WHEN OUR BOAT HIT THE SHORE
When our boat hit the shore, ploughing into the sand with the pounding surf, it was already twilight. The huge dunes at the top of the beach hid the extensive rough shrubby wasteland behind them, on the far side of which lay the Wall - and behind the Wall safety at last. We knew that we would have to keep low and move fast to cover the distance, may be only a mile or so, without attracting the attention of any enemy hunting parties, but we had no option. There was no going back.
Although I was the oldest in our tight knit group of four survivors, I was not a natural leader and, as I had throughout our long journey through the badlands and across the sea, I let Jed take the lead. He had a natural authority and charisma, which had kept our spirits up through the tribulations of the last weeks. We all trusted him, may be in vain, to keep us safe until the end. Jed was not only physically strong with a powerful, athletic body but also intelligent and emotionally calm and stoical. His dark, handsome, Latin looks, re-assuring smile and wise eyes kept us all enthralled and hopeful that we would and could survive.
Saul and Harry, although younger than Jed by some 20 years and me by 30 years, also had a positive and determined attitude and hid any fear or doubt well. Saul was tall and blond with loose limbs and open face. He had a talent for turning the worse moments into challenges to be laughed at and pushed through. He also knew that behind the Wall his lover was waiting to embrace him after 8 months of separation. His hope of reunion kept him going. Harry was more serious and taciturn and carried his wiry frame with an air of aloof mystery. His tight dark curls farming his classic good looking young face. None of us had really worked out what made him tick, but he was loyal and reliable and as much a part of our close little band as any of us.
It was a hot, still evening, as we ran up the beach to the dunes, abandoning our boat to the waves. We wore no shoes and our shorts were dirty and stiff with salt from the ocean. Jed had tied his ragged shirt around his waist and still wore the red bandana to hold his wavy long dark hair back from his face. The rest of us kept our shirts on, but unbuttoned to keep us cool. We were all sun baked after hours at sea and our arms ached from the constant rowing, but there was no time to rest. The last most perilous part of our escape route to freedom lay ahead.
Jed led us over the first row of dunes and we skirted behind tall buckthorn bushes and scurried through sandy blow-outs and eroded footpaths choked with marram grass and brambles trying to avoid the higher ground. We had been on the move for about 10 minutes and been making good progress, although the Wall was not yet in sight, when we heard the distance sound of a hover machine. We all hit the ground instinctively pushing ourselves low in the vegetation. The noise seemed to grow more distant and then stopped. Jed carefully stood up and scouted around then beckoned us to follow. There was an old ruined roofless concrete building about 100 metres ahead of us. “Lets take cover there.” he suggested. “Just to make sure we’ve not been spotted”.
Jed and Saul had reached the door-less entrance of the building and I was just a few steps behind them, when I heard the whistle of an arrow, then a sickening thud as it hit Harry square in the back. With a look of surprise on his young face he stayed standing and looked down at the arrow head protruding from his slightly downy flat, chest. “I’ve been hit” he said almost matter of factly. I quickly stepped into the doorway with the other two, as we watched him collapse slowly forward onto his face just metres from safety.
For a moment, we did nothing except stare at Harry’s motionless spread-eagled body. The arrow had penetrated right through him. “Harry?” whispered Saul helplessly “Can you hear me?” His body remained still, but a faint moan came from him. Suddenly Jed swung into action. “He’s still alive. Help me.” he said looking purposively at me. We crawled forward, keeping low and grabbed an arm each and pulled Harry’s body through the door. “Fuck – what now?” said Saul, perhaps for the first time showing genuine doubt and fear in his piercing blue eyes.
Jed turned Harry over and as he did so slipped off the boy’s open shirt to use as a bandage. He wrapped it around the now profusely bleeding wound where the arrow protruded and held the young mans body in his arms. Harry looked questioningly up into Jed’s eyes, but already he seemed to be slipping into unconsciousness. Saul and I each held one of his hands, they felt clammy and hot and beads of sweat ran down from his tight dark curly locks over those serious knotted eye brows. “Stay with us my friend.” I said. But it was too late. His eyes did not close, but his stare became fixed and his pupils dilated and clouded and his mouth fell slightly open as he breathed his last breath. Jed rolled the limp body slightly to one side and with a sharp yank pulled the arrow loose, the he gently let Harry down on the dank sandy floor and closed his dead eyes with a swift brush of his hand. A trickle of blood ran down the side of Harry’s chest and sank into the sand. A fly already buzzed around his slightly arched neck and landed close to his Adam’s apple.
But there was no time to mourn our friend or even for the reality of what had just happened to sink in. The sound of the hover machine could be heard again and it was definitely heading our way. We cowered silently against the inside wall of the ruined building, Harry’s dead body lying still in front us. The machine stopped. It must have only been metres away. At the same time running feet could be heard on the other side of the building – perhaps 5 or more men. It was hard to tell. Then there was silence again.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only seconds, a thickly accented male voice spoke loudly and sharply. “You have been caught my friends. So close to freedom and your friends behind the Wall, but not close enough. You have come a long way I know, but sadly in vain. Your dead bodies will be displayed to your comrades as a warning that no-one can succeed against us.”
There was another silence, interspersed with some whispering and shuffling of feet.
“Your most honourable choice is to come out with your heads held high and we will dispense with you quickly and painlessly.” The voice continued.
We looked at each other with deep sadness in our eyes, but I sensed all of us felt strangely calm. Jed stood up first and brushed the sand and dirt off his muscular legs and taught abdomen. Saul and I followed suite and standing tall and proud we stepped outside as the sun sunk low in the sky in what could be our last moments of existence.
The leader of the hunters was a massive, giant of a man, bold headed and fully bearded, wearing a sleeveless leather jerkin and leather chaps and boots. He was heavily tattooed. There were 6 other hunters with him all similarly clad and all strong and well-built. They all had emotionless and hard faces, like they had done this many times before with countless other refugees trying to make it to safety.
“Kneel down” the leader commanded. We obeyed. “Tie their hands.” he barked. Two hunters moved toward each of us.
“RUN!” Jed shouted as he bolted pass the two men bearing down on him and began scampering and leaping across the coarse grass. Saul and I both lept up too, but Saul was immediately smacked hard across the side of head by one of the men assigned to him and fell sideways with a shout. I faired no better and was grabbed by both my captors and forced back down onto my knees. As this happened the leader had grabbed a loaded cross-bow from the hover machine just behind him and in one seamless move raised it up took aim and fired it as Jed as he fled. Even although he was already a good 30 metres away the bolt flew with deadly accuracy into the back of his head and out through his skull between his eyes killing him instantly – his body crashing to the ground and spinning around to leave him staring vacantly into the evening sky, the gaping bolt wound like an angry third eye.
The hunters now forced me and a dazed and confused Saul to remain kneeling side by side and roughly tied our hands behind our backs ripping the shirts off our backs as they did so. “For that little act of disobedience, I think we will take things nice and slowly now. Your chance of a fast and honourable death has gone.” the leader said in a slower, menacingly quieter tone. He smiled and turned to his men. “Get the two other bodies over here and strip them down. Lets have some fun.”
Saul and I looked helplessly on, as a hunter each held our heads back slightly gripping our straggly hair with their strong fists. Harry and Jed’s bodies were dragged to the bare ground between us and the leader. The men expertly stripped them of any remaining clothing and lay them out on their backs with their arms spread wide behind their heads. More flies were buzzing around the congealing blood of their fatal wounds. Jed’s eyes were still open but his pupils had rolled back leaving just the whites showing.
The leader approached Harry’s corpse first nonchanantly kicking it in the side. “What a pretty boy.” he said to no-one in particular. “Lift him up. I fancy drilling into his beautiful dead torso”. Four of the men, with an air of having done this before and with smirks on their faces and more than willing to please their leader, took a limb each and raised Harry up to their waste height, his head lolled backward exposing his pale white neck and serious face to us as we looked on in resigned horror. His dead eyes had slightly opened again and stared directly at us. The leader pulled an already erect, impressively large and hard penis out of his chaps. He spat on his hands and lubricated it and then deftly rammed it into Harry’s exposed anus. The men pushed the body toward the leader so that his organ penetrated even further. He lent forward and grabbed Harry’s throat for further support and then began thrusting back and forward with increasingly loud guttural shouts of pleasure. He glanced at us occasionally between spasms of ecstasy. “You will enjoy this too soon my friends” he taunted. Then with a shudder he came into Harry’s inert corpse. He withdrew quickly and the men simultaneously let the body drop violently to the ground. He let out a sigh and strode away with a powerful arrogance, brushing his hands together as if to signify a job well done and let out a short harsh laugh.
“So what next?” he said turning swiftly on his heals and looking back at us and then over to Jed’s prostrate body. Saul had started shaking and silently sobbing and closed his eyes to try to block out what was happening. He knew his dream to be reunited with his lover was now exactly that… just a dream. All she was likely to see was his abused dead body being displayed as a warning to her and the others. I remained still and expressionless – I already felt dead inside and just wanted it all to end. Our captors were not going to make this easy however.
The leader was now standing over Jed, his feet planted either side of his chest. “I can’t fuck this one” he announced “Not with a messed up bloody face like that – that bolt wound is too ugly”. “I do fancy a bit of decapitation though – what do you think lads?” His men let out a hearty roar of approval. “Throw me a blade”. One of men pulled a broad sword from a scabbard at his waist and tossed it to his leader, who expertly grabbed it by the handle.
The leader then quickly flipped Jed’s body over onto its chest. He pulled the bandana off and gathered up a thick handful of Jed’s long back hair in his left hand, then with his right hand he swiped the sword under Jed’s exposed throat and with two or three fast scything moves he cut the head from the body. As blood gushed out of the severed neck onto the ground Jed’s legs spasmed briefly in a last nervous reaction. The leader drove the sword in between Jed’s shoulder blades pinning the headless corpse to the ground and held the head up high for his men to appreciate. “Catch” he shouted and threw the head with some force at Saul. It hit him in the chest leaving a bloody patch and rolled away to stop between the two of us. “There’s your leader” he added.
Somehow I kept composed and stayed kneeling motionless and looking straight ahead. Saul however was now crying openly and pleading for mercy, curling forward and shaking. The man behind him yanked him back up right and pulled his head back further, his blond soft hair stretching back from his forehead. All his fearlessness in the face of adversity that had so marked our journey together utterly gone. “Shut the fuck up – nancy boy” his guard shouted. The leader was now standing between us and had picked up Jed’s bloody head and was looking quizzically into the rolled back eyes. “Oh well” he said and tossed the head further away to land next Harry’s corpse. “So who’s next?” he asked?”
“Lets shut this squealer up first.” suggested the man holding Saul’s head back.
The leader moved slowly and deliberately in front of Saul who was dragged by his guard into a standing position. He stared at Saul who at first tried to look away. Then suddenly as if he had reconciled himself to his fate, Saul stopped shaking and whimpering and stood silently staring back into the face of his brutish tormentor. There was even the traces of a slight smile across Saul’s face. “Thank you for being my friend” he whispered calmly glancing quickly at me as I knelt metres from his side. As he moved his eyes back the leader had quickly pulled a dagger from his belt and plunged it straight into Saul’s gut and was now twisting it deep and hard. Saul smiled even more broadly, then slowly the smile turned to a painful grimace, and his knees began to buckle. The man behind caught him under his arms and held him up as the leader pulled the dagger free and with one movement swiped it across his tanned elegant neck making a perfect thin clean slash from ear to ear. Saul gurgled several times and a stream of blood flowed from one side of his mouth and his head drooped to one side. He was instantly dead. His body was allowed to drop to the ground in a crumpled heap.
“Time for a break I think” the leader pronounced. “Keep an eye on the last one”. The guard behind me pushed me to the floor face first and then sat down heavily on top of my tied hands. I managed to move my head sideways so I could see what was happening. The leader had gone over to the hover machine and pulled a large corked steel bottle from its rear. He uncorked it and took a deep swig then passed it around his men. As they drunk and talked (in their native tongue) I tried to find my composure again to ensure my last moments were lived as bravely a I could muster, but slowly the terror inside was welling up as what I had just witnessed happening to my friends sunk deeper and deeper into my soul.
“Lets make this one suffer a bit longer I think.” pondered the leader as he tossed the now empty bottle back into the hover machine. “I think he would enjoy seeing us prepare his friends for display first…before he joins them in hell”.
And so as the sun slowly set over the dunes and into the ocean beyond, I watched, mesmerised and terrified in equal measure, unable somehow to close my eyes as I remained prone under the guard who continued to sit on me as his compatriots went about their tasks.
Three A frames were set up and pushed into the ground (made from extendable steel poles that had also been stored in the hover machine). Jed’s strong, well-honed headless body was dragged to the first frame and it was hoisted up by its feet, which were tied to together and then tied to the point of the frame. The arms where then pulled out and tied to the bottoms of each pole so that the severed neck was just above the ground. Jed’s bloody head was then impaled on spike set in the top of A frame, his long hair hanging down over his face.
Harry’s body was next to be prepared. One of the men first expertly sawed off the head, impaling it on the spike before upending and tying the corpse to the A frame in the same way as Jed’s.
Finally two of the other men performed the procedure on Saul’s corpse, stripping him of his shorts and then decapitating him using the incision already made to slit his throat. His blonde fringe hung down over his staring dead blue eyes on top of the frame above his stretched out inverted lithe young body. As he had feared this would be how his girlfriend would see him when our bodies were moved to the base of the Wall later in the night to be discovered at day break.
But before that the hunters had one last task – to dispatch their last victim.
By now as the light disappeared quickly, my own darkness grew, my mind was scattered and distracted and I fluctuated between utter fear and deep acceptance and even a kind of strange sensual arousal at my own imminent demise. Some of the men had planted some torches in the ground in front of the three A frames where my friends’ headless corpses hung. Some distance away two of the men had made, and were tending to, a large bonfire.
In the arena formed by the pool of light from the torches I was dragged heavy and unresponsive, staring blankly around me at my captors and my dead fellow travellers. A fourth A frame had been erected facing the other three. “Are you not going to fight my old friend?” asked the leader mockingly. I remained silent. “String him up then.” he barked. The ropes holding my hands behind my back were untied and I was pushed unresisting toward the A frame. Three men then grabbed me and without either hindering or helping them I allowed them to tie my feet together and lift me upside down so that I was suspended from the frame and them my arms were pulled out and tied to the sloping side pools just as my dead friends had been, my head just above the dirt.
“So this is it.” announced the leader to his men. “Its been a long night and I am looking forward to some nice cooked man heart and man liver – before we sleep”. He stepped forward to my suspended body and then moved around behind me and pulled my head backward. I felt the cold steel of his blade, still sticky with Jed’s blood, move across my throat, then intense pain as he violently sawed through muscle, sinew, blood vessels and bone. My ears filled with a deafening roar, wet, warm blood cascading in spurts out of my neck splashing on the trampled dirt, everything went light, the pain grew even sharper then diffuse then subsidised, I felt my penis engorging and hardening and then darkness and nothing.
The leader lifted my severed head up and stared into my lifeless wide open eyes and agape mouth. “Nice face on this one.. and a good strong neck, even if a bit on the mature side” he said. “Looks from his dick he wanted some action too”. Holding my head by its curly greying hair in one hand he used his other hand to pull out his own penis again. He stroked it slowly and it grew long and hard then he pushed it into my open mouth and now holding the back of my decapitated head in both hands he pushed it back and forward with increasing force – the head of his penis pushing into the back of my throat. Warm hot cum exploded inside my head and trickled out mixed with the blood still steadily dripping from my neck. “Ah that was a good night-cap.” he said. His men laughed, appreciating his sexual prowess. My head was finally skewered on top of the frame staring blankly out at the darkness beyond the bodies of my friends – my empty blue eyes boring directly into and through Saul’s dead eyes opposite me.
“So time to feast my friends, let get gutting and cooking”. The two men now approached each of the bodies with the leader keeping my body to himself. Almost in unison, and in practiced silence, each corpse was now slit open from above the genitals down to the neck and the sternum was then sawn open and the body cavity slowly levered open. The internal organs were ripped out and the livers, hearts and kidneys separated out and placed on a large slab of rock. All the remaining offal was then hefted into centre of the bonfire and more logs thrown on until the fire was large and intense. The men then cleaned themselves up as best they could using canisters of water from the hover machine and sat down to slowly roast and feast on the hearts, livers and kidneys which they impaled on sharp steaks and held over the fire to cook as it died down.
The leader had more bottles of drink to help the food down and soon replete the men curled up and slept were they lay in the warm night air as the torches gradually flickered out and the four stretched out decapitated bodies hung lifeless on the A frames, cooling, paling and stiffening as the night rolled on.
As the sun rose behind the Wall the next day. The night watch changed hands with the day watch and a new cohort of men took their positions on the ramparts looking at over the wasteland – ever hopeful more survivors might have made it pass the brutal hunting parties of the enemy. This morning, however, sadly as had happened on now countless other mornings – it wasn’t living survivors but dead victims that greeted them. Only 20 metres from the Wall were four A frames in a row with the headless and gutted bodies of four men hanging from them- their decapitated heads swarming with flies impaled on the top of the frames. It would now be the gruesome job to take down and identify the bodies. This time it would turn out to be Jed – one of refugees most renowned leaders, Martin his older friend and two younger lads only in their late teens – Harry and Saul (whose girlfriend Jade would be one of the first to wail in grief at that sight of this dismembered remains – another beautiful young man taken so soon and so brutally). When would this nightmare end?
When our boat hit the shore, ploughing into the sand with the pounding surf, it was already twilight. The huge dunes at the top of the beach hid the extensive rough shrubby wasteland behind them, on the far side of which lay the Wall - and behind the Wall safety at last. We knew that we would have to keep low and move fast to cover the distance, may be only a mile or so, without attracting the attention of any enemy hunting parties, but we had no option. There was no going back.
Although I was the oldest in our tight knit group of four survivors, I was not a natural leader and, as I had throughout our long journey through the badlands and across the sea, I let Jed take the lead. He had a natural authority and charisma, which had kept our spirits up through the tribulations of the last weeks. We all trusted him, may be in vain, to keep us safe until the end. Jed was not only physically strong with a powerful, athletic body but also intelligent and emotionally calm and stoical. His dark, handsome, Latin looks, re-assuring smile and wise eyes kept us all enthralled and hopeful that we would and could survive.
Saul and Harry, although younger than Jed by some 20 years and me by 30 years, also had a positive and determined attitude and hid any fear or doubt well. Saul was tall and blond with loose limbs and open face. He had a talent for turning the worse moments into challenges to be laughed at and pushed through. He also knew that behind the Wall his lover was waiting to embrace him after 8 months of separation. His hope of reunion kept him going. Harry was more serious and taciturn and carried his wiry frame with an air of aloof mystery. His tight dark curls farming his classic good looking young face. None of us had really worked out what made him tick, but he was loyal and reliable and as much a part of our close little band as any of us.
It was a hot, still evening, as we ran up the beach to the dunes, abandoning our boat to the waves. We wore no shoes and our shorts were dirty and stiff with salt from the ocean. Jed had tied his ragged shirt around his waist and still wore the red bandana to hold his wavy long dark hair back from his face. The rest of us kept our shirts on, but unbuttoned to keep us cool. We were all sun baked after hours at sea and our arms ached from the constant rowing, but there was no time to rest. The last most perilous part of our escape route to freedom lay ahead.
Jed led us over the first row of dunes and we skirted behind tall buckthorn bushes and scurried through sandy blow-outs and eroded footpaths choked with marram grass and brambles trying to avoid the higher ground. We had been on the move for about 10 minutes and been making good progress, although the Wall was not yet in sight, when we heard the distance sound of a hover machine. We all hit the ground instinctively pushing ourselves low in the vegetation. The noise seemed to grow more distant and then stopped. Jed carefully stood up and scouted around then beckoned us to follow. There was an old ruined roofless concrete building about 100 metres ahead of us. “Lets take cover there.” he suggested. “Just to make sure we’ve not been spotted”.
Jed and Saul had reached the door-less entrance of the building and I was just a few steps behind them, when I heard the whistle of an arrow, then a sickening thud as it hit Harry square in the back. With a look of surprise on his young face he stayed standing and looked down at the arrow head protruding from his slightly downy flat, chest. “I’ve been hit” he said almost matter of factly. I quickly stepped into the doorway with the other two, as we watched him collapse slowly forward onto his face just metres from safety.
For a moment, we did nothing except stare at Harry’s motionless spread-eagled body. The arrow had penetrated right through him. “Harry?” whispered Saul helplessly “Can you hear me?” His body remained still, but a faint moan came from him. Suddenly Jed swung into action. “He’s still alive. Help me.” he said looking purposively at me. We crawled forward, keeping low and grabbed an arm each and pulled Harry’s body through the door. “Fuck – what now?” said Saul, perhaps for the first time showing genuine doubt and fear in his piercing blue eyes.
Jed turned Harry over and as he did so slipped off the boy’s open shirt to use as a bandage. He wrapped it around the now profusely bleeding wound where the arrow protruded and held the young mans body in his arms. Harry looked questioningly up into Jed’s eyes, but already he seemed to be slipping into unconsciousness. Saul and I each held one of his hands, they felt clammy and hot and beads of sweat ran down from his tight dark curly locks over those serious knotted eye brows. “Stay with us my friend.” I said. But it was too late. His eyes did not close, but his stare became fixed and his pupils dilated and clouded and his mouth fell slightly open as he breathed his last breath. Jed rolled the limp body slightly to one side and with a sharp yank pulled the arrow loose, the he gently let Harry down on the dank sandy floor and closed his dead eyes with a swift brush of his hand. A trickle of blood ran down the side of Harry’s chest and sank into the sand. A fly already buzzed around his slightly arched neck and landed close to his Adam’s apple.
But there was no time to mourn our friend or even for the reality of what had just happened to sink in. The sound of the hover machine could be heard again and it was definitely heading our way. We cowered silently against the inside wall of the ruined building, Harry’s dead body lying still in front us. The machine stopped. It must have only been metres away. At the same time running feet could be heard on the other side of the building – perhaps 5 or more men. It was hard to tell. Then there was silence again.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only seconds, a thickly accented male voice spoke loudly and sharply. “You have been caught my friends. So close to freedom and your friends behind the Wall, but not close enough. You have come a long way I know, but sadly in vain. Your dead bodies will be displayed to your comrades as a warning that no-one can succeed against us.”
There was another silence, interspersed with some whispering and shuffling of feet.
“Your most honourable choice is to come out with your heads held high and we will dispense with you quickly and painlessly.” The voice continued.
We looked at each other with deep sadness in our eyes, but I sensed all of us felt strangely calm. Jed stood up first and brushed the sand and dirt off his muscular legs and taught abdomen. Saul and I followed suite and standing tall and proud we stepped outside as the sun sunk low in the sky in what could be our last moments of existence.
The leader of the hunters was a massive, giant of a man, bold headed and fully bearded, wearing a sleeveless leather jerkin and leather chaps and boots. He was heavily tattooed. There were 6 other hunters with him all similarly clad and all strong and well-built. They all had emotionless and hard faces, like they had done this many times before with countless other refugees trying to make it to safety.
“Kneel down” the leader commanded. We obeyed. “Tie their hands.” he barked. Two hunters moved toward each of us.
“RUN!” Jed shouted as he bolted pass the two men bearing down on him and began scampering and leaping across the coarse grass. Saul and I both lept up too, but Saul was immediately smacked hard across the side of head by one of the men assigned to him and fell sideways with a shout. I faired no better and was grabbed by both my captors and forced back down onto my knees. As this happened the leader had grabbed a loaded cross-bow from the hover machine just behind him and in one seamless move raised it up took aim and fired it as Jed as he fled. Even although he was already a good 30 metres away the bolt flew with deadly accuracy into the back of his head and out through his skull between his eyes killing him instantly – his body crashing to the ground and spinning around to leave him staring vacantly into the evening sky, the gaping bolt wound like an angry third eye.
The hunters now forced me and a dazed and confused Saul to remain kneeling side by side and roughly tied our hands behind our backs ripping the shirts off our backs as they did so. “For that little act of disobedience, I think we will take things nice and slowly now. Your chance of a fast and honourable death has gone.” the leader said in a slower, menacingly quieter tone. He smiled and turned to his men. “Get the two other bodies over here and strip them down. Lets have some fun.”
Saul and I looked helplessly on, as a hunter each held our heads back slightly gripping our straggly hair with their strong fists. Harry and Jed’s bodies were dragged to the bare ground between us and the leader. The men expertly stripped them of any remaining clothing and lay them out on their backs with their arms spread wide behind their heads. More flies were buzzing around the congealing blood of their fatal wounds. Jed’s eyes were still open but his pupils had rolled back leaving just the whites showing.
The leader approached Harry’s corpse first nonchanantly kicking it in the side. “What a pretty boy.” he said to no-one in particular. “Lift him up. I fancy drilling into his beautiful dead torso”. Four of the men, with an air of having done this before and with smirks on their faces and more than willing to please their leader, took a limb each and raised Harry up to their waste height, his head lolled backward exposing his pale white neck and serious face to us as we looked on in resigned horror. His dead eyes had slightly opened again and stared directly at us. The leader pulled an already erect, impressively large and hard penis out of his chaps. He spat on his hands and lubricated it and then deftly rammed it into Harry’s exposed anus. The men pushed the body toward the leader so that his organ penetrated even further. He lent forward and grabbed Harry’s throat for further support and then began thrusting back and forward with increasingly loud guttural shouts of pleasure. He glanced at us occasionally between spasms of ecstasy. “You will enjoy this too soon my friends” he taunted. Then with a shudder he came into Harry’s inert corpse. He withdrew quickly and the men simultaneously let the body drop violently to the ground. He let out a sigh and strode away with a powerful arrogance, brushing his hands together as if to signify a job well done and let out a short harsh laugh.
“So what next?” he said turning swiftly on his heals and looking back at us and then over to Jed’s prostrate body. Saul had started shaking and silently sobbing and closed his eyes to try to block out what was happening. He knew his dream to be reunited with his lover was now exactly that… just a dream. All she was likely to see was his abused dead body being displayed as a warning to her and the others. I remained still and expressionless – I already felt dead inside and just wanted it all to end. Our captors were not going to make this easy however.
The leader was now standing over Jed, his feet planted either side of his chest. “I can’t fuck this one” he announced “Not with a messed up bloody face like that – that bolt wound is too ugly”. “I do fancy a bit of decapitation though – what do you think lads?” His men let out a hearty roar of approval. “Throw me a blade”. One of men pulled a broad sword from a scabbard at his waist and tossed it to his leader, who expertly grabbed it by the handle.
The leader then quickly flipped Jed’s body over onto its chest. He pulled the bandana off and gathered up a thick handful of Jed’s long back hair in his left hand, then with his right hand he swiped the sword under Jed’s exposed throat and with two or three fast scything moves he cut the head from the body. As blood gushed out of the severed neck onto the ground Jed’s legs spasmed briefly in a last nervous reaction. The leader drove the sword in between Jed’s shoulder blades pinning the headless corpse to the ground and held the head up high for his men to appreciate. “Catch” he shouted and threw the head with some force at Saul. It hit him in the chest leaving a bloody patch and rolled away to stop between the two of us. “There’s your leader” he added.
Somehow I kept composed and stayed kneeling motionless and looking straight ahead. Saul however was now crying openly and pleading for mercy, curling forward and shaking. The man behind him yanked him back up right and pulled his head back further, his blond soft hair stretching back from his forehead. All his fearlessness in the face of adversity that had so marked our journey together utterly gone. “Shut the fuck up – nancy boy” his guard shouted. The leader was now standing between us and had picked up Jed’s bloody head and was looking quizzically into the rolled back eyes. “Oh well” he said and tossed the head further away to land next Harry’s corpse. “So who’s next?” he asked?”
“Lets shut this squealer up first.” suggested the man holding Saul’s head back.
The leader moved slowly and deliberately in front of Saul who was dragged by his guard into a standing position. He stared at Saul who at first tried to look away. Then suddenly as if he had reconciled himself to his fate, Saul stopped shaking and whimpering and stood silently staring back into the face of his brutish tormentor. There was even the traces of a slight smile across Saul’s face. “Thank you for being my friend” he whispered calmly glancing quickly at me as I knelt metres from his side. As he moved his eyes back the leader had quickly pulled a dagger from his belt and plunged it straight into Saul’s gut and was now twisting it deep and hard. Saul smiled even more broadly, then slowly the smile turned to a painful grimace, and his knees began to buckle. The man behind caught him under his arms and held him up as the leader pulled the dagger free and with one movement swiped it across his tanned elegant neck making a perfect thin clean slash from ear to ear. Saul gurgled several times and a stream of blood flowed from one side of his mouth and his head drooped to one side. He was instantly dead. His body was allowed to drop to the ground in a crumpled heap.
“Time for a break I think” the leader pronounced. “Keep an eye on the last one”. The guard behind me pushed me to the floor face first and then sat down heavily on top of my tied hands. I managed to move my head sideways so I could see what was happening. The leader had gone over to the hover machine and pulled a large corked steel bottle from its rear. He uncorked it and took a deep swig then passed it around his men. As they drunk and talked (in their native tongue) I tried to find my composure again to ensure my last moments were lived as bravely a I could muster, but slowly the terror inside was welling up as what I had just witnessed happening to my friends sunk deeper and deeper into my soul.
“Lets make this one suffer a bit longer I think.” pondered the leader as he tossed the now empty bottle back into the hover machine. “I think he would enjoy seeing us prepare his friends for display first…before he joins them in hell”.
And so as the sun slowly set over the dunes and into the ocean beyond, I watched, mesmerised and terrified in equal measure, unable somehow to close my eyes as I remained prone under the guard who continued to sit on me as his compatriots went about their tasks.
Three A frames were set up and pushed into the ground (made from extendable steel poles that had also been stored in the hover machine). Jed’s strong, well-honed headless body was dragged to the first frame and it was hoisted up by its feet, which were tied to together and then tied to the point of the frame. The arms where then pulled out and tied to the bottoms of each pole so that the severed neck was just above the ground. Jed’s bloody head was then impaled on spike set in the top of A frame, his long hair hanging down over his face.
Harry’s body was next to be prepared. One of the men first expertly sawed off the head, impaling it on the spike before upending and tying the corpse to the A frame in the same way as Jed’s.
Finally two of the other men performed the procedure on Saul’s corpse, stripping him of his shorts and then decapitating him using the incision already made to slit his throat. His blonde fringe hung down over his staring dead blue eyes on top of the frame above his stretched out inverted lithe young body. As he had feared this would be how his girlfriend would see him when our bodies were moved to the base of the Wall later in the night to be discovered at day break.
But before that the hunters had one last task – to dispatch their last victim.
By now as the light disappeared quickly, my own darkness grew, my mind was scattered and distracted and I fluctuated between utter fear and deep acceptance and even a kind of strange sensual arousal at my own imminent demise. Some of the men had planted some torches in the ground in front of the three A frames where my friends’ headless corpses hung. Some distance away two of the men had made, and were tending to, a large bonfire.
In the arena formed by the pool of light from the torches I was dragged heavy and unresponsive, staring blankly around me at my captors and my dead fellow travellers. A fourth A frame had been erected facing the other three. “Are you not going to fight my old friend?” asked the leader mockingly. I remained silent. “String him up then.” he barked. The ropes holding my hands behind my back were untied and I was pushed unresisting toward the A frame. Three men then grabbed me and without either hindering or helping them I allowed them to tie my feet together and lift me upside down so that I was suspended from the frame and them my arms were pulled out and tied to the sloping side pools just as my dead friends had been, my head just above the dirt.
“So this is it.” announced the leader to his men. “Its been a long night and I am looking forward to some nice cooked man heart and man liver – before we sleep”. He stepped forward to my suspended body and then moved around behind me and pulled my head backward. I felt the cold steel of his blade, still sticky with Jed’s blood, move across my throat, then intense pain as he violently sawed through muscle, sinew, blood vessels and bone. My ears filled with a deafening roar, wet, warm blood cascading in spurts out of my neck splashing on the trampled dirt, everything went light, the pain grew even sharper then diffuse then subsidised, I felt my penis engorging and hardening and then darkness and nothing.
The leader lifted my severed head up and stared into my lifeless wide open eyes and agape mouth. “Nice face on this one.. and a good strong neck, even if a bit on the mature side” he said. “Looks from his dick he wanted some action too”. Holding my head by its curly greying hair in one hand he used his other hand to pull out his own penis again. He stroked it slowly and it grew long and hard then he pushed it into my open mouth and now holding the back of my decapitated head in both hands he pushed it back and forward with increasing force – the head of his penis pushing into the back of my throat. Warm hot cum exploded inside my head and trickled out mixed with the blood still steadily dripping from my neck. “Ah that was a good night-cap.” he said. His men laughed, appreciating his sexual prowess. My head was finally skewered on top of the frame staring blankly out at the darkness beyond the bodies of my friends – my empty blue eyes boring directly into and through Saul’s dead eyes opposite me.
“So time to feast my friends, let get gutting and cooking”. The two men now approached each of the bodies with the leader keeping my body to himself. Almost in unison, and in practiced silence, each corpse was now slit open from above the genitals down to the neck and the sternum was then sawn open and the body cavity slowly levered open. The internal organs were ripped out and the livers, hearts and kidneys separated out and placed on a large slab of rock. All the remaining offal was then hefted into centre of the bonfire and more logs thrown on until the fire was large and intense. The men then cleaned themselves up as best they could using canisters of water from the hover machine and sat down to slowly roast and feast on the hearts, livers and kidneys which they impaled on sharp steaks and held over the fire to cook as it died down.
The leader had more bottles of drink to help the food down and soon replete the men curled up and slept were they lay in the warm night air as the torches gradually flickered out and the four stretched out decapitated bodies hung lifeless on the A frames, cooling, paling and stiffening as the night rolled on.
As the sun rose behind the Wall the next day. The night watch changed hands with the day watch and a new cohort of men took their positions on the ramparts looking at over the wasteland – ever hopeful more survivors might have made it pass the brutal hunting parties of the enemy. This morning, however, sadly as had happened on now countless other mornings – it wasn’t living survivors but dead victims that greeted them. Only 20 metres from the Wall were four A frames in a row with the headless and gutted bodies of four men hanging from them- their decapitated heads swarming with flies impaled on the top of the frames. It would now be the gruesome job to take down and identify the bodies. This time it would turn out to be Jed – one of refugees most renowned leaders, Martin his older friend and two younger lads only in their late teens – Harry and Saul (whose girlfriend Jade would be one of the first to wail in grief at that sight of this dismembered remains – another beautiful young man taken so soon and so brutally). When would this nightmare end?
