by Joe Russell
He was afraid that the spilling of blood tonight was not over. He did not ask for this fight, but he would cut down anyone else who got in the way of saving Sandra, Jen, and now, Rachel. He just hoped that if more blood was spilled, it wouldn’t be theirs.
✽ ✽ ✽
By the time the group had made their way to the end of the cabin’s driveway and back to the forest road, the darkness of night had completely fallen on them, and it was getting more and more difficult to walk without constantly stumbling on the uneven terrain. Neil had wanted to take the old pickup truck, but having heard how loud it was before, Dave convinced him that it wasn’t worth the extra speed to completely blow their stealth. Others would hear them coming from literally a mile away, and they could lose the opportunity to detect others that were out there.
“How far away are these guys?” Dave asked the others softly.
“A few miles, maybe?” Mike answered uncertainly, looking at Neil, although he probably didn’t notice in the darkness.
“Yeah, something like that,” Neil confirmed.
“All right,” Dave said. “I think we can use our flashlights for a little while. We have a long way to go in this darkness and they won’t be able to see us until we get closer.” Dave paused and looked up at the sky. “I think we should have some moonlight tonight. I think the moon is half full or something, and it’s pretty clear. We’ll just have to wait for it to rise.”
Neither Mike or Neil had any objections, so Mike and Dave each took out their flashlights and clicked them on. “Just keep them pointed down, don’t shine them around up high. Light can be seen from far off when it’s this dark out here.”
Mike kept an eye out for the landmark tree where he had cached Dave’s backpack earlier, and they retrieved it with no issue when he saw it. Dave saw that Neil didn’t have a light, so Dave retrieved his spare from his backpack for him to use. It was the small single cell AAA LED Maglite, the one that Dave carried in his pockets every day, and was only his back up out here when he used the XL50. It wasn’t the brightest, and certainly didn’t light up the night like the larger flashlights, but it was more than enough to navigate through the forest right now. Dave’s flashlight had a power saver mode where it only used a quarter of the battery and was proportionately less bright, but was actually perfect now, considering the light discipline he knew they needed. Plus, although he carried extra batteries in his pack, he didn’t know how long they’d be out there and wanted to conserve the batteries when possible. He thought briefly that maybe it wasn’t necessary for them all to be using flashlights at the same time, but shrugged it off. He had at least a dozen AAA batteries with him, enough to run all three flashlights for days on end. Surely, they’d be out of the woods by then. He hoped so, anyway.
The group walked in silence, with Mike in the lead. As they walked, Dave tried to form a plan in his mind for how to accomplish their mission, but it was difficult without being familiar with the area where they were going. He did know that they needed to act swiftly, striking by surprise, because whoever had the girls were obviously dangerous and revealing their positions prematurely could put the girls in danger.
After what seemed to be an hour or so, as it was hard to tell without a working cell phone or a watch, Mike halted in the road. At first, Dave was concerned that he had seen something alarming, and his hand went instinctively to the grip of his pistol. However, he soon noticed the trail on the right that Mike was looking at, and relaxed a little.
“This is it,” Mike whispered, and Neil nodded in concurrence.
“How far?” Dave whispered back.
“Maybe a mile or so. A little less maybe.”
“Oh,” Dave straightened a little, realizing that they weren’t quite there yet. He thought for a minute, looking up at the sky. The stars were out now, and the moon was beginning to rise over the ridge. It wasn’t very high in the sky yet, but with their eyes adjusting to the darkness around them, the light it was casting was now perceptible. “I think we should keep our lights off now. I know we’re still a way off, but light will travel out here. Heck, they might not even be awake, but our ability to sneak up on them is really all we have going for us.”
Flashlights clicked off, one by one. Dave realized that Neil hadn’t really spoken since they had left the cabin earlier. Actually, Dave realized, he hasn’t really said a word to me, and I don’t know if I ever really spoke to him. He figured that he had been so consumed in the moment at the time when Mike had rejoined him, that he hadn’t really acknowledged the man’s presence. Understandable, Dave thought, given the nature of that moment and circumstance, but on the same token, it was understandable that Neil should be uncomfortable around Dave. Dave didn’t think the little man was exactly the warrior type, and the stress and fear of having lost his daughter, combined with the fact that his first impression of Dave was him literally burning and beating someone to death, might be a factor. This, of course, wasn’t Dave’s fault, but he tried to consider what it’d looked like from an outside perspective, for someone who hadn’t witnessed the previous events of the day, and probably wouldn’t have the stomach or the balls to do what he’d done. This didn’t make Dave wrong in any way, he supposed, but considering that he and Neil were now on the same team, with a common objective, then maybe it would be worthwhile to make the man more comfortable around him.
Dave turned to Neil, who even in the dark, Dave could tell was losing the mental battle they were facing. It reminded Dave of when he was a wrestler in middle school, and he’d spend all day nervous to the point of nausea, about an evening match that he knew he would lose painfully. The man hadn’t given up hope, for he was still with them, and presumably ready to do what he had to do to get his own daughter back. Dave doubted that Neil would be of much help in an all-out physical confrontation, and maybe Neil knew that, but it didn’t matter. The man was nervous as hell, but he was there.
“Hey,” Dave said to him, easily.
Neil turned to him, not speaking, but giving him a look that Dave took to mean he was listening.
“I’m sorry about your daughter. I’m scared as hell about my wife and her sister, but at least we know where they are now. And we’re going to get them back.”
Neil looked like he wanted to believe what Dave was saying, but was too scared to accept it. “How do we even know they’re there? We didn’t see them… and if we did, they could be gone by now.” The man shuddered visibly. “If they were taken by traffickers, then they’ll be long gone by now, and we’ll never see them again…” The sad little man trailed off.
Dave grabbed him by the shoulders, not violently but assertively enough to snap him back to attention. “Hey,” he said firmly, “they’re there. You guys were just there a few hours ago, and they were there with no transportation. I don’t know what’s going on, why they're there or why that Jeep isn’t running, but the girls are there and we’re going to get them back.”
Neil stared back at Dave’s intense gaze, and Dave could tell that he wanted so badly to believe. Finally, he gave a little nod that seemed more like submission than bold confidence, but it was something. After all, Dave wasn’t really counting on him do much fighting if it came to it, but he needed the man to keep it together.
Dave was pleased in the relatively short time since this crisis had begun, Mike had seemingly changed into a different person. No longer was he the whiny kid who Dave secretly enjoyed watching fall into the creek the previous day, at least until he’d taken Sandra down with him. Yes, Mike seemed to be stepping up, and Dave was grateful to have him around. What an improvement from even earlier in the day? After all, without Mike there to take out Doug at the fire pit, he might not be standing there now. At that moment, Dave realized that Mike was looking at him, as if waiting for him to decide what to do next. Dave looked at him back, their eyes locking for a long moment. Then, in show of friendship that Dave had never even hinted at before, he raised his hand and clasped Mike’s shoulder, squeezing it. The two
men held eye contact for a moment longer, with Dave giving a half-smile and half-nod. Then, without words, he turned and led the trio into the dark forest.
Chapter 22
Spruce Knob, West Virginia. Present Day.
Dave stared down the dark slope from the vantage point they had found. It had taken them over an hour to travel the mile or so from the forest road to the cabin, navigating through the dark forest and sometimes uneven terrain without their flashlights. Dave and Mike had both stumbled a couple of times, and Neil had taken a pretty good fall when his foot caught in a tree root that was sticking up on the side of the trail. Fortunately, only pride was hurt during the rough trip. When they had seen light coming from the cabin about two hundred yards off in the distance, Dave had looked around to determine their best course of action. The light wasn’t electronic, but the dim orange of a candle or some kind of oil lamp. Dave made a mental note that this probably meant that the cabin didn’t have power, like the other cabin they had come from. Maybe this would work to their advantage if it meant that the guys in the cabin didn’t have much light to see their surroundings, especially outside. Still, to avoid being seen in the ambient light cast by whatever the light source was, he suggested that they move to higher ground on their left, maybe to try and get a good vantage point to the east of the cabin. After ascending toward the ridge, they followed it, until they were nearly abreast of the cabin below them and to the west, at a small rocky outcropping where the ridge ended in a knob and began falling sharply to the remote valley below.
Dave crawled to the edge of one of the large boulders that overlooked the cabin. He estimated that they were somewhere around a hundred and fifty yards from it, with an elevation advantage of about two hundred feet. The mountain night air was getting cool for early summer, and the rock chilled his hands. During their trip here, he had retrieved his zip-up fleece jacket from his pack, and was thankful that it was a dark gray that he assumed blended into the night pretty well, along with his olive drab cargo shorts. He was not decked out in full camo, but at least he was wearing dark earth tones. It could have been a lot worse. Like what Mike and Neil were wearing, for example. Neil had a bright green jacket and khaki pants, and Mike was wearing a medium blue hoodie with jeans. Dave sighed, knowing there was nothing he could do about it now, other than account for it in the plan he was still attempting to construct. His mind was racing. Being this close to where he was certain his wife was being held captive, yet not charging in and taking her by force that very instant was maddening. He closed his eyes and pictured Sandra. In his mind’s eye she smiled at him, and he tried to think of what she would say to him if she could. Of course, she would want him to save her, but she wouldn’t want him to be reckless. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and forced himself to think of a plan. One that would actually work.
One asset he was considering was the rifle they had taken from Doug and Billy. The thirty-thirty was not known to be a long-distance sniper rifle, but Dave knew from personal experience that it would have sufficient range and power at this distance, assuming the scope it had was sighted in. It was a cheap three to nine power, and Dave had to assume that the guys had probably used it to hunt quite often, so it would hopefully be reliable should they need it. He had found a box of twenty Winchester soft point rounds, decent enough to satisfy Dave, plus whatever was in the gun now. He turned and looked at it, laying beside him on the boulder. Mike was there too, seeming to be staring down at the cabin in the same manner he was. Dave slowly took the rifle, removed the spring-loaded rod that held the rounds in the magazine tube, and carefully let them slide out the front. There were three rounds in the magazine and a spent casing in the chamber.
“Mike,” Dave whispered, although Mike was already watching him in silence. “Do you know how to use one of these?” Dave was pretty sure he knew the answer, but asked anyway, hopeful.
Mike hesitated, then answered. “Kinda,” he said vaguely, then explained, “when I was a kid my uncle took me hunting a few times. I don’t know much about guns, but I think I shot something like that when we went deer hunting.”
Dave was impressed and hopeful by Mike’s unexpected response.
Mike continued. “Don’t you basically work that lever, and the hammer comes back, and you pull the trigger?”
“Yeah, that’s basically it.” Dave thought for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said. “You’re going to use this and cover me. I think I have a plan.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Dave made his way carefully down the slope toward the cabin, but this time, he was heading around the east side toward the back. He got a strange feeling of deja-vu as he crept as silently as he could, taking his time to be undetected by anyone unseen who was paying attention. After all, this was the second time he had done this sort of thing today, but this time it was going to go better. It needed to. He was fortunate that his screw-up at the other cabin hadn’t cost him his life, but if it happened again, it probably would, or worse. The girls were depending on him. He figured it was by God’s grace that the Jeep wasn’t running, and that could very well be the only reason why everyone was still here. He said a prayer of thanks for that, along with a request for guidance and favor in what he was now attempting to do.
It took him about fifteen minutes to move a few hundred yards, circling the cabin and approaching stealthily from the rear. It was dark in the forest, but he was thankful there was substantial moonlight and it was a clear night. As he moved, he paid attention to the cabin, alert for any movement inside. There was the orange glow of the oil lamps coming from several of the rooms, he could see now. He paused frequently to just observe, but didn’t catch any movement. When he got to the edge of the forest, about twenty clear feet from the back of the cabin, he took another long pause. This time, he heard movement inside from the eastern end of the cabin, to his right. Not seeing anyone in the windows, he made a break toward the western end of the cabin, crouching in the shadows beside a window. This window, like most of them, was lit, but he hadn’t seen any movement come from it. Slowly and carefully, he moved his head up to look in. He was terrified that someone inside would be looking out at that very moment, and it would all be over. His heart thundered in his chest as his face cleared the trim and hovered outside the window, and he let out a little sigh when he peered in and saw no one. He looked all around the small room. The door was shut, and it appeared to be a bedroom, though no one was in it. The bed was unmade, and by the items strewn about, it was obvious that someone was using it. Then, his heart stopped when his eyes fell on one item that was clearly out of place. An aqua-green fleece jacket, much like his own gray one. Only it was a lady’s jacket. His lady.
✽ ✽ ✽
Neil was shaking visibly when he made his way up the driveway for the second time that day. Before, he’d been scared, but it was the numbing background kind of scared you get when you know something is wrong, but it’s not quite staring you in the face. This time, however, he was terrified. He believed his daughter was inside, and truly wanted to do whatever he could to get her back, but he wasn’t the type for facing physical danger, and it took everything he had in him to keep from turning and running back into the safety of the dark forest. He knew, however, that everyone, the girls, Mike and Dave, were counting on him.
His part of the plan was to create a diversion. He had descended the hill back the way they had come, about ten minutes after Dave had left the boulders himself. The idea was that Dave would have some time to scope things out unseen from the back of the cabin, and be in position to make his move, whatever that would reveal itself to be, when Neil knocked on the door and created what Dave would hope to be an adequate distraction. Now, here he was, standing on this God-forsaken porch again, almost wishing he would get caught in the massive cobwebs hanging from the low porch roof and eaten by spiders, if it meant he didn’t have to knock on that door again. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. You can do this, he told himself. She’s counting on you. He p
ut his fist to the door and broke the silent night air with a few loud knocks.
