by mike Evans
Lambert nodded, walking into the field. “Well, let’s hope for her and her family's sake that we do find her and her boyfriend.”
When they made it to Bynum, he used the gloved hand looking a bit green in the face showing them a finger. Hardin looked and said, “Well, at least it isn’t the woman’s”
Bynum said, “How the hell do you know-”
Lambert cut him off. “You date a lot of girls with hairy knuckles and fingers?”
“Shit, what dates? This uniform doesn’t do jack shit for me getting dates, sir.”
Lambert thought of his wife and how they’d met over a speeding ticket. “Well, you are doing something wrong kid. You can figure that one out on your own. Look at the dark hair. It’s a guy. I'd bet money on it. Besides, look at how low the fingernail is cut. No female is going to look like that.”
Hardin said, “So now we have another factor to weigh in with. There’s a second male involved in this.”
Nulty said, “I don't understand.”
“Try to keep up Nulty. You saw the victim by the truck, correct?”
“You know I did. So what?”
“Was he missing anything?”
“You mean besides everything from the neck up?”
“Yes, besides the stupidly obvious, Nulty.”
“No, apparently not.”
“Well, if you’d have noted everything about him then you would have seen that he didn't have any missing fingers. I’d say from the blood on scene here that the finger wasn’t dropped here and that this was the scene where it took place.”
Lambert said, “Bag it, print it, and send it to get looked at see if the person is in the system for good or bad reasons. Maybe he has some minor on his history that we will at the least have him in the system for.”
Hardin walked away from them looking around, he yelled, “Hey, Chief I think I got something bigger than a finger over here. You’ve seen this Isaac fellow right?”
“Yeah more than once, why?”
“Well, why don’t you come over here and tell me if this head belongs to him?”
Lambert did the sign of the cross, praying that it wasn’t, but not wanting to wish suffering on another family at the same time. When he walked around the side of the tent he saw a head staring back at him and Tony’s face gave him an instant relief. “Does that look like it’d fit on the corpse by the SUV, Hardin?”
Hardin knelt down looking at it moving it around to examine it, and said, “Well, the removal of this head sure as hell would have been as brutal as the one by the crashed SUV.”
Lambert was keeping track. “So, what we have is Isaac, Traci, and two males. Our list is growing of people to find.”
Hardin said, “Well, three men and one girl screams to me that there’s probably more girls. We just haven’t found any of them. Or pieces of them, to say more accurately. Let’s hope that the men tried to save them and they got away as a best case scenario.”
Lambert said, “This shit’s just getting worse.”
“Yeah, imagine this as your day job.”
“How the hell do you turn it off?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll let you know once I figure out a way to turn it off at night. This shit goes home with you.”
Hardin walked away leaving it at that and watching the blood as it disappeared into the grass heading towards the tree line. “We need to follow this. I have a bad feeling we are going to find where they were hiding in the woods.”
Chapter 16
Jack screamed at the top of his lungs as he watched his finger fall to the grass below. Tears filled his eyes and streamed down his cheeks. He watched as the blood soaked his freshly cleaned arm, turning it red in the bright sunlight. When the man brought the machete up a second time, Jack rolled to the side, trying to pushing the pain out of his thoughts if only for long enough to escape. He went the wrong way and fell into the tent, knocking half of it over. Jack jumped to his feet, avoiding the swing, hearing the blade whistling as it made its way towards him.
Jack looked over his shoulder as he ran, trying to see where the girls had ran to, not wanting to follow them, but could not see them anywhere. The man did not wait for Jack to tire and began a run of his own. For some reason Jack was surprised that he was running. He always thought that like in the movies, the killers could out walk you no matter how fast you were attempting to run. Jack screamed, “Leave us alone damn it!”
The man started to cut the lead Jack had on him with the extra foot of leg he had to run on. The stranger most definitely appeared to be a mad man at first sight. He had a machete clenched in one blood splattered hand and a piece of wood in the other. Just as Jack thought that once he hit the inside of the tree line that it would provide him some sort of safety, the man hurled the branch at him, striking him in the spine and knocking him to the ground.
Jack tried to push up but it was too late, the man was already upon him. When he tried to push up from the ground the stranger put one monstrous foot on Jack’s back pushing him back down to the ground. When he tried a second time the stranger kicked him in the gut and bent down to pick up the heavy branch and struck Jack across the back of the head once, then twice. Jack started to watch as the world spun and could hear a familiar voice screaming his name.
Chapter 17
Isaac pulled Traci behind him. She was crying uncontrollably and Isaac could not blame her in anyway. He said, “Baby, when we get out of this, not if, we are going to go away somewhere tropical and safe and with a fuck ton of alcohol.”
Traci laughed, wiping at her eyes as they made it into the clearing. She had fought him to take the road back to the camp but he had lobbied against it, telling her there was no way that they wanted to run into that monster again. When they made it to where they could see the campsite they watched as Brandi and Katy were heading into the woods. Isaac looked back at the campsite and could see Jack being manhandled as he was trying to, what he could only assume was an attempt to save the women’s life, or at the least give them a hell of a head start.
Isaac gripped Traci by both arms. “You need to stay in the tree line and follow the girls. I want you to try to catch up to them. Is your ankle going to be able to do that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure that I’m able to, but why are you talking like you don’t want to go with me? What in god’s name do you think that you are going to do?”
“You can see Jack, right? You know that we can’t just leave him out there, he’s unarmed and that twisted fuck is not going to chop off his damn head, I promise you that.”
Traci held up her hand with her newly acquired engagement ring. “Sorry, but maybe you forgot that you are engaged to me. You need to go with me. It isn’t possible to marry a dead man, you know that right?”
Isaac smiled, giving her a quick but deep kiss. “Look Traci, I’m pretty sure that Katy isn’t going to want to be a widow at age twenty seven. If there is anything that I can do to help him I need to do it. There isn’t anyone else out here that is going to be able to do something if I don’t.”
“Why, do you have to be such a fool and so brave at the same time?”
“Just remember those are only a few of my enduring traits that you cherish about me, right?”
She put her head on his chest, taking a whiff of his cologne and deodorant, which was a smell that helped her sleep at night. She thought about it being the last time that she would have the opportunity to get that smell and started to cry even harder. She started hitting his chest and said, “You come back, damn it. You don’t leave me. You don’t die. Get Jack and you guys come meet us. I’ll catch up to the girls and then you meet us there. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, but if I don’t get going, I’m going to be too late and I’d much rather it be Jack and I then just myself against that fucker. Now get going and don’t make any noise you don’t need to. If anything horrible happens he’s going to want to come after me next.”
Traci gave him one last kiss and then turned
, running to the tree line, headed to try and catch up with the girls. Isaac looked around the forest floor, kicking at branches until he found one that was thick and not brittle but not so heavy that he couldn’t get a good baseball bat swing with it. He gripped it, testing it against a tree, and then ran across the field the best that he could. He watched as Jack was being pursued by the man and then winced as he imagined the stick which was almost as big as a log. He figured, crack into his best friend's back, sending him to the ground.
Before the man could kick him a third time Isaac screamed, “Leave him alone you piece of shit.”
The man, still looking at Jack head bent down, put his foot back on the ground and then twisted his head as awkward as a human could so that he could see Isaac sprinting with the stick. Isaac still had plenty of ground to cover and the stranger bent down, gripping Jack by the hair and dead lifting him off of the ground. The man took the machete back and Isaac winced as he brought it towards his friend, missing him and sending it into the tree a foot above his head.
Isaac almost had his legs give way at the idea of this happening and when he did he lost some of his speed. He took a deep breath and picked the run back up, but before he could make it the rest of the way the man pulled what looked like a bowie knife from the inside of his overalls and pinned Jack to the tree with a forearm under his chin and into his neck and stabbed him in the chest. Jack winced, screaming, unsure if he could endure any more pain, which was when the man brought out a second knife and stabbed him in the other shoulder. Jack’s arms were now useless to him and Isaac knew that it was him against the stranger.
Jack screamed as he hung there, the only thing keeping his legs from giving out were the blades that were pointing to the heavens and would cut him if he tried to fall. Isaac yelled across the field, “Let him go!”
The man gripped one of Jack’s limp arms, holding it to his cheek in an oh my gesture, mocking Isaac. Clearly fear was the least of the sadistic intruder’s worries. Isaac stopped for a moment, watching this. He wasn’t stupid and knew that this man was dangerous, more so than anyone he’d ever encountered in his short life. He watched his friend's face begin to grow pale. The man was lifting his arms and Isaac said, “I’m gonna kill you god damn it if you won’t leave us alone!”
This stopped the man. He let go of Jack’s arms and looked directly at Isaac now waiting for him to come at him. He shook his head no motioning for him to come. Isaac sprinted, waiting until the very last minute when he could bring the stick down. Isaac had never seen a man this big move so fast. Isaac couldn’t believe that it was happening even as it was. He looked down, seeing the man had a giant mitt of a hand wrapped around his wrist. He spun Isaac in a circle and then right before he was ready to fall off balance, he slammed Isaac into an ancient oak tree.
Isaac grunted when he hit the tree and he hit it hard. For not the first time that day his world spun and when he tried to get up he fell back to the ground. He could feel warm, fresh blood trickling down his face. He tried pushing up off of the ground, gripping the stranger’s leg, looking up as they gripped onto Jack’s hair. The stranger lifted his head up and, stared him directly in the eyes and took the machete across his neck slicing it clean and deep. Blood poured down Jack’s front, wetting his shirt until it clung to his chest that was barely rising.
Isaac, still barely hanging onto it, hammered on his leg. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Isaac cringed, as he took a hand getting it soaking wet in the crimson red blood. The stranger ran a finger in a cross over his forehead and then put two more on his cheeks. Isaac tried to back away from the blood that was pattering on the ground. The man stood to the side, running the blade across Jack's neck even further and sending a geyser of blood onto Isaac. He pushed up from the ground, slipping at first, bear crawling away as well as he could. The stranger saw this and ripped both knives from Jack’s now limp body holding him up and when both of them were out lifted Jack above his head and hurled his still bleeding body into Isaac, hitting him full force in the spine and sending him off balance sprawling back to the ground.
Isaac rolled over on his back, trying to push himself up again. The man walked forward, almost looking like he was marching towards the man. He took one of the knives up behind his shoulder and brought it back down with nothing but bad intentions. Isaac felt a sharp pain. When he tried to spin his head a knife blade was sitting next to his cheek and he felt new blood now pouring out of the side of his head. He screamed when he touched it. The pain exploded through the side of his skull. He felt his ear and could tell that it was now in two pieces and the knife had sliced it cleanly open to make two.
When his hand came away bloodied he felt an entirely new pressure to get his ass up and moving. He pushed up as the stranger started walking, still armed with the second knife. Isaac ran until he could feel his legs fully again and then pushed into a sprint. He took the most difficult path through the underbrush he could find. He knew that if he had to duck down to make it through, that the giant son of a bitch would have to practically army crawl. Isaac ran for what must have been ten minutes sitting trying to catch his heaving breaths to slow down. He felt like his chest was going to explode and he could feel burning in his legs. He did a self-assessment realizing the ear wound was really the only problem that he had to deal with and knew that he didn’t have a hell of a lot he could do about it. He ripped his shirt off on the side of it and wrapped the makeshift bandage around his ear, looking more like a bandana but the last thing he wanted was for his earflap to catch on a branch and rip it clean off of his head.
Isaac sat waiting and listening for a minute. He was staring at the branches praying to god that the monster wasn’t going to just somehow materialize running at him. He waited a few more minutes before he decided that the man had decided to go an entirely different direction. The only problem he’d had with this new thought process was the fact that the three girls were going to on their own. He thought of having to break the news to Katy and Jack’s parents, whom he’d known since he was in diapers, and could imagine what his mother’s face was going to look like. After a little more thinking he thought on the upside the only person that would have to have their heart broken if he was caught was Traci.
Chapter 18
Brandi and Katy sprinted through the woods the best that they could. Brandi had a firm grip on Katy’s wrist because more than once she had attempted to run back to Jack. His screams echoing through the trees were enough to break her heart. When they’d ran half the distance through the woods to what they thought was a safe stopping point they did. Katy sat on a downed tree with her face in her hands. She said, “I can’t believe we fucking left him. Who fucking leaves someone when this kind of shit is happening? Do we have no souls?”
“Hey, your husband, as much as you hate it, was being a man. You can’t be more chivalrous than throwing yourself under the bus if it means saving the one you love. If he makes it, you are going to owe him some serious fuck time. I mean-"
“Okay Brandi, it might be a good silent time. Can we just sit here for a second? I’m almost thirty and we’ve been together for a while so believe it or not, having my legs open isn’t the biggest part of our relationship. We’ve been together forever, we’ve had to deal with the good and the bad, we’ve seen each other at our sickest, and had to deal with family loss. We have love and yes, even though my husband is still a complete hornball he actually still is capable of sitting on the couch with me without getting himself all worked up each and every time. You should try it sometime. It’s actually a pretty fucking rewarding life to live.”
“Wow. Look you bitch, I was just trying to make you feel better.”
“Well, you fucking nailed it didn’t you? Why don’t we try the silence thing and when this is all over we can all sit around and talk about that one time at band camp when the stranger came out of nowhere and killed your fuck buddy. You remember him, right? Yeah, and we can have a nice, very stiff drink.”
“Whatever. If we live through this then I'm moving. This is the most fucked thing that I have ever had to deal with. This state can lick my ass when this is over. I do not make nearly enough at my job to stay here. I think California is screaming my name out loud at this point.”
“You realize statistically if you live through this that there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be able to go your entire life with good odds of never having another killer come after you? I mean how often do you hear about the victim getting away only for them to come back and kill you later?”
“I don’t watch the news, okay.”
“Shocker. You are something, you know it?”
Brandi went to retort but the snapping of branches was growing louder and closer. The two girls looked at each other. Brandi went to say something, but Katy said, “Shut the fuck up!”
Katy looked around the floor of the forest, trying to find something that she could use as a weapon. Brandi said “You’re fucking crazy. You really want to try and fight that son of a bitch?”
Katy looked up when she’d found a sturdy thick branch. “No, I'm going to trip that big mother fucker and when he’s down I'm going to put the tip of this branch through his neck. Then I'm going to leave him for dead and go back to my husband and we are going to walk to wherever that damn farmhouse is and beg them for a ride and to call the police. How does that sound to you?”
“Better than running only to have him catch up to us and chop our fucking heads off one at a time. But here, this stick’s better, you’ll be able to jab this right into his neck. I think.”
“You hold on to it. Once he goes down you come up and stab the fucker with it.”
“I don't know if I can do that, Katy.”
“Really? He chopped your boy toys head off and has terrorized us since and you don’t think that you can fight back? What the hell is wrong with you, suck it up!”
