eye, Cleese was back on his feet and had crossed the distance between Bartlett and himself. Bartlett’s face slowly expanded into the classic 'Oh, fuck!' expression and then his vision ratcheted down onto the big man standing in front of him. He tried to lift the gun and point it at Cleese, but he was already too close. Cleese slapped the barrel away with one hand and followed up with a vicious uppercut. The blow smashed into the front of Bartlett’s throat.
Bartlett’s grunt of pain was cut short, halted by the knuckles of Cleese’s fist.
Cleese quickly raised his hands overhead, and brought both fists down onto Bartlett’s collarbones, putting all of his upper body strength into it. A sickening crun-crunch sound echoed in the darkness. Between the searing pain which exploded across Bartlett’s chest and the rapidly bruising tissue in this throat, it was impossible for him to catch a breath. Every time he tried, it felt like daggers were being pushed deep into the meat of his neck and shoulders. There was a sudden constricting sensation in his chest that felt like there was an elephant sitting on it.
As for Pugnowski and Del Castillo, they’d fallen back several steps once the gun went off. What had started out as a pursuit of a good time had now gone terribly, terribly wrong and they knew it. It was bad enough that Cleese saw what was going on in the tent, but now Jenny was dead. There was no way around it, all of them were utterly fucked. It was a situation none of them ever imagined they’d be in, but here they were. And from where they now stood, it was not an enviable place to be. Both of them slowly stepped back and tried to appear as small and unthreatening as possible.
Bartlett fell to his knees; his breath labored and wet sounding. Pugnowski’s rifle had fallen from his grip and it laid there like a eunuch in a whorehouse. Bartlett clutched both of his hands over his chest, impotent and unable to protect himself from any further damage. His pain-wracked face lifted skyward as he begged the ever-silent moon for forgiveness.
It was then that the light of the moon went out and Cleese fell upon him.
Cleese landed on him and drove his shattered body to the dirt. With wet, packing sounds, he vented his anger on the man with a flurry of hacking punches and brutal twists of Bartlett’s already damaged anatomy. An ear- piercing shriek broke the stillness of the night, its timbre was high pitched and desperate.
And then, the sound was abruptly cut off as if it had been stomped on unmercifully.
Finally, his fury now spent, Cleese pulled himself off of Bartlett. The body on the ground before him lay broken and distorted in ways that defied both logic and reason. Bartlett’s decimated corpse sprawled on the ground, his limbs bent at odd angles, his head turned savagely facing the wrong direction.
Once back on his feet, Cleese stood panting in the night air. Soft plumes of fog streamed out of his flared nostrils. From his hands to his elbows, his arms seemed to be coated in a thick substance which appeared black in the sparse illumination. He turned to face Pugnowski and Del Castillo and stared at them, his eyes burning with a fierce intensity. They both looked as if Death itself had come to claim them.
Already, the killing of Bartlett was a fading memory in his mind. He’d killed people before—when they’d deserved it… and, let’s face it, some people deserved to die—but this… This was a killing that needed to happen. More than any others before him, Bartlett was someone who had literally signed his own death warrant. He’d done so the minute he’d forced Jenny to go into that tent. His shooting of her… well, that was him making sure the ink was dry.
With the sound of a rifle being shot within the confines of the compound, a general alert had been sounded and people were already running to investigate. The tableau that greeted them was one that both broke their hearts and turned their stomachs. A few of the women moved to cover Jenny’s body, but left Bartlett’s out in the open, ignored and unattended.
Cleese stood over Bartlett’s corpse, lost inside the whirlwind of his thoughts; his blood still boiling, his anger remaining unabated. He continued to glare at Bartlett’s crew and silently wished for one of them to say something, anything. Even with Bartlett’s blood on his hands, his retribution was far from sated and therefore incomplete.
A hush fell over the crowd as Wolf stepped out from the fold and into the clearing between the tents. What he saw before him made his flesh turn pale. Cleese met Wolf’s gaze, shook his head, and looked away.
'What the fuck’s happened here?’ Wolf asked, his voice cracking with anger.
'Ask them,' Cleese responded and jerked his thumb toward Pugnowski and Del Castillo.
Wolf turned to face the two men and saw the guilty look on their faces immediately. They’d been drinking, that much was obvious. He could tell that from the redness of their cheeks, their open-mouthed breathing and their heavy-lidded stares. Wolf knew instinctively that the rest of the story was not going to be one he was happy with. It was then that he noticed the front of Pugnowski’s pants and his unzipped fly. Wolf looked over at Cleese and recognized the anger that still burned in the man’s eyes.
Slowly, his gaze wandered over the scene before him and nothing he saw made much sense. Bartlett’s crew stood there like a mouth-breathing Greek chorus, looking guilty and ashamed. Bartlett’s battered body spread out in the dirt like a rag doll that had gone through a lawnmower. Cleese stood hovering over his dead body like an avenging barbarian whose vengeance was something no possible amount of blood or sorrow could sate.
And then… and then he saw Jenny.
Wolf closed his eyes and tried to push back the tears of grief and frustration.
Against the blackness of his eyelids, a waterfall of images of the young girl came flooding into his mind. He saw flashes of her warm and reassuring smile, the moments of tenderness she always seemed to have for the frightened children or the injured, and then there was the scope of her potential as a person—and as a woman—if she could only survive these dark and dangerous days.
And now…
Now, her young body lay face down in the dirt, unmoving and growing cold in the midnight air. Her smile now stilled forever. Her kindness offered up as compensation for her sin of naivete. Her limitless potential now leaking from her body in the form of her life’s blood, reparation paid to a gutless egomaniac who’d decided to dole out his own idea of heavy handed retribution for her crime of slighting him.
'Shit…' and then the tears came.
~ * ~
The next morning, after a sleepless night in which he’d gathered several versions of the same story, Wolf thought he had a pretty clear idea of what had gone down. The bottom line was that there were now two people dead in his camp and two more who would have to leave if for no other reason than for the good of the camp. There was no other way of handling it, from what he could tell.
No matter how you diced it up, it was a shitty proposition. From the loss of innocent life to the inevitable deaths of those who would have to be sent away, it pained him to know that it was avoidable on all fronts.
And then there was Cleese. Yes, he’d killed Bartlett, but no one really held that against him. The consensus amongst the camp’s inhabitants was that Bartlett got exactly what he’d had coming, given his crime. Cleese only did what everyone there wished they could do. Plus, in the short time he’d been here, Cleese had proven himself to be a substantial asset. He was good with gun, concerned about the others, and he didn’t seem to mind putting himself in harm’s way for the good of the cause. All of that meant something around here.
But then again, from the looks of things, he was also something of a shit magnet.
Wolf decided he’d have a talk with Cleese before making any hard and fast decisions in his regard. Truth was… he’d hate to lose him. Not only was he a good addition to the team, but he played a mean game of chess.
Wolf left his tent and headed for the roach coaches. He figured he’d get himself some coffee and maybe something to eat, then he’d pass along the judgment that he hoped would set things right.
God knew… after he did, he would probably not want to eat again for a very long time.
~ * ~
Far off, on a cliff that overlooked the camp, Cleese watched the compound come to life. He stood quietly and thought about how Wolf had a good thing going here. He was a good man and a competent leader and Cleese hoped that some of them would survive if and when this all got sorted out.
It was better for everyone involved if he just climbed back under the rock where they’d found him. Maybe someday he’d be able to sort out what the fuck happened here… but that day was not today.
Luckily, no one had seen him in the early morning hours as he helped himself to some ammo and the newly oiled SIG which laid tucked under his arm. As most of them were sleeping, he’d loaded a backpack with food and a
