by J K Ellem
The crowd parted and Jim Morgan approached, a fake smile on his face hiding his obvious disappointment, his three sons in tow. It wasn’t expected to turn out like this. Shaw was supposed to die.
Jim Morgan reached Shaw, leaned in and spoke into his ear. To all it looked like congratulations. “You have bought yourself a short reprieve, but my sons will finish the job.”
Jim Morgan stepped back and smiled at the crowd. He couldn’t kill Shaw here and now, but his sons soon would, more privately, away from prying eyes. He raised both hands to hush the guests. “Ladies and gentlemen. What a display of courage and fighting spirit,” he said, each word forced and tasting like acid on his tongue. “I’m sure you agree a worthy winner. Now, tonight’s gathering is far from over and neither is my hospitality. Please make your way back to the covered area and enjoy yourself with more food and drink.”
The crowd drifted back to the banquet.
When it was just Shaw and his three sons, Jim Morgan turned to them. “Get rid of him,” he hissed. “I don’t care how or where, just do it now and do it quietly. I want no traces.” And with that Jim Morgan stormed off in a fury to attend to his jubilant guests.
The two security guards held Shaw between them, he was almost unconscious with pain. Billy Morgan turned to them. “Get him patched up quickly.” Billy lifted Shaw’s drooping head. “I don’t want to make it too easy for him.” Billy laughed.
“What have you done with Callie?” Shaw croaked.
Billy smiled. “You’ve probably walked right past her a few times and not even known. The first time when you were an uninvited guest, and again tonight as well.”
Shaw tried to remember back, but his mind was crowded with pain and his entire shoulder and arm was on fire. Then it came to him. He knew where Callie was, where they had put her.
“But don’t worry,” Billy continued. “Once we’re done with you, she’s going to get the royal treatment from us.” Billy turned to his two brothers. “Isn’t that right boys?” Jed and Rory gave their childish snigger.
Rory licked the stubble on his lower lip, grabbed his crotch and said, “Yeh, we’re gonna treat her real nice. Had her saved for the Ox, but since he’s toast we’re gonna have to teach her a lesson ourselves.”
The guards dragged Shaw away to the medical shed. Billy slapped his brothers on their backs. He was disappointed that the Ox was dead, and that he wasn’t going to see Shaw’s head pulled from his body, but it presented a new opportunity he was going to relish. “Saddle up boys, we’re going hunting!”
43
Three ATVs were lined up just beyond the perimeter fence, motors idling, the headlights and light bars cutting through the darkness revealing the rocky and barren terrain. Each ATV had a Go-Pro attached to the side of the roll-cage. The Morgan brothers weren’t into extreme sports. They were into extreme hunting, the human kind.
Billy, Jed, and Rory leaned casually against the ATVs, each of them holding an assault rifle fitted with a night vision scope. Shaw stood shivering in front of them, still just in his pants and boots, his hands bound with a cable tie.
They had pumped some pain-killers into his shoulder and his swollen ankle making it easier for him to run, but they hadn’t reset his dislocated shoulder. One arm hung limp by his side, the drugs only taking the edge off the pain. Shaw felt more lucid, but the drugs would soon wear off and the bone-numbing pain would return.
Billy stepped up to Shaw, unsheathed a large hunting knife and sliced the strip of plastic between his wrists. “We’re going to give you a twenty-minute head start. If you make it to the McAlister boundary fence, then you’re home free. You came this way the other evening, so you should know how to get back there.”
Shaw didn’t believe Billy for a minute, but he stood patiently and listened. Jim Morgan wanted him killed immediately. Billy Morgan wanted some fun.
The way the Morgans were kitted-up Shaw knew they had done this before, hunted people for sport on their land in some perverse game they liked to play. At least he wasn’t in the Pit and he wasn't restrained anymore. “And after twenty-minutes?”
“Then we’ll come after you.” Billy nodded at the outline of the hills. “We need to go around, so it will take us longer, whereas you can climb over them. You’ll have a decent head start.”
There was no head start in Shaw’s mind. He only had the use of one arm, his ankle was injured and he was going to be run down by three men with assault rifles and driving ATVs.
“Will you let Callie go, if I make it?”
“You can have the slut, for all I care, and Daisy too,” Billy said. He had no intention of releasing Callie. She was as good as dead. As for Daisy, as soon as they had taken care of Shaw they were going to slip up to the homestead and do her as well. About time too. Billy’s father said that she was off-limits, but Billy didn’t care anymore. He had to step up to the plate, as they say, start making his own moves. He couldn’t live in the shadow of his father forever.
Billy checked the luminous dial on his watch. “You’ve got twenty minutes.”
Shaw took off as fast as his injured ankle would allow.
The Morgan brothers watched the hobbling figure of Shaw until the dark swallowed him up.
Billy pulled something out from behind the driver's seat of his ATV—the balled-up jeans they had found in the locker after they had captured Shaw.
Billy slipped a walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it. “Bring the dogs.”
* * *
A cold drizzle began to fall and the moon disappeared behind a veil of cloud. As a child, Daisy had laid awake at night in her tiny bed with the covers pulled up tightly under her chin as she stared out of her bedroom window at the storms rolling towards the ranch. She would count the seconds between lightning and the eventual rumble of distant thunder. If the seconds got less and less, she knew the storm was coming towards her, and she would pull the covers a little tighter around her.
She did the same now as she trudged over the sodden ground. The cold air carried the musty smell of rain. Another storm was approaching, and she was walking straight towards it.
She had stopped once or twice with her heart in her mouth when the silhouette of some mantis-like creature loomed out of the darkness. It squatted, watching her, waiting to pounce. But it turned out to be the rusted-out carcass of an old abandoned farm tractor or plough that was half-buried in the low scrub.
Daisy turned on her flashlight and continued across a section of marsh dotted with thin reeds, her boots making sucking noises in soft mud, insects clicking around her. It was getting colder. Patches of mist seeped from the ground and hovered around her ankles as she moved, like boney white fingers trying to pull her back.
Then the ground flattened and became more solid where the earth had sucked up the rain from the last downpour. The texture was rough dirt littered with stones that crunched under her boots. She passed rows of shallow furrows covered in a fine layer of mist. The clouds cleared for the briefest of moments widening her visibility, Daisy realized that she was in an old field that had long since grown its last harvest, the ground sandy and coarse like all the nutrients had been sucked out of it. She pressed on, following a straight line. As best as she could tell, she was still heading in the right direction.
The lightning grew more frequent and the intervals to the thunder less.
44
The three beams of the ATV headlights converged on the body. It lay twisted, disfigured, a shallow furrow in the ground behind it, the dirt pushed up in front like it had been moving at speed then had ploughed head-first into the ground.
Billy Morgan climbed out of his ATV, the engine idling. Jed and Rory got out of their vehicles but kept their distance, rifles in their hands, scanning the dark that pressed in around them where the headlights didn’t reach.
Billy squatted down beside the dog's corpse and placed his palm on the rib cage.
It was still warm.
“Jesus Billy, what’s going on?”
Jed said, as he looked at the ghastly sight.
Billy said nothing, just kept looking down at the body, seething. The Ox they could replace, there were plenty of dim-witted men they could train-up. He was expendable.
But the dogs, his dogs, he loved beyond measure. They were harder to replace. He had raised them since pups, loved and cared for them, treated them better than most humans. When they hurt, he hurt.
And now his insides were torn at the sight in front of him.
The huge dog laid dead, a fist-sized hole of flesh, fur and shattered ribs blown outwards in its side from where the bullet exited. The dog may have survived for a few minutes after being shot, but just to make sure, someone had also cut its throat for good measure. A viscous pool of blood puddled underneath its head that was almost severed from the body.
Rory looked over Billy’s shoulder at the dog, his voice unsure and fidgety, “How the hell did he get a knife? He had no knife!”
Billy stood up and looked at Rory. “Forget the knife, you dumb idiot! The dog has been shot. He must have stashed or buried a weapon somewhere around here when he came over the other night, just as a back-up.”
Clever bastard, Billy thought.
It was freezing, but Billy’s blood boiled with anger. The odds were starting to tip against them.
“Find him and kill him!” he screamed, his breath like steam in the cold air.
Billy ran back to his ATV, jumped in and stamped on the gas. The big tires skidded then gripped, the ATV lurching forward. Jed and Rory quickly jumped in their vehicles and tore after Billy, their headlights bouncing and slewing through the night.
* * *
Shaw ran for his life, one arm dangling, the other pumping wildly, urging him forward. The drugs were dwindling, the pain spreading in waves. He fell, gathered himself and stumbled on, the limping stride of an injured gazelle.
Something was chasing him through the darkness from behind. Something big, he could feel it, the displacement of air as it bore down on him. It wasn’t a vehicle. There were no headlights. It was something else. Something much worse than the Morgans in their ATVs was closing in on Shaw as he staggered forward.
He could see the tin shed up ahead and he angled towards it.
It was close, almost on him, he could hear its snarl, but Shaw kept on.
A shape shot out of the darkness, four large paws churning up the dirt in a rhythmic beat, before becoming airborne. Over one hundred pounds of muscle, sinew, bone and teeth careened into the back of Shaw, barreling him over.
The Italian mastiff peeled sideways then rounded back on Shaw as he lay on the ground. The worst thing Shaw could do was to bring his arms up, extending them, giving the dog something clean and easy to latch its crushing jaws onto. Instead he curled into a ball protecting his throat, head and belly, the soft areas that attack dogs want to rip into.
The dog closed in and Shaw tensed for the onslaught of being torn to pieces.
Blood splattered across Shaw in a warm spray, then nothing.
Shaw looked up. The dog was a few feet away, slumped in death, steam rising from its body, it twitched once then stopped.
Shaw kicked away from the animal, looking around, confused.
Three ATVs burst out of the night and skidded to a halt in a spray of dirt and rocks a few feet from Shaw, the glare of the driving lights blinding him.
Billy Morgan almost fell out of his ATV as it skidded to a halt, such was his ferocity of wanting to reach Shaw and kill him. A bullet was too good for him. He was going to beat Shaw to death with his bare hands.
Billy stumbled upright then sprinted past the body of his second dog. The sight of its mutilated shape pushed Billy over the edge, a white-hot nail of rage drove right into his brain. Most of the dog’s head was gone, ripped apart. From the neck up it was a twisted bloody bouquet of skull, furry mush, partial jawbone, pink gums and canine teeth.
“You bastard!” Billy screamed. He started kicking into Shaw as he lay on the ground, sinking his boots in. Jed and Rory rushed forward and joined the melee, soon all three churned up the dirt in a violent frenzy, feet and legs back and forth.
Shaw balled-up again, covering himself as best he could, protecting his head, face, ribs, and groin. His forearms, elbows, back, knees and shins bearing the brunt of the onslaught as he curled into the fetal position.
Thirty seconds later Billy yelled, “Enough!” His voice hoarse from exertion, his face coated in sweat, tears and dribble, eyes wild with rage.
Rory sunk in one last kick for good measure then backed off with Jed.
Shaw’s nose was bleeding and a nasty gash had opened above one eye where a boot got through his defenses. He rolled onto his back and gulped in air. It was like he had been beaten by a sledgehammer. He ached all over, but thankfully nothing was broken. Bruises would heal and eventually vanish. Broken limbs took a little longer.
Jed collected his rifle from his ATV and came back to Shaw.
“No,” Billy said, as he looked at the bloody and beaten shape of Shaw. “He deserves a more painful death.”
Billy looked around, but couldn’t see any gun that Shaw had used. It didn’t matter, his mind was focused elsewhere.
He had an idea.
He unsheathed his hunting knife from his belt. “I’m going to skin him alive like a deer. Hang him up and peel him open like a carcass.” He gave a manic laugh like he had gone completely insane.
“Yeh, just like that bitch Annie,” Jed sniggered.
Rory moved closer. “Yeh, but we did her first, took turns in the shed,” he said, nodding towards the tin shed that was lit up by the headlights.
Shaw looked up.
Annie? The girl whose silver identity bracelet he had found.
“Pity we can’t fuck him first like we did her,” Rory sniveled, disappointment written across his face.
“Don’t forget, we’ve still got that other whore locked up safe and sound in the shipping container,” Jed replied. “Ox won’t be needing her anymore.”
“Shut up, the pair of you!” Billy growled. He held up the hunting knife. Ten inches of serrated steel glinted in the headlights. “He’ll get fucked alright,” Billy said quietly, as he regarded the razor-sharp beveled length of the knife.
Shaw looked at the knife and slowly gathered himself, tensing each muscle, ready to fight no matter what. But his eyes shifted back to the dead dog.
“Annie?” he said. It was worth a chance, to prolong the conversation. The one thing he knew was that murderous bullies always liked to brag about their conquests, their sick achievements. They got off on it. And Billy Morgan was no different.
Billy tilted his head as he looked at Shaw. It made no difference to him. He was going to skin and flay open Shaw anyway. The man was going to die. And Billy liked to reveal to his victims some of the pain and suffering they were about to endure. He enjoyed seeing the fear in their eyes. But for some reason this man had no fear. He just regarded Billy with a calm stare.
“Tell me about Annie,” Shaw said, raising his hands submissively, like he had given up, he was their prisoner now.
“Bitch ran too,” Billy lowered the knife, but still held it by his side. “Thought she was fast, but not fast enough.” He paused, thinking back to Annie, shuffling through the catalogue of images in his mind, trying to recollect the particular girl. There had been so many. “Didn’t use dogs that night,” Billy continued, his voice distant. “No need.” Billy pointed at the shed with the knife. “Told her if she got to the shed then we would let her go.” Billy looked at Jed and Rory, and gave a demented smile.
“Bitch didn’t know me and Jed were waiting for her in the shed,” Rory laughed. “Should’ve seen the look on her face when Billy finally caught up with her and she ran inside and saw us in there too.”
“Squealed like a pig that girl,” Jed added. “Thought she had won. Thought she was home free.” Jed turned and looked at Shaw, the eyes of a sadistic killer. “But we never let them go once we have
'em.”
For three hours they had Annie Turnball in a hellish nightmare inside the old tin shed. Three hours of wonderful video footage. Annie was special. Her video was Rory’s favorite. It was the one he had shown the Ox so he would know what to do when his chance came. The Morgan brothers had taken their time with Annie.
“So what did you do with her?” Shaw turned to Jed.
“She’s deep. Real deep. In hell, I suppose,” Jed replied.
For a moment Shaw thought Jed was just fantasizing. Then he realized what Jed had meant, where Annie was, her body. And the others too.
Real deep.
Billy looked at Shaw. “Don’t worry. You’ll soon be joining her. In hell, that is.” Billy raised the knife again. He’d always wanted to gut and skin a person. He and his brothers had done it with deer and the like. But not a human. That would be neat. Ever since he watched some TV show on cable, some medieval fantasy series, he had wanted to do it. The show had plenty of tits, ass and killing. He liked the show, because all the evil people seemed to get away with anything and all the goody-two-shoes were killed off.
Billy liked that. He wished he could be in a TV show like that. There was one character in the TV show, some evil dude who lived in a big old castle. Killed his parents so he could rule the family throne. Nice guy. Had hunting dogs as well. That’s when Billy decided to get the dogs, big hunting dogs so he could hunt people too, like the evil dude on the TV show. The dude on the TV show even skinned people, flayed them open. Billy liked that a lot, it was like the dude on the show and him were kindred spirits.