Vice(49)

“Damn,” Natalia curses under her breath. She’s anxious as she looks sideways at me. “I’m sorry. I thought...I thought this was further west. The smell…”

The smell must have confused her. It was coming directly from the west, instead of from down below us, but the breeze is strange today, sending blustery gusts in loops up and down the mountain on thermals, and it’s obviously turned her around a little.

I’m beginning to wonder why there’s even any smell at all—the corpses in the huge, mass grave, are all skeletons—but then I catch sight of something that blows that theory right out of the water. The corpses are not all skeletons. On top of the mountain of bones lie three fresh bodies. All three are women, and they’re naked. They’re in various states of decomposition. The first body has to have been out here for at least a couple of weeks. The skin is nearly all gone, as well as the eyes, and most of the flesh on the skull. The other two bodies can’t have been exposed for as long. They’re bloated and purple, as if they’ve been submerged in water rather than left out on the side of a mountain. Then I realize, the rain yesterday was intense and didn’t stop for hours. And with the bodies resting on top of the pile the way they are, they’re likely to have absorbed an awful lot of fluid.

“What is this?” I can barely speak. I want to double over and throw up. I have seen some f*cked-up things in my time, but this? This is something else. Something rotten and evil. Tears streak down Natalia’s cheeks.

“This is where my father disposes of the people who stand against him. The people who try to sell cocaine in his country. And the women who say no too many times. The women who won’t submit.”

As I’m staring at the grave, my eyes skipping over countless bodies, I try and estimate how many people are here. The skeletons are scattered and in pieces for the most part. I give up trying to see them as whole people and instead move onto counting skulls.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…

Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…

Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four…

Oh god. So many. I can only count how many are resting on the top of the pile. Who knows how deep the hole is, how many bodies are stacked underneath. And who knows how many holes Fernando Villalobos filled before he has this one dug and filled. Something tells me this can’t be the only one.

This must be how it felt for the soldiers who rolled into Auschwitz, expecting to be liberating prisoners of war, only to find the dead piled high on either side of the road.

Something occurs to me, then. Something awful and so horrifying that I can’t even comprehend that it might be true. The women who won’t submit.

Laura was as stubborn as they come. Laura wasn’t a woman to submit, no matter how black the situation. I look at Natalia, and she can already see it on my face.

“No. No, she’s not here, Cade. He didn’t put her here. I’d know if he did. He promised me…”

Too late.

It is far too late for me to be reasoned with. The idea’s in my head now, and it won’t go away. That f*cker could have thrown my sister’s still-warm body into an open f*cking mass grave? Oh no.

Just. Fucking. No.

I take off down the mountain, and I’m not walking anymore. I’m f*cking running. I’m charging. I’m on the warpath, rage pumping through my veins, and I won’t be able to get a hold of myself until Fernando Villalobos is lying in a pool of his own blood. I’m going to pull every single last one of his teeth out with a pair of pliers. I’m gonna dump acid on that motherf*cker. I’m gonna hurt him so bad, he’s gonna beg for me to just give in and let him f*cking die.

There will be no mercy for him. There will be no forgiveness. There will be only pain and suffering, and finally, when I’ve had enough and my body is tired and I physically can’t torture him any more, I’m going to shoot him in the f*cking head and put him down like the f*cking dog he is.

“Cade! Cade, please wait!” Natalia is behind me somewhere, running after me, but now I’m faster than she is. I’m not careful. I barrel through the forest, barely missing tree trunks, barely ducking under low hanging boughs in time.

“CADE!”

Natalia’s cry echoes around off the high mountainsides around us. A chorus of shrieks split the air apart as dozens of birds take to the sky. I don’t look back. I am single minded in my purpose, and that purpose is to cause Fernando indescribable agony. My journey down the mountain is a hell of a lot faster than it was going up. My legs are singing with pain, though, my knees and ankles throbbing from my headlong sprint downhill.

The sun is going down. Little more than a burned orange crescent remains hovering on the horizon. It will sink soon, disappearing altogether, and then I’ll be running in darkness. Natalia probably had a flashlight in that backpack of hers. She probably had water and all kinds of other supplies, but I don’t need any of them right now. I just need to get back to the estate. I just need to—

A low, eerie howl deadens the sound of the forest. One minute everything is alive, bugs chittering, birds zipping between the trees, crickets chirruping, and then it’s as if the forest sucks in a deep breath and holds onto it, refusing to let it go. Another howl, long and plaintive. It’s damned close. I stop dead, waiting, listening. Sound travels so well in the mountains. So well. It could be that the wolves are actually miles away, and their song is simply being carried on the wind, but…