Twelve

The men burst from within the small buildings at the end of the road, pointing their shotguns and screaming at them to get down, get the fuck down, right now, and Richard did the only thing that made any sense. He got down, and just like that his face met with a gritty boot. He hit the ground with blood erupting from his nose.

One of them was on his back, knee pressed into his spine, prying his bloodied hands from his face, binding his wrists and ankles. He screamed and he tasted dirt and blood, but he did not fight. They had shotguns, and you did not fight shotguns.

There were four of them, including the one they’d picked up in town, and they moved with awful speed and precision. To Richard’s left, Kimberly rolled and shrieked, her ankles and wrists also bound. Samson was on Colleen’s back, clutching her hair in his fists, breathing into her ear in a very ugly way, and the man who had broken Richard’s nose and bound his wrists had now planted his foot firmly in the middle of Richard’s back, pinning him to the ground.

Also bound, Daniel screamed and struggled, rolled away from his own attacker, who pumped a foot into his stomach. Guy was big and it took two of them to slam him against the pickup truck—Daniel’s attacker joined in, ramming the stock of his shotgun into Guy’s stomach.

“Guh,” Guy said, buckling forward. They slammed him against the truck once more. Richard closed his eyes and waited for it all to end, and when it didn’t he opened his eyes and watched as Colleen was dragged toward Guy. Samson and his friends sounded happy, and Richard screamed, and Kimberly screamed, and Daniel writhed in the dirt. The pressure on Richard’s back went away, and his attacker stepped away.

Now all four of them clustered around Colleen and Guy, and a shotgun leaned against the truck. Guy screamed and Colleen screamed. A shotgun leaned against the truck, and Daniel sat up, his hands free and working the rope binding his ankles.

A shotgun leaned against the truck, and Daniel crawled toward it.

Guy saw the knife descending toward his genitals. He thought: Oh, God, please let me die right now, please let my heart stop. And: Please let the blade be sharp.

God met him half way: his heart did not stop, but the knife separated his penis from his body as easily as a cruel child plucks the wings from a dragonfly. The pain was pretty much everything that ever was, all at once, and everywhere. Later, while lying in the dark and waiting to die and trying to navigate the minefield of his confused and fevered thoughts, he thought that the pain had been divine, if such a thing was possible.

Something exploded. His ears rang. Wet chunks of something pattered his bare legs.

They let go of him and he slid down the truck and onto his bare ass, blood jetting from the hole between his legs. Screaming, screaming—everyone was screaming—he raked his hands through the dirt, brought up handfuls, and pressed them into his wound. His pants and underwear were pooled between his thighs. He seized them and pressed them to his mud-packed wound. He was knocked to the ground, and the black spots throbbing at the corners of the world got bigger. Guy went away.

He spent most of the night swimming in and out of consciousness, and when clarity came, it brought one simple and terrible realization, an unwelcome and searing thing that he turned over again and again, tried to make sense of: They’d cut off his dick. They’d cut off his dick.

And: he’d slowed the bleeding. Somehow he had. He was still bleeding, he could feel it, but it was a stinging trickle. He could last a long time like this.

He spoke occasionally to Daniel and Richard, who were nearby, but mostly he slept and quivered and cried out in pain, and when the birds sang and the world around him emerged in shades of darkest blue, he swam up from the haze of shock and delirium long enough to ask God to let him kill at least one of the bastards before they killed him.

The idiot, the fucking idiot, he didn’t knot the rope tight enough. Now it slipped away and Daniel’s hands were free, and he had a chance, damn it, they all had a chance now, because the idiots were crowded around Colleen and Guy, they were watching her, and he could see her between their shifting bodies. He could see what they forced her to do. The ropes came away from his ankles with ease. Guy screamed threats and Colleen wept and Daniel crawled. His fingers touched polished wood, and the shotgun felt heavy in his hands.

He roared like some animal and rose and pressed both barrels to the upper back of the one with the knife, the one who didn’t know how to tie a knot, the one who’d been stupid enough to set down his shotgun. He pulled the trigger.

They were on him, screaming and cursing and kicking and punching. His head lolled, and the world went black, and at some point he realized that he was lying in the back of a pickup truck, bouncing and jostling and no doubt being driven to his death. He screamed around the rag packed into his mouth. It reeked of oil and gasoline. His tongue burned.

Richard, similarly muffled and screaming, stared into his eyes. Guy lay next to Richard, quivering. The truck bounced and rocked, and eventually it came to a stop.

They dragged Daniel from the back of the truck, took off his clothes and tied him to a tree. Two of them. Just two. The other was someplace else. The other was with Colleen and Kimberly. He’d never see either of them again.

Samson and the other one pulled Guy from the truck first. He was as limp as a rag doll, a corpse before rigor mortis sets in. His wrists and ankles were bound, the bloodied wad of his pants and underwear clamped between his thighs. He still wore his shoes and socks. Richard came easier, helping himself along. Both were thrown onto the ground facing Daniel.

“You’re so dead, man,” the other said, holding a knife to Daniel’s stomach. He looked a lot like Samson, only older and shorter. His nose was crooked, a bad break that had never been properly set. “I ought to open you up right here, you mother fucker. Watch your guts pop right out.”

“Stop, Max,” Samson said, walking over to them and putting a hand on the other one’s shoulder. “I want to do it as badly as you do, but we gotta wait for Dad.”

“With all the shit that’s happening, do we even know he’s gonna be back?” He pressed the tip on the blade into Daniel’s chest, etched a short line across his breastbone. Samson pulled him away, and Daniel allowed his head to hang forward. He closed his eyes.

“We’re waiting.” Samson said again, and Daniel heard the threat in his voice. “Okay?”

“Faggot,” Max whispered, punching Daniel in the stomach.

“Hoo,” Daniel said. A thick rope of blood and spit spun to the ground.

“Get in the truck,” Samson said. Daniel opened his eyes and lifted his head in time to see Max stomping away toward the truck. He stopped and kicked Richard in the lower back. Richard writhed, his face red, the veins standing out in his forehead.

Daniel started making blubbering sounds under his breath.

“What’s that shit,” Samson said. “You praying? You believe in God?”

Daniel felt a warm slick of saliva fall out of his mouth and separate from him. He breathed twice. “No.”

“No? Huh.” Samson seemed a little surprised. “You looked to me like maybe you did. Oh, well, I was just gonna let you know that he probably wasn’t gonna help you. Guess you know that already though, huh?”

Samson walked away, got into the truck, backed out, and drove away, the truck rocking along the path, moving downhill and away from them.

There the three of them sat in the falling dark for a long time, under the bats and breezes.

“How tight are your ropes,” Richard asked at last.

“Tight,” Daniel said, wriggling in place, the bark of the tree grinding into the flesh of his back. He was bound across the chest, beneath the armpits. The rope was looped around, circled his arms at the elbows, looped around again and again, above and below his knees. His feet and hands tingled, sensation fading.

“God,” Richard said, and gave himself over to panic. He thrashed and screamed through clenched teeth. After a while, he fell quiet.

Guy grunted, his hands twitching behind his back. He fell silent, grew still. He said something, little more than a mumble. Something about Colleen, maybe. It was hard to tell.

Colleen. And Kimberly. God.

Daniel let panic take him, as well, screaming and crying and struggling against the ropes binding him to the tree. The cut in his chest burned, and his face felt like a toothache. The rope and the bark dug in, and yet somehow he eventually nodded off.

“Gah,” someone said, and Daniel opened his eyes. Night had fallen. The forest floor was awash in moonlight and shadow.

“Wuzzat?” Daniel said, and tried to move. His feet and hands were no longer tingling, they were simply dead. Something moved upon the ground before him.

“Get,” Richard said, growling. “Get away.”

Daniel blinked into the black and silver gloom, and the form before him suddenly made sense. The coyote tugged at the blood-stained bundle of denim and cotton pressed between Guy’s legs.

“Go,” he tried to say, his voice ragged, like his throat. He coughed, and the coyote twitched, its plume of a tail dropping between its legs, its head low. It growled, tugged the cloth once more. An engine hummed, light played across the trees, and the coyote vanished.

Daniel raised his head. The pickup truck crunched to a halt, pretty much in the same place as before, and the doors popped opened. The headlights blinked out and were replaced by the single bobbing beam of a flashlight. It drew close, its circle of light gliding over Richard’s body, pausing for a moment upon his glowering face before leaping over to Guy’s curled and still form, and then moving toward Daniel and filling his eyes.

He squinted, and the person holding the flashlight stepped up to him.

“You killed my boy,” the man said, dropping the hand holding the flashlight to his side. Turning it off and pocketing it. He stared at Daniel in the scattered moonlight. Blinded by the flashlight’s beam, it took a minute for Daniel to take in the full shape of man. He was tall and bald, and his grey beard hung in what looked like a triple-braid down his chest and across his fat gut.

“Eh,” Daniel said. He cleared his throat, said the only thing that came to mind. “Fuck you.”

“Oh, stop that,” the man said. His voice was soothing, calm. “I’ll bet you’re smarter than that, son.”

“Huh-huh-huh,” Daniel said, and realized that he was shaking. Samson stood close behind the man who Daniel assumed was his father. Daniel let his head hang forward.

“You killed Marcus,” the man said. Stepping closer. His breath reeked. “Marcus wasn’t very smart, but he was my son, and you killed him. He’s the second child I lost since all of this started.”

“Good,” Daniel said. His mouth was dry. This was a shame. He wanted to spit in the creep’s face.

The man seized Daniel’s hair in his left hand and slammed the back of his head against the tree. With his right he pressed the barrel of a small revolver to Daniel’s cheek.

“Do it,” Daniel said.

“Not a chance, little boy,” the man said. He stepped back and holstered his gun. “You’re gonna die tomorrow morning, badly, and I just want you to spend the next few hours thinking about that, okay?”