“If they see us, they’ll have us up on those crosses in no time at all.” He was casting nervous glances around him. Not that Mary noticed, she was too busy trying to compose herself. She had never been in such a state before, and it scared her almost as much as what they were up against. It was like the part of her brain that controlled her emotions had malfunctioned, and just couldn’t be fixed.
They stood where they were for about half a minute, before they began moving back to the front corner of the building again. Then they began speed walking toward Main Street and the other side. When they reached it, Mary began sobbing. She tried to hold it in, but she just couldn’t do it. She had finally hit the end of her rope. She was at a point where she felt she couldn’t go on any further. The accumulation of all the horrible things she had experienced today had caught up with her both mentally and physically. And had it not been for David, literally dragging her along, she would have just given up and let fate run its course.
Her senses weren’t working properly, and she only took in bits and pieces of her surroundings. Everything had become a grey, blurred mass. She was vaguely aware that they were running, and she was aware that they turned into a side street. But she didn’t know how long they had been running for. When she raised her head for the first time since they left the bus station, she saw that they were running up a driveway and into someone’s backyard. Please god, don’t let anyone come out of that house, she thought as they were racing toward the back.
There was a two car garage located at the end of the property, and David steered them over toward it. A few seconds later, they were leaning up against its back wall. Mary was still sobbing and shaking violently, and David took her in his arms and held her tight.
“It’s ok Sweetie. It’s ok,” he whispered in her ear as he rocked her gently from side to side. And Mary let all the horrible things that were festering inside out into the open, and she wished they could stay like this until the end of time. Just forget about everything else and be safe.
There was a garage directly opposite them on the neighbouring property, only a few yards away and a tall hedge on their right hand side. It created a little sheltered area, where they were safe from prying eyes. But Mary’s sobs were still loud enough to draw attention to their location, and David did his utmost to try to calm her.
“I know it’s hard Sweetie, but you have to try to compose yourself.”
David let go of her gently and put his hands on her shoulders.
“We’re safe here for the time being, but only if we’re quiet.” He looked her in the eye, his voice calm and soothing.
She nodded and tried to regain control of her body, which was still shaking badly.
“I want you to take a couple of deep breaths and think about that no one is going to find us here. Do you think you can do that for me?”
“Yes,” she said in a tearful voice. “I think I can do that.” She wiped her face and began taking deep, slow breaths.
David studied her carefully, and she tried to get her emotions under control. She had to do it for his sake. She was not in this alone. Her actions also affected him and their unborn child. She couldn’t let her behaviour lead to these crazy people locating them. She had to snap out of it.
And it did seem to work, because she noticed her breathing slowly returning to normal.
David gave her a few minutes before he started addressing their situation, which could only be described as abysmal.
“The only way to get out of here is to steal a car, or alternatively escape through the forest.” He kept his voice low. He was squatting with his forearms resting on his thighs facing Mary, who had sat down on the little concrete strip between the garage and the low wire fence separating the properties. She had her knees pulled up against her chest, her head leaned forward.
She lifted her head and looked at him.
“David, I’m five months pregnant. I’m in no condition to run around in the forest.” She stared into his eyes, trying to see if he actually believed that it was a viable option.
He lifted his palms.
“I’m not suggesting that that is what we are going to do,” he said and sighed. “I’m just going over our alternatives, that’s all.”
He put his arms back on his thighs again
“It just means we have to try to get a car.”
He turned toward the hedge and looked at it for a while.
“However, the problem with that scenario is that I’ve only seen three vehicles since we arrived in town.”
“You don’t think there are any other cars in town?”
“No, I didn’t say that. Just because we haven’t seen any, doesn’t mean that they’re not there. It could well be that they are locked up in garages, or parked somewhere else in town.”
“Do you think there’s a car in this garage, or the one on the other side?” Mary asked.
David shrugged.
“That could well be the case, if we’re lucky. But even if there is, we still have to get hold of the car keys, because I have absolutely no idea of how to hotwire a vehicle.”
David hesitated for a moment before he continued.
“Even if we manage to sort out all those things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll be able to get away. There could still be roadblocks to contend with, or pursuing vehicles. I’m also pretty confident that these folks are armed to the teeth, and we won’t be able to outrun bullets. My point is that we might not make it back to the highway, even if we do find a car.”
He stretched his arm out and touched her hand.
“I don’t want to upset you any more than you already are, or myself for that matter, but it is important to remember what we are up against. These people are ruthless killers who will do whatever they have to, to prevent us from escaping and informing the authorities.”
Mary took a deep breath and nodded. She was under no illusions about their chances of getting away unharmed. To label them minute would be generous, to say the least. They would in all likelihood die here, but still they had to try to get away.
David got up, and held out his hand to help her up.
“I’ll check the garages and see if there are any cars in there,” he said. “But if there aren’t, we‘ll have to get moving again.”
Mary clutched his hand and let him pull her up on to her feet. Then she hugged him tightly.
“I love you David.”
She felt the tears well up in her eyes. She knew this might be the last time she would be able to embrace him, and it made her hug him even tighter.
“I love you too Mary.”
There weren’t any cars in the garages, something that Mary had suspected all along. David had pushed himself in between the hedge and the side wall of the two structures, and peered in through the tiny windows positioned there. It was just two big open areas collecting dust, and he had found himself wondering why they had even bothered building them if they had no intention of parking their cars there.
When he returned, he helped Mary over the low, chain link wire fence separating the two properties. Then shortly thereafter they found themselves walking south along the street running parallel to Main Street.
Both of them were on edge, and both of them were ready to bolt into the nearest garden should they happen to see anyone coming their way. But no one came. Nor did they see anyone inside the houses they passed along the way. But the lack of people did nothing to alleviate the stress they were experiencing.
Not knowing where the inhabitants were, and not knowing when they were going to run into them was difficult to cope with, and it only added to her overall anxiety. It was like walking on eggshells. She knew she could be attacked at any moment, whether it was someone rushing out from behind a hedge, or someone firing a bullet from behind one of the windows in the houses.
They heard the pickup truck just as they were walking up next to a driveway of a single story house. They looked at each other for a fraction of a second before racing up
to the house, where they threw themselves behind the back wall just as the truck drew alongside it.
Mary looked around the corner, but only got a brief glimpse of it. But what she saw made her blood turn to ice. The pickup truck was moving slowly, no more than ten miles an hour and she could clearly see the driver and the passenger. They were studying both sides of the street, constantly turning their heads back and forth. But that wasn’t what frightened her. What frightened her were the four individuals dressed in long black robes and hoods, standing on the back of the truck, clutching scythes attached to long dark wooden shafts.
She let out a gasp and pulled her head back. Then she closed her eyes, hoping desperately that they hadn’t seen her. When she opened them again a few moments later, David was standing in front of her.
“Did you see the people on the back of that truck?” she whispered and sucked in some much needed air.
David nodded.
“Hopefully that’s the only vehicle they’ve got,” he said. Then he stuck his neck around the corner again. “If it is, we should be able to make it over to the forest on the southern end of town before they return.”
“But David...”
“We don’t have that much time, we have to leave now.”
He walked out from behind the corner and hurried down to the end of the driveway. There he looked both ways, before turning back to Mary again. She had followed him reluctantly, and was standing only a few yards away. He gave her a thumbs up, and she started following him toward the forest.
They were walking fast, but stopped every twenty seconds or so to listen for vehicles or any other human-made noises, but they couldn’t hear any. Mary suspected that the pickup truck had crossed over to the other side of Main Street, and was now patrolling the residential areas on that side of town. She hoped it was, and she hoped they had seen the last of it.
As they were about to cross one of the side streets half a minute later, David raised his arm and took a few steps backwards. Then he stopped and listened.
“What is it?” Mary whispered as she slid in beside him.
“I can hear someone talking.”
Mary strained her ears and thought she could detect a very faint sound.”
“Do you think they are coming this way?” she asked and put a hand up to her mouth.
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it’s coming from somewhere on Main Street.”
David scanned the houses across the road.
“If we can get onto one of the properties bordering it, we might be able to see who it is and what they’re up to.”
Mary looked at him horrified.
“David, you can’t be serious. We should try to get as far away from these people as we possibly can. If they see us, we’re as good as dead.”
David twisted his lip and shook his head.
“Well, they’re not going to see us. I’ll sneak up to one of those houses and hide behind the back wall. I promise I’ll be very careful. We have to find out if they have set up any roadblocks or not, or done something else to prevent us from driving out of town. There is no use finding a car, only to discover that we can’t leave.”
David took a step forward, craned his neck and looked down toward Main Street, which was only a block away.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Before anyone sees us.”
Then he ran across the street and jumped over the picket fence separating the road from the house. Mary hesitated for a brief moment, but when she realised that they would be safer off the street than on it, she ran too.
They made their way over to the side of the house, not really paying any attention to whether the owners were there or not. All the houses they had come across so far had been empty, or at least appeared to be empty. When they reached the end of the backyard, they climbed the fence and dashed over to the house behind it. The voices were louder now, but still they weren’t close enough to pick up any of the words.
David asked Mary if she was ok, and when he received an affirmative answer, he walked over to the corner and popped his head around it. When he saw that the coast was clear, he ran over to the house next to it and motioned for Mary to follow along. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then she began running again.
They kept making their way south in this manner for another few minutes, and when they stopped, they had arrived at the last house on the block. And by now they could hear the voices quite clearly. It was a crowd, and the voices were weaved together and formed a steady drone, as is always the case when large numbers of people are talking at the same time.
There was a hedge separating the front yard from the street, and they crouched down and ran over to it. When they got there, they lay down on the grass and gazed out through a tiny gap in the hedge.
They were less than sixty yards away from the crowd, and the realisation made Mary feel nauseous. Her entire body was trembling and she was sweating profusely. She knew their ordeal would have to come to an end soon, one way or another, because she wouldn’t be able to cope mentally much longer. She started thinking about what would happen if they were discovered, and the thought made her shudder. If just one person in that crowd happened to look in their direction, and was able to detect movements behind the hedge, it would be all over.
David lifted his hand and started pushing some of the branches aside, creating a small opening. And after some quick deliberation, Mary did the same.
There had to be hundreds of them. Men and women gathered in the middle of the road. They had their backs turned toward them and were facing what she assumed was the pickup truck they had seen ten minutes earlier. She couldn’t actually see the pickup truck, but she could see the black hoods of the four individuals that had been standing on the back of it when it drove past the house. They were looming over the crowd, and her eyes were automatically drawn toward them.
In her mind she started conjuring up images she’d seen in photographs from the early twentieth century, in which members of the Ku Klux Klan were getting ready to lynch some unlucky black person or other undesirable individual that the organisation had deemed to be a public enemy.
She closed her eyes, and noticed her heart starting to beat even faster and a cold sensation filling her body. This time she and David were the perceived enemies. This time it would be them who would feel the wrath of an uncontrollable crowd and the agitators who stoked the flames. She put her hand out, found David’s and squeezed it tightly.
Then when she heard the deep voice, amplified by the megaphone drown out the drone of the crowd, her body tensed.
“Good people of Minden,” the voice boomed out, interspersed with some high-pitched feedback.
“We are gathered here today because our enemies have wandered into our midst.”
There was a brief pause in which the drone of the crowd once again became noticeable, and died down again a few moments later when the person holding the megaphone raised his arm.
“These enemies have come here to try to proselytise, to try to get the people of this town to reject their strong belief in our lord Satan.”
This generated another loud response from the crowd, and once again the speaker had to raise his arm to quell the noise.
“We cannot allow this to happen,” he continued. “We cannot allow these intruders to come here and tell us what to believe in and how to live our lives. We decide what is best for us, and we decide who we allow into our town.”
The crowd reacted with applause and words of agreement.
“But the thing is that the enemy who so arrogantly drove into town today aren’t just guilty of proselytising. They are also guilty of murder.”
This last word was shouted out, and this time a loud collective gasp escaped from the crowd. Mary held her breath, knowing very well what he was referring to. But what happened next came straight out of the blue, and she was completely unprepared for it.
The three other hooded individuals on the back of the pickup truck bent down and disappeared f
rom view. And when they appeared a couple of seconds later, a collective shriek could be heard coming from the crowd. Mary’s eyes shot open wide, her heart skipped a beat and she felt like she was falling. Her left hand fell down to the grass, and only with some considerable effort was she able to steady herself.
She was staring at a corpse. It was the old lady from the B&B. The three hooded individuals were holding her up like she was some kind of a trophy. The old lady’s head was hanging down on her chest as if her neck had been severed. Her hair was all tousled and tattered, and her face as white as snow. Mary felt numb.
Then the crowd snapped out of the temporary shock of seeing one of their own killed by their perceived enemy, and started making their displeasure known. Mary blocked out their voices, and the only thing she could hear was her own heart pounding against her chest. Seeing the person she had killed less than half an hour ago, paraded in front of the crowd, brought back the terrible images of what had happened in the old lady’s apartment earlier that day.
The angry reaction from the crowd didn’t register with her until after the hooded men had put the old lady down again, and the menacing voice once again boomed out of the megaphone. And this time it was seething with undiluted rage.
“Are we going to let these murderers get away with their heinous crime?” the voice bellowed, and the crowd answered with an equally angry no.
“Are we going to let these Christian pigs saunter out of here and tell their sanctimonious friends and relatives that the people of Minden are too weak and feeble to offer any resistance? Are we going to allow them to brag that the folks in this town turn the other cheek when they are confronted by deliberate provocations?”
The crowd repeated their answer and Mary could feel the sound waves rip through her body from sixty yards away.
“Are we going to catch these sons of whores and avenge this cowardly and completely unjustifiable act?”
By now the crowd had reached fever pitch, and the noise had started to hurt her ears. She could see hands clutching baseball bats, machetes and scythes raised in the air. The shouting and screaming had morphed into an unintelligible roar.
The Bad Country Page 8
