The Savage

by Frank Bill

  With a jawline bit by tears, the Widow told Dillard, “You’re barking up the wrong damn tree. Need to hunt somewheres else.”

  Dillard lowered the Glock. “They’s something here but it ain’t tree’d. I believe it’s buried.”

  NOW

  He woke with a belt of pain to the rear of his skull. Hands bound. Wrist over wrist behind him. Laces removed from his boots. He was in a massive opening, devoid of furniture. His eyes adjusting to his surroundings. Shelves climbed to the ceiling with medical dictionaries, anatomy bindings, and surgical doctrines combined with philosophies by Jung and Freud, an A-to-Z encyclopedia on serial killers. Appeared as though he were in a museum of books that foretold deviant theories.

  In the front room, a bay window appeared with the curtains drawn. Large rectangle of an oak door, closed. Poster-sized illustrations of the human form hung beside him. Some were of the backside. Others of the front. Some skeletal. Some muscular, tendon and organ. Body parts named and dissected. On shelves sat the bones of hands, feet, and skulls from human and animal.

  As he tried to work his hands back and forth, to free himself, the waft of air within reeked of something putrid, like the chickens they sometimes found in the Widow’s henhouse. Dead from the unbearable humidity. Dorn thought he’d been taken to a lair for the broken and fragmented.

  Strung over the floor before his feet were the interiors of his pack. Compass and boxes of ammunition. Somewhere behind him, the sound of words being whispered drifted from a room. He needed to figure out where he was. To distance himself from this juncture. Eyes followed the blood that smeared and tracked from the front of the room, continuing on past him. Looked as though someone’d had a mud bog using a person’s insides.

  Everything about the home screamed grotesque. Footfalls traveled in an upward clomp. Growing in pitch till the feet were leveled beside him.

  A callused nudge came to his right temple. Dorn looked up at Toby standing milky skinned and lean. Features depressed, arms casted with red, holding Dorn’s .30-30.

  Studying the way Toby held the rifle, gripped it like a spear, no finger on the trigger, the safety on, Dorn questioned Toby’s understanding of the artillery, whether he knew how to shoulder, aim, flip the safety, and shoot.

  “You near cost us our supper.”

  “Supper?” Van Dorn questioned.

  Behind Toby, a long hallway was lit by sunlight. Pictures of deformed men and women hung from the walls. “We’ve watched these bands of degenerates loping about as though a lost herd of goat. Such easy prey they are, of course they thought the same of us, I’m certain,” Toby said.

  “Prey?”

  “Prey. They’re not the first we’ve baited with our tactics of jostling back and forth, pretending to jump the cars, acting as though we’ve no idea they’re watching. Childish really, not much different than playing an Xbox game. Guiding them in, so to speak. It’s what we’ve grown accustomed to in order to procure nourishment.”

  “You mean food?”

  “Dear God, yes. Food is something we ran out of eons ago. Parents had no choice, really. Cars wouldn’t run. We waited till we could wait no longer. Father and mother were morticians. We’ve been around dead bodies since our birthing. We were showed how they were prepared for viewing, but never for nourishment.”

  Van Dorn asked, “The man and woman on the porch?”

  “Suicide was their alternative. Their choice.”

  Van Dorn questioned Toby while slowly working his hands back and forth, as the binding wasn’t tight. “Choice?”

  “They offered themselves. Not an easy decision for either of us. But they were old, we are young, and they weren’t born blood. Better them than Ann and me.”

  “Born blood?”

  Turning his back to Dorn, Toby walked about the fired squares of clay like a professor offering a lecture. Glancing at the walls. Running a tip up the spine of a volume that lined the shelves. Raised his voice.

  “Adopted, simpleton. They were not our real parents.”

  On the floor, Van Dorn pushed his back into the plastered wall. Twisted his wrists within the nylon strings; his thoughts bounced between shock and dread, unable to fathom the thought of eating a human, let alone one’s parents, for continuation. Thought about Jeremiah 19:9: I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh during stress of the siege imposed on them by the enemies who seek their lives.

  In his lower back he felt the cold pang of a handle, the pistol. They’d not searched him, only his pack. The muscle that pumped blood in his chest raced. He needed out of this layer of cannibal. Adolescents turned to the ways of the vile before they took him as their supper.

  “Why not hunt the land for wild game?”

  “Hunt the land?” Toby’s laughter recoiled from the walls of the home. “We know nothing of hunting animals other than that you need to gut them and remove the skin. Grew up learning anatomy and reading books while Father viewed the world news. Father always found humor in the bartering of beliefs for world power. How graying men shuffled papers at the expense of others’ lives who actually fought wars. That’s what I wanted to be, a paper shuffler. It’s easier to wait, let the food come to us. To stab rather than pull a trigger.”

  Van Dorn kept Toby speaking. Buying his time. “And you’ve survived all these months on … human?”

  “On the meat of man, woman, and child, yes. We hide when necessary. Have a panic room in the house. It’s hidden within the basement. Nothing electric, just old Victorian trickery,” said Ann as she came from the hallway, bare of shoes, her feet and shins covered in fluid, her arms bubble-gummed with scars from what looked to be cleaving.

  “Had planned to go home. Back to the city when the power went out,” she said, walking across the floor in an almost catatonic state. “Our father drained the battery on the Mercedes, trying to jump the Lexus. Ran it out of gas.”

  She came up behind Toby, ran a hand up his neck, licked his cheek.

  Getting a cold shiver, he felt the taste of how a rotted possum smelt expand upon his tongue and Van Dorn asked, “Why would he try to jump one if the other ran?”

  Ann glanced at Van Dorn with a sneer. “’Cause everyone wouldn’t fit in the two-seater, what an invalid question.”

  Toby turned to Ann. Kissed her forehead. Stared into her eyes. Reached a left hand at her breast, ran a thumb over it, and asked Van Dorn without looking at him, “What is your story, Van Dorn, from where do you travel? You look very filthy but speak with a hint of intelligence.”

  Feeling the looseness within the nylon from his boots, Dorn wouldn’t argue for the siblings’ intelligence; they’d not tied his wrist with firmness. Wanting to live, he’d have to move, and move quick. Abandon his pack. He thought of Red, his mule. How they laid blades into his thick coat, digging at the meat, for consumption, he believed. Looked as though he’d be on foot. And he lied, “My mother and father’s truck gave out long ago. Stayed on the farm till our food supply dwindled, saddled our mules, tried to make a go of it out in the wild.” And he thought of the men he’d shot and the women and children they’d restrained. “Till a group of hordes ambushed us. Murdered my folks. I escaped. Been livin’ off of wild berries, yellow root, and game ever since.”

  Across the room, Van Dorn noticed the lurk of shadow darkening outside the window. Toby and Ann were caressing each other. Pausing and studying the shelves of books, Toby said, “Ah, your mule. He had a name as though a pet. How standard. He’ll be our supper this evening. Something new. Marinated in olive oil and red wine. We have a gas grill out back. The one item Father kept stocked with fuel in case of power outages. It’s lasted us all this time. How many months has it been?”

  Ann didn’t answer but said instead, “We’ve still got a battery-powered radio, though it has no use anymore. Used to listen to a man on an AM station at night, ranting about madness, saying that like the United States, all of Europe went bankrupt when the American
dollar fell. That jobs dwindled, militias formed, and crime escalated. People no longer trusted their government. He talked of Mayan Prophecy, of solar alignments, storms wiping out grids, and something called an EMP, electromagnetic pulse. Others think maybe a virus from a hacker could’ve infected everything. Just assumptions, that’s what the man said. No one could prove him wrong, everyone was in the dark, living like nomads, no communication, no news. Though there was one thing he spoke of with certainty: there are no more rules.”

  And Toby said, “Sure miss hearing that crazy bastard and his theories.”

  Seeing his opportunity, Van Dorn needed to act before they sectioned him for the grill or whatever was outside the window came and enslaved or slaughtered everyone. Working the gap between his wrists, he watched as Toby and Ann warmed about each other like incestuous lovers, their eyes not watching his movements but studying each other. Toby’s right hand rubbed between Ann’s legs. Tongues drew wet over each other’s lips. Dorn closed his eyes for a moment, wanting to curse himself for wasting ammunition on those two men. Believing he was salvaging Toby’s and Ann’s lives; he had sensed something was amiss. Should’ve trusted his instinct. Dwelling on the horror of this killing skewed Van Dorn’s thoughts and psyche as he tried to keep his wits about him, and he asked, “What possessed your folks to come out here and live?”

  The silhouette outside the window paused, then slowly disappeared. The door handle’s latch lifted. A clicking motion that went unnoticed.

  Irritated, Ann said, “Dear God, the simpleton and his questions. A summer home. Father and Mother liked to come here and recharge their batteries, relax. Get away from their jobs in the city.”

  Toby released a pouting breath and cut in with “Internet is slow, barely got a cell phone signal. Only thing we could do was watch satellite when it didn’t rain, play Xbox, and read.”

  Having seconds to react, Van Dorn questioned whether he’d be forced to kill these whom he believed he’d saved. He’d be a fool if he didn’t, they’d off him when the mule meat was gone and the hunger pains set in. Or they could castrate him, feed and fatten him up for a butchering like the hogs his father and grandfather took to.

  Van Dorn felt the shake in his finger’s ends, and stress jarred his tendons and ligaments. The front door creaked open slow and methodical. Toby and Ann looked to the intruders in surprise. Two profiles passed through the opening. Outside light gave them the appearance of faceless figurines, hiding their features at first. Once they were inside, Van Dorn saw that they were male. One wielded a cane cutter, its width discolored by something human or animal; the other gripped a roofing hammer with what appeared to be strands of hair caked between its claw. Clothing was ragged T-shirts, tainted work pants; their scents were a concoction of the earth, burnt papers, spored lumber, and sweaty socks. The whiskers upon their scratched and crusted faces could’ve marred the paint of a vehicle. And the sugarcane-cutter wielder looked to Toby and Ann, yelling, “You’ve murdered our kin!”

  Freeing his hands, which were rubbery and confetti-filled from being pressed behind him, Van Dorn dug at his lower back, pulling the .45 from his waist. Toby stepped around Ann, placing her behind him, lowered his head, tactile and wormy. Eyes evil slits, he butted the .30-30, pressed it toward the man, and said, “Killed me some supper, you invalid fuck.” Ran a tongue about his lips. Tugged and tugged the trigger as though using a video game’s plastic gun. His face was confused when there was no explosion of gunfire. He held no understanding of how the rifle worked.

  Grinning at Toby’s ignorance, the man laughed. “Fool.” Sliced the air with the cutter. Knocked the .30-30 away. Came with another slice. Caught Toby’s forearm. Split the muscle as if it were a squash being sectioned for a salad. Toby screamed. Blood oozed. The .30-30 clattered on the ceramics. The one with the claw gavel thumped Toby’s skull like he was staking spikes, connecting and securing iron on railroad tracks. Over and over till he plopped the skull into the floor, creating a heaving mash of tissue and gore; Toby’s entire frame jutted and jarred as though pummeled by electricity.

  Ann stood in hysterics, screaming, “No! No! Toby, Toby!”

  The man with the straight claw embedded his hand into Ann’s starchy lengths of hair. Slammed her face-first into the shelves of books that collapsed to the flooring until her shrieks found quiet.

  Training the pistol on the mallet wielder, Dorn thumbed the hammer, squeezed the trigger, and lit up the interior with surprise.

  THEN

  Upon the Widow’s property, Horace took to sharpening tools or mending the leaks of the roof with heated tar from a bucket. Replaced sections of rotted stringer and joists within the attic of the Widow’s home or patched pipes beneath the sinks. Hunted wild game and split wood for the oncoming winter. Each kept an eye wide for the unexpected visitor, listening for the ping and drop of gravel from the tread of vehicle while the Widow worked the mart, as Dillard’s visits now came once a month after the battering of Manny. Always in search of clues to his brother Gutt’s disappearance. Always he traveled with companion, men from south of the equator, the Mutts, he called them. And Horace told Van Dorn, “One can only wonder why the alien skin finds interest in an Aryan.”

  Day had shifted to night after the picking of beans. Seated around the kitchen table one night, Van Dorn and the Widow broke the mint-green strings that were as long as crayons. Taking them from the tin basins and placing them into large plastic dishes to later be washed, boiled until tender, and cooled with cold water, packed and layered into masons with salt water. Then sealed and stored.

  Johnny Cash’s tone belled from the speaker of an old eight-track player the Widow had been given by her father. Cash sang of lines walked, getting a rhythm or a boy named Sue. A crock jar of sweet tea moistened the burn lines of wood grain on the table with condensation. A ceiling fan trundled overhead. Horace sipped on three fingers of Maker’s as the Widow finally told of her dead husband, Alex. Of how they’d once been. How they’d become and how he’d found burial in the bone box.

  Meeting in town at Lisa’s, a local watering hole, he’d bought her a drink. Conversation ensued. She lived with her parents on a farm around Crandall, Indiana. Where her father raised a small number of cows and hogs. Farmed feed corn and hay. Her mother was a black Baptist, her father a white Methodist, spiritual and hardworking, each appreciative of the land.

  Alex helped his father, who worked for Olin Chemical in Brandenburg, Kentucky, farmed several hundred acres of corn and soy, but he also ran his parents’ minimart in Marengo.

  Numbers were exchanged.

  The Widow and Alex’s courtship lasted a year. They traded vows at Fountain United Methodist church. Mortgaged the place in which they now sat. Alex’s parents gave the mart to them as a wedding gift. Something neither Dillard nor Gutt ever accepted. They were the seeds that spawned an alternate direction. She and Alex lived simple. Never had a phone or TV, only a radio and the eight-track her father had given her.

  She ran the store, sometimes with Alex. Ordering what was needed. Keeping the books straight with part-time help. Dealt with the brothers. Their snide slurs that funneled beneath their breath. She and Alex lived in this way for ten years until he’d gone to cut some fallen timber for Warner Stokes, one of his father’s friends. A leafy-faced man with a pear-shaped build and yellowed chewing-tobacco teeth. He’d stopped by their home. Told he’d seen a hickory tree that’d been blown down after a storm. Said he’d no use for it, that it was Alex’s to keep, use for firewood if he wanted to cut and haul it without help.

  “Being a hard wood, it was best for winter fires, lasts a good long while,” the Widow told Van Dorn and Horace. “Alex being as he was, always thinking he needed plenty for the following winter to cut, pile, and let dry till the next summer. Use what he cut from the previous year. The man was always thinking ahead. Figured it was too good to pass up. So he made the early-morning trek, worked on it all day.”

  The Widow went silent for a moment
. Quit her breaking of fiber lengths. Then came the crack of her voice, as though it were a test of strength to speak. “Thing was, I drove the beat Ford every day to work. It was mine. Alex always drove his Chevy. But he’d not wanted to haul the ricks in his truck as it were newer, less beat-up. Was coming home that evening on Rothrock Mill Road, coming down them gravel drops and curves. Parts of the road had been washed out and ridged from some rainstorms we’d been dealt recently. Police surmised he was tired, the shoes had gotten too damp. Dozing off, he took one of the drops too quick, fishtailed, pressed the brake, slammed into a tree. All that weight in the bed came through the cab. Mashed him six ways to Sunday. Sheriff Elmo Sig later said the brakes had went out.”

  Coming up on the wreck that night after closing the mart, road blocked off by the tan cruisers, the white-and-orange ambulance, their strobes of red and blue marbling the surrounding wilderness, the Widow nearly lost it when she saw the bed of her Ford truck. The cab full of lumber.

  Seeing him in that morgue, swelled contusions. Purples casting to darker shades like a vegetable finding rot. Bulbous swells of pulp, the Widow told Dorn and Horace, she never seen such a sight. Couldn’t help but wonder if it was Dillard who messed with the brakes. Bled them of fluid, hoping it’d be she that come across her ending that night after work, not his brother.

  NOW

  The gun jerked Dorn’s wrist. The mallet-wielding man’s left thigh spit like an eruption of sap from a tree with the ooze of fragment, caused the man to shift in surprise as though his leg had been stung by a hornet, and he screamed, “Goddamn son of a bitch!”

  Ann’s outline wilted onto the books that’d fallen and piled. Patting at his wound, the mallet wielder focused his view at Van Dorn with rage that heightened the pigment of his face. He’d not noticed Dorn on the floor before. Dorn now looked to the door opening. Then back down at his supplies strewn about the tile. Get out the door, he thought, and to the woods or risk a fight you may not win, supplies you’ll sacrifice to salvage your life, live another day.