The Ritual

exhausted, and unable to speak
for a while. He had not realized the barrel of the gun had been directed so low when he shot Loki, but he had gunned him somewhere through the pelvis, where Loki’s big hands were now pressing
into a dark wetness.
    ‘Luke. Stop!’ he commanded in his deep voice. Even covered in cracked white face-paint, Loki had never looked so pale.
    Luke shook his head. Swallowed, but could not find his voice.
    ‘Luke, no. I ask this of you.’
    Then words rushed out of him. ‘Where are the keys to the truck?’
    Loki stayed quiet, but winced, screwed up his eyes against the pain.
    ‘Keys, Loki?’ He looked over his shoulder. Still no Surtr.
    ‘Upstairs. In my jacket.’
    ‘Where your fat bitch is? Nice try.’
    Loki looked at him again; he was terrified, he had been telling Luke the truth about the whereabouts of the keys. Luke stared at the long figure down there, shivering in agony. The man
couldn’t have been older than twenty. Loki started to cry. Luke could not look him in the eye for long. He started to cry too; couldn’t help himself. He felt a terrible grinding remorse
for what he had just done to Fenris and Loki; he was about to shut down at any moment.
    Luke stopped crying. Was suddenly angry with himself. Swallowed hard. ‘My friends wanted to live, Loki. To see their children.’ He cleared his throat; spat phlegm onto the floor.
‘Mercy is a privilege out here. Not a right. You made it that way. You can die by your own rules.’ Luke cleared his throat again and said, ‘Fuck it.’ He aimed the end of the
rifle barrel at Loki’s big face. ‘Consequences, Loki.’
    ‘No, Luke,’ Loki said in a voice that was not so deep now. He raised a big hand and stretched it towards Luke, palm first. The palm was bright red and wet.
    Luke shot him through his fingers. Banged Loki’s big head down against the wooden deck of the porch. Behind his head was an instant wide swirl of murky liquid peppered with hard bits that
Luke could not bring himself to look into. The sound of it coming out of Loki’s head was the worst thing he had ever heard.
    Luke punched the bolt up, forward, back, and down. Stepped over Loki, who still twitched and shivered down the length of his legs. Luke was not worried about him getting up again.
    Luke sniffed; there was mucus all over his mouth and chin. With one forearm he wiped at his eyes, then at his mouth.
    Fenris was lying on his side, still moving, about twenty feet from the house. Pulling himself along the ground with one arm, towards the trees. Just to get away. Luke followed him. There was a
lot of blood in the grass.
    Then Luke paused and turned around to look up at the windows of the house. The whitish balloon of Surtr’s face peered down at him from the little window of the room where they had kept him
captive. Her face was full of shock. They stared at each other and then she retreated away from the glass.
    ‘Hey,’ he said to Fenris. ‘Hey.’
    Fenris looked up at him, his eyes bulged from his smeared face. A horrible speckling of blood dotted his chin and the forearm beneath the hand that clutched at the handle of the hunting knife
moving up and down in his throat.
    Luke looked away, at the trees. He felt dizzy and sick and he just wanted to sit down on the grass, but could not bring himself to get any closer to the sounds Fenris was making.
    ‘I could get the truck running. Put you in the back. Drive like a bastard to . . . Where, I don’t fucking know, but that road must go somewhere, Fenris.’
    Fenris propped himself up on one elbow. He gasped, he choked, his throat produced a horrible aerosol of blood, a mist as he pulled air in and out of himself from mouth, nose and throat.
    Luke looked back at the house, wondering if there was a second gun. Nothing moved in the old black building, but Surtr would have to come down soon. From where he stood in the paddock, he could
see through the open front door, and along the hallway to the far rear wall of the building. But still, nothing moved.
    He looked down at Fenris again. He wanted, he needed, to speak. To make some sense of this to himself. It was like he was just doing things without thinking any of it through. He was operating
on instinct now. But where did these instincts come from?
    ‘It’s too late for all that,’ Luke said, surprising himself with his own voice that possessed an inappropriate strength. ‘I don’t think the world has enough time
left for all that,