Foodchain (39 page)

It took Frank a few seconds to comprehend that were killing their own brothers and stepbrothers.

* * * * *

Sturm heard the fire engine, turned to it, and fired. A hole appeared in the windshield and Frank felt something thump into the seat, inches from his right shoulder. Frank hit the clutch and the emergency brake at the same time.

Sturm fired again, and another hole appeared. But this time it smashed through the window behind Frank’s head with a dull whistling rush. He must have been out of bullets because he put his revolvers back into the holsters and put the picnic table between him and the fire engine.

Frank hit the gas. The truck yawed and pitched and Frank fought her the whole way, sliding through the grass. Frank crunched the gearshift into first and popped the clutch. The truck launched itself through the picnic table after Sturm.

For a split second, Sturm was a fearless matador without a red cape, facing down a pissed off three ton vehicle. Calm, like he was going out for a Sunday stroll with the dog, he moved to the left, and Frank tracked him. And when Frank knew he had him, he eased off on the gas but Frank wasn’t expecting the tank full of gasoline to slam forward, pushing the cab before it in mindless fury, throwing the steering all to hell. Sturm simply stepped aside.

The fire engine smashed into a two-foot thick elm tree with the sound of dry thunder, the back end bounced with the impact, and for a moment, under a burning mid day sun, everything, even the dust in the air, was still.

* * * * *

Frank heard voices. The words didn’t make sense. He thought he was sitting upright in the fire engine cab, but all he could see was some smooth, curving piece of metal and the dry leaves under a bleached sky.

He had been thrown into the dashboard and had his head stuck somehow between the steering wheel and instrument panel and the door, staring up through the windshield. He untangled himself and sat upright as much as possible. The seat and the dash had suddenly gotten much closer. He didn’t know if it was the first or second pill or the crash but suddenly, he was feeling decidedly calm. Relaxed, even. Blood, both fresh and dry, streaked his face. He’d somehow ripped his shirt. But nothing much hurt anymore.

He got out and stepped into a flood of gasoline. The crash had broken something loose, but hadn’t sparked. Steam hissed from a crumpled radiator. The nearly sweet stench of gasoline hung heavy in the air, stinging Frank’s eyes and nose.

Ten feet away, Sturm mechanically reloaded his revolvers, using speed loaders. He slapped the cylinders back in to place and spun them, then turned to Frank. Pine was way off to the left, keeping well away from the tank. He cut the air around him in short, swift strokes with his machete, as if the blade was thinking for him. Frank couldn’t see Jack.

But he could see a lioness, slinking from between a couple of abandoned houses, nose twitching, eyes locked on the corpses. Frank let his gaze wander for a moment and saw another lioness, a wolf, and even more animals. They were drawn by the smell of death to this park. It was as if the park was calling to all of these animals, drawing them in, like some kind of magnet.

Sturm said, in an even, emotionless voice, “Fuck’s wrong with you, son?” He cocked one of the revolvers and brought it up.

Frank reached into his pocket and came out with Chuck’s matches. “Shoot. Go ahead,” Frank said, striking a match.

Sturm hesitated.

“I mean it,” Frank said, watching the small flame.

“Why’d you come back, son? This ain’t your home,” Sturm said.

“Drop ’em, right fucking now. Or I’ll drop this.” Frank pinched the burning match between his thumb and forefinger and held it out to the side, directly over the pool of gasoline. “We’ll all go up. This whole fucking town.”

“Why? I took you in. I showed you nothing but love,” Sturm said.

The match went out.

Frank went to strike another, quick, but something hard and heavy and dark exploded in the back of his head and the last thing he knew, he was pitching forward into the lake of gasoline, unlit match and matchbook falling from his fingers.

* * * * *

Frank tried to breathe, tasted blood and dirt and gasoline.

It hit his lungs like Drano attacking a clot of hair in a sink. He whipped his head out of black water, sucking in a ragged, searing breath, and found that he had been facedown in the middle of one of Sturm’s rice paddies.

Frank knew this was it. He was beyond kidding himself. But surprisingly, he realized that he was okay with the idea of death. It didn’t bother him as much as it had. In some ways, death was liberating. The worst had happened. And now that it was here, it was a relief. This life would be behind him and he would be held accountable for it. Frank just hoped it was quick.

The sun hung directly overhead, burning away the shadows. The water lay flat and smooth, except for bones that littered the edge of the water; sheep ribcages curled into the muck. Among the rotting carcasses, other rough, segmented humps lurked. He squinted in the scalding sunlight.

One of the humps moved. A segmented tail swept lazily through the muddy water. Just above the surface, cold green eyes watched him. Something gripped him deep inside and squeezed unmercifully. Sturm had known, seen Frank’s fear when he watched Frank’s reaction when they climbed up the metal stairs. And so, just in case, weeks ago, he’d sent Jack and Pine back to the zoo to haul away one more load.

The sun hammered down into Frank’s eyes, sizzling into his skull and he lunged forward, giving in to the screaming urge to run. Something clenched at his neck and yanked him back. He grabbed at it; a dog’s choke chain, padlocked to another length of chain wrapped around a T-post that had been driven deep into the soil. Only a foot or so of the post rose above the water. He tested it. He might as well been trying to pull Sturm’s Lutheran cross out of the yard with a four foot length of twine and some spit.

As ready as he’d thought he’d been for death, this was different. This wasn’t simply death. This was something far worse. Panic clawed at his skull. He kicked at the post and wished he had been wearing shoes.

It wasn’t just the shoes. He was completely naked. He squatted, dropping back into the water, drew his knees to his chest, and scanned the horizon. To the south and east, nothing but more of Sturm’s fields.

To the west, thirty yards behind him, Frank spotted the silhouettes of Sturm’s truck, the refrigerated Komodo truck, the police cruiser, and Jack and Pines’ pickups parked along the edge of the highway.

In front of Sturm’s truck, a row of lawn chairs had been lined up along the water. It looked like some surrealist’s vision of Da Vinci’s last supper, arranged in front of truck grilles. Sturm was in the center, flanked by Theo and Pine. Jack lounged on the other side of his brother, playing with several pistols on his lap. Olaf and Herschell sat next to Jack. Olaf drank Coke out of a glistening bottle with a straw. The taxidermist and Billy waited on the other side of Theo.

Theo was quite dead. He had been propped up next to his father, sunglasses shrouding his blank, dry eyes. His right hand was gone, a shredded stump of flesh that began at the wrist and ended with a few splinters of bone; blood seeped out of his ruined groin. Sturm kept touching his son’s shoulder, dribbling sips of beer into Theo’s open mouth. He patted Theo’s hair, caked and matted with blood. The gesture was affectionate, loving; it didn’t look like Sturm knew his son was dead.

Billy, the owner of the Komodo dragon, jumped out of his chair and flung a beer bottle at Frank. “Goddamn you. I had you drowning in the next five minutes. Fall back down, boy!”

Sturm whispered something out of the side of his mouth to his son, waited a moment, chuckled at the answer.

* * * * *

For the most part, they left Frank alone. There was no jeering, no gambling, no singing, no screaming, and no shooting. They all seemed content to simply wait and watch.

Frank kept one eye on the men and the other on the alligators. He stayed low in the water, knees straddling the T-post, and worked on unwrapping the chain, uncoiling it and yanking it at his chest.

Two hours later, the first alligator got close. It coasted in just under the surface, using its legs to occasionally to steer the seven or eight feet of cold muscle, gliding along like a submarine full of teeth.

It got to within five feet before Frank sobbed and the panic took hold. He tried to attack the reptile, kicking and screaming and sobbing and slapping at the water. He had two feet of chain loose by then. The gator whirled away and shot away into the far corner of the rice field.

The men laughed and applauded.

Sturm put his arm around his son’s shoulders and finished his beer.

The sun crawled across the sky.

Four alligators went at Frank the next time. By then, he had nearly three feet of chain loose, and whipped it at the gators like he was popping a wet towel. He drove them off, but an hour later, he watched as every gator he could see get closer in slow, lazy movements.

Heat waves shimmered off the water, attacking the air with shards of light.

Frank splashed water on his face and chest, eyeballing the sun. He squatted again, now holding a chain loop almost five feet in length. He scooped up a handful of mud and smeared it across his scalp, his face, his shoulders.

He couldn’t help himself and swallowed a few sips of water from his palm.

* * * * *

Sturm watched Frank the way a housecat will watch a rattlesnake, waiting, learning, full of hunger and reluctant respect. He bent down at the water and splashed some over his skull, imitating Frank’s movements, smearing mud across his face. Frank watched him right back.

Sturm unzipped and pissed in the rice paddy. Some of the others looked like they had to take a leak, but weren’t sure if they were supposed to, worried that this might be some kind of important ritual. Sturm zipped and unsheathed his Iron Mistress. He dipped the blade in the water, held the blade to the sun, then sliced Theo’s shirt open. He touched the edge of steel to his own chest, drawing blood, and in a precise and methodical manner, cut into Theo’s chest, cracking the ribcage and prying his son’s heart out.

Sturm held it out and sprinkled blood into the water, as if blessing the land with a sacrifice. He took a bite out of Theo’s heart and tossed it into the rice paddy. Jack and Pine silently wrapped Theo in a sheet, and put him in the back of Sturm’s pickup. Sturm pulled his chair closer to the edge and sat, watching Frank.

Conversation bubbled up, like vultures going back to a dead squirrel after a truck had passed. An alligator took the heart.

Frank vomited. He knew it was from drinking the water from the rice field, and it was his own damn fault. He retched again. It foamed around his shins and haunches. He didn’t know if the drugs were still affecting him anymore, and just as he began to lose faith in the pills to either kill him or give him a fantastic burst of energy, the whisper of the drugs wearing off was enough to corrupt the waves of energy that he imagined floating up through his chest and head, and he felt the fire go out as if someone had turned a knob, killing the BBQ burner.

Frank tried to scare himself, to shock himself into an adrenaline overdose, something to clutch at the strength in his limbs. He sank to his knees, too exhausted and hurt to stand anymore, forcing himself to see it as it would happen, feeling the gators go after him like pack of pit bulls ripping at a three legged cat, twisting and tearing him until he was pulled apart like taffy, all while the men watched.

The gators closed in, their tails sweeping great swaths of dead rice stalks in the creamy mud. Frank gripped the chain tight, tighter, cried out, and slashed it at the first couple, but the others came in from the side. He kicked out, using his heels and elbows. Teeth snapped on bubbles and steel.

Two gunshots, flat and quick, ripped across the water.

* * * * *

It was Alice. She had a worn Remington semi-auto .12 gauge, moving quickly through the mud. The Glouck station wagon waited behind her, on the east bank. They had clearly come from Sturm’s, and Frank knew they had found their boys. Alice got closer and shot two more alligators. Fifteen feet from Frank, she stopped to reload.

Pine jumped up. “Are you aware that these animals are private property?”

Alice shot another gator. “You oughta be ashamed of yourselves.” The reptiles stopped stalking Frank long enough to attack their dead kin.

Sturm stood. His voice boomed across the water like the shotgun blasts. “Ashamed? Ashamed of what? I’m ashamed abominations of nature such as yourself still walk the earth.” He drew his pistol and shot Alice in the hip.

She spun, firing the second round into the white sky, fell into the water on her wounded side. Bobbing up, water still running off her face, she tried to take a breath and Sturm shot her in the shoulder. Her mouth was still open when she flopped back into the shallow lake.

Frank lunged for the Remington.

Alligators came out of nowhere, clamping down on Alice’s hand, her knee, her feet, her head. They twisted and rolled until the water exploded in a churning vortex of mud and blood. A tail slapped the shotgun away.

Even over the thrashing water, in the baked silence of the valley, everyone could hear Edie’s howl. She floored the 4X4 and the motor growled as if matching her scream. Tires spun in the dust and she raced around the rice paddy.