life and psyche. The poor tormented soul didn’t have a chance of a better tomorrow. The least Isaac could do was give him the ending he craved. He climbed off Wyndorf.

  “He’s all yours.”

  Jensen looked at Isaac with an unreadable expression. It certainly wasn’t gratitude, but it was something.

  With heaving breaths, Wyndorf screamed at Isaac, pouring out deepest, blackest chagrin. “YOU FUCKING PUSSY! FINISH IT! FINISH IT THE WAY I FINISHED YOUR WIFE! YOUR BOY!”

  Isaac backed away, watching Jensen step over Wyndorf, who was now using one hand to lamely flail at the surgeon’s ankles.

  Before turning his back on Isaac to lord himself over Wyndorf, Jensen said one thing. “Axillary artery.”

  Isaac wasn’t a doctor but he figured the puncture wound, in addition to all the moving and wriggling about Jensen had stoically undertaken, had created some rapid and deadly repercussions. The ravaged surgeon lowered himself painfully to his knees, adopting the same sacrificial position Isaac had been in a moment before, and dropped his body weight, arrowhead first, into Wyndorf’s neck. Jensen’s slumped body prevented Isaac from enjoying the dying light in Wyndorf’s frantic eyes, but the wet choking of him drowning in his own vile blood made up for it. With his final dregs of strength, Jensen pushed himself up, removing the spear from Wyndorf’s throat, and kept tight hold of Wyndorf’s shirt as he leaned toward the gap in the guard rail.

  “JENSEN!” Colquitt saw what his financier was doing, but it was too late. “Transfer me the second half of my fee, RIGHT FUCKING NOW!” Jensen had lost so much blood that he looked vacant. All he seemed to know was that he and the soft, writhing man spitting blood bubbles belonged below in the tenebrous pit. “JENSEN! Pick up your phone and transfer the fucking money!” Colquitt raised his rifle, knowing how futile the gesture was even as he did it. As mercenary jobs went, this one had gone sideways in quite remarkable fashion.

  With one final heave, Jensen pulled himself and Wyndorf down into hell. A delight of scoffs, slurps and wet smacks rose from the depths.

  “Looks like there are no winners today,” Isaac said to Colquitt.

  Colquitt burned holes through him with his stare. “This was never personal.” He lowered his automatic. “But before I change my mind, you better get the f—” Colquitt’s sentence broke off with two thunderous bangs, the bullets throwing him backward a step before he gripped the railing. Falling to one knee, he looked about for his executioner in confusion.

  Roach was leaning his smoking and depleted HK barrel against the railing of the opposite flight of steps. “That’s for my family. For Robert Ludlow. For Monahan. And it was personal.” Colquitt tried to respond but only managed to flap his mouth like a fish before banging face first to the walkway.

  Isaac was riding a disorientating wave of shock, fatigue and a whole concoction of grief, relief and anger. He looked at Roach with an almost unperturbed air. “So you can still walk and talk.”

  Roach dropped the gun, slowly taking the last couple of steps up to the walkway. “Always had a hard head. You okay?”

  “In time,” he answered after some cursory consideration. He gave a last glance at their surroundings, staring out of the long tunnel and seeing the distant firelight still crackling away in the fully engulfed livestock enclosure. “Let’s go see if your guys got your family out of here.”

  The walk was slow going for Roach, who was still a little wobbly from the head blow, but they reached the parked cars eventually, not entirely sure if the walk had taken minutes or hours.

  “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me you had kids,” Isaac said, cracking the fatigued sile
nce.

  “I wanted to. But it was about finding the right time. Busy day.”

  Isaac almost laughed but was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop if he did.

  “After all this,” continued Roach, “I’m understanding the appeal of the quiet life.”

  “You already own a bar. That’s a decent way of making an honest living, right?”

  “I’ve toyed with the idea of opening a second. Maybe have a chain going by the time I’m a fat old man.”

  Isaac liked the sound of that. “Ludlow, Monahan … they each had a good inning, but their work got the best of them in the end. One way or another. I don’t think many bar owners find themselves getting targeted by psychopaths and mercenaries.”

  They walked on in silence for a short distance, then Roach had to ask, “So what are you going to do now?”

  Isaac mulled it over. “Depends. You need a bartender?”

  Roach smiled sleepily, wanting to make sure his family were okay before spending three days in bed. “I’m always looking for reliable staff.”

  They stopped before the cars when it dawned on them that the keys would be in the pockets of the scattered corpses back where they came from.