“It ain’t gonna be easy to hide three horses and a girl from her, Johnny.”
“It will if we keep her away from the barn. Let me worry about that. Now go on in there before she hears us and starts looking out the window. I won’t be long.”
Lisa heard a low chuckle from one of the other two at Johnny’s last comment. She had a feeling she was about to face the moment of truth a lot sooner than she’d hoped. The only bright side was that it might be just one of them. If it were all three, resistance would be futile. She felt the horse move as the one they called Johnny started walking again with the reins in hand. She counted his steps as best she could; trying to estimate how far the barn might be from the house the other two went inside. When they stopped again her count was already up to 200, a distance that might work well to her advantage.
She flinched when she suddenly felt his hands on hers as Johnny began untying her wrists from where they were bound to the saddle horn.
“Just relax now. I’m just gonna get you down off of that horse.”
“I can get down myself!”
He grabbed her by the arm anyway to restrain her as she swung her leg over and awkwardly lowered herself to the ground, stumbling when she landed because she was unable to judge the distance with the blindfold.
“We’re just gonna go in here and find you a place to get comfortable. You’re gonna like it here, you’ll see.”
Lisa didn’t answer, but allowed him to lead her by the firm grip he had on her upper arm. She was thinking fast, trying to figure out a way to take advantage of the fact that she was alone with just one of her captors, and likely out of earshot of the other two.
“I know why you brought me here. I’m not stupid. I’ll do what you want if you’ll just let me go before those other two creeps come out here too.”
“Is that right? I’ll have to think about that, but we’d better hurry, because Preston and Curtiss will be here with the horses in a few minutes.”
Lisa kept pace as he walked faster. When he stopped again, she heard the rustle of a chain as he unhooked the gate latch and swung it open on squeaky hinges. He pulled her along again and she felt loose hay under her feet; probably old hay that had been on the ground there long before the collapses. She tried breathing deep to suppress the rush of adrenaline that had her trembling inside. She knew she was only going to get one chance at this, and she had to make it count. Johnny wasn’t a big guy, from what she’d seen of him in the firelight, but he looked strong and wiry, like someone who’d worked outside with his hands for a living even before the lights went out. But Lisa was strong too, both mentally and physically. She’d been pretty tough for a teenaged girl even before, but the experiences of the past months had really transformed her. She’d killed men before, and she was more than willing to do it again. She just had to find the right opportunity.
What happened next though surprised her. When Johnny stopped walking, he spun her around by the arm he was holding so that she was facing him, and then without warning, shoved her backwards so hard that she was falling through space. She landed in a soft pile of hay, unhurt but disoriented, as she was still blindfolded with her hands tied in front of her. Then she felt Johnny’s weight pinning her down by the shoulders, causing another flood of adrenalin, but instead of struggling, as her instincts wanted her to do, she forced herself to remain calm.
“I can’t see with this blindfold. And I can’t move with my hands tied together like this.”
She felt his weight shift and then a tug at the bandana tied around her head. It was off in an instant and she saw the flash of a small knife that he drew from his belt, and with a quick motion her hands were free. Watching him replace the knife in its sheath, she knew he was completely confident he could control her without it and without the restraints. It was that confidence that she knew she had to use against him.
“That’s better,” she said, forcing her voice to sound calm and relieved. She steeled herself and managed not to flinch when his hand touched her cheek, sliding up over her forehead to brush the hair out of her face. Her hands were together as she rubbed her wrists where the rope had bound them. Johnny leered over her, grinning and licking his lips as his hand began to move back down her face to her shoulder. Remembering what April had shown her, Lisa kept her hands pressed tightly together, rotating them slightly so that the heels of her palms were locked to each other just above her chest. Then, when Johnny’s face was approximately a foot above hers, she thrust them simultaneously upwards into his jaw with all the force she could muster, her entire body braced against the ground for power. Johnny’s head snapped backwards at the impact and she heard his jaws snap shut with a hard chomp of his teeth. The blood from his severed tongue splattered her face but Lisa ignored it, withdrawing her right hand to quickly punch him in the throat while it was open and exposed. Johnny rolled backwards off of her, coughing and gurgling, clutching at his throat and bleeding from the mouth. Lisa crawled out from under him and pulled her feet away as he grabbed for them with his other hand but missed. She was on her feet an instant later, scanning the dark interior of the barn for anything that would help her. Then she spotted it leaning against a wall, a piece of two-by-four lumber about five feet long, with bent, rusty nails protruding from one end. Picking it up by the other end and winding it up behind her shoulder like a baseball bat, she rushed back into range and clobbered her assailant across the side of the head. When he went down, she hit him again and again as hard as she could. When she was sure he wasn’t moving, she grabbed the small knife out of its sheath on his belt and rushed for the barn entrance. Once outside, she sprinted for the woods in back. She wished she could have made her escape on Arod, but that was out of the question now. She had to go for it on foot, and hope those dogs weren’t hounds that could track her down.
* * *
Mitch was utterly exhausted by the time he’d ridden the trail an hour south of Brooklyn. A part of him wanted to push on all the way home, but that would be an insane pace and unfair to Amigo, who had more than done his part on this trip. He found a place to camp where the trail ran parallel to the creek, and soon fell into a deep sleep from which he didn’t wake until the sun was high enough that he knew it was mid-morning. He estimated he was still seven or eight hours from home, so he wasted no time getting moving again. The sooner he arrived the sooner everyone there could stop worrying about him, and the sooner he would know for sure that Lisa was safe.
As he rode, he scanned the ground wherever it was clear of leaves and here and there he saw the hoof prints of horses going in the same direction, assuring him Lisa had indeed ridden home. Seeing that sign was all he needed, and Mitch didn’t bother looking close, choosing to focus instead on scanning the woods in front of him for signs of danger or game. And because of this, once he crossed one of the gravel forest service roads that intersected the trail, he failed to notice there were no more hoof prints beyond that point.
The sun was just setting when he at last reached the road that ran in front of the Henley farm. Mitch turned off the trail and followed it to the fence line, riding into the woods until he reached the back corner of the property, where he unsaddled Amigo to let him graze. Lisa’s saddle was not there with the others under the tarp he’d rigged to keep them dry, but he thought maybe she’d continued on down the creek bank on Arod and left her saddle closer to camp. That would make sense, because she still had all the guns and stuff packed on the other two horses. He was sure that was what she’d done when he found his canoe still propped against a small tree where they’d left it. He pulled it quickly to the water’s edge and hopped in with the bag containing the medicines and other goods he’d brought from Purvis, excited at the prospect of seeing April and everyone else. He called out his customary greeting as he paddled around the final bend, making sure he was heard before he was seen, and then he aimed for the landing on the sandbar below the camp.
“MITCH!” April shouted. “We were so worried about you two! What took
you so long? Where’s Lisa?”
Mitch’s elation at being home was shattered in an instant at what he heard. Where’s Lisa? “What do you mean, April? Lisa’s here, isn’t she?” As soon as he said it he saw April’s momentum slow from a run to a hesitant walk at his question. She was clearly shocked at his question and the fact that he’d arrived alone.
“No, Lisa’s not here, Mitch. Why would she be? Why isn’t she with you? We were worried because you were late, but we had no idea you weren’t together.”
“You mean you haven’t even seen her? Mitch was dumbfounded. “She was supposed to come straight back here! She was waiting for me outside of town while I went to the trading post!” Mitch saw Stacy, Jason and even David and Samantha were now gathered on the sandbar behind April. “They put me in jail, April. That’s why I was late. But when they let me go I found my weapons that Lisa left for me and I assumed she’d ridden straight back here, like she promised me she would do if anything unexpected happened while I was in town.” Mitch was banging his palm against his forehead now, feeling like an idiot for not checking the trail more carefully for signs of Lisa’s passing. April had her arms around him now, and the others were crowding in close as well.
“Maybe she stopped at Mr. Holloway’s camp!” Mitch suddenly said, pulling away from April. “I didn’t even check because I rode past there in the middle of the night. I’ll bet she would stop there because we told him we would check on him on the way back from the trading post.” But even as he said this, Mitch wondered how she could be there if he’d seen the tracks of the horses headed this way on the trail. Again, he felt like a fool for not dismounting and examining them closely. Maybe they were made by some other horses and had nothing at all to do with Lisa? He’d just made an assumption, just like the idiot he felt he was about now.
“I’ve got to go back there, and right away. I’ve got to see if Mr. Holloway has seen her or if maybe she’s there with him right now, waiting to see if I show up from Purvis.”
“But you look exhausted, Mitch,” April said. “You’ve got to rest. It’s almost dark anyway. There’s no point in going until morning.”
Mitch knew she was right, but how could he relax even for a second with his little sister missing? He suddenly remembered Benny as he looked at the others. “Where’s Uncle Benny? Is he any better?”
“We think he’s worse,” Jason said. “He may already have pneumonia. He’s up there in the lean-to. He hasn’t done anything but lay around and cough.”
“I’ve got something for him; antibiotics from the trading post. I hope it’s not too late, but the man there said a couple rounds of this stuff would probably get him through it. Let’s go get him started on it right away. Maybe I’ll try to sleep for a couple of hours, but then I’m heading to Brooklyn. I can’t believe this is happening! I can’t freakin’ believe Lisa’s not here!”
Twenty-one
LISA DIDN’T KNOW IF she’d killed Johnny with the two-by-four, but she was pretty sure she’d messed him up good if she didn’t. If he wasn’t dead, he was completely unconscious after the last blow and in no condition to follow her. She’d been a little surprised at the effect of her double palm heel thrust. April had shown her a few of the karate moves that she’d learned from years of training with her father, and the palm heel strike was one of her favorites because you could hit something hard with it, like a man’s face, without damaging your hands. That she’d slammed his jaws shut and caused him to bite off the tip of his tongue was sheer luck, but it definitely added to the effectiveness of the strike. She’d hit him with every ounce of strength she could muster, because she knew if she didn’t, it would just make him mad and then he would really hurt her. April had told her not to slack off if she ever had to strike an assailant. She said to continue until her opponent was no longer moving, and that’s exactly what she’d done. The two-by-four had worked, but if she had been able to find a more deadly instrument such as an axe or hammer, she would not have hesitated to use that either. Those men deserved no mercy after what they did to poor Mr. Holloway.
She ran into the woods as fast as she could in the dark, doing her best to avoid tripping over briars and bushes or hitting trees. She knew the most important thing she could do was to put as much distance as possible between her and that barn and house. As soon as Johnny’s two buddies came out there with the horses and found him the way she left him, they were going to come looking for her. She had no idea if they knew how to track a person or not. Few could do it as well as her brother, but people who lived out here and hunted a lot tended to have woodsman’s skills. And since they’d survived this long, they probably had more than most. And there were dogs too. She was more afraid of the ability of the dogs to track her than of the men. If they were trained hunting dogs, eluding them was going to take every trick she knew.
Once she’d been moving as fast as possible for a good fifteen minutes and was completely out of breath, Lisa stopped to think and make a plan. She had no idea where she was in relation to Brooklyn or their camp or anywhere else. Maybe after daybreak she would come across something familiar, like a road or even Black Creek, but for now she intended to stay in the cover of the deep woods as long as possible and begin taking steps to hide her trail. She knew she needed to find a stream or some other body of water she could walk into, as that was the best idea she had for throwing off the dogs if they were using them.
The problem with trying to go cross-country through the woods anywhere in south Mississippi was that it was impossible to go far without hitting cutover. Even within the national forest, which she wasn’t sure if she was still in or not, there was plenty of cutover scattered among vast swaths of mature, standing timber. The first such patch she came to had probably been cut not long before the solar flare. There were thick briars and low bushes, but even in the dark she could tell the new growth wasn’t much over a year old. Lisa had to stop often and extricate herself from the thorny vines that grabbed at her clothing like tentacles, and several times she got deep, bleeding scratches for her efforts. She found a way through it despite the dark though, thankful to discover it wasn’t one of the larger clearcuts that could be hundreds of acres in extent.
Beyond the cutover she came at last to the edge of water in a low, swampy area of cypress and hardwood timber growing in a stagnant, inky-black swamp. It was hard to tell how far it extended or how deep the water was, but Lisa waded right in anyway, grateful for a chance to hide her trail and scent from human or canine pursuers. A few feet out from the edge, when the water reached knee deep, she stopped to catch her breath and listen. The water was cold, but she ignored the discomfort, knowing she would be warm again in a few hours when the sun came up. She waited several minutes, listening for sounds of pursuit. Just as she was about to move again, after hearing nothing, the distant baying of dogs reached her ears from somewhere far behind on her back trail.
Lisa felt her heart race as she moved into deeper water, unsure which direction to go because she couldn’t tell how long or how wide the swamp was. She decided to turn at a right angle to her path into the water, hoping it ran far enough that she could cover a significant distance before coming out again. She couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that the dogs she heard were even the same ones from the place she’d fled. It wasn’t uncommon at all to hear dogs at night in these woods. Even this long after the blackout, feral packs were still around, possibly increasing in number. But the sound seemed to be coming from the right direction, so she had to assume she was being tracked. She had to keep moving, and she had to be clever about how she did so.
She was almost as tired and hungry as she was scared. She’d not had a chance to finish her dinner with Mr. Holloway before the three men entered his camp. And she’d already been worn out from her sleepless wait for Mitch and her long ride from Purvis. She knew she was going to have to stop somewhere, but it would have to wait until morning. She slogged on through the water, pulling her feet free of the sucking mud on the bot
tom with each step.
* * *
Benny had heard all the commotion when Mitch arrived and was awake when he and the rest of the group returned to the lean-to. Stacy gave him the first dose of antibiotics according to the instructions on the package. Benny was happy to get the medicine, but happier still when Mitch handed him the half-pint of Jack Daniels.
“I wish I was able to go with you, Mitch,” he said between another coughing fit.
“Me too, Uncle Benny, but what I really want is for you to get well. I think you will if you do what Stacy says to the letter. She’s going to be watching.”
“I hate the thought of you going out there again alone,” April said.
“There’s no other option, April. Even more than before, everyone else is needed here. With luck, I won’t be long anyway. Maybe I’ll find her tomorrow with Mr. Holloway. I don’t know why she wouldn’t come the rest of the way home like I told her too, but you know Lisa can be stubborn.”
Mitch tried to sleep but spent more time tossing and turning than anything. Despite his restlessness, he waited until the first hint of daybreak to leave. With Amigo fresh and daylight in which to see, he could ride much faster anyway, so he planned to make the trip to Brooklyn in record time.
“Please be careful, Mitch,” April whispered as he pulled her close in a long good-bye hug.
“You know I will.”
“If she’s there with Mr. Holloway, you might be back as soon as tomorrow.”
“I hope it’s that easy, April. But until I find her, I won’t be back. No matter how long it takes.” Mitch knew April didn’t want to hear this, but he didn’t want her sitting there watching the creek for his return, either. He was going to find his sister, wherever he had to go to do it.
This time as he rode the trail, he kept a close check on the ground for signs of horse tracks he might have missed when he wasn’t looking for them before. The problem was that on the narrow trail, in the few places that were sandy or muddy enough to leave a track, the trip west with Lisa from before left quite a mess. With six horses in total that day, plus his ride back just yesterday and last night, most of the bare patches were a trampled mess. It was not until he was within a few miles of Brooklyn that he saw the eastbound tracks again that he’d noted the day before. He dismounted to look closer and see if he could pick out any details. It was more than one horse, but in the soft sand where the prints were not well defined, he couldn’t be sure that there were exactly three of them. And here and there, he saw man-sized boot prints that had been made before the hoof prints. It was impossible to tell if they had been left a few hours or even a couple of days before the horses stepped on them, or if they had been made at the same time, perhaps by men leading horses on foot. Deciding there wasn’t enough here to determine if the tracks had anything to do with his sister, Mitch mounted up again and pushed hard to Brooklyn, where he hoped to get some answers from Mr. Holloway.
Darkness After Series (Book 4): The Savage Darkness Page 13
