Crossing the Line

by Bobe, Jordan

  Anna grabbed the last piece of the gurney’s leg and jumped out of the van. She swung with all of her might and the wheels caught Marcy’s attacker directly in the temple. The man fell to the ground unconscious.

  Marcy sobbed as she got back to her feet. She kicked the man feebly in the gut and looked around for her dropped weapon. Her eyes fell on a hunting knife that had fallen off of one of the men’s belts instead. She picked it up, marveling at how deceptively heavy it was. She mounted the man, who was lying on his side in a slowly forming pool of blood. His eyes began to flutter open just before Marcy brought the knife down in an accidentally well placed blow. The thick steel tip punched straight through the man’s eye, tore through his sinus cavities and burst out of the temple of the other side of his head.

  Unaware that the first blow had killed him, Marcy struggled to pull the knife free and began stabbing him over and over again along the side of the neck and his arm and chest.

  The man who had been directly hit with the piss shirt woke from his stupor and pulled the sopping wet garment from his face. He sat up and glared at Anna, who stood over him with her legs spread wide.

  “Don’t fuck with a cowboy, girl, we all wear spurs,” he said. Anna recognized the voice as Greg. He was one of the fake EMTs that had picked the girls up from the house.

  “Be careful which bull you spur, cowboy, we’ve got horns,” she said. With a battle cry that tore through the garage like the wailing of a siren she used both hands and brought the wheeled end of the gurney’s leg down between Greg’s eyes. There was a loud crack as his nose broke at the arch.

  Greg fell onto his back with a howl of agony. Anna’s mind went suddenly blank as she mounted his chest and hit him over and over again. Blood splashed up onto her breasts and stomach, but she did not notice. The wheels broke away from the rest of the gurney’s leg, but she did not notice. She didn’t even notice when the remains of Greg’s caved-in head split open wide and she began pulverizing the skull back into the brain tissue. The world was gone around her. Everything went silent and dark. Her body made the motions without any conscious control.

  When she finally came out of the spell she was crouched on the chest of a corpse whose head had been completely decimated. Bits of hair and skin were everywhere and the remainder of the skull looked like a dropped casserole dish. The bone was shattered and the contents had been hit so many times that they all mixed together.

  She crawled off the man in disgust and looked at her friends. The man Lynne had murdered had been fileted. His innards spilled out from his gut and blood continued to pour from the gash running from his jugular to his midsection. Marcy had stabbed her victim dozens of times, reminding Anna of a gnarly nursery rhyme about Lizzie Borden.

  Both Lynne and Marcy were standing over the corpses of the men that they had killed. They were covered in blood and looked like warriors from some ancient barbarian tribe. Lynne looked immune to what she had done, but there was terror etched into Marcy’s beautiful features. The knife in her hand hung limply between her gore smeared fingers.

  “We did it,” Anna said. She giggled a bit and ran a bloody hand through her hair. “We fucking did it.”

  “Fucking right we did,” Lynne said.

  “We’re going to Hell,” Marcy said. “We’re all going to go to Hell.”

  Anna opened her mouth to respond, but didn’t have time to say anything. Marcy’s face came apart as an enormous boom filled the confines the garage. Marcy was thrown off of her feet and slammed into the wall of the garage. Her long, black hair ran down the wall as her corpse collapsed. A long red smear was left behind.

  Anna and Lynne quickly dodged to the relative safety afforded by the ambulance. They knew that the van wouldn’t stand a chance against the high powered rifle that had killed their friend, though. Lynne had tears streaming down her face and when Anna looked at her she knew she should have been sobbing, too, but she didn’t even feel the loss. She was aware of the world, but the numbness that had come while she killed Greg hadn’t worn off yet.

  “Whores!” the shooter screamed. Anna was surprised to note that the voice was that of a woman. She didn’t sound very old, neither. It could have been one of their classmates out there working with the murderous rapist swine.

  “Fucking redneck cracker cunt!” Lynne screamed back. She slammed her fist into the side wall of the van and let out a wail like an animal. “What the fuck is wrong with you people? What the fuck did we ever do to any of you?”

  “You just killed my goddamn husband!” the woman’s voice was shrill with fury.

  Lynne laughed and shook her head. “So what? You were going to stand there and watch as your husband fucked another woman? What kind of inbred Mormon society is this?”

  Anna jumped involuntarily as a huge hole exploded in the side of the van. It barely missed them, punching through directly between her and Lynne.

  “Carpet munching college dykes! How dare you? How fucking dare you?!”

  Another hole tore through the van, this one far too high to have struck either of the friends. Anna crawled to the back door of the van and looked out through the crack of the hinge. She saw the woman moving slowly toward her with the gun held firmly at her side. Some of the numbness wore off when she saw the young woman. She looked deranged, but she really could have been one of Anna’s classmates.

  “Come out here so I can see you when I blow your heads off!” the young woman snarled. She took another step toward the back of the van and moved to pull the trigger of the rifle. Anna leapt at the door, throwing all of her weight against it. She fell to the floor as the door swung open fully and knocked the woman into the side of the van, dislodging the gun from her hand.

  Anna was quick to regain her feet and she rushed and jumped against the door again, bashing the woman so hard into the ambulance that a deep dent formed in both the door and the vehicle’s side.

  Anna felt the woman pushing against the other side of the door and jumped against it again. The woman screamed out in pain and began sobbing as the back of her head cracked open against the steel.

  Anna flung the door away from the woman and grabbed her by the collar of her flannel shirt. She twisted her around and threw her into the side of the other ambulance. The woman fell to the ground a crumpled, bloody mess. Anna marched over to her and braced her hands against the van as she began kneeing her head over and over again. Her leg cried out in pain as the woman’s skull rebounded off of the vehicle and hit it a dozen times. She stepped back and the woman fell to the floor completely unconscious.

  Lynne appeared at Anna’s side from nowhere. Anna jumped a bit and let out a little scream. Her friend was holding the woman’s lost rifle like a club. Anna watched in grim fascination as Lynne beat the woman’s head into a bloody pulp. After she was done Lynne righted the gun and fired a round through the woman’s destroyed face.

  Anna’s ears rang and her body ached, but for the first time since she had killed Greg she felt an emotion. She reached out and lowered the gun’s smoking barrel with a shaking hand. Lynne turned to her and they embraced, sobbing openly.

  33

  Tracy and Ivy ditched the cars as soon as they entered the ranch, knowing that they would only draw unwanted attention. At first they followed Brute as he stalked through the night, but once they realized he was hunting the people they were trying to avoid they broke away from him.

  Now they were approaching a series of trailers, all of which had their lights on in all of their windows. Tracy hoped that it was because the owners of the mobile homes were out prowling, but she was not confident enough to walk upright. They crawled through the tall grass on their bellies with their stolen rifles slung over their backs and had the pistols in their hands. They were doing their best to act like soldiers.

  Ivy’s complete nudity made her feel more noticeable in the dark. She knew the rules of society and if a man was walking down the street with a loaded gun during a nudist parade no one would even notice the gunman.
Our sensibilities are always thrown off by the sight of naked flesh.

  As they neared the trailers Ivy noticed that clotheslines were strung between them. Blowing in the soft mountain breeze were dozens of articles of clothing. Despite the desperation of their situation she felt genuine excitement when she saw the clothes. The dew on the grass was cold and the air in the higher altitude seemed unaware that winter had passed.

  They army crawled to the first trailer and sank completely to the ground. After a couple moments of listening with their breaths held they decided that the mobile home was, indeed, empty. Ivy cautiously rose to a crouch and walked around the corner of the trailer. Feeling entirely too exposed she grabbed the first piece of fabric on the line and pulled it away from the old fashioned wooden clothes pins. She sank back to the ground with her prize clutched in her filthy hands and inspected it.

  The jumpsuit looked like the kind mechanics wore. She surmised it was about ten times her size, but it was a single article of clothing that would cover her entire body. She unzipped the jumpsuit with her breath held. The noise was nothing compared to the chorus of crickets and the scuffling of mountain critters, but she was still sure that it was going to alert someone. She laid aside the shotgun and thirty-ought-six that she had gathered and pulled on the jumpsuit. It was surprisingly warm and had a thick lining that felt like a handmade quilt.

  She was right about its size and so she rolled the sleeves and pant legs up until they were wads of heavy fabric at her elbows and knees. Tracy followed her example and pulled a second pair of coveralls off of the line. Once the girls were clad in somewhat more appropriate clothing they began making their way from trailer to trailer and listening for noises inside. A couple of the homes had televisions playing softly within them. In one they heard a mother singing to a mewing infant. In none of the homes did they hear the voices of men.

  Counting the number of trailers as they went they guessed that there were better than twenty men searching the property. They also guessed that these men were trained and practiced with firearms. That put them at a serious disadvantage. They were only likely to land a fatal shot in they were lucky enough to sneak up on the men. Neither of them were avid hunters nor did they have survivalist fathers. They had never been to a shooting range. In fact, Tracy had never actually fired a gun though she owned a couple for self-protection in the city.

  They hoped Brute was doing most of the killing already so they wouldn’t have to worry about taking on the small army with their non-existent weapons know-how.

  Ivy motioned for Tracy to follow her and they wandered around the back of the trailers. Here the darkness seemed fuller and more alive. There were also signs of civilization that neither of them expected to see. A large in-ground pool reflected the moonlight off of its surface. A chain link fence was built around the Olympic sized pool to keep children from wandering in unattended. More evidence that there were quite a few children on the ranch came in the shadowed bulks of playground equipment and unattended toys laid out in what looked like a private park.

  “Shit,” Tracy whispered.

  “What?” Ivy asked.

  “I didn’t think of the possibility that there might be kids up here. I know I won’t be able to kill a kid,” Tracy said. She leaned heavily against the base of the trailer they had rounded. The pistol suddenly felt heavy in her hand.

  “Why the hell would we have to kill a kid? This isn’t the Middle East, I’m sure these sickos aren’t training their kids to catch babies on bayonets.”

  “I’ve seen news specials about these survivalist groups that teach their kids to fire guns before they know how to read. How do we know we’re not going to come across an army of toddlers toting AK-47s?”

  “Well cross that bridge if we get there, okay? Don’t go putting ideas in your head without even knowing if they’re true. We’re in a bad enough spot that we don’t need to freak ourselves out.”

  Tracy nodded her head and sat forward. She looked over the landscape and shook her head. “Where the hell would they be keeping the others? I don’t see any dilapidated barns of terror covered in rusty old torture devices. I was expecting this shit to be more like the movies.”

  “The movies are bullshit,” Ivy said. She thought about the conversation she had with Lynne as they were driving in this morning. “It’s not the crazed mountain man that raped and tortured our friends, he came to our rescue. As far as I’m concerned Hollywood doesn’t know dick about the real world.”

  Tracy smiled and nodded her head. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to come across some torture shack at some point tonight.”

  Tracy followed when Ivy began moving forward again. Army crawling through the grass was much more comfortable with the jumpsuits on. Ivy’s wounds still throbbed, but they were no longer constantly being irritated by sharp blades of grass.

  They were nearing the swimming pool when they suddenly heard male voices coming from the other side. They laid flat against the ground, their faces buried in the moist grass.

  “This shit was bound to happen someday,” one of the men said. “It’s only a matter of time before people strike back. I mean, we’ve been fortunate that no one renting the house is some ex-special forces guy or something.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t care if it is a soldier or just a bunch of girls it’s screwed up that they made it to our homes. There’s no call for this shit to put my wife in danger. She doesn’t even really know what’s going on around here. She’s never seen the kennels or anything.”

  “It doesn’t pay to keep your family innocent if you’re going to be working for a place like this. Especially not with that kooky ass bitch running the show. Deloris is worse than the dogs, man. She just sits there and collects the money without any remorse for what she’s done. She’s like one of those Ted Bundy serial killer types, completely soulless.”

  “And what does that make us?”

  “The Manson family, I suppose.”

  “Well, whatever the fuck we are I ain’t going to be able to shoot them girls if we see them. Brute is one thing, but those girls are another entirely.”

  “I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t do any good to shoot Brute. He’s like a bear, man. He would keep coming until you blew his head clean off.”

  The men must have heard something because their conversation ended suddenly. Two flashlights kicked on and began sweeping the tree line on the opposite side of the pool. Ivy marked the locations of the beams and began formulating a plan. Despite the reluctance in their voices she was sure they would at least be beaten if the men found them crawling around.

  Striking first was the only option and she knew it. She had figured out throughout the course of the night that there was little a man wouldn’t do to a woman if he was given the chance. She refused to be raped or beaten again. She would rather die than go through another soul breaking experience.

  After another moment’s consideration she decided that attempting to approach the men was out of the question. They would be spotted and wouldn’t have much time to react. She also knew that attempting to snipe them was not an option. They wouldn’t have been able to hit the men. The shots would also alert others as to their whereabouts.

  She held her breath and softly slammed her empty fist into the grass. Tracy looked over at her and raised her brows in question. “We’re going to have to get under better cover,” Ivy whispered. “Stay low so no one sees you. If you hear someone coming let me know.”

  Tracy nodded and followed Ivy as she crawled through the grass toward a thicket of trees set to the West of the trailers. Despite their pain wracked bodies they moved quickly through the night. They reached the trees and delved into the cover of the forest.

  Once they were hidden by the trees they got up off of the ground and sat with their backs pressed against a tree. Neither of them spoke. They held as still as they could and breathed as shallow as their over exerted bodies would allow.

  Just when they thought they had moved to th
e cover without detection the sound of feet falling came from the edge of the forest. Tracy bit her lip to keep from gasping with fear. She closed her eyes and leaned harder against the tree.

  Ivy gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder before vanishing around the side of the tree trunk. Ivy moved from one tree to the next, following the sound of the feet as they shuffled closer to where Tracy was hiding.

  There was only one set of footsteps. They were heavy and sounded a bit off balance. Whoever was stalking them was trying his best to move quietly, but in the stillness of the night he still made more noise than anything else.

  Ivy reached what she decided to be a good ambush point and set the pistol down on the ground. She took the shotgun off of her back and held it like a club. She knew once she began the attack there was little chance that the man’s companion wouldn’t rush into the forest, but two men were easier to take out than the entire ranch.

  As she leaned against the tree to keep from throwing a shadow a sharp pain announced itself in her bare forearm. She softly hissed with pain and looked down to see that an old fence post was leaning against the base of the tree’s trunk. Barbed wire was wrapped around the top of the post and had snagged her skin. Fresh blood ran from the wound on her arm, but she paid that little attention.

  She put the shotgun back over her shoulder and picked up the post. It was a solid piece of wood, though it had been softened in spots by the weather over the years. Still the four feet of timber was reinforced with barbed wire that ran from the top down two feet. It had obviously been part of a large fence because the wire had been wrapped around it dozens of times, leaving it looking like a generic mace.

  She held the end of the post in both hands, as her fingers could not encompass the twelve inches of its circumference. New weapon in hand she waited for the footsteps to draw near enough that she could attack.