The Savage(68)
The man blanketed his arms around Angus. Wormed his right leg behind his footing. Tripped him backward to the dirt floor. The slam of weight to his chest, air coughed from within, exhaustion was numbing his every morsel of being as the female scooted toward Angus, kicked at his features from the side with her foot bottoms. Mick punched at Angus, left and right, repeating the back-and-forth as he screamed and drooled to the wiry man, “They’s not, Josiah’s been knee shot, Grudge and Okra has been delivered to they Maker!”
With a heated fury, Mick blistered and bruised Angus’s face. The female continued to kick and kick, cursing him. “Wasn’t for you my daddy’d be alive, you murderous fuck!”
Angus’s complexion was a rotisserie of jags, bumps, and welts as he took the assault, reached through Mick’s punches, grunted, and laced his fingers into his ratty knots with his left and right hands, pulled Mick’s face down to his own. Lips parted and he engulfed the oily nose of blackheads, bit down. Mick screamed, “Ahhh! Ahhh!”
From the door opening came booted clomps tracking across with footfalls and the pant of menace, stopping at the two men on the floor, the length of sawed-off metal formed into a point with a duct-taped handle wrapped by a beefed-up man’s digits. Seeing this aged shape, the female quit kicking. Sat with a creak in her neck. Ache in her spine from being cuffed, she rolled to her side and looked up.
Blood nostriled from Mick’s nose and oozed out of Angus’s mouth with a built-up three-fifty small-block engine’s pulse, Angus’s muscles pumped, and the hacksawed barrel of the 12-gauge pressed his ear, conducted thoughts that ran rampant in his mind. Knowing somewhere along the line these people had gone from crazed lunatic to fucking turbo-charged insane.
The leader looked to the dead on the ground, strewn about as though oversize action figures, he told Angus, “Release my follower’s nose ’fore I split your pan across the damn dirt.” Shaking his head, he continued with “Of the years it took to create a congregation of men and women, turn them from white-trash misfits to Aryan Christians with the knuckles of my hands that I bled, beat, and killed others for, you’ve decimated a small percentage of them within minutes.”
Tight clamp of jaw released Mick’s nose. Hands fanned out. Angus’s skull reared to the ground. Mick spit and blew crimson from his mouth and nose, punched Angus with a one, then a two.
The man looked to the female and back to Mick. “And who’d be this feisty menstrual of a female?”
Rolling Angus facedown, Mick told the man, “Far’s I know, she’s traveling with him. But she spouted something of he killed her daddy.”
Mick stood up from Angus’s shape. The leader clumped over Angus with shadow, the barrel’s rough end digging into the rear of his head, Mick stepped from each, seized two pistols from the dirt, held each, one in his left, the other in his right, until the man ordered him, “Quit dicking about, find some twine or baling wire to figure this shitheel’s hands as it appears he’s a helluva brawler. Could make a powerful Aryan representative.”
Glancing from his eye’s corner, his peripheral taking in Mick’s bristled face while the stern-eyed leader leaned over him, Angus searched for that split second in a fight, waited for that one opening that could change everything, listened to the tall shadow of a man speak at the female, telling her, “You seem to be a feisty gal; keep that spirit ’cause they’s men here and others who hunt that can muster a firm loaf and butter you up a few shakes be it night or day, just hold your wet for us to deal this devil to the meat cellar and let him earn his keep and honor our clan.”
COTTO
Cutting higher and higher above elevation, the sun gave heat to the shadows that cowered. Manny and his men kept themselves shielded behind the peasants. Manny eyed the spread-out peasant, Ricco. Nudged Cotto, told him, “Grab the dead’s ruck of dope from his body.” Cotto didn’t hesitate. Reached and tugged the thick and weighted pack. Manny barked at Ernesto, “You see what direction the carbine flash came from?”
Chub, Minister, and Cotto kept corralled behind the peasants. Looked over their shoulders. Were using them as protection. Ernesto pointed two fingers to his eyes, then to the northeast, where in the far distance a wall of stone lay with breaks around it. Manny pulled his field glasses from his ruck, saw the reflective glare of glass dancing around with what appeared to be two shapes. He twisted and looked behind them, a silhouette was running in their direction. The one who’d been tracking them from the rear.
Turning back around, he mouthed to Ernesto, “Dust is being kicked up, moving toward us from both directions.”
Holding the glasses, Manny was tired and worn. Eyeing Ernesto, he finished with “My guess is they’s two in the rocks and maybe three or four in the vehicle that is bringing a storm for us.”
Ernesto held his pistol at the ready. “Do they look of gringos?”
“Cannot tell, but I’d say they’re connected to the owner of these rucks of dope that the peasants tow.”
Ernesto’s face glimmered with the sweat that began to pour from him like a beef-greased skillet; he wrinkled one eye into his cheek. “How would they know our position of travel?”
Manny reached into his pocket and removed a cell phone. “They’s a tracking device within this cell, the same cell of the men who normally transport the peasants and the dope. My belief was they never got their call for transport, checked in on their transportation, found the house Cotto and I torched.”