He tugged off his belt and cinched it under his knee.
Streng brought the knife down. And he began.
The jaws of the trap had already done most of the work. Streng stuck the blade in where the teeth were already embedded, following an imaginary line around the circumference of the calf.
The pain was still there, but he felt a curious detachment from what was happening.
He recalled Dad’s story, how he used a rock to break his leg bone.
Streng didn’t have a rock. But the Ka-Bar Warthog was a heavy blade, razor sharp.
He began to chop.
The belt tourniquet wasn’t helping much. Streng’s fingers were slick with blood, and he’d become so dizzy it was a struggle to stay awake. He alternated knife blows with manually checking to see if the bone had been severed yet; the pain had become so all encompassing he couldn’t tell without touching.
Streng let out a strangled grunt of triumph, put his hands behind him, and tried to pull his leg away again—
—and screamed.
He was still caught.
He palpated the area with muddy fingers. The bone was severed. The flesh was severed. Why was he still—
In all of Dad’s stories, he’d never mentioned that a leg had two bones in it.
Streng sought out his fanny pack, located the box of Magnum rounds. He broke it open, selected one, and wedged it in the hinge of his mouth, between two molars.
Moaning deep in his throat, Streng raised the Ka-Bar and hacked as fast as he could, not stopping to feel, not wanting to drag it out any longer.
He knew he had to keep quiet, but he couldn’t anymore. The scream came from deep within and went on and on like a foghorn. Streng hacked and hacked and screamed and hacked.
On the eighth hack his leg came free.
Streng didn’t pause to celebrate. He dropped the knife, grabbed two handfuls of dirt, and began to drag himself away from the trap. The pain had reached a point where it seemed like it wasn’t even happening to him anymore. It had become another entity, a doppelganger of himself, a creature of pure suffering. He crawled alongside his pain, down on his belly, pushing himself forward with his remaining leg, determined to get away.
Noise, to his right. Streng squinted.
Streng considered his next move, and realized he only had one—release the belt on his leg and bleed to death.
He reached down, seeking the buckle.
“Aren’t you a big one?”
The voice came from the left. Streng stared, saw Wiley in his ghillie suit, holding a shotgun.
“Body armor,” Streng managed to say.
Wiley aimed at Ajax and squeezed the trigger.
Streng knew he was hallucinating, because it looked and sounded like Wiley fired eight shots within two seconds.
Ajax crumpled like a demoed building, spraying arterial blood so far that some of it hit Streng in the face.
“Body armor my ass,” Wiley said. He reached down and Streng felt himself being dragged.
Abruptly—and absurdly, considering the circumstance—everything became clear to Streng. He had always looked up to Wiley. Put his older brother on a pedestal. Through the haze of pain, Streng realized that he wasted thirty years trying to analyze why Wiley didn’t measure up to his standards, when he should have simply accepted him. Family shouldn’t judge. Family should forgive.
“I’m sorry,” Streng mumbled, hoping his brother heard him.
The sheriff was sure he heard Wiley say, “I’m sorry, too, Ace,” right before the pain reached a crescendo and he passed out.
Fran huddled close to Duncan and waited in the strange purple room for her father to come back.
Two minutes earlier she and Duncan had been running through the woods and were stopped by what appeared to be a swamp monster, vines and sticks hanging from its body.
“I’m Warren,” it said. “Follow me.”
Fran followed. She’d just seen the sheriff get shot, and much as she mistrusted the man in front of her, she had to protect Duncan. Warren Streng led them to a dead deer, pressed some sort of button, and the ground opened up.
“Slide down. I’ll be right back.”
Fran clutched her son and they went down the ramp on their butts, Fran using the rubber grips on the bottom of her sandals to slow their descent. When they reached bottom they were in a room illuminated by black lights. The decals on her sweatshirt and Duncan’s white shoelaces and socks glowed purple.
Above them the hatch closed. Fran startled at the sound. They’d escaped the Red-ops, yet again, but she still felt a long way from safe.
“Is Sheriff Streng okay?” Duncan asked.
“I don’t know, baby.”
“Is that guy really your dad?”
“I think so.”
“So he’s my grandpa?”
“Unfortunately.”
Duncan pulled away from her, trying to stand.
“Stay close to me, baby.”
“I’m not a baby, Mom.”
Fran rubbed his back, like she did when he was an infant and wouldn’t go to sleep. “You’ll always be my baby, Duncan.”
“Can I get lights like this? They’re cool.”
“We’ll see.”
The seconds ticked by. Fran wondered what they would do if Warren didn’t come back. She guessed this place had more rooms. There was probably food, water, weapons. And so far the Red-ops hadn’t been able to find
