That day, he confirmed his first fully grown fruit.
Alex was never more satisfied than when he picked and ate that cucumber.
Chapter 3
Shadow came up the hill with something in his mouth that afternoon. He’d been gone for a while, but it hadn’t even fazed Alex as he meticulously tilled the soil and enjoyed his day of gardening.
He regarded the wolf and did take note that the beast had almost doubled in size recently. It was a bit peculiar and he had no way of knowing what to expect from Shadow. He had grown from a pup to what appeared to be a full-grown wolf in only a few months.
Alex considered that he knew nothing much about wolves other than their pack mentality as he filled a bucket with water, intending to wash his clothes for the first time in a long time. He considered the fact that he had no idea how big wolves got, either, supposing they might be bigger than dogs.
As he removed his clothing, he hadn’t even realized his own stench until removing his shirt and revealing his own scent fully. Washing the clothes as best he could by hand, he then soaked the garments in water and hung them to dry. He had a few pairs of jeans that the former owner of the cabin had left behind, which were a bit loose on him, but that was easily remedied with a belt, of which there were many inside.
It also struck Alex as odd that the cabin’s prior resident was never discovered on any item in the cabin. There were no photographs, albums, or any personal effects at all.
He must have really been a hermit out here. Maybe he was crazy, Alex thought as he observed Shadow approach. The wolf dropped a shoe at Alex’s feet.
“Where the hell did you find this?” he asked, picking it up and inspecting it. It was warm, but had no blood on it. “A size ten or more from the looks of it.” He stared at Shadow for a few moments before heading into the cabin to retrieve his shotgun, bow and quiver. He closed the door behind him and made his way slowly and carefully down the hill.
On his way down, an hour or so into his descent, he happened across a newspaper that seemed to be in relatively good condition.
“That’s odd, eh, Shadow?” he said as he bent low and picked it up. He paged through it, and it was from months ago—last November the 11th, to be precise—but it wasn’t weather-beaten at all. It had to have been recently discarded, he guessed, scanning the condition of it thoroughly and then looking around. He noted sale ads for SuperMart, a few odd car sales, and a half page add about a castle structure or some such at the local Renaissance Faire this coming spring.
Even more interesting was that the crossword puzzle had been started, but never finished. He slipped the newspaper into his back pocket and shooed Shadow away.
“You head on back or stay here. I don’t need you causing a scene, got it?” the wolf looked at him queerly, tilting his head, and then he simply lay down in the shade, watching Alex trot off.
A short distance later, off the trail and in the thickets to his left, he heard the faint sound of human voices. He crept closer and noted two men and a woman sitting in a circle, eating something that looked like a squirrel or raccoon or some kind of smallish animal. He couldn’t tell what it was from this far away, nor could he make out any details other than one of the men wore a hat. He wanted to get closer, but could not as they would most certainly catch sight of him.
He circled around and got close enough to hear, but could not see them from his vantage point behind a crowd of bushes. He heard the woman excuse herself to go to the bathroom and he listened in as the other two men chatted about ‘fucking her’, as they so crudely put it. He also heard one of them complaining about a missing boot as they shared stories about their sexual prowess, which had him shaking his head.
“Typical dudes, still measuring their dicks in this shitty world,” he whispered with a sarcastic huff and a shake of his head. “And I guess I know where this came from now,” he added, looking back to see if Shadow was near and subsequently tossing aside the boot he carried. Alex was both pleased and a bit surprised that Shadow had listened to him to this point, staying far away. However, Alex’s smile disappeared quickly as the dialogue shifted to something more malevolent.
Their words turned their tone to more than just idle desire, as they debated forcing themselves on the woman. He took a deep breath and sighed, hoping they were not serious, but he could not tell. He also heard mention of others, citing multiple male and female names, and he wasn’t sure exactly how many were in their group. He was also unaware if they were nearby or not.
“Dammit,” he mumbled, uncertain of what to do next. If he were to act, unsure of the group’s size or tendencies, it might be a suicide mission for him if he were to intrude on them.
He heard Shadow approaching and decided to get out of there before the wolf gave away their location, or started something that he wasn’t prepared to finish. They were far enough away that they probably wouldn’t stumble upon the cabin being this far away. From the distant looks of their camp and the sounds of their conversation, they’d probably been here a while. It included a pair of tents that he could make out from this distance, which were at least a hundred paces away.
“None of my business, right?” he asked the wolf as he made his way quietly away from them and back up the trail. “I don’t need any fucking drama,” he added angrily, clearly wrestling with his own ethical questions of wanting to get involved. He continued giving it consideration with each step he took.
He argued both for and against it at least a dozen times along the trail home, and when he finally made it back, he figured it was wisest to leave it well enough alone.
He pulled out the paper and gave it a closer look. Again, he read the ads, all about the Renaissance Faire, and the sale at the SuperMart, and he read a story about soldiers being killed overseas. “I guess that won’t be happening anymore.”
As he turned the page, he stopped at the crossword puzzle once more and tried to answer a few of them before reading the comics to provide him some much-needed levity. It was short-lived at best, as he gave consideration to the woman in that camp yet again.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he mentioned to Shadow, who drank thirstily from a bowl of water. He retrieved his bow from inside and the duffle bag with the extra arrows he brought from home. He had a generous portion of field tip rounds and decided that he might need the practice. He went about setting up a target, made up of some wooden paneling as the base. He duct-taped a pillow to it, and propped it up against the wood he’d recently cut.
He spent the next few hours angrily hitting and missing the target. Overall, he was pleased with himself and had only broken one arrow. He retrieved his quiver with the broad heads and dumped it out. He was pleasantly surprised to see that he had put several dozen more in the bottom of the quiver.
The next hour or so was spent changing the heads so that he was ready for anything. His thoughts shifted back to the woman and he re-read the paper again, trying hard to focus on the words, but failing miserably. He grabbed his gear on more than one occasion and started down the hill, only to reason that he could not do it. He kept telling himself that if was a fool’s errand.
He realized suddenly that he could work on the solar panels to try to generate some electricity. It would at least provide a diversion from his agonizing moral dilemma. And a hot shower would be amazing right now, he confirmed, trying to remember the sensation of hot water on his skin.
With that motivation as a distraction, he used the remainder of that day, until darkness stole away his light entirely, trying to figure out how the solar panels worked and how to get them fixed. All of the wires running inside appeared fine, but he did find an exposed wire that he fixed inside behind the wall paneling.
His next step led to the unit itself and it appeared that the battery that ran the thing was in good condition. As he pulled out the inner workings, he reconnected everything that he could find tightly enough and refitted every wire and screw that he could turn.
As the night came, h
e lit a fire in the fireplace again and called it a night. He moved the sofa away from the wall, plugged a lamp into the outlet behind it, turned the switch and the bulb exploded from an apparent surge.
“I’ll call that progress,” he said absently.
He put his head down on the sofa, let Shadow outside to do whatever it was that he did, and closed his eyes feeling he’d accomplished something today.
But, try as he might, he could not fall asleep. He lay awake several more hours, as thoughts of his self-confessed cowardice plagued him. The rhythmic smattering of raindrops sounding on the roof were so hypnotic that their melody eventually allowed him to drown out his own thoughts enough so that sleep finally came calling.
Chapter 4
The sound of dripping water invaded his sleep the next morning as Alex stirred. He threw the blanket off and sat up on the couch. He stood, rubbed his eyes and wandered toward the sound at the back of the cabin.
He looked up to see a water leak in the rear room from the rain last night.
“Great,” he mumbled, looking around the back room. He had not come back here very often, especially after finding the mattress in the condition it was, slick with blood. After cleaning that up, he hadn’t really come back here except on occasion to find some spare clothes.
There was a six-foot ladder in the back room closet, he recalled, seeing it once before. Alex took it and brought it outside, looking for a suitable area upon which to lean it. He propped it up against the rear side of the wall, climbed as high as he could, and then used the edge of the roof to grab on and pull himself up. There was a tree nearby, too, but not close enough for him to grasp.
Once on the roof, it didn’t take him long to find the area, a shingle had come loose in the storm last night, or at least he assumed it was last night, seeing signs of what must have been heavy gusts last evening. He did not even hear it after he actually fell asleep, but signs of strong winds were evident. The leak was coming in from a tiny hole in the plywood under the tarpaper.
He climbed back down, looked around the cabin area and happened upon the missing shingle a long while later, under a thicket of shrubs to the north behind the cabin.
He went back into the cabin, grabbed the bag with his hammer, nails, and a towel, tossed in a roll of duct tape, grabbed a few tuna can lids, and climbed back onto the roof to begin the repair. He first wiped the area dry as best he could with the towel; put down a tuna can lid over the hole, covering it quite easily, then put a few strips of duct tape over it to hold it in place. He the reset the loose shingle and nailed it down as best he could, using mostly the nails that remained in place.
It wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but it should hold, he supposed, as he climbed back down and set to his next task.
Alex raked the dirt again as he had a hundred times before, spreading the seed all about and using the shovel to overturn soil so that it was moist and fresh for the new seeds.
Several days passed and he went about his routine, throwing in some old katas he used to do in his martial arts classes, trying to remember some of them. As he did so, he was finally able to forget about the woman who’d haunted his dreams these past few days—a woman he didn’t even know.
Beside the area he worked was a small area roped off that had seen some fresh cucumbers along the vines. He was able to attach some of the vines with some twine to twigs to allow them to grow up along the pole. He had aspirations of making his current garden larger, as the vines were snaked in many directions and required a good deal of space. And as of yet, no animals had gotten to this particular crop, especially not with Shadow guarding it night and day. This morning, however, the wolf had slumbered inside the cabin just as Alex had finished his exercise.
He was particularly excited to find something that he could plug in to see if the solar panels would actually hold a charge and work their magic to run an electronic device of some sort. He found several more lamps in the bedroom that he could test, and had found a package of two sixty-watt bulbs buried deep in a closet, just in case another bulb exploded. Nevertheless, those experiments would have to wait as he had further work outside to finish.
As he continued to work the soil, he heard the crack of a twig in the distance to his right. A man in overalls stood a dozen feet away from him, a hat pulled down over a mop of shaggy brown hair, and he leveled a gun at Alex. Stubble lined his face and a tiny wooden stem escaped from between his lips, chewing on it like one might with a toothpick.
“What have we here, Joe?” asked the gunman, looking toward his companion who was a bit overweight. He had no hair on his head, was dressed in denim jeans and a flannel shirt, and he held a tire iron in his right hand with gore staining its length.
As Alex heard them speak, their voices sparked a hint of recognition and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He wasn’t absolutely certain, but he believed them to be the same two voices he’d overheard discussing a certain callous act only a few days past. Anger bubbled within him at both his own refusal to act and their exact words he recalled all-too-well.
A woman strode up slowly from behind them both, her blue eyes catching Alex off guard by seeming very warm and friendly, with more than a hint of distress beginning to surface before it was stifled, replaced with a mask of stoicism. Her hair was blonde and appeared partially matted and unkempt, loose strands escaping from her pony tail. A pack was slung over her shoulder. He had not seen the woman to know if this was…well, the subject of the two men’s desires.
“Not sure, Todd,” answered the one named Joe, grinning a smile that displayed a few missing teeth. “Looks like a farmer we got here. Maybe he’s got some food or somethin’ inside…maybe some weapons, too, eh boy?”
“I am no farmer and I have nothing for you,” Alex responded curtly, leaning on his shovel, and trying to suppress his anger. ‘Reacting to situations in anger is what gets people killed’, Alex recalled from a martial arts seminar he attended last year.
He also quickly realized helplessly and abruptly, that all of his weapons were in the cabin. Even his knife as he looked down to see the empty sheath.
Stupid!
“Let’s see what you got inside, boy,” Todd said, adjusting his hat and gesturing with the barrel of the gun, indicating for Alex to head toward the cabin door. “And don’t you try nothin’ unless you wanna’ die. This thing is loaded.”
Alex merely nodded and took a step toward them.
“Uh-uh, pretty boy. Drop the shovel.”
Alex reluctantly obeyed, dropping his only weapon to the ground, and cursing under his breath. He was hoping to get close enough to swing it.
Todd, Joe, and the as-yet-unnamed woman, all followed him toward the door. Todd had the gun pointed at his back and Alex breathed deeply, not wanting Shadow to take a bullet if the assailant entered the cabin.
“We don’t have to do this, do we, Todd?” asked the female from behind, her voice full of unease. Alex turned to regard the scene, as Todd looked her up and down sternly, as if he was going to backhand her. He even reared back to strike her.
But Alex, incensed by what was about to happen, and angry at himself for not confronting the men earlier when he had the chance, grabbed the outstretched arm, yanked it, and spun him around. He shoved Todd hard against the cabin wall, the man’s face pinned against it, as Alex held him in a hammerlock. He had the man’s gun arm pinned against the wall.
Alex could see that Joe had raised his tire iron and moved to strike Alex, and he readied a back kick. But, before he could launch that kick, a growl sounded through the din of their struggle, preceding the arrival of Shadow. His dark form crashed into the heavier man, who lost his weapon in the process, Shadow pinning him to the ground with his great paws. He growled and began tearing into the man’s flesh. The unnamed woman turned to run and Alex had no choice but to watch her go.
Todd must have felt the relaxation in Alex’s grip as he spun and shoved him to the ground, landing on top of him. The two of them wr
estled with the gun until a shot sounded between the two of them. Alex felt the trigger in his finger, but wasn’t sure if he shot Todd or himself. Blood covered the both of them; Todd’s eyes were wide with the understanding that his death was imminent as his hands made to cover the freshly made bullet wound in his abdomen.
Alex shoved him off and got to his feet. As he did, he watched the blood pour from beneath Todd’s hands to stain the earth red beneath him. Shadow was tearing at the flesh of Joe, who screamed in a panic, trying to fend off the wolf.
Shadow, a pup no longer, would have none of it.
He continued to tear at the flesh and garments of the man until Alex, unwilling to hear the screams any longer, turned the gun on Joe and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Nothing happened.
Only one round left, he thought with a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief. He stood, ran into the house, retrieved his bow, and shot an arrow straight through the howling man’s skull, silencing his screams directly.
“I am never leaving the house without my knife on my belt ever again,” Alex vowed to the wolf. “And I really need to brush up on my self-defense.”
He watched uneasily while the wolf tore more flesh from the man and wasn’t sure if Shadow was hungry or if he simply wanted to make sure that his attacker was dead.
Alex heard the distinct sounds of branches giving way in the distance and saw the woman as she scampered up a tree. She was off the ground and into the lowest hanging sturdy bough, but was high enough that Shadow could not reach her. Alex made his way to her, lowered his bow, and stood within earshot, some twenty paces from her.
“He won’t hurt you,” Alex offered, not truly confident if that was true or not. “You can come down now.”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’ll take my chances up here.”
“Suit yourself,” he answered, turning around and heading back toward the cabin. “I’ve got some canned food inside if you are hungry.”
Wake the Dead Page 4
