Cannibal Country (Book 1): The Land Darkened Read online

  The man squawked a shocked “Yow!” but didn’t let up on the pressure that was keeping him from taking a breath.

  Then the pressure disappeared. The man’s head snapped backward and a spray of blood that looked black in the darkness arced through the air. Wyatt looked to see what happened and found Seth clutching the meat tenderizer.

  He had a moment to wonder why they still had that utensil, considering there was never any meat to tenderize when the man recovered and threw a fist toward Seth, knocking him backward and sideways in his chair. With the intruder’s attention diverted, Wyatt hammered a punch into what he hoped was the man’s kidney.

  It worked, and the intruder stumbled to the floor. Wyatt dove onto him and, as their bodies pressed together, he could feel the almost feverish heat of the man’s flesh against his own. Wyatt slammed his head downward, his forehead connecting with the man’s nose which exploded with a geyser of blood.

  He reared back to punch, to hit, to do anything he could to further immobilize the man who’d had the nerve to break into their house when three more intruders burst through the opened back door. Wyatt saw a foot fly at his face just before it connected with his jaw. He fell backward, slamming into the tile floor.

  “Fucker!” Seth yelled. He swung the meat mallet at the man who’d send Wyatt to the ground but only landed a glancing blow. This new attacker was bigger than the first, tall and thick and from Wyatt’s vantage point looked something like a giant.

  The man grabbed Seth’s wrist, squeezing down with nearly crushing force and disarming him of the tool in one effortless motion. Seth grabbed for it but the big man held it out of reach and a grin that revealed rotting teeth spread across his ruddy face. “Uh-uh, kiddie. This is my toy now.”

  As Wyatt tried to regain his footing, bloody saliva seeped from his mouth and dripped onto the tile, forming a shallow pool in which he could see the outline of his own reflection. He made it to his knees when one of the other intruders, a gangly man with matted hair that hung halfway to his chest, bucked a booted foot into his ribs and he was down again.

  The man who’d returned him to the floor grabbed a fistful of Wyatt’s hair and yanked his head skyward, hyper-extending his neck. Wyatt caught a glint of metal and realized the man had the carving knife.

  This is quite the pickle, he thought. His father used to say that when things weren’t going well. Then Wyatt or Seth would respond with ‘No big dill.’ But this was a whole new level of not going well. This was the mack daddy of pickles and a very big dill.

  The giant raised the hammer, ready to bring all its weight down on Seth’s skull. At the same time the other man brought the knife close enough to Wyatt’s throat that he could feel the cold radiating from it.

  Getting murdered on his birthday hardly seemed fair, but Wyatt had almost accepted that fate when--

  A thunderous boom sent his ears ringing. Wyatt watched the giant drop, hitting the floor with enough force to shake the room.

  The man who’d been on the verge of cutting Wyatt’s throat released him, but before the intruder could take a step there came another flash and boom and he joined Wyatt on the floor. Their faces were less than a dollar bill’s length apart and Wyatt watched his eyes go dull and sightless as he died.

  Wyatt clambered to his knees and found Trooper standing in the open kitchen doorway. The old man looked straight out of a western as he clutched a pistol in each hand, smoke wafting from each barrel. Wyatt thought Jesus himself wouldn’t have been a more welcome sight at that moment.

  One attacker sprinted past Wyatt, away from his dead comrades and from their executioner. He didn’t hesitate as he dove through the bay window and vanished from their view. Trooper followed and, when he reached the gaping cavity, raised one pistol and shot again. Wyatt heard a pained shriek and knew Trooper hadn’t missed.

  He’d nearly forgotten about everything other than the man who’d saved them from certain death when he heard Seth grunting. He turned toward the noise and found his brother on the floor, on top of the man with whom he’d been struggling when this mess kicked off. Only now Seth had the advantage.

  He had a fistful of the man’s scraggly, gray hair in each hand and slammed his face into the floor. Wyatt heard bones break.

  The man’s arms flailed as he tried to free himself. “We was just looking for food.” The man’s words came out clumsy and garbled, like someone speaking through a mouthful of partially chewed meat. Seth pulled his head back and smashed it down again. More wet crunching and popping noises, so thick and loud Wyatt felt his stomach tighten.

  “Please don’t.” That plea was nearly unrecognizable - lees ont - but Wyatt got the gist of it.

  Seth either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He lifted the man’s skull a third time and pounded it into the tile yet again. A scream that Wyatt initially thought was a pained sound from the intruder followed that blow, but then he realized it had come from his brother. Seth’s upper body shook, his face a mask of rage and fury. The man under him didn’t move.

  “Seth.” Wyatt reached for his brother’s shoulder, eased his hand onto him. He could feel him trembling.

  Seth dropped the man’s ruined skull and turned to Wyatt, tears in his eyes. The dead man’s blood intermixed with Seth’s tears creating a watercolor painting of carnage across the palate of his face. Wyatt had seen nothing like that from anyone let alone his own brother and the brutality of the act scared him.

  “You boys alright?” Trooper asked, limping toward the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” Seth said.

  Wyatt wasn’t able to get out any words.

  “I’m gonna check the perimeter, make sure no one else is lurking around outside.” He holstered one pistol. “Although, if there was, I imagine they high-tailed it outta here when the shooting started.”

  Trooper was half-way to the front door when Wyatt realized no one, no matter how good of a sleeper they were, could have slept through that madness.

  As if their lives had turned into a bad B movie, on cue, Barbara screamed.

  Wyatt sprinted toward the sound which took him past Trooper. Without a thought, he snatched a pistol from the holster at his side. The old man’s hands clawed at him, trying to stop him from rushing headfirst and stupid into danger or maybe just to retrieve his gun, but Wyatt’s youth and speed were too much and he blew past.

  His bare feet pounded against the floorboards as he raced down the hallway, past his own bedroom, and to his mother’s room. The door was two-thirds of the way closed and through the opening spilled whimpering and grunting sounds. Wyatt didn’t hesitate and threw the door all the way open as he pushed through.

  Barbara was on the bed, on her back. A string bean of a man was atop her, his narrow body positioned between her legs. The man’s pants were around his ankles and his pale, bare ass shone like a beacon in the dark as it swayed and thrust.

  Wyatt realized his mother was naked from the waist down and averted his eyes in shame. He saw her nightgown and a pair of ripped underwear on the floor beside the bed and forced himself to return his focus to the struggle taking place.

  “Hold still you sow!” The man grunted as he tried to plant his pole.

  Barbara bucked her hips, defiant. The man bounced up and halfway off her, now straddling her right leg.

  “Do that again and I’ll gut you. I done it before.” He pressed a knife against her cheek, indenting her skin.

  Wyatt had seen more than enough. “Get off her!”

  Both the aspiring rapist and Barbara looked to Wyatt, and they appeared equally shocked. The man appeared to be about thirty with a long, droopy face that reminded Wyatt of the painting they based the Scream mask off for the movies.

  “This your whore? Little old for you ain’t she?” The man asked.

  Wyatt raised the pistol. It felt heavy and slippery in his hands and he realized his palms were wet with sweat even though it was near freezing in the house. He tried to hold them steady, but they shook and he could only
hope the bastard couldn’t see that in the dark.

  “Get off or I’ll blow your brains out.” The words felt as forced as if he were reciting Shakespearean dialogue in a high school class play.

  “Shoot him,” Barbara pleaded.

  The man looked away from Wyatt just in time for Barbara’s hand to connect with his face. Her fingernails raked across his cheeks, carving shallow channels through his doughy skin.

  “Bitch!” He slammed the handle of the knife into her forehead, breaking open an oval, oozing wound and some of the fight left her.

  Wyatt’s index finger tightened. He had never shot Trooper’s pistol before, but he suspected it was close to going off. But he hesitated. “Pay attention to me, asshole. Get out of this house right now and you can live. It’s your call.”

  The man swiveled his head back to Wyatt, grinning a toothless and joyless smile that revealed milky white gums. “You ain’t gonna pull that trigger. You ain’t got the balls. So why don’t you skidoot while this sow and me get on a good rut. She wants it too. I can smell it drippin outta her like parfum.”

  He licked his thin lips with a tongue that was thick and dry, then turned back toward a dazed Barbara. With one hand he pressed the blade of the knife against her face. With the other, he pushed her legs apart to give himself easy access.

  Wyatt knew his mother was in no shape to carry on the fight. It was up to him to stop this. It was up to him to do what he couldn’t do earlier that day and shoot. To kill. For his family.

  I can scare him away, Wyatt thought. If he sees I’m serious, he’ll tuck tail and run and then I don’t have to live with murdering a man. Because he was the guy who couldn’t even shoot a deer so how was he supposed to shoot a man? He raised the pistol, aiming just over the man’s head. It seemed the coward’s way out, but he believed it would work.

  Wyatt pulled the trigger. The bullet blasted into the wall kicking out a spray of debris in its wake.

  It worked. The man was scared. His body jerked. And so did his knife-wielding hand.

  The scream that followed was a sound Wyatt knew he’d be forever unable to forget.

  The blade of the knife sliced a four-inch long gash through Barbara’s cheek but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst was when Wyatt realized the tip of the knife had disappeared into her eye socket. The blade had bisected her left eye and a jelly-like fluid escaped. Blood mixed in creating a pink, viscous tide that ebbed down her ruined face.

  She screamed again. It was a sound Wyatt imagined was audible miles away.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Wyatt tried to aim, this time actually at the man, but his hands were shaking so bad he thought he might blow a hole in his mother if he actually fired. Before he could do anything, another gun went off.

  The attacker’s head seemed to implode and explode at the same time sending blood and shattered bone and chunks of brain matter splattering against the bed and floor and walls all at once.

  Wyatt turned and found Trooper standing in the doorway, his remaining pistol raised. Of course, it was Trooper. Saving them again when he couldn’t. When all he did was make things worse.

  Wyatt ran to Barbara and grabbed the top sheet from the bed, trying to shake it free from the bloody detritus that had been a man’s skull a few seconds earlier. “I’m so sorry, mom. I’m sorry.” He raised the linen to her face, not sure if he wanted to use it to stop the bleeding or cover up the carnage so he didn’t have to see what he’d done.

  Chapter Six

  The screams from Barbara’s bathroom weren’t as bad as the ones she’d made in her bed but they were damn close.

  In his sixty-eight years on the planet, Trooper had witnessed and dealt with his share of pain. The worst, at least until now, had been Frank Hanzel, a fellow Maine State Police Trooper who caught a .338 magnum during a standoff with a moose poacher in Aroostook County.

  The round had missed his kevlar vest and ripped apart the young officer’s shoulder. Trooper used his hands to cover the wound and try to slow the bleeding, but by the time the paramedics arrived there was more of Frank’s blood in the dirt than in his body. He survived, barely, but never regained full use of his arm and took medical retirement.

  The man’s agonized moans as Trooper kept pressure on the exploded remains of his arm came back to him now as he listened through the closed door.

  She was alone in there. That was her call and while Trooper didn’t like the thought of her trying to fix the damage to her face solo, he respected her wishes. Seth did too. Trooper sometimes thought Seth lazy, but he had common sense. Sense that Wyatt lacked.

  As Barbara had stumbled into the master bathroom, Wyatt followed like an attention-seeking dog trying to win back its owner’s affection. It didn’t work.

  “Get away from me! Go!” Barbara had screamed at her son.

  Wyatt retreated, not saying a word. If he had a tail, it would have been between his legs. Then the door slammed and the three men were left alone with their shared helpless shame.

  A mix between a cry and a groan seeped out of the bathroom. Trooper’d been staring out the window where the poor excuse for a new dawn was breaking. He heard the bedsprings creak and knew it was Wyatt.

  “Don’t.” Trooper glanced back and saw the boy on his feet.

  “She shouldn’t be all by herself in there.”

  “She made her choice.”

  He turned to the closed door. Part of him wanted to know what the hell was going on inside that room as bad as Wyatt. He’d known Barb for going on fifteen years, since she moved to the neighborhood with a tot on her knee and another in her belly. She was a seamstress for one of the fancy, upscale boutiques in Portland so he knew the woman could handle a needle and thread but sewing up your own face…

  Trooper was a prideful man, but he doubted he’d have the stones to do what she was doing. Just the thought of it, the cleaning, the stitching. Then doing whatever the hell she’d have to do with what remained of her eye. She was something else.

  “She might have passed out,” Wyatt said.

  “You hear a thud?” Trooper asked.

  Wyatt shrugged. “Guess not.”

  Another moment passed in silence.

  “What if--”

  “Wyatt, shut the hell up,” Seth said. “Mom’s tough. She’ll be fine and doesn’t need you up her ass.”

  Trooper’s mouth curled into a grin. The Morrill’s had always been decent boys. Not perfect, but what kids were? Wyatt was the more outgoing and affectionate of the two, always wanting to do what was right, be liked, and win your approval. Seth was more aloof, sometimes bordering on cocky, but despite those faults he got it. He was more savvy, more intuitive, and more prepared for the world even though he was the younger of the brothers.

  Before Wyatt could complain about Seth chastising him, the bathroom door opened. Barbara stepped out, wearing an oversized gray T-shirt, stained with drops of blood that had dried to the color of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. She stared at the men with a steely resolve that almost dared them to look away. Trooper did not.

  The stitches were small and even and extended from below her mouth, through where her eye had been, and into her eyebrow. The tension of whatever string she’d used to close it had puckered the skin in spots and thin, watery plasma seeped from the wound.

  From the day the Morrill’s moved into the neighborhood, Trooper, himself a lifelong bachelor, thought she was a fine-looking woman, just a few notches short of beautiful. The bastard who mauled her face had robbed her of that, and the attack had certainly caused different kinds of wounds too, but she still impressed Trooper.

  “You alright?” Trooper asked.

  She gave a curt nod. “I suppose.”

  “Mom, I’m--”

  “Save it.” Barbara cut him off, her voice flat. “It’s done now.”

  Wyatt stared at the floor. “Okay.”

  Barbara glanced around the room. Trooper and Wyatt had dragged the bodies out of the house and left Seth to clean up the go
re. He’d done a fair enough job but a large spot of pink lingered on the eggshell paint of the bedroom wall where the would-be rapist’s blood and brains had splattered.

  “You take care of all of them?” Barbara asked.

  “Ayuh. The bodies are outside. I’ll burn them in the morning,” Trooper said.

  “I don’t give a shit about their bodies. I want to know if you killed them.”

  “We did,” Seth said.

  Barbara looked at the boy and Trooper saw some of the brave facade she’d been wearing like a mask crack when she realized Seth, her youngest, had killed a man.

  “That’s good, Seth. Thank you.”

  Trooper thought Seth looked on the verge of making one of his ill-timed and usually bad jokes, but his common sense kicked in and he only shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sure.”

  She turned her attention to Trooper, and he saw tears forming in her remaining eye, tears she quickly blinked away. “How can we be sure there aren’t more of them in the neighborhood? Maybe hiding out in one of the abandoned houses?”

  Trooper had considered this too. He’d planned to inspect the block once he knew the Morrill’s were okay, check for kicked in doors or broken windows. Because he knew these days people traveled in packs.

  “There could be, but I doubt it. We made quite a ruckus last night and laid the dead on the front lawn for anyone who cared to see. A sight like that is apt to give any cohorts not much want to come around.”

  “But it doesn’t mean more won’t come,” Barbara said. “Especially if some got away. They could regroup and come back and next time they’d be better prepared.”

  “Winter is almost here, though,” Wyatt said.

  “So what?” Barbara asked.

  Trooper knew the woman was hurting, physically and emotionally, but the frigid tone of voice she directed at Wyatt made him pity the boy. He’d have to live the rest of his days knowing his hesitation had caused his mother a horrific injury, and Trooper was getting the feeling that, should he ever forget, Barbara would be quick to remind him.