I am on the move before I have a chance to talk myself out of it. A second scream of terror echoes from the barn. Skirting around the rim of the fire, I realize that running toward fresh blood is the stupidest thing I’ve done all day, but I ignore the red warning flags waving like mad in my mind and race for the tree line to conceal my approach.
The low hanging branches of a great white oak tree are heavy with new leaves that will provide partial cover for my climb. I weave among the unevenly spaced tree trunks, keeping the barn in sight while I work to give myself a decent vantage point. When I am less than a hundred feet away, I drop to my knees and listen.
My heart thumps against my rib cage but it is not a result of the sprint that I just finished. It is from adrenaline that spiked through me at the first hint of blood.
“Keep it together,” I scold under my breath as I try to clear my thoughts. When sheer willpower proves inadequate to keep my mouth from watering, I dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand until I feel the skin part and the pain helps to ground me.
Once I am directly across from the barn, I bend my knees and leap high to grasp a sizeable branch and swing myself up into an oak tree nearest the building. The speed of my swing takes my breath away and before I can blink I am crouched perfectly on the branch.
“Holy shit.” I press my hand against my chest to feel the racing of my heart. Heavy doses of adrenaline pump through my body, setting my nerves alight with hyper awareness so that I am ready to act at a moment’s notice.
Another cry of pain refocuses me and this time I hear a resounding smack followed by whimpering.
“I told you to shut your whiny trap,” a man’s gravelly voice rises from the barn’s interior and I grit my teeth. “Don’t think I won’t gag you.”
I take hold of a higher branch and begin to climb, intent on reaching a height that will allow me to look down into the barn from above and get a lay of the land before I make my move. The bark is scratchy against my hands as I climb and I feel a twinge of pain as bits of wood burrow into the half-moon cuts in my palms.
Nestling as high as I dare to trust the tree to sustain my weight, I inch my way out onto a wide branch nearest the open barn window and look in. The opening is large enough for a man to lie down across the expanse twice and affords me a view of the rolled bales of hale in the loft, empty horse stalls on the main floor and various farm equipment along the walls. A large green tractor sits in one corner, partially concealed under a dusty covering. Along the wall I spy various woodworking tools and a work bench beyond, but there is no sign of movement.
This area is not nearly as clean as the house.
“Stop!” a young man calls out in a strained voice. I search for his whereabouts but he is concealed from sight by the expanse of the loft floor that stretches out in front of me. “Please, take me instead. She’s just a little girl!”
The old man does not respond. Instead I hear an odd sound, like something grating against metal and with a start I realize that I know what he is doing. It is same sound that I heard each time I used to sharpen the blade of my ax against a stone while living on the road. When I glance back at the wall of tools I see that one space is empty, but there is no way for me to know exactly what was there before.
“Listen to me. She’s all skin and bones. She’s no good to you,” the boy yells again.
This time I spy movement along the floor and realize that it is a shadow. It is low to the ground and appears stretched. He must be sitting near a lantern and is mostly likely tied up to prevent him from interfering, but what does the girl’s weight have anything to do with it? Is the man trying to force her to do some sort of heavy labor work and she’s resisting?
When the girl’s soft whimpering rises tenfold as I hear footsteps and her frantic cries shift into muffled screams, I realize something terrible is happening below. Shifting slightly farther out on the tree branch, I search for a landing spot inside the barn. The gap between the end of the branch and the opening is a good ten feet, easily manageable, but I have to make sure I don’t miss my target and plummet to the ground below.
“I’m begging you. Please, don’t do this!” The desperation in the boy’s voice makes my chest ache for him as I remember similar feelings of helplessness when I lay beneath my mother’s hospital bed as she was gutted and drained.
I am about to leap forward when the scent of newly spilled blood paralyzes me. The girl’s shriek pierces the night and if I had not already had a death grip on the tree, I might have fallen.
The boy thrashes and kicks out his feet just far enough for me to see the tips of his toes. “No!”
I swallow hard, fighting against the wave of hunger that swells within me as the girl’s blood invades my nose and sets my blood boiling. I close my eyes and push out every ounce of air that I can spare from my lungs so that I can reign myself in, but I am so weak from my journey without food and tasting Ryker’s wounds has enabled me to instantly revive the memory of his warm blood on my lips and I nearly succumb to my desires.
My body burns with an internal fire, as if flames were lit beneath my feet, and I am lost to the ecstasy that I know one taste would bring me of the girl’s blood. So sweet and filled with life giving nourishment. My fingers dig into the flesh of the tree as I fight to push down my hunger and it is only when Nox’s face fills my vision that I feel an ounce of control return.
Seconds later, the girl’s screams go supersonic. They rattle around in my brain and I am forced to release one hand on the tree to clutch my stomach as bile rises in my throat with an acidic burn that helps to stave off the hunger.
She is a little girl, I repeat over and over again.
I have heard many people die since the outbreak began. Some die well, fast and painless, but far too many are forced to suffer before their end comes. I have heard the screams of people being eaten alive and this girl could easily match them shriek for shriek.
“You bastard! I’ll kill you for hurting her!”
My eyes snap open at the boy’s shout and I see red, almost like a physical veil of shimmering color has fallen over my vision. The unseen girl’s face takes form in my mind as the young girl I tried and failed to save back at the Opryland hotel two months before. Nox had entrusted me to keep his young friend, Chloe, safe and I let her fall to her death. Though I made every attempt afterward to save her life, I still failed and her death continues to haunt me. I could not save Chloe, but I’ll be damned if I let this girl die while I sit idly by.
“No one threatens me, boy,” the old man rages from below. I hear a clattering of metal and then loud stomping of boots against the wooden floorboards. Before I can make the leap through the window and onto one of the rafters, I hear a loud crunch followed by a howl of pain.
“Let that be a lesson for you,” I hear the man spit and then walk away.
Taking a deep breath of the last fresh air I will be able to fill my lungs with, I make the ten foot leap through the window and land on my intended rafter. I waver slightly and am forced to distribute my weight to a second beam that crisscrosses nearby. I manage to stabilize myself at the last second. I feel a slight tremor in the wood reverberate up through my legs when I land, but my presence goes unnoticed by those below.
Craning my neck around to the right, I find the wounded girl lying on a long wooden table attached to the wall. She appears to be no more than seven or eight years old, with hair the color of wheat and skin so pale she looks as if she hasn’t seen the sun in months. Her clothes are soiled, her hair is slick with oil and her nails are caked with dirt. Her shoulders are thin and her collar bone juts out of her shirt neckline. The boy was right. She really is nothing more than skin and bones.
That same teenage boy sits on a small square hay bale less than twenty feet away from the girl with his hands bound by rope and a cloth shoved in his mouth to silence his cries of pain. His eyes are wide with hatred and his lips are deeply cracked from prolonged dehydration. His nose looks as if it has been forcibly shoved to the right side of his face. Judging by the rapid swelling and gush of blood, this is the source of his most recent injury.
His clothes are filthy just like the girl’s. His dark matted hair curls around his chin and his jeans show signs of dried blood and a puncture hole about two inches wide. From this height, it is hard to judge the nature of the wound, but if I had to guess, I would say the old man either shot the boy with a gun or drove an arrow through the top of his thigh. Either way, the man has proven to be more than willing to hurt these two kids and that makes me seethe with anger.
Killing Flesh Bags and hurting adults is one thing but to maim and torture a child is sadistic.
The teenager looks less wasted than the girl but far from what I would imagine his normal physique could be. He probably has not been here as long. Judging by the purple shadowing along his right eye he isn’t the best at following orders or keeping quiet either.
I can’t help but wonder how long these two have been trapped here. Days? Weeks? Months?
Casting my gaze around the room, I spy a square crack in the floor with a pull handle where a pile of hay has been shoved aside. That must be where he’s been keeping them.
So far I have yet to be able to see past the man’s broad shoulders where he stands beside the girl, blocking her torso from view as she strains against the leather straps. A wide brimmed straw hat covers his head. It isn’t until he tilts his head down to focus on his work that I am able to spy white curls of hair at the base of his neck. His clothes are patched and threadbare in places, just like the ones I saw in the closet. An old apron is tied at his neck and around his back.
He hums a child’s nursery rhyme as he works despite the girl’s pleading whimpers. That has to be the creepiest thing I’ve ever witnessed.
I move along the rafters, ducking low through one opening to reach another beam until I am directly above the girl. What I see below me makes me stop and stare in horror. In a shallow cast iron grilling tray sits the girl’s severed hand and forearm. The bone has been sawed cleanly through with a bloody cleaver just above her elbow. Blood drips down from the wooden table and splatters on the man’s work boots but he pays it no mind.
Her young face has drained of color as she stares at the remaining stump of her arm. Her mouth twists in a silent scream of horror before her eyes roll back into her head and she finally passes out from the pain. The man begins to whistle as he latches two additional straps across her chest before he moves off toward a wood burning stove. It is only when he bends to stoke it that I notice a small old fashioned iron warming on top of it.
I close my eyes as I realize that despite his earlier butchery, he must be preparing to cauterize her wound. The girl is lucky to have already passed out.
What sort of sick fuck cuts off a little girl’s arm and then patches her up afterward? I watch him place the grill pan with the hand on top of the stove. He scoops a bit of lard out of a small container with his finger and then sprinkles in a couple of pinches of herbs.
All hint of my former hunger vanishes and I cling to the rafter as I realize what he’s doing. He’s planning on feeding off that little girl!
As horrified as I may be at my own uncontrollable hunger for human flesh, I am part zombie now. This man, this beast, is nothing more than a sick monster without feeling. The urge to grab my gun and shoot the bastard in the head is almost strong enough to follow through on, but it would be a death far too kind for the likes of him.
The boy thrashes against the floor as the scent of the little girl’s cooking flesh fills the barn, toppling himself onto his side, but still he tries to work the gag out of his mouth to yell. I can only imagine how many useless hours he has screamed for help while trapped in that hole in the ground and no one came. The road leading to this house has obviously not been traveled for quite some time and anyone who could have heard the cries for help and stopped might have proven to have intentions far worse than this old guy.
The man barely glances at the teenage boy as he places his hand in an elbow length black leather glove and takes hold of the iron. The bottom of it glows orange from the heat as he turns and walks slowly toward the unconscious girl.
Every fiber in my being wants to drop down from the rafters onto the man and snap his neck before he can hurt that child again but I know this must be done. If the wound is not sealed properly, she could bleed out and die. The only reason I choose to let him live now is to allow him to give her the care that she needs. This is obviously not the first time he has severed a limb and he is smart enough not about to let his food go to waste.
He will take good care of her now that he has what he wants. I just need to bide my time before I strike. Then he will pay.
Forcing myself to ignore the boy’s cries, I listen for other sounds of heartbeats in the barn and realize that apart from the three down below, no one else is here. I glance back over at my shoulder outside and hang my head as I realize my mistake. He isn’t burning the Flesh Bags that attacked. He is getting rid of the evidence of his last victim.
In the far corner I spy a shovel with dried dirt still on the head. Something darker is smeared there and I would bet my life that it’s blood.
This boy and girl must be the last among his prisoners. If that is the case, judging by the sad state these two are in, he will be forced to start looking for replacements soon.
“There you go, my pretty. All better.” The man’s crooning voice breaks off into a coughing fit. He turns his head to the side to spit a nasty wad of phlegm onto the floor and I spy a bit of blood in the mixture.
Good. I hope he chokes on it next time, I think as he sets the iron on its end and removes the glove, pausing to wipe his hands on the soiled apron that he wears. I watch as he opens the top drawer of a tool cabinet and removes a roll of gauze that is several shades darker than white. For the little girl’s sake, I hope that he has at least sanitized it after the last victim he bandaged up.
My peripheral vision catches movement below and I turn to see that the teenage boy has noticed my presence from where he lies on the floor. He blows out a hard breath and his hair shifts out of his eyes to stare up at me. He falls completely still, no doubt afraid of drawing further attention to himself or to me, and pleads for help with his eyes.
I wish that I could offer him a reassuring smile but the scent of blood is still too strong and I fear that my smile will turn more into a baring of my teeth that will terrify him instead. I place a silencing finger over my lips and then move along the rafters back toward the window that I jumped through before. Tucking my gun into the back of my pants, I climb into the window sill and prepare to jump.
No matter what discomfort being near that injured girl will bring to me, or how much distance I may be losing by delaying here instead of trying to catch Wiemann’s trail, I can’t turn my back on them and let this monster carve them into little pieces. I will stay and fight for them, but I have to do it the right way.
If the old man is going to need a new victim, I intend to give him one.