The Savage(65)
Cotto imagined his young soldiers becoming cunning and knowledgeable like Dorn and Sheldon, surveying the land, how to live from it. Survive. Knowing how to battle and maneuver with ease. Help map and rule. The very thought of these two transforming the young into hardened warriors clenched within his frame an unknown excitement. An addiction to rule.
Sheldon came to a T. Jogged left. Went toward the river. Down an embankment of rock, of assorted colors of smooth stone. Whites, muds, flints, and rust. She studied the water’s flow. Searched the opposite side, her head jutting up and down. With the glare of diamond-like sight, Cotto could see what the Sheldon girl was studying, taking in where Dorn’s creature had traveled upward, similar to the deer that had been tracked down the hillside, up past the small cut, and made it back up the hill at an angle. They each possessed a great trait, skill to be passed onto others. To hunt and yield what is feasible. Necessary with little or no time. Quick to react during times of duress.
When next Cotto looked at the Sheldon girl, she was gone.
The crushed powder that he sniffed was heightening his reaction to detail. Blinking hard and fast. Looking again, he watched her drift into the movement of the rippling water. Crossing at a knee-deep point. Watched her straddle the river, make it to the opposite side, her pants clinging to her legs as she wrestled through the outgrowth of weeds, briar, and small trees that wormed and curved. Then she scaled the grade. Reached its summit. Disappeared once more. Cotto lowered his binoculars, came quick from the road, waited by the stream, eyeing where to enter, then crossed and made his way up the mound of expired vegetation. Felt the heat in his joints and tendons, the burn of the climb.
At the top, with his heart binding and unbinding behind sternum bone, he reached one hand after the other to limbs, lifted himself up, and scaled an oak tree, perched hawk-like on a limb. Looked for the Sheldon girl. Seeing her in the far, but also hearing the silent unknowns. Crows. Sparrow. Red or gray squirrel. Marbled tans and whites of rabbit or deer.
There was the distant echo of gunfire that rimmed the land. Then nothing. Followed by another shot. Then silence.
The Sheldon girl slowed, took in the area, searched for camouflage, found a small enclave within the ground, and burrowed into the leaves to hide. Cotto waited for her to move. His mind a concaving rush of colors wilted and worn, colliding with daylight that began to shift its hue until darkness absorbed the entire forest.
Cotto switched his binoculars to night vision. Came down from the tree. Walked. Took careful steps to where the Shel don girl lay. Moved as though he were a ghost. Kneeled beside her. Rested a hand down on her neck. Took in the rhythm of her breath that pushed from beating heart and expanding lungs. Calm. Lax. Unlike the jittering of his. Letting his sight adjust to the ravenous surroundings of wilderness that was nothing like his homeland. Feeling the build and dissipation of frame, an increase in pulse, her lids began to flutter, her arms jerked, the stomp of blood circulating within sped up, and she opened her eyes. Rose from the indention within the earth in a pant of suffocating fear.
But Cotto was gone.
By morning, Cotto sat vein-eyed and wired awake, holding the vial of powder. Tied himself to the tree that he’d climbed up. Watched Sheldon rise. She studied the woods, then took to the land once more. Came down the hillside above where Cotto’s men had been slaughtered. Where the deer had been gutted. In the rutted road the Sheldon girl kneeled to the patches of stain, glanced around. Took in a tree where a hand had been nailed, or what was left of the hand, blackened by heated rot and engrossed by insects.
Watching from a distance, Cotto smirked at this warning. His warning. He’d had one of his men nail the instrument for touch to the tree. Sheldon moved from the road, walked quickly. Cotto followed her stride for almost an hour. She stopped at a property line. Crossed an acre or more of field that once held nutriment but was now parched. From a tree, Cotto watched her bend, run her fingers over something in the field. Indentions of hooves, Cotto thought, a marking to let her know Dorn had traveled this direction. His nerves were tense. Where was this Dorn? Where and how did he keep distancing himself? He was like a fable, leaving traces of story but no shape.
Through the binoculars, Cotto took in her walking with concern from the field. Sheldon hesitated as she passed what looked to be two dogs or what was left of their bloated and scattered remains. Bone, hide, and graying bowels. She continued toward the monstrous home that sat on the opposite side. Studied two vehicles with hoods ajar. Parked in the faded driveway like monuments from a forgotten era with jumper cables intestining from one to the other.
From afar, Cotto was irritated, taking in the Sheldon girl’s nervous approach. There was no Dorn as she walked toward the mule that lay upon its side. Butchered. Her hand covered her mouth. It was Dorn’s mule, Red.
“An ass,” Cotto said under his breath. “Where is the one who rode and led you about?”
Sheldon looked to the porch. Viewed the strewn bodies, some blackened by blood, opened up by a sharp utensil or broken by gunfire. Adrenaline built within Cotto as he took in her cautious steps amongst the flies collecting and circle-eighting around the mule. Display yourself, Dorn, show me you’re a living, breathing warrior.
Sheldon stepped to the bodies that planked the porch like a house of real-life zombies. She seemed to have no fear, or little of it. Or maybe it was the desire to find Dorn.
But viewing the mule made Cotto wonder what troubles the boy could’ve crossed into. These people of the rural land were maybe more savage than he and his men when there was nothing else to lose. And that brought even deeper desire to catch him. Dorn was planning to be everything Cotto believed he was; he’d be a defining asset to his young soldiers.