Verge of Extinction (Apex Predator Book 3) (11 page)

“But,” he interrupted them.  “These women killed a man, yet they both still draw breath.  Justice has not been served.  There must be a life for a life.  So, I ask you: Which one of these women will pay for Ernie’s life?”

A small man wearing a pair of glasses stepped forward as he spoke.  “I say Ernie was twice the man that these two pieces of shit are.  I say the two together might equal one of Ernie.  I say they both pay.”  The crowd again began cheering loudly.

“Then it is settled,” Andrew announced.  He turned to a big man named Raul.  His beard was greasy and still had little bits of food in it.  Each arm was decorated with a simple black and white tattoo.  The right held a laughing theatrical mask, while the left held the same mask that appeared to be crying.

“If I don’t think you made them suffer enough, I promise you will owe me the difference,” he whispered.  The rest of the men shuffled out of the room.

Raul Jimenez had been a butcher before the world fell apart.   That was after he was released from jail for assault with a deadly weapon.  What no one knew was that Raul Jimenez was actually a serial killer.  He had been responsible for the death and dismemberment of at least seven homeless people in Jackson, Mississippi over the past year.  He strode out, whistling as he did.

Tina didn’t hear what Andrew had told the big Mexican guy.  It didn’t matter, she thought.  He was going to kill her and there was nothing she could do about it.  She wasn’t even sure she wanted to stop it.  She had given up.

When the man returned, he was carrying several knives.  One was large with a double edged blade, and the other had a giant curved blade.  He set both down on a chair in front of the women.  He stood there for a moment, staring at his future victims, then to his tools.  He was smiling broadly.

It was at that moment that Tina realized that Raul had not taken part in the rape.  He did not get his satisfaction from sexual release.  His release came from something more macabre.  She looked at the knives.  Tears welled in her eyes.

The man did not speak as he went about his work.  He slowly stalked around the women.  He would place a hand on a hip, or cup a breast.  Once, he set the cold blade of the knife against Tina’s back, near the shoulder blade.  She shrieked and recoiled from the touch of the metal.

After a few moments, he put the double-edged knife down and slowly strode behind Heather.  Tina could see the man make several quick motions behind the blonde woman’s back.  Heather screamed.  The man leaned his mouth close to her ear.  Tina couldn’t hear what he whispered to her friend.  But, the woman began to sob and plead with the man.  She kept repeating:  “No, no, please no.”

Tina watched as he retrieved the bigger knife from the chair.  She gasped as the man drove the knife between the Heather’s ribs, just below the shoulder blade.  The crunching of bones brought on a wave of nausea.  The younger woman tried to scream.  Somehow it seemed muffled.

There was more crunching of bone and more muffled screams, each weaker than the last.  Finally there was a sound of something wet, as if he had thrown a wet sponge against the wall.  Heather’s eyes went wide from this new torture, and then closed.  Tina realized that God had been merciful and allowed the younger woman to lose consciousness.

The wave of nausea returned when she realized what the man had done to her friend.  There, sticking out from behind her back on both sides was two large masses of dark red.  It looked for a moment like the woman had grown wings, blood red wings.  She suddenly realized that the wings were, in fact, the woman’s lungs.

“It’s called the blood eagle,” the butcher announced proudly. “The Vikings used it when they had a particularly troublesome person who needed to be executed.  I’m not quite done.  You see, I will soon hanger her outside with her arms outstretched from a tree with her lungs actually visible under the arm pits.  The lungs will give the impression of wings.  That is what gives the blood eagle its name.”  He hesitated as he wiped gore from the knife onto his leg.

“Unfortunately, you will not live to see that part of the presentation.  That is, unless you are far stronger than I believe.”

“What…What are…are you going…?”

He cut her off.  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to do that to you.”  He allowed her to sigh with relief.  “Do you know what the word flay means?”  She shook her head, no.

“It means to skin.”  With that, he lifted the knife with the curved blade.  He held it in front of her eye.  She looked in horror as the shiny, razor-sharp blade turned in the man’s fingers.

With a flash, he grasped her hair and jerked her head back as far as it would go.  A searing pain shot through her, radiating from her right cheek.  In front of her eye, the man held a bloody piece of brown skin.  She could see small globules of fat clinging onto the underside.  The man’s face wore a frown.

The next slice took the skin from her left cheek.  The pain was equally intense.  This time the flesh held before her eyes was smoother, containing no little fat globules.  The salt in her tears began to sting the raw nerves that used to be protected by the skin of her cheeks.

Pain shot through her right arm as the man removed more skin from her upper arm.  She screamed in pain.  A wave of pain shot through her face as she screamed; the raw nerves in her cheeks becoming more and more irritated from the involuntary movement.

The next slice removed about ten inches of skin from her left arm.  She tried to speak, to plead with him.  She tried to beg.  Her voice wouldn’t come.  The only sound was a whimper.  She had heard that sound before.  Her dog had sounded that way as it lay in the road after being hit by a car.

Several more cuts brought more pain, more screams, and more whimpering.  She was pretty sure the man was whistling again.  Or, maybe her mind was playing tricks on her again.  The world had begun to spin, and there was a loud ringing in her ears.  Finally, she vomited and passed out.

She was jerked from her merciful unconsciousness by an intense stabbing pain in her stomach.  She screamed at the pain.  Her eyes fell on her own abdomen.  There was a one inch gash in her left side, blood flowing from it.  The man slapped her on her raw left cheek. The pain was more intense than anything up to that point.  She screamed again.

Without a word, the man continued to remove flesh from her body.  She passed out several more times from the pain.  Each time, the man would jam the knife angrily into her body.  With each new wound, she could feel her life slipping away.  Soon, she didn’t have the strength to scream.

The man was growing tired of what had turned out to be a chore.  He had enjoyed his work when the women were screaming and begging for death.  But, the black one kept passing out.  It took the joy out of skinning someone alive if they didn’t have the decency to stay awake for it.  Finally, he lowered his head to look her in the eyes.  “Do you want it to end?”

Tina couldn’t believe what the man was asking.  Could it finally be over?  Was this another sick trap?  Oh God, please let it be.  She managed the slightest nod.  Yes!  Oh please, yes!  He smiled and began to whistle again.

She felt an intense sharp pain run across her abdomen.  Then a wave of nausea hit her again.  At the same time something wet splashed loudly on the floor.  She dared to allow her gaze to fall to the floor.  There below her feet were her own entrails.  She watched as they continued to spill from the gaping hole in her abdomen.  She vomited again, adding the contents of her stomach to the gore spreading on the floor under her feet.  Her eyes closed and a wave of darkness washed over her.

SSgt Brown watched Jackson as he led them down the street.  There were almost no cars here.  It was as if the entire town had packed up and left at the same time.  He looked at his map again.  He could see that the town of Moss Point Mississippi was nestled between Highway 90 and Interstate 10, just north of the town of Pascagoula.  It seemed to fairly sparsely populated; not a suburb, but not out in the country.  He could see how residents may have had the chance to leave before the disease spread too fast.

Yesterday’s fiasco at the hospital had inspired SSgt Brown to try something new.  Today, his team was not only armed with firearms and knives, but each person carried a sharpened broom handle.  They had been instructed to keep their weapons slung until they absolutely needed them.  He was glad to see that no fingers were near triggers.

Suddenly Jackson froze, holding his fist next to his ear:  Freeze!  Then he tapped the top of his head with his open hand:  Cover.  SSgt Brown started herding everyone behind the nearest building.  It was a little flower shop.  There was no real cover there, but it was all they had.  Jackson slid in beside his boss.  As he did, the sound of motorcycles could be heard.  It wasn’t the high-pitched whine of a dirt bike, but the low rumble of large cruising bikes.  There were too many for them to get an accurate count.

The rumble grew louder.  SSgt Brown tapped Jackson on the leg and pointed to his rifle.  The trooper pulled the rifle over his head and assumed a good prone firing position.  SSgt Brown pointed to Kerry and Theresa, then his own eyes with two fingers, then to the rear corner of the building.  Watch the rear.  Ms. Hebert started to free her rifle.  The big NCO tapped her shoulder and shook his head.  No!  Then he held a finger to his lips.

The roar of engines grew louder.  A black and gold motorcycle passed; its rider wearing a denim jacket.  Another passed; this man wore a long beard and a white tee-shirt.  The third man in line was a black man.  He had a shiny bald head and scruffy black beard.  His shirt was stained in blood and looked as if it had been black at some point in the past

The last bike rumbled past the group.  The man looked larger than the others.  He also wore blue jeans and a denim vest.  SSgt Brown recognized the symbols on the back of the vest.  They represented one of the outlaw biker gangs from the southern US.  He had also noticed that all of these men wore side arms.  He didn’t see any rifles, but that didn’t matter.  They looked too dangerous for a group of five to deal with.

They remained in place for another few minutes.  Once he was sure the bikers were gone, he ordered everyone back on their feet.  Ms. Hebert didn’t hesitate to express her displeasure.  “What do you mean telling me to keep my rifle on my back?  What if we needed to shoot?”

“I was counting on us not needing to shoot.”

“But what if we did,” she shot back.  SSgt Brown really didn’t like Ms. Hebert.  While trying to get to safety, she had accidently shot Sgt Procell.  As far as he was concerned, she was the reason there were two soldiers on this mission and not three.

“You’re on my team, you do what I say.  If you have a problem with that, we can take it up with the Bishop when we get home.”  She started to say something, but thought better of it.

For the next twenty minutes, the group continued south.  Jackson kept them in the middle of the road in order to keep the surprises to a minimum. They only ran across a few zombies.  Each was dispatched with ease.  Then, Jackson saw it.

A hundred meters or so down the road on the right stood a red brick church.  In the parking lot stood a fifteen foot tall cross.  It wasn’t the cross or the building that was worth stopping for.  Hanging from the western arm of the cross was the body of a blonde girl.  Her arms were spread as if she were hanging by them.

Suspended from the eastern arm was something that had the shape of a human being.  But, the resemblance stopped there.  As they got closer, they could see that the human shape really was human, or at least it had been at some point.  It too was suspended by its opened arms.

Ms. Hebert couldn’t stifle her scream when she realized what she was seeing.  She had never seen something so horrible.  “Oh my God!” she said.  “What is that?”  SSgt Brown, though he was a history teacher and avid reader, had never seen a blood eagle before.  He was going to explain to her something to that effect when a single shot rang out.

Everyone jumped for cover.  No one knew where the shot had come from.  A second shot rang out. This time a fountain of dirt rose a few feet away from Jackson. The soldier did not hesitate.  He began firing into the church.  SSgt Brown had joined him by the time he fired his third round.

They were in trouble and he knew it.  The parking lot was remarkably empty of cars, only a dozen or so motorcycles.  There was only the sign, which was still forty meters away and closer to the church, and the 6 inches of concrete that made up the curb.  The next cover was a building about seventy-five meters behind them

He pointed to Theresa and Kerry.  “Get behind that building!”  He told Ms. Hebert to start shooting.  There were only three windows that someone could be shooting at them from.  He could see muzzle flashes emanating from all three.  He took careful aim at the one to the far left and fired three rounds in rapid succession.  He was rewarded by a scream of pain.

He shifted his fire to the middle window.  Several more rounds and the muzzle flashes diminished from that window.  “Jackson, you and Ms. Hebert bound back!”

The young trooper slapped the older woman on the thigh and jumped up.  She followed without hesitation.  SSgt Brown now fired rounds into each window, three or four at a time.  Dirt and cement chips continued to erupt around him.  Shit, he thought.  Now he was the one pinned down.

Finally, someone behind him began shooting.  The fire from the windows slackened as whoever was inside tried to remain behind cover. Feeling that the fire had sufficiently slackened, he leapt up and sprinted to the building everyone else was hiding behind.  The fire from his friends almost masked the sound of motorcycles.  Shit, they’re coming back.