The Savage(91)
“Why for?” asked the Sheldon girl.
“To end him and save a kid or two. Keep telling myself they’s once like us in some form or another. If we’s to keep believing they’s no good no more, then what hopes do we possess?”
The Sheldon girl nodded in acknowledgment, kneeled, took a worn pack of matches out. Checking them for dampness. She wrapped the bag back up. Placed it to the ground where a flat rock sat. Visible. Shook the lantern once more. Then pulled the glass back, removed a match from the small box. Fingered out a small wooden match and struck it. Placed it at the wick and the flame took. Standing, she looked at Dorn. “That’s the chance we been offered.”
Dorn nodded. The Sheldon girl held the lantern up, and into the darkness they walked.
*
Within seconds of Sadist Samhain swinging a wide-rounding George Foreman right hook, Angus focused on his breath. Took his anger. Hardened it into energy. Felt the wind of movement coming at him, and his own building on his insides. Knees bent. Body arched backward as if doing a reverse somersault. The bones of Angus’s back popped. He whipped and spun his body. Swiveled his hips and rolled like a disjointed wooden art figurine. Attacked the side of the Sadist’s right knee with the index knuckle of each fist supported by the thumb, a phoenix-eye fist. Shotgunning a stair step of punches. Piercing his way up the thigh, kidney, and ribs. Sadist bared his yellow teeth. Dropped to his knee. Hurt peeled his complexion.
Above the pit people reeled shouts. Cheers and roars. Spitting and tossing hooch from used bottles and cups. Below, Angus came with the backs of his hands at Sadist’s temple. Patting and slapping his face away. Masking his movements, like a boxer readying his jab he was setting up his range of attacks. Reversed one hand’s motion, turned it to a claw, dug into Sadist’s throat. Felt the softness of skin. Ripped away from Sadist, who tried to stand. Came mad at Angus, swinging wild and coughing froth.
Angus rolled his arms out. Spun backward. Dropped and fed a hard-angled kick into the side of Sadist’s knee. His endorphins raked his entire body with sensations of rage. Angus was working on Sadist’s weakness, his give and bend. Keeping him to the ground, while deflecting the onslaught of haymaker attacks.
Catching Sadist’s arm as he fell in pain, Angus clenched Sadist’s wrist. His dopamine was chugging on high gear. He felt pumped with an uncontrolled strength and power. Stripping this man-child’s respect from his peers. He rolled his arm. Locked Sadist’s elbow. Made eye contact with the ridged bloodshot orbs and told him, “You’re fucking weak.” And snapped Sadist Samhain’s arm. Bone pierced flesh, followed the man’s descent forward to the ground, pinned Sadist’s arm behind him. Beneath Angus’s ass and calf. He sat with Sadist beneath him, branding the crowd with his screams. Angus’s body flamed with shivers of rushing endorphins as he studied the lost faces of rural men, not many women. Their scrubbed-out features and lost souls. He wanted out of here but needed to find the soft spot. The breach of weakness.
Then from the lookers above came the shouts and screams, and the man who bore a blade. Who’d released Angus’s wrists. He tossed the same blade down to Angus. He looked up, wanted to return the blade to the man by separation of skin, through the cavity of his chest, and stop the pulse of his heart. Instead the man told Angus, “Remove his scalp.”
*
The belt of sound funneled from the holler and to the cave’s mouth, hemming ears with whoops of battle, caused Dorn’s heart to peel and juice like fresh citrus. Lantern light cut through the dark where walls of rough-textured rock tunneled. Rushing feet and paws sunk into mud. Cold air dampened their hides, while the scents of mollusk encased Dorn and Sheldon’s inhale, the hound pawed alongside, whining every so often.
“What if the lantern fades?”
Rubbing the red-kraut wound about his shoulder, Dorn told Sheldon, “My worry surrounds Cotto with his juvenile militia bringing us our end. Here I thought I could save those who was enslaved, I’s crazed in my beliefs.” Dorn paused, patted his pack, and finished with “I’ve positioned us a backup light.”
“Lantern?”
“A Maglite. Ain’t fired it but it’s got batteries. Snagged from the supplies of Scar. Regardless, this cavern is a straight shot. No bumps, just a cut that opens out the other side of the hill.”
Ache and throb fell upon Dorn’s arm. Baring teeth, he tried to flex his shoulder. A tear traced down his cheek. He’d need a means to solder the wound. Heated metal or iron, he thought, remembering his father, Horace, mending to a hog’s wound once from a puncture. He’d heated a flat square of alloy till it rang orange with the hog fastened down about the fores and the rears and melded the flesh. The hog’s squeals still tattooed his memory. And Sheldon said, “That kid spared your life.”
Snapping back, Dorn said, “August.” The wilt of the hog’s image lying in that barn morphed into the boy’s outline, weighing his thoughts, August’s weight about the ground. Eyes open. The loss of blink. Blood fertilizing leaf. Innocent, Dorn thought, never hurt a fly. “What of him?”
“Where did you cross him?”
As he kept tread with the Sheldon girl, there was the brief rupture of sound. A change in air. Dorn couldn’t put a figure of recognition upon what it was. Maybe his ears needing to pop. But there wasn’t a drastic change in altitude, Dorn thought. He stayed attentive. “Pentecost Bill. Captured by him for the crazed Cotto. Been trapping and holding folks for him.”