The Savage(18)

Dorn navigated Red back to where he’d begun to dress the deer, shot the men. Crows walked about the stains. Picking at the rutted remains of rot. On one of the trees below him hung what appeared to be a blackened appendage. He dug the binoculars from his pack. What he viewed was exactly that, a human limb. From another hung what appeared to be a hand.

Lowering his field glasses, Dorn thought of animals who urinated over a section of ground to ward others off, territorial pissing, only these were humans, they’d marked their territory with the dead. A warning, Dorn said to himself.

Behind him leaves trundled with the clomp of what sounded like footfalls. Turning. He glanced to the ground. To the trees that climbed up into the gloom. But saw nothing and the noise ceased.

Traveling on past the killing ground for what seemed an hour, Dorn came to the edge of a property line. Stopped. Before him lay several acres of dead cornstalks, tanned and broken over. Paths made way into what had once been a yard but looked like a hayfield that coursed up to a home forged of brick. White pillars from the side. Land that had once been farmed, probably sold when the parents grew old and passed away. Had maybe been developed into the beginnings of high-dollar homes. Something Dorn’s father and the Widow complained about on their late-night binges on Maker’s. Something Dorn and his father had seen firsthand while jotting down addresses to rob.

Searching his memory, unable to remember seeing this residence on his way to the Pentecost’s place with his father, Dorn recalled the long driveway. The home couldn’t be seen from the road.

Feeling eyes dig into his back, he could not shake the uneasiness of something bad. Lifted his binoculars, searched the area for evidence of transit, something out of place. Disrupted. The heads of two Labradors lay with bodies outstretched. One fudge. One black. No rise from their ribs. Their insides appeared gored. Splayed out. Looked like fresh kills as the blood appeared red and saucy. On the front porch sat a man in a rocker. Neck bent back, mouth agape, eyes removed with a vulture on the chair’s armrest, beaking at the orb holes. Split-glass flesh marred the side of his temple. A mess littered his front all the way to where parts of his legs looked to have been cut out. Sections of quad removed. The spill of the cutting painted the porch where a female lay tossed out on her back. Or at least it was what Dorn believed to be a female.

The actions were all wrong, though Dorn could not place his finger upon the wrong just yet.

Off beside the home was a matching brick outbuilding. Beside it, an indent of mossed-over land. Parked on the sun-bleached blacktop was a navy-blue Mercedes two-seater with the hood raised, nose to nose with a silver Lexus SUV, its hood also raised. Jumpers wired from one battery terminal to the other, connecting the two. Driver’s-side doors on each ajar. From the Lexus ran a boy. T-shirt, cargo shorts, hair matted, about eighteen or nineteen years of age. Cutting to the concrete walk that gave way to the home’s front porch of cadavers.

From nowhere came a jaunting figure. A head with porcupine hair. Sunken and carved features like a totem of wood. He donned denim bibs. No shirt. He tackled the boy, who hollered something indecipherable.

The figure raised the boy to standing. The boy kicked. Threw his arms sideways. Reached, dug his fingers into the man’s features.

From the porch the buzzard took to the air.

Dorn lowered the field glasses. Knew he’d need to make a choice. His heart pounded. Limbs tensed with each echo from the boy that bounced out into the woods where Van Dorn sat hidden.

But the boy wasn’t shouting for help.

Dorn swiveled the rifle from his back. Butted the stock to where shoulder met chest. Hesitated. Clasped his eyes. Opened them back up. Something was amiss. This he knew from hunting, like watching a deer being baited with a salt block.

Front door of the home swung open. Dorn lowered the rifle, raised the field glasses with his left. It was a girl. Looked to be the same age as the boy. Golden locks unfluffed. Flat and olive-oily. Stains about her face, smearing her front. She screamed, “Let go of him!” and from the weeds came another figure. Banded eye, cankered complexion, sleeveless flannel, wielding a hatchet. He hugged the female, raised her up. She rammed her head backward. The figure ran a tongue up the side of her face, laughed. The other figure dropped the boy to his knees. Laced his fingers into the boy’s hair. Brought a butcher’s blade to his widow’s peak.

Dorn lowered the glasses. Knowing he had to shoot them now if he wanted to save them. Risk his direction. Freedom. Alert others. Raised the rifle once more. Seemed there was one, then two, meaning there could be a third, a fourth, and so on. A damn domino effect.

React, Van Dorn thought, don’t think. That’s what his father would tell him. And Dorn leveled the .30-30. Closed one eye. Let the other rest on the knife wielder. But the boy, he looked not afraid. Dorn inhaled deep through his nose. Slowing the rhythm in his chest, the nervous twitch in his arms and hands. Flashes of Gutt on the tile. Men coming at him on the road. Horace drilling into his worldview since birth: Do what you must to others and abandon weakness.

Exhaling, Dorn firmly pulled the trigger. Gunfire breached the land. Neck sprayed hot. Hands released the boy. The bibbed figure dropped backward, palmed his neck.

Van Dorn shelled and chambered brass. Turned to the man hugging the female, who looked to be pawing at her pocket. She was released. Knees hammered the porch. The boy came at the man with a blade pulled from somewhere. The man turned his head upon his neck from one side to the other. Trying to hone in on where the rifle shot came from. But it was too late, Dorn sighted his silhouette between the crosshairs. Then the boy stepped into his aim. Took a stabbing swipe at the man, who stepped back. Lined himself in Dorn’s hairs again. Slapped at the boy with his left hand. Brought the hatchet with his right. Another explosion pierced the man’s face. Flung chunked juice, deflated his hide to the ground.