A diesel pumper that is essentially one enormous tank chugs away beside the chicken coop. Black soot smokes from exhaust pipes that rise like dual chimneys behind the cab. Painted on the backside of the enormous machine are words I remember:

YESTERDAY’S MEALS ON WHEELS

It’s harder to dispose of a body than what you see on television. It takes weeks for most acids to turn bones to jelly. Not just any fire is hot enough to burn away DNA. You need a potter’s kiln or a blacksmith’s forge to pull off an impromptu cremation. Pigs are reliable dispose-alls, if you have enough of them and give them time to digest.

The method the Dows have chosen is to dump me, probably alive, more likely in pieces, into a tank filled with shit, piss, and every imaginable bodily fluid. To any K-9, even an experienced dog, my distinct odor will be lost in the miasma of scents. All that is uniquely me will decay, dissolve, and disappear into raw sewage in the tank of some treatment plant.

“Tori, you want to do the honors?” Tempest asks with new merriment.

“You bet, Gram.”

Behind me, I hear a chainsaw roar to life. I knew this was going to be bad. But this is worse than anything I imagined.

“Throw him there,” orders Tempest.

Tanner heaves me into the tarp behind the idling truck. I land on my chest but roll onto my back quickly. I don’t want them seeing the knife.

No one points a gun on me. Some of them have opened cans of beer. Tina has a fifth of Fireball. Others are passing around a gallon milk jug into which they’ve added coffee brandy. They’re getting ready for their show of shows.

“Please, please.” I put a weepy desperation into my voice. “Not this.”

What they don’t realize, as they’re howling with laughter at my pathetic display, is that they can’t see my hands. Behind my back I pull out the knife, push the button, and feel the high-carbon blade swing out of the handle. The edge of the Gerber 06 Automatic Knife is partially serrated above the finger guards. I saw through the plastic cable tie with quick strokes.

Tempest refuses an offered beer. “Tori, baby, I assume you want to take his leg first.”

“I’d rather take his dick, but it’s too small.” She advances fast on me with the upraised saw. The jagged chain whirs, smoke rises from the vents. “I’m going to make this slow, motherfucker. I’m going to cut off your legs and then your arms and then I’m going to make you wriggle on your stumps.”

Tempest says to Jewett, “Bruce, help Tanner hold him down.”

Jewett doesn’t budge. He seems on the verge of catatonia.

“You afraid of getting blood on you?” she snarls. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this without taking part.”