The Savage(81)

Over the months he’d multiplied them in numbers. Some had long hair, some medium length, others colored pink, fire-engine red or moss green on their ends, while their natural colors grew back. They’d piercings, concert shirts, or bright-colored cotton worn to holed and ragged. Some were skinny. Lean or athletic, those who had been obese had been whittled down in stature. Starved of sugars. Nourished with rice, beans, and mystery meats. Their frames wafted vinegary and tart from bathing in the river. They mirrored the others who had followed direction, those who formed ten lines of five. Their hands at their sides, watching and waiting to learn the discipline of soldiering. To be prepared for raids and the slaughter of their own.

They were children, boys, younger and older, ripped from families. Their fathers murdered before them. Their mothers, enslaved and unseen.

Day after day. Week after week, the young boys were awoken at the crack of dawn. Fed. Shuffled into groups of five. Shown how to shoot their rifles, how to load the banana clips of the AKs. Given cocaine cut with gunpowder. Sometimes heroin or marijuana. Shown how to ingest the drugs through snorting or smoking. Cotto had to put his drugs to good use, considering they’d no longer earn him tender. They’d yield him blood and territory.

At first some would not give in. Take the drugs. They were forced. Some died immediately, as their bloodstream couldn’t handle the rush rocketing to their hearts. They were hidden deep beneath the soil of a mass grave dug by the hands of the orphaned males who could handle the excitement. Their bodies able to withstand the surge of potency. Those were the ones left with the pang of addiction shotgunning through their young arteries, and they soon found a way to numb the hurt and shock of what they were living within, exiled as junkie soldiers in a rural hell.

But now, after weeks and months of training, it all came down to the survival of the strongest, and Cotto had lined the young men who could not meet his demands to become soldiers, lined them up in front of those who could and had survived his training; the weak ones stood snot-nosed and scared. Bloodshot eyes, smeared by dirt that rimmed their cheeks and nostrils, meshed with bruise and confusion.

Cotto pointed. “These that stand before you are those that would not heed my words, week after week. Would not listen to command nor follow direction, month after month. Now they will kneel, pay the tokens for their stubbornness.”

Each stood, their hands zip-tied tightly in front of them. Shirtless and pale. Some with lips busted like spores of bacteria. Others with red encasing and running from their nostrils. Cotto’s men stood behind each boy. Kicked them from behind in the bends below their hamstrings, helped them kneel quicker. Then the men backed away as another man came behind the first boy, whose hair broomed down over his eyes, cheeks gored by pus that expanded like terrain on a U.S. map. The man stood with a length of leather. Reared his arm back, snapped the leather over the boy’s back. The boy rolled his lips to bare his teeth and gums, while his eyes juiced moist and he screamed, “No, please! No! I’ll do as you tell, I’ll—” He tried to stand, was popped by the leather once more, and dropped down face-first to the ground, whimpering and slobbering in pain. Cotto told the boy, “You’ll do as commanded and this is your reminder.”

All of the boys’ faces filled with tears, those watching and those being corrected. Their cheeks watered in front of one another. Torsos twitched as if being surged by electricity. A learning tool that bad things happen in a world turned to ruin. When rules have been omitted.

The man who wielded the leather pulled the first boy up by his locks, lashed him five times, bringing swells and blood. Then he moved to the next, who tremored about the bony indentions of back, tactile arms, and green hair. A puddle of warm spread down the inner thighs of the boy’s legs. The first lash dropped the boy to his chest. Cotto stood, shaking his head. “Weak,” he muttered. “When I was of your age, fifteen or sixteen, I was on the front lines with my father. Earning as a man. Each of you are worms who’ve had a spoon held before your mouths for too damn long.”

Afraid to move, to turn away from what their minds were registering, all of the boys mashed their eyes shut for long jags of time. Hoping the sounds of cruelty would end. Lessen. That this nightmare that they’d found themselves within would cease so they could get a fix and uncover silence. Recess into the caves of their consciences. Find that time before everything went so wrong. Only it was about to get worse.

And now all of the training came down to this as Cotto told the young soldiers, “Those who’ve followed my words shall have their first mission tomorrow morning led by me and my men. Each shall administer at least one kill or be killed themselves.”

*

Morning dew coated leaves, limbs, and ridges of farmland and forest greens and tans like fresh fluid from a ruptured artery, while the band of men and boys dug into the perimeter of hillside surrounding the encampment of Scar McGill and her militia.

Fingers rested on triggers, eyes followed those who stood within tree stands in ragged clothing bearing high-powered rifles, keeping a lookout for the threat of unknown and unwanted trespass.

Cotto had handpicked five teams of ten boys led by his own Mutts, each heavily armed with AKs, ammo, and explosives. Their complexions painted like humans devoid of tissue or fiber, just coal blacks and chalky whites, similar to the ink that decorated Cotto’s appearance. Sergio had ridden within the dark of late morning, sat center, guiding direction, the way he’d traveled behind the backs of Cotto and the Mutts. Warm country air twigged his face, offered the last remnants of feeling or sight, elements of a life that’d been taken for granted, a nature he’d never know again once the ATVs they rode were finally parked more than a mile away from McGill’s encampment. Five men led ten boys spread out into a web of dope-induced bodies anticipating their first kills below the stone embankments.