by Joe Schlegel
Blood poured from the gaping wound, and it splattered as it screamed. It babbled through the injury, but it no longer stood at the length of the chain – it retreated a single, fearful step from its tormentor.
Maddox returned to the sloppily constructed fire pit. He glanced down to find small, dark red droplets spread across the diagonal dachshund.
Letting the hand sickle fall to the concrete floor, it impacted and echoed like a nefarious chime.
Then he carefully tugged off the t-shirt.
Maddox dropped the tainted fabric at his feet. Unrestrained, his gut sank lower overtop the waistline of his too-short jean shorts.
His malevolent gaze scanned the large, circular room again.
Then his attention halted on a shackled woman sprawled out on the ground. Her head faced him, and her eyes watched him, but she didn’t huddle herself into a protective hug like all the others. In the waning daylight, she withered, visibly gaunt and starved.
He sneered quietly, “Someone’s stopped eating, haven’t they? Well that simply can’t be allowed.”
Maddox walked toward her. His belly jiggled from side to side with each step.
Reactively, the gaunt woman pushed herself back away with a bony hand on the dirty concrete. Her forearm flashed another revelation – bloody, smeared scratch marks on her wrists.
Her tormentor noticed.
“Trying to reach death before I can kill you? That won’t be allowed, either.”
Maddox withdrew the bulky key ring from his pocket. They sparkled dully from the light that barely illuminated the evening sky through the overhead windows.
The gaunt woman pressed herself against the wall. She tried to slide her shackled feet protectively beneath her.
At the sight of the keys, the other prisoners pushed backward as well.
He crouched down beside her and examined her weight loss overtop his own prominent belly. “Starving yourself is a sure-fire way to eventually die, but malnutrition leaves you too weak to fight back if your other suicide attempt is interrupted.”
Maddox grabbed her legs and jerked her feet out toward him.
She toppled over sideways like a child’s doll in the grip of the family’s Doberman.
He jammed a key into the lock. The metal released from around her ankle.
Then he unlocked the other manacle, and he dragged the gaunt woman by her leg ...toward it.
She struggled weakly, futily against his strong grasp.
“Leave her alone,” Oliver cried out fearfully. His hoarse voice broke with terror, and his weeks-long imprisonment aged his woeful looks beyond his mid-thirties.
Maddox barked, “You wait your turn, monkey!”
Oliver promptly muted his objections.
The overweight tormentor heaved the gaunt woman the final few paces.
She slid into its reach.
It fell hungrily down upon her.
The woman howled as it bit and tore and clawed at the flesh on her thighs.
Satisfied, Maddox yanked her messy hair and pulled her back out of its reach. She held onto his arm to keep her scalp from ripping.
He dragged her back to her shackles.
Her leg oozed blood, and it trailed along behind them.
Finally, he released her hair and allowed her to collapse to the dirty concrete. And he bellowed to the prisoners, “If you don’t eat, then THEY eat!”
Maddox bent low and clasped the metal around her ankles.
He stood, pocketed the keys, and paraded back to the cinder block fire pit in the middle of the round, high-domed room. His boastful gait skewed into a sadistically happy, powerful swagger.
Beside the discarded dachshund t-shirt, he retrieved the hand sickle.
Maddox pivoted on his heel to face a chubby, teen female, the one he’d thought about all day. She wilted under his near-demonic, greedy, voracious scrutiny, and she pressed herself against the round wall.
He sauntered closer to her.
Remaining safely beyond his prisoners’ reach, he halted. He tossed the sickle to her.
It bounced within a few feet of her manacles.
“It’s your turn, my dear,” he hissed quietly.
She broke down into fearful sobs, unable to dutifully or obediently accept the knife.
Maddox spoke softly, encouragingly, like a parent coaxing their child to take its medicine, “Surely those are welcomed words to you. Your torment can finally be at an end. It’s all over now. You can finally leave here. Escape is within a few moments. But first, you must pick up that blade. First you must choose to escape.”
With a trembling hand, she reached out for the sickle.
She gripped it weakly.
As she’d seen many prisoners do before, she pushed herself up to her knees. And she held the curved tip to her own throat.
She sobbed harder.
And she sobbed even harder still.
He encouraged, “It can all be over in a moment. It’s all up to you. You’re so close. Just go a little further. You can leave this place behind. It’s perfectly within your power.”
She clenched her eyes shut – the two tears which escaped trailed down in thin, small lines. Fear nearly paralyzed even that automatic response.
With a sudden jerk of her arm, the blade pierced her throat.
The teen dropped the sickle and frantically gripped the front of her neck. Thick, dark blood poured from between her fingers.
She writhed and squirmed on the squalid concrete, and her shackled chains rattled loudly.
Maddox studied her movements as her body gradually, eventually slumped to an end.
The rest of the prisoners watched too, horrified.
He unlocked her manacles and retrieved his bloody hand sickle, then he dragged her to the middle of the high domed, round room.
Quickly, he restarted the simmering coals in the sloppily-built fire pit with kindling and wood he’d already prepared.
The fire quickly intensified. It lit everyone and everything with flickering, yellow light. Smoke rolled up and out of the darkening, overhead windows.
Maddox rotated the cast iron skillet a few times to heat the entire pan.
Satisfied with the fire, he crouched beside the fresh corpse.
He shredded back its skin with the tip of the blade.
The prisoners watched, unable to turn away ...yet again.
Maddox stripped away the meat and spread it out on the skillet.
It sizzled lightly at first and gradually grew louder as the juices seeped to the pan.
He stood and stomped over to a heaping pile of canned dog chow and cat pate. Flavors and brand names lay indiscriminately among each other, dumped into a small mound of dented aluminum and questionable expiration dates.
Savagely, he threw several cans at each of his captives.
“Eat! Eat!”
None of them found the will to eat. The hunger that gnawed at their bellies evaporated while their tormentor remained active. Nevertheless, they gathered their dented cans against the section of the wall to which they were chained.
The gaunt woman received no rations. She moaned weakly as her wounded thigh carried the infection through the rest of her body.
Maddox returned to the fireside. His bulbous, shirtless gut bounced.
With the tip of the blade, he turned the meat in the skillet. The sizzle renewed itself afresh.
He shredded away more flesh and stripped more meat from the teen’s warm remains.
7.
How Far to Search
Repeatedly traumatized by death, no one grew accustomed to the terrifying reality that their own demise was imminent. No one chose to see more, to experience more of the crippling grief that possessed their sleepless nights.
No one wanted to discover more lifeless bodies, to confront the reminders of their own loved ones, families, and friends.
During that fateful morning, however, every volunteer understood that the path toward the cemetery offered nothing more than
that very horror.
Communal duties always motivated even the most reluctant ones.
On the occasions when the search parties succeeded in returning the lost soul back to safety, every ounce of effort felt worth the cause. And then there was the terror of being lost or trapped themselves, a fear that restrained their desperate hysteria only because of the promise that someone would soon come searching.
At daybreak, they gathered.
* * *
Xenia lightened as the horizon nudged to a brighter and cheerier green upon purple, and a sliver of orange promised another addition to the layers of dawn colors. With the streets freshly lit, the black of night lifted into a deep, rich purple.
Conrad stood among an assorted group of men and women in the middle of a large parking lot near the center of town. They all straddled their bicycles, and they all refused to stifle their yawns. Their rifles and shotguns and pistols and ammunition hung across their shoulders or lay strapped tightly to their bodies and bikes.
He spoke to the group with a confident mumble, “Did everyone get enough sleep?”
Many grumbled, “No.”
“Me neither. I miss my box fan.” Conrad sighed, then surveyed the volunteers, “There’s what, a dozen of us this morning?”
“From the bottom of my heart,” Trapper spoke loud enough to draw all eyes on him, “I want to thank each and every single one of you. Freddie is all I have left on this godforsaken planet. You have no idea how much it means that you showed up for this.”
They observed him for only a moment – his large, empathetic, sad eyes, his grizzled goatee, his deep, wide worry lines. His heartbreak and mournful anxiety broadcasted out to them all.
Ben nodded humbly, “You did the same for me – many times.”
“And me,” Jake Osborne solemnly added. The myriad tattoos up and down his arms and around his neck emerged from the darkness as dawn crept higher above the horizon.
“Yeah, and me, too,” Corrine peeped. Her young, Korean features flashed grief, then a crushing sadness settled heavily on her shoulders.
Trapper lowered his head to the parking lot’s painted lines and closed his eyes. He fought back tears of gratitude, tears of terror, tears of grief, tears of quivering hope.
“Thank you.”
A long, painful silence lingered. Some of the volunteers watched Trapper fight the sobs that shook his posture, and others turned away respectfully. Some turned away unable to witness yet more braying sorrow.
Conrad cleared his throat. All eyes shifted gratefully to their Shawnee moderator.
“Wesley, William, and Freddie left for a disposal mission at Woodland Cemetery. They failed to return overnight. If their mission was diverted by their appearance, then our neighbors are likely seeking refuge in a safe zone somewhere, all the better for keeping them away from our central population. And that means it’s our job to check each of the safe zones and bring down our neighbors from whichever rooftop they scrambled to. We’ll split up, four to a team—”
His attention snapped up over the volunteers’ heads.
They all jerked around to check, their hands close to their weapons.
Pedaling from the central intersection, three members of Aaron’s congregation approached the volunteers. David led the tardy pack. His black ponytail bounced along his broad shoulders, and his swollen biceps stretched the sleeves of his orange polo shirt.
Coasting behind him, Perceival studied the other volunteers with pale lavender circles under his eyes. The slender, elderly man held his chin high, haughtily proud of his good-standing among the tiny group. And Deaver’s long face drooped from only a partial night’s sleep, his eyes wilted to a faded yellow.
They both wore brown polos.
“We’ll have three teams, five on each,” Conrad corrected himself, “which should make us all feel that much better about our odds today. One checks north, one west, and one south. If Wesley, William, and Freddie were unable to ditch them, then the area around the safe zones could be hostile. Watch each others’ backs, and let’s bring everyone home.”
The volunteers dispersed from the whole, and they clustered into smaller groups.
More bike tires rolled toward the north and south search teams, neither of which checked Woodland Cemetery.
Conrad stood side by side with only Perceival to brave the west side search team.
A few nervous looks counted the members in the mismatched groups.
They all noticed the puny, unwanted roster for west.
A few volunteers from north and south slowly coasted to join the under-staffed group. Finally, everything balanced.
And the three teams set off in their directions.
South Team pedaled in a loose group into the Main Street intersection. They turned up along Detroit Street, the vertical artery through town.
The general mayhem of abandoned, wrecked vehicles concentrated in the nucleus of Xenia, just outside the courthouse’s steps. Further out from the central point of town, the chaotic ruination dwindled its intensity. Whole neighborhoods on the outskirts nearer the township border lay undisturbed since the infection outbreak, as though everyone simply vanished without a stunt of protest.
Following Detroit Street across the bridge and around the slight curve, the volunteers formed a tighter, single-file line in the middle of the road.
A large, red caboose lay on its side, catty-corner in the street just before the next intersection. Its hilltop perch – the memorial train rails on which it stood – opened eerily to the sky. The destruction of the monument offended and upset the nearby area.
David studied the lessening road debris around them, and the half-mile hill that rose upward after the caboose-littered intersection. He wondered aloud, “How far up that hill do you think Freddie could pedal, like non-stop?”
Lily shifted nervously on her seat, and her thick, bushy, brunette ponytail trembled along with her awkward trepidation. Her wide, brown eyes fervently surveyed the rest of South Team.
She questioned, “So what, we just skip the gas stations and the call center?”
“You’ve been chased,” David gently reason. “You have felt that burn in your gut when you fight for every inch of distance between you and them. There’s nothing appetizing about working against a climb if your life is in peril. If Freddie was already pedaling like crazy from the cemetery to this point, then there’s no way he’d make it to the top. Even I have troubles with that ascent. Would you have gambled by turning uphill? Or would you have preferred to find downward slopes?”
“Do you expect a frightened child, possibly alone,” Lily fired back, “to reason so logically?”
“No – I think that if we climb Detroit, we’ll just be wasting precious time if Freddie and Wesley and William need us somewhere else. If we were searching for a group of fit, athletic adults, then sure, the gas stations and call center would be a viable option—”
He spied a wound on Lily’s knee.
Words failed him as he gaped noiselessly.
Ben spoke up, hesitantly at first, “I agree. I’m sorry, but I do because even Rhea knows to pedal downhill from them. If we’re supposed to be canvassing safe zones, then it doesn’t serve our goal to parade toward the ones that just aren’t attainable.” He flashed Lily a direly regretful expression. “Someone may need medical attention, we really can’t waste time with pointless diversions.”
Too distracted to notice that someone had chimed in on his behalf, David gazed fearfully at the young woman’s scraped knee. Fear crept into his vision.
He looked up and studied her face for any hint of early decay.
Lily addressed the remaining two volunteers in the group. “What do you guys say? Are we going up the hill, or am I in the minority opinion here?”
Neither uttered a word, too awkward to entertain any defense for their dissenting opinion.
She sighed aloud, “So if no one thinks Freddie would – or could – climb Detroit hill, then you must all feel th
e same way about the Upper Bellbrook hill, right?”
“Maybe they’d end up at the electric company,” Ben surmised, “but the climb from there to the top of the highway overpass is worse than this one.
“First we check the gas station around the corner,” Lily deliberated after a moment’s hesitation, “then we hit the grain elevator in the other direction. After that, we make our way to the electric company on Upper Bellbrook Avenue. I suppose that means the water treatment plant is out of the question too, right? So where do we go after that?”
As Detroit Street purged its four lanes into two, South Team meandered along the center of the street. They pedaled around the overturned caboose.
They veered left at the intersection toward the gas station around the corner.
* * *
Trapper led North Team in a straight, single-file line along the painted yellow lines. They each searched and scanned the backs of the restaurants and the corners of the nearby apartment buildings for them.
Their eyes lingered just ahead, where the road curved up and out of sight, where the pillars outside Woodland Cemetery marked its entrance. The reluctant West Team rode out of sight, the only ones chosen to investigate the tombstones, the tall grass, and the charred remains.
And the nearer that Trapper approached his nephew’s last known whereabouts, he found no sudden desire to traverse the cemetery, only a sickened fear that whispered doubt from the back of his mind.
They turned abruptly right to the sidewalk, coasted onto the paved bike path, and pedaled along the long-converted railroad tracks. Now, the asphalt arteries that snaked around town – buffered on both sides by trees, wild thickets, dense underbrush, and occasional fencing – provided brief respites from the fear of being attacked unexpectedly.
But first the riders needed to reach the wooded stretches.
Separated by only a few yards, they all followed one another. They intently monitored the parking lots on either side of them. On the left, the old mental health facility, and on the right, the old metal foundry – both properties mercifully void of movement.