I bit down on my lip and pushed two dirt-clad fingers into my stab wound.
“Fuck, this hurts.” Breathing through my mouth, I blinked to clear away gathering tears.
Arlen made a sound in her throat, watching me with a frown. Blood quickly seeped through my already stained shirt. I pulled my fingers out and pushed down on the inflamed skin, leaning over so blood would drip down on the ground, stopping when my head grew fuzzy and it felt like I would throw up.
I’m not sure how long we sat before Lumberjack showed up, reacting just like I thought he would.
“Oh, no, yer don’t!” He rushed towards me, grabbing for his key. “If yer dying I gotta skin yer now or the meat will go bad.”
I didn’t move from where I’d purposely slouched on the ground. I let him unlock the padlock, remove the chain, and drag me towards his table.
As I played half-dead, I couldn’t help but wonder how many people had been alive and fully aware of what was going on as they were dismembered limb by limb. Not that I cared; I was just curious.
His mistake was underestimating my will to survive. He lifted me up and dropped me down right on top of the bare torso. Bones shifted and collapsed beneath my weight, pressing into my back. I swallowed repeatedly in an effort not to throw up from the smell.
As soon as he turned to grab one of his buckets, I reached for the hacksaw he’d left near the edge of the table.
There were still pieces of tissue and flesh embedded between the ribbed blades.
I gripped the blood-crusted handle and swung without hesitation.
He screamed and bowed forward as the blade made contact with the back of his upper thigh. Before he could get up, I swung again, sucking in a breath as pain shot up the entire left side of my body.
This time, the blade hit the back part of his neck. Instead of pulling it out, I pushed in, making a seesaw motion to wedge it in place.
“You cannibalistic fucker!” Arlen yelled triumphantly.
I swung down off the table and pushed him over. He reached for his neck and I went for the key, ripping it right through his worn belt-loop.
Key in hand, I ran to Arlen, letting out a quick breath of relief when it easily fit into the padlock holding her chain on.
“Bill?” someone called from outside of the barn just as her chain hit the floor.
We froze and looked at one another. The person called out again, sounding a little closer. Bill stood up and stumbled forward, making an attempt to yell for help.
With the saw no longer wedged in his neck, blood flowed freely, spurting around meaty fingers.
“We need to go,” Arlen rushed out.
She grabbed my hand and pulled us closer to the wall, using shadows to cover us.
“Bill!” a woman screamed from just outside the barn’s doorway.
She barreled right past us and we wasted no time slipping out. I still heard her screaming as we took off through a field to the right of the depleted building. A screen door slammed shut shortly after.
“They went that way,” were the only clear words I understood over the loud commotion.
“Shit! How many of them are there?” I asked as we zigzagged our way through the tall grass.
“Five…four…” Arlen responded, before gasping out, “Woods!”
We made a break for it, hearing multiple male voices calling out behind us. My heart felt as if it were going to beat out of my damn chest. Adrenaline had my brain so focused on getting away I almost forgot about the bloody hole leaking down my side.
The drizzle had turned into a light rain and the ground was wet. I saw the steep embankment but Arlen didn’t. I managed to slide into a stop; she fell forward and grabbed for me, taking us down together.
A list of expletives flew from my mouth as my body rolled over hers and we tumbled like logs. Leaves and mud clung to me like Velcro. The pain in my side suddenly hit me like a hammer to a nail, slightly blurring my vision.
“Come on girl, we gotta move.” Arlen recovered first and grabbed my upper arm, practically dragging me until I was running beside her again—barely.
She was in pretty good shape for having not eaten the past two or three days. The ground was uneven and neither of us seemed to have a clue where we were—not that it mattered, because we sure as shit didn’t make it very far.
They had to have seen us long before we saw them. This time, there was no stopping. I slammed right into him, and it was as if he’d been waiting for me to do just that. His hands gripped my forearms to steady me, not push me away.
From my peripheral, I saw Arlen apprehended by a redhead and another dark-haired man with a beard. I attempted to turn my head to make sure she was okay, but I was stuck. I had never stepped in quicksand before, but I imagined the sensation was similar to this.
He had the darkest eyes I’d ever seen. I blinked, thinking the pain was affecting how I saw what was right in front of me.
Nope, I was still staring into two black holes with endless depth. I saw sorrow, pain, and so much anger sunken within them that it was almost like looking in a mirror—a shattered mirror with jagged edges.
I smiled. I was a bloody, muddy mess, but I smiled, and he smiled back. That alone would have knocked me right back on my ass if he wasn’t holding me up. It was like déjà vu; he felt so familiar to me.
Before I could open my mouth to speak, he had a hand tightly wrapped around my throat. He spun me around and pressed his brick chest against my back. I reached up to remove his damn hand when two men came sliding down the embankment much more gracefully than we just had.
“Those lags belong to us,” one of the men said as they approached, unmistakably kin to cannibal Bill.
“Do they?” Romero challenged lazily.
The deep timbre of his voice sent a chill straight down my spine.
“If she belongs to you, why is my hand wrapped around her throat?”
The other man opened his mouth to respond but was swiftly cut off.
“We don’t belong to no bottom feeders!” Arlen yelled, struggling to break away from the dark haired man that was now holding her in a chokehold.
“We don’t want any trouble, Romero. We just want the girls,” the more intelligible one conceded. There was a nervous hitch in his voice that reminded me of how well known the Savages were and how people purposely avoided them at all costs.
“There was a girl with yawl’s tattoo. They ate her. They ate your friend,” Arlen rushed out.
None of the men reacted. Her confession was met with resounding silence from both sides.
“So she’s yours?” Romero asked again, cupping a tattooed hand over my mouth when I tried to speak.
“They both are.”
“Alright then, take her.” He pushed me forward and stepped back. “And her.” He nodded to Arlen.
She barely righted herself from being shoved forward when the man’s companion grabbed her by the hair and started dragging her along as if she were a ragdoll.
“No, wait!” I shouted as I was partially lifted over the man’s shoulder. I hit the back of his head with a closed fist and he let me go. I stumbled backwards, tripping over myself as I tried to get away, landing right at Romero’s feet. The air whooshed out of my lungs and I reflexively grabbed for my side.
With an angry growl he reached for me again, this time going for my ankles. The situation flipped in a matter of seconds.
I stared in confusion as he jerked away and blood began to spill down the front of him. Romero stepped around me and I watched as he pulled a knife out of the man’s chest, shoving him to the ground in the process.
“Go get the other one,” he said to his friends, placing his black boot on the man’s stomach to prevent him from getting up.
Without a word, his comrades walked off after Arlen. Romero looked at the cannibal and began pressing down. The man’s pained scream echoed across the treetops as Romero dug his steel toe into the chest wound. I watched him suffer with a deep feeling of self-satisfaction. The fucker deserved it.
“Stop, ple––”
Romero lunged down and drove the silver blade straight through the center of the man’s forehead, cutting his plea short. His muscles flexed beneath his shirt from the force it took to penetrate the man’s skull.
My lips parted as I stared at them both in fascinated awe. A silent crimson river made its way to the forest ground. The knife made a faint squelching sound and then a ‘pop’ as he removed it.
With a flick of his wrist, something chunky and pinkish-red flew off the blade and landed on a nearby plant. He looked at me then, his onyx hues drilling into mine—dark meeting light—and gave me a beautifully devious smile.
“I changed my mind.” He shrugged. “Finders keepers.”
His words had the breath evaporating from my chest. As I stared into his eyes, I saw myself falling right into the void.
I was so fucked.
An angry scream in the near distance broke me from my tunnel vision. I blinked and looked away, glancing around in hope I would catch a glimpse of Arlen. Remembering my objective, Tito’s voice resounded as a warning bell inside my head.
“They can’t know you found them willingly. They’ll know something’s up and won’t hesitate to kill you.”
Well, fuck. Realizing I’d almost completely screwed everything up, I began to half scoot/half crab-walk backward.
Our eyes locked once more and he grinned, flashing a set of perfect white teeth. Somehow, this smile was darker than the last one because now he seemed to be amused.
“Where are you going?” His tone was mocking—childlike. He tilted his head to the side, making no effort to come after me. He simply tracked my every move with his coal-black eyes.
My back hit a tree and I used it as leverage to pull myself up, keeping one hand over my injury. We were only a few feet apart. My ragged breathing filled the silence that grew between us.
Arlen’s yells grew louder.
Male laughter signified his friends had caught her and were bringing her back against her will. I tried to spot what direction they were coming from but I still couldn’t see anyone.
Is he getting closer?
I glanced back at Romero and swore he’d moved from where he’d just been standing. His face gave nothing away.
“Why are you still here?”
“Why am I still here?” he repeated.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? I don’t know what you want. I have nothing to give. So why are you still standing there?”
“The odds must be in your favor then, babe, cause I don’t want anything from you yet. You don’t even have to thank me for saving your pixie ass, but you’re coming with me.”
His friends came up behind him, and the redhead smiled at me. The one with darker hair carried an unconscious Arlen in his arms.
“What did you do to her?”
‘I shut her up,” he replied, a little too happily.
Fucker.
I fixed my face with a glare and looked back at Romero.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, and neither is she, so you can just put her down and be on your merry way.”
He flashed me another dark smile before sharing a look with his friends.
“Not only is she a fucking idiot, but she’s mouthy, too? Huh. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though. I mean, look at her.” He turned away from his friends, letting his eyes slowly travel up and down my body, landing back on my face. “All beauty and no brain,” he sneered.
Did this shithead just call me an idiot? I was filthy, hurt, and aggravated, and a million different variations of the word asshole were flying around in my head. He had just insulted me multiple times in the span of five minutes.
“Hypothetically speaking, say I leave you out here with your little friend. What’s your next move? You’re hurt. She’s unconscious, and you’re in the middle of the woods. Where are you going to go?” His tone was way too smug.
I mentally attempted to count to ten, only making it to three. Tito and Grady had laid out a plan and a strict set of rules, making me swear I’d follow both before agreeing to send me out here. I was supposed to pretend I was scared and helpless. In other words, do not poke the beast. They should have known that wasn’t going to last long.
Screw the plan and screw the rules. I had never been any good at abiding by them anyway. I was going to do this my way. Besides, their plan should have gone right down the drain the second Tito stabbed me. Somehow, he had left that important detail out of our discussion.
“Look, asshole, I’m not some poor damsel in distress. Thanks for your help; greatly appreciate it, but I don’t need you––”
I suddenly found myself pressed into the tree with his hand back around my throat.
“You don’t need me? Prove it. Break free,” he taunted, starting to squeeze.
I covered his clean hand with my filthy one but I didn’t try to pull it away. Maybe it was from my lack of oxygen and the warm feeling spreading through my brain, but I swear something happened between the two of us.
Something shifted, something clicked. It wasn’t love. No, it was the same familiarity I’d felt just moments ago, like I was reuniting with an old friend. Our eyes met and there was an inexplicable understanding between us. One dark damaged soul fully recognized another, reaching out and beckoning to play with the other.
His mouth moved and I counted three words but I didn’t hear what was said. Spots began to dance before my eyes.
He let me go and stepped back. I spluttered and braced myself as I plunged forward.
The ground rushed towards me but I never made impact. He caught me before I completely fell and supported my weight with ease.
“You’re coming with me,” he repeated, taking hold of my left wrist and guiding me towards his friends.
One day, I would look back on this memory from some far away vantage point and realize how significant it was. I would recall that this precise moment was when it really all began. My story did not start until I met him.