“I found a hammer!” Lorien called from somewhere deep in the house. “I don’t see any nails.”
“Use the claw end and extract some from the wood. We’ll need eight or so. Two for each extremity,” Maddox shouted back.
Without Will in his vicinity, Maddox felt no compulsion to behave in a civilized way. This was the excuse he had been looking for to unleash some genuine brutality. There could be no better target than Chauvelin, someone who deserved it and would in all likelihood benefit from it.
“You don’t want to do this,” Chauvelin said. “You know I won’t let it go. We’ll be stuck in a spiral of revenge from now until forever.”
“You are going to wish that William destroyed you when he first turned. You are going to yearn for the wolf’s teeth,” Maddox promised him.
Lorien was back. He had an old mallet in one hand and a handful of rusty nails in the other. Many of the nails were bent and at least a couple of them were screws.
“Perfect,” Maddox intoned, pressing Chauvelin against the wall. “Now, if you could hold onto him and just extend his arm out like… yes, there, that’s perfect.”
Chauvelin was babbling something that was probably an attempt at apologizing but was lost in a guttural cry. It did not last long. Or perhaps it did. It was hard to tell over the sounds of hammering.
11
The Meal
Seven states stood between Will and his father’s home. They were in Pennsylvania, but there was still Ohio, Iowa, and Nebraska to go before they reached Wyoming. This was a cannibalistic road trip he had not bargained for.
He’d been tempted to flee the vehicle several times now. Occasionally, when they went over a bump or pothole in the road, the corpse in the rear would thunk around with a heavy, meaty sound.
It wasn’t the murdering that was getting to him, though perhaps it was. Will had killed many times in his life, but it was always for a reason. Revenge, usually. Killing someone without a motive, or just for something to eat felt deeply wrong. Will was surprised to discover something he considered wrong. Was this what having a conscience was like?
Later they stopped off the road in a forest clearing several miles deep. It was the sort of place hunters went to set off on hunting expeditions, and the kind of place you went if you wanted to dispose of a body.
Will sat by the fire as his father set about butchering his kill before bundling the remains up in the man’s clothing. It was a grotesque, grizzly process and Will found it impossible to take his eyes off it, though he knew it would haunt him forever. This was not the act of passion he had come to associate with taking life. This was the action of someone providing for themselves. There was little emotion, though from time to time a particularly nice cut would reveal itself and then Ivan would make a satisfied sound and put it off to the side where it would be rolled in a sheet of wax paper and tied with a little string bow.
At first, Will had been deeply disgusted. By the end, he was even more deeply disgusted. Seeing a person turned into parts and cuts was so much more brutal than anything he had been forced to gaze upon before.
“Good. You’re watching. You need to learn to do this for yourself,” Ivan said. “A good carcass like this can supply us for a month or more.”
“I won’t be eating that.”
Ivan laughed. “One day you’ll beg for a cut like this. He was in good shape, but a little hefty. That’s the best kind… Flavorful and plenty of…”
Will actively stopped listening and looking until Ivan had just the bones and offal left. He carried them off into the woods and presumably buried them. Will didn’t look. Will didn’t want to know.
He thought the worst of it was over. And then Ivan started to cook.
It looked like leg chops. It was leg chops. It’s just, the leg it came from had recently belonged to someone who had to pay rent and had a preference in music. Will wanted his stomach to turn more than it did. He did not like the way his mouth began to water. That was wrong, even if it was nothing more than an automatic response to the smell of cooking food.
He wasn’t going to eat, obviously. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a fucking cannibal.
It wasn’t long before temptation, such as it was, was presented to him.
“Here. I cooked you something.”
Ivan pushed something like a pork steak on a paper plate toward Will. Will’s stomach had been growling for hours now, and he was very much ready to eat almost anything. Almost, being the operative clause. He would do anything for food, but he would not do… that.