Page 31 of Viking

CHAPTER TWENTY

Viking

“Rat, Rat, Rat.” I slaphis face. My gloves are tacky with blood, but he’s practically covered in the stuff, so what’s a little more? “Don’t fall asleep on me now. We’re just getting to the fun stuff.”

His eyes roll back, and his head lolls to the side, as blood dribbles out of the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t rat ... I s-swear. Please, V-Vike.”

“It’s Prez. Only my friends get to call me Vike,” I hiss in his face. “And you are a motherfucking rat, Rat.”

“I-I’m not. I’m n-not a rat.”

“I thought that too,” Blue says. “Until I found this.” He holds up the burner we discovered at Rat’s apartment.

Rat tries to shake his head, but he can’t. Those muscles have already been severed. “I don’t k-know what t-that is.”

“You had me fooled. Now, it’s time to squeal, little piggy.” Breaker says, oinking for effect. He’d taken Rat’s betrayal the hardest. Breaker didn’t trust a lot of people. Knowing that he’d sponsored a rat cut him deeply.

“I swore black and blue that shitty apartment of yours was clean.” Blue crouches so they’re at eye level. “Too bad Gator kept you occupied all week, or the feds might’ve had time to give you a little warning that you’d been burned as their asset.”

Rat’s arms sag in their restraints, and he starts to weep, tears merging with blood as they trail down his face.I’ve grown bored. We already have all the information we need. Along with the photographic evidence on his phone.

I circle around to his back and peel away the flaps of skin and the trapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles I separated with long, even incisions only a moment ago. The deeper muscles were a little trickier. It’s a lot of fucking work, and that’s just to gain access to the ribs.

I take my hand axe and fracture the scapula, then the first rib on the right side, severing it from the spine. Rat jerks violently, but he makes no sound as I continue onto the next.

“Prez, I think he’s gone,” Meatball says.

“Shut the fuck up, dickhead.” Blue whacks the back of his skull. I tune them out, enter that methodical space where my victim is no longer my enemy, just an unfortunate sack of bones and meat for me to assemble in offering to Odin.

I hack through each of the ribs on the right and then the left. Then I spread the rib cage outwards to form wings.

Ever so gently, I reach my hand into his thoracic cavity and pull out the lungs through his back, lifting them up and placing them reverently on top of the wings.

The process takes an age, or so it seems. He stopped breathing a long time ago, and we’ll never see that final fleeting wingbeat my ancestors intended for this type of execution. But a sacrifice to Odin can’t be rushed, and it’s not always perfect.But it sure is fun.

“Jesus, Vike. That is some grisly motherfucking shit,” Gator says.

When I’m done, I’m sweating. Every inch of me is covered in blood. I step back and look over my work, and then I hold out my hand to Blue. “Phone.”

He places the burner in my hand. I snap a picture of Rat, strung up between two trees, his ribs broken and twisted, splayed out behind him like great, bony fingers forming wings with his lungs placed on top for the final flutter of the Blood Eagle.

I send the image to the only contact in the phone and shove the device inside his gaping mouth. I’m confident the ATF has nothing, or they would have hauled us in already, but that doesn’t mean I could let a slight like this go without retaliation. Rat paid the ultimate price for his betrayal.

Now for the other problem in my life, which is not so easily solved.

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