The Savage(58)
The lighthouse sat along the Ohio River upon the north side. Once used to guide barges in the night. Now it was part of Cotto’s encampment of razor wire. Dogs. Supplies, vehicles, child warriors, mercenaries, and their training. But what the child warriors needed was a leader. A man to look up to. To admire. To aspire to in their training.
Playing weak and innocent, the girl parted her lips. “Please.” But she did not look at him. And Cotto snapped his fingers to a man with an AK-47 strapped across his front. His face half-covered from chin to nose with a skeleton imprint. Hiding his mouth. Hair oiled and tacked in all directions. “Sergio, get her some liquid.” The man’s clomping feet trailed from the room.
“My … my daddy,” the Sheldon girl stuttered with her backwoods English, “you and your men, you … you ended him.” The picture flashed quick. Over and over. A man’s knees unhinged. Arms pruned tight behind him. Barrel opening to the rear of his skull. Loud explosion. The front of his face arced like power lines being struck by lightning and fertilizing the yard grass with burnt combustion.
Scripts of unshelled bullets, daggers, the skeleton lady of Santa Muerte, and chinked-out Jell-O scars banded tight as Cotto flexed his shirtless arms. Approached her, sniffed, ran a finger across her forehead. She turned her face sideways from his touch. “Kill. We killed him. You must understand. Your kind took my father from me. My kind took my mother from me. Killing is a way of existing. Loss makes us stronger. Black, white, yellow, or green, it makes little qualm, I will end any and all who stand in my way.”
“In your way for what?”
“To rule territory.”
“That’s what you do here, rule territory?” Sheldon asked.
“I train children to become soldiers, savages. My band of sicarios. To help me rule. Yes. And one day set up stash houses and run drugs again. It’s all I know.”
Giving a side-eyed glance, the Sheldon girl looked to this man. To the skeletal ink shading his complexion. Charcoal lines rimming his eyes, teeth above his lips, and an upside-down cross splashed down his nose, a shaved skull of stub, a crown of thorns bandanaed around his forehead, and she told him, “You could’ve spared this man who created me like you took my mother and me.”
The girl is finding comfort, talks with backbone. Not fear, Cotto thought as he stepped away from her, snorted more powder, tasted the chemical drainage in his throat. His eyes glassed and he said, “Maybe. Regardless, I did as I did, I’ve no use for your people’s fathers.”
Sergio entered the room holding a bottle of water. Raised it to Cotto. “Not me, her. Offer it to her.” Cotto sniffed with irritation. And Sergio approached her.
Unbound, the Sheldon girl raised a quacking hand. Took the water. Uncapped it. Ran the open bottle below her nostrils. Sniffed. Cotto smirked. “It’s clean of toxins. I’ve no reason to pollute something that is of dire use to my cause.”
The Sheldon girl drank. Her father’s words rattling her pan much the same as Van Dorn’s father’s and the Widow’s rattled his, telling, If things come unhinged and your mama and me is no more and bad people take you, act afraid regardless of how afraid you are or are not, gain whatever trust you can through appearing feeble and weak, and when an opening comes, seize it.
“Three of my best men were shot dead today, killed in broad daylight for all eyes to see except mine. But you and the others, you had front-row viewing, did you not?”
Hiding her anger at Van Dorn for abandoning her. For not trying to salvage her mother and her and the others, the Sheldon girl raised the bottle to her lips. Took a long swig. The water bubbled through the ridges of plastic as did the malice and discontent within. Something her father had taught her as he’d listened and watched the world unbuckle at the seams and go belly-up, as neighbors became fools and self-centered, she knew she’d have to play sides to survive if at all feasible. She swallowed and lowered the bottle. Said, “I heard shots. Then I viewed his shape.”
A breach of excitement came from Cotto. Eyes sparking, he queried, “This Dorn?”
The Sheldon girl nodded her head up. Then down. Her green eyes held Cotto’s perforated shape within them. She held his trust, was turning the tides, and parted her lips. “Yes.”
“This Dorn, can you guide me to his place of rest?”
ANGUS
The road came quick, the vibrancy of oak, elm, and hickory trees, blurred with the wildflowers that’d blossomed and browned on the other side of the once-metallic guardrail. Below that, the Blue River ran a soupy brown similar to a pasty stew. Cars and trucks had been abandoned alongside the road. Angus was fortunate, didn’t have to siphon gas from the many fuel-injected vehicles he’d passed. Fu had placed barrels of octane back just as he’d done with water, rice, vegetables, and meat, kept cool, hidden from all intercepting eyes, along with ammunition and firearms.
From the truck’s glove compartment he’d pulled a pair of handcuffs, secured Christi’s wrists behind her in case she came to, irate and heaving with violent dexterity while Angus navigated down the road, caused a collision and possibly death. Glancing from her to the rearview, he caught movement. The lime-colored Scout. It was hauling ass, gaining on him.
Looking in his side mirror, he saw the man hanging out, aiming with a long weapon, a shotgun or rifle. Then he heard the explosion of slug shot shatter his sideview mirror. He swerved. Rubber barked like a dog. “Fuck!” he shouted. Pressed the accelerator to the floor. The four-barrel kicked in. Tires hugged the bend and sway of the pavement, the engine muscled loud in pitch. The world outside passed in waves of cracked and baked tans.