by D V Wolfe
There was another booming howl above us and the blades stopped. The cannibals holding me went still. Another howl, and hands were in my hair again, grabbing my ankles, pulling me forward. The crush of bodies around me stayed tight, each of them keeping a wad of shirt or jeans or hair and skin wadded in their fingers. I tried to keep from passing out. I tried to breathe deep and slow. I was still alive and they’d stopped trying to tear me apart, for now at least. I turned my head as much as I could, trying to spot anyone else and know they were ok, but I couldn’t see anything beyond the chests of the crazed men and women who carried me. The herd split to go around Mastick’s RV. I tried to push myself up as we passed the platform behind it and my abdomen screamed in pain. Sister Smile was huddled on the platform, next to Mastick’s throne, staring up at the sky, completely unaware of what was happening around her.
“Bring them to me,” a voice boomed. Mastick’s voice. “Do you not remember your oath? To whom do these offerings belong?”
“Mastick!” The cannibals all bellowed.
The cannibals holding me were lifting me up, passing me roughly forwards. I was tossed from the last pair of hands and I felt something digging into my back. I felt around and realized I was laying on the logs that had been split and neatly stacked like Lincoln Logs, five feet high for the bonfire. Definitely not a good sign. I swiped at the blood in my eyes, clearing my vision. The cannibals around me were backing away. The woodpile structure was about fifteen feet wide and fifteen feet long. From where I was laying, I could see other knots of cannibals dropping Tags, Stacks, Vince, Mick, and Rosetta onto the woodpile behind me. No Gabe. Maybe he had escaped. Maybe he was… There was a lot of noise behind us and I turned to see about ten cannibals struggling with something. Finally, one of them just reared back and started pummeling whatever they were carrying.
“That’s enough,” Mastick boomed. “Bring me the offering.”
The thing they were carrying had gone limp now and they threw it onto the pile of wood behind me. I turned my head and saw a limp biker boot. Around me, the others weren’t stirring. Stacks was closest to me. He was sputtering softly, blood bubbles forming on his lips. Mick was on my other side and he was completely still. Mastick was on his feet and he looked over our heads to the platform behind us.
“Come,” he boomed and I felt the ground beneath us vibrate. There was the sound of wood creaking and then a single set of steps moving through the crowd of cannibals. She passed close to me as she moved stiffly towards Mastick. Sister Smile came to stand next to him, her eyes dull. Not black like the others, but lifeless. There wasn’t even a spark of her madness left there. Mastick motioned to Sister Smile and spoke to the rest of the cannibals.
“Brothers and sisters, your old leader was content to have you feed on leftovers and corpses, hide like vermin from the light of day! I have freed you from her tyranny.” There was a collective yell from the cannibals and Mastick raised his hand again to silence them. “You have seen the power I will give to you tonight, by the sacred Red Moon Rite. We will feed and grow stronger, we will fight and be invincible. This world will fall before us and we will eat our fill!” I closed my eyes. It was bad enough that he was going to torture and probably eat us. Now we had to listen to him monologue.
“Do you recognize these offerings, brothers, and sisters,” Mastick said. “These are the hunters who have slain so many of your family. They do not practice the sacred promise of eating only what we kill. They kill for the sake of killing. Today, we will show them why we are the superiors of the natural order, upholding the true nature of the animal man. Light the fires!”
The cannibals surrounding us started shuffling around and several cans of gasoline were produced and passed forward. A cannibal near me started dumping it onto the wood around my head. I struggled to get up and I was halfway to my feet when Mastick boomed out. “Bind her!” And then I was mobbed, rolled onto my stomach and my hands were duct-taped behind me. I was tossed back onto the logs, my hands crushed between my weight and the splintered wood. I kicked out at my attackers and my ankles were then taped together. Fuck. I’d never been very good at waiting for the right moment to act. One of the flamethrowers that Noah and I had made was brought out of a trailer next to the one Mastick stood in front of. The girl wearing it approached the wood nearest me. I closed my eyes, hoping that smoke-inhalation death would come before the skin-melting-off-of-me pain.
There was a scuffling noise coming from Mastick’s general direction and the girl with the flamethrower paused. Then there was a scream. And not a manly deep yell. It was a three-year-old-in-pigtails-being-told-they-can’t-eat-dirt kind of scream. I craned my neck and I could see Mastick stumbling around in front of the crowd. At first, I couldn’t tell what was wrong with him. Then I saw the smoke rising up past his bald head. And what was around his neck?
Hands. There were hands around his neck. I saw a flash of orange curly hair when Mastick turned suddenly, trying to throw his attacker off. It was Noah. Noah had both hands around Mastick’s throat. I could smell the melting flesh from here. Any minute though, Mastick was going to throw Noah off and kill him.
I looked up at the cannibals nearest me. They were in some sort of trance, just staring at Mastick as he struggled. Great followers. The one nearest me was holding a box cutter blade loosely in his hand, the blade had sliced into his palm and blood was dripping off of it, onto the red dirt. Oh well. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. I strained as hard as I could and rolled off the woodpile structure to land in the dirt. I expected the cannibals to move quickly around me and throw me back on the pyre. Nothing. They just stood as if they were waiting for Mastick to come back on the air and tell them how to wipe their asses. I was able to get to my knees and I was eye-level with the box cutter blade. I didn’t want to try to grab it with my teeth and end up getting it shoved down my throat. I reeled back and with all the force I could muster, head-butted the guy holding it, right in the crotch. Apparently, the part of his brain attached to his gonads was still working because he doubled-up and stumbled back a step or two, dropping the blade to the dirt. I heard thumping mixed with the screaming still coming from Mastick at the front of the crowd and I rolled around in the dirt, trying to grab the blade with my hands taped behind my back. I felt the edge of it slice into my finger and I did my best to cut the tape and not my wrists. As soon as the tape gave, I ripped the tape around my ankles and stood up.
“Stop her!” Mastick choked, pointing at me. He was bashing his back into the trailer, trying to get Noah to fall off. Now the cannibals around me seemed to come to life. They were snatching at me and all I had was the stupid box cutter blade. There was only one place for me to go. I jumped back up onto the woodpile, feeling the logs starting to give under my feet as I ran across them. Stacks was struggling to move and I reached down to him. He and I weighed about the same so I wasn’t sure that this was going to end well. He seemed to have more strength left in him than I had expected as he met me halfway in helping him to his feet.
“Well we’re up,” Stacks wheezed as we backed towards the center of the woodpile, as far from the reaching arms of the cannibals as we could get. “I guess it’s better to die on our feet than our backs.”
“Try to get the rest up,” I said. “And get them to the middle of the woodpile.” The cannibals were tripping over the wood that had started falling off the pile and rolling around on the ground. Stacks moved away to where Vince and Mick were already stirring.
Mastick finally decided he needed a hand. “Help me!” He wheezed. The cannibals nearest him changed directions and started towards Mastick who was still struggling to get Noah off his back. Noah was getting whipped around like a ragdoll but he hadn’t let go. How much longer could he hold on though? Any normal man would have been dead by now from the flaming chokehold Noah was giving, but it was becoming clear that Mastick was not a normal man and he and his followers had a serious handicap on not dying. There was a gas can sitting on the ground near the place
Stacks had been laying. The guy holding it had turned to help Mastick. I tripped over a couple of loose logs, sending them down into the crowd. I snatched the can of gas and stood up. Standing on the woodpile, I was about a foot or two taller than the heads of the cannibals around me, who were lunging trying to grab my feet. I swung the open can of gasoline over them. When it was empty, I threw it over their heads. I looked around and the crowd, searching. My eye caught movement behind me and I turned to see Vince and Mick dragging Gabe towards the middle of the woodpile. Something was grabbing at my foot. I looked down just in time to get my feet jerked out from under me by the woman wearing the flamethrower. Instead of pulling back, I leaned forward into the fall and I knocked into her as she hit the trigger. I could smell burning hair next to my face and I punched her in the arm, knocking the flame away from me. She’d lost her hold on me, trying to get control of the flame again. She stumbled back and the flame lit a guy who had been standing close when I flung the gas around. His hair went up along with his clothes and he stumbled back, lighting more of the cannibals around him.
I glanced back at Stacks and the others to see them on their feet. They were moving away towards the other side of the woodpile where the rest of the cannibals were struggling to get to Mastick or to me. I saw the flaw in Mastick’s order. He had told them to ‘stop her’, meaning me. They were ignoring the other ‘offerings’. His other scream had been for them to ‘help me’, not ‘get this kid off of me’. They were moving around in front of Mastick while he flailed, trying to figure out what would help him. Mastick’s whole face was blistered now, his lips turning to swollen raw flesh. Noah was limp, hanging from his back by his hands. He wasn’t going to last much longer. As soon as I saw that Tags and Vince had made it off the far side of the woodpile away from the fire and were helping the others down, including an unconscious Gabe that Mick was dragging, I started shoving through the cannibals. The ones who had come to help ‘stop me’ had run into their brothers and sisters who were on fire and the fire was quickly spreading to them as well. I fell down the far side of the woodpile, next to the rest of the crew, and stumbled towards where Mastick was, his ‘helpers’ had finally figured out what he wanted and were trying to pull Noah off him. It didn’t look like there was much of Mastick’s head left. His scalp looked like one giant blister. Mastick reached back with his hands and grabbed Noah by the ankles. I heard an audible snap and Noah screamed and let go of Mastick. I was moving before I knew what I was going to do. As I plowed toward them, the sun flashed off of something in the hand of one the cannibals in front of me.
My machete.
I lunged for him and tussled with him for it, feeling the bones in his hand break as I bent his fingers the wrong way. I turned to face Mastick. He was facing away from me and I could hear his sick laughter as he stood over Noah’s limp body which was crawling away towards the trailer. He lunged for Noah and I leaped on his back. He spun, trying to throw me off. I wrapped my legs around his chest, locking my ankles and grabbed onto one of his ears, feeling blistered skin come off under my fingers. I put every ounce of strength I had left into bringing the machete across Mastick’s throat. A black haze spewed from his eyes and mouth as blood, thick and black began pouring over my hands from his throat. I kept cutting. Flashbacks of that smirk, licking blood off of his fingers, his laughter when he told his tribe what he’d done to the women they’d eaten the night before, snapping necks with his bare hands and the realization that he and his high-up cannibals may have already killed and eaten Festus to gain this power, scorched through me. He was stumbling as I sawed, sinew and muscles giving way under my machete. My vision was blurring as angry tears rolled down my cheeks. This vicious animal was going down. All the death and torture and pain he and his tribe had caused were ending. Now and right here. His body shuddered under me and crumpled to the ground. I kept sawing until his head came off his shoulders. I got shakily to my feet and with an angry scream, I kicked his head. I’m no soccer player and I shanked it left where it ricocheted off the trailer nearby and came back to rest not that far from his body. I wanted to kick it again, but the sound of gagging and gasping, made me turn.
The remaining cannibals around me were falling to the ground. Most of them were still on fire. I searched the ground around where Mastick and I had fallen. No Noah. There was soot smeared on the open door of the trailer next to me. I crawled over Mastick’s corpse and stumbled up the sway-backed steps to the trailer door. It was dark squalor inside. The furniture was stained and the carpet was soaked in blood. Noah was laying on the floor taking shallow breaths, his eyes closed.
On the couch, Sister Smile was sitting, staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Hilda was leaning next to her, unconscious. I looked around. Where was Joel? I dropped to my knees next to Noah and put a hand behind his head.
“Noah?” I asked. He cracked his eyes open and looked up at me.
“Did we get him?”
I grinned down at him. “Yeah, we got him. With a little from our friends.” Noah’s face winced as he tried to sit up and I gave him a hand. “Especially you, Hands of Flame, Flaming Fingers, Hot Holders...we’ll work on the name.”
Noah groaned. “I appreciate that.”
There was the sound of running footsteps coming closer and I let go of Noah and staggered to my feet, holding the machete out, ready to run through whoever came through the door.
“Jesus!” Stacks said as he came up the stairs and saw me with the machete. “You’re just not going to be happy until you kill me, are you?” I lowered the machete and went back to Noah. “You look like hell,” Stacks said to Noah.
“Thank you,” Noah muttered. “I’ve been working on this look for a while now.”
Stacks shook his head at me. “He’s been spending too much time with you.”
“Wisecracks later, can you help me carry him out of here?” I asked Stacks.
“It’s just my hip,” Noah said. “I think Mastick dislocated it, but it’s popped back in now. I’ll be fine to walk. I just can’t feel my right leg yet. ”
“We’re carrying you out of here,” I said. I looked back at the couch at the unconscious Hilda and Sister Smile, still staring off into space, unmoving. What kind of brain-frying had Mastick done to her?
“He says he can walk,” Stacks muttered. I glared at him and he sighed, bending down so that we could make a chair with our arms to carry Noah out.
Rosetta and Tags were sitting on the edge of the woodpile. Rosetta got to her feet when she saw us come out of the trailer. Tags tried to stand, but he needed a hand from Rosetta to get up. They were ok. They were both sore and Tags had a back and ass full of shrapnel from what I saw, but they were alive.
“Rosetta,” I said as Stacks and I got Noah to the woodpile and set him down next to Tags. “There’s a gal named Hilda in the trailer who was a huge help in making this whole thing happen. She’s unconscious and I know you can bring her around without causing too much stress on her heart.” Rosetta nodded and headed towards the trailer. “Oh, and I wouldn’t worry about Sister Smile. I’m pretty sure that whatever Mastick did to her left her pretty much brain-dead.” I left Noah with Stacks and Tags who were steadying him between them. A thought hit me and I moved back to Mastick’s corpse, searching the ground around him. Then I saw it, shining in the dirt. The necklace. I scooped it up, fingering the silver symbol and the black stone. I tucked it into my pocket to give to Stacks for analyzing later. I looked around and saw Vince and Mick kicking bodies aside, looking for something. I scanned the area, my heart pounding again. Where was Gabe?