The Savage(21)

“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.”