“MITCH!” she called in a loud whisper.
He turned in surprise as she stepped out from among the trees where he could see her. He immediately raised a finger to his lips and pointed back in the direction from which he and Jason had appeared and she whispered again as she walked up to hug him. “Are you okay? Were those men shooting at you? Have you seen Uncle Benny? Where’s Corey?”
“Corey’s dead, Lisa! Someone shot him! What men are you talking about? Have you seen someone? Why would Uncle Benny be here? And what are you doing out here? Where is April? Is she okay?”
Her brother’s questions didn’t even register after Lisa heard the first words out of his mouth. Corey was dead! “They shot Corey? That was the shooting I just heard?”
“Yes. Someone on a horse shot him and tried to shoot Jason too.”
“I have no idea who he was,” Jason said. “I shot back but I don’t think I hit him at all.”
“I know who it was!” Lisa said. “It was one of the same men who killed Tommy yesterday. Tommy’s dead, Mitch! And the men who killed him are in our house right now!”
Lisa saw the color drain from her brother’s face as he took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “What about April and Kimberly, Lisa? Tell me they’re not dead too!”
“No, they’re fine, Mitch. Everyone is okay except for Tommy, but we don’t know about Uncle Benny. We haven’t seen him since right after Tommy got shot.”
“Where is April, Lisa? Did they all go down the creek? I saw tracks where two of the canoes were launched.”
“Yes! They’re all safe. I just saw them after the three men on horses followed their trail here looking for them. I went back and told them to hide after those men turned back. I thought they had gone back to the house, but they must have still been nearby.” Lisa just could not believe Corey was dead. How were they possibly going to break this news to Samantha?”
“I only saw the one guy,” Jason said. “He had a long red beard and he was riding a black horse. He shot Corey with a lever-action rifle.”
“I saw that one!” Lisa said. “The rifle looked like a Winchester, but the other two were carrying ARs like yours.”
“Who are these people?” Mitch asked. “How many of them are there? Are there more than three?”
Lisa gave him the quick synopsis based on what she knew. She told him how it started with the shooting of the cattle. Mitch was sick when he realized he’d heard those first shots the afternoon before and dismissed them as nothing. She would never be able to convince him that he couldn’t have known what was happening and that it was not his fault for not rushing back. There was no point in him beating himself up for not being there, just as Lisa realized that feeling bad for not waiting in the right place for Mitch to return wouldn’t bring Corey back.
She went on to describe the shootout with the unseen rifleman that had shot Tommy, and how she’d last seen Uncle Benny when he sent her and Stacy back to warn April and Samantha and get the travois. She told him how David had seen Tommy finished off with a hatchet and how they had all hidden in the woods and shot two of the men stalking near them in the dark woods beside the yard. She could tell Mitch was burning with rage as he listened to all this. He wouldn’t stop blaming himself, not only for not coming back or for leaving in the first place, but also for not working harder to prepare better defenses to guard against just such an attack.
“Let’s just go back to where April and the others are, Mitch. She’s worried about you. We all were. And now we’ve got to tell Samantha about Corey.”
“I can’t right now, Lisa. I’m going to look for Benny. And, I want to see how many of these thugs we’re dealing with.”
“Please don’t go near the house, Mitch! They know there are more of us now after seeing Jason and Corey. You might run right into an ambush!”
“I’m not going to run into an ambush. Believe me; I’ll be careful.”
“I’m going with you,” Jason said.
“Me too, then. We’ll all three go!”
“No! Neither of you are going with me! I can do this better alone. You both know that. Besides, April and everybody else must have heard that shooting. Since they know you came this way, they may be thinking it was you who got shot, Lisa. You need to get back there ASAP and let them know you’re okay before they decide to come looking. You’ve got to tell Samantha about Corey too, but no matter what she says, you can’t let her see him. None of you need to see him like that. I want you to go with Lisa and help her, Jason, because you two need to take the other three canoes and paddle them down the creek. We don’t want them just waiting here for those men to use if they come back and decide to go search downstream. I’ll help you launch them, and then I’ve got to go.”
“I was thinking that,” Lisa said. “They know about the other canoes. They walked right in there where they’re hidden and found them.”
“Take them and when you get to April, get everybody moving again and all of you go further downstream. Paddle down to the mouth of our little secret branch, Lisa. When you get there, you can pull the canoes a couple hundred yards upstream in it without leaving tracks, but I’ll know where to find you when I come back. How are you set for weapons and supplies? Did you get anything out of the house?”
“We got a lot out, but we had to leave a lot of it when we ran down here after the shootout. We have some food, and a couple of blankets. We all have weapons and we brought what extra ammo we could carry: 5.56, your .357 Magnum, some 9mm and some shotgun shells. We’ve got more magazines for the Glocks and ARs. David’s got Tommy’s .308 too, and I’ve got all my magazines for my 10/22 and a full brick of CCI Stingers.”
“Good. Give me the AR and its magazines then, Jason, and all your broadhead arrows too. You take Corey’s Glock 20, but I doubt you two will need a rifle or the bow before you reach the others. I don’t plan to use the rifle, but you never know. I’m taking all of Corey’s arrows too, in case I get an opportunity too good to pass up.”
* * *
As soon as the three canoes were at the water’s edge, Mitch promised Lisa he would be careful and then he turned and set out for the road. His plan was to take a circuitous route through the heavy woods well to the east of the property boundary and the house, then cross the gravel road to the south side and work his way back west to the spot where the first shootout had taken place. There was a wooded ridge on that side of the road that would provide a natural route, and it was from approximately that area that Lisa said the first shooter had fired and hit Tommy. Mitch wanted to start there looking for any sign of Benny, knowing that if he was still alive and anywhere in the area, he would have returned there for his wounded son and found him dead.
It made Mitch sick to think that someone killed Tommy in cold blood that way. Of all the people he’d met since the breakdown of society, Benny and Tommy were the nicest and the most honest, having retained their human decency despite the tragedies they’d suffered. It was far more than Mitch could say about most people. The dark side of humanity that had come to the surface as civilization unraveled was far worse than the other kind of darkness that was the direct result of the power grid failure. Mitch had seen it manifest almost immediately in the beginning, and he knew it had only gotten worse over time, especially in the more populated areas. It had reached the remote backwoods out here too, but until now not on this scale, with such a large group bent on murder and plunder finding their way all the way to the Henley farm. Mitch wondered where such a band of killers came from, and how many there were in total following the men who had forged ahead to pave the way. Lisa said that David had overheard some of them mention women and children. If it were true, Mitch figured there would probably be more men traveling with the second group as well to protect them. It would be in his best interest to do something now, while they were still divided. Maybe he could come up with a plan to take them out, but if Benny was out there somewhere, Mitch wanted to find him first. Lisa knew for sure Benny had kill
ed one of the intruders. And she and the others had heard his shotgun twice more out by the road in the area where he was headed now. If Benny was still alive and in the fight, Mitch was sure the two of them could accomplish far more together than he could alone.
Knowing that the route he was taking was far from the house and any path that the men on horseback could use, Mitch was able to move fast. He threaded his way through an area of densely planted 10-year-old pines and reached the road at a point more than a quarter mile east of the driveway entrance. When he was sure no one was within sight of the road, he sprinted across. Closing in on the scene of Tommy’s murder took much longer, as stealth was imperative. Mitch knew someone was there well before he was close enough to see. Men were talking, not especially loud, but at a normal tone as if they weren’t concerned about being heard. With an arrow nocked on his bowstring and two-dozen more jammed into the soft quiver that rode close to his body so it wouldn’t snag brush, Mitch crept along the ridge overlooking the road. As he drew closer, he could see that there were four men, along with two saddled horses tethered nearby. They were working at skinning the carcasses of the steers and not far away, he saw three fresh mounds of dirt, one with with a folding shovel standing upright in it by the blade. Mitch had no doubt they were graves, but whose? Lisa had told him Benny had killed the first cattle rustler there, a teenaged boy not much older than her, and Tommy had died there too, according to David. One of the graves was surely for their own fallen, but could the other two be for Tommy and Benny? It didn’t seem likely that such men would bury their victims, but then again, if they planned to stay here long term, they just might. All in all, it was a mystery, but Mitch intended to have the answers soon. The men were preoccupied and still had much work to do. He would watch and make sure they were indeed alone. If so, four was not really so many with the element of surprise on his side.
Twenty-four
BENNY WAS SO TIRED he was having difficulty holding his head up. Moving to a more comfortable position was impossible, as he was sitting in one of the straight-backed wooden dining chairs from the kitchen, his hands tied behind the chair back and his ankles lashed to the wooden legs. Another length of rope was wound around his body as an additional restraint. But Benny had been surprised that they’d bothered to tie him up at all. He’d expected to be shot as soon as they were done questioning him, as he was of no real conceivable use to them. But the one called Drake, who’d asked most of the questions and who seemed to be in charge, had acquiesced when another suggested that they wait for Jimmy. Benny gathered real quickly that Jimmy was the little brother of the teenaged boy he’d shot—the one that had pulled the knife on David. And both of them were Kenneth’s sons—the man who’d shot Tommy and who had died during the night of the wounds he received from Lisa’s .22.
He heard them say that Jimmy ought to have his chance to get an eye for eye. “Let him do the honors,” the man arguing for waiting said. “It won’t make any difference to us, but it’ll give little Jimmy a bit of satisfaction, getting his revenge, since he didn’t get to participate in the fun here, seeing how he had to ride back and tell the others what we found. Besides that, waiting for him to get here will give the old man more time to contemplate the fact that he’s gonna die for what he’s done.”
“Suit yourself, but just get him out of my sight and make damned sure he’s tied up where he can’t get loose! He’s already caused me enough trouble!”
Benny had put up a fight when they grabbed him to drag him into the house. He knew it was useless, but he couldn’t go out without trying. It ended when one of them kicked him so hard in the stomach that he couldn’t breathe. He took a couple of hard punches to the face too, including one that had his right eye swollen shut. Now he had been tied to that chair for what he figured was nearly 12 hours. They’d put him in one of the back bedrooms, the one that had been Doug Henley’s office, with the chair facing the wall. When daylight came, Benny could see with his good eye the framed pictures of the real game warden that had given away the lie he’d concocted to discourage his captors from further searching. It hadn’t worked, and now Benny found himself helpless, with nothing to pass those long hours but his tortured thoughts of Tommy’s death. The only thing left to look forward to now was seeing Tommy and Betsy in the next life, where Benny was certain he was headed soon.
There was nothing else he could do for his friends either, but hope they were safe. Maybe the girls had realized they needed to get far away, and maybe, just maybe, Mitch and those other two boys wouldn’t come walking up into the yard before they figured out something was wrong. Benny didn’t have any illusions that Mitch would be able to do anything in time to help him. With this many armed men here and his sister and his girlfriend off in the woods somewhere, taking back the house wasn’t going to be his top priority, even if he knew Benny was in there. But Benny was sure he wouldn’t, because nobody did other than the men who were holding him. From what he’d heard them say, there were even more of them on the road behind than there were here, including the young boy they intended to hand him over to.
They had left him alone after moving him into the office during the night, and all he could hear outside was muffled conversation and the sounds of the horses in the front yard. There was a lot of activity out there after daylight, and Benny figured they were going through everything in the house and barn, looking for anything they could use. He heard some of the men ride off on horseback, and later in the morning, he heard distant rifle shots off in the direction of the creek. The shooting had to involve his friends; he couldn’t think of another explanation. The men had either found the girls where they were hiding, or they’d ambushed the boys coming back from the hunt. When he heard the door open behind him a half hour later, Benny suspected he was about to find out, and he was right. The one called Drake entered the room and jerked Benny around to face him, chair and all.
“I want to know how many of you were living here, old man! I just ran into two young men on their way back here with a deer carcass. They were both carrying bows and arrows. I guess you’re going to tell me they were your ‘cowhands’ too, aren’t you? Like anybody with a tiny herd the size of the one here would even need a hired hand…”
Benny said nothing, but he now knew the shots he’d heard had involved Mitch and the guys, rather than the girls. That didn’t make it good news though, and what he heard next was even worse.
“Well if they were your hands, you can count yourself one short as of this morning. The other one won’t be coming back, but if he does, we’ll be ready for him. The son of a bitch can’t shoot worth a damned, I’ll tell you that. He must have fired a half a dozen rounds at me with a semi-automatic rifle, but missed every time.”
Benny wasn’t going to volunteer anything, so he had no way of knowing which of the young hunters was dead, or why Drake only saw two instead of all three. But he did know that Jason was the only one carrying a rifle. So that meant that it was likely Mitch or Corey. It made him sick to think about it, but he still had hope April and the girls had escaped. The thing was though, even if they had, where would they go now and how would they survive? Other than he and Tommy, Mitch and Lisa were the only ones with any real woods experience before the collapse. So if Mitch was dead, their future didn’t look bright. But Benny was snapped out of his worries of the future by the back of Drake’s hand striking him across his already-bruised face.
“How many?”
“The two you saw are it!” Benny said. “They’re the hands I already told you about.”
“No, they’re not, because these two didn’t know we were here. They were carrying that deer out of the woods like they were out for a Sunday stroll; laughing and cutting up, completely at ease.”
“Well maybe they was going somewhere else with it then,” Benny said. “Sounds like more strangers if you ask me. Lately, the place has been crawling with good-for-nothing vagrants, looking to take up where they ain’t got no business!”
“Just
keep being stubborn, old man. It doesn’t really matter whether you answer my questions or not. The only reason you’re alive now is so you can meet Little Jimmy. It’ll be good for him, figuring out just what he wants to do to you before you die. It’ll make him a stronger man someday. We’ll hunt all your friends down like dogs no matter how many there are; so don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re helping them by keeping your mouth shut. It won’t matter in the end.”
With that, Drake shoved Benny back against the wall and left the room, slamming the door behind him. Benny’s face stung from the blows, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the sadness and loss he suffered.
* * *
“Oh my God!” Stacy had whispered, when the first two rifle shots echoed through the forest, coming from exactly the direction in which Lisa had gone after warning them to hide the canoes. “They may have just shot Lisa!”
When several more shots rang out, none of which sounded like a .22. April had wished she could go and see if Lisa needed help. Maybe she’d been hit, but then again, maybe they shot so many times because they missed as she took off through the woods? It was horrible, not knowing, and also not knowing where Mitch and the guys were. She considered too that the shooting could have involved them instead, or maybe even Benny. There was no way to find out without going to investigate, but she was not leaving Kimberly to do it herself, and Stacy, Samantha, and David did not have the skills to risk stalking closer to such dangerous men in the daylight.
The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3) Page 13
