The Savage by Frank Bill
For my two girls, Jenn and Emma, I love you each. And for my cousin Denny Faith, with whom I roamed the woods and built a lot of fires.
PART I
THE SALVAGED
All you lyin’, greedy, stealin’, cheatin’, hurtin’ everybody sinners
You’re all gonna pay the worst on Judgement Day
—Scott H. Biram, “Judgement Day”
NOW
Clasping his eyelids tight, Van Dorn recalled the echo from the radio, speaking of the dollar losing its worth. Of a global downfall dominoing across the United States, of militias formed by the Disgruntled Americans, a group of fed-up military and police tired of the government milking the working class. They wanted change, so they’d taken out the grids, the world’s power switch, eliminating lights, sounds, and anything that warranted electricity, and what followed was the images of men being kneeled in front of women and children, homes besieged by flame, a pistol or rifle indenting a face enraged by fear, hurt, and anger. Trigger pulled. Brain, skull, and hair fertilizing the soil with departure. One man’s life taken by another without mercy.
Van Dorn had spied upon these foreigners over the passing months. Men who’d trespassed through the acres, raiding, robbing, slaughtering, and burning human, home, and salvation.
As he opened his eyes, sweat trickled a salty burn from his brow. Wanting to help those weak and in need, he feared risking this freedom he’d forged since the fallout, one of silence, separation, and singleness. Instead, he’d made his way back into the camouflage of the woods. Tried to dissolve what he’d viewed from his memory, though it haunted him night after night.
Hunger pained Van Dorn’s stomach, as he’d not eaten in days. As he laid a hand to the heat of the broken pavement, his chest pounded with dread from the engines’ bouncing horsepower through the valley; the sounds and vibration were a signal, these men were getting closer. He knew what they’d bring. Death.
Glancing back through the line of brush and briar that scripted the hillside, Van Dorn knew he couldn’t drag the venison that lay before him back to shelter to field-dress it. He’d no choice but to chance his freedom. Salvage what meat he could out in the open.
Several miles back, he’d shot the doe. Tracked the beast’s blood spots over the dead leaves until it gave in. Tumbled downhill and out into the open road.
Before the power devolved into a station devoid of words, the static speak on a local NPR news broadcast foretold of the unraveling domino effect that was upon the land. How the U.S. dollar had failed as one war after another bankrupted the very same government that had created the disaster with countries they dealt promises to in the first place. Countries that had been using their own currency rather than America’s coin for day-to-day living. These countries and foreign territories waited for America to crumble within a digital age of gadgets, degrees, and national debt. Disorder was coming in pockets of civil unrest. Militias had formed after the Disgruntled Americans made a bold statement with armed robbery, testing the strength of the United States’ protection of its citizens. Men and women had walked off their jobs. Law enforcement disbanded. States were attempting to secede from the union. Cities and towns were being looted. Criminals were beginning to run rampant. Military had been spread thin, were trapped on foreign continents fighting other men’s conflicts. Human beings who wanted to govern and police everything had lost their rules. Then came the explosions from the networking of small militias. Electricity had been cut and the everyday noise of vehicles, music, television, and people vanished.
As he took in the glassy coal eyes, trees sketched shadows over Van Dorn as he unsheathed his blade, thinking of a time before his father and he had settled with the Widow, a time when his father and he had roamed the roads like vagabonds. Stealing and scrapping. Living hand to mouth. It was preparation. Something Van Dorn didn’t understand then but understood now, so many years later.
With the blade in his right hand, his left spread beneath the deer’s chin. Pulled the head back. Pressed the edge into the white of the deer’s throat. Watched the blood spill warm.
Lifting the hindquarter, Van Dorn stabbed the serrated edge above the genitals. Split the hide up to the rib cage, careful not to part the intestines or the stomach, taint the meat. Fluid steamed from the innards. Flies buzz-sawed the air around his one hand, severing the fat, which held the colors of plum, crimson, and pearl hanging half out. He cut the diaphragm from the cavity. Dug his arms elbow-deep up into the venison, feeling the wall of heat and marrow, gripping the esophagus with one hand, the other hand severing it with the steel.
Tugging the veined heart, lungs, and intestines free, Dorn left the bladder.
In Van Dorn’s mind, he recalled the broken-speak of his father telling how the only thing of value would be a commodity: Something of weight. Gold. Silver. Bullets. Arrows. Those things that’d break or burn flesh would render food, water, survival.
Buzzards circled overhead. A few landed fifteen feet away, stood tall as Van Dorn leaned forward on his knees. Tawny beaks hooking the slick noodle insides. Jerking the fuming hues of organ as he tossed them their way.
Crystalline beads stung Van Dorn’s eyes. Red encircled the venison’s outline. Splitting the almond hide around the neck and shoulder, he dug his feelers into the fur, pulled it down the carcass, and freed it from the shoulder, ribs, spine, and hindquarter, exposing the beet-colored meat. He paused. Heard the barreling sound lessening his time for what he could cut. He’d have to make a decision.