aerodynamically streamlined and now resembled a demonic
version of the tortured soul depicted in Edvard Munch’s the Screamer. From the
neck down was a different story. The sadists had hacked off the creature’s
forearms, leaving it looking like some kind of battlefield casualty, straining
against the fence, mouth opening and closing, waving its bloody stumps at its
antagonists.
Elvis threw a half-assed salute at the men, sending them
back to their macabre undertaking.
Then, now knowing precisely why he was cutting the pole part of the flag lot into the forest, he lowered the blade and resumed razing
the earth.
Watching the action through a pair of binoculars from his
post near the north gate, Jimmy Foley, a newly conscripted townie, said a small
prayer that whoever was driving the tractor would accidentally run over
the pair he’d taken to calling the Brothers Grimm.
Chapter 11
A handful of things Jamie knew for certain. The first, and
hardest for her to admit, was that Logan was dead. Replaying the surreal scene
in her head for the hundredth time, she heard the out-of-place mechanical
buzzing of the egg-shaped helicopter as it flitted left to right. The black
flash of metal and glass skimmed inches above the borrowed police Tahoe. Then,
like an old film, jittery and slow in motion, she saw the needle antennas
quiver spasmodically from the disturbed air and the black and white SUV start
rocking subtly on its springs. A microsecond later, bullets were snapping the
air around her and the two men responsible for the barrage had materialized
from her right side near the trio of swaybacked sheds. To her left, Logan’s
breath left his body, producing a drawn-out wheezy groan unlike anything she’d
ever heard. Simultaneously, the fatal one-two punch registered in her side
vision and she saw his black bowler hat go airborne. Instinctively her eyes
tracked it as it tumbled slowly, then, a tick later, his feet followed his
hat’s trajectory and he was pitched onto his back, bloody red blossoms breaking
out on his tan fatigue top. Then, without warning, she felt a sharp pain in her
knee and was bowled over and face down on the cool concrete, wedged between
Logan’s inert body and Gus, who was by then flat on his back, gasping for
breath, his frantic eyes seemingly begging her to run.
But she couldn’t. She struggled to move but the strap on her
carbine had become twisted when she fell. She remembered feeling the weight of
the rifle against her back, but face down with her arms pinned fast there was
no way to fight back.
Everything had happened so quickly that her mind was still
collating the intense bombardment of stimuli when a dark shadow rippled over
Logan’s body and the light coming in through the roller doors was mostly
blocked out.
The last thing she remembered before everything went black
was the tempest of noise, the kerosene-tinged air and the metallic tang of
Logan’s warm blood as it wet her cheek and soaked into her hair.
Sometime later she regained consciousness in a helicopter
with a hood reeking of blood and fear-laced sweat cinched tightly over her head,
her wrists bound together so tightly that she feared a double amputation might
be in her immediate future.
Next, the gravity of her situation hit her hard and fast
like the bullets that had struck down the man she had grown to like and was
beginning to love.
Remaining calm, she had taken immediate stock of her
injuries, the worst of which had been a dull throbbing emanating from behind
her left ear where she guessed the knockout blow had been delivered. From her
right knee came the disconcerting sound of bone grating on bone. An injury
sustained when Gus, acting heroically, had violently pushed her out of the line
of fire.
Now, a sleepless night later, her brain felt like it was
caroming around inside her skull and her knee was still noisy and swollen, yet
remarkably could support her entire weight. Whether or not she could
version of the tortured soul depicted in Edvard Munch’s the Screamer. From the
neck down was a different story. The sadists had hacked off the creature’s
forearms, leaving it looking like some kind of battlefield casualty, straining
against the fence, mouth opening and closing, waving its bloody stumps at its
antagonists.
Elvis threw a half-assed salute at the men, sending them
back to their macabre undertaking.
Then, now knowing precisely why he was cutting the pole part of the flag lot into the forest, he lowered the blade and resumed razing
the earth.
Watching the action through a pair of binoculars from his
post near the north gate, Jimmy Foley, a newly conscripted townie, said a small
prayer that whoever was driving the tractor would accidentally run over
the pair he’d taken to calling the Brothers Grimm.
Chapter 11
A handful of things Jamie knew for certain. The first, and
hardest for her to admit, was that Logan was dead. Replaying the surreal scene
in her head for the hundredth time, she heard the out-of-place mechanical
buzzing of the egg-shaped helicopter as it flitted left to right. The black
flash of metal and glass skimmed inches above the borrowed police Tahoe. Then,
like an old film, jittery and slow in motion, she saw the needle antennas
quiver spasmodically from the disturbed air and the black and white SUV start
rocking subtly on its springs. A microsecond later, bullets were snapping the
air around her and the two men responsible for the barrage had materialized
from her right side near the trio of swaybacked sheds. To her left, Logan’s
breath left his body, producing a drawn-out wheezy groan unlike anything she’d
ever heard. Simultaneously, the fatal one-two punch registered in her side
vision and she saw his black bowler hat go airborne. Instinctively her eyes
tracked it as it tumbled slowly, then, a tick later, his feet followed his
hat’s trajectory and he was pitched onto his back, bloody red blossoms breaking
out on his tan fatigue top. Then, without warning, she felt a sharp pain in her
knee and was bowled over and face down on the cool concrete, wedged between
Logan’s inert body and Gus, who was by then flat on his back, gasping for
breath, his frantic eyes seemingly begging her to run.
But she couldn’t. She struggled to move but the strap on her
carbine had become twisted when she fell. She remembered feeling the weight of
the rifle against her back, but face down with her arms pinned fast there was
no way to fight back.
Everything had happened so quickly that her mind was still
collating the intense bombardment of stimuli when a dark shadow rippled over
Logan’s body and the light coming in through the roller doors was mostly
blocked out.
The last thing she remembered before everything went black
was the tempest of noise, the kerosene-tinged air and the metallic tang of
Logan’s warm blood as it wet her cheek and soaked into her hair.
Sometime later she regained consciousness in a helicopter
with a hood reeking of blood and fear-laced sweat cinched tightly over her head,
her wrists bound together so tightly that she feared a double amputation might
be in her immediate future.
Next, the gravity of her situation hit her hard and fast
like the bullets that had struck down the man she had grown to like and was
beginning to love.
Remaining calm, she had taken immediate stock of her
injuries, the worst of which had been a dull throbbing emanating from behind
her left ear where she guessed the knockout blow had been delivered. From her
right knee came the disconcerting sound of bone grating on bone. An injury
sustained when Gus, acting heroically, had violently pushed her out of the line
of fire.
Now, a sleepless night later, her brain felt like it was
caroming around inside her skull and her knee was still noisy and swollen, yet
remarkably could support her entire weight. Whether or not she could
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