Emmit plastered a black hand over his mouth, then promptly vomited between his fingers.
"Papa," Pup sighed weakly, and Emmit closed his eyes. Those shoes: they were black and white gym shoes, perfect for a high school Phys Ed class. Emmit couldn't make out the finer details, but they looked to him like the sort of shoes a kid's parents might have to buy for a school supplies list. The kind a kid kept in his cluttered wreck of a locker, to change into before class. Did that mean...
Were those Pup's feet? Is that Pup's...
Emmit opened his leaden eyelids, telling himself that he would have to look at what Roy had done to the kid if he had any hope of saving him. His neck was taught and resisted movement, the cords and muscles grinding like rusty chains. He would have vomited again, had anything been left in the shrunken apricot pit that served as his stomach. He stared down at what was left of the kid called Pup.
Pup's slender body looked more like a crumpled-up paper doll than a functioning human form; a paper doll that a careless child had taken a pair of scissors to. His arms were lashed viciously together behind his back, tight enough to wrench his shoulders nearly out of their sockets. The muscles bulged like metastasizing tumors against the skin. His left shoulder was bruised, and, judging by its angle, partially dislocated. His skin was deathly pale, and his half-lidded eyes were ringed with dark purple circles that made him look like he hadn't slept in years; Emmit guessed that was probably because of the amount of blood he had lost while Roy was amputating both of his legs.
Emmit could only stare, shocked into petrification.
Roy had severed Pup's legs just above mid-thigh. Pup's pants had been cut off into tattered shorts, and the stumps that protruded from them were a nightmare vision. They looked like uncooked sausages, the shredded skin pulled tightly into a loose balloon knot around the glistening muscle and cleaved bone beneath it. Twin tourniquets, made from more of Roy's famous clothing rope, were cinched savagely tight above the amputations, biting into the remaining flesh and giving each destroyed thigh the look of a half-used toothpaste tube.
Pup was breathing heavily, pausing only to unravel his swollen tongue and try to wet his lips before his mouth gasped open again. Occasionally his entire body would seize and tense, his teeth snapping together as waves of agony tore through him. He sat in a tacky lagoon of his own blood that had begun to resemble old tar. When he tried to lift what was left of his legs, Emmit watched streamers of cloth and skin alike pulling out of the drying blood as if Pup had been plopped down on a giant piece of flypaper.
Emmit felt the urge to roar and the urge to cry rip through him at the same time, but it didn't take much thought to understand what Roy was doing; why he wouldn't just kill Pup and end his misery. He was keeping him alive as long as he could, keeping his heart beating and the remainder of his blood circulating. Keeping a supply of meat that preserved itself. Food that he didn't have to freeze or throw away because it rotted, and it would always be fresh.
Next would probably be Pup's arms, although they were rail thin and little more than skin and bone. Emmit could only hope that Roy would have killed Pup before starting on his chest, his back, his buttocks...
If you move, you might be able to save him. There's no saving his legs, but you could save his life.
Emmit didn't take the time to consider how impossible it might be to carry a gravely wounded kid through the woods while nearly blinded and physically exhausted. He didn't take a moment to consider that as far as he knew, there was nowhere safe to even carry him to. He dropped to his knees beside Pup regardless, gently nudging him over to one side so he could cut the ropes off of his wrists. Pup's skin felt like cold lunch meat.
"Alright Pup," he whispered, leaning down into the cloying smell of sweat, blood, and encroaching death. "Step one, get your hands free. Okay?"
It took longer than he had hoped because Pup kept squirming and writhing in pain, and he didn't want to slip and slice him open with one of the deadly sharp knives he had procured. The broken spearhead lay abandoned on the floor behind him like a fallen friend.
Pup's slim wrists fell free. He made no effort to move or lift his arms. They both fell out of Emmit's shaking hands and dropped limply to his sides, splashing into the puddle around him. Emmit's shoes slid on the greasy burgundy floor as he stood, throwing one of Pup's lifeless arms over his shoulder. The young boy was shockingly light. It felt more like lifting a backpack full of books than another human being. Or maybe like lifting his son up off the living room floor, to shush and soothe his cries after he had pinched his finger in the moving parts of a toy.
Pup tried to stand, instinctively trying to use his phantom legs and instead driving one ragged stump into the hard, unforgiving floor. Pup howled in pain, digging his fingers into the back of Emmit's neck hard enough to make him cry out as well. He accidentally dropped Pup, the poor kid's body bouncing like a KO'd boxer hitting the mat. The two pitiful remnants of limbs wiggled uselessly.
"Jesus, I'm sorry Pup, I'm sorry..." Emmit babbled, resting his hand on the kid's clammy shoulder and keeping his eyes trained on the amorphous blob that was the door. He knew it would fly open at any second. He hoped that if Roy had put someone
