The Savage(39)
“Where are these victims of tyrant?”
“Couldn’t save them. They was more men coming. I’d no choice but to flee. They tracked me, attacked my home. I burned it with them in it. But that’s part of why I’m out here. The images have marred and haunted me ever since. I’m in search of others like myself. Survivors. To regroup and find this horde of men. Want to free a girl known as Sheldon, free her and the others.”
Scar laughed and asked, “What makes this girl so special that you’d venture into the wild for her?”
“I knew her and her family. She’s like me. Was raised in the old ways. Understands the land. How to live from it. And I believe no person deserves to be caged and treated ill.”
“A girlfriend,” Scar teased.
Van Dorn felt the pulse of red kindle his dirt-smudged cheeks and said, “Never thought of it in such a way. Regardless of definition, I aim to free her and the others.”
Poe and Wolf Cookie pursed their lips. Nodded their heads. Scar smirked, cleared her throat. Said, “And then what?”
“Haven’t thought that far. Maybe rebuild what’s been squandered?”
“Well, we got a jaunt before getting back to camp, been out hunting, scouring for intel. You fall in with us, but don’t question our actions.”
Believing there was a bond to be formed, Dorn offered a hand to August, helped him to standing. But he didn’t know how much credence he could lay within any of them just yet. All trust had to be earned.
Following Scar, Poe, Mike, and the hound through the woods, taking more hills and flat land. Making passage above broke-down trailers, furniture gutted and thrown out into the dirt that passed as yards. Vehicles lay abandoned on back roads. Vinyl, brick, and wood-sided homes sat devoid of presence. After they had walked more than two hours, the hint of something charred lingered in the air. With each footstep, the smell grew thicker until the reek banded everyone’s inhale with woodsmoke and something similar to meat, only it was not the loin of animal. Camouflaged by weeds and trees, Dorn, August, the hound, Scar, and her men kneeled, viewing a house offset from a yard where two men, pale and thin, were barbed to cedar posts. Several worn truck tires had been dropped over their hides. On the ground sat a pit of flaming lumber. A piece of rusted iron that glowed orange on one end, used to sear and bubble one of the men. Foam dribbled from the branded man’s mangled lips. He looked barely alive. Favored the other man who was tactile and jerking. Coughing up words. “Motherfucker, I kill you. Hear me, I kill you, you lay that heat to him again!”
A steel pan was lifted over the branded man’s head of wool strands by a third man whose frame looked combed by a steel rake. Skin carved and nicked, indented by bruise. He’d a bandana of black with dirty white skulls all about his head. Stood shirtless, sweating and laughing as he turned the pan upside down. Drained a thick ooze of motor oil over the man. Said, “Where’s your nest of nourishment? Ain’t your baby brother suffered enough?”
Wiggling and jerking, the man’s mouth frothed with rage. His complexion appeared almost rubbery and slick. From the house, two more men joined, flaking and peeling with the wear of being rotted and unbathed, grabbing their nether regions and pig snorting.
One held a small blue propane cylinder, its brass wand flamed orange and blue as he stood in front of the vinyl-sided home, with a roof of ribbed tin and a large covered porch. Placing the torch on the ground, he ripped pieces of a shirt, wrapped them around a thick piece of tree limb about arm’s length. Laid it on the ground. Wrapped another limb with more shirt strips. Then dipped the clothed ends into a bucket of used tractor oil.
The man who’d poured the oil told the tactile and jerking man, “Last time I’m asking, Lucas, your family’s ’bout tuh get smoked, then wrung of dignity. The food, where you keep it.”
A gob of lung butter darted from Lucas’s mouth. Juiced warm over his torturer’s face as he mustered language. “I … look like I … got a stash of food, youuuu … fuck? I’s no more than bone and skin.”
Wiping the phlegm from his face, the man told Lucas, “Keep on spitting lies. Have it your way.” Then he turned to the torch wielder and nodded. Kneeling, the man grabbed the propane canister in one hand. Picked up one of the pieces of lumber. Lit its oil-soaked cotton end. Walked up the porch steps, tossed it into the home. Curtains and carpet ignited.
Turning from the blaze, the man stood watching the home expand with flames and laughed.
Dorn sat with August, Scar, Poe, Wolf Cookie, and the hound, camouflaged behind the sprout of foliage. Gripping his pistol, taking in the dehumanization, Dorn pulsed with wanting to act. Scar sensed his jittering, touched his arm. Whispered, “Wait.”
The man with the propane torch walked over to Lucas.
Holding the dog back, Poe said, “They ain’t with Cotto. They’re charlatans, scrounging for food.”
“Charlatans?” Dorn questioned.
“Copycats,” Scar told him. “Make their musings for torture appear like what Cotto and his narcos do. Been suspecting them for a month or better.”
“How you know?”
“The tires they throw over men. Country folk use those to start brush fires, not light folks up like these wretches aim to do, like Cotto did to double-crossers on the border, he does the same here.”