He secured a chain around my neck and knocked me on my ass before walking away.
I immediately wrapped my hands around the thick metal and pulled to no avail, agitating the raw skin on my palms.
“This can’t be happening to me.” I gritted my teeth and tried again, yanking with all the strength I had.
“It’s not going to give. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
I stopped and looked across the barn in the direction the voice had come from.
A girl who looked to be a few years younger than me was chained to the adjacent wall. The sun filtering in from outside bounced off a long, chocolate brown hair and illuminated a pair of cognac colored eyes.
Various flower and henna tattoos were inked on her bronze skin.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, taking a good look around.
“Two days, maybe three. She was here before me.” She gestured to a dead girl strapped down on an old table near the back of the barn.
The rancid smell emanating from a quad of rusted oil drums lining the front wall was self-explanatory, as was the rotting torso lying in front of them. Only the head was left; the rest of whoever it had once been was either in one of the barrels or someone’s stomach.
“He’s coming back,” she warned quietly.
I pressed my back against the wall to give myself a full view of what was going on, wincing from the sharp pain in my side. The lumberjack entered the barn with a hacksaw in one hand and a little boy’s in the other.
We watched in silence as they walked right by us to the table in the back.
“Grab the buckets, Dex.”
The little boy did as he was told, taking off and returning with two round, bloodstained pails. He sat them down by the edge of the table before climbing up on a stool so that he could watch the man I assumed was his dad work.
“Remember to keep your hands off,” the man warned the kid as he began sawing into the dead woman’s arm.
You could hear the blade sliding back and forth, cutting through bone and muscle.
“I saw that man stab you,” he said after a minute. “Shame. If I wasn’t a married man, I might keep yer for myself.”
What a goddamn nightmare that would be.
“I acquired Arlen over there when her uncle was kind enough to stop and offer me a ride. That’s him.”
He gestured towards the decapitated torso lying by the oil drums. I glanced at Arlen; she was now staring down at the ground.
Generally, I didn’t feel bad for people, but I hoped for her sanity’s sake she didn’t have to watch that happen.
The man resumed his sawing, occasionally saying something to the kid as he stripped the body down and tossed random bits into the buckets.
“Now, yer never wanna eat the brain. It ain’t good fer nothing but C-J-D. That’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,” he explained, loud enough for us all to hear. “Ribs, well, who doesn’t like a good barbeque?” he joked.
“The forearms are tough meat. My wife likes to use those chunks for soup. The shoulders need some work to make tender but once yer do then yer get a nice blade steak. Oh, and anything on the back is gonna give yer some good choice cuts. Now, can either of yer pretty ladies guess what my favorite part is?”
He glanced between me and Arlen with a disgusting toothy smile as he flipped the body onto its stomach.
The arm he’d been working on dangled by a small band of tendons that slowly pulled apart.
“It’s the buttocks!” He laughed and slapped the dead girl’s ass. “Put it in a slow cooker for a few hours, and it reminds me of my momma’s Sunday roast.”
Neither of us said a word. I had no idea why he felt the need to share all of this, but it was information I never needed nor cared to know.
I’d heard all about cannibals before. They refused to be simple outliers, and no one else would accept them. The Savages didn’t exactly have an open-door policy, and there was no way in hell they could live in Centriole—the megalopolis.
Like everyone else though, they usually cliqued up in groups; safety in numbers and all that jazz.
They were unable to get food through connections or other means, so animals and people were their only options.
Nevertheless, hearing about something and seeing it were two entirely different things.
I listened to his heavy breaths as he grew tired and began to sweat. I turned away when he started to strip down individual bone, using the claw of a hammer to pull and pry.
After another stretch of silence, he began to whistle as he worked. Tuning out the noise around me, I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling.
A giant cockroach darting down my arm woke me up.
I smacked it off and watched it take off across the dirt floor. The chain around my neck clinked at the sudden movement, instantly reminding me of where I was.
Looking out the open barn door, I saw it had begun to drizzle. The hazy blue-gray sky signaled it was early dawn.
I’d lost a full day thanks to a cannibal.
I took my first real breath and had never been more grateful for having a strong stomach. The smell of decaying flesh was so potent it burned my nose hairs.
Just for the hell of it, I tugged on the chain again, knowing it wasn’t going to magically unlock itself or come off the wall.
“He keeps the keys on a belt loop,” Arlen flatly commented.
She seemed resigned to the fact that we would be sautéed like fillets and then eaten with a side of flesh rolls. I was determined that wasn’t going to happen. This was just a minor setback I should have foreseen.
Every time I thought I was finally getting somewhere, this bitch called life decided she would try and break me down again.
I thought she would have fucked off by now and realized it would never happen.
I had already been to hell and back and now it was a part of me. There wasn’t much she could throw my way that I wouldn’t overcome. I think she forgot all the cards I’d already been dealt.
“Okay, Cali, you got this.” Looking around, I studied what was left of the woman on the table. Damn near all the flesh had been stripped from her bones, except for her face, which was untouched.
Not only did this make a plan begin to form in my head, but it made the inverted cross tattooed beneath her eye stand out like a beacon in the night. If she were part of Romero’s group, that meant they had to be around this area, just as Tito had said.
“You look like you might have a plan,” Arlen said, suddenly sounding much more alert.
I looked back at her and smiled.
I didn’t know shit about this girl but I wasn’t going to leave her here to become someone’s midnight snack.
Glancing out the door to make sure Lumberjack wasn’t coming, I began to explain.