My Dog Of War

Part 3

"Don't say much, do ya?" The youth's assailant spat a mouthful of tobacco and grinned a filthy-toothed smile. The youth's pants were unzipped and the waistband wedged under his bum. His unbound hands fluttered over his crotch, vainly trying to preserve his modesty but unable to hide all of his sandy pubic hair. His eyes squinted and teared with each fresh squeeze of his hair in the man's tight fist and never lost their contact with the scuffed shotgun at his face, its twin barrels staring back like the unblinking black eyeholes of a skull.

If Weston had thought clearly, he would have followed police procedure. He would have radioed for help, retrieved his own weapon at the car, found a proper vantage point, shouted instructions. But seeing that youth there, helpless, half-naked, at the mercy of some madman – that youth, the one he saved, the one whose life gave his meaning, the one whose existence or annihilation he held in the palm of his hand . . .

Something boiled inside him and as if possessed he leaped from his crouch and howled, a frenzied, animal war cry that rose up from somewhere primal within him, that rocked the empty desert and made both youth and man jerk their heads in shock at the source of that unholy, savage sound.

Weston charged the man. The man quickly swung the shotgun at him and discharged a round that rocketed past Weston's ear with thunderclap nearness and Weston felt the sting of gunfire kiss his shoulder but the pain only spurred him more. He grabbed the man by the shoulders and knocked him to the ground. The man spun his weapon out at him once more and Weston grabbed the hot barrel in his fingers and struggled it away from his face, his other hand furiously searching out the man's throat.

Weston had him pinned now, his hips locked under his straddled legs, blood running down his wounded shoulder to his arm and fingertips locked around the man's throat and as he squeezed and a choked little crunch escaped the man's lips Weston felt something break . . . but not under his hands. Not in the struggling man's constricted neck but deep inside himself . . . some last vestige of humanity, of protocol, of meaningless and arbitrary rules, now dead in this savage and arid future.

The man in his death panic got a second wind and pounded Weston's ribs with a rattlingly accurate punch. The pain stung through his whole body and ignited some combustion engine within him. He wrested the shotgun out of his grasp and in a blind, superhuman fury brought the rifle butt down square on the man's mouth. Teeth cracked like pottery and the man's arms went limp in shock. Weston pounded again and again. The man's skull deformed and flattened under the blows, the bone forming eyesockets and cheekbones and jaw and brow pulverizing, until the splatters of blood kicked up with each new stroke became flecked with soft, gelatinous gray.

Weston pounded, again and again, long past the point of mortality, long past any sensible person would realize the man was nothing but dingo fodder. He wasn't killing just the man. He was killing his old self, his old scruples, the false rules of a dead civilization. He knew who he was now. And how he would make his way in this new world. The realization filled him with the crisp joy of liberation.

He threw the shotgun down and stood up. He turned towards the youth. He grabbed his perfect, pristine face in his bloodied hands and crushed his mouth to the youth's lips. The youth stiffened and struggled and Weston persisted, forcing his jaw open to receive his insistent tongue, taking deep, wet mouthfuls of the golden prize he'd denied himself for so long.

His hands tore at the youth's decayed t-shirt and ripped it open, like the belly of the animals he'd gutted. His hands tore over the smooth skin, the ribs rippling under his touch, the flat of his belly. His thumbs found the hairless hollows of the youth's armpits and squeezed, creeping down to his nipples as his mouth searched out the angelic contours of his teeth.

The youth made no sound. Tiny squeaks of air that might have born cries of protest whistled out of his voiceless throat, but Weston paid them no attention. "Don't fight it, lad," he whispered into the magnificent hollow of the youth's neck. "You'll soon see what I now see."