“They are good for honey, obviously, and they keep the gardens and orchards pollinated. We live as one with them. The only difference being that the hive has a queen and we never have, until now,” Drake said.
Henderson again was taken aback by how clear and on point Drake’s speech was. It was not that he was a well-taught classical English speaker. Even more so it was not what he said. It was the way he said it. Straight to the point and without emotion was what she had come to expect from him. This made her wonder if Tomek would be the same way.
“Wow, you do not sugarcoat anything do you?” Henderson asked.
“Sugarcoat?” Drake did not understand the phrase.
“Never mind, it is just a saying,” Henderson replied.
It was in this moment that Henderson began to really question herself on what their future together would entail. For all intents and purposes it was clear that Drake wanted her to stay with them and assimilate into their way of life. Honestly, she knew that would be difficult, but was open-minded enough to see that it was possible from a pure survival standpoint. They had the skills to live on their own. Food, water and weapons were not a problem. She had not seen their shelter, yet even though at this point they had walked directly past it four times. Each time, Drake smiling as they strolled on by the oak tree door.
“Could she live with them?”
“Who would come looking for us?”
“They are cop killers. They will have to answer for their crimes, won’t they?”
All of the above raced through her mind. Would Pine Run ever know the truth? There was certainly no way that everyone would just accept that the entire Sheriff’s Department mysteriously went missing in the woods. She was sure that search parties would come and then it dawned on her: She was, in fact, herself part of a search party. She was the last remaining part of one, for that matter. If Henderson stayed with her brothers and became one of them, would she have to hide? Or would more drastic options be the only way to prolong their way of life?
Walking in circles for the last two hours she realized that Drake was attempting to stall the reunion with Tomek. Just as she began to speak up about it, Drake stopped walking along the river bank. Turning up toward what looked to her to be a blown-down tree lofted along the hillside. Following the boy’s lead, she stretched her legs and hopped from rock to rock just as Drake did.
“Is this some kind of test?” she asked him.
“Nope,” he said.
“Why are we jumping from rock to rock then?”
“Do you see the taller switch grass from the river up to that tree?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said, still a little annoyed.
“Well, if there was a path trampled down through it, then someone might follow that path would you not think?” Drake asked fatuously.
“I suppose,” his sister said.
“I am taking you to our home, your home and this is how we approach it. This keeps us hidden from random people floating down our river. This is how we live. This was all Uncle’s idea.” Drake said while leaping to the last rock.
Standing at the tree trunk it was still not obvious to her that it was a door. Although, as Drake rotated a false piece of the bark aside, she was quickly amazed at the intricate handle that had been carved into the body of the tree.
Opening the door exposed to her a site that she could never have even imagined. There on the floor lay the second of her twin brothers. She rushed into the dimly lit room and dropped to her knees and picked up Tomek. Pulling his limp body into her lap and arms she was astounded at the true likeness both boys shared. Further relived to see he was still breathing, Henderson was taken aback as she looked over his shoulder.
She knew that her fellow deputies had been killed, but was unprepared to see any one of their particular bodies. Seeing the sheriff’s body was also something she had not expected, yet there he was, standing over her, alive and chained to the wall via the bear trap looking at her for mercy.
21 Decisions
“Annette, look what they have done to me,” said the sheriff, referencing his current bloodied disposition.
“We have done nothing to you, yet!” yelled Drake. This being the first time he himself had been face-to-face with the leader of the trespassers.
“The events of the last two days have been because of your actions. You came here, you attacked, you trespassed, all the while never telling our sister what you truly were coming for. Every man you dragged out here is dead because of you.”
“Your sister?” the sheriff asked, looking down to the ground in disbelief. “Do you honestly think this bitch is your sister?”
He continued, “Your mother was a drugged-out whore and you both should have died beside her in that truck.”
Henderson laid Tomek down softly on the ground and stood to look her boss directly in the face. “You know about how they vanished? You know about her truck? You knew she was dead? That was my mother, our mother.”
“Oh, are we still playing this little charade you have going that you are the long-lost sister these two somehow never knew about?” he sarcastically asked.
“Hell yes, I knew she was dead. I am the one that found the damn truck. Full of cargo fresh out of the Canadian pharmacy headed into town,” the sheriff said. “That bitch was working for the wrong guy. I needed the meds, not the truck, or those damn twins. I figured someone would find it and oh, the fucking tragedy it would be. But nope, years later and not a single hiker tripped upon it. Somehow it remained my little secret. I went back to check it out one time but it was gone—poof!—fucking vanished.”
“She was alive?” Drake asked from the corner of the room, stepping into the light coming through the open door.
The sheriff looked up upon hearing Drake's voice.
“Damn, I had hoped that they would had killed at least one of you demons.”
“She was alive?” Henderson asked with the same intensity in her voice.
“Like I said, I needed the meds, not the whore!” the sheriff said.
Standing side by side, Drake and Henderson both reached for one of the flint-napped blades sitting on the shelf beside them. The stone blades were nowhere as strong as one of Drake’s preferred throwing knives but the hollowed-out slice in the sheriff’s hand could attest that they were just as sharp.
Bumping into one another, Henderson gave way to her little brother as he picked up the blade and took a step toward the sheriff, who was now dropped down on one knee.
Looking up at what seemed like just a boy above him ready to end his life, he said, “You know, she is not your sister. Uncle could have never hid a sister from you.”
Hearing the name Uncle escape from the tattered remnants of the sheriff's cheek flaps caused Drake to step back.
“I found you in that truck, the both of you. I gave you to your precious Uncle and in return he presented me with this necklace. As long as I stayed away from him and let him go, that was the deal. And this bitch... is not your sister. Her momma was the only black bitch in town. A nurse, if I remember correctly. Not a whore like your mother,” the sheriff said, gasping between each word.
The sheriff was dying on the spot from the overwhelming blood loss from the injuries he sustained fighting Tomek, but was still able to spin a lie. The major issue being that each statement had a shred of possible truth to it.
Drake thought to himself:
“He knows about Uncle and is wearing a head Uncle had made on his neck. How could he know about the truck and how Uncle had found them? There was a black nurse when I was in the hospital. Is Annette my sister?”
“He is lying, Drake. I loved you boys more than anything and I have been searching for you all my life,” Henderson said.
The sheriff chuckled.
Amidst all the confusion and discussion between the three of them, Tomek remained lying on the floor. Stepping over his body to get closer to Drake, Henderson reached her hand out.
“We don't have to kill
him,” Drake said. This comment made both the sheriff and Henderson alike raise their heads in confusion. Neither of them had expected any type of mercy to have been shown.
“Drake is right we don’t have to kill him,” Tomek said, looking at Henderson. Drake stepped back toward his brother, who was now standing in an attempt to get between Tomek and Henderson.
“I have a lot to tell you. I know it may sound crazy, but this is,”
“Our sister,” Tomek said interrupting his brother.
“What, you knew?” Henderson asked.
“Yes,” Tomek said.
Drake was now in the state of confusion that he had expected Tomek to be upon learning about Henderson.
“How?” Drake asked.
“Uncle,” Tomek said. “I knew from the minute we saw them at their first camp with the wolf that it was her.”
“You have been trying to kill her first, from the get go,” Drake said.
“No, save her,” Tomek corrected his brother. “Uncle told me about her, told me that there was another one of us and that one day she may come looking for us.”
“When?” Drake asked.
“You were sick, in the hospital at Pine Run. You were supposed to either die there or be taken from us. He did not expect you to ever return to our life and he said that I should never feel alone because if you died there would still be one more of us. He told me there was a girl, Annette, and that she would be older.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Drake asked.
“To see that look on your face, ha, and now I am glad I waited.” Tomek’s answer annoyed his brother, but Drake was not surprised by it.
“So no, we don’t have to kill him,” Tomek said, taking a breath. “We don’t, but she does.”
“Wait, what?” Henderson asked.
Tomek remained silent and walked over to the sheriff pushing him down to the floor. Tomek reached into the cubby and pulled out the pistol that the sheriff had attempted to obtain when his hand wound up in the clutches of the bear trap.
Continuing his silent but deliberate movement across the room, he opened a pull-out drawer from the cabinetry near where their beds would have normally been before his scuffle with the sheriff. Removing a single round from the drawer, he walked over to Henderson, handed her both the gun and bullet. Tomek then looked at her intensely and said, “Kill him. Kill him and prove you are one of us.”
Henderson looked at her younger brother, knowing this was the moment that Drake was trying to prepare her for during the conversation on the walk back to the cabin. It was at this point she knew that it would be the sheriff’s life or her own and if she did not take his, the boys would take them both. Looking back at Drake for some semblance of understanding, she was surprised to see him with the same look as Tomek.
Both boys stood side by side, strong, united. Identical in every way except Tomek’s blue eye and Drake’s damaged ear lobe. There they stood, as if a line had been drawn in the blood-soaked dirt floor. Kill her boss or become like him. She had no other options, no way to talk herself out of the terror. This was either the end of her life or the start of a new one.
“It is the only way, sister,” Drake said in a comforting manner.
“You are not a murderer, Annette. Do not become one of them. Shoot one of them and shoot them now!” the sheriff yelled.
Tomek raised his voice to overpower the sheriff
“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it never care for anything else thereafter.”
“Stealing lines from Nietzsche only makes you a murderer and a thief,” the sheriff said, laughing at what he thought was Tomek’s attempt at sounding bright.
Unfazed by the sheriff’s insult, Tomek put his finger inside of the gash of the sheriff’s cheek, forcing his finger down into the man’s throat. Grasping the side of the man’s ripped-apart face, he pulled the struggling sheriff’s ear up to his mouth, as if to tell him a secret.
“It’s Hemingway, asshole,” Tomek said.
Having made his point, Tomek dropped the man and walked over to his sister.
“It is time for us to be together again, to live as a family. The way Uncle always wanted, but first this retched puke must die. Are you ready?”
“I can’t,” she said. Tomek thought the pain in her voice was evidence that while she did want to be with them, bringing herself to murder her boss was not something she could accept.
“That is unfortunate,” Drake said, as he reached down, pulling the stone-bladed knife from out of the tabletop where it had sliced through the sheriff’s hand earlier.
“Then you understand, this is the end for you both. Do not fight, do not struggle and you will die in peace,” Tomek said.
“Would you like to say something to God?” Drake asked her.
“No, I never trusted religion because it teaches you to be okay without understanding the world in which you live,” said Henderson.
“Good point,” the sheriff said, now laying down on his side with the bear trap atop of his opposite arm.
“I think you’re missing my point, little boys.”
Not keen on being referred to as little boys, they allowed her to continue.
“I said I can’t, not I won’t,” as she held up both the gun and the single round of ammunition. “This is a 40-caliber round and a nine-millimeter pistol. You might not know much about these types of weapons, but just so we are clear, these two do not work together.”
Her dramatic flair for informing them of Tomek’s mistake had almost gotten her killed, but in all honesty, Drake loved it. For what had been the tensest moment in their past few days of surviving and taking lives, this moment was perfectly contrasted with the sense of relief in knowing now that his sister was on their side. Tomek was less amused as he handed her the only round of 40-caliber ammunition they had in the entire cabin.
“Take this and end him, or end yourself,” said Tomek.
“We will be at the river. Join us after you make your decision,” Drake said, walking out of the cabin. Tomek was caught off guard by his brother leaving her alone with the sheriff, but knew his brother’s plan without having to be told and followed him out of the cabin.
Once outside the cabin, with the door shut behind them, Drake looked at Tomek and it was if they both could hear Uncle’s voice.
“This hole is your home, your castle. Just as the mouse lives in a hole of his own, you must keep it a secret. If the snake finds the hole, the snake knows where to hunt. Only the mouse knows how to escape his own hole if stuck and he is lucky that snakes do not hunt together for this gives him a chance. Use this hole as a weapon, as a trap if you must, but always hunt together. Be the snake, not the mouse.”
And with that they both rolled the large boulder just uphill from the door off of its perch. It took both of them using their entire body weight to get it rolling. Landing on top of the oak tree door, it lodged into place securing the door against the side of the hill. The cabin was now a prison with Henderson inside alone with the sheriff and only one round of ammunition.
“What now?” Tomek asked. Drake knew that at this point it was a waiting game.
“Let’s go fishing” Drake said, jokingly.
“Ah, man, my fly rod is still inside,” Tomek joked.
Jumping from rock to rock towards the river they both looked back at the door to their home.
“But really, what now?” Tomek again asked his brother and was not surprised with the shortness of the answer he was given.
“We wait.”
22 Choices
“They left you here, trapped to rot and die in this underground prison. I cannot believe you didn’t kill one of them while you had the fucking chance. Congratulations, Annette. You got outsmarted and left to die, slowly, by a couple of 16-year-olds.”
“Says the grown-ass man chained to the wall with half a face,” she replied.
Wanting to prove him wrong, Henderson walked ove
r to the door, trying to open it in order to see just what exactly her brothers had done to it as they walked out. She had heard the thud the boulder made upon its impact, not to mention the dust that shook loose from the ceiling as it fell into place.
“I am dead, look at me. I’ll be done in a few hours. But you? Nope. You will be wasting away for days. Starving, dying slowly in this pit. This pit is where they left your ass. This is where you will suffer and die. Sure, you may have some food in here to live a while but after that you will fade away into nothing.”
“Can’t eat the food. It’s all been poisoned. Or at least some of it has,” Henderson said.
“You sure about that? My pickle was delicious,” the sheriff said, hiding the fact he hadn’t actually eaten the boys’ food.
“Yes, Drake told me. Well, no, I guess I am not sure.” The doubts about everything Drake had told her began to grow. Drake had said Tomek was the one she needed to worry about, but Tomek accepted her right away. Drake was the first to walk out of the cabin. Drake was the one who led her to the cabin in a roundabout way so she would not know the direct path. It began to become more clear to her with each passing realization. Drake was the reason she was trapped, Drake had fooled her and had done so easily.
Unable to prove her boss wrong, the overwhelming feeling of being trapped started to set in upon the female deputy. The room still dark with only the still burning beeswax candles began to feel smaller and smaller by the minute. Henderson franticly walked down the passageways dug into the hillside, avoiding the pitfall traps that Drake had told her about, all of which led to dead ends.
Returning to the living quarters, she kicked the sheriff’s foot to see if he was still alive.
“What the hell? I’m not going anywhere, you dumb bitch,” the sheriff said, very much still somehow alive. “You find any more rounds?”
“No,” she said.
“So just the one, huh? Smart little shits they turned out to be, huh?” He said. “You know what you have to do, Annette. I am done. We are done, but that bullet has your fucking name on it. Don’t waste it on me. No reason for us to both suffer. Do what needs to be done. Die on your own accord.”
Twins of Prey Page 12
