It was very dark where the horses stood. She had less visibility here than she had at her previous position. A wall of decorative trees blocked much of the firelight and though she could catch glimpses of light, it did little to aid her sight.
The horses had grown accustomed to her presence. They were quiet now, no longer shuffling or moving, no longer making sounds of alarm. She pressed her way through them and heard nothing from outside the large herd. Was the man still there? Had he moved? Did he know she was coming?
She heard a noise to her right and jerked in that direction, turning her back to the warm sides of a quarter horse. She realized the noise must've been a ploy, a distraction, when an arm came across the back of the horse and snaked around her neck. Understanding the lethality of a choke, she dropped her gun as she tried to get both hands up under the arm and pry them from her neck. Her attacker had leverage, though, and strength. He was anchored firmly against the horse, giving him a mechanical advantage. By simply tightening his arms he was able to lift her off her feet.
Being unable to use her legs put Barb at a tremendous disadvantage. She was now dangling from his powerful chokehold. His hands were locked together, fixing the hold around her neck. Despite having both hands hooked beneath his arm she could not pry him loose. It was not only his tremendous strength, but the fact that the horse was in between them, preventing her from using any of the typical moves she would use to break a chokehold. She could not throw elbows, attempt to gouge his eyes, bring a heel to his groin, or stomp his foot. She was completely powerless, a feeling she feared more than death itself. She was in no immediate danger of blacking out, but neither could she escape.
She considered yelling for help but what if there was another shooter out there? If both Lester and Top Cat had been hidden behind those saddles, yelling at Ragus would only draw him into the fire. She couldn't do that. She had to solve this problem on her own.
The horse directly in front of her was growing uneasy, worried by the sounds and frantic gestures she was making. He took a step further away from her and it gave her an idea. She raised both her feet and kicked hard against the side of the horse in front of her. The move startled that horse, and also the quarter horse she was pinned against. Uncertain of what was going on, the horses shied away from each other.
The quarter horse behind Barb stepped in the direction of her attacker, throwing him off balance. She could sense his indecision, the knowledge that while he did not want to let go of Barb's neck he could not let himself be trampled. Taking advantage of what she had set in motion, Barb began raining powerful elbows against the side of the quarter horse between them.
It had no idea how to react to such physical aggression. It tried to move away from her, stepping yet again toward her attacker. His grip broke, slipping from her as the horse pushed against his body. It didn't feel like he was giving up. It felt like he was falling or being pulled beneath the horse. Taking a risk, she jerked her body hard and pulled loose from his grip. She dropped to the ground and spun, shooting her arms beneath the horse and finding the man's ankles. She hooked her hands around them and tugged hard, pulling his legs out from under him.
The man grunted as he fell hard, unable to regain his balance with the horse pushing against him and Barb pulling. The instant he hit the ground, Barb wasted no time. She began shooting groin strikes with her powerful right fist. The man cried out and tried to block, to kick at her, but she parried his moves. The horse could take no more and shuffled away from them, stepping on the man's bicep as it slewed away from their combat. The man tried to roll away from Barb’s brutal punches, ending up on his stomach. Barb was waiting for this. She nearly smiled as she sprang onto his back and locked him in a rear naked choke.
Barb now knew that the man under her was Lester. She recognized his voice in the grunts and groans as the struggled. He fought valiantly for a moment but he was too beaten down by the groin punches to effectively defend himself any longer. His resistance to the choke was a token gesture. He had nothing left. She felt him give in, submit, and knew then that he would be dead shortly. If she felt anything at all, it was satisfaction.
“Remember calling me sweetie?” she hissed. “Sweetie is going to kill you. What do you think of that?”
“Let him go!” a voice demanded from the dark. Then the blinding beam of a flashlight hit her. She blinked but did not release her grip. “I said let him go!”
For a moment she thought it might be her dad. She realized that she hadn’t heard gunfire or screaming for the last few minutes. Then she recognized this voice as Top Cat. She released a hand from the limp man, drawing his handgun from the holster on his belt and whipping it up toward the light. "Make me."
The light moved away from her face, snaking slowly across the distance between them before revealing Ragus, his neck locked in the crook of Top Cat’s elbow. A .45 automatic was pressed against his temple.
"Surely this boy has to mean something to you. After all, he came all this way to rescue you. Don't tell me you’re going to let me blow his brains out right in front of you."
"Ragus," Barb growled. Her cry was a plea of desperation, expressing anger, disappointment, and frustration.
"I'm sorry," he said. "He was on me before I saw him."
"Toss away the gun and get off Lester,” Top Cat ordered.
Barb sagged her head in defeat. She tossed Lester’s pistol in Top Cat’s direction and released her hold on Lester's neck. She sat upright on his back and the man stirred. She got off him and scooted away, then stood, glaring at Top Cat defiantly.
"What did she call you boy?” he asked. “Ragus? What the hell kind of name is that?"
Barb knew this was a sore spot for the boy. He became defiant anytime he was asked. “None of your damn business."
Top Cat shook his head in the harsh glare of the flashlight. "That's no way to talk, boy." There was a flash of movement and Top Cat struck Ragus in the head with the pistol. It was not enough of a blow to knock him out or seriously injure him but the metal base of the grip lacerated his scalp. Blood seeped down over his forehead.
"I asked you a question. I expect a polite answer."
"It's just a name," Barb said. “I asked him before and he doesn't know. It’s just some weird fucking hillbilly name his mom came up with. He’s a dumb kid. Leave him alone."
Ragus mumbled something unintelligible.
"What the hell did you say?" Top Cat asked, drawing back the pistol, preparing to whack Ragus again if he felt disrespected.
"Ragus is sugar spelled backward. My mother named me Ragus because she thought I was going be a sweet baby."
Lester guffawed. "Now that’s some stupid bullshit right there," Lester said, staggering to his feet. He retched and gagged, then coughed violently. The moment the coughing spasm stopped, he lashed out with a violent jab that caught Barb off guard. The punch hit her just below her left eye. She staggered and fell backward.
"I thought you were some kind of tough bitch," Lester snarled at the fallen woman. "Get back up! We’re not done playing yet."
Top Cat, who usually disapproved of Lester's crude and often violent behavior, appeared to have no problem with it this time. When Barb righted herself, a grin was widening on Top Cat’s face in the glow of the flashlight. He was gloating, relishing the moment. He was enjoying the show.
Before her brain could make sense of what she was seeing, a gloved palm wrapped around Top Cat’s face and wrenched it violently to the right, followed by a sickening pop. When the gloved hand was removed, the head remained obscenely staring backward, looking Conor directly in the face. Ragus moved away as the hand around his neck released him and the gun dropped to the ground.
Lester was not fully aware of what had taken place but knew that the window of time in which he could get his own revenge was closing. His hand dropped to his left hip, to the fixed blade knife he always carried there, but his hand landed on an empty sheath. He looked down in surprise.
The kn
ife was in Barb’s hand, removed when she climbed off Lester’s body. She lashed out with the razor sharp blade, slashing the tendons above his right knee. Lester bellowed and the leg folded under him. He collapsed in a heap, unable to control how or where he fell.
With no weapons at his disposal, he opened his mouth to bargain, to beg for mercy, to do anything to see his life spared but he did not get the words out. Barb slid the long blade into the side of his neck. Lester had a moment where some clarity remained, where he pondered the seriousness of his injury, the sensation of the stiff metal object embedded in the soft flesh of his neck. He felt a tug, the blade viciously slashing out the front of his neck, and then he was gone, fading like an old light bulb.
Conor leapt over Top Cat’s body and took his daughter up in a desperate embrace. While the overwhelming emotion was relief, there remained an undercurrent of panic, the awareness of how close they'd come to losing each other. The emotional complexity of the embrace between the two blood-spattered and gore-encrusted warriors seemed unfathomable. It was only now that Conor let his emotional armor slip. The tears flowed and he sobbed openly, the tears rinsing ghastly tracks in the blood coagulating on his face.
"I was so scared," Conor said. "I can't tell you what it felt like to know you were out here and I couldn't protect you. I wasn't certain I’d ever find you. I might not have had it not been for the lad."
At the mention of the boy, Conor was hit with the awareness that he and his daughter were not the only pieces to this puzzle any more. Conor raised his damp eyes from his daughter’s head and looked at Ragus. The boy stood several feet from them, watching with both hands shoved in his pockets. He looked uncomfortable. Conor knew what he needed. He understood the boy needed closure and de-escalation as badly as they did.
"My boy," Conor said softly, raising an arm and beckoning Ragus with a gory glove.
He didn't move at first, uncertain if he should intrude on what was clearly such an intimate family moment. Then Barb turned to him too, her expression softer than he’d ever seen it, and she opened their embrace to him. They all knew the significance. It was the opening of more than an embrace. It was the opening of a life. Ragus was one of them now.
He walked over tentatively, uncertain as to what to do. Conor lashed out and grabbed him by the sleeve, pulling him hard into them. Father and daughter both hugged him tight and Ragus was overwhelmed with emotion. He knew his place in this world, knew his worth, and knew what he was to these people. He was not alone anymore.
"You’re fucking family now, Ragus. You're one of us. When we get home, I'd be honored for you to move in with us. You belong under our roof and at our table. God knows we’ve got the room."
Ragus had no idea that such a simple statement could have such a profound effect on him. His guard slipped, and the tears flowed. He had not let his emotions see the light of day since he’d shoveled dirt onto his poor dead mother. He understood this was not just a gesture of thanks for going after Barb. He had proven himself to these folks and their appreciation was genuine. As they’d said, he was one of them now. He felt a warmth inside, a peace, that had been absent since the death of his mother. It felt like warm water running back into pipes long left empty. He could never have imagined in the midst of this gore, death, and extreme violence, he would find a family.
No one, neither rescued nor rescuer, wanted to spend the night in the midst of the carnage. The brushfires started by Conor’s improvised pyrotechnics had burned their way down to embers, running out of dried grass and brush when they hit rocky sections of the steep mountains. Barb and Ragus kept the former captives on the other side of the bridge until Conor finished dispatching the wounded. He had done such a thorough job of killing that there were few for whom the task was incomplete. There were some who'd caught bullets in non-lethal areas of the body and crawled away. Conor found the suppressed Henry .22 among the saddles, using it to finish the wet work.
When the death detail had finished its rounds, they dug through the kidnappers’ gear and found what flashlights and headlamps they could. With those, they saddled the horses and the pack horses then set out. They searched the bodies for weapons, ammo, and gear, leaving the corpses where they fell. Kidnappers and slave-takers were unworthy of the sweat required for a decent burial.
They used some of the weapons and ammunition to arm the former captives who were familiar with operating weapons. Barb would not arm Bonnie, though. She did not trust that woman at her back with anything dangerous. Barb gave the petulant woman the opportunity to take a horse and continue on in an attempt to find a better place for herself.
“What do you care?” Bonnie growled in response to Barb’s offer.
“I don’t,” Barb responded, “but you have to go somewhere.”
“I got nothing at home. Nobody at home.”
“It’s familiar territory. You might do better in a place you know than as a stranger in a place you don’t know.”
Bonnie chose to go with them, but displayed no gratitude or appreciation. Barb would be surprised if they made it all the way home without her having to kill this woman. While it would probably be wiser to just banish her here and avoid the possibility of the fight, Conor had not raised her that way. She’d try to do the right thing until she couldn’t anymore.
They put nearly ten miles between them and the scene of the battle before the adrenaline and the bad memories began to dissipate. Nearly everyone but Conor was nodding off in their saddles. They pulled over and set up camp beneath the canopy of an abandoned convenience store. The women no longer needed the tablecloths, instead finding rest inside the sleeping bags belonging to their former captors.
Conor insisted that he could not sleep and chose to remain on watch for the night. Barb told him she would switch out later if he would wake her up. He promised he would but she knew he was lying. He was her father. He would let his baby sleep, even if that’s not what she wanted to do.
28
The ride home with the freed captives was nearly relaxing after the urgency of the days of dogged pursuit. The ability to relax came from knowing that anyone who might pursue them lay rotting in the stark light of a roadside battlefield many miles north of them. It also came from Barb, Conor, and Ragus, now a family of three, being together. They remained vigilant against anyone who might see them as prey, yet had time to talk and get to know each other. There was a lot to learn but things had changed between them by virtue of this experience. They were bonded. They were tempered by fire.
They stopped at the location where Barb had killed Howell and she told her dad how it went down. It was interesting for Conor to hear the details and see how they matched up with his earlier speculations. They retrieved Ragus’ gear from the woods and the young man was glad to have his pack on his back again. Conor had reunited him with the Henry rifle after the battle was over. The pack and the rifle had come to feel like part of him. The gear kept him alive on his trek after Barb.
When they passed the dead men Ragus had left as directional markers, some of the women wondered if they should stop and give them a Christian burial.
“They’re undeserving of our sweat and toil,” Conor said. “Let them feed the ants. Let people see them and speculate on how they came to end up where they did. They’ll become part of the legend and that legend will protect us as it grows.”
“What legend?” one of the women asked.
“The only way we prevent this from happening again is we band together,” Conor announced. “We work as a group to maintain security and we develop a plan for communicating with each other. The legend to which I was referring is the manner in which we capitalize on this experience. It was unpleasant for all of us and we might as well derive some benefit from it.”
Conor withdrew the combat tomahawk from his pack and went to a tree visible from the pair of bodies. He shaved off a circle of bark facing the road at head level. It was nearly a foot in diameter. Using bold strokes of the tomahawk, he formed the letters MM.<
br />
“What’s that mean?” asked the woman.
“The Mad Mick,” Ragus replied.
Conor nodded. “As we get closer to home, we leave more of those. It’s like the signs for security companies you used to see in fancy neighborhoods. These are protected by ADT or whoever. Except in this case, it means that this area is protected by the Mad Mick.”
“And that’s you?” the woman asked.
“I may be the face of it,” Conor replied, “but it’s not only me, it’s all of us. It’s your husbands and sons. It’s you and your daughters. It’s all of us working together to keep this from happening again.”
“How do we do that? We’re not soldiers. We’re not fighters like you.”
“You do it by spreading the legend of the Mad Mick,” Barb replied, seeing where this was going. “You tell the story of what happened on this trip and you make it wilder with each telling. If you’re speaking to a stranger, someone from outside our community, you describe the Mad Mick as a dangerous madman who guards our community to keep people safe. He’s the sheepdog who drives out the wolves, who protects the sheep.”
The woman, in fact all the women, appeared overwhelmed by this but it wasn’t just the story. It was everything they’d gone through. The trauma of the experience would be slow passing. There would be nightmares and tears. They would fear strangers for a long time, but perhaps that was the safest response to have. The coming winter would be a hard one with deep snows and long periods of time spent in a single room by a warm fire, just like the pioneers that settled this region. Around those fires, they would tell stories like folks used to. Variations would develop. Stories would be embellished. By spring, the legend of the Mad Mick would reach as far as Asheville, Knoxville, Roanoke, and Charleston.
Conor did his part to encourage the legend. Every man deterred from bad actions by the legend was one less the sheepdog had to engage. By the time the snows of winter melted, everyone in their greater community carried an ax or hatchet on their forays into the woods. As Conor did that first time on the road home, they shaved the bark from trees and carved crude MMs to mark the range of the Mad Mick.
The Mad Mick: Book One of The Mad Mick Series Page 20
