by Clay Martin
“Tim, you dumb motherfucker, I should pull your lungs out through your asshole. What in the fucking hell made you decide to pull prey from our own goddamn town? Are you stupid, or do you just want me to kill you?”
“Now wait a second Chief, hear him out, Tim actually….”
“No one asked you to open your fucking cock holster Dean. Sit your ass back in that seat or I will sit you down.” Chief snarled. Dean clamped his jaw shut and sat down in his chair like a scolded child. Chief kicked an empty chair across the tent, adding emphasis to his displeasure.
Chief was not the sharpest tool in the shed, he had solved a lot more problems with his fists than his head as long as he could remember. Still, even he could read the way the balance of power was shifting among the tribe. All of these dumbasses had been brewing this over as a good idea, waiting on him to show up and approve it. They were shocked he was not only rejecting it, but he was so angry he was on the verge of violence with his own kind. He needed to bring some finesse to bear. He had to regain control of the situation, but not in a way that permanently altered the dynamics of the group he had so lovingly built. “Goddamnit, we do things the way we do them for a reason. It’s kept us safe and powerful for ten years. It’s allowed us to build our tribe. It will keep us free and able to continue our ways until the Return of Kings. We fucking do it that way because its smart. Now you are all cunning and capable men, you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. But you elected me your leader. You expect me to make the hard decisions for us, that is my burden. Someone want to explain to me exactly why we are in this situation?”
Tim was not a particularly strong man, in either body or character. He knew he had made a mistake, and was scared to his core that he was going to pay for it with his life. The cowards tongue took him, that silvery gift that has talked many a craven man out of the noose. He had one chance to fix this problem and walk out of here, with a little luck with his standing among the tribe still intact. Maybe even enhanced if he played it right. The words rolled off his tongue like water over a cliff, flowing to show Chief he had acted right. He recounted the story from the bar, how he had made sure there were no witnesses, how this was a loner from nowhere, how he had slipped the roofie into the strangers drink, then come back here to get help transporting the body and cleaning up any potential mess. Tim delivered a case worthy of a veteran prosecutor in a courtroom, watching Chief’s face the whole time for signs he was going to be okay.
Chief sighed to himself. It was like dealing with children some days. In many ways, these were his children. Had he not created them after all? He felt his rage abating. He was still angry, but taking it out on the boys wasn’t going to help anything. “Look, you took action Tim, and I can’t fault that fully. But we do things careful for a reason. Yes, on the surface, this looks like a good catch. And I know the last stalk wasn’t the greatest. That pussy was still good though, right Bill?” He said with a smirk. That got a little grin from everyone. Bill had lasted all of about ten seconds, which had earned him a lot of good natured ribbing over the last few days.” You guys have grown as warriors, and you need a greater challenge. I get that. But the Return isn’t fully here yet. There are too many things that could go wrong here. More people may know where he is than he let on, hell, he could have been running a Facebook live event when he pulled up. People do weird things. If nothing else, his phone has picked up signal in our town, which makes it a last known location.”
Shifting to a sterner tone, with his hands on his hips, Chief continued. Looking down on his troops now. “The other thing is, we don’t know shit about this guy. You don’t just let a wild animal loose in your preserve, until you have some idea of what it will do. How would I feel if one of you got hurt? I don’t doubt you guys could take on anybody, the tribe against one man, but you are all still growing. Hell, Jessup over there was Force Recon. But he was still squeamish the first time the ritual was completed. What if this guy spent his whole life trapping, and he catches one of you with a deadfall before we kill him? Is that really worth it right now, with so much hope for our future on the horizon?”
Chief’s words had struck true. He could tell by the way no one wanted to meet his eyes anymore. When he had first entered the den, he had seen challenge and fury in several of these faces. Now all he could see was shame and doubt. Shame that they had disappointed the Chief by thinking they knew better than him. Doubt that they had dared to question his judgement. Check and Mate. The power was his again, and any threat to his leadership had evaporated like smoke.
“Now we can’t just toss him in the bone pile. That won’t work this time, we don’t want him to just disappear. We are going to kill him right now though, because this is exactly how things get fucked up otherwise. Tim, this was your mistake, so you are going to take the lead in cleaning it up. First order of business, go in there and club this fuck to death. Head only. Then we will take him back to town, put him in his own truck, and roll it off the logging road southeast of town. People die in car accidents all the time. That is still inside our county, but as far from here as you can get. Then sit back and wait on someone to call it in. With a little bit of luck, nobody notices until spring. A long winter would play hell with forensics, if anyone even bothered.”
Loyal soldier that he was, Tim stood and grabbed a fire log, following Chief to the tent flap. Glad he was out of trouble, he was experiencing massive relief and an adrenaline spike fueling what he needed to do. Tim wasn’t the best in the tribe at killing, he usually thought about it long after when he was done. He couldn’t sleep well for weeks, and when he closed his eyes he would see his victims looking at him, sporting impossible wounds. This was a secret he kept deep inside, no way he would let any of his brothers see his weakness. In time, he was certain it would pass, it was just another layer of forced civilization to shed. But right now? He would gladly cave this man’s skull in as long as it meant returning to the fold after his mistake.
Chief was still relaying directions over his shoulder three steps into the room that held the prisoner when he stopped dead in his tracks. Tim bumped into him, a small accordion crash of all the tribe that had followed to see Tim earn his redemption. The room was empty. Time stood still as the gravity of the situation hit each man square in the disbelieving face.
“FUCKING FIND HIM!” Chief bellowed at the top of his lungs, cuffing Tim on the ear with a vicious blow.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As soon as the two clowns in Halloween masks left, Mike knew the clock was ticking. It might be amateur hour around here as far as warrior skills went, but there were no illusions he was a dead man if they found him awake and bound. Even if they were fool enough to let him out of cuffs, no way he was taking down six or more grown men with his bare hands. That was pure Hollywood fantasy. He was certainly going to try if it came to that, always better to die with your boots on than groveling for death in the face of unspeakable torture. He had no idea what they had in store for him, but he didn’t want to stick around to find out.
Opening his eyes fully, Mike took stock of the situation as best he could. White canvas room, no doubt a straight wall tent. Bare electric bulb hanging in the corner, light hum of a generator close by. A bare dirt floor, with a small leak springing free under the uphill left corner from the drizzle outside he was just noticing. He was barefoot and his shirt was missing, though he still had pants on. Small comfort, maybe they didn’t want to rape him first. His feet were unbound, which would afford some more maneuver room for however he was going to try and get out of this. His captors thought they had things locked down tight, no doubt, but he could see through the sloppiness of their methods. Unless you plan on walking a prisoner around, why not bind the feet as well? And what kind of a rookie left a prisoner unguarded in a prison with cloth walls? He was still going to need a bigger error in judgement than that though, if he planned on making it out of here. Moving slowly, still mindful of making a loud noise, Mike tried to si
t up. His cuffs made contact with something and stopped his forward progress. Feeling around with his fingers, he determined it to be a steel pipe. Cautiously scooting to the right, while pulling tension on the cuffs, Mike felt the pipe slide down at a 90-degree angle. His mind’s eye conjured a U-shaped pipe maybe a foot wide, and probably about the same off the ground. No doubt put here expressly for this purpose. Hoping for an easy win, Mike rolled onto his side, twisting the cuffs down the upward leg of his restraints, so that his fingers could scrape the ground. Fuck. Concrete less than a quarter inch down. They had at least done this part right. The size of the U shape also prevented him from maneuvering to get a foot in it, possibly allowing the much bigger muscle groups of his legs to press the apparatus apart. This was at least one-inch pipe, so that was unlikely to work anyway. Mike also seriously doubted they had been so lazy as to concrete one side of the U, but not the other. Nobody gets that lucky. Mike recovered to a sitting position anyway, and scooted his body to the left. At the intersection to the pipe and the other 90-degree bend, he found what he was looking for. The oversight that just might get him out of here in one piece. Whoever had constructed this restraint system had left four threads exposed from the pipe to the fittings, and now it was going to cost them dearly. Provided he had enough time.
There are many ways to defeat handcuffs if you have tools, and a few more still if you don’t. Even if Mike had been able to break the U shape, he would still have the added problem that he couldn’t get his hands in front of him without breaking the cuff. Some men he had known were that flexible, but he wasn’t one of them. Not a lot of guys in the 240 weight class were. Without any specialized tools, like a professional would have tucked in his belt Mike thought morosely, the only option left was a brute force attack. He could beat himself up for getting soft later. Now it was time to do this the hard way. Pulling his hands as far apart as they would go, he inched his butt away from the U until he felt the chain of the cuffs bite into the threads. Leaning forward slightly to up the tension even more, he began rocking side to side. The trick here was to use the big muscles of your core, and not try to rely on arm strength. The cuffs dug into his wrists as the friction on the chain increased. As the pain ratcheted up, he felt the blood start to flow into his palms, and a wicked burn in the opening wounds as sweat poured into them. Between the exertion and the agony, he was sweating buckets. He bit down an urge to scream. His own rending flesh not only filled him with horror, but hurt like a hammer on toes. Focus on the prize, he willed himself. This is nothing compared to what will happen if you fail. He had an image of a coyote chewing its own limb off to escape a trap, which almost caused him to laugh out loud. Maniacal, crazed laughter, the calling card of the damned. Not the first time he had been here. His shoulders burned with the fires of Hell, but on he pushed. In training, they had always taped the wrists first. A little safety precaution, and we don’t want our guys running around looking like emo teenage girls. They also checked the cuffs first for defects. These were mass produced, and if you tried this little trick on a set with a burr, you might not need to worry about escaping. You would bleed out and die before you got free. Ever onward, no way but forward, Mike pushed himself. If you can run until your heart explodes, you can take this. With redoubled fury, he leaned into the cuffs. And felt the chain pop and give as the threads of the pipe finally ground through the links to freedom. Leaning back, he let the chain go slack, and the broken link fell free, releasing him.
He jumped to his feet, listening for a sign they had heard him, praying the generator and rain had covered the noise of steel on steel. He hadn’t heard a word for the last few minutes, both from the noise of the chain dragging across the pipe, and the necessary inward focus to complete the task. On a good day, it took less than three minutes to defeat handcuffs, but that felt like a lifetime if it was you in the hot seat. A new voice was mid-sentence with “go in there and kill him right now…”, which Mike absolutely knew was for him. No sense sticking around then, and no time to listen to the outside wall in case there was a sentry. There is a time for caution, and a time for decisive action. This was no question the latter. Mike took three rapid steps in the direction he had seen water seeping under the tent, hit the floor at a dive, wormed under the canvas like a mad man, and rolled free in a dark rain. A lighting flash in the distance gave him all he needed to know, as he ran towards the tree line barefoot, like a rabbit from a pack of wolves.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Halfway out of the clearing, Mike was at a dead run. The muddy ground cushioned his bare feet from all but the occasional granite rock in the soil, but he was far from caring. Like it had all of his adult life, the tree line meant safety. In the open he felt naked, vulnerable, even in everyday life. Escaping from some backwoods nut jobs in the middle of who knows where, he wanted the concealment of the deep woods like a drowning man needs a straw. His legs pushed like pistons against the soft earth, running for cover a memory as old for him as time. It seemed like an unfairly large portion of his life was spent running toward the temporary security provided by a sea of green, it was home to men like him. Some people might call it the green hell, but not those who had been molded by it, forged into walking weapons by countless days playing cat and mouse in just such an environment. The truth was, nature was neutral. Those who learned to play by its rules, however, gained a huge advantage over those that resisted it, tried to shape it to their whims. Mother Nature would kill you in a heartbeat, but it would be impersonal. I told you not to touch the light socket, Johnnie boy, now you have to pay the consequences. Learn its heartbeats, its patterns, how to move in harmony with it though, and God help anyone arrayed against you. Because nobody else will. That is a lot easier to enforce with a rifle in your hands though, Mike thought grimly.
One hundred meters to go, a flashlight beam pierced the night, followed in rapid succession with a rifle shot. Mike redoubled his effort, shifting up to a sprint reserve fueled by even more adrenaline. A commotion to his rear, he was no doubt being pursued now. The only way his antagonists could have possibly missed was a choice of weapons. Mikes brain was calculating angles and odds even as he cleared the first of the giant pine trees. They had to be using deer rifles, which explained the one shot, with scopes, which explained the miss. Scopes are great for many things, but they don’t gather artificial light worth a damn. Probably dialed up to max power too. The easiest way to make a standing off-hand snap shot with a scope is counter intuitively to drop the magnification down as low as it will go. The shooter either didn’t know that, or he had caught them so flat footed they were reacting with panic. Hopefully a little bit of both.
Lungs burning with exertion, Mike kept up the pace as he ducked branches and scrub pines. The first rule of evasion, make enough space your pursuers don’t accidentally land right on top of you. Fitness was a prized asset amongst all warriors, exactly for situations like this. As the lactic acid hit Mike’s quads, he regretted every cigarette he had ever smoked, and every mile over the last two years he hadn’t run. It had been so easy in the before. Fitness was part of the lifestyle, and the machine always had ways of checking. It might catch you slacking once, but the second would be the end of you. Out of the game, like many athletes, Mike’s people had a tendency to backslide. They had been so superhumanly strong for so long, it felt like it would never go away. And regular people were so weak, it didn’t really seem to matter. Like Clark Kent on a six-month bender, one day you woke up feeling like that last shot was liquid kryptonite. And of course, the universe throws you in a situation where you need it. His chest heaving and his legs turning to jelly, Mike tried to keep to a path across the jagged foothills that was basically level. Higher in elevation would require more stamina than his feeble body possessed at the moment. Not a chance he could disappear over a ridge in time to get out of rifle range. Down was worse, that is the default setting for almost every human lost or being pursued. The short-term gain in less exertion means being channeled by the terr
ain, a sure fire way to run into a trap. Ravines also usually have thicker vegetation, which makes you much easier to follow.
On and on he went. Speed was the only way to gain the gap he needed. The easiest way to never get caught is to be faster and deeper of lung than whatever is chasing you. Mike didn’t know the terrain, however, and hadn’t even the benefit of knowing where exactly he was. You don’t go running blind in someone else’s backyard unless you want to get headed off at the proverbial pass. Mike just needed a few minutes clearance to tilt the tables, and learn something about his adversary. With no attempt at counterattacking, he made a hard left turn. Dropping from a run to a fast walk, he mentally began counting his paces. Sixty-eight, left foot, sixty-nine, left foot, the same mental cadence he had been using for over a decade. His brain judged the distance for him on autopilot, allowing him to tune an ear to the noises that would mean the pursuit was close. At seventy-two steps, he turned hard left again, back the way he had come. As he walked, he stooped to pick up handfuls of cold mud, rubbing it on his exposed torso and face. Another seventy-two steps, which meant another 100 meters passed, and he turned left one last time, toward the original path he had taken through the woods. This time he slowed to a stealthy pace, taking care not to overshoot his original trail. That would spoil everything, depending on the tracking skills of whoever was behind him. A few paces from what would be a perfect square from the air, he halted and crawled low into a nearby bush. Dog leg complete. A recce trick learned from the older brothers in Vietnam, a lesson learned in blood and passed down through the generations since. Think you are being tracked? Circle back and rain fire on your enemies when they least expect it. Attack from nowhere, right in the soft underbelly while they think you are still moving. It tended to work a lot better with claymore mines and machine guns, a sobering thought at the moment. Still, it would teach him something about these other men. Could they track him at all? Could they do so in the dark no less? If they did pass by him, he would at least learn their numbers, and what weapons they carried. Would they walk in a formation? That would imply training, and that wasn’t good. Would they be disciplined and silent, or a gaggle of yelling wild animals? As his hands found a fist sized rock with a nice jagged edge, he hoped maybe a straggler would be behind the pack. After all this time, to be left sitting in the dark, holding a fucking rock? Maybe this is how it all ended, clutching a Neanderthal level weapon and dying in a hail of gunfire.
