The big man staggered back from the sealed window, the stumps of his index and ring fingers spurting blood. A new and improved shriek ripped from him as he gripped his ruined hand, eyes threatening to pop from their cavities like cork guns.
“Jesus Christ,” Morg blurted.
Wayne sunk to one knee and Morg crouched over him, vacillating on exactly how to help.
“Get in the house!” Morg shouted.
The order unfroze Ray. “Huh?”
“Smash out the picture window and get inside! We need something for his hand.”
Ray tore his attention away from the dribbling stumps of Wayne’s hand to the sealed window that had chomped Wayne’s fat fingers off. He scanned the back of the house and, without another thought, snatched up the fallen crowbar. He rushed to the deck out front and stopped. Ray hesitated in front of the picture window, its heavy curtains drawn close, before he wound up with the crowbar. He smashed the glass, blowing shards inward and out in a storm of glitter. Ray doubled his efforts, wondering if a man could bleed to death from having his fingers lopped off. He destroyed the huge pane in seconds, clearing an opening large enough to step through. He shoved the curtains aside. Wide slices of light cut across a living room as he stumbled inside and sidestepped the furniture. Once in, he shot to the kitchen and stopped.
There, right above the sink, was the metallic sheet that had dropped and chopped Wayne’s pudgy meat hooks.
“Ray!” Morg shouted from outside.
Ray broke for the back door and stopped short when he saw the hardware store’s display of bolts and locks, one on top of the other, from the bottom right side and straight up to the top. Dumbfounded, he got to work and started at the bottom. Aware of the time, he slapped open one lock after the other, pausing only to finesse a few that required a twist and a flick before sliding. Ray opened them all, counting a dozen all told, and by the time he finished his fingertips stung.
He pulled open the heavy door.
There, on his knees and in a wide slash of red, was Wayne, white-faced and snarling at his diced hand, squeezing the raw stubs of his fingers together while they continued to spritz like baby tomatoes hacked in halves. Morg pushed by Ray. The lieutenant made a frantic search of the kitchen before rushing toward a door and pulling it open. He darted inside and emerged a second later with a white towel. Not two frantic heartbeats later, Morg returned and bound the thick cloth around Wayne’s crippling wound.
Wayne hissed at the contact, his face perhaps two shades whiter every ticking second, while sinewy cords threatening to uproot themselves from his neck.
“Hold that,” Morg commanded him. “You hold that there. Clamp down on it and get inside.”
“What?” Wayne ejected, spraying spit.
Morg didn’t repeat himself. He pulled the man to his feet and into the kitchen, leaving red tracks on the floor.
Ray followed like a lost dog.
Morg stopped at the sink, gazing down at the pair of fleshy fingers that had no place being where they were. One finger had rolled into the drain and was stopped by a plastic trap. Despite the horror in the sink and his own wounds, Morg once again took command. He turned to a nearby dining table and yanked a chair free from it.
“Sit down,” Morg instructed, pushing Wayne into the chair.
Ray hesitantly took stock of the hairy digits stewing in the sink and snarled with distaste.
“Watch out,” Morg warned and pushed him aside again. The leader snatched up the two fingers and strode to the stainless steel refrigerator. He opened the freezer door, spied a full ice tray and packet. He dropped the fingers on the tray and slapped the packet on top, creating a gruesome sandwich even a bear would shy away from.
“All right,” Morg said as he slammed the freezer door. “I got your fingers on ice, Wayne. I got ’em on ice. We’ll look for a thermal bag and get everything to the car. We’ll be on the road in fifteen minutes, be in Bonavista in thirty. Find a hospital and get a doctor.”
“He can sew them back on?” Wayne sniffled and hitched, red-eyed and pitiful.
“He can sew them back on,” Morg assured him. “You got a good two or three hours at least. Right, Ray?”
Ray blinked as if slapped. “Yeah.”
But he wasn’t concerned with Wayne anymore. The other windows had snatched his attention. Each one on the ground floor—with the exception of the living room—had a similar sheet of metal positioned above the frame, well out of sight. And truly, who the hell would notice such a thing?
“Holy shit,” Ray whispered, inspecting an intricate set of wires and fat wooden pins concealed by thin curtains. He stepped to the nearest trap window to better study the simple mechanics, rigged to drop a flat panel of sharpened metal upon an unwary intruder. The fallen sheet in the kitchen showed the final results.
“Be careful, Ray,” Morg warned.
“I’m not doing nothing,” he answered, flicking his thumb across the sheet metal’s razor edge. “Holy shit.”
He could practically shave with the trap.
“You finished?” Morg asked.
Ray turned around. “They’re all like this. All of them. Except the picture window.”
“Mission’s aborted, okay?”
“Huh?”
“Look, Wayne’s a piece of shit but he needs a doctor. We’re getting out of here.”
The first red blots appeared through the towel around Wayne’s hand. The sight of those colorful blooms made Ray swallow. His throat clicked. He nodded a second later.
As much as he loathed the guy, he needed medical attention. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Check those drawers for a thermal bag or anything we can put his fingers in. And keep them pressed against the ice.” Morg approached a closet to the left of the fridge.
“We’re leaving?” Wayne asked.
“Soon as we can find something to carry your fingers in,” Morg told him and turned the knob on the closet door.
As the door swung open, the three men heard a loud rubber twang, much like the snapping of an archer’s bow. A crossbow bolt skewered Morg’s left hip, dropping him in an instant. Morg rolled onto his back, grunting short, breathless eeee, eeee sounds as if attempting to lift an impossible weight. His hands quivered around the shaft’s flights protruding from his hip. A singular vein popped out on his bulging forehead like a fat purple worm, right down the middle of the golf ball-sized welt Morg had sustained earlier.
As Ray stared in fascinated horror, that purple-hued vein actually flexed as if under extreme duress.
“Ray!” the Pearsons’ lieutenant shrieked.
Morg was no longer concerned with Wayne’s fingers.
The cry froze Ray to the spot as he took a moment to process the scene. Then he rushed to Morg’s side, wary of the closet. He opened the door with a shy push, spotting the weird contraption that resembled a mash-up of a handheld crossbow and a spear gun. The weapon was empty, having unloaded its single shot into Morg’s person.
Ray knelt beside the shaking man and couldn’t think. Morg lay on his good side, angling his impaled hip to Ray’s face. The arrow wiggled with every motion like one half of an insect’s antennae. Morg squirmed violently while blood seeped through the denim of his jeans.
“What do I do?” Ray asked.
“Get a towel. Get a towel. From the bathroom. Over there,” Morg blurted in agony, smashed lips drawn back to reveal the full extent of his remaining dental capacity. “Hurry.”
Ray rushed to the indicated bathroom, ignored the pleasant design and the glossy, walk-in shower. A collection of towels rested on a shelf and he grabbed all of them, thinking he’d seen movies where guys had bled to death from leg wounds. There was an artery in the leg, he realized, a big artery, and if it was punctured, Morg could be dead within a minute.
“Here,” Ray said upon returning to Morg’s stricken form. “I got the towels.”
“Press it, press it around the shaft,” he instructed.
Ray did. The white towels, they were all white, he realized, quickly turned red.
“Put pressure on it, put pressure on it,” Morg gasped.
Ray pressed, drawing a hiss from his companion. Morg stretched out on the hardwood floor and softly yowled until he emptied his lungs.
“Now rip it out,” he whispered urgently.
“What?”
“Rip that cocksucker out.”
“You could bleed to death.”
“Not––can’t bleed to death,” Morg shook his head like a dog fresh out of a pool. “Can’t happen. It’s not, not in the meat, it’s in the fuckin’ joint. Right in the ball joint. Spiked in between.”
“Should we leave it in there? I mean, isn’t that what they say to do?”
“Jesus,” Morg swore, and, with a gritty display of will and strength, grabbed the shaft and yanked it out himself.
Except the shaft didn’t come free.
Morg’s hand slipped off the short arrow and he released a wheezy scream of pure agony. He lay back, panting, delirious from the effort, and attempted to draw his legs up to his stomach. That didn’t work either.
Ray grabbed the blood-slicked shaft. He couldn’t pull it loose. He placed another towel over what little the protruding bolt offered and couldn’t maintain a grip.
“Shed,” Morg whispered as his eyes narrowed. “Shhhhh…”
The shed. Ray saw that Morg wasn’t going to be screaming for the next little while, so he looped a towel around his thigh, hiking it up and around the shaft as close as possible. He made a knot and pulled it tight, hoping that the tourniquet would work for a short time.
Ray stood and rushed outside, leaving Wayne to watch over the unconscious Morg.
Ray snatched the crowbar up from where Wayne had dropped it. A thick padlock greeted him at the shed’s door, but he was operating in overdrive. He hammered the lock until it cracked and fell. Remembering the booby-trapped closet, he stepped out of the way of the door and flung it wide.
Nothing fired.
He peeked around the corner and saw nothing rigged to maim or kill. The interior appeared spotless. Dust free. An assortment of hand tools hung from a peg wall. Handsaws, hammers, nails, even a chainsaw. Five-kilogram sacks of limestone were stacked in a corner. Ray spotted a pair of heavy pliers. He grabbed them and ran.
Wayne had a sweaty, decidedly hopeful expression when Ray returned to the kitchen. Morg remained unconscious, all color drained from his cheeks.
“You find anything?” Wayne asked.
Ray ignored him and fastened the pliers onto the bolt’s shaft. Morg moaned, squirmed. Ray took hold of the tool in both hands, adjusted his grip, and pulled.
The arrow came free in a bloody burst, but nothing resembling the geyser Ray had expected to see. He grabbed a nearby towel and pressed down on the wound, noting that the puncture was exactly where Morg had called it—right in the joint itself.
“You can tie that off?” Wayne asked, sounding groggy.
“Maybe.” Ray left the towel and stretched out his last one. He tied it off in a second makeshift tourniquet and sat back, breathing hard.
“He gonna die?” Wayne asked.
“I dunno. I don’t think so. Doesn’t seem to be so much blood now.”
“It’s all over the floor.”
And so it was. In his rush to help, Ray had missed how the blood, all warm and syrupy, had pooled around Morg’s lower body and his own knees. He inspected his hands. Both looked like he’d just performed surgery.
“Wayne, I gotta go.”
“Huh?”
“I gotta get back to Bern. Get him up here. I’ll need help carrying Morg to his car. You can’t do shit with that hand of yours.”
“What?” Wayne said, not processing the information, his features pinched.
“Are you listenin’ to me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Ray could see the man wasn’t, however. He stood and went to the front door.
“Where you goin’?” Wayne nearly shrieked, his eyes revealing horror.
“Said I’m goin’ to get Bern and bring him back here.” Ray worked the locks.
“You’re leaving us!”
“I’m not leavin’ you, y’fuckin’ moron, I’m gettin’ Bern. Just watch Morg until we get back here.”
Wayne rose from the chair and stuck his chin out. “You’re fuckin leavin’ us both behind, you piece of cowshit. I knew you were a dickless wonder from the very start. Swear to God above I’ll—”
Ray didn’t have time, didn’t need Wayne’s rants, and certainly didn’t want the mounting pressure, so he punched the man in the gut, doubling Wayne over. He followed up with a punishing left to the head. The bigger man collapsed, dazed and sputtering.
Seeing Wayne doubling up in a sprawl left Ray shaking his head in anger. Striking the bastard down probably wasn’t the smartest of moves, but given the situation and Ray’s own potentially curt demeanor, it just came natural.
Knowing Wayne, however, payback would come at the worst possible time.
“Christ,” Ray muttered and opened the door. I’ll be back, he thought and ran outside. He sprinted across the front lawn as if he were fresh from a starter’s gate in a hundred-meter dash. Once on the road, every footfall kicked up pebbles. Trees sped by and in short time, the adrenaline faded. Ray slowed to a jog, surprised his cardio had failed him so quickly, and chugged onwards. Images of Morg lying on the floor and a pissed-off Wayne Roberts filled his mind. What exactly had happened at the cabin? At least two elaborate traps had been waiting for them inside the weekend retreat. Who knew they were coming? Had they been set up? And if so, why?
Somehow, Ray found the energy to run faster.
The van came into view and he steamed toward it, arms pumping. At a glance, he couldn’t see Bernie anywhere.
“Bern!” Ray slowed to a stop and placed a hand on the van’s hood. Both tires remained flat. “Bern! Where are ya?”
No answer.
Gasping and not appreciating the dread rising inside his chest, Ray hurried to the van’s rear. No Bernie. No Bernie snoozing inside the vehicle, either.
“Bernie!” Ray’s voice cracked at the height of his scream. The stoic forest crowded in from the edges, barring light and encouraging shadows, a faceless entity that sought to smother the lost man. Ray whirled and scanned the dense thickets, his senses wired, seeing and hearing nothing and no one, verifying Bernie was indeed gone.
The car. Morg’s car. Back on the road. That’s where he’d gone. Bern had obviously needed something. Ray slapped the van’s ass and moved on, renewed by his logic. He chugged along like an engine about to explode. His waning strength reduced him to short strides, and even those felt like he was slogging through deep snow. His chest stretched and heaved, his legs were slabs of lead. He reached the rope hanging across the lane and ducked under, grabbing the woven length and rattling the low-hanging sign.
“Bern!”
Morg’s car came into view but nothing else.
“The fuck…” Ray coughed, standing at the mouth of the junction. He scanned the dense forest in every direction, then walked to the car and slapped his hands against the glass. Morg’s ride was empty, the door unlocked. Ray pulled open the door and had one leg inside when he realized there was no way he could drive the thing around the van. Even worse, Morg still had his keys.
“The hell are you, man?” Ray stood and flapped his arms in frustration. He walked back to the rope, bracing his lower spine with his hands. Bernie might have gone for a leak or a dump, but Ray doubted it. His friend would’ve responded.
Feeling tendrils of desperation tightening around his vitals, Ray trudged past the sign and headed back to the cabin. The woods felt darker, even though there were still two hours of sunlight left to the afternoon. No sound permeated the dense fir wall, and that played upon Ray’s mind. He stopped and listened, hearing only the flatlined drone in his eardrums. Sunlight retreated from the forest heights, escaping the scene as if knowing better, as if knowing it was wise to get to safety before dark. Ray wiped the sweat from his face and forced himself to walk faster along that twisted, dead snake spine of a country back road. He glanced over his shoulder with increasing frequency, recalling childhood ghost stories of haunted woods. Bern was out there somewhere but, for whatever reason, unable to answer. Ray scanned the thickets as he jogged back to the cabin, searching for clues and finding none.
An air of violation hung over the cabin, with its picture window smashed out and the door closed. Wayne must’ve been feeling the breeze from his own asshole. Ray dragged himself across the lawn, damn near exhausted, and plodded onto the deck. Boots clomped across the carefully fitted planks as he tried the door and found it locked.
Ray pressed his face against the wood. “It’s me.”
The curtains fluttered and a guarded Wayne peeked from the far side. “You came back.”
“‘Course I fuckin’ came back. I said I would.”
“Took you long enough.”
“Open the door.”
“Thought you bugged out,” Wayne said. “You were gone fuckin’ thirty minutes almost.”
“Open the door or I’ll climb in through the fuckin’ window.”
Wayne shut up and reluctantly did as told. He even closed the door once Ray was inside.
“Where’s Bernie?”
“I dunno.”
The cabin’s interior had dimmed considerably, and Wayne looked even more like shit. His eyes were sunken with charcoal shading the bags underneath, leaving him resembling a person who’d just come off a weeklong chemical bender. He cradled his towel-swaddled hand, the fabric wet and splotched. Wayne looked a little crazy, perhaps from the blood loss and definitely from losing a pair of fingers. Ray very much didn’t want to have to deal with him.
“Whaddaya mean you dunno?” Wayne demanded, mouth hanging open and poised to bite.
“He wasn’t at the van.”
“He’s at the car, then.”
“He’s not there either. I checked.”
“You look around?”
“Course I looked around. He’s gone.”
“Well, where the fuck is he?” Wayne seethed.
“I said I don’t know,” Ray shouted in return. “Maybe he went for a shit in the bushes and planted his ass crack over a bear trap or something. Or a lynx snapped him one across the ball sack in mid-squat and left him unconscious. He’s not out there. Nowhere in fucking sight.”
“Hey.”
The whisper quieted both men. They turned to see Morg lifting a bloody hand. A set of keys rested upon his palm.
“Get me to my feet,” the Pearsons’ lieutenant groaned. “Give me an extra shoulder and I’ll walk out.”
Ray and Wayne exchanged dubious looks. Spread out in a congealed puddle of his own morbid juices, with his earlier facial wounds fully in bloom and his forehead’s contusion swollen to epic proportions, Morg looked as if God had heel-stomped him into the dirt like a finished cigarette.
“You sure?” Ray asked.
Grimacing, Morg forced himself to a sitting position. The very effort probably caused more bleeding.
Ray went to the fallen man and helped Morg stand. The battered leader clutched Ray around his neck and at one point, threatened to choke the last few grains of energy from him.
“All right,” Morg groaned. “Wayne. Get your fingers outta the freezer. We walk outta here.”
“Don’t we need a bag?”
“Wrap them up in a towel with the ice.”
“Oh, okay, yeah. Sure, sure.” Wayne was all for leaving.
“You okay, man?” Ray asked the battered man hanging off his shoulder.
“Nah. Whole leg’s fucked up. Hip is screaming. So’s my face.”
‘Could’ve been worse.”
“Yeah, could’ve been my pecker, right?”
Ray smiled. “Can you walk for fifteen?”
“I’ll limp for thirty,” Morg groaned. “As long as we get to a hospital. Don’t worry about Bern. He’ll show up along the way.”
Ray wasn’t as confident.
“Got ’em,” Wayne said, holding up a dish towel that resembled a checkered picnic bag.
“Get on ahead,” Morg ordered as they gathered at the front door. “And don’t rush me. All right. Let’s boot ’er.”
Wayne took hold of the knob and shot a quick, menacing glare in Ray’s direction, which he understood without fail. Wayne was going to stay on the team for now, but he and Ray would eventually have words for the earlier cheap shot. Ray had no doubt of that.
The big enforcer pulled the door open.
He stuck his head out and an arrow split the air like a low-flying jet, sinking into the wooden frame with a loud whack, just inches away from Wayne’s face. He jumped as if an exceptionally hot poker had been shoved up his ass and fused it shut.
“Jesus Christ!” Wayne shouted and slammed the door shut, crashing into the two men behind him and tipping them over. Ray fell with a grunt and took Morg with him.
Another arrow twacked into the cabin’s clapboard hide, placed near the first shot.
“The fuck was that?” Ray groaned as Wayne’s size-twelve boots clattered past his head, sending vibrations through the floor.
“Someone’s shootin’ at us!” Wayne wailed back.