Page 86 of Ballistic

The sound of rustling leaves arrived from somewhere behind me, and I twisted around to see two figures off in the distance. Nabbing my phone from my back pocket, I flicked the flashlight toward them and smiled. Three feral pigs rooted along the ground about fifty yards off from where we sat. Two more trotted up to the first three.

“And this little piggy cried wee, wee, wee. All the way home.” Instead of slicing the last toe, I gathered up my cutters and removed the gloves. “I’m afraid this is where I fold. Seems your luck’s finally run out, Kenny. Those pigs found us faster than I thought they would. Must be starving.”

I’d read a while back that the state had banned what they’d considered exotic animals, like the feral pigs, but somehow the preserve managed to get around it, and was known for it’s large Russian boars.

“Pleath don’t leave me out here. Pleath!” He’d grown more ashen with every passing second, practically clinging to life. Blood had dried to the corners of his mouth, and his foot oozed blood from his wounds.

“Give Jasper my regards.” I pushed up from the forest bed, leaving the flashlight propped on the rock, and made my way to the car, parked at the edge of the woods. From there, I could see Kenny struggle in his binds, until the first hog trotted over. Window cracked, I listened to his gurgling screams, as more boars joined the first. The light sliced across the trees, where one must’ve knocked it over, landing on Kenny’s toeless foot sticking out from between their swarming bodies. His legs shook and seized, and within minutes, they stilled.

The screams went silent.

32

Nicoleta

In a chair beside the window, I sat smoking a cigarette, with my legs tucked to my chest, while peering through the curtain to watch Dax ascend the staircase. I didn’t have to look at the clock to know it was after eight in the morning, as the rising sun left hazy yellow and red streaks across the sky. I’d gotten out of bed an hour before, and had noticed his car wasn’t parked in the lot.

Red spatters across his neck and face had me putting out the cigarette, and I pushed to my feet, as he entered the motel room, looking defeated and tired, his eyes swollen to slits.

“Where’ve you been?”

He removed his coat, revealing more red stains up to his forearms, across his chest, and he made his way to the bathroom without saying a word.

“Dax?” I followed after him, certain the red was blood, but whose, I didn’t know for sure. “What happened?”

Flipping on the faucet, he kept his gaze from mine, as he cupped his hands and splashed water onto his face. He gripped the edge of the sink, hanging his head. “I killed him.”

A tightness stretched across my chest, and my skin prickled. “Kenny?”

Nabbing the soap off the counter, he scrubbed the blood from his arms, frantically rubbing it into his skin. “Yeah. Kenny.”

I bristled, crossing and uncrossing my arms, before setting my hands on my hips. “Without me? How?”

Instead of answering, he rinsed his arms, sending rivers of red swirling into the drain, and lathered the soap onto his face. Once he’d washed away the blood, he rinsed and dried his face, leaving a faint pink stain on the white towels.

My heart hammered out a confusing beat of shock and frustration. “How did you kill him?”

“Pigs ate him.”

Numbness bathed my muscles, and I stood frozen for a moment. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Took him to a hunting preserve. Only took about sixteen minutes to consume every bit of him.”

Gone. The man who’d haunted my nightmares, wiped out as if he’d never existed. In a matter of sixteen minutes, no less.

From the pocket of his jeans, he pulled a morbidly bloody bag and tossed it onto the counter. “Saved his teeth. In case the pigs didn’t finish off his bones. Didn’t want dental records lying around. Turns out, they polished every bit of him.”

Nervous laughter, so out of place, ripped through my chest. Hand slapped to my mouth, I gripped the doorframe and wheezed, my eyes filling with tears. I had no idea if I was crying from disappointment, or laughing with exhilaration. I bent forward and laughed harder, the tears unstoppable as they leaked from my eyes.

Still drying his fingers, Dax tipped his head and frowned. Not even the austere angle of his brow could stop the laughter.

As the clash of emotions overwhelmed me, I tipped my head back, desperate for some distraction.

“The girl in the video. She was your friend, you said?”

Funny that the question didn’t seem to strike me the same. Felt easy to answer, for the first time in years. Perhaps the lies would begin to fade, as well. I nodded and opened my eyes, to see his had filled with tears. Something inside of me sounded off a warning, and as I continued to watch his face, a terrifying realization dawned on me.

He knew the truth. “I watched the video, Nic. To the end.”