by mike Evans
“Matt, put that damn gun down. I’ll explain everything to you. I wanted him to meet you. I wanted you to tell him that as long as we are left alone that we aren’t going to be an issue for anyone that doesn’t deserve it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Zeke—trying to calm everyone down—reached down slowly, pulling the buckle from his holster and letting the rig fall to the ground, into the leaves. “Now, your daddy and I, well now, we go back a long way, Son.”
“Were you buddies in the army, Dad?”
“Something like that,” Paul said.
Chapter 3
Washington
Fifteen years ago
Zeke was tucked behind his car’s door. Bullets were flying overhead, buzzing through the air and disappearing into the woods behind them. They were trapped between a dead end and a frontage road in the North Pass Woods, and he was one of only three left in his crew. They’d been trying to call for more backup for the last twenty-five minutes. They’d been unable to reach anyone in the mountains, even the CB radio was lost in the woods. Zeke looked to his deputies; both of them were pulling speed loaders from their belt and looking as unhopeful as possible. Zeke said, “What do you two both look so shit sour about?”
“We’re about out, Chief. I got six shots left to my name and then we’re fucked. We can’t get away where we are. They got us blocked in, they aren’t giving up either. What do you want to do, should we try to make a deal with them?”
“We aren’t making a damn deal with a bunch of druggies. Besides, they are so doped up they aren’t going to let us leave alive, even if we offered them a bucket full of cash.”
The two men stared at each other, looking like they were both thinking the same thing. “You two run on me and you’ll die of bullet wounds to the back of the head. Y’all let me know if that is something that you are interested in, you hear me?”
“I don’t want to be shot in the back, but I don’t think that you want to have to explain to our wives that we got shot by our own sheriff, now do you?”
“After I get these assholes killed, I’m going to go out of my way to make sure that I shoot both of you in the back with their guns. Ballistics will match up; you won’t have anything to worry about. Hell, they will still give your wives their widow's benefits, so you won’t be leaving them with nothing.”
Roberts stared for a minute at Stephens and neither of them liked the idea of being shot by their own. They both rose quickly to run and a slew of shots came from the opposite side of the road. Zeke looked to his men, seeing them now resembling the others, dead where they fell. “I don’t care what you mother fuckers do, I ain’t leaving, and I ain’t running. Why don't you get the fuck out of here? At least you’ll have a head start on me, because once I load up, I’m coming after your asses; you are living on borrowed time right now, that I can promise you!” Zeke screamed.
There was no answer, no one yelled anything back. They’d been trying to push the officers’ buttons all night but weren’t able to get them to come out of their spot. Zeke ducked down as far as he could, no longer sitting in front of the door, but had moved in front of the wheel wells where he’d have the engine and brake drums to help stop any bullets that had his name on them.
***
The four men were laughing, they were doing lines of cocaine in between firing off a bag full of magazines they had. They hadn’t expected to run into the police, but they also had no intentions of anyone finding where they were cooking at. The cocaine had been pure when they bought it, but they’d cooked it into crack cocaine. They were some of the most popular men in the county, as well as the most sought after by the police and rival drug dealers. The woods were their playgrounds. People could walk for miles and the hunters knew to stay out of the woods or to be worried about what repercussions could be had.
Paul walked up, watching the gunfire exchange back and forth. He had been up in Washington for a few weeks and was still deciding if he was going to stay or not. The idea of living in the woods did not come as unappealing to him, but knowing he had no chance of befriending a bunch of drug addicts, he decided that he would take his chance. The one man left would more than likely be thankful to grant him freedom in his county if he made sure that he saw another day.
Paul grabbed a rock, throwing it in the woods across from the men. They swung that way, unloading their weapons and shooting at sounds that had no owner or threat of hurting anyone. When they clicked empty, Paul came out from behind the tree trunks he had been watching from. He made no noise, and by the time the first man heard the slightest of sounds he was already swinging the back of his axe directly towards the man’s mouth.
Matt had inherited his size from his dad’s family. The Hardins had been around for centuries, and as long as their blood had flowed, they had been giants compared to normal men, with psychotic behaviors. His dad had put up with his mother as long as he could. When Matt had left for the service, that was when his dad had finally decided that he no longer needed the cover of a wife and spilt her blood in the woods, which coincidentally was where he now wanted to live forever, albeit in a different state.
The flat part of the axe struck the man in the jaw and, unlike a clean cut, it caught on the back of the axe and the force ripped through his cheek, catching on the second side. Paul spun the man in a circle with the axe handle and launched him off balance into the second man. He screamed, clawing at the axe handle, unsuccessfully trying to get it out of his mouth to release the pressure.
The two men collided together. When the third man was finally able to see anything of the quick-moving blur that was Paul, it was already too late. Paul walked straight for him, gripping the man’s wrist and twisting it until it snapped under the pressure. When the fourth man started firing, Paul spun his partner around, using him as a shield. The man began firing, and Paul never stopped his path towards the man. His friend was screaming from the broken wrist and now the gunfire. Only half of the shots were hitting him; the man was high and his aim was sloppy.
When Paul was within three feet, he ran his knife across the man with the broken wrist’s neck. Blood sprayed into the gunman's eyes. Paul threw the now shot-up man to the ground like a rag doll. The gunman bent over, trying to get the blood out of his eyes and Paul brought up a knee the size of his face into his nose. It shattered instantly under the blow and he flew backwards onto the car’s hood.
“My nose, you broke my fucking nose!”
Paul smiled and gripped him by the throat and the crotch, lifting him overhead, and the last man still standing was aiming dead on him. He’d pushed off the man who had the axe head permanently as a part of his jaw. Paul heaved the man at him and the two connected with each other hard, cracking skulls. He dropped the pistol, and Paul made his way over to the man with the axe sticking from his mouth, stepping over him.
The guy who’d been hit by the man thrown at him looked up, trying to see what was going on. He was disoriented. Paul lifted him from the ground, putting an arm around his neck and in front of him yelling, “Sheriff, it’s okay, these men won’t be hurting anymore of your men.”
“What do you mean? What are you talking about? Who the fuck are you? I can’t trust you!”
Zeke stood slowly, shaking his pistol in Paul’s direction. The officer stared into the dark. Only half of the light was still shining on their car; they’d shot out the right side of the car’s headlights earlier. “I still got six you sons of bitches, and I ain’t getting shot in the back like my cowardly deputies.”
“Sheriff, please put your gun away. I mean you no harm, I assure you. I really do not.”
“I like my gun fine where it is.”
Zeke was covering his eyes. He could see no one with their oversized KC lights mounted on the truck, aiming down at his squad cars. “Please don’t shoot me then, can we agree on that?”
Zeke said, “Why don’t you come on over where I can see you then, and we’ll take it from there.”
Paul removed a
hand when the man bit him hard, drawing blood. Paul walked with the man in front of him still, making sure he had a human body vest if he needed it. Paul leaned in and whispered, “I like to bite to, biting is probably my favorite.”
When the man went to ask what he was talking about, Paul clenched two of his fingers, bringing them up to his mouth and biting through the bone until he felt them crack and then tear in his mouth.
The man screamed a cry that made Zeke stop cold in his tracks. He didn’t know what was going on and wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. The thought of getting in his car and taking his chances to drive away was looking more and more intelligent by the second. He took a good look at his hood, and the steam coming from the radiator helped him decide that that probably wasn’t going to be much of an option for him.
Paul spat out the two fingers and let go of the man’s hand. He cradled his arm like it was a newborn baby. Paul brushed his head hushing him. “I don’t like crying. I think you should be nice. You should also show me a little respect.”
“Respect? What the fuck are you talking about, psycho?”
“I guess in all reality, you have less than ten minutes to live—but you still should be nice. I can’t handle people being disrespectful.”
“Whoa, whoa, what are you talking about I only... goddamn it, my hand hurts! What are you talking about, psycho?”
Paul kept walking him forward. The man was thinking in the back of his mind that his first call was going to be to his lawyer, and the second was going to be to the rest of his crew to come out here and skin this son of a bitch.
Zeke saw two figures coming his direction. When they were out of the light, he looked more like a man—a big son of a bitch, but a man. The lights on their back and the two men’s figures transformed them into some type of monster.
Paul said, “Good evening, Sheriff Henderson.”
“Call me Zeke, everyone else does.”
The man was still trying to get away from Paul, but his left arm was wrapped around his neck and his bicep held tight. He was clawing and scratching at Paul’s arm, but unable to get through his overalls material. Paul said, “I like to scratch too, would you like to see how I scratch?”
The man was shaking his head no as quickly as he could, but Paul let go of the man’s arm, gripping him tighter with his left arm, and brought his nails down the front of the man’s face as if it were a chalkboard. The screams from the man were almost as bad as a board would have been. Paul yelled over the man’s cries. “Sorry about that, sheriff, but nothing upsets me faster than being disrespected, and too much of the time nowadays, people let that pass. Maybe it’s my age showing.”
“I’m not going to pretend that I completely understand what is going on here, so if you could fill me in on about every damn thing about tonight, that’d be more than wonderful. You see, I already got a handful of questions that are going to need to be answered after this. I don’t know what in the hell I’m going to do. I'm going to have to tell these two assholes’ wives their husbands aren’t coming home to them, as well as the three back there that got shot to shit. Those were good men back there. They were in it for the long haul. I wish you’d have come out earlier.”
“Yes, well, I was attempting to not get shot, Zeke. When you ran out of bullets was when it was safe for me to emerge from the woods. I apologize that it wasn’t when you wanted.”
“No, I guess I can understand what you are talking about. What the hell did you do to him? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Hmm, that’s a lot of questions, Zeke. Let’s go in order. I slammed him into a car, I bit off his fingers, scraped his face with my nails—probably my favorite thing. I like to feel the flesh beneath my nails. I’ll leave it there for days. Maybe not with this one though, he’s a bit on the dirty side. They look like they were putting most of their profits up their nose. With me, it’s a longer story. I need to know if you are on board for a helper?”
“A helper?”
“You’ve got a lot of pieces of shit in the North Woods. Each of them thinks that they are the next great drug kingpin.”
“What do you exactly plan on doing with that last one there?”
“Would saying that you killed them single-handedly with your last six shots after they shot your men be a good enough story that would keep you in the good faith of the citizens in town?”
“Shit, they’d think that I'm a regular John Wayne.”
“Now, if the North Woods was cleaned up for you, would we be able to come to an agreement that we will have no hunting, no hiking, no people coming in and out? We could work out a proposition that you could drop off some supplies every so often for me? Call me a freelance officer of the law, maybe?”
“You know I can’t go giving you a fucking badge. Christ, I don’t even know why I’m talking to you, Mr…?”
“You can call me, Paul. You’re talking to me, because this is the best offer you’ve ever had. You won an election, got a great district, and then the pieces of shit moved in. I know that as hungry as I get that it’d be best if I’m not in the city—for that matter, any city. I need a break from society and if you want to help keep blood off the streets, that is probably the best thing for everyone.”
“So you want the North Woods, and some food. You think that is all that you are going to need to stay happy? I can’t go have you killing a shit ton of people. This can’t be a regular thing,” Zeke said
“The only ones that will go missing will be those that you won’t miss. Now, North Woods is mine? I’ll take care of shelter, I'm quite handy.”
“You, uh, still got one alive there. What are you going to do about him?” Zeke asked
Paul dragged the man behind himself, heading straight for the sheriff. He took Zeke’s pistol, spun the man in a circle, and when he caught his balance, standing wobbly, sent one 357 caliber bullet through the front of his head, blowing the back of his skull off. “Now, you go up to where you can get some reception. I know these hills are a real bitch. Can I assume by the fact that I'm still alive that the two of us have a gentleman’s agreement?”
Paul held out a hand covered in dead skin and blood. Zeke, who never considered him anything but a man’s man, held out a hand and the two shook, making a deal with the Devil—or maybe the father of the Devil.
“Now, you let me deal with this mess for a few days, and we are going to put up some no trespassing signs. You see anyone out here doing business, and you let me know. I’ll buy you a shovel. These pieces of shit keep coming back. It doesn’t matter what you do,” Zeke complained.
“Zeke, I’ll have a list for you, if you want to come back five days from now. I can let you get everything taken care of. It would seem I have some supplies to go out and purchase; I'm going to become one hell of a survivalist, living out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“You know where you are going to be setting up camp?” Zeke asked.
“It’ll be far enough in that no one that isn’t in better shape than those guys are ever going to make it that far into the woods. I plan on being off the radar and staying that way. Know that I will be out there.”
Zeke rubbed his face, hating the idea of everything, but nodded, holding his hand out for the pistol. “I think we are going to have a long relationship. I got a feeling, if you can get rid of the immediate threat, that we are going to have little in the way of new cooks coming in. They like money, but they like their lives more.”
Paul gave him his pistol back and spun around to head out to the woods. Zeke held a light on him for a moment, but Paul went behind a tree and all but vanished. He pulled out a can of tobacco, pulling the biggest wad he could fit into his gum. The instant rush of nicotine hitting his bloodstream about knocked him off his feet.
“What the fuck am I getting myself into? Nothing like making a deal with the Devil, Zeke, Christ. I don’t know, what you are thinking?”
Chapter 4
Present day
Matt was still holding the
gun and didn’t have very much more pressure to apply before the back and inside of Zeke’s head would become part of the nature scene. Paul yelled, “You will put that goddamn gun down and you will do it right now. You need any more reason, you remember that I invited you up here because you needed help. Now damn it, Zeke here is going to be a friend to you. I'm getting too old to make this trip down here to get everything. He’s going to need to be able to trust you, or I don’t suspect he’s going to make too many more trips to see us. Now, does that sound about right, Zeke?”
“Well, I sure as hell don’t want to leave you high and dry, Paul, but no, I'm not trying to get shot when I don’t got five or ten more years in me. Now, your daddy told me that you are gonna be staying up here. Believe it or not, we do have television and radio up here, and I know all the trouble you’ve been to. I'm willing to look past that, if you can stay up here without issues. You stay in the woods where you belong, and you stay the fuck out of my town. Any crack cookers decide they want to risk coming to the North Woods and they are all yours. You do whatever it is that you want to with them, and get no complaints come from me. You got any questions about that?”
