His SAW had literally sawed the three Salvadorans in half. Even though it had been his ‘job’ to provide cover for these Triple Canopy Contractors while they spoke with the tribal lawyer, and even though he had stood by—dying inside—as they hacked the man to pieces with their machetes in front of his daughter, they could not have her. That was not the mission; not his job, just him. Something within him had a ‘need’ to protect this girl who was so shocked and trembling she was not even able to cry or close her eyes.

The bodies had not separated cleanly—kind of like sawing rock with dynamite he supposed. They did though kind of ‘squish’ together into a reasonable reconstruction of the three mercenary scumbags who had so recently been his close associates, until his inexplicable ‘need’ had intervened. He had never been a do-gooder, was quite selfish actually, and was thought by those around him to be ‘robotically’ amoral. This need confused him, this need to protect this child, child of the enemy of the oil company that paid the people who paid the people who paid him.

The shrine—the expression of this other deep inexplicable need—was coming along just fine. The weapons man and the interrogator served as the base of the shrine. He placed their weapons at port. The NCO, that mean bastard, he was the obelisk. Pozer had to cut some stakes and shove them through his legs to prop him up. The torso kept flopping off so he used the web gear and some small stakes to keep it together—actually the intestines made half decent cords. He worked in silence as the flies began to buzz. Eventually the pyramid of death was complete and Wilson cursed behind him, “What the fuck Poze. We need to get back to the LZ—enough already with the Genghis Khan shit.”

He stepped up to Wilson, took the girl out of his arms, placed her on his shoulders, and then, when Wilson began some complaint, kicked his chest in. Wilson sounded like a piece of fried chicken that had been smashed with a hammer. When he hit the deck and looked up at Pozer with startled ‘why me’ eyes Pozer simply stood and watched him die as his lungs filled up and the mouth overflowed, and he choked on his own blood.

He had always felt bad about Wilson—in retrospect, after he had gotten back to the States. But at the time, Wilson was just in the way of his need; was simply a problem with a brutally simple kinetic solution.

The girl grabbed his ears as soon as Wilson died. Pozer slung the SAW across his lower back, squatted down and picked up her father and held the pieces together as best he could, and walked off down the jungle trail. Never had he felt so in tuned, never had a walk felt so predetermined, so right, so…

...the body was getting heavy. No, it was not a body—a rock, it was a rock, and it sank into the mushy mess beneath him that had been a giant bear’s head. It was not that he lacked the strength to draw it from the remains and continue. But rather that his savage will had been spent. He felt like little Posie again, The Man in The Gray Suit’s ‘special boy’ who raced dogs, talked to rats, petted starlings—that were ever so skittish around non-special people—and swam joyfully under the ice when the river froze up in winter, pushing along between the muddy bottom and the white hardness above. The under ice swims, that reminded him of this, but without a Starburst candy reward for every minute beyond five that he stayed under the ice.

“I want a Starburst!”

He looked down at a thousand pounds of hairy ground meat, splintered bone, and loose teeth, and felt kind of sad for Old Munch, his first Ice Age acquaintance. Then, as he stepped away, and felt nothing jiggle against his bloody inner thighs, he remembered—“My junk!”

He felt like his voice should have echoed it was so clear and deep. But it just died, sinking into the bloody snow-smeared turf. He looked down at his groin and saw nothing. He was drawn morbidly to the ruin of his genitals and began to bend forward so he could look up from below—if from an upside down perspective—at what was left. He was really wondering if he would be able to urinate.

“Tina!” he screamed up into his crotch as his head hung between his knees.

The wound didn’t even look like a wound, more like a bloody declivity. Then he saw that the blood was from two large gouges on his pelvis that had raked to the bone. He could feel the exposed bone and the stinging that let him know that his body was cut. But there was no pain where his genitals should be. And, more importantly, he still felt like he had his testicles and penis. They did not feel hurt, or gone, although he did recall hearing that people who lost parts still felt the pain in the missing part, however much egg-headed sense that made.

He felt the time-hoop against his chin and shoulders where he had placed it around his neck.

“How do chicks pee? How am I going to pee?”

With those words he saw his genitals literally fall out and hang normally.

“What?”

“Dude, this could be better than a cup!”

He worked his abdominal muscles and his pelvic floor muscles, and got some movement. Then he thought about being the condor, about not wanting to be a man getting his balls kicked in, and his genitals retracted up into his pelvic floor. It felt kind of warm and a little like he was constipated too.

“Wow, I am special!”

The snarl he heard in front of him—or where would be in front of him if he did not have his head hanging down between his knees looking up at his disappearing junk—had a slather to it, a drippy steel-trap gnashing quality that sent a thrill through him.

His impulse was to stand up and face the enemy. But his every instinct told him to squat down so his throat would not be exposed. He squatted slowly as he pulled his head out from between his knees and found himself two yards from the biggest damned dog he had ever seen; what he had learned through the books that The Man in The Gray Suit had brought him as a boy, was named a ‘dire wolf’, and this dire wolf had five dire friends.

To be continued in Snarl: Out Of Time #12