The Savage

by Frank Bill

  “The Ox.”

  “Who makes the pickup?”

  “All we call him is the King.”

  Manny turned from Raúl. Shook his head in disgust. Turned back to him with the .38, pressed it above the bridge of his nose, and said, “You took an oath to protect and serve, instead you’re working for a smuggler of the flesh. Peddling human cargo.”

  Raúl stuttered, “J-j-j-judge how you will. It’s more than humans being smuggled from this country, it’s every man for himself, we’re shifting between two things, drugs and those who control their routes. Law has no loyalty and little pay. If you don’t shuffle dope or flesh, then you starve. You think the police department can feed a man and his family? I get one hundred American dollars for each walker I set up for transport. I only make four hundred dollars a month being an officer of the law.”

  “Drugs? You’re packing the peasants with what, cocaine, marijuana, heroin?”

  “Not I. The Ox and his men give the peasants packs to carry with marijuana, sometimes the other.”

  Headlights beamed from outside, created shadows for the three bodies inside the house. Manny turned and Raúl lit up with fear and told him, “Now you shall see. The Ox will dismember you and your boy while you’re full of breath. Will skin and gut you. Feed your remains to his dogs. You should run while you can.”

  Cotto watched his father reach for a hat that Raúl had hanging from the wall. Placing it upon his head, he told Raúl, “You won’t view it. But you shall hear it.” Pausing, he turned to Cotto and said, “Grab a rag from the kitchen. Stuff it down his fucking throat. Then come with me, keep behind with your pistol tucked at the ready.”

  Out the door, Manny’s boots treaded the parched earth. Cotto stayed behind him. The taste of dry heaves hung in the heated air. Two men dropped from the passenger’s side of the large vehicle. One man slid from the driver’s side. Lights made the outlines appear like silhouettes. And one of the men shouted to Manny, “Raúl, are my eyes deceiving me? Have you slimmed down, my friend, or is it just this light that plays tricks with my sight?”

  One of the other men shouted, “And he’s brought his boy.”

  Manny didn’t waste time, raised the pistol, knowing he had four shots left. Fired once. Twice. Dead center to the foreheads of the passengers on his left. Their weight dampened the ground. To his right, the Ox reached to his body, was backing up as he screamed, “You’ve dug your grave, Raúl!” Before he could shoot, Manny trailed toward him. Footfalls hit fast. Aiming where he knew there’d be a left shoulder. Pulled the trigger. He had one shot remaining as the man spun and fell. Cotto kept his distance, watched Manny cloak over top of this man called the Ox. Manny mashed the left wrist with his boot, it held a .45-caliber pistol, a steer with horns was engraved on its shell-white handle. Manny smirked.

  “You’re the one referenced as the Ox?”

  Top teeth met bottom teeth. Slobber poured from the corners of the man’s cacti-mouth. “I am. But you’re a dead inhabitant to this world. Your burial is already being fashioned.”

  “Not tonight. Tonight, me and my boy remunerate what you’ve stolen from us, as it was sacred.”

  Manny pulled the trigger. The Ox’s right palm became a messy web.

  “You son of a bitch!” the Ox screamed as he drew his hand toward his chest.

  Manny had no more shots left. Threw the revolver out into the dark. The Ox’s face crimped with disgust, pain, and anger. Cotto came from behind Manny, lowered his pistol on the Ox’s head. The Ox’s eyes crimped. “Identify your shapes to me?” Manny kneeled into the Ox’s throat, heard a bit of give and pop, took the man’s .45 from the ground, stood up, and gestured with the pistol. “I answer to no man. Stand,” Manny told him. “To Raúl’s house. You have a debt to clear.”

  Manny kept the .45 zeroed upon the rear of the Ox’s slicked-back locks. Cotto followed behind. Each entered into the house. Cotto went off to the right, watched Manny but kept his distance from the bleeding Ox. Raúl’s eyes bludgeoned wide with his damp complexion. “Ox, I … I had—”

  Keeping his hand pressed to his chest, his shoulder a blossom of skin, tendon, and crimson, the Ox cut Raúl off, “—had everything to do with this, you pathetic maggot.”

  Before another word was passed, Cotto’s father told the Ox, “Be like a good doggy and sit.” Then he smacked the butt of the pistol into the rear of the Ox’s skull like a sledge fashioning a railroad spike into a cresoled six-by-six. Knees unfastened. The Ox dropped to the floor. “Roll your body. Face me with your hands under your ass!”

  Cotto stood beside Manny, watched the Ox struggle to sit on his ass. Pain from his wounded palm marbled his face. Manny spoke from the corner of his mouth to Cotto. “This is the worm who took your mother from us. The woman who birthed you. Fed you and showed you hope when you felt there was none, something I can never replace.”

  The Ox’s right arm shuddered with the pain of his parted right hand. His left shoulder the same. The Ox shouted, “The female whose eyes I removed for fishing bait, she was of kin to you? My, she tasted so lovely. I killed her ’cause I did not want another to have the same pleasure as I. Raúl, he set it up. Told her to come early. Before you two. It was to be a surprise to her husband and son.”

  Manny shook his head at Raúl, whose eyes were bugging. “No, señor, he … he lies.”

  “Useless outlines of flesh, the each of you,” Manny said to Raúl, and then told Cotto, “Tonight you become a man. Take the pistol in your grip. End this piece of excrement’s existence, quick or slow, it makes little difference, because now we hold their wrongs for our judgment.”

  Cotto studied this man called the Ox. The scattered ink about his knotted muscle, the bony lady upon his unbuttoned shirt, revealing his chest’s center, knives and skeletons up and down his tensed, grisly forearms, and in that moment, Cotto thought of his mother. Of her loving touch, of her warmth. Of her giving soul. And he thought about losing that to this animal. A man who smirked for what he’d done to her. Smirked at him, at his father, and belittled her. And Manny said, “He’s the man who has forsaken her. Taken our happiness. Every second you consider his life is another breath of air he is offered but does not deserve.”

  Manny went silent, then told Cotto, “Take a swig from the bottle. It will numb the butterflies in your gut.”

  Cotto uncapped the bottle. Tilted it. Felt the alcohol heat and ignite a trail down his throat, lighting a fire in his belly. The Ox looked Cotto in the eye and told him, “You’re weak like the female who spit you from between her thighs. Like your mother, you’re a little bitch.” Then he broke out into laughter.

  Eyes watered and Cotto lifted the bottle once more. Felt a numbness coat his thoughts. Brush his temperament into a deep anger. Raising the weighted pistol. Manny took the bottle from Cotto’s grip. “Use both hands. Just as I’ve taught you long before now.”

  Hand over hand, Cotto thumbed the hammer. Pointed it at the Ox, who smiled. Ran his tongue over his lips. Cotto pulled the trigger.

  After that first time, it came not easier, but there was an understanding, an acceptance that it was part of his and his father’s way of existing. How things in their world would be decided. With a gun. But now, staring at this young female, eighteen or nineteen, Sheldon. Locks of hair once golden, the strands spotted by the filth that each day of struggle delivered. Her face nicked, her clothing the same. Crimson ringing around her wrists from being restrained. Skin bruised and marred from fighting off the savages, the mercenaries. Cotto snorted black and white powder from a glass vial. His eyes two damp falling stars, he wiped his nostrils and studied her. Knew she held the answers to what had happened to his men. His fallen ranks. She knew who had slain the deer. Someone monikered Van Dorn. And she’d known how to find him, or at least where he laid his head.

  But she had to be comforted first. Her fear needed to be replaced with a bridge of kindness. She needed to forget her loss. Even if only for a split second, she needed to feel safe.<
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  “Would you like some water?” Cotto asked.

  The Sheldon girl did not answer at first. She stared off into an unknown mass of nothing, with shrieking and outcries of the others she’d been caged with, the sounds shotgunning through her mind. Cotto filled another nostril with powder. Tasted the chemical and carbine dust drop down his throat. Watched her lip quiver. Her fingers shake. She searched for her center to pull everything together, just as her father had taught her. She inhaled the stale air of cinder within the building where spray-painted words and symbols rose, dropped, and spread out like hieroglyphics from an ancient time. It was the top floor of an abandoned lighthouse in Leavenworth, Indiana. A place where teens and older people had hung out over the years. Drunk booze. Smoked weed. Dropped acid. Fucked and scribed murals of pot leaves, UFOs, and any and all idea upon the cemented walls.

  The lighthouse sat along the Ohio River upon the north side. Once used to guide barges in the night. Now it was part of Cotto’s encampment of razor wire. Dogs. Supplies, vehicles, child warriors, mercenaries, and their training. But what the child warriors needed was a leader. A man to look up to. To admire. To aspire to in their training.

  Playing weak and innocent, the girl parted her lips. “Please.” But she did not look at him. And Cotto snapped his fingers to a man with an AK-47 strapped across his front. His face half-covered from chin to nose with a skeleton imprint. Hiding his mouth. Hair oiled and tacked in all directions. “Sergio, get her some liquid.” The man’s clomping feet trailed from the room.

  “My … my daddy,” the Sheldon girl stuttered with her backwoods English, “you and your men, you … you ended him.” The picture flashed quick. Over and over. A man’s knees unhinged. Arms pruned tight behind him. Barrel opening to the rear of his skull. Loud explosion. The front of his face arced like power lines being struck by lightning and fertilizing the yard grass with burnt combustion.

  Scripts of unshelled bullets, daggers, the skeleton lady of Santa Muerte, and chinked-out Jell-O scars banded tight as Cotto flexed his shirtless arms. Approached her, sniffed, ran a finger across her forehead. She turned her face sideways from his touch. “Kill. We killed him. You must understand. Your kind took my father from me. My kind took my mother from me. Killing is a way of existing. Loss makes us stronger. Black, white, yellow, or green, it makes little qualm, I will end any and all who stand in my way.”

  “In your way for what?”

  “To rule territory.”

  “That’s what you do here, rule territory?” Sheldon asked.

  “I train children to become soldiers, savages. My band of sicarios. To help me rule. Yes. And one day set up stash houses and run drugs again. It’s all I know.”

  Giving a side-eyed glance, the Sheldon girl looked to this man. To the skeletal ink shading his complexion. Charcoal lines rimming his eyes, teeth above his lips, and an upside-down cross splashed down his nose, a shaved skull of stub, a crown of thorns bandanaed around his forehead, and she told him, “You could’ve spared this man who created me like you took my mother and me.”

  The girl is finding comfort, talks with backbone. Not fear, Cotto thought as he stepped away from her, snorted more powder, tasted the chemical drainage in his throat. His eyes glassed and he said, “Maybe. Regardless, I did as I did, I’ve no use for your people’s fathers.”

  Sergio entered the room holding a bottle of water. Raised it to Cotto. “Not me, her. Offer it to her.” Cotto sniffed with irritation. And Sergio approached her.

  Unbound, the Sheldon girl raised a quacking hand. Took the water. Uncapped it. Ran the open bottle below her nostrils. Sniffed. Cotto smirked. “It’s clean of toxins. I’ve no reason to pollute something that is of dire use to my cause.”

  The Sheldon girl drank. Her father’s words rattling her pan much the same as Van Dorn’s father’s and the Widow’s rattled his, telling, If things come unhinged and your mama and me is no more and bad people take you, act afraid regardless of how afraid you are or are not, gain whatever trust you can through appearing feeble and weak, and when an opening comes, seize it.

  “Three of my best men were shot dead today, killed in broad daylight for all eyes to see except mine. But you and the others, you had front-row viewing, did you not?”

  Hiding her anger at Van Dorn for abandoning her. For not trying to salvage her mother and her and the others, the Sheldon girl raised the bottle to her lips. Took a long swig. The water bubbled through the ridges of plastic as did the malice and discontent within. Something her father had taught her as he’d listened and watched the world unbuckle at the seams and go belly-up, as neighbors became fools and self-centered, she knew she’d have to play sides to survive if at all feasible. She swallowed and lowered the bottle. Said, “I heard shots. Then I viewed his shape.”

  A breach of excitement came from Cotto. Eyes sparking, he queried, “This Dorn?”

  The Sheldon girl nodded her head up. Then down. Her green eyes held Cotto’s perforated shape within them. She held his trust, was turning the tides, and parted her lips. “Yes.”

  “This Dorn, can you guide me to his place of rest?”

  ANGUS

  The road came quick, the vibrancy of oak, elm, and hickory trees, blurred with the wildflowers that’d blossomed and browned on the other side of the once-metallic guardrail. Below that, the Blue River ran a soupy brown similar to a pasty stew. Cars and trucks had been abandoned alongside the road. Angus was fortunate, didn’t have to siphon gas from the many fuel-injected vehicles he’d passed. Fu had placed barrels of octane back just as he’d done with water, rice, vegetables, and meat, kept cool, hidden from all intercepting eyes, along with ammunition and firearms.

  From the truck’s glove compartment he’d pulled a pair of handcuffs, secured Christi’s wrists behind her in case she came to, irate and heaving with violent dexterity while Angus navigated down the road, caused a collision and possibly death. Glancing from her to the rearview, he caught movement. The lime-colored Scout. It was hauling ass, gaining on him.

  Looking in his side mirror, he saw the man hanging out, aiming with a long weapon, a shotgun or rifle. Then he heard the explosion of slug shot shatter his sideview mirror. He swerved. Rubber barked like a dog. “Fuck!” he shouted. Pressed the accelerator to the floor. The four-barrel kicked in. Tires hugged the bend and sway of the pavement, the engine muscled loud in pitch. The world outside passed in waves of cracked and baked tans.

  Angus eyed the truck, not knowing where he was going, where he was headed; he was in dire need of rest but he’d a crazed female restrained and traveling shotgun. Could use some fuel from the canister in the back. His gas was reading close to E and the harder he crunched the accelerator, the less sense the world around him made.

  Another shot rang out from behind, this time shattering the back pane of window.

  Squeezing his traps up to his ears, he steered the wheel with frustration, unholstered his .45, came out of the curve, and passed the road to his right for White Cloud; a dirt farm sat dry and without vegetation on his left. The charcoaled structure of a once-squared tan sandstone home lay off to his right, the bones of horses ornamented the pasture as he crossed over the Blue River bridge, and the snaking crooks tested the Tahoe’s suspension and handling and Angus’s navigation skills, rocking the vehicle.

  Sharp and winding surface distanced the men, tires squeaked and squealed, their shapes disappeared in the rearview. Angus kept the gas mashed to the floor, knowing there was a straightaway in the distance. He’d one of two choices: keep hauling ass and hope to outrun them or lock up the brakes, pull off the side of the road, exit his Tahoe, and open fire as they approached. As he glanced in the rearview, there was nothing. To the right in the distance sat a once-white cinder structure, now mossed over with green and chipped paint. Braking to slow the vehicle, the tires slowing their rotation, Angus pulled up beside the building, parked so he couldn’t be viewed. Turned and grabbed at the glass-specked Bushmaster rifle in the backseat. Came fr
om his truck. Shouldered the rifle, leaned into the truck, listened for the roar of the Scout and the men within to enter the cross hairs of his scope.

  Deep and powerful came the sound of the Scout’s motor with boisterous hoops and hollering of the men within. Through the scope Angus viewed the toothless abstraction of man hanging from the passenger’s side, then the navigator behind the wheel. He tugged the trigger. A webbed hole cloaked crimson, the driver’s face attained to that of a smear and the Scout ran off the other side of the road and flipped.

  Angus laid the rifle across the backseat of the Tahoe. Unlatched the rear, removed a can of gas, opened the tank, lifted the jug, and poured the fuel in.

  Backing out across the gravel and away from the structure, Angus shifted into drive, hung a right back onto the highway, navigated slowly past the Scout that was turned upside down, the tires still spinning. Men lay half hanging from the interior, crushed and pulpy. He gripped his .45 with his right, his left on the wheel, looking for the movement of human. Saw none and stomped the gas, not knowing where he could hole up, rest, figure out where to find medicine for Fu, ascertain some meaning to all of the menace he’d incurred.

  COTTO

  One by one, they moved them from the earthen gut beneath the weathered house to the rusted bed of the farm truck. Men, women, and children. Ducked down, crawled in on hands and knees as though they were slaves, sat and took the ragged packs Manny had inventoried, found loaded with dope, handed to the peasants. Dirty faces took them, and waited to be transported to the land of the free.

  Before freeing the men and women from the lower area of the home, Manny finished his interrogation of Raúl, patted down the Ox in between boot stomps to the face and ribs of his slain corpse, found the cell phone, his contact for TK, the King. Raúl explained how the Ox took them to Sasabe and crossed the border. Led the walkers out into the night of the desert. Their pickup was a mile marker to the east. Once they found it, the call was made. Then a van was contacted from nearby, waiting for the call. The van pulled up. Doors opened. Wrangled everyone inside, then they were taken to a safe house that was guarded by gangbangers who waited to place the walkers somewhere in the United States.