James Axler – Bitter Fruit

All of them looked as if they were no strangers to violence.

The stench around the corpses was nearly unbearable. Ryan took a rag from his jacket pocket and tied it around his lower face. The material cut down on some of the stink, and breathing through his mouth helped, as well.

His stomach was tight as he walked into the clearing. Moonlight shafted through the tree branches and washed over the faces of the dead.

Standing almost within arm’s reach of the men, the first thing Ryan noticed was that they hadn’t died from being hanged. All three men’s pants had been torn or cut open. Blood crusted the material around their flies, frozen where it had crept down their thighs.

Ryan used a self-light to take the guesswork out of what he was seeing. In the pale golden glow he held protectively in a cupped palm, he saw that all three men’s cocks had been hacked off. The wounds weren’t nice and even as if they’d been done with a knife or an ax. They were jagged and irregular, with puckers showing where flesh had been pinched together in the jaws of scissors or snips of some kind.

All three men had their hands tied behind their backs with vines. Their faces were marred by blood as well. Frozen crimson tears hung on their cheeks and stubbled jaw-lines. Small forked oak branches the length of Ryan’s longest finger had been wound with single strings of mistletoe laden with white berries, then shoved through each man’s eyes, puncturing the lids and penetrating deeply. The amount of blood testified they’d been alive when the sticks had been pushed through their eyes.

The self-light burned down to Ryan’s fingers. He waved it out, then stuck the burned wooden stick into the frost to take away the heat. He pocketed it once it was cool, conscious of leaving no trail at all.

“It’s safe enough,” he told the others.

All of the companions surged forward. J.B. and Jak stayed long enough only to satisfy their own curiosity, then set up a loose perimeter guard.

“These corpses were left as a definite message to someone,” J.B. said.

“Yeah, that’s what I figure, too,” Ryan replied. “Somebody marking territory. Bastard hard about drawing the lines when they went about it.”

J.B.’s grin in the dark was white and mirthless. “No mistakes that way.”

“That’s a mean way to kill a man,” Mildred said. Her face was stony as she looked impassively at the corpses. She worked a rag loose from her own pack and bound it around her mouth and nose. “Unless you had reason.”

Ryan forced himself to go through their pockets. He turned up a few coins that he wasn’t familiar with. Some looked manufactured, but there were a half dozen that looked as though they’d been hammered out by hand, often more oval than circular.

“From the way it looks,” Krysty said, “some kind of justice was meted out here.”

“Hunters,” Jak commented. “Look clothes. Scuffed from going through brush. Crawling on ground. Mud stains on chest and knees. Pants double stitched, and legs tucked in boots keep crawling things out. Bags at waist. You look close. Game bags, mebbe.”

Krysty gave the older man’s corpse a push, causing it to swing around at the end of the rope. The branch it was tied to creaked overhead, protesting the shift in weight. Shards of ice rained down for a moment, slamming against the ground and dropping across the companions.

“Jak’s right,” Krysty said, lifting the back of the man’s coat with the tip of her knife. She pointed to the canvas bag at the man’s back hanging from short leather thongs.

“Could I see those coins?” Doc asked Ryan.

“Sure.”

Doc took them and dropped them through his hands, examining them with animation.

“Somebody go to the trouble to leave a note like that,” J.B. cautioned, “they might be inclined to wait around to see who comes checking on it. They don’t, mebbe they come back to check on it regular.”

“A couple minutes more,” Ryan said, “and we’ll be out of here. What’s in the bag, Krysty?”

The red-haired women opened the drawstrings and peered inside the bag she’d taken from the dead man. “Looks like some kind of tubers.” She took one out. It was wrinkled from dehydration and bent at almost a ninety-degree angle in the middle, the color of pumice and shot through with dark green veins. She sniffed it and started sneezing at once. “It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen.”