He Runs (Part One) (2 page)
Daniel has long dark hair, shoulder length and walks with a confident gait. He is wearing green shorts, cargo-style and a loose fitting blue t-shirt. Wellington boots climb up past his calves. Celeste is how Man imagined her, lithe and tall with sun-bleached hair, flowing in wild ringlets over her tanned shoulders. She wears blue dungarees, cut off above the knee and a peach coloured t-shirt that clings with sweat to her sinewy back. Something inside Man, a lost and foreign feeling, wants her to be beautiful. Something wants her to be his.
A low growl through trapped jaws breaks Man free from his trance, leaving his daydreams to float freely into the everlasting abyss of the past.
It is the present, after all.
And Man needs to eat.
************************
Hound is tied to a tree in the forest, his muzzle tightened to prevent him from barking. Man will come back for the dog. Man will come back with the spoils of a successful raid.
He creeps across the first paddock, his back arched and just lower than the top of the wall. He reaches the wooden gate, slips a square, rusted lock off the end beam and pushes forward. The next paddock is filled with cows and he decides to run, lightly on his tip toes, side-stepping the beasts. Contemplates stopping, slitting one of the beast’s throat with the karambit. Could be noisy, could draw attention before enough flesh could be cut away.
Man looks ahead when he reaches the next wall. The farm house is close, less than thirty yards. This close up he can see how bad of a state it is in: tiles missing from the roof, moss and greenery covering the brickwork, the side wall tilting up as the root of a giant guardian-like tree worms its way into the foundations.
He hops over the wall, making sure to keep his skin away from the barbed wire, and runs to the side of the house, keeping his head below the ground-floor window ledge. Behind the farm house is the barn, a mud-coloured block of corrugated iron that looks more industrial than agricultural. Close by, Man can hear the clucking of chickens. He thinks of their eggs, pilfered on a daily basis by their captors.
‘Shit!’ whispers Man to himself, as another thought creeps into his head. There could be someone else inside the house. An elderly parent, perhaps, or a child. A stupid mistake, borne out of hunger and desperation. But the reward, in this case, certainly outweighs the risk. And if he is spotted then he can subdue the person, trade flesh for flesh.
Man creeps forward, feels a cooling breeze tunnelled between the house and barn. He moves toward the barn door, the side entrance, which stands open to the world. The karambit is hooked over his thumb, the curved, five inch blade ready to slice through anything that comes close.
‘Hold it still!’ says Daniel, his voice dampened by the steel walls.
‘I’m trying,’ replies Celeste, ‘but it’s strong! Hurry up and do it!’
‘I don’t want to hit your hand! Hold her still!’
‘
It,
Daniel, it’s an
it!
’
Man closes in on the barn door, thick clumps of grass on the ground cushioning his feet, quietening his approach. He positions his face so that he can see through the gap between the door and the hinges, peers in with his good eye.
He sees the cow, number forty three, her, it, a rope taught around the neck, the beast huffing and puffing; he sees the axe swing down, the blade whistling a death song through its silvery arc. Steel splits through fur and meat and the animal slumps in an explosion of blood, its bulky mass convulsing, the nerves firing off in sensory firestorms as they try to keep the beast alive. The axe falls again, hits the neck, passes through vertebrae. Again. And again. And again, until the cow’s head lies separate from its body, its neck a circle of gore, spewing blood like a burst pipe.
Daniel’s face is red-speckled, thin lines of blood racing down into his beard like roads on a map. Man looks closer, sees that Daniel’s nose has been broken. Wonders why. The woman called Celeste moves fully into Man’s view, puts a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, and nuzzles into him. She lifts her head and Man sees her face; she’s beautiful, even with the thick, pink scar running over her left eye and down onto the cheek. Man smiles to himself, looks at her eyes and notices that they are green; two deep emerald pools. He sees her standing in those dungarees, cuddling her partner, kissing him on the shoulder as number forty three’s blood laps at their wellington boots like the last tide of a summer’s day.
************************
Man runs as fast as he can, jumping over walls with an agility he reserves for such occasions as this. He’s pretty sure that no one else was in the house.
He left just as Daniel and Celeste began to butcher the cow, its carcass hanging on a metal hook, winched in the barn by an old pulley rig.
Man’s lungs are not what they used to be and he sucks hard for air, hurdling ancient walls and dodging cows. He runs until he is back in the forest. He runs until he can see Hound.
The dog is lying on his belly but jumps up with excitement when Man approaches, huffing and wheezing. The beast jumps on his hind legs but is stopped by the tension of the wire lead. Man moves to Hound, offers his hand for the dog to sniff. He loosens the muzzle. No growls. No barks. Hound has missed him.
‘Good boy!’ says Man. ‘We’ve got a treat coming our way! A cow leg. Meat and fat and the bone, as long as my arm, all for you.’ Man sits down, just out of Hound’s reach, in case the dog’s temper suddenly changes. ‘I’ll see if I can find some salt. They’re bound to have some. It’ll help preserve the meat.’
Hound murmurs excitedly and Man contemplates removing the muzzle completely but is too wary of what the dog can do. Hound is an animal, a smart animal and Man knows he has to be careful.
‘Not yet, boy. Not yet.’
Hound lies down again, his eyes growing slightly in his head until they resemble two large, obsidian orbs. Man sees himself in those eyes, in the beast itself. Man sees nature, the unwilling patron of a man-made notion called
fate
and begins to laugh.
‘We’re the same, you and I.’
The dog whimpers.
‘No, I mean it. We’re the same. Well, apart from the fact that I can talk and reason and form opinions and judgements.’ Man lies back, his warm head cooling on shaded grass. ‘Come to think of it, how come Nature chose to give human’s the Earth? I mean, look what we’ve done to it. And we weren’t even here first. We’ve evolved from other life forms, as if Nature has been continuously revising its designs until it got to us. And the other animals that broke free from our mould just kind of fucked off, did their own thing to survive and evolve while we were being perfected. Mankind! Nature’s seemingly greatest accomplishment and worst enemy, all in the same package.’ Man turns over, faces Hound and tries to imagine how he would sound if he could speak. ‘Or maybe what I’m talking about could be complete bull shit and lending to the ideal that humans, as a species, are arrogant and misguided. I think we are. Fuck it, I know we are.’
Hound murmurs lowly which Man interprets as a sign of boredom.
‘Okay, something else, perhaps. We’ll give it two hours and I’ll go back, get us that leg. Sound good?’
Hound makes no sound and Man looks up at the Sun, positions his fingers in front of it.
‘Two hours should be just about right.’
************************
A dim light emanates from the farmhouse; the flickering of dozens of candles, the glow from a dying fire. It is night time and Man has overslept.
Daniel and Celeste are sitting at the table in the kitchen, talking and laughing. Man sees them. Man envies them.
And he was right; there was another person in the house. A female. But the female is not yet able to chew her steak. The female is not older than six months.
Man licks his lips at the sight of steak and eggs and freshly grown greens and what looks to be homemade wine. He sees Daniel’s mouth open and close, yellowed teeth mashing cow flesh, blood-coloured wine pouring down his bearded chin.
The thought of stealing from them, a thought he has harboured as soon as he saw them retrieve number forty three has been a burden of guilt weighing lightly on his chest. But after watching them eat, after witnessing their feast he can feel that guilt dissipating, leaving a searing red hole behind.
They have everything. He has nothing. And that’s about to change.
Man listens to the feast as he moves to the barn door, waits patiently until the noise levels increase and then slips the lock off the latch. In his hand he holds the karambit and it feels heavy but also like it is a part of him, an extension of his existence. Using his spare hand he opens the door slowly, an effort to minimise the hinges’ screams.
The barn is in blackness, a dark box that reeks of death. A hint of ferrous in the air, the throng of spilled blood. It tingles Man’s nose, takes him back to another time, when claret wetted his brow and stained his hands. He shudders, shakes it off and closes the door slowly behind him.
He fishes a lighter out of his pocket and in the darkness the flint sparks like Chinese fireworks, the gas igniting in a primordial firestorm. He has always loved fire.
The glow from the lighter’s flame is enough to illuminate what he needs to see: a black, paint-peeling girder used to hang number forty three’s butchered remains. It seems that David and Celesye have used everything; the lungs, liver and kidneys hang at the end of the gory clothesline, best to use quickly to preserve the quality. Two rear legs, two front legs, a torso halved. The head is missing, more than likely next on the menu.
Man moves forward, weighs up both the rear legs and picks the one he thinks is larger. He releases his grip on the lighter and the world turns ink-black, has Man imagining what existence was before our sensory experience began. He shakes it off, no time to dwell on such things.
It takes two attempts for him to successfully remove the preferred leg and he staggers back under its weight. With a brutish heave he throws it over his shoulder and waddles to the outside world. No need to close the door; they’ll know they’ve been robbed. But they have more than enough to share and the leg will last Man as long as he can make it last.
Hound will eat. Man will eat.
He knows he’ll be back for more.
************************
A sharpened punji stick pierces cow flesh, the point blackening with heat of fire. Not long, two minutes each side. Hound takes his steak raw, a large cube of marbled meat to keep him busy. Man has fully removed the dog’s muzzle. Hopes to keep it that way.
Laphroaig is the accompaniment, along with some water that Man has had tucked away. No need to boil it this far up; no toxicity, and Man’s stomach has adapted appropriately. A swig from the whiskey burns his throat in a good way, a pleasurable pain. He lifts his steak from the fire, bites into it and tears, warm, salty juices splattering his beard. He chews slowly, letting the pink flesh melt with each movement of his jaw, swallows and falls back in child-like jubilation.
On his back, eating and drinking, he feels like some sort of Roman nobleman. Hound is grunting quietly, attacking his food with patchy paws, bouncing on the spot like his legs are made of springs.
‘Told you, boy! Didn’t I tell you? A reward for the both of us. There’s enough to last us a while but I think we should go back.’ Man looks up at the tree line, watches as the moon, fuller these days, hides behind two tall trees, its luminous glow creating a white skull-like shape through the protruding branches. ‘They’ll be more careful next time. But I’ll find a way. I always find a way. You’ll find that out about me.’
Hound ignores him in the way that dogs do when they are eating. Man laughs under his breath, thinks about how wonderful it would be to have that much focus every time he ate. Of course, he’s had that focus before. That focus that comes when you need it most, that arctic chill that infects the eyes, turns them a bloody shade of black. The time when violence is absolutely necessary. The act that ignited his hunters’ pursuit, day and night. He had to be focused that night. He had to be to get the job done.
At least that’s what he tells himself.
***********************
A smouldering grey volcano of ash throws miniature plumes into the sweet morning air. Man sleeps well, deeply, the reward after a hearty meal and a few drops of good whiskey. The hunting knife idles in his right hand in case of nocturnal troubles. In case anyone approaches his camp.
Birds sing their morning greetings, the Sun smashes its rays through the shelter of tree leaves and branches to fall warmly on Man’s face. His eyes flicker wildly as light bursts into his skull and he stretches, as far as his withered tendons will let him.