Gristle

by Mark Allen

  Mongus yanked his axe free and the body fell to the ground. Blood immediately formed a halo around the shattered skull, melting the frost with its grisly heat. Boss, Cyclops, and Junior emerged from the woods to examine the kill.

  Boss reached down with a brawny fist, grabbed the front of Tom’s hunting jacket, and hoisted the corpse into the air. He looked at it the way a fisherman looks at a freshly-caught trout to determine if it’s worth keeping or not. He shook the body to get a feel for its weight, paying no mind as the remaining brains slopped out of the crushed cranium and splatted on the ground. When he realized the featherweight remains of Tom Rickson wouldn’t make a snack, let alone a meal, he growled, “Leave him. Ain’t nothing but gristle,” and then disgustedly tossed the corpse aside like an unwanted rag doll.

  The body tumbled over the crunchy leaves until it crashed into the tree the shotgun was leaning against. The axe-chopped arm flopped against the gun, knocking it over. It struck the ground and since the safety wasn’t engaged, the jarring impact triggered a shot.

  The boom thundered through the woods.

  ******

  Jack and Paul had just split up to head to separate hunting spots when the shotgun blast shattered the dawn air. They quickly reconvened with each other and Jack pointed to the southeast. “Sounds like it came from over there,” he said. The trail for the last several hundred yards had gradually steepened and he was panting a bit from the exertion. Nothing like a good hike to make you realize you’re no longer in prime physical condition.

  “That’s where Tom is,” Paul said excitedly. “Hope he nailed a big one.” He grinned proudly and slapped Jack on the shoulder with a gloved hand. “You know what they say: one shot, one kill. Bet you dollars to dimes something just bought the farm.”

  “Sorry, I’m saving my money for tonight’s poker game,” Jack said. “Now let’s go see if he needs help with the gutting.”

  ******

  Like Tom, Kevin had located a mossy stump on which to sit. The location was a hardwood ridge, the forest floor practically rolling with acorns of both the red oak and white oak variety. Kevin knew acorns were one of deer’s favorite foods, a fact proven by the countless piles of pebbled scat. He also spotted several tree rubs where bucks had scraped their antlers against sapling trunks to clean the velvet off the bone. All in all, more than enough sign to justify setting up watch in the hopes of ambushing an unsuspecting whitetail.

  Unlike Tom, he did not have a Nintendo 2DS, so all he had to pass the time with were his thoughts. He would have rather had the Nintendo. When he was alone like this, all he could think about was his dead mother, his cowardly father, and the years he had spent behind bars. Oh, sure, dad was trying to make things right, but he was trying too hard … while also not trying hard enough. It would take more than a new shotgun and a hunting trip to heal the wounds between them.

  Maybe I should cut him some slack, Kevin thought. At least he’s trying.

  He suddenly slapped the side of his neck. When he pulled his hand back, a splat of blood stained his palm. He also spotted some tiny, twisted legs and crushed wings mixed into the mess. “Stupid mosquitoes,” he muttered. Still, he would rather deal with mosquitoes than deer flies. Those things frigging hurt when they bit you.

  He opened his knapsack, pulled out a paper towel, and began wiping off his hand and neck. He hoped there were no other hunters in the vicinity—unlikely, given their remote location—that might mistake the white paper towel for the tail of a deer and throw a shot in his direction.

  He suddenly froze as he heard something crashing through the trees toward him.

  The noise was loud, all crackling leaves and snapping twigs and breaking branches. It sounded like a deer on the run, coming his way fast. He grabbed the Stoeger, clicked off the safety, and pointed the barrel in the direction from which the crashing sounds were originating. He looked through the scope, heart hammering, spiked on adrenaline, waiting for the deer to appear. He mentally envisioned making the perfect kill-shot, putting a twelve-gauge slug in a ten-pointer’s heart.

  Of course, it was more likely just a doe or a spike-horn.

  The noise grew louder and louder … and then completely stopped.

  Kevin held still, but his eyes flicked back and forth in their sockets, peering into the woods. He waited for what seemed like several minutes, but was probably more like thirty seconds. Finally, when no deer appeared, he lifted the shotgun to his shoulder and peered through the scope. With the magnification dialed all the way up to 9X, whatever he was looking at through the scope was brought into much closer focus, but it also considerably narrowed his field of vision.

  Keeping his eyes glued to the scope, he swung the shotgun slowly to the left, scanning the trees, the rocks, the brush.

  Nothing.

  No deer.

  But I know I heard one. It’s got to be around here somewhere.

  He swung the shotgun back to the right and a woman’s bloody head suddenly filled his crosshairs. One second she wasn’t there, the next she was, popping into frame like some kind of gruesome jack-in-the-box. He nearly jumped out of his skin. “Holy shit!” he yelped.

  She had no hair on most of her head, just a filleted scalp covered with matted gore. Dried blood streaked her face into a reddish-brown mask. Kevin lowered the gun as the woman screamed, “Help me! Please help me!”

  Kevin stood up and took a step backward, not quite sure what to make of the injured woman in front of him. “Who are you?” he said. “What the hell happened?” There seemed to be no immediate threat, so he slung the shotgun over his shoulder.

  The woman stared at him for a moment. She seemed dazed, maybe from blood loss. Then she blinked and rushed toward him.

  “Hey, lady, are you okay?” he asked, taking another automatic step back, retreating from the woman’s panicked charge.

  He didn’t move fast enough. The woman closed the gap and her hand shot out to grab his arm, fingers digging desperately into the sleeve of his hunting coat. Kevin tried to pull away, but her grip was too strong. The woman was clearly half out of her mind. “Please!” she said frantically. “Come with me! They’re going to kill him! Please, you have to help!”

  Kill? Did she just say kill? Kevin tried to take another step back but the woman’s other hand reached out and grabbed his arm, holding him in place. “Relax, lady,” Kevin said. “You need to take a breath, calm down, and then tell me what the hell is going on. Who’s gonna kill you? Go with you where?”

  The woman abruptly let go of him. “This way!” she said, hurrying back the way she had just came. Not really a path; more like a game trail.

  “Hold on.” Kevin reached into his pocket and pulled out a two-way radio. He keyed the mike and said, “Dad, you there?”

  He heard a squelch of static and then the woman darted back and slapped the radio out of his hand. He glared at her the as the radio broke into pieces on the rocks at his feet. Pieces of shattered casing and busted circuitry bounced against his boots.

  “There’s no time for that!” The woman practically screamed the words.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Kevin snapped.

  “There’s no time! We have to hurry! They’re going to kill him!”

  “Maybe I should go get my father first.”

  “There’s no time!”

  The woman was starting to sound like a broken record. “All right, I got it, there’s no time,” Kevin said. “So let’s go.” He took the shotgun off his shoulder, taking comfort in the fact that there was a shell in the chamber as he followed the scalped woman deeper into the woods.

  ******

  Jack heard Kevin’s voice on the radio. “Dad, you there?”

  He plucked the radio from where it hung from a clip on his belt and raised it to his lips. “Yeah, I’m here.” He took his thumb off the transmit button and waited.

  Silence.

  Jack keyed the mike again. “Hey, Kevin, can you hear me?”

  The radio r
emained mute.

  Jack gave the thing a good shake and then tried again. “Kevin, are you there?” When there was still no answer, he turned to Paul. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Paul.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “He’s your son and I would never tell you not to trust your gut,” Paul said. “Tell you what, why don’t you go check on him and I’ll go find Tom. We can meet back at the lodge.”

  Jack nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” He slapped Paul on the shoulder and then headed back the way they had just come, his feet picking up the pace while a sickening sense of worry settled in the pit of his stomach.

  ******

  Paul watched Jack trot off, hoping that the man was wrong and that Kevin was not in any kind of trouble. When Jack disappeared around a bend in the trail, he shrugged his pack into a more comfortable position and then continued in Tom’s direction. He didn’t know exactly where his son had chosen to hunt, but he knew the general vicinity. Every fifty yards or so he yelled Tom’s name.

  He continued to walk and holler until he came to an oak grove near a clear-cut. He paused, cupped both his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “Hey, Tom! Where are you?”

  Nobody responded, but he did hear something rustling in the thick tree canopy above him. Probably a squirrel. Where there were deer, there were squirrels, both creatures finding the tasty attraction of the acorns impossible to resist. These early morning hours were prime feeding time for squirrels too. Paul could hear the thing hopping from branch to branch.

  “All right, you stupid tree rat,” he growled. “I’m gonna blow your ass into stew meat.” He looked up and started to raise his rifle. He would rather have venison steaks for dinner, but some sautéed squirrel would do just fine too.

  Something large tumbled from the trees, bouncing and ricocheting off the branches as it fell, heading right for him. Paul jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the object, which crashed to the ground in front of him like a lumpy sack of sand. He flinched as something wet spattered his face…

  …and then looked down at his son’s dead body.

  Tom’s head was almost completely split in two, recognizable only because of the red hair. One of the last sights Paul would ever see on this earth was the crimson-coated interior of his son’s cranial cavity. He dropped his rifle from fingers suddenly too weak to hold it and fell to his knees, screaming in anguish. The screams seemed to last forever, and when they stopped, the sobbing began. Lost in that grief-stricken moment, Paul Rickson no longer gave a damn if he lived or died.

  So he didn’t care when a large shadow suddenly loomed over him. The only reason he had to live was now lying in front of him, brutally transformed from repentant son to butchered meat. He didn’t even bother to turn around and face the danger behind him. He simply gathered Tom in his arms and wept, anointing him with tears. He would never let his son go.

  Not even when Mongus’ massive axe shattered his spine like dry kindling.

  Chapter 6

  A Jack of All Trades

  Barren branches reached out and clutched at Kevin like skeletal hands and thorny brush clawed at his clothes as he followed Vicky’s hurtling flight down the path. Blood dripped from her scalped head every few yards and stained the earth beneath their running feet. Normally it would have been hard not to stare at her skinned skull, but he was too busy trying not to stumble and break an ankle. The open woods had given way to much more rugged terrain, but Vicky showed no sign of slowing down.

  Kevin was really starting to huff and was just about to ask, “How much farther?” when they threaded their way between two huge boulders and burst out of the brush into a small hollow where a cabin stood. It looked exactly like the kind of cabin a mountain hermit would have built back in the 1800s.

  Except for the large cross stuck in the ground with a skeleton nailed to it.

  And the carpet of bones.

  Fear uncoiled in his guts and began a slow-crawl through his system. “What is this place?” he asked. He had been in some tough spots behind the razor wire, but some primal instinct warned him that he had never been as screwed as he was right now.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry. They said they would let us go if I brought you here. I’m sorry, so, so sorry.” Vicky was babbling and Kevin knew that was never a good sign. “I’m so, so sorry, but I really didn’t have a choice.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kevin demanded. “Who are you talking about?”

  Vicky pointed over his shoulder. “Him.”

  Kevin turned just in time to catch Boss’ wicked haymaker flush on the jaw. The blow spun him around so fast that the shotgun went sailing in one direction and his knapsack went flying in the other. Both landed unceremoniously in the dirt. A second later, his unconscious body joined them.

  ******

  It took Jack longer than he hoped to find where Kevin had set up watch, but when he saw the shattered walkie-talkie, it confirmed his suspicions that his son was in trouble. Panic hammered at him, but he forced himself to keep it under control. He scanned the woods for any sign of Kevin and soon noticed drops of blood on the ground. Kevin’s blood, someone else’s blood, deer blood … Jack had no idea and no way to figure it out. He simply started following the red droplets, tracking his son the way he would have tracked a wounded deer, praying like hell that there was still enough time to rescue his son from whatever danger he was in.

  ******

  When Kevin regained consciousness, he found himself staring at the dirt, just inches below him. He was suspended face-down in a spread-eagled position by thick ropes stretched taut between four large wooden poles that pulled his arms and legs in all directions. The agony from his wrenched joints was excruciating. His skull pounded with pain from the blow that had knocked him out. He coughed to clear his dry throat, not factoring in his close proximity to the ground, and a cloud of dirt slapped him in the face.

  He strained to lift his head and saw Vicky and another man. During their urgent flight through the woods, Kevin had pieced together from Vicky’s babblings that she had been hiking with her husband, Wayne, so he presumed that was who the man was. If so, he was in a rough shape; Junior and Cyclops were holding him upright and he was covered with stab wounds. He looked like he already had one foot in the grave and all it would take was a soft puff from the Reaper to put him in the rest of the way. If not for the mutants supporting his nearly-dead weight, Wayne would have crumbled to the ground, likely never to rise again.

  Turning his head slightly, Kevin saw Mongus wrapping rusty strands of barbed wire around an equally rusty ten-foot length of logging chain, threading the metal thorns through the steel links. The sight promised unimaginable pain and did nothing to soothe Kevin’s nerves.

  “I did what you asked.” He heard Vicky’s plaintive voice pleading with Boss and turned his head in their direction, neck straining. “I brought him here. So please, let us go, like you promised.”

  Boss stared at her with a cruel smile that only made his ugly face even uglier. “You want me to let him go?”

  Vicky nodded. “Yes, please.”

  Kevin could tell plain as day what was coming next. Had she not been hanging onto her last strand of desperate hope, Vicky no doubt would have seen it too. But as it was, she never saw it coming.

  Boss looked over at Junior and Cyclops and gave them a nod. They let go of Wayne, who immediately dropped to his knees, head lolling weakly forward until his chin touched his chest. In one violent blur of motion, Junior whipped a knife from his belt, jerked Wayne’s head back, and gashed his throat open. Not the clean slice of a skilled assassin, but rather the vicious hacking and chopping of an amateur butcher. Kevin could hear the sound of ripping flesh and see the blood gushing from Wayne’s sawed open neck.

  “NOOOOO!” screamed Vicky. The horrible cry ricocheted off the boulders surrounding the hollow and echoed back at her in a torturous taunt.

  Wayne clutched at his sa
vaged throat for a moment, his fingers funneling the spraying blood into jets, and then toppled onto his face. He exhaled his final breath in a wet gurgle as the ground beneath him became crimson mud.

  Vicky threw herself at Boss in a grief-stricken rage, pounding her fists against his chest as she screamed, “You bastard! You promised!” But that outburst sapped her last reserves of strength and she slid to the ground, kneeling in front of her captor, arms now hanging limply at her side. “You promised,” she whimpered. “You promised you would let us go.” She sounded betrayed, as if she had actually believed the mutants would keep their word.

  Boss leered at the woman on her knees before him, then grabbed his sawed-off shotgun and shoved it into Vicky’s face. He grinned lecherously and growled, “Suck it.”

  Vicky looked up at him with terrified eyes as Boss pressed the muzzle against her lips, forcing them apart. She whimpered when the cold steel pried open her mouth; those whimpers turned to gags when the steel invaded her throat. Boss rammed the barrel in and out, his finger toying with the trigger with every thrust. Kevin winced every time, fully expecting a shotgun blast to detonate Vicky’s head at any second.

  She was clearly broken. She just closed her eyes and endured the violation, no fight left in her, just waiting for it to be over. When Boss finally jerked the shotgun all the way out, blood dripped from the muzzle and more blood dribbled from the corners of her mouth. She fell forward, sobbing and coughing and choking. She heaved several times, vomiting bloody bile into the dirt.

  She finally stopped and looked up at Boss wearily as if to say, What next?

  Kevin fully expected the mutant leader to force something else into Vicky’s mouth. Orally raping her with the shotgun had clearly aroused him; the bulge at the front of his pants was disturbingly obvious.