by Blake Pierce
She took a few steps toward it and before she reached it, she spotted another structure on the other side of the creek. It sat on a little plot of land directly in front of a rise in the land where bits of rock pocked through the ground. This structure was larger than the gigging shack she’d seen. It looked almost like a primitive cabin—some recluse’s old lean-to. But it had what almost served as a crooked little porch. A five-gallon bucket sat in front of it.
And from what Mackenzie could see from this distance, it looked like there had been recent movement in the foliage around the front of the shack.
Swamp chestnut trees surrounded the shack on all sides. The ground was covered in acorns all around it.
This is it, she thought.
Her hand went instinctively to the butt of her gun. She then thought of Bryers, sitting about a mile further back. She knew she should go back to him before venturing ahead.
But that ugly lean-to was right there, no more than thirty yards away from her.
She couldn’t go back. Not now.
Walking as quietly as she could on the fallen leaves and twigs underfoot, Mackenzie started forward. Her eyes stayed on the shack even when she had to take a wide step over the creek.
When her feet were both securely on the other side, she felt like she had arrived…somewhere. Something was different on this side. Something was amiss. Her instinct kicked into overdrive and adrenaline started pumping into her blood in drastic amounts.
Still, she started forward again.
The forest was beyond quiet all around her—a silence she felt in her heart.
Yet she was still unable to hear the soft treading footsteps of someone approaching from a few feet behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
As Mackenzie closed in on the shack, she could smell something in the air. In fact, it was a few different smells. One she could instantly notice was the smell of human sweat and occupancy. The other was almost a chemical smell that she could not place right away. It wasn’t very strong but seemed to intensify with every step she took toward the lean-to.
She stopped in front of it, feeling the urge to call out to see if anyone was there. She recalled the stories she’d heard about the homeless often coming out here and wondered if this was a shelter that had been left behind. She looked down to the ground in front of the shack and saw that her first guess had been correct—someone had been here recently.
She took another step and that’s when she heard something behind her.
She turned quickly, her hand going for her gun.
When she saw the man coming at her quickly with an axe in his hand, she brought her gun out. Before she could steady it, she saw the axe coming down and had to sidestep it. She felt the rush of wind just inches from the side of her face as the swing went wide. Rather than shoot the man, she rushed at him as he recovered from his swing. She struck him squarely in the side in a tackle that would have made any defensive lineman proud.
They both went to the ground but when they did, the man rolled over hard and trapped her right hand beneath him. She lost her grip on the gun just as the man tried delivering an elbow into her face. She blocked it and wrenched his arm back. He shouted out in pain but fought back with an intensity that seemed much greater than his small stature.
It was the first time she managed to get a good look at him. He looked to be in his late fifties. He was tall and haggard, with a growth of gray hair on his chin that could not quite be called a beard. He had intense blue eyes that looked impossibly bright in contrast to his dirty tanned skin. There was something almost feral in his eyes that made Mackenzie wonder if she might not make it out of this alive.
He tried getting to his knees, using the head of the axe to push himself up. He gave a hard heave with it and Mackenzie felt herself being lifted from the ground. The man spun around but Mackenzie kept her grip on his arm, pulling it harder behind his back. The man roared, stumbled backward, and they both collided with a tree. The back of Mackenzie’s skull connected squarely with it and her ears rang for a second.
The man tore free from her and wasted no time in hitching the axe back for another swing. His arm was hurt, though. The swing came slowly, allowing Mackenzie to duck. Before he even started the swing, she threw two hard jabs to the man’s ribs. He doubled over and when he did, she pivoted, clenched her fist, and came up with a huge uppercut. It connected solidly under the man’s jaw. He went staggering back, stumbling against the side of the lean-to. He blinked a few times, trying to clear his head as Mackenzie looked to the ground for her gun.
She saw it, but it was too far away—closer to the man with the axe than to her. She rushed forward, trying to take advantage of his dazed state. By the time he was aware that she was coming again, he wasn’t able to defend himself. She threw a hard knee into his stomach and when he doubled over again, she wrapped an arm around his neck, hugging his head tight to her side. She then dropped to her knees, flipped him over onto his stomach and drove a hard elbow into the space between his shoulders.
“How dare you interrupt my work,” he growled.
Mackenzie ignored him, trying to reach for her gun, which was now about three feet away. She leaned over and her right hand was able to retrieve it. As she brought it to her, though, the man managed to roll halfway over beneath her. His strength was crazy. Mackenzie drew back her fist to throw another blow to his face but she was not fast enough.
The head of the axe came up flat-side first. It struck her in the forehead with a quiet little thud. The man had not been able to put much force behind it so it did no real damage—but it sent her sprawling backward onto the ground.
As she tried to get up, again hearing a ringing in her ears, she saw that the man had dropped the axe and had grabbed her gun. He was slowly getting to his feet as he held it directly at her.
“Get up,” the man said. “And do it slowly.”
Shit, Mackenzie thought. I should have gone back for Bryers. This is bad…
She knew better than to try to bargain with a man that she had just beaten rather badly. So she got up slowly, checking her surroundings for a way out of this. So far, though, she could find nothing.
The man was smiling. He was favoring his left side, where Mackenzie had done the most damage, but hobbled forward with a lunatic’s smile on his face. The hand that held the gun was shaking, making Mackenzie feel even more in danger.
“Now get inside,” he said, gesturing toward the shack’s crooked front door with the gun.
“Look,” Mackenzie said. “I’m an FBI agent. If you do anything stupid, you’re going to be in a world of trouble.”
“That don’t matter,” the man said. “After I’m dead, the earth itself will reward me for what I’ve done. Now get your ass inside.”
Mackenzie did as she was asked. She stepped into the shack and realized that the sharp chemical smell was coming from in here. She saw more buckets along the back of the small shack’s wall. A few Mason jars sat there as well.
Moonshine, she thought. That’s the other thing I was smelling.
“To the back and to the right,” the man said from behind her. He nudged the gun into the small of her back to get her to move faster.
Mackenzie followed his directions. It took less than four steps to reach the back of the shack. There, at the back, she saw what looked like the fragment to an old barn door blocking off another room to the right. She went to it and pulled it open as he marched along behind her. When she pulled it open, she did so slowly. She was hoping to distract him, to perhaps wheel around with a palm strike to his head when the door was partially open. But the gun remained at her back and she didn’t dare attempt such a thing.
When the door was opened, her heart sank. She saw another axe, a sledgehammer, and what looked like an old handheld wheat thresher propped against the wall. The floor was mostly dirt with plywood and old boards scattered here and there. An old bench sat to the back of the small room. A few empty Mason jars sat there, along with
two large rocks and what looked like a lower jaw bone.
Dried blood was splattered everywhere. The room was lit only by the sunlight that came in through the shack’s front door.
It was then that she saw that the sheet of plywood she had seen on the floor was tied down. One end of a series of ropes was tied to the plywood and the other to one of two short poles on either side of the room. The plywood was about six feet long and seemed to be hiding something—maybe some sort of informal cellar.
As she looked at this, she felt the gun come away from her back. Just as she felt the moment of relief, she felt the gun again. This time, though, she felt it in the back of her head. It was hard and had come fast.
Just as her knees gave out and white flares of light passed across her eyes, she realized that the man had slugged her in the back of the head with her Glock.
She blinked away the white flares as she hit the ground. She made the decision then and there to pretend to be knocked out. She almost didn’t have to pretend but managed to hang on to consciousness, if only by a fragile thread.
The man dropped down beside her and checked to see if she was breathing. She felt his hands on her chest and his finger under her nose. He nudged her with his foot but she purposefully did not respond. She hoped he might set the gun aside within her reach. She did her best to keep her focus on that task at the center of her mind to keep the lure of unconsciousness away.
But instead, he carried the gun with him over to the bench against the wall. She watched him as he set the gun down on the bench and then started working on the ropes that kept the plywood down. As he started untying the ropes, someone started screaming from somewhere within the shack.
It took Mackenzie a while to understand that the screams were coming from under the plywood. As the man removed the plywood sheets, the screams grew louder.
The man reached into the hole in the ground, delivering three quick punches that silenced the screams. The screams were now nothing more than moans, words muffled by weeping and hitching breaths.
“This woman has screwed things up,” the man said, speaking directly into the hole. “After you, she’ll go as well.”
A male moan came from the hole in the ground as the man reached into it. He started to haul someone out of the hole by the armpits. Although her vision was still hazy from the blow to the back of the head, Mackenzie was pretty sure it was Brian Woerner—only a bloodier and terrified version of the young man she had seen in pictures provided by his sister and mother.
Having fought with the killer already, she knew that he was strong and that it would take him no time at all to get Brian Woerner out of the hole in the ground. If she was going to get out of this, she was going to have to do it now.
She sprang up as quickly as she could and leaped at the killer. The moment she was on her feet, she realized she was dizzy and disoriented. As she propelled herself at him, the room seemed to spin. Still, her aim was mostly dead on; she threw her shoulder hard into the killer’s chest. Brian Woerner was trapped between them as Mackenzie went to the dirt floor. Behind her, the contents of the bench shook and trembled. Something fell to the floor and she heard glass breaking.
She did her best to roll away from the tangled limbs of the killer and Brian Woerner. When she did, she felt a sharp and stinging pain in her knee. She had no idea what caused it, nor did she have time to investigate. She got to her feet, still dizzy from the blow to the head. She brought her right leg back, nearly falling over, and delivered it into the killer’s chest. She drew the same leg back again, this time aiming for his head, but fell over this time. The blow barely connected and all it did was cause her to fall.
When she did, the entire lower half of her body fell into the hole in the ground. She was dimly aware of seeing her right knee, bloodied and shining. Apparently, one of the Mason jars had broken and she had rolled her knee directly into the broken glass.
The killer came at her again, stumbling over Brian to get to her. Brian apparently caught on to what was happening and tried to stop him; he caught a vicious right-handed blow to the side of his head as a result.
Mackenzie struggled her way out of the hole, her right knee a blaze of agony and the room still spinning. She felt like she might pass out any moment and felt herself growing nauseous.
A concussion. If that’s the worst I get out of this, I’ll consider myself lucky.
She stumbled forward toward the bench, reaching for her Glock. The killer met her just before her fingers wrapped around it. He tried throwing a knee into her ribs but she blocked it. He was then on top of her, pushing her to the ground. She fought as hard as she could but everything was spinning—the room, the killer’s face, everything.
She reached for the bench but her gun was nowhere to be found. What she did find with her roaming hand was one of the Mason jars that had fallen but not broken. She grabbed it and brought it up fast and hard. When it connected with the killer’s head, the glass exploded. Blood spilled right away, coming from a deep cut in his brow.
He was just dazed enough for her to push him off of her. He thudded to the floor and instantly started scrambling for the gun. Mackenzie dove at him but he had already grabbed the gun. The two of them wrestled for possession of the weapon. She threw an elbow into his throat and he delivered a knee to her stomach. They struggled, gasping and writhing, until the killer threw a kick into her injured knee.
The glass that had cut into her was driven further into her knee. She screamed and lost possession of the gun.
Her scream filled the little room and seemed to cause the shack to tremble.
The only other noise that could be heard was a gunshot, which promptly put an end to her screaming.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
With a scream of pain coming out of her throat, Mackenzie heard the gunshot. Blood washed over her in a fast, brief splash. She closed her mouth and fell to the floor, certain that she’d been shot, sure that the pain would start registering at any moment.
Instead, the killer fell on top of her. Just as he came down, she caught a brief glimpse of his face—and, more than that, the neat little red hole in his forehead.
Grunting in frustration and anger, Mackenzie shoved the man off of her. She slid backward and looked toward the small doorway.
Bryers stood there, leaning against the doorframe with his Glock in his hands.
He was surveying the room with something like horror as Mackenzie slid over to Brian Woerner. He had fallen back to the ground, his left arm dangling into the hole in the floor.
He was still coherent, his eyes looking wildly around the small room.
“Brian Woerner?” she asked.
He nodded and then began to cry. He took in deep lungfuls of air and expelled them in what was almost hysterical weeping. Then, in a flash of movement so fast that it was uncanny, Brian launched himself on top of the killer. He started slapping him in the face and tearing at the man’s skin. He screamed in a furious sort of howl as he attacked again and again.
Bryers came into the room and wrestled him away. Again, Brian started to weep but this time he remained crouched on the floor, unmoving.
Bryers ambled over to Mackenzie and put an arm around her. “You okay?” he asked.
“Concussion, I think,” she said. “And my right knee is pretty messed up.”
“What happened to coming back for me?” he asked.
Mackenzie said nothing. She found herself looking down into the hole in the ground. It was about three and a half feet deep. She wondered how many people had been down there. Hopefully it had only been the people they had discovered so far. She prayed there weren’t more scattered body parts hidden around Little Hill State Park.
She tried getting to her feet and was relieved to find that she could. Her right knee would not straighten out but she was pretty sure there was nothing too serious going on with it. She might need stitches, but that was about it.
“You got your wind back pretty quickly, I see,” Mackenzie
said. “Good thing for me, I guess.”
“I couldn’t let you have all of the fun,” he joked.
Together, they helped Brian gather his wits and led him out of the shack. He had been stripped down to his boxer shorts and his clothes were nowhere to be found. Bryers called the situation in to Clements and Smith after several attempts, fighting with the terrible cell phone reception so far out in the woods.
Mackenzie listened to him as she sat propped against a swamp chestnut tree. Through gritted teeth, she plucked shards of glass from her knee and tossed them to the ground. It hurt like hell and her head was still ringing. She knew that she was lucky to be alive.
Brian Woerner sat beside her, staring out into the woods. There was a blank look on his face and she knew he would be spending some time with a psychiatrist in the near future. She had tried speaking to him several times but whenever he would try to respond, he ended up crying.
Bryers came back over to them when his call was done. He looked very weak as he sat down next to her. He let out a whooping cough and frowned at her, as if apologizing that she had to hear it.
“So tell me what you think went down out here,” Bryers said.
Mackenzie knew that he was trying to distract her from the pain in her knee and the dizziness that still wobbled her head. She appreciated it—she loved him for it a little.
“I’m assuming the killer brainwashed Will Albrecht after kidnapping him all those years ago,” she said. “There might have been an almost paternal bond between them, seeing as how Will actually went to school, if those records you mentioned are indeed legit. I think the killer may have actually cared for him—or at least wanted to make it seem like he did. He must have eventually sold him on the idea that he was doing important work. We’ll never really know what that work is…although he mentioned the earth rewarding him. Maybe he thought he was empowering the earth through the deaths.”
