Hank’s pants dropped down around his feet and he stepped out of them. He had an erection. This was the moment he’d come in here for. He was on Danielle like a lion on a lamb and in a flash tore open the top of her dress exposing her breasts.
“You may as well enjoy this, whore, because…” He hesitated, “First we gotta get rid of this little piece of shit,” he said.
As he grabbed Whoops and tried to wrench her from Danielle’s grasp, she desperately held on to her sister with her left arm while her right hand fished down between the cushion and the arm of the chair. Hank began to choke her with his other hand. Her hand searched. She was beginning to pass out. She hoped Zach hadn’t already found…and suddenly her hand wrapped around its handle. In one motion, she pulled the hunting knife out from under the cushion and whipped the razor-sharp blade across the left side of his neck, neatly severing the carotid artery, and just as quickly brought it back and slashed the other side. Their eyes locked as he grimaced, her own eyes looking deep into his with homicidal hatred as she showed him the blood-soaked blade.
“You fucking asshole,” she said.
“You fuckin’ cunt,” were the last words ever to form on his lips. He stood up trying to hold his life fluid inside his body with both hands, but geysers of blood, pumped by his giant heart, sprayed from between his fingers hosing both Danielle and Whoops. The look on his face was profound surprise. He was dead before his stinking corpse hit the floor.
In a flash she put her screaming sister on the seat cushion and she was out of the chair and across the room to the closet.
Δ Δ Δ
When she threw the cabin’s front door open, all eyes turned. And there she was, her dress torn open to her waist, her body and clothes drenched with Hank’s blood, the Remington 870 coming up murderously in her small hands.
Mayfield, holding Zach by his left arm, suddenly realized the shotgun was pointed at him. The first time she pulled the trigger she sent nine balls of double-ought buck into his face and neck. Four of them penetrated his brain, two reaching all the way to his medulla oblongata, one of them causing hemorrhaging in the lateral medulla. All involuntary muscle control in Mayfield’s body ceased and he had a total loss of coordination as he slumped against Zach. He wasn’t dead, yet.
In a panic Jerry Brady released Zach’s right arm and Zach, keeping his balance on one leg, caught Mayfield’s falling body and pulled his Model 60 from Mayfield’s pocket. With a calmness that surprised even him, he put the gun against Jerry’s head and blew his brains out. Jerry crumpled like a paper bag full of fresh shit. Zach let the paralyzed Mayfield slip to the ground.
Respiration was now impossible for Mayfield. As he lay in the snow fully conscious of the maelstrom of screaming and shooting that raged around him, he became witness to his own death by suffocation—and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.
Danielle immediately jacked in another round into the chamber and she brought the shotgun to bear on De Angelis. With a squeeze of the trigger, nine red dots appeared on his chest and she ensured he would never learn that Louis LaCroix had fucked his wife.
Now, for the first time in his life, Brian Peterson, the hunter, was the hunted. The man who had calmly drawn a bead on his victims more than forty times for the Army and a dozen times for Louis LaCroix was, suddenly, the prey instead of the predator as Danielle brought the shotgun to bear on him as she worked the slide on the shotgun. Never having been the prey before, panic had a profound effect on Peterson and he fumbled as he unslung his prized rifle from his shoulder and, though he got his shot off first, the experienced sniper was too hurried, too panicked, and his bullet merely splintered the door jamb three inches from Danielle’s head.
Danielle was too focused to flinch.
Peterson, his training finally kicking in, expertly worked the bolt of his rifle to get a second shot. He wouldn’t miss again.
However, with an almost Zen-like calmness, Danielle, now a half-second ahead of the master marksman, took just enough time to be precise and, as he slammed the bolt home on his sniper rifle, she sent nine balls of death screaming down the barrel of the 870.
What a difference that half-second made. In what some might call poetic justice, Peterson now knew what many of those others, who had had the misfortune to have appeared in his crosshairs, had learned before: With nine balls striking his neck and chest, and both carotid arteries spewing blood, he had only seconds of consciousness left before he was dead.
As he dropped his rifle and slumped to the ground, Danielle jacked a fourth round into the chamber.
Abby, Raymond, and Ingram had been too surprised by the sudden commotion to react and, before Danielle could snuff out their existences, they threw their arms up in surrender. Her finger, already putting pressure on the trigger, she paused.
The air was abruptly and eerily still except for Whoops’s painful screams in the cabin and Stupid’s desperate whines on the snow.
The only surprise to both Zach and Danielle was…
…neither of them shot anyone else.
The snowflakes still swirled around them like the chorus in a Greek tragedy—witnesses but uninvolved.
No one spoke. Danielle looked down the barrel moving the sight at the end of the tube from one to another of them because she needed a reason to pull the trigger again. But none of them moved. None of them gave her an excuse. She didn’t know it, yet, but this would create a new problem for her.
“How’s Whoops?” Zach asked breaking the silence.
“She’s okay,” Danielle replied in a monotone that told Zach that, somehow, Hank Brady was no longer a problem; he was dead. But he couldn’t imagine how Danielle could have survived the onslaught of the brute.
“Are you okay?” Danielle asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
Danielle watched the three as she stepped down the stairs to reach him. Abby began to lower her arms and Danielle brought the 870 back up. “Keep your hands up.”
Abby’s arms went up again.
“What happened in there?” Zach asked. “I didn’t hear a shot.”
“I didn’t need a gun for that piece of shit,” she said.
Abby and Raymond glanced at each other.
“Is any of that blood on you yours?” he asked.
“It’s all Hank’s.”
Even Zach couldn’t believe her words. Still trying to stand on one leg, he was losing blood and in imminent danger of falling.
Abby’s arms started coming down again.
“Put them up!” Danielle yelled.
“My arms are getting tired,” she complained.
“Put them on top of your head,” Zach ordered. “All of you.”
They did.
Danielle nodded. She liked that. She studied the situation.
“Can you get yourself into the house?” she asked Zach without taking her eyes off the three of them.
“We’ve got to do something with them, first,” he replied.
“That’s not an answer to my question,” she said and, enunciating each word deliberately, she again asked, “Can you get yourself into the house?”
“Yes, but…”
“Can you get Stupid into the house?”
Stupid was up on three legs. The femur on his left rear was shattered beyond repair and the leg was dangling by shreds of muscle and skin. He gingerly licked his wound.
“I think so. But we still have to…”
“I can deal with them,” she said. She was getting testy.
“But we’ve got to do something, now,” he said emphatically.
“Get Stupid into the cabin,” she said without taking her eyes off them.
Zach teetered on his good leg. He was beginning to feel woozy. He sensed his and Whoops’s fates were now in Danielle’s hands. Whoops was screaming. He didn’t know if he was losing his mind along with his blood, but he was going to trust her, now.
“Get Stupid in the cabin,” she repeated.
&nbs
p; “Come ’ere, boy,” he said and turned to go up the steps with Stupid in front of him
“Wait!” she yelled.
Chapter 32
September 4
No one knew why Danielle shouted, “Wait,” but they all froze their eyes on her.
The moment Abby, Raymond, and Ingram surrendered, it became clear neither she nor Zach could bring themselves to simply execute them, though it was clear that, had the tables been turned, those in the Brady-LaCroix party would have no trouble murdering Zach, Danielle, and even Whoops.
It was also readily apparent to Abby and Raymond that Zach and Danielle’s reluctance to shoot them could work to their advantage. With Zach’s wound he would not be on his feet much longer and, once he was down, they would have only the young girl to deal with. They just had to bide their time until she made a mistake with a lapse in judgment or attention. It was inevitable.
Danielle was aware Zach was succumbing to his wound. Whatever had to be done, she would soon be doing alone. With a glance at him and Stupid, she wasn’t sure if either of them were going to live. There was no 911 to call, no doctors, no hospital to take him to. If he died, she and Whoops were alone in the world, again.
With everyone now staring at her, she looked around. There was Ingram in his police uniform and still wearing his Sam Browne belt. With an eye on the three of them she went to the body of Jerry Brady. He too had worn a belt with the same police paraphernalia Ingram wore. She thought a few moments, then quickly stooped, took the handcuffs from the belt, then stood, again.
“What are you doing?” Zach asked.
She didn’t answer. She kept as much of her attention focused on the other three as she could.
She went to the Sam Browne belt Hank had dropped in the snow. As she stooped to retrieve the handcuffs, she stopped and quickly brought the shotgun up. “Put your hands back up on top of your head,” she yelled sharply at Raymond. Raymond’s hands had been gradually coming down. She was scared and anything any of the three survivors did made her nervous. He put them back up. With an eye on him, Danielle retrieved the cuffs from Hank’s belt.
“How do these work?” she called back to Zach.
“They go on real easy. To get ’em off, usually one key fits all.”
“Where’s the key?”
“I can see a key ring on the belt on the ground.”
She glanced down at Hank’s belt and quickly stooped to retrieve it, still keeping a wary eye on what Abby, Raymond, and Ingram were doing.
“Which key?”
“The little key with the circle at one end,” Zach replied,
“Where’s the Model 60?” she asked.
“Why?”
“I may need it,” she said.
He hopped up behind her and slid the revolver into a pocket of the dress. “There are only four rounds left in it,” he whispered.
“That’s okay. Get in the cabin, throw my coat and the boots out,” she said and, with the muzzle of the shotgun leading her, she approached within ten feet of the trio.
“Take your coat off, Abby.” she ordered.
“It’s cold,” Abby said.
“If you don’t take your coat off, in two seconds, you won’t feel a fucking thing.”
“Listen to her mouth,” Abby said and Danielle brought the shotgun up and rested the sights on her.
“Okay,” Abby said and quickly let her coat drop to the snow.
“Hands back up on your head.”
Abby’s hands went back up on her head.
“Your turn,” she said to Ingram.
Ingram was too gutless to protest and he let his coat drop into the snow then he put his hands right back up on his head.
She nodded to Raymond and, seeing as the shotgun was now aimed at him, he followed suit. Why not, he thought? He had only to wait until this young, dumb bitch made the mistake that would get her killed.
His coat dropped, but he stood and stared at her defiantly.
“Get your hands back up on your head!” she said.
He was testing her and he could see he was making her nervous. That was good. His hands went back up, but slowly. It was just a matter of time.
“What are you going to do with us?” he asked.
Danielle didn’t answer him. There was something going on in her head, he thought.
She nodded toward Ingram and said, “The handcuffs you’ve got on your belt; take them, and handcuff Abby’s left hand to that guy’s right hand.”
Sensing Raymond was a bigger threat than the others, she brought the shotgun up to bear on him as a warning against resisting, and Ingram did as he was told.
“Tighten them,” she said.
“Careful!” Abby yelled as he did, but it was too late and Raymond and Abby were now bound to each other.
She threw the other two sets into the snow at Ingram’s feet.
“Take those and put a set on each of your wrists.
“Do it!” She yelled when he hesitated, and he did.
“Now, handcuff your right wrist to that other guy’s left hand.”
Ingram hesitated when Raymond glared at him.
“Do it,” Danielle ordered again.
Ingram put it on him.
“Make sure it’s tight.”
He did.
“Now, handcuff your left hand to Abby’s right hand.
“Not that way,” she shouted. “I want you to go around the other way.”
“But we’ll all be back-to-back,” Ingram said.
“That’s right. Now, do it.”
Raymond suddenly realized the girl was smarter than he’d thought.
Ingram did as he was told and, this time, he made them tight without having to be asked.
Danielle got closer and checked them.
She looked back at the steps. Zach had thrown the coat and boots out. She backed up, sat on the steps and, while watching them, she quickly changed into the boots and donned the coat. Then she was back on her feet.
“Now, let’s go back to the road,” she said, and the three started trudging through the snow to the edge of the field with Danielle behind them. Through the trees, the snowflakes, and the cold afternoon air they went. Raymond now realized the pistol hidden in his pocket was inaccessible. But, if she was going to shoot them, she’d have done it long ago. He could wait for an opportunity.
It wasn’t easy for the three to walk through the woods handcuffed as they were. Either someone was walking backwards or all three of them had to step sideways through the snow. They fell frequently, particularly when going through thick bushes or stepping over deadfalls, and, whenever Raymond fell, they all fell and had trouble getting back to their feet. Abby and Raymond constantly bickered with each other. Abby beseeched Danielle to take the handcuffs off her but all Danielle would say was, “Keep walking.”
Raymond and Abby complied because each was anticipating the moment when they could reach the handguns they had concealed. But, because of the way they were bound together, reaching them was all but impossible, and Raymond realized an accurate shot would be impossible with each of his hands handcuffed to someone else, even if he had the gun in his hands right now. So, he and Abby bided their time, expecting a better opportunity.
Abby fell again and they stopped. She lay in the snow and asked, “Can you please free me, dear? I’m not the danger these two are to you.”
“Can you guys drag her if I shoot her? Or should I shoot you all before we reach the road?
“I’ll drag the dried-up old bag if I have to,” Raymond said.
Ingram bemoaned his fate, but Abby struggled to her feet.
Δ Δ Δ
They reached the edge of the road.
“Stop!” Danielle commanded.
She placed the key on a stump.
She spoke to Ingram. “Work your way over here and get the key.”
They all had to move together so Ingram could reach it.
“I want you to unlock the cuffs,” she said, but she explaine
d how she wanted it done and, soon, they were freed of each other but each of them was standing with a set of cuffs on one wrist.
“What now?” Raymond asked. His opportunity was almost here, but she still had the shotgun pointed in his direction.
“Take your clothes off.”
Raymond looked at Abby. He looked at Ingram. Neither had moved and he knew, with his clothes off, the gun would be out of reach.
“I’m not taking my fucking clothes off.”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“I’m not getting naked in front of these men,” Abby said. “It would be a sin.”
“You’re not taking yours off, either,” Raymond said to Ingram. “I’ll beat the shit out of you if you do.”
Ingram said nothing, but he was more afraid of Raymond than he was of Danielle even though she had the shotgun.
Danielle stared at them wordlessly.
“What now?” Raymond asked her. He pretty much had her where he wanted her. All he needed, now, was a momentary lapse in her judgment and he had her.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said to him, “but you really don’t know how pissed off I am and you should be listening to me.”
He still didn’t move and the other two weren’t moving if he didn’t.
“Take ’em off,” she repeated.
He shook his head “No.”
She didn’t know what to do and took a deep breath. She had to make a decision and, not sure of what to do next, she let her gaze drop to the snow. It was the lapse Raymond had been waiting for and what happened next was a blur. His hand went into his pocket and he brought up a Kahr .40 caliber handgun.
Danielle saw the motion in her peripheral vision and, though he managed the first shot, it’s not that easy to shoot a handgun accurately. His shot went wide but with a two-handed grip he was zeroing in on her. But Danielle was already in motion and with a gentle squeeze of the trigger she sent a load of double aught buck into his chest. Raymond fell to his knees as Danielle jacked the last shell into the chamber and swung the shotgun smoothly to Abby. Abby now had a small pistol in her hand. Realizing she was about to die, she quickly threw it onto the snow and put her hands back up.
Danielle Kidnapped: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Ice Age Page 34
