“That was some ninja-like footwork, right!” Russell said with a tone of excitement. “By now, I’m guessing all the help you have in this house is an old man on the floor, a pretty girl in my arms, that unarmed woman right there, and you!”
Kara took a survey of the environment and realized she had no viable options.
“On the couch, both of you,” Russell commanded.
Kara lowered the rifle to the floor. Both she and Tonya moved around the outside of the room and made their way to the couch. Russell threw Carissa between them. They all sat down.
“Everything alright in there, Russ?” Carl yelled from outside.
Knowing that he had the women in control and the old man was out like a light, Russell yelled back, “Come in here, Carl.”
Carl nervously entered the house. Russell saw how apprehensive he was acting. “Knock it off, doughboy. This is everybody.”
Carl looked at the women. He pointed at Kara. “That’s the one we followed.”
“Shut up, Carl,” Russell said. “God, I want to shoot you myself. Why do you always have to be so rhetorical?”
“What’s rhetorical?”
“Shut up, Carl! Head back to the Enclave and make sure Rueben knows we found Larry, Shawn, and possibly Max. Ask him what he wants us to do with them. Tell him they killed our people.”
“Did they tell you where Max is?” he asked.
“Carl! Head back and do what I said.”
“But are we for sure they killed Shawn, Larry, and Max, or are we just going off a hunch?”
“Think extra rations, Carl. That should motivate you.”
Carl frowned at Russell and said, “You know Denver don’t want us to separate. You’re making me no better than Mark.”
Russell rolled his eyes and Carl left.
Turning his attention back to the women on the couch, he said, “I’m only going to ask once. After that, I shoot one of you. If you don’t talk after that, I shoot another, and on and on until I run out of people to shoot.”
Tonya, Kara, and Carissa were sitting silently, each of them wondering who would be the first to speak.
“Where’s Max?”
Tonya began to cry. Carissa was all cried out, and Kara was just too jaded to care.
“Your men, Larry and Shawn, held me captive for days,” Kara answered. “They raped me, tortured me, and hid me from the Enclave for fear of being killed for their lusts.”
The answer surprised and shocked Russell. He was taken aback by the information. “So where’s Max?”
“I don’t know where Max went. When he shot and killed my partner, they took me and tied me up to a tree while they murdered those old folks at that ranch where we found Jimmie. They came back for me. After that, they kept me in a closet like a wild animal and fed me scraps. Just enough to keep me alive. They left together to do some more scouting, but only Shawn and Larry returned. That’s all I know.” Kara was hoping the man would be appeased and let them go, but that was a pipe dream.
“You were there,” Russell said. “You were there, so you know who killed them. They deserved what they had coming if what you say is true. But I gotta know. Who killed them?”
Kara thought for a moment before deciding her own fate. When she was at peace with her decision, she answered the man. “I killed them. I killed Russell and Shawn.” Of course, she was lying. The answer she decided to give their captive was thoroughly thought out. Right down to the detail. “Shawn came in to rape me. I escaped the knot he tied. He was wearing a gun. I killed him with it. Then I went outside and killed Larry.”
Russell considered all the information she had provided. He spent about thirty seconds scratching his scalp and running his fingers through his thin beard. “You know, it almost makes sense. Except it doesn’t. Shawn was shot in the back of the head. Larry was shot in the back of the head. Can you explain to me how two men get shot in the back of the head? Don’t you think the first shot would alert the other man? I’m not buying your story. Now, I followed you back from that ranch house, and you were with that man,” Russell said, pointing to the backyard, when he had a thought.
I’ll just torture the man until he confesses and tells us where Max is.
Russell looked around and saw some backpacks lying around on the floor. He walked over to the closest pack and knelt next to it, never taking his eyes off the women. With one hand on the rifle and the other on the pack, he began to rummage around inside it. “I know you got some rope in one of these packs,” he said. “I mean, who doesn’t keep rope in a bugout bag?”
The women remained silent.
When he didn’t find what he was looking for in that pack, he grabbed the next one. “Looky-looky,” he said, pulling out fifty feet of paracord. He threw it at Tonya, the woman he perceived to be the weakest among them, and said, “Tie ’em up, now.”
Tonya had the rope in her hands when she turned to look at Kara and Carissa. Kara was expressionless, but Carissa was shaking her head. “No.”
Russell ran up to Carissa, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her on the ground. When he did, Tonya and Kara stood up in preparation to charge at their captor, but he pointed his rifle at them and said, “Nuh-uh.”
They stopped dead in their tracks.
Carissa already had one arm in a backpack that she was familiar with. She pulled out a pocketknife and quietly opened it. Russell had no sooner turned around than he was met with a stab to the upper pectoral muscle just under his left shoulder. He yelled and punched Carissa to the floor. He pulled the knife out of his chest and was making his way to Carissa.
Elder Mitchell was making his way to his feet, and Russell heard it. He kicked Carissa unconscious and turned around to deal with the old man. Both Kara and Tonya were back on their feet.
Russell wrangled elder Mitchell into a choke hold, using the rifle for leverage. It was clear that the old man was no match for the much younger and stronger aggressor. “I’m done with the lot of you!” Russell said, choking the life out of his elderly victim. “Who’s gonna miss an old fart?” he taunted as he pulled the rifle in tight against James’s neck.
Elder Mitchell’s knees were giving out and his arms were going limp when the sound of a gunshot went off. A pink mist flew out of Russell’s head and splattered over Carissa’s unconscious body. Russell let go of elder Mitchell and they both fell limp to the ground.
There was a dead silence. Then a kitchen floorboard creaked.
Kara and Tonya remained frozen.
“Tonya,” a voice called out from the kitchen. Kara didn’t recognize the man’s voice, but Tonya did. She jumped up and ran to the middle of the floor, stepping over Russell’s body.
“Marcus?” Tonya asked, looking at Marcus Guy, also known as Mark, Darrick’s military buddy.
“Come on,” Marcus said. “We don’t have time.”
“Time for what? What’s going on?”
“There’s a man on his way back to the Enclave. If they find out you’re here and believe that you had anything to do with the deaths of their people, you’ll all be cleansed.”
“Marcus, I don’t understand,” she said. Kara and Carissa were helping elder Mitchell to his feet.
Marcus took one more look at her before heading out the back door and saying, “There’s no time to explain. Get out of the area. Head west if possible. Stay away from the crows and you’ll be fine.”
“Crows?” Tonya asked.
Marcus didn’t stick around. He ran out the door, right past Darrick’s unconscious body, and off the property toward Carl.
“Tonya, who was that?” Kara asked.
“It’s a long, long story,” she replied, still confused from her encounter. Kara shot out the door to where Darrick was tied down and began releasing him.
When Tonya saw that Kara was being more attentive to her husband than she was, she ran out to assist. “Wake up, hon,” Tonya said, jiggling Darrick’s cheeks. He was out cold.
Carissa ran out the door to the
water well and drew up a bucket of water. She carried it over to Darrick and dumped it over his face, waking him from his sleep.
Darrick was dazed and confused. There was some dried blood mingled with new blood on the back of Darrick’s head. It was apparent from that and the lump that he had been hit hard. Darrick grabbed his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh God, my head is killing me.”
“You’ve been hit pretty hard in the head,” Kara said, gently touching his scalp where he was hit.
Tonya’s jealousy was growing. She pushed herself between Darrick and Kara. “Let’s get you in and cleaned up,” Tonya said. “Can you get another bucket of water, Carissa?” Tonya asked, helping Darrick off the table.
Tonya walked with Darrick into the house, leaving Kara and Carissa outside, where they began whispering.
“Are we going to completely ignore the strange man who burst in here and saved us?” Kara asked.
“I know, right? Tonya knew him by name!”
“And what was that stuff about the crows and being cleansed?”
“I don’t know, but it was creepy.”
In the house, Tonya was sitting next to Darrick and elder Mitchell on the couch. James wasn’t acting like himself. Darrick and Tonya both noticed that he was gazing off into the distance like he was watching something far away.
Not paying much attention to the dead man on the floor, Darrick noticed his dad. “What’s up with him?”
“That guy choked him half to death,” Tonya said, pointing to Russell’s lifeless corpse.
“Which one of you had the pleasure of shooting him?” he asked, nodding to the dead man.
“It was me,” Tonya said, looking over Darrick’s shoulder toward the kitchen door, where Kara and Carissa were standing in awe of Tonya’s blatant lie.
They glared at her, Darrick not knowing that there was an unspoken contention brewing between Kara, Carissa, and Tonya. Tonya had her eyes locked onto each of them and was slowly shaking her head back and forth, signaling that they not reveal the truth to Darrick. All Kara and Carissa could do was look at each other. They were deeply confused over Tonya’s intentions.
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” Darrick asked. Both Kara and Carissa looked back at Tonya, believing she had been busted. Darrick looked at her too. Her face was reddening. When Darrick saw it, he said, “I mean, you couldn’t kill a bug. So who really killed him?”
Tonya’s mouth was open, but no words were being said.
“I did,” Carissa said, stepping forward into the picture. “Why’d you tell him you shot him, Tonya?” Carissa had found a way to both call Tonya out on her lie and to cover for her. Kara was still perplexed and unwilling to play along.
“I, uh, I thought he’d be upset knowing the truth,” Tonya said, outwitting her.
Carissa thought for a moment. “You should have informed me first before deciding on your own that you wanted to hide something from your husband.”
“Where’s the other guy?” Darrick said, interrupting them.
Kara, Carissa, and Tonya knew the other guy had been ordered to return to some place called the Enclave and speak to a man named Rueben. Knowing Tonya was hiding something they didn’t know about, they played coy.
“He ran off,” Tonya said.
Darrick stood up. “I have to go find him.”
“You can’t,” Tonya said, grabbing him by the arm.
“Why not?”
“He left more than an hour ago. There’s no way you’ll find him.”
Kara was by no means a fighter. She had little to no experience with guns or knives, but she was the most jaded of the three women. Seeing Carissa and Tonya lie to Darrick for reasons she didn’t know made her feel uncomfortable. Her career prior to the Pulse had been one of encouraging couples and individuals to be honest and truthful. She had her own issues that she had to deal with from time to time, but in the end, she would be honest. Sitting with people for hour-long sessions meant listening to her clients. There were some occasions in her individualized casework where speaking the truth would cause more harm than good. Kara’s strength was knowing how to weigh the balance of honesty against omission. She never lied. When the truth would cause pain or aggravate situations, then she resorted to secrecy. The events that were unfolding in the Mitchell house were against her better judgment, but she knew she didn’t have all the available information at hand to make a choice between truth or omission. So she not only excluded herself from the conversation they were having, but she also backed out of the house and quietly left. Of course, she made sure she was equipped with at least a pistol.
Several minutes later
Somewhere east of the Mitchell homestead
“Hey, wait up,” Kara called out to Marcus. He was several yards ahead of her. She had practically run to catch up with him. He heard her voice and turned around. Kara was caught off guard when she saw he pulled his pistol out when he whipped around to face her.
“Easy, dude!” she said, putting her hands up in the air.
“What do you want?”
“Just answers,” she said.
“I don’t have time for this. I’ve gotta catch up to Carl before he makes his way back to the Enclave.”
“What happens if he gets there before you?”
Ignoring her question, Marcus turned around and continued his fast-paced walk toward the Enclave’s campsite. There were too many things he needed to have kept quiet. He wasn’t about to tell his secrets to a stranger, but if there was anything Kara was good at, it was getting people to open up.
“Are you a friend of Darrick and Tonya?” she asked.
“Listen, lady,” Marcus said, stopping mid-stride to turn around and confront her. “I’m about to do something dangerous. It’s going to put me in harm’s way and it’s sure to get you killed. My recommendation to you is to turn around and go make sure Darrick and Tonya get off that property. With any luck, I might be able to buy them some time.” Marcus turned back around and picked up his pace.
“I know what happened to your missing men,” Kara said, hoping to stop Marcus in his tracks. It worked. Marcus stopped and spun around, but this time, it was Kara who had the drop on him.
“I’m listening,” Marcus said, seeing her with a pistol pointed at him.
“I’m not interested in hurting you, but I am interested in making sure nothing happens to Darrick.”
“You have a thing for him, don’t you?”
“Let me help you stop this Carl guy. We can do it together and maybe give Darrick more than just time.”
“Fine,” he said, conceding to her will. “But you can’t follow me into camp. Women aren’t allowed to scout, so it’ll be an instant red flag if they see me bringing you in.”
Kara put her pistol away. Marcus turned to finish his walk. “We’ll be lucky if we can catch up to him before he reaches camp,” he said.
“If we catch up, what happens?”
“I’m going to try to convince him that you guys had nothing to do with the killing of Shawn and Larry. By the way, what happened to Max?”
“I don’t know the details, but he must’ve given Darrick some hassle on his property, because he killed him,” she answered. She was still pondering Marcus’s involvement in Tonya’s life and why Tonya lied to Darrick about him, so she posed a question of her own. “It’s my turn. How do you know Darrick?” she asked. Kara purposefully asked a loaded question. It was obvious that he knew Tonya, but she was curious what he had to hide.
“I was in the Marines with Darrick,” he answered.
“That’s it? You were in the Marines with him?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“You know as well as I do that’s not it. You walked right by Darrick when he was lying on that table back at the farm, not one time, but two times, and you left him there unconscious.”
“You really should mind your own business, woman.”
“Kara.”
“What?”
&
nbsp; “My name’s Kara.”
“Look, Kara. The friendship between me and Darrick is complicated. You would be doing him a favor if you didn’t mention me or even let him know that I’m in the area.”
“Why, did something happen?”
Marcus stopped and grabbed Kara by the head. He placed one hand over her mouth and the other hand behind her head, pulling her down to the ground behind a tree. “Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s Carl, up ahead.” Marcus released his hold on her, and she held her silence, lying low on the ground. “Stay here,” he whispered.
Carl was urinating with his back to Marcus.
“There you are,” Marcus called out, startling Carl.
“You skeered the ever-living daylights outta me, Mark.”
“Sorry, man.”
Carl was putting himself away and wiping the urine from his hands onto his jeans. “All this because you wanted to get a laugh outta me, eh?” Carl said, looking back over Marcus’s shoulder. “Where’s Russell?”
“Russell got mad at me and said he was done.”
“Done? Done with what?”
“Done with the Enclave, man. We had an argument about the people at that farmhouse, and he didn’t like what I had to say, so he left. He had a few choice words, but that’s all there was to it.”
Carl thought the story sounded shady, but he couldn’t stand Russell, so he was glad to hear that he wasn’t going to be around to belittle him anymore.
“Do you think Ten-Stitches’s gonna buy that story?” Carl asked.
The question was enough to let Marcus know that Carl was believing it.
“Carl, those people are good people. They didn’t have anything to do with the deaths of our guys. We need to leave them alone.”
“I can handle it if they killed Max, or even Russell. Those guys had it coming, but Larry and Shawn? They treated me good. They stuck up for me when people messed with me.”
“So what now?” Marcus asked.
“I can’t believe it!”
“What?”
“You’re actually asking me for my opinion?”
“Shut up, Carl!”
After The Pulse (Book 1): Homestead Page 10
