Authors: Jordan Bobe
Their passage through the darkness came to a sudden end with a motion detecting flood light coming to life above their heads.
They were set on the ground gently and the log was moved away from their bindings.
“That’s right, you bring them pretty little things up here so we can have ourselves a talk,” a woman’s voice demanded.
The girls were carried up onto a screened-in porch and set down on the hard, uncomfortable carpet fashioned to look like grass. The rope keep their hands and feet tied together were cut and they were sat upright. Strong hands forced them to face the woman sitting in the mobile chair.
“Welcome to my home,” the obese woman said. A warm smile spread across her face. “I am Deloris, and I’m sure you’ve already met many of my boys.”
Neither Anna nor Lynne spoke. Their pain kept them silent. They knew that they were looking at the woman that had orchestrated their kidnapping. Her name had come up dozens of times since they had been abducted. They hated her already.
“Now you seem like educated young women with good etiquette, when someone introduces themselves in a polite fashion as I have it is customary for you to return the favor, isn’t it?”
After the woman chided them they were each punched across the face by the man closest to them. Neither of them cried out. Deloris snorted and motioned for them to repeat the action. Still, neither of them cried out. Deloris snorted and thumped her hands roughly on the arms of her chair.
“I guess I was wrong about you two. You haven’t got any idea what proper etiquette is. A young woman should obey their elders. When a man strikes you it makes him feel impotent if you don’t sob. You’re not purposely trying to make my boys feel impotent, are you?”
“I don’t give a fuck if your boys
are
impotent, they can take their limp dick asses on home if they are expecting some kind of rise out of me,” Lynne snarled. “And you, you filthy old bitch, don’t scare me at all.”
“You should be scared, cunt, you should be fucking
terrified
. I’m the only thing standing between you having a nice easy death or being kept around to be fucked over and over again. You should consider playing nice whore for a minute.”
“You should consider liposuction before your neck swallows your head.”
The
boom
made Anna jump and scream involuntarily. The close proximity to her head made the world go silent until a high pitch hum started up softly and quickly grew. She looked over and saw Lynne’s headless corpse being held by two men while a third man stood in front of her with smoke still coming from the twin barrels of his shotgun. She had been deafened before the second shot had even been fired.
Smoke was rising from the flaps of flesh that remained of Lynne’s head. Blood jettisoned from a deep cavern that must have once been her lower jaw. Anna screamed as loud as she could, and she heard it in her head, but not with her ears. She tried to move to clutch at the sides of her head, but her captors held her fast.
Anna’s chin was grabbed by a strong hand and she was forced to face the obese woman again. The woman mouthed, “Don’t move, sweetheart.”
Anna nodded her head, knowing that there was nothing else she could do. She would simply agree to whatever the woman said until she found a way to escape— even if it meant taking her own life.
35
The dogs “kennels” were set up in a barn near the back edge of the property. The building stank of filth and sweat. As Ivy and Tracy followed the dogs into the barn they held their breath against the rank aromas.
Growls and yelps came from a dozen horse stalls that had been converted into cells. At the far end of the barn
there were three small wooden boxes with barbed wire
holding the captives inside. Tracy
looked at the faces staring out at them and heartache filled her. The men ranged in age from small boys to teenagers. Brute appeared to be the oldest of the dogs.
Ivy
did not feel the same empathy. She was terrified by the haunted looks she received from the animalized humans. They looked like they wanted to eat her or fuck her, or do both at the same time. Though she was comfortable with Brute she was not comfortable with the idea of the rest of the dogs being set free.
Brute silenced all of the pack with a single loud bark. He snarled as he looked at the hungry faces. “No kill girls,” he said. “We kill masters. No more kill for them. We kill them.”
The dogs cried out in excitement and threw themselves against the doors of the stalls. Brute walked to back of the barn and knelt down in front of the boxes. “We kill for you,” he said. He grabbed the barbed wire as if it were nothing and pulled it free from the first box. From within came a woma
n with a ball gag in her mouth. Brute gently removed the gag and the tethers that had kept her bound.
From the other cages emerged four more women. They had been bound more securely, presumably so they wouldn’t release their cellmates. All of the women looked to have been kept in the tiny boxes for years.
Brute turned to his new friends and a tear ran out of his eye. “They no dogs. They bitches. They kept for making puppies. Girl puppies no become dogs. Girl puppies go to sleep.”
Ivy realized the weight of his words and her breath caught in her throat.
Brute moved forward and began pulling down the cell doors as if they weighed nothing. The dogs came out of their kennels and followed behind their alpha. As the last cell was pried open Brute snarled louder than ever. Ivy jumped and screamed.
“No more listen! No more care! We kill masters!” Brute growled. He slammed his hand into his chest loud enough that the sound echoed in the barn. “We free dogs!”
The dogs howled in agreement. Brute went to the doors of the barn and threw them open. The dogs rushed out into freedom. The hunt for their former masters seemed to have elated them all.
“Come,” Brute said. He touched Ivy’s arm, shaking her from her spell. Tracy followed after them out of the barn. He led them around a short trail from the back of the barn leading to a clear patch of land. Here little pink crosses had been set up in a senseless pattern.
Brute walked over to one of the crosses and a fresh looking mound of dirt. He knelt down and touched the earth and tears spilled from his eyes. “They put the girl puppies to sleep,” he said.
Ivy walked over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for somebody told me so, peace on earth and we move on, they was weak but I is strong,” Brute sang.
The lyrics were wrong, but Ivy understood his meaning. It was probably the closest Brute knew to a prayer. She got down on her knees next to him and tears ran freely from her eyes, too.
She hugged Brute as best as she could. His body was far too broad for her arms to wrap around him completely. Tracy came to his other side and hugged him.
The three knelt there
sobbing at the grave that had set off the entire day’s events. Brute had witnessed, for the first time, what happened to the babies that were born to the bitches if they were female. He had tried to get the baby back and had been beaten for it. Aaron had hit him harder than ever before. Aaron who thought Brute was nothing more than a senseless killing machine. Aaron who had turned his own sons into monsters. It was Aaron’s fault that Brute had gone feral.
The sobbing was cut short when a deafeningly loud growl came from directly behind them. Brute pushed Ivy and Tracy aside a moment before the enormous mass smashed into his back. Ivy gathered her wits and looked as Juggernaut lifted Brute from the ground and threw him through the air.
Brute smashed into the earth on top of three of the small crosses. He didn’t miss a step in moving out of the way when the other dog leapt at him. He sprang to his feet and grabbed Juggernaut by the throat. He lifted the bigge
r man from the ground without as
much as a grunt of exertion
.
Juggernaut snarled down at Brute’s face and punched him upside the head. The first blow made Brute stumble back a step, but he did not loosen his hold on Juggernaut’s thick throat. Juggernaut punched him again, but this only caused Brute to tighten his grasp. The dogs snarled ferociously at each other.
Juggernaut clasped both of his fists together and brought them down on the top of Brute’s head. Brute fell to his knees, his hands finally releasing their hold on his attacker. The enormous fists began pummeling Brute about the face and head. The blows were so powerful that they actually tore open the skin in places. Blood sprayed as his head turned from side to side under the force of the blows.
A normal man would have fallen unconscious after only one or two blows, but Brute was not a normal man. Instead of passing out from the blows he launched himself forward and put his head between Juggernaut’s massive thighs. He rose to his feet suddenly, causing his attacker to flip end over end. He
smashed into the ground and Brute leapt onto his back.
He beat at Juggernaut’s back and the side of his head in a flurry of movements that seemed far less calculated than they actually were. He knew what he was doing. He hit each nest of muscle precisely where it would cause them to knot up.
He grabbed Juggernaut’s thick hair and lifted his head from the ground and brought it down a dozen times in a minute. As he released his hold on the mane, he punched the giant in the back of the head.
He climbed off of the other dog and growled. He turned back toward the girls, but before he could take a step Juggernaut grabbed him by the ankle and yanked his legs out from under him. His face collided with the ground hard enough to crack his right eye socket and break three of his teeth off at the gums. He raised his face out of the dirt and howled with pain.
Juggernaut got up onto all fours and snarled. Brute forced his anguished body into a similar position and glared at the other dog. Blood ran from both of their faces as their eyes locked. They lashed out at each other like animals. Their long finger nails worked like claws, tearing into each other’s flesh.
The exchange lasted for a few moments before they locked their arms around each other like wrestlers.
Juggernaut flipped Brute onto his back and punched him in the ribs. Two of the bones broke with the single blow. Brute returned the punch, his knuckles smashing into Juggernaut’s clavicle and snapping it on the right side.
Brute capitalized when his opponent staggered back with his eyes wide from the pain. He launched both feet up in the air and they landed directly in Juggernaut’s abdomen. The dog flipped end over end before landing on his massive shoulders, driving his chin into his chest and causing the broken clavicle to compound fracture.
Brute picked him up from the ground by the shoulders and threw him against a tree. Before he could bounce back Brute launched himself at him, ramming him against the thick trunk. The tree’s ancient core creaked loudly. Brute stood and let the other dog fall to the ground. He stood over Juggernaut panting and wincing with pain.
“Brute no kill,” he said. He knelt down next to Juggernaut. “You Brute’s brother. Brute no kill.”
Juggernaut sat himself up against the tree and coughed blood. Brute wiped it away as it speckled his face. The dogs seemed to appraise each other in silence. They cocked their heads from side to side. Once Juggernaut snarled, but it was not with the same fury as before. This seemed to go on forever, but the exchange actually lasted less than a minute.
“You remember?” Juggernaut asked. “You remember Juggernaut?”
“Big brother,” Brute said and laid a hand on Juggernaut’s chest. “You protect Brute. You teach Brute. Brute love you.”
Juggernaut nodded his head and let out a distinctly human sob. He reached out and lovingly grabbed Brute by the sides of the head. “You remember mama?” he asked.
“Beautiful mama,” Brute nodded. He looked over at Tracy. Juggernaut followed his stare and smiled. It seemed an impossible feat without any lips, but he somehow managed it. “She look like mama.”
“What Brute doing?” Juggernaut asked.
“Brute kill masters, be free dog. Look, see the girl puppies? They kill so we kill.”
Juggernaut looked at the remains of the crude cemetery and nodded. “I know. I saw when I was little. That’s why I attacked dada.”
Brute laid his head on his brother’s chest and let out a loud sob. “Brute miss you, Juggernaut. Brute love you.”
“I love you,” Juggernaut said. He hugged his brother tightly. “We will kill them all.”
Brute nodded his head. He got to his feet and helped his big brother to stand. The two enormous men limped through the ruined graveyard over to the girls. Ivy looked up at them in wonder and terror. Seeing how huge Brute was had been a shock, but his brother was even larger. She didn’t know people could get so big.
“Brute find girls now,” Brute said. “You come.”
Ivy and Tracy stood and followed after Brute, who continued to help his brother walk. The battle had only lasted a few minutes, but it seemed to have injured both of the giants grievously. They limped and dragged their feet.
Ivy felt somehow more at ease now. She knew the pack would be attacking the sentinels, tearing them to shreds. That meant that Juggernaut and Brute could accompany them to their friends. It would not be long before it was all over. She tried to imagine how she was going to be when she returned to her life of normality and wondered if she would even be capable of doing that. Would she really be able to finish college and start a career after having been through everything she had been through? She didn’t know, and she seriously doubted it.