The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3)

by Scott B. Williams

  * * *

  Mitch moved ahead of his two friends to lead the way home, an arrow nocked on his string as always in case they jumped another deer or encountered something else unexpected. It was mid morning by the time they had worked their way back down the creek bank to the area adjacent the farm. Mitch always used a slightly different route through the area between the creek and the farm, in order to avoid making a well-trodden path others would notice. He and his father had been doing this since long before the grid went down, to keep the presence of the farm and house hidden from passerby on the creek who might happen to stop on the nearest sandbar and wander into the woods. Of course it was even more important to do so now, but even so his comings and goings brought him through the same general area, if not on a beaten path. Once they were near enough that Jason and Corey would have no trouble finding their way without him, Mitch stopped.

  “You guys go on ahead. I’ll be there in a bit.”

  “What’s up?” Jason asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just going to hit the creek for a minute; clean up a bit.”

  Jason and Corey laughed aloud at this. “You’re gonna take a bath in the creek in this?” Corey held his hand out as if to test the air. “You’re gonna freeze your ass off, Mitch!”

  “He wants to smell all fresh and clean for April,” Jason laughed.

  “Well Samantha can just deal with it! I’m not taking a bath in this weather. Hell, it’s not even fifty degrees!”

  “There’ll be a warm fire in the house when I get back,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah, and that’s not all,” Jason said.

  “Go on, get out of here! You guys have got a deer to skin. I’ll be there in 20 minutes!”

  Mitch turned and made his way back to the bank of the creek. There was a spot near the small sandbar where they always launched the canoes that was deep enough to dive into from the clay bank just upstream. He stripped and placed his bow and arrows on top of the pile of clothes and dove without hesitation. Yes, it was cold, the water taking his breath away as it closed around him, but Mitch knew from experience that he would instantly feel warmer than he had before his dip as soon as he was back out. He had been swimming and bathing in the creek since he was old enough to walk down there, and the time of year made little difference except that he didn’t linger in the water as long on days like this.

  When he swam to the surface he scrubbed his scalp with his bare hands as he drifted on the current down to the sandbar, standing when he reached waist deep water again. Then he walked out, shaking his head vigorously to shake the water out of his hair, that had now reached his shoulders since the lights went out. The quick, bracing plunge was enough to make him feel great, and he would indeed be more comfortable returning to April’s embrace knowing he didn’t stink of sweat and the night’s smoky campfire.

  He had just stepped out of the water when he noticed something in the mud just four or five feet farther downstream—the keel marks made by two canoes sliding into the water. But why in the world would anyone from the house launch the canoes now, in this weather? The marks were fresh, only a little distorted by the rain, and Mitch quickly found many footprints in the mud farther up the bank. Several sets of tracks and the obvious marks of two boats told a story that was completely baffling. But then he noticed something else—something completely ominous and out of place here near the creek on this wet, gray morning—the hoof prints of horses! Mitch was already running to grab his clothes and weapons when the sharp crack of a rifle thundered through the woods in the exact direction Jason and Corey had gone!

  * * *

  Jason and Corey were still laughing about Mitch and his winter bath and talking loudly when they reached the fence at the back boundary separating the Henley farm from the national forest lands surrounding it.

  “How do you want to do this?” Corey asked, turning to look over his shoulder at Jason.

  “Let’s just set him down. You go ahead and step through and then we’ll lift the bottom strand and slide him under.”

  Corey did as he suggested and once he was on the inside of the fence, grabbed his end of the pole again and pulled while Jason held the wire clear and pushed the buck from his side with one hand. It was almost clear and Jason was about to crawl under too when he felt a warm mist spray his face just as the report of a rifle fired from very close startled him and caused him to jerk back, snagging his jacket sleeve on the barbed wire. When he saw that Corey had fallen and realized that the splatter on his face was blood, Jason ripped his arm free and instinctively dove to the ground on his side of the wire. He abandoned his bow and quiver as a second round tore a chunk out of the fence post inches from his head. Keeping as low as possible, he squirmed on his belly to the cover of a nearby fallen log as fast as he could. As soon as he was behind it, he reached for the AR-15 slung over his back, but under the poncho he’d been wearing because of the rain. He had no idea where the rifle rounds were coming from other than somewhere on the farm side of the fence, but then he heard something big crashing through the brush beyond where Corey had fallen. When he raised his head just enough to see what it was, a man riding a black horse had appeared from the trees and stopped to aim his short cowboy-style rifle at Corey, firing it before Jason had time to react. The damned poncho was in the way and he had to yank it over his head to get the AR into action. By the time he finally did he was shaking so badly his first shot missed completely, sending the horseman wheeling around and charging off into the dense trees from where he’d appeared. Jason fired five more rounds after him, but could see nothing and had no idea if any of them connected or not. When he got to his feet, he stood there trembling with adrenalin, staring at the empty forest where the man and horse had disappeared, and at the immobile body of his cousin, Corey, whom he was certain was dead.

  Twenty-two

  “JASON!” MITCH TOOK IN the scene as he reached the fence and saw his friend standing there trembling, the AR-15 in his hands still pointing into the trees in the direction of the house. There had been several more shots following the first he’d heard, and he had run there as fast as he could, taking time only to pull on his pants and grab his weapons. Now he knew that Jason had fired some of those rounds, but not all of them. He saw the deer with its feet lashed to the pole lying there halfway under the bottom strand of the fence, and next to it on the other side, Corey’s inert form sprawled in the grass. “What happened? Who shot Corey?”

  Jason was climbing through the fence to check his cousin even as he answered. “I don’t know who he was! A man on a horse! He came out of those trees over there. He shot at me too and I was trying to take cover and grab my rifle at the same time but I didn’t get a chance to shoot back before he shot Corey again!”

  Mitch reached the fence just as Jason recoiled in horror from what he’d seen when he knelt to see if Corey might still be alive. Half of Corey’s jaw was missing and from the looks of it, and another bullet had entered his left eye socket and exited the side of his skull, leaving a gaping hole oozing bloody matter. It was a gruesome sight made exponentially worse for Jason by the fact that Corey was not only his cousin but also one of his closest friends. Mitch quickly crossed the wire to Jason’s side and reached to remove the Glock 20 from Corey’s belt; then picked up his bow and arrows too. Whoever did this hadn’t gone far and Mitch didn’t want more weapons to be available to the murderer.

  “He killed him in cold blood Mitch! He sat there on his horse and just shot Corey in the head! When I got off a shot at him, I missed and then he was gone. He headed straight towards the house, Mitch, and now I’m worried about Stacy and Lisa and everybody there!”

  Mitch was worried too, and with good reason. Whoever ambushed Jason and Corey was a ruthless killer who would do anything, and Mitch knew he was not alone. He could only hope the worst had not already happened. “Come on, Jason! Lets get away from this fence line before he comes back! I found the hoof prints of several horses down by the creek, so there’s more than one of
them, and someone launched two of the canoes too. There were tracks down there that I’m sure were made by the girls, but I didn’t have time to sort it out before I heard all the shooting and ran up here as fast as I could.”

  Mitch was thinking hard, trying to comprehend all the possibilities as he hurried back to where the canoes had been launched with Jason following close behind. Maybe he was wrong about who launched those boats, but he needed his moccasins and his shirt and coat anyway, so he would start there with the tracks. Things had happened so fast in just a few minutes that until now he had not even connected these events with the distant rifle shots he’d heard the afternoon before, but as he hurried back to the creek, he thought of that too. If these men had gotten there late yesterday, what had happened in the meantime? He wanted to run to the house as fast as he could to see if April and Kimberly and his little sister were there, but Mitch knew he couldn’t do anything foolish. He had to force himself to be smart and careful about it, no matter how much urgency he felt. The man who’d shot Corey dead was cool and calculating, and it wouldn’t help April or any of the rest of them if he got himself killed by letting his emotions get the better of him.

  * * *

  When Drake saw the tracks in the mud leading to the creek, and then the slide marks where two canoes had been launched, he knew they weren’t going to find whoever had been living in the house easily. He also knew there were more of them that had disappeared into the woods last night than he’d first suspected. When he had gotten a look at Mosley and Hanberry in the daylight, he saw that Mosley had been shot with a high powered rifle while Hanberry had been killed with a .22, the same as Kenneth. So he’d known there had been at least two besides the old man they’d caught, but now the tracks told him there were more than that—maybe even four or five or more. They’d made their way down here during the night and escaped to the creek. With canoes to take them downstream, there was no telling how far they had already gone, and the undergrowth along the bank made it impractical to try and follow with the horses. He told Chuck and Clint as much and after discussing it for a minute, the three of them turned around to ride back to the house. Drake felt better, even if they hadn’t caught whoever shot Mosley, Hanberry and Kenneth. They had the old man who’d killed his other men, and if the rest of the bunch that was living here had left by canoe, maybe they wouldn’t come back at all. The best he could do right now was just to keep a sharp eye out in case they did, and then, when the rest of the people got here tomorrow or the next day, maybe he would get a posse together and go look for them. After all, there were still three canoes hidden in the woods where the two that were missing had been stashed, and they could use those if necessary.

  Once they left the creek bottom, Drake told Chuck and Clint to go on to the house. “I’m gonna ride the fence line. I want to see where all my new property corners are,” he said with a grin.

  “We’ll go with you, if you like.”

  “No, that’s okay. Go on back to the house. I won’t be long.”

  They were back inside the fence now, having ridden back through a side gate they’d found this morning on the east side of the house. Drake hadn’t seen the rest of the cattle, but it was obvious the fence contained several hundred acres of mostly woods, so there were lots of places where the small herd could be grazing. He expected to find them soon, but the two steers Kenneth killed yesterday were more than enough to feed everybody for the immediate future. He and several of the men had ridden out there before coming down here to search for tracks and had found Marcus and Bobby dead beside the road, just as he’d expected. The old man had killed each of them with a single round of buckshot to the chest from close range. It was a damned shame, losing five good men as well as Kenneth’s boy to take this place, but Drake still figured it was worth it. Aside from the excellent location and remoteness of it, the house and barn were solid. Inside the barn they’d discovered a running antique pickup and a tractor, along with extra gasoline and diesel, stored in jerry cans. There was even an old johnboat on a trailer with small two-stroke outboard mounted on its transom that Chuck said he had no doubt would run. There was also a useless newer SUV under the carport, along with the late-model game warden truck out back and a bigger state patrol boat with its fuel-injected four-stroke outboard parked in a shed. Like most of the places they had raided since the collapse, there was a mixture of the useful and the now useless. But the cattle were a big bonus, even if it was a small herd. Drake was looking forward to his first steak later in quite some time. He’d left four men out there by the road to complete the butchering of the two steers so they could bring the meat back to the house, but first the men would bury Marcus, Bobby and Kenny in shallow graves. A couple of his other guys that stayed near the house were doing the same for Kenneth, Mosley and Hanberry.

  Drake had only been alone for about 15 minutes when he heard voices. He had ridden roughly back in the direction of the creek, following the fence to the lower boundary, while Clint and Chuck had gone the opposite direction, to the house. Knowing it couldn’t be them he was hearing, Drake whispered quietly to his horse and walked him slowly in the direction of the sound. There was a small semi-open area with just a few scattered pines between him and the hardwood forests bordering the creek, and it was through this opening that the lower perimeter of the fence ran. The voices he heard were the voices of two men, laughing and joking about something, from the sound of it. Drake watched and waited, and seconds later he saw them, walking single-file, carrying a deer carcass on a pole between them. They looked younger than he’d expected and oddly, both of them were carrying bows and arrows instead of rifles, although he could see a large frame pistol holstered at the hip of the one in front. Drake would take that one first.

  He waited until they had put their weapons down and were fussing with getting the deer under the fence, then when the first one stood again on his side; he took aim at his temple and squeezed the trigger. Just as he fired his target apparently moved his head upward and back ever so slightly. The bullet hit him, but in the hinge of the jaw instead of where he’d aimed. Coming from the 16-inch barrel of his Winchester Trapper, the 240-grain jacketed hollow point .44 Magnum rounds would do a lot of damage no matter where they hit and his priority was to put the other one down before he could react. He levered another cartridge into the chamber and squeezed off another shot, but missed as his second target dove to the ground and crawled for cover. Then, Drake made a foolish mistake that nearly cost him his life. He had not seen another weapon other than the two bows and the pistol the one he’d already hit was wearing. So confident that he would catch the second one easily, he urged his horse a bit closer to finish off the first, who was still alive. His next round went through that one’s eye, leaving no doubt that the job was complete.

  He was about to dismount to cross the fence and go after the one that was trying to hide when he was surprised by an incoming rifle round that grazed the lapel of his jacket. He wheeled his horse to dash back into the cover of the trees and caught a glimpse out of corner of his eye of a rifle barrel over the log behind which the second one had crawled. Several more wild rounds followed the first, tearing through the foliage and ricocheting off trees around him, but somehow, he got away unscathed. Drake considered dismounting and doubling back, but not knowing whether or not there were even more than those two carrying the deer, he thought better of it and continued on to the house.

  Twenty-three

  LISA FELT BETTER KNOWING that April and Stacy and the others would now take the extra precaution of carrying their canoes into the woods to hide. Although she’d seen the horsemen turn back once they figured out the trail they were following led into the creek, there was no way of knowing whether or not they would return later and mount a real search up and down the banks. At least if they stayed on this side of the creek, they were unlikely to see anything. But by that time, Mitch would surely be back. She just had to find him before he went to the house.

  As she crept back t
hough the woods in the direction of the place where she’d seen the horsemen, she wondered again about Uncle Benny. If he were alive, he would probably know to come down here by the creek if he had managed to sneak up on the house and determine she and the rest of them were not inside. The more time passed without seeing or hearing anything of him, the more she worried. And when she suddenly heard two rifle shots ring out from somewhere ahead, in the area between the canoes and the farm, she wondered if the horsemen had found him. A third, single shot followed almost a full minute later, and then there were several more in quick succession, undoubtedly from a semi-automatic. Lisa felt a chill. The shooting almost had to involve the three horsemen, and who else could they be shooting at but Uncle Benny? Unless Mitch and the guys had returned by a different route!

  She moved carefully in the direction of the gunfire, as soon as it stopped. She knew she was too far away to intervene, and she could only fear the worst: that the men had killed whoever they were shooting at and were still out there, more on edge and cautious than ever. Lisa slipped among the trees in silence as she looked for movement or sound—anything to tell her where the danger was. She saw it as she came within view of the thicket in which the canoes were hidden—just a brief glimpse through the foliage of someone walking—but enough to make her stop and raise her rifle to her shoulder. A couple more steps and whoever it was would be in view again and in her sights. Lisa waited, her finger lightly resting on the trigger of the 10/22; ready to squeeze it, when a figure emerged into the open forest at the creek bank. But what she saw was not what she expected. It was her brother, shirtless and barefoot despite the December chill, and right behind him was Jason!