Blood Mountain

on.

“Buuuuuiiiiiiiissssshhhhh!” Caleb screamed, by which he meant, bitch!

This monstrous cry held her in place as if hypnotizing her. Caleb lunged toward her in a haphazard stagger and at first it seemed like he might fall and maybe she’d get lucky and he’d knock himself out, but then his gait evened out and he evolved from ambling zombie to determined sprinter.

“YOU BITCH!” This time his words were much clearer.

She ran.

THIRTY-NINE

Victor might have laughed if there wasn’t a risk that Caleb might royally fuck this up. Caleb stumbled into a run, screaming like a wild man full of injured pride and bestial rage. Mercy watched him for a second and it almost seemed like she might wait for him, take him on face to face, but then she fled. It was the wiser move. But it made no difference to Victor. He had everything he needed.

He slipped two knives into his belt and kept another, the eight-inch work knife with the serrated inside edge and VD carved on the handle, in hand. The black, brass knuckles were cold against his skin. There were two flashlights in the bag: a Maglite and a flood. He chose the Maglite, the type Troopers carried for peering into cars in the dead of night. He had once purchased night vision goggles that, priced under a hundred dollars, had seemed too good to be true, and they had cracked in half the second time he used them. It would have been an unfair advantage, anyway. Primitive man did not have the luxury of technology. His eyes were getting better in the dark, anyway. Eventually, he wouldn’t need the flashlight. Although the flashlight offered other advantages.

Caleb vanished into the woods after Mercy. He was still screaming that she was a bitch and he was going to kill her. The sound echoed through the night like the distant call of some nocturnal beast.

Victor put on his boots. His feet were accustomed to this mountain and soon boots would be completely unnecessary. The soles of his feet were already thick pads of flesh that could withstand rocks and branches but boots gave him the extra protection he needed for what could become a prolonged hunt through the woods. And they were an excellent weapon, too.

He once found an injured crow on this mountain. One of its wings was cocked at a weird angle and wouldn’t fully extend. The bird tried desperately to get airborne with its sole-working wing but managed only to hop in circles. Victor stepped to it and the bird beat that single wing even more frantically. He watched it flap harder and harder until it ceased the struggle and appreciated Victor as if he might be its salvation.

The first stomp of his boot broke its neck. The second burst open the bird’s chest with a spew of guts.

He laughed at that.

Soon he’d be laughing in much the same way.

Victor Dolor headed across the open field to the path that wormed its way up the mountain and toward the black sky.

FORTY

The beam of her flashlight faded by degrees with every hard-footed lunge. The path ahead was clear but far from straight and the naked arms of branches protruded into the path, growing more imposing and sinister as the light dimmed. They were the skeletal arms of all the victims Victor had raped and murdered up here. They had come alive and instead of trying to save her, they wanted to seize her with their barbed arms and keep her in place so they could watch as Victor raped her again and then beat her to death. They’ll be laughing when he does it, she thought.

Mercy ran up the trail, grunting at the pain in her legs and crotch. The dying light wobbled before her like a psychotic vision before a patient collapsing into a seizure.

“You buuuuiiiiiissssshhhh!” Caleb screamed not far behind her, but far enough to offer hope.

The trail steepened. She bent forward as she ran and let her feet try to dig into the mountain for leverage. Somewhere in the back of her mind she realized she wasn’t wearing her boots. She had taken them off before entering the tent. Victor must have smiled at that. Even if she runs, dumb bitch will break all her toes, maybe even an ankle.

There was pain there, in her feet, but not so great as to block out the burning fire pokers in her groin. She could weep over her mangled feet later. If she survived.

That if, the great and only if that ever mattered, injected her with the extra adrenaline to keep scaling the mountain, keep moving up and up toward some distant plateau where the only escape was off a steep edge or down into the soil.

With the flashlight nearly useless and branches scratching at her face and arms, Mercy began to form a plan. It wouldn’t be anything miraculous or impressive, but if it worked maybe it could be considered both. Victor was coming after her, she knew that, but Caleb was the immediate threat. He was enraged and hollering out all his pain at her in a pledge of vengeance, but he was also injured and that made him vulnerable.

She clutched the trees lining the path and launched herself up the mountain, propelling herself ever forward. How long would it take to get to the top? Might it take hours? If so, how the hell could she maintain this pace? She would collapse well short of the top and then Caleb would be on her and even if she managed to stop him, Victor would be close behind.

She couldn’t think about that. Those were the worries of her cynical voice, which had gone quiet for once in her life. That’s because it doesn’t need to say anything, she thought. You know you’re fucked.

She wouldn’t accept that. No. She would not surrender. Not fall at the hands of two deranged men. Cancer had taken her mother but she had fought to the terrible end. She had, several weeks before that day of final gasps that dragged out interminably told Mercy that she would keep fighting. This cancer isn’t going to get the best of me, she said. I’m going to show it how tough a bitch I can be.

Mercy had fought tears when her mother said that to her but the memory now was like a glorious pre-game speech from a coach who truly believed that if the team took the field with all the confidence of winners there was no way they could leave it as anything but.

How tough a bitch can I be? Mercy wondered.

Grinding her teeth against the pain radiating from below her waist and still throwing herself up this damn mountain, Mercy felt the hard strength of complete confidence empower her.

“Tough as you want,” she said.

FORTY-ONE

Victor’s fingers hurt like hell. His balls had calmed from raging pain to a dull, almost detached sensation of numbed hurt, but the two fingers Mercy had bit throbbed like they were engorged to the size of plump diner sausages. Luckily they were the first two fingers on his left hand. He could make do without them. He could make do without the whole hand if necessary, but the pain was impressive. He had suffered many indignities of pain throughout his life but in only a few seconds, that bitch had trumped them all with a simple bite. The pain had been too great to carry both the flashlight and the knife. The blade with the carefully polished wooden handle joined the other blades along his belt.

Walking up the path at a quick, though not frantic, pace, Victor dared to shine the light on his injured hand. The fingers were swollen like they had been injected with some kind of filling that stretched the skin to the breaking point. His knuckles were faded creases in tubes of flesh and would not bend no matter how hard he strained. As if the joints had fused together.

Her teeth had broken through the skin just beneath the middle knuckles and ripped the flesh into a jagged, bleeding mess. The bones shone impossibly white against the fresh blood. If he wanted, Victor might be able to slide the flesh right off the bones as easily as removing a glove.