The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3)

by Scott B. Williams

  “As hard as it is not knowing,” April said, “we’ve got to sit tight. We can’t risk splitting up any further just yet.”

  “But what are we going to do if Lisa doesn’t come back?” Stacy asked.

  “If she’s okay, she’ll come back soon. If they were shooting at her, she may be hiding or running, but if they didn’t hit her she’ll be back. If she’s not back in another hour or so, then we’ll decide about looking for her.”

  April had her hands full keeping Kimberly quiet while they waited. A light rain was falling again, but not enough to put up with the discomfort of sheltering under the canoes as they had done all night when it rained much harder. April wished they had a tarp, but the one she’d brought from the house was with the pile of stuff they had abandoned in their haste to get out of there after the shootout. So they sat there in the wet, cool forest, she keeping Kimberly wrapped up under her poncho in her arms, while they waited and listened, their field of vision limited to just a small stretch of the creek they could make out through the trees. When something finally did break the monotony, it was a sound that sent a chill all the way through her—the sound of a paddle lightly banging into the side of an aluminum canoe!

  April placed Kimberly under the canoe behind her and grabbed her carbine. She was almost certain the sound meant that the men Lisa had watched discuss the other canoes had returned to get them and were now hunting for them downstream. She whispered to her friends to be ready to fire as soon as the canoes came into view, but when they did, what she saw was not at all what she’d expected.

  Lisa was paddling the first canoe! Behind her, Jason was paddling the second one, with a third trailing behind him on a towline. That was all of them—their entire fleet! April stepped out of the concealment of the woods to greet her and find out why they were in the canoes. And more importantly, why Jason was with her, but not Mitch and Corey? When Lisa stepped ashore and told them, Samantha let out a scream that April was sure could be heard all the way to the house. April and Stacy caught her as her knees collapsed beneath her and eased her gently to the sand as the sobs racked her body in great waves. April could not begin to imagine how she felt, and what she herself would feel if it had been Mitch instead. But from what Lisa and Jason told her of his plans, she knew she might easily find herself in the same place as Samantha later that very day.

  Twenty-five

  MITCH MADE A DECISION as he watched the men at work on the carcasses and determined that they were the only four out here. Attacking them from the hillside across the road could work, but would leave any he missed with an easy escape route back to the house and reinforcements. Now that he had assessed the situation, Mitch decided his best plan would be to backtrack a bit and cross the road to the same side they were on, then circle around and get between them and the house. It would be the direction from which they least expected an attack, and if any of them managed to get away, it would not be easy for them to retreat to the house. Mitch knew every possible route and he could intercept any attempt they might make to do so. He had no mercy to spare for any of these men after seeing what they did to Corey and learning of Tommy’s ruthless murder. He would take out these four and whatever it took, get rid of the others that were in the house too. If more came as David had heard them mention, he would deal with them as the situation required, but that was for later. His full attention was on these four for now.

  Once he’d crossed the road and worked his way back around among the pines, Mitch came upon the rolling travois that Benny made from his old bicycle wheel. Lisa had told him they’d planned to move Tommy on it, but that plan changed when she learned from David that he was dead. Mitch stalked on past it and continued to close the gap on his prey. When he was close enough to hear the men talking, the conversation he overheard was music to his ears. His job was about to get a whole lot easier:

  “I’m gonna go look over there in that stand of pines between here and the house and see if I can find it. I almost tripped over it last night, so I know it’s there.”

  “If you think it’s worth the trouble…”

  “I know it is! That’s what it’s made for. They used to sell a contraption like that to haul your deer out of the woods. But I don’t know who would have bought one back then, when everybody had four-wheelers for that. It’ll sure make moving this beef a lot easier though. We can finish cutting it up when we get it back to the house.”

  Mitch knew this was an extremely lucky break. One of the men was coming his way alone to look for the travois. He would be the first to die and then there would be three—much easier to deal with all in a group than four. He carefully checked the arrow he’d selected as he waited. It was one of his best. The spares he carried from Jason’s and Corey’s quivers would be used last, after all his favorites were exhausted.

  From where he watched, Mitch was nearly a hundred feet from the other three men. If he waited until the lone man was almost upon him, the chances of the others hearing anything were very slim. Mitch had done this before, far more times than he cared to recall in the months since the lights went out, but such was the world he now inhabited. The man walking towards him looked to be about 30, his full black beard showing no gray and the rest of his face lean and tan. He carried an AK slung casually over one shoulder, clearly feeling safe on this little walk between his buddies by the road and the others that occupied the house. Mitch was low to the ground behind a dense clump of small evergreen cedars, sitting with his butt on his heels and his bow canted almost to the horizontal with the arrow resting on the upper side. He drew the arrow slowly, the motion so familiar that it was burned into his neuromuscular memory, the touching of his right thumb to the corner of his mouth telling him without conscious thought he was at full draw and ready to release the string. Mitch’s target was the center of the man’s Adam’s apple. The razor sharp, three-bladed broadhead would cut through his throat and silence any outcry; its path out the back of his neck severing the spine if his aim was true. He let the arrow fly and saw that it was.

  Mitch already had another shaft nocked and ready as the man gurgled his last breath through his own blood as it flowed onto the wet pine needles covering the ground where he’d fallen. The arrow had passed through his neck almost to the fletching, and had broken in half with a muffled snap when he fell on it. But the other three hadn’t heard a thing over the sound of their ongoing chatter as they worked. They were mostly hidden from view by the trees and from where they were; they wouldn’t see their fallen comrade unless they came looking for him. That was exactly what Mitch hoped would happen because it would make his task easier. He wanted to get this over with quickly and move on to the house, but he had long since developed the fine art of infinite patience when it came to hunting. Waiting would be to his advantage, so that’s what he did until finally, he heard the others wondering what was taking their friend so long. They were complaining about being sick of the rain and were ready to take some of the meat back to the house to cook it.

  “The hell with waiting on Gerald. He probably cut out on us went back there already,” Mitch heard one say.

  “If he did, I’ll kick his ass when I see him.”

  Mitch listened to their banter until he heard enough to know that they didn’t care enough to look for their buddy. They were more interested in getting back to the house with the meat, and they were ready to do it now. Mitch couldn’t afford to let any of them make it back there though. He would lose the advantage he had of them being divided from the rest of their group, and besides, if they made it back there and didn’t find the one he’d just killed waiting on them, it would raise an alarm. He slowly worked his way closer, getting within easy range and making sure he had clear lanes of shooting to his next targets.

  He watched as they brought the two horses closer to where they’d been working to load some of the meat across the saddles. Before he moved in, Mitch had already selected three more choice arrows in addition to the one on his string, and these he held in the fi
ngers of his bow hand, ready for quick access as soon as he loosed the first. He decided he would take the one standing there, holding the reins to the horses first, while the other two were bent to pick up their loads. The one standing also presented the most immediate danger, as he had his rifle hanging from a sling in front of his chest, while the other two had both leaned theirs against a nearby tree.

  Mitch’s first arrow hit the standing man in the side of the neck. The stricken man managed to take a couple of steps backwards, before almost falling on top of his two friends when he collapsed. The first of those two to turn and attempt to get to his feet was drilled through the chest by the second arrow, but before Mitch could get the third one into play and draw the bow again, the remaining man grabbed one of the AKs leaning on the tree and dove for the ground. Mitch lost sight of him momentarily, but then a wild fusillade of bullets tore into the trees around him while Mitch went to the ground himself. The man had apparently guessed the general direction from which the arrows came, but had not seen him. Now that this man’s rifle fire had given away Mitch’s hope of taking all four without alerting the rest at the house, he reached for his own AR and set his bow on the ground. He didn’t have time to play a game of cat and mouse with this guy and it would be difficult to get him with an arrow now that he was aware of what was happening. The guy had to be freaked out, seeing his two buddies go down right beside him, pierced by silent arrows from out of nowhere. Mitch figured he would lose his nerve and either keep shooting wild or turn and make a run for it, thinking his unseen enemy was armed only with the bow. He didn’t have to wait long to find out. When he saw movement again, the man had belly-crawled to the road and had just gotten to his feet to run. He was nearly out of bow range and there were branches in the way that might deflect an arrow, but he was an easy target for the AR. Mitch took aim and fired a quick double-tap, dropping him just as he probably thought he was going to get away.

  Mitch knew he would run out of time fast now that there had been gunplay, so he quickly checked that the three men were indeed dead. It would have been fortunate if he could have taken one alive for questioning, but none of the three were in any condition now to discuss the circumstances of their visit here to the Henley farm. Mitch then looked around until he found Tommy’s body, lying face up and partially covered with leaves. Now that he knew that Tommy wasn’t in one of the three graves, he figured Benny must not be in one either. The men had apparently buried three of their own. A hurried scan of the ground in the vicinity also revealed several shotgun shell casings that Mitch was sure were Benny’s. He already knew Benny had killed the boy Lisa told him about, and maybe he killed the other two buried here as well. Mitch didn’t know and there was no more time to linger and speculate. At least the shell casings gave him hope that the old man might still be alive.

  Twenty-six

  “I DON’T REALLY THINK the other one will come here,” Drake said, as he and Chuck discussed his encounter with the two deer hunters. Drake hadn’t gotten anything out of the old man, but then he hadn’t really expected to. Sure, he could have made him talk with the right application of the right kind of pain, but it was hardly worth it. The more he thought about it, the less he was worried that the one that had shot at him would dare to come here. Drake knew that whoever had been in the house before they arrived had taken to the creek in two canoes, and that meant in all probability; they had gone downstream with the current because that would be easiest. The two young men carrying the deer didn’t know anything about what had happened, or they wouldn’t have been walking back in the direction of the house in such a carefree manner. Drake decided that they must have been off hunting overnight and therefore had missed the other group who had left during the night in the canoes. When he had shot one of them dead, the other one returned fire when he got a chance, but seeing Drake turn his horse and gallop off in the direction of the house, he probably figured it wasn’t safe to go there. If he did try to sneak closer to see what was going on, he wouldn’t dare try anything once he saw how many saddled horses there were tied up outside.

  Before he rode all the way back to the house, Drake had stopped and dismounted, watching and waiting for a good twenty minutes to see if the hunter was following him. When he saw or heard nothing, he had continued on to the house to go and question the old man.

  “I imagine you’re right, Drake,” Chuck said. “I just don’t like the thought of anybody that was living here still being alive. You never know when they might come back and try something.”

  “I agree, and that’s why I want to hunt them all down. Unless they kept going in those canoes all the way down to the next county, it shouldn’t be hard. And if they did go that far, they won’t be a concern of ours.”

  “I wonder what’s taking Clint so long. Hell, with four of them to skin and butcher those steers they should have been back grilling steaks for us all by now!”

  “Yeah, well they did have three graves to dig first, but still…”

  Drake was about to suggest that maybe they ought to send someone out there to find out what was taking so long when a series of rapid fire rifle shots rang out from that very direction.

  “Uh-oh!” Chuck said. “That doesn’t sound good!”

  Drake threw the door open and stepped out onto the porch. One of his men had fired the shots, most likely, but at whom? Had that other fellow that shot at him managed to circle all the way out front? If he did, maybe they got him, but he wanted to know. He didn’t think it was a good idea to go charging out there on the horses though, just in case. As if to prove that thought right, there were two more shots several minutes after the first series. With four of his men out there possibly engaged in hostile fire and six of their number already dead. Drake was feeling that his resources were spread a bit thin. Only six remained at the house, including him and Chuck. Maybe Clint and the others out there had whatever it was under control, but Drake didn’t like the idea of not knowing and wasn’t going to just sit there waiting to see.

  “Chuck, let’s you and I go see what’s going on. We’ll leave the horses here and slip out there through the woods on foot. It may be nothing, but I don’t like wondering.”

  Before they left Drake told the four who would remain to keep a sharp watch and to split up so that two were stationed at the barn out back and two at the house. Then Drake and Chuck crossed the front yard and disappeared into the woods on the other side, taking care to avoid the lane leading to the road. Drake hoped he was doing this for nothing, and that Clint and the others would already have most of the meat cut up when they got there. But for some reason he had a bad feeling he just couldn’t shake. It seemed like every time they thought they had this place under control, someone else popped up to give them grief.

  Drake led the way, carrying his Winchester in one hand while Chuck had his M4, the selector switch set to 3-round burst. It was fairly easy to figure out the angle that would take them to the property corner where the steers had been killed, and the two of them soon came upon a long wooden frame with a bicycle wheel mounted on an axle at one end.

  “Looks like a travois they must have built,” Chuck whispered

  “I think you’re right. I wonder why they left it out here though?”

  “Must have been planning to haul something with it and dropped it when the shooting started yesterday.”

  Drake figured that was it and walked on past it, making a mental note of where it was because it looked like something that would come in handy later. But he hadn’t gone another 50 feet though before he spotted something else on the ground that froze him in his tracks. Chuck saw it too, and the two men spread out, moving without a sound until they were adjacent their fallen comrade. When Drake was sure they were alone, he moved closer to see what had happened to Gerald. A broken arrow protruding out of the back of his neck was the last thing he’d expected to see. Gerald’s glazed and lifeless eyes stared up at the dreary gray sky above the tops of the pines, beads of rainwater dripping from his be
ard to mix with the pool of blood soaking the ground around his head. From the way the arrow hit him Drake figured he died instantly. He and Chuck exchanged a glance and then moved on towards the road; keeping a good twenty paces apart in case the mysterious archer was still out there waiting.

  Drake struggled to wrap his mind around the fact that Gerald had been killed with an arrow of all things. The two young hunters he’d seen earlier had been carrying bows and arrows, and not modern compound bows, either, but the old fashioned wooden kind like the Indians used. If they had the skills to kill deer and one of his men too with weapons like that, where did they learn them? He was almost certain now that the one who’d fired at him had indeed come back and done this, and now there was nothing more important than hunting this guy down and killing him. But first he needed to talk to Clint and the others and find out why Gerald had been out in the woods alone, and whether or not they had heard or seen anything unusual. But there was only silence in the direction of the road where Clint and the rest of his crew were supposed to be.

  When they reached the scene of the butchering, Drake was not completely surprised to find P.J. and Jonathan lying dead next to the two animal carcasses. The horses were standing off among the trees nearby, acting skittish like they were about to bolt at the next thing that startled them. There was no sign of Clint, but P.J. and Jonathan had both been killed the same way as Gerald—with arrows! Drake bent and studied the one that had passed through P.J.’s neck in one piece, unlike the broken one that had killed Gerald. It was without a doubt homemade, the feather fletching from a wild turkey and the broadhead a flat piece of triangular steel ground to razor edges and lashed into a notch in the other end of the wooden shaft. The archer who made the arrows was absolutely deadly with them, judging by his shot placement. Gerald and P.J. had both been hit in the neck, while Jonathan had been shot through the heart. Drake was still considering the improbability of all this when Chuck signaled him with a low whistle. He’d found Clint face down in the gravel at the edge of the road, dead of two gunshot wounds through the side of his chest.