Crossing the Line (30 page)

“Let’s not argue semantics here. We need a new pack and we’ve got the beginnings already on the property. You can have more kids if you want to keep them as your own.”

“If you think we’re just going to turn our kids into your dogs, you’re wrong! There’s no fucking way you’re going to do that to my baby boy!” Jessica screamed.

“Insubordination will not be tolerated,” Deloris warned. She raised her shotgun at Jessica. “My decision is final. Now get the fuck out there and kill those stupid college cunts.”

Jessica turned away from Deloris in a huff. Ethan followed after her, seemingly unaffected by the idea of surrendering his children to the cruel bitch he worked for. Norton limped after them. His spirit seemed as broken as his legs.

Deloris knew that if even one of those college g
irls knew how to fire a gun there
was no salvaging the situation.
She was trapped in the room thanks to the downed gun lockers. With the walls in their current condition there was no way of telling where the death blow would come from.

She would have prayed if she was a religious person. Instead she just loaded her shotgun and waited.

43

As they approached the end of the hallway Ethan took the lead. Tracy had no idea what strategy the people upstairs were using she merely heard the shift in the footsteps. Ethan’s stride was much broader and more defined. The one pulling up the rear sounded as if they were limping.

She held her breath as the steps came closer to the top of the stairwell. She was sure everyone was hidden from view, but that didn’t mean no harm could come to them. If Deloris’s men had decided to just randomly open fire they could all be killed. The walls weren’t much protection against hot lead.

A single gunshot sounded above them. The shot was followed by the
thuds
and
thumps
of a body falling down the stairs. Ethan’s corpse landed at the foot of the stairs with an enormous hole in the back of his head.

“We don’t want to fight you!” a woman called from the top of the stairs. “We just want to take our children and leave!”

“Throw down your weapons and come down the stairs slowly!” Tracy cried back.

As Jessica and Norton came down the stairs they did so by clinging to the loose bannister. Tracy watched them closely to make sure they weren’t hiding any weapons on them. The man seemed too gravely injured to pose any real threat and the woman’s face looked terrified. As they reached the foot of the stairs Tracy came out of her hiding place and leveled her gun on them.

“If you’re not going to fight I suggest that you run,” she said.

“Thank you,”
Jessica said. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes. Tracy had no time to reply. The flash of quickly moving naked flesh came from nowhere. Jessica was pinned to the ground by the two naked bodies. Norton screamed as he was dragged away down the hall by three more nude women.

Tracy lowered her gun and watched as Jessica’s face was shredded by the bitches. They snarled like wild dogs as they clawed, trying to gouge out her eyes. She thrashed her head from side to side, trying to divert their sinister attacks. One of the bitches grabbed her by the hair and yanked a square inch of her scalp away with a clump of the filthy strands.

“Help me!” Jessica screamed and reached a hand out toward Tracy. Her bloodied fingers brushed against Tracy’s ankle, so the onlooker took a step back.

One of the women sat up straight and punched Jessica’s dry lips back into her teeth. A tooth snapped off and stabbed through her upper lip. The bitch paid this no more attention than she did the woman’s screams. She continued to pummel the mouth until it was a bloody mess. Her companion bit at the side of Jessica’s head and pulled away strips of her hair and her ear.

Jessica opened and closed her mouth like a fish flung ashore.
The raging woman on top of her reached into her bloody mouth and grabbed hold of her tongue at the stump. She wrenched it from side to side until it tore free of its flesh housing. The bitch held it up with a cry of victory and took a bite out of it.

The sight of the cannibalism disgusted Tracy, but she could also see herself in the woman’s place. She had only suffered through one day of agony and she already felt as animalistic as the women looked as they ate one of their abusers.

Somewhere outside she could hear Norton screaming, too. She was sure his death was just as gruesome as Jessica’s.

Brute stepped out from where Tracy had left him and looked at the scene unfolding at the foot of the stairs. He looked to the top of the stairs and bent over to rele
ase a bit of bile on the blood soaked floor. He stood upright and winced in pain. “Deloris,” he said gruffly.

At the mention of the name the bitches moved away from Jessica’s corpse and whined like kicked dogs.

They moved aside as Brute limped toward the stairs. Tracy went to his side and braced him. “You’re not doing this alone,” she said.

“Behind Brute,” he said. She nodded and followed him up the stairs. Ivy and Anna came out of their hiding places and followed them.

As they reached the gore splattered upper floor Anna retched. Her stomach churned from disgust and pain, much like Brute’s had a few moments before. She turned to head back down the stairs and saw that the bitches were gnawing on Jessica’s corpse again. There would be no escape from her stomach’s upheaval. She puked all over a pile of limbs and indistinguishable hunks of flesh.

It was impossible to navigate the hallway without stepping on pieces of what had once been a person.
Even Tracy, who seemed to have the strongest stomach, found herself gagging as her feet sank into a concealed pile of offal between a set of scorched appendages. She picked her leg up and gagged louder than ever when the gore clung like old chewing gum to the bottom of her foot.

As they neared the armory Brute ducked down and looked behind him at the girls. “Danger,” he said. As soon as the word came out of his mouth the wall exploded leading into the room. Pellets from the buck shot tore through the wall beside Brute’s head, leaving behind an odd pattern.

He dropped to the floor and lay flat. Blood and burnt flesh surrounded his face. After a moment he sat up and began moving up the hall back the way they came. The women froze, keeping their distance from the doorway.

“Come on, you coward fucking dog!” Deloris screamed. “Obey your master!”

Brute reached the end of the hall and picked up the remains of a head. Tracy watched in horror as he began smashing it against the floor like a dirt clump. After he had turned the back of the skull into mush he
dug out the burnt eyeballs from their sockets and tossed them aside. A moment later he began peeling away charred skin and flesh from the dead face.

When he was finished he stood with the skull mask in his hands. Jagged pieces of bone jutted from the sides and top of the skull and all of the teeth had been jarred free. There was still some gore smeared on the bone here and there, but for the most part he had fashioned the bone armor perfectly in less than two minutes.

He went into one of the bedrooms and came out a moment later with a pillowcase. He tore a strip of the fabric away and used it to turn the skull into a mask of sorts. He placed it over his face and flexed, urging away the agony from his torn body.

He made his way brazenly up the hall. He only stopped when another shotgun blast tore through the wall. Tracy understood the shots to mean that the woman was desperate and trying to intimidate them, but she also knew that a lucky blow could kill her or any of her friends.

She cocked her stolen weapon and aimed it at the wall. Brute stepped back and put his hands over his ears. Tracy’s finger felt as if it weighed nothing while she squeezed the trigger.
She stumbled back at the sudden burst of energy weighing against her. She released the trigger, letting only a short burst of ammunition go. The rounds tore through the wall where the shotgun blasts had struck.

“You filthy whores!” Deloris screamed. Tracy wasn’t sure if she imagined it or not, but she thought she heard tears in the woman’s voice.
“Look what you’ve done to my beautiful home! You ruined everything!”

Tracy stilled herself and took a steadier hold on the gun. She released another spray against the wall, releasing the trigger when the gun began getting away from her again. Torn pieces of wallpaper fluttered to the ground along with pieces of particle board. The second burst lasted only a few seconds longer than the first, but did a considerable bit more damage.

Deloris screamed out in pain, but Tracy had a feeling that it was just a ruse. To prove her suspicions to be true a moment later a shotgun blast tore through the wall followed immediately by another.

The damage happened so fast that Anna almost didn’t feel the pain. When it did register, though, it drove her to her knees. Tracy looked over and saw her friend collapsing. Anna held her hands over the two pellet wounds in her side. Blood seeped from between her fingers. She went completely pale as she passed out from shock.

“Fucking inbred cunt!” Tracy screamed. She turned back to the wall separating them from the woman and fully compressed the assault rifle’s trigger. She stepped forward and watched in grim fascination as the long burst tore the wall to pieces.

Movement to her right caught her attention and she realized what was happening too late to stop Brute. He rushed into the room using the cover of her long burst. Tracy released the trigger as he vanished into the room. A shotgun blast tore through the house, but this time it was not aimed at the wall.

Brute had grabbed Deloris by the arms and lifted her from her chair before she had a chance to react to his sudden attack. The shotgun blast blew a new hole in the ceiling and
dust rained down around them as she stared at the enraged eyes behind the skull’s sockets.

Brute yanked the gun away from her with one hand and threw it out the open window. He released his hold on her and she fell to the floor. Her enormous weight crushed her legs beneath her body and she screamed in agony.

“Brute good dog,” Brute said. “Deloris bad master.”

Deloris tried to defend herself from the blow, but his fist was much more powerful than her flabby arms. All that she managed to do was give him a wrist to break before his enormous knuckles thudded against her forehead.

The world blinked out as she was knocked out cold.

44

The design had come from Ivy, but most of the work was done by Brute. The network of barbed wire wound around Deloris’s body like a cocoon. Thirteen different kinds of rusted wire had been plucked from discarded fence posts and used to wrap the wench. The ends of the network had been wrapped around a post full of nails. The post was attached to a crank shaft off of an old butter churner. The engineering had been quickly plotted, but meticulously built. During the time it took the sun had started to rise on the horizon and Brute had knocked Deloris out ten more times.

The wire was wrapped loosely enough that it had only bit into her in a few places.
Even as they wrapped her to the thick tree they were careful not to injure the woman too gravely. Her death was meant to come wicked, painful and slow, but not out of their control. They wanted to feel her die a little more with each twist of the handle.

When the time had finally come Brute slapped Deloris across the face to wake her. She opened her eyes and started to speak, immediately regretting her decision. A special bit had been shoved into her mouth constructed purely out of razor wire that was wrapped around a long, narrow piece of stone. As she attempted to speak the rusted wire shredded her tongue and lips. She grunted in agony, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes.

Anna was far too weak to take part in the execution, but she had requested a seat where she could see it in all of its glory. She was not alone in keeping audience. The surviving bitches were crouched down in front of the woman with blood caking their fingers and chins.

Ivy turned the crank the first few times, until the barbed wire bit into Deloris’s flesh, tightening until she was pulled roughly against the tree.
After Ivy, Tracy took her turn. She cranked the churner’s handle as hard as she could, but as the wire began meeting the resistance of both the tree’s bark and Deloris’s flesh she found it increasingly more difficult to twist the handle.

The barbed wire now had sunk in so that it segmented Deloris’s body. Parts of her were pinned to the tree while purposely exposed areas seemed to gain weight. Blood blossomed along the tightening cords and spilled slowly down her obese body. She shook in agony and her bladder let loose, causing her to scream when the salty urine touched her fresh wounds.

The scream made the bit cut deeper into her cheeks. As she sputtered out blood tiny chunks of flesh from her face and tongue came out with it. She twisted against her restraints, urging the wire to shred away more layers of flab.

Ivy took back over with the handle and cranked it with all of her might. She got three good winds out of it before the stress made it too difficult. The cranks had done plenty of damage though. Now the onlookers could see the white of her fatty tissues where the wire had slid deeper into her body. She had screamed again and her mouth had taken on quite a bit of damage. Her jaw muscles were ruined, leaving her incapable of fully closing her mouth. Blood and tissue now overran her lower teeth in a flood that splattered across her robust breast
and clung there as the wires had made them into platforms jutting away from her body, but standing rather upright.