A little while later, Einar scanned the room, taking in the people who remained there: Russ, Albert, Dave, Mickey, Cyril, and me. I didn’t like the look of grim satisfaction that bloomed on his face.
“Well then,” he said darkly, “now for the fun part of the evening.”
In two broad strides, he reached the hideous orange couch by the restaurant’s entrance. A cloud of dust rose from the fluffy pink pillow as his fingers dug into it. A chill crept up my spine.
“You have all seen it,” Einar told us. “The boy went to sleep and never woke up. Probably malnutrition.”
Turning his back to us, he pressed the pillow onto Bastien’s face and held it there fast, his other hand pushing the back of the cannibal’s head into the dirty fabric. I very much wanted someone to stop the sickening spectacle, but nobody moved an inch.
“Good, important rules should never be permitted to have exceptions,” Einar spoke as he crouched with his back to us, slightly breathless from exertion. “Because exceptions tend to erode them.”
A few of us shifted on our feet, reluctantly acknowledging the unsavoury reasoning behind his words.
“It might be hard to watch,” Einar grunted. “But it is mercy. No one should ever have to suffer living like this. Killing is ugly, but oftentimes death is not.”
There wasn’t much resistance to be had from the small bundle of ropes. Soon, he sagged limply against the wall and lay still.
What followed Lena’s departure was, without a question, the most difficult phase of the whole scheme. Waiting.
Josh had agreed to observe Bonifacio from the forested hilltop that stood between us and the fortress. About an hour after Lena’s departure, he informed us that three burly men had let her in through the gates, but not before each taking a swig from the bottle she had brought. They had seemed pleased with her arrival, Josh told us, and hadn’t been rough with her. At least not before the gate shut behind them.
Then, there was no news whatsoever for three days. Apparently, all that happened was that two men came out for a short stroll around the adjacent marina. Apart from that, the gates remained closed, and we could only guess what took place beyond them.
On the fourth day, Josh finally reported a change.
“I heard shots,” he said at the dinner table, nervous excitement twinkling in his brown eyes. “And no smoke, meaning no fire and so no cooking. Something’s definitely up.”
Customarily, Josh left the camp at sunrise with Jean-Luc’s binoculars and some food and only returned at sunset. So, when on the seventh day he rushed back in at midday, it was clear that something significant must have happened.
I had been lying on my back in the grass, reading. I marked my place and straightened up, holding my breath. Einar stoodup from his chair, abandoning the book that I knew he had only been pretending to be reading. It took him a split second to arrange his facial expression into the mask of assured confidence that he always wore, and I felt a faint stab in my heart at the intensity of anxiety that had briefly flashed in his eyes.
“Lena and Emma and some other woman just ran out of the front gates and are heading this way,” Josh announced breathlessly. “But a cannibal was at the curtain wall above and jumped down to chase after them. He’s injured and limping, but so is Emma by the looks of it.”
Quicker than a heartbeat, Einar disappeared through the campsite gates in long, forceful strides, with a hunting knife fastened to his belt but armed with no other weapon. Grabbing my bow from our tent, I rushed after him, and so did Josh himself, Dave, Russ, Albert, Mickey, Cyril, and others who had been nearby and had heard the news.
Rounding the corner, Bonifacio finally came into our view.
It was a spectacular sight. The proud fortress sat on the limestone cliffs of the narrow peninsula like on a throne, and the bulk of its pale stone gleamed in sunlight like a diamond. From where we were nothing but the walls was visible, the houses and churches and squares beyond hidden from our sight.
We reached the marina, set on the strait dividing the peninsula from the mainland. Several half-sunk boats protruded from the shallow water awkwardly. As we ran, lungs burning and muscles protesting, palm trees swayed above our heads in the characteristically fresh, salty seaside breeze.
At the further end of the marina, a young woman appeared, running with all her might, strawberry-blond hair flying madly around her head.
The stretching road curved behind an assortment of colourful, multi-storey houses, so we couldn’t see who or what trod in her heels. Einar reached her first and caught her by herarms. She struggled to break free, but he held her fast, asking questions. He then let her go, indicating to her that she should run towards us.
Lena and Emma emerged from behind the corner. Lena was carrying Emma on her back, struggling with the weight, unable to run with her burden. Even from so far away, we could hear the growls that followed them. Einar picked up his pace, arms pumping like the coupling rod on the wheels of a fast-moving locomotive. But the fury was too close to the young women for him to reach them in time.
Slowing down, I nocked an arrow, aiming. But Lena either didn’t realise our presence or wasn’t willing to bet her sister’s life on me. She roughly shook Emma off her back, propelling her forward with a hefty push. And then she lunged at the male fury who was easily twice her weight.
“No, don’t do that, Lena, NO!” I yelled desperately, my voice echoing through the space, but ultimately lost in the whispering of the palm trees and the susurration of sea waves.
From that distance, I could not safely fire the arrow into the tangle of limbs and heads on the ground. Einar reached them, brandishing his knife. He grabbed the fury’s ponytail of greying hair. Holding his head fast, he cut through the throat with such vehemence that the head almost came off. It tilted grotesquely to the left, propped on the shoulder at an impossible angle. Einar stepped back swiftly to avoid the spurting blood, his whole body visibly tense with adrenaline.
Our group, joined by the strawberry-blond girl and by a sobbing Emma, reached him shortly. And then we all saw the terrible truth that had been concealed from us, but visible to him all along. It wasn’t only the fury’s blood that pooled around the bodies, congealing on the burning asphalt, making the air around taste like metal. It was Lena’s blood, too. The fury hadbitten a hole in her throat. By the time we got there, she was already very pale and lifeless.
Back at the campsite, Einar wrapped Lena in a sheet and put her in the coolest possible place, which was a windowless pantry we had ransacked earlier. Einar had washed the blood off Lena in the sea before carrying her all the way back from the marina. As an unusually tall, strong woman, Lena must have been a heavy burden even for a man of Einar’s stature. And yet, he hadn’t stopped to rest, hadn’t once rearranged her weight in his arms. Aside from being slightly flushed in the face and breathing deeply through his nose, he gave no indication of having struggled.
Neither did he make a sound when he washed himself with boiling seawater mixed with disinfectant, his skin angrily red and painfully raw from being scrubbed down without mercy.
