The Savage(33)

“Yes. I aim to save Sheldon and the others from whatever it is these men are doing.”

A fit of words spilled from Bill’s tongue. “Have you lost your mind? You find her, you find death. Did you not tell that she navigated the hordes to the Widow’s?” Bill shook his head and continued with “Believe you me. What needs finding is the Lord. Is the only saving any of us is getting in this hell we’ve dealt ourselves into.”

Working the knife, knowing the Pentecost was one step away from the asylum’s gates, Dorn still held suspicion; from the look of the man’s stature, it seemed as though Bill’d not missed any meals as of late.

Bill’s girls were only three in number but stood statue-like as if guardians or protectors, awaiting his commands or maybe something else.

Each blade gathered more and more hair and Bill spoke with tension, told Mary, “Fetch another bucket of boil.”

And she did. Came back and began pouring it over the hide. Dorn chose his words carefully, held a sense of distrust, felt as if Bill were hiding something, and he asked, “You spoke of hearing a rumor about the pockets of hordes, the rural clans. From who did you hear this, you’ve yet to answer.”

“Who?” Bill paused for thought. Spittle had congealed in the corners of his mouth as he appeared more and more irritated with Dorn’s words and he said, “Was no rumor. Is real. Seen them with my own two eyes. I’d led myself astray when hunting. Came up behind a great neighborhood of brick homes. Watched from afar. Men going from house to house. The hordes looting the fathers from them. Breaking them down to their knees. Pointing a barrel to a skull and pulling the trigger in front of their loved ones. It was enough for me to mind my own.”

With a look of horror, Dorn paused his scraping and asked, “Why you figure they kill the men, keep the girls?”

Pursing his lips, Bill said, “Breeding, why else.” He then lifted his gaze to Dorn and said, “Though I never eyed them killing young boys. There lays some unknown meaning in that. To kill a father but keep a son.”

“And what about these religious clans, you’ve viewed them as well?”

“I’ve visited their cellars, yes.”

“Cellars?”

“Meat cellars. Look, all you need to know is this: stay clear of them or you’ll be enslaved to fight for another’s entertainment and power to rule. You win, you eat, and if they’s females about, they’ll be forced into coitus.”

Curled splinters of hair piled to the floor and stuck to the hands and blades of Bill and Van Dorn. Dorn believed Bill was hiding something as they scraped and scalded till there was no more growth to be removed. Then came the kettle. The removal of leaf lard that’d be used for cracklings. Bill stabbed into the boar’s spine. Guided the blade down the backbone. Then Dorn helped him lift the carcass from the hook and lay it on the large walnut table planked by heavy two-by-six cuts of lumber that’d been nicked by steel and smirched by things that had once been breathing.

Myra brought a hacksaw down the swine’s back. Getting to the pork chops and the fatback. Then the tenderloin that rested on both sides of the backbone before sawing and cutting at the rib cage.

“Think we’ll ever get juice back to light up homes?”

“If God sees it in His plans. Otherwise be prepared for a long era of suffering. This is why wars are begun. An indifference. To rebuild what has been squandered. Too many digital dependencies. Do you think many men or women, even children of this era, can do what our ancestors did in order to hold continuance, to exist?”

“I care none, all I know is what my father and grandfather taught me, the ways of the old, and for that I am appreciative.”

“But did Horace raise you by the guidance of the Lord? A better way of offering it is this: Do you believe in God? In His prowess to accept spiritual donation?”

Horace had raised Dorn with Old Testament beliefs in the Methodist Church as a boy, though he’d not stepped foot in one since his mother had abandoned them. His father had lost any hope there had been in scripture. Calling the Bible a book pasted together by a government that wanted to control the masses with fear. Letting those masses read what they wanted them to read, then interpreting it how they saw fit for control. Always pointing a finger and judging others while never judging their own ways. Horace told Dorn if there was a higher power, He was a pricey son of a bitch for all the hardships He placed on the innocent to pay for His suffering.

Dorn knew he was dealing with a man who’d been willed with religious rhetoric all his life, relied on the fear he brought to others from this rhetoric, and so he told Bill, “Never gave it much concern since my mother quit us, seems the good book is just words bound by officials.”

Bill slammed a fist on the wood table. His orbs were blusterous bulges of white splintered by a rosary of vessels. Damming around him, the girls heaved air into their lungs with shock. Each held their tools like weapons. Watched Dorn as Bill spoke. “Be damned, boy, the Lord is no fool! Why you think things has turned to chaos? ’Cause God’s coming back for us but first the Devil’s riding in pockets. Shaping and metastasizing nonbelievers into the vicious. Then it’ll be hell to pay for their wrongs. Don’t be a pagan.”

Dorn tasted the tension like a penny pulled from one’s pocket and put on a tongue, metallic and dirty. Thought of the pistol tucked down his back. The blade in his hand. Knowing he’d had his will tested too many times over the passing days. Dorn’s stomach bubbled and he felt as though he might puke. Knowing Pentecost Bill was one crazed fuck. As were his daughters, odd as ever, unlike any girls Dorn’d seen before, and he told Bill, “I’m no pagan. Like my father, I’m a survivor, a pioneer.”