Deadfall

by L. Douglas Hogan

  Tonya stopped where she stood and dropped her pack. Andy stayed with her while Carissa and Marcus walked around her and headed to Darrick’s position.

  “What are you thinking?” Carissa asked.

  “I don’t like this,” Darrick answered. “There’s no good choices here. If there was some way to cover our tracks, I’d recommend hiding with Tonya while one of us continues to Pontybridge.”

  “That’s the thing. We don’t know if we’re being followed at all. We don’t know if they have a tracker hound or…”

  “They don’t,” Marcus interrupted.

  The group stared at him, waiting for some kind of elaboration.

  “All they have is men who are fairly good at tracking. The Enclave picked up a legit tracker not long after the group was formed. Rueben, or Denver, or whoever he is, made him teach others the trade. Now there’s a small group of them who are used for these kinds of occasions.”

  “Did you ever take any of his classes?” Carissa asked.

  “No. I volunteered to scout. Every scouting party had one tracker attached. That’s how they’re so efficient at finding resources.”

  “Recommendations?” Darrick asked.

  Marcus looked back at Tonya. He worried for her. He turned back to Darrick. “I know one thing. We can’t be having any more campfires. No matter how small they are. That was a bad tactical decision. We’ll never know, but we may have lost Kara because of it.”

  Darrick took offense at the comment. “Don’t be blaming me for her disappearance.”

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  “What are you trying to say, Marc?”

  Carissa interrupted. “Let’s not be pointing fingers and arguing amongst ourselves. It’s hard enough surviving our enemies. Let’s not have to survive each other.”

  Emotions were high for all of them. Adrenaline and testosterone can be a problematic cocktail. One thing about surviving after the Pulse – conflict. Conflict does not discriminate. It shows no disparity and is all-inclusive. It’s built into every human and has to be managed so that it doesn’t control. It arises from either a real or perceived threat to one’s concerns, needs, or best interests.

  In Darrick’s case, Marcus was insinuating that he’d made a bad decision that led to Kara’s disappearance. Darrick was already questioning his own leadership capabilities after going soft in civilian life. With the loss of the homestead, having to put down his own father, and the disappearance of Kara, he was struggling with himself. When a perceived threat to his recovery introduced itself, Darrick went on the offense. In a normal situation, he could run off and be alone with his thoughts; but this was life in a post-apocalyptic world. To be alone, anywhere, led to disappearances.

  Darrick’s new struggle? Managing the conflict. It was everywhere. Wherever he went, he was struggling internally – struggling with trying to get Tonya to safety, struggling with his relationship with Andy, struggling against the Enclave, and now, he was struggling against a perceived competition with Marcus to control the way he was viewed as a leader. Some things just can’t be controlled. The only way to change the way you are perceived is to change the way you perceive others. It was a deep conundrum that Darrick was still working on. It was an internal conflict that might last the rest of his life.

  “Whatever,” Darrick said, yielding to the perceived insult on his character. He walked over to Tonya and knelt down next to her and Andy.

  She looked up into the caring eyes of her husband and soul mate. “Baby,” she said in a soft voice, “I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, hon. You’re doing your best. That’s all any of us can do.”

  “I don’t think I can make the trip.”

  “Sure you can. We can’t be too far now.”

  “I’d say another six or seven miles,” Marcus said.

  Tonya sighed and frowned a half-smile expression. The expression was lighthearted and warming for Darrick to see; she still had a sense of humor. He smiled back at her, but the moment was interrupted by the distinct sound of a horse’s gallop.

  Without seeing where it was coming from, Marcus used a soft tone to say, “It’s gotta be a scout from the Enclave. Hide.”

  Each of them scattered into the woods not far from the path of the horse. As it came into view, Darrick was the first to see it didn’t have a rider, but at the rear, two people were being dragged along, one person by the wrists, the other by a leg. It was a brutal scene. The people were snagging on root systems and bouncing off trees and rocks. The horse looked to be alone other than that.

  He made a quick decision to jump out in front of the horse with his hands in the air. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he called out. There was enough distance between him and the horse to slow it down, but the horse refused to stop. It barreled on through, forcing Darrick to get out of the way. He looked at the dragging victims as it passed. He recognized the clothing of the one restrained by the wrists.

  Marcus jumped out from his position and ran alongside the mount. He grabbed the saddle horn, simultaneously placing his foot in the stirrup. It was textbook western-style mounting. He grabbed the reins and brought the horse to a stop.

  Carissa met them and immediately went to work calming the horse with her soft touch and pleasant voice.

  Darrick, on the other hand, was running to meet them, except he stopped short of the person who was tied to the horse by the wrists. The person was unrecognizable. The head and face were lacerated so severely that it would have been impossible to ID the person without fingerprinting or dental records, two sources of identification that were no longer available. Darrick didn’t need them. He recognized the clothing the person was wearing and knew it to be a matter of fact that the victim was his missing friend, Kara.

  The other man was an unknown. His condition was worse than Kara’s. His head and face were dragging directly on the ground and looked like they might have bounced off a few trees and rocks. Even if these two people were still alive, they would have died from the severity of their wounds or the infections that would have inevitably followed.

  “It’s Kara,” Darrick said, looking up at Carissa and Marcus.

  “Who’s the other guy?” Carissa asked.

  “Not sure. I doubt I’d be able to recognize him if I knew.”

  Marcus hopped down from the horse and tied the reins to a tree. He met Darrick and Carissa at the rear of the horse and took a gander at the stranger. “There’s no way to know,” he answered. “You gonna be alright, Darrick?”

  Darrick was visibly distraught over confirmation that Kara was not only dead, but sadistically put to death. “I’ll be fine.”

  Marcus knew Darrick well enough to know that he was already plotting a way to bring some kind of vengeance. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not worth the price.”

  “I know,” Darrick said, reluctantly giving in to the voice of reason. “We’ll get our chance.”

  Marcus knew she had been killed by Rueben. The dragging death fit his modus operandi, and the horse was one that he recognized from his travels with the Enclave. He wasn’t going to bring the point home with Darrick, though. He seemed content enough accepting things as they were.

  Darrick had done what he had to do to get his family to the homestead from Tennessee, but that was without suffering loss. It was the new way of life that Darrick was having difficulty adapting to. Not the killing part, that part was easy, but the losing part. He had to learn to accept defeat and manage losses. Nobody lives forever, and the odds of dying a natural death are stacked against everyone.

  Darrick untied the ropes from the saddle horn. He was struggling with idea that he would have to leave Kara behind without affording her a proper burial. Even his enemies were buried – at first. His trusty shovel had been left back at the glade on the Mitchell homestead, so that was a no go. Darrick went back to tend to Tonya. “Are you rested enough to ride a horse?”

  “I think I can do that,” she said.


  Although the horse came with bad tidings, it would be used to carry Tonya, and gave the group a sense of encouragement. It was a bittersweet thing for Darrick to leave his friend for the crows, but her arrival couldn’t have brought a better gift – a horse.

  No sooner than Tonya was hoisted onto the mount, an unfamiliar voice came from the west. “Drop your weapons or we’ll shoot you dead.” The command was loud and authoritative.

  Both Darrick and Marcus went into survival mode. Their ears were acutely attuned to the environment. Marcus’s and Carissa’s backs were to the threat, as was Darrick’s. That didn’t stop them from turning their heads and looking at the threat to study the situation to determine a course of action. Conflict.

  A man with a rifle pulled snugly into his shoulder walked toward them. He peered over his sights, and his stare was intense. Was he alone? No. Suddenly there was another and another. Three men made their approach, each looking as intense as the next. They were well equipped, too. They had M4s, flak jackets, and radios. Radios! They had communication devices two years after a massive EMP wiped out everything electronic. This moment could make or break the group. They had to play it smart.

  Marcus and Darrick locked eyes. They had to make a universal decision without forethought or planning.

  “These guys aren’t Enclave,” Marcus whispered just loud enough for his friends to hear.

  “If they wanted us dead, why didn’t they take us out? They had the drop on us, and we’re outnumbered,” Darrick whispered.

  Marcus watched Darrick for leadership direction. He didn’t let him down. Darrick stood up slowly and, with an authoritative voice of his own, answered their demand. “My name’s Darrick Mitchell. This is my friend Marcus Guy. We’re not looking for problems, just safe passage.”

  “There’s nothing moving forward that you want any part of,” the front man answered.

  “We’re headed to Pontybridge. It should be just a few miles up from here,” Marcus said.

  The men looked at each other. The front man asked, “What business do you have in Pontybridge?”

  “I have a friend there, a militiaman by the name of Chad Nance,” Marcus answered.

  The men looked at each other good. The way they looked at each other told both Marcus and Darrick that they knew Chad. They waited for their response.

  “Chad Nance is dead,” the first man said.

  “Dead?” Marcus asked.

  “He was killed by Russians.”

  “Russians?” Darrick asked.

  “What’s going on?” Marcus asked, both of them now thoroughly confused.

  “How did you know Chad, again?”

  “He was a friend of mine from before the Pulse. How did he die? What do you mean he was killed by Russians?”

  “Pontybridge was a resistance outpost for a while. A rogue group of National Guardsmen came through here and greeted us with a few supplies. They must’ve been followed because a Russian special forces group came in behind them and all hell broke loose. They were all killed. A handful of us survived.”

  “But only because we hid,” the second man said.

  “We would have been killed, too,” the third man added.

  Darrick and Marcus instantly lost respect for the men. Both of them were trained in such a way that they would never hide while their group was being slaughtered. Stand together, fall together was their mantra. They didn’t let the men know their true feelings.

  “My wife is sick, and we’re looking for meds,” Darrick said, pointing to Tonya, who was atop the horse.

  “How many are in your group?” the first man asked.

  “Just us. Me, Marcus, my wife Tonya, my sister-in-law Carissa, and my son Andy.”

  The man studied them before lowering his weapon. “Surrender your weapons and we’ll take you to Pontybridge. We have meds, but the decision’s not mine to make.”

  Darrick looked to Marcus and Carissa. They each nodded their heads. Darrick set his bolt-action rifle on the ground, and the others followed his lead. The second man went around and collected the rifles. When he was done, the other man lowered his rifle.

  “My name’s Devin,” he said. “This here’s Clint and Allen,” he added, pointing to the other two men. “Follow me.”

  Seven

  GO FAST – GO ALONE

  The Mitchell Homestead

  The stranger stood in the orchard of the Mitchell homestead. A plume of fire shot up from the home and rose high into the sky. This was the same thing he’d experienced upon arriving at the old ranch house.

  Oddly enough, a few miles back, he’d passed through the property of an old couple’s farm home, where he found the bodies of the owners lying out in the open. There was a third body that didn’t seem to belong there. All three of them had been shot and killed. Another body was in the house.

  The stranger was traversing the landscape and following the trek of the Enclave, all the while trying his best to keep his distance. From what he had been able to learn so far, the group almost always burned down the properties they dominated. So what made that property different? They didn’t seem to dominate that one. There were signs of struggle here and there but definitely not any signs like what he was used to finding. Without seeing the group, the stranger estimated that there must have been a hundred or two who burned down the ranch property.

  When he was done looking at the plume of smoke, he moved on until he reached the source of the smoke plume. The man didn’t know it, but it used to be the Mitchell house. He didn’t know the Mitchells, but he could see that that there was once a family living here, and, although there was no evidence of a large group residing here, there were still signs of a massive firefight of some kind. Brass cartridges of all sizes littered the property. Mostly 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm casings. Among them, a small toy race car. He reached down, picked it up, and gave it a quick study before putting it in his pocket.

  He continued to look around. The barn was burned down, too, and the chicken coop. Who would burn down a chicken coop? The orchard was picked bare. What happened here? The stranger didn’t know. He could only assume from the absence of hanged bodies, the people who used to live in the residence either escaped on foot or left with the group. The answers weren’t pressing. The stranger had a destination, and it just happened that the route he was taking was the same as the killers he reluctantly followed.

  The stranger left the back of the property and came to the front yard. On the front side of the house, a mailbox read Mitchell. The stranger moved on past the house and eventually came to the glade where Darrick Mitchell had buried the bodies of family and Enclave members. Of course, the stranger knew nothing of Darrick Mitchell’s existence. Nevertheless, he was becoming somewhat interested in the case, especially given the circumstances of the unique makeshift cemetery.

  He studied the graves closely. One stood out to him, a fairly fresh one, with a cross made from the planks of the old barn. It was engraved. It read Jimmie Mitchell. The other graves were shallow and also fresh. Some shallower than others. Some fresher than others. He could only conclude that either the person who buried them grew tired of digging deep holes, or the only grave that mattered was Jimmie Mitchell’s.

  A story was beginning to unfold in the mind of the stranger. It made sense that the man with a grave marker was a resident of the home he’d just passed. Somebody buried him. A survivor. The man looked about and studied the terrain. He had to keep moving. It sickened him to think that he was on a collision course with a group of people responsible for so much carnage. He pressed on.

  Seven miles east of Pontybridge

  Sometime later, Rueben’s caravan of Enclave members came hiking through the forest where Darrick and his group had spent the night. The trackers who took Kara by night led them to where she had been taken. The camp was now abandoned, and nothing had been left behind. Nothing but evidence of a campfire. The caravan moved on past the campsite.

  Rueben and Tony, who were near the rear of the column,
stopped to stand over the firepit.

  Tony looked at Rueben for approval before stooping down to feel the warm embers. “Late last night to early this morning,” Tony said to Rueben, letting him know how long the fire had been out.

  Rueben knew they were tailing the homesteaders and that they’d most likely encounter them by the end of the day, especially if the Enclave could keep moving. The way Rueben had it figured, there was most likely a child and women in the group he was pursuing.

  Rueben cared nothing about political correctness or gender equality. All he considered was science-based fact. To him, that meant women and children were weaker than him and therefore a contagion upon the earth. He believed, with absolute certainty, that they would catch up with the homesteaders simply because he viewed them as a chain with weak links. Eventually that chain would break under the stress. When that happened, Rueben would be there to capitalize on it.

  Rueben continued on foot. Tony followed.

  Sometime later, the caravan slowed down. It was always easy for the people in the rear to know when something was happening in the front. The caravan would suddenly stop, then go. This would happen a few times, signaling to the people in the rear that the front of the line had come to a stop and others behind the leader were doing the same. This captured Rueben’s curiosity. There were no sounds of conflict. No scuffling or yelling. Just stop and go.

  Eventually, he and Tony also stopped. The mangled bodies of Cory and Kara were sprawled out and contorted from the beating their bodies had taken as they were dragged behind the running horse. Immediately, Rueben pulled his handkerchief out and covered his face. He moved past her and didn’t remove the barrier until he was a few yards beyond their bodies.

  Tony saw the behavior. He’d spent the last few months observing Rueben’s behavior and acting like he saw nothing. He wanted to have a conversation with his leader, but he knew not to make eye contact unless he was seeking Rueben’s approval. The fact that there was no such person in the group by the name of Denver conveyed his suspicions about Rueben. The man had an imaginary friend. Although Tony was slightly off on his assumption, he was right that Denver wasn’t real, at least not real to those closest to Rueben. The crowd didn’t care. It mattered little that they’d never seen the man responsible for their ongoing survival. As long as they had food in their bellies and water on their lips, they were content.