Hours of torture

The dying youth lurched up and grabbed Kessler, his fist tight around the front of his jacket. With the strength wakened at the precipice of death, he pulled Kessler face to face. Seo drew his sidearm, but didn’t fire.
“We followed their howls. Followed the trail of… remains. It ripped apart seven more of us before we brought it to the ground. Just one did that, and the girl said there are dozens more out there. We cut it for hours to draw them out, but it made no sound. I— I do not think it can die. Please kill it. If you can. Then take me from here. Don’t let it have me! Fly my corpse away and throw it into the sea. Hell lives in its eyes.”
He collapsed, eyes wide open and staring straight up into the air, the motion and life in his body evaporated, so that only the husk remained and not the animating force of the man.
Seo scratched the back of his head beneath his helmet. “How many drugs you think that guy was on?”
“All of them,” Kessler said.
They both walked out of the alcove and toward the fire, built with the remains of wooden crates. The post groaned in the breeze, threatening to snap in half from where the round had blasted through it. Kessler looked again at the bundle of supplies strapped to the top. It didn’t look like much, just a lump wrapped in black trash bags, strapped to the stake with baling wire. A big, metal tent spike had been driven into the post up high to nail it in place. Seo gave it a firm push with his shoulder and the post cracked, falling to the side and away from the fire. “Timber.”
The post hit the hard desert ground and the bundle of supplies growled at them.
“Holy shit,” Kessler said. Had they tied a wild animal up? He leveled his rifle, clicked on the front-mounted light, and shone it over the misshapen heap of bags. He traced his light up the pole. Rust-brown bloodstains coated the wood below the bags. Then he passed his light to the tent spike.
“Oh holy God,” Kessler said. It wasn’t a strap they’d nailed to the post. It was a human wrist. “It’s a person.”
He and Seo dropped to their knees. He flicked his combat knife out and sawed the baling wire. Seo worked from the bottom up and snapped a wire off, then forced the mass of garbage bags aside, baring small feet. Please let them be attached.
Seo clipped another wire. They were. Kessler ripped the plastic bag open where there was a lump like a head, above where the wire tightened around the shape of a neck.
“It’s a girl,” Kessler said, his throat and stomach contracting all at once. “I think.” It was hard to tell. Her face had amassed brown and purple bruises, eyes swollen to slits, her mouth a bloody mess.
“Look at her wrist,” Seo said.
He did. She’d been tied to the post by baling wire and covered in plastic, but her wrist was stretched straight over her head. They’d pounded a railroad tie–sized spike through her wrist just below where the bones in the forearm met. “Jesus. The wire on her throat’s tight,” Seo said. “Can’t get my knife in. Think she’s conscious?”
“Has to be,” Kessler said. He swallowed. “Only way she could keep from choking to death…”
“…was by hoisting herself up on the spike in her wrist,” Seo finished.


Chapter 1, Page 13-14