Biohazard

10

I remember coming awake to the sound of my own voice: “Janie? Janie? Janie…where are you, Janie?”

I blinked and blinked again. Finally my eyes opened, focused, and I saw the Hatchet Clans. We had been taken to some kind of encampment outside town. In the distance I saw those crucified mummies up on the crosses. There were fires burning, canvas tents pitched. I was tied to a post driven in the ground. Mickey was to one side of me and Janie was to the other. Both of them were unconscious. They were still dressed, so I supposed they hadn’t been raped or tortured yet.

But that was coming.

Because that’s what the Clans did with women. With men, they generally killed them outright. But maybe they had a special purpose for me. Maybe they would make a grand spectacle of my death.

For the time being, we were of no interest to them.

I watched them sharpen axes and spears, fashion weapons from slats of wood and lengths of iron. If they had voices, real voices, I never heard them, just that indecipherable hissing. Now and again they’d make ratlike squealing sounds as a fight broke out between individuals. And when they fought, trust me, they fought to the death.

I watched a couple of them-women, I thought-threading things onto a length of metal bailing wire. Human heads. Five or six of them. They jabbed the wire into the ear and pushed it right through and out the other ear. Then they tied off the wire between two green tree limbs jabbed into the ground.

One of the heads belonged to Carl.