The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3) (7 page)

Benny had only been standing a few yards from the edge of the road when he’d first seen the approaching six. As he processed what was happening, he barely had time to slowly sink to his belly in the low-growing ferns around him before they were near enough to see him. He watched with his finger on the trigger of the shotgun as they slowly slunk by, scanning not only the road ahead but also the ditches and surrounding woods. Benny was afraid to even blink and he was certain that if it hadn’t been raining and wasn’t nearly dark, they would have spotted him lying there.
 

He was way too close to them for comfort; certainly close enough to get a good look at what he was dealing with. All six were grown men, unlike the teenager he’d shot. They were heavily bearded to a man, all of them wild-eyed and looking like they had been living outdoors for months, as was to be expected these days. One of them carried a shotgun—a pump like Benny’s but with an extended magazine like the riot guns the police sometimes used. The rest were armed with military-style semiautomatics: AR-15s and AK-47 variants. They were moving in silence, communicating with hand signals like they were in a war zone expecting enemy contact at any minute, and Benny knew if he was spotted he was a dead man. But after several excruciating minutes during which he barely dared to breathe, they passed by his position. Benny remained motionless as he watched them go, until the one bringing up the rear was at least a hundred feet down the road. Stepping as carefully as he’d ever done in his life, Benny eased his way back to the road and quickly slipped across again. He had to follow these men, but he wanted to be on the same side of the road as Tommy. The girls would not have time to get back with the travois before these men got there and David had no idea they were coming. It looked grim for all of them, and Benny didn’t see a way out of what he knew was surely coming.

Ten
 

T
IME
DIDN
’
T
USUALLY
MEAN
much to David Green because he had no memory of anything beyond the recent past and little concern for any future beyond the present day. The only life he knew revolved around the Henley farm and most days since he got there had been the same until this one, when everything suddenly changed. But sitting there waiting with his helpless friend, it seemed to David that the minutes were dragging by impossibly slow. He wanted the girls to hurry up and return with April or Samantha and the travois they were going to use to get Tommy home, and he wanted Benny to hurry back too. But it seemed like he’d been waiting there forever. It was still raining and the dim light was turning to twilight. David and Tommy were alone except for the dead boy Benny had shot and the two steers the strangers had killed. David didn’t want to be out there waiting when it got dark, but he didn’t think Benny would come back until he caught the other one that shot his boy. He kept whispering to Tommy, telling him he needed to try and get up on his own if he could. He said the others might not come back for him and that it would be dark soon. He also told Tommy he was sorry for what happened to him.
 

“You didn’t deserve to get shot, Tommy. All you were doing was what you were supposed to—protecting the cows. They shouldn’t have shot you for that, but they did. I wish I could have stopped them from doing it, Tommy. I really do, but neither one of us knew there was another one hiding over there across the road.”

Tommy’s eyes were open and he seemed to hear him but he didn’t respond. David could see that he was still breathing, but he was too weak or in too much pain or both to talk. Benny had slowed the worst of the bleeding by packing the entrance and exit wounds with strips of cloth ripped from a flannel shirt he’d been wearing under his jacket. The crude bandages were soaked through with blood, but they were effective in blocking most of the flow. Benny had warned David and Lisa that when they moved him onto the travois they would have to take care that the bandages did not come loose.
 

David thought he heard something in the woods behind him and he looked anxiously in the direction Lisa and Stacy had gone to get back to the house
.
He hoped it was the two of them coming back, but he waited and waited and there was nothing. Then he looked back to the road and saw something move over on the other side. His heart pounded in his chest as he watched for it again, and then there it was: a man stepping slowly out of the woods and into the open by the edge of the road. Even in the poor light, he could tell by the man’s shape that it wasn’t Benny. He was much too tall and thin, for one thing, and he moved differently. David reached for Tommy’s rifle with shaking hands and twisted to get a better view through the trees behind which the two of them were hidden.
 

The man stood there for what seemed a long time, waiting and listening no doubt, before he walked into the road. David’s hands were shaking and he was having a terrible time trying to control them. He knew this man had to be the one that shot Tommy, and probably the steers too. Now he had emerged from hiding and was coming to see about his friend that Benny had shot. He probably thought they were all gone because it had been a while since the shooting stopped and nothing moved after Benny and the girls left. But David knew that once he got over here by the dead one, he would look around and he would find them. He had to stop him while he didn’t suspect anything and before he had a chance to shoot first. David steadied the rifle by resting the forearm stock against the side of a tree. That helped stop the shaking and he was able to line up the open sights on the man’s chest. David didn’t remember where he’d first learned to shoot, but it somehow felt familiar to him every time he did it and it came natural enough that he knew he wouldn’t miss at this range. He was just about to pull the trigger when he heard a voice that caused the man in the road to turn and face the other way.

David hesitated and turned his attention to the direction the man was now staring. It was the same way Benny had gone and he wondered if it could be him, but the man called back to whoever it was in a friendly tone. Then David saw that there were several other men walking down the road. They were carrying guns and they seemed to know the one who’d shot Tommy. David didn’t know what to do now. If he fired the rifle at the one he was aiming at, these others would know he was there and he didn’t know how many of them there were. Even if he didn’t shoot he was afraid they’d quickly find him and Tommy if he just waited there. The first man was already pointing to his dead companion as he spoke to the others, no doubt telling them what happened. And the body was less than twenty yards from where he and Tommy were concealed. David knew he was about to run out of time if he didn’t do something fast.

* * *

“We’re not going to find him before night,” Mitch said, turning to face Jason and Corey, who were following close behind him. “It’s too dark to follow the trail. We need to find a place to camp and look for him at first light.”

“There won’t even
be
a trail in the morning,” Jason said. “All this rain will wash what little blood there was away.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s probably already lying up somewhere and may have already bled out. We’ll find him in the morning.”

“We should have just gone back to the house then;” Corey said, “got a good night’s sleep and started out fresh. It’s going to suck, camping here out in this.”

Mitch knew Jason and Corey would gripe about spending the night out here in the rain. He would have preferred to be back at home too, especially now that April was there. But part of his reason for deciding to stay out was for the benefit of his two apprentices. They needed to appreciate the consequences of a less-than-perfect shot, and the difficulties of tracking wounded game in tough conditions. The more uncomfortable they were, the better. It was no big deal to Mitch, because he had been doing stuff like this for fun since he was old enough to follow his dad. He still loved it now, even though it meant a night away from April. It was great having her there, but with all the others now living there too, the house sometimes felt crowded and confining to Mitch. He would always need his time away in the woods, through preferably in better conditions than this.
 

But Mitch had come prepared for a night out in bad weather, as he usually did on hunts like this. In the small backpack he wore there was an eight by twelve ripstop tarp, the grommets already fitted with lengths of paracord to secure the corners. He selected a spot near the creek on a slight rise where the rainwater would drain and stretched another piece of heavier line between two trees. With this to serve as a central ridge, it was a simple matter to rig the tarp into a makeshift A-frame. They were already wet from trailing the deer in the rain, but at least they wouldn’t have to sleep out in it all night.

“Well, I guess this is a good opportunity for you guys to practice your wet weather fire-building skills.”
 

“Great,” Jason said. “Then we can sit around it and eat cold venison jerky. Sounds like a party to me!”

“Well, it could be worse. At least we have the tarp… and the jerky…”

“It could be better, too,” Corey said. “We could all be back at the house, eating a real supper and sitting by the fireplace. It’s going to get cold tonight. Wouldn’t you rather be spending it with April than the two of us?”

“Nah, I can do that any time. This will make her miss me and it’ll be better than ever when I get back tomorrow!”

“Well, if it was me in your shoes,” Jason said, “I wouldn’t give a girl like her the
opportunity
to miss me. I wouldn’t let her out of my sight! The only bad thing for you I guess is that she comes as a package deal. How’s it feel being a dad at freakin’ 17, dude? And what are you going to do if David ever gets his memory back? You see that kind of thing with amnesia in movies and stuff. Somebody gets hit in the head, loses their memory for a while, then it all comes back to them all of a sudden. Boy, when it does, I reckon he’s gonna be pissed, seeing you’ve taken up with his girl and his kid and all!”
 

“Yeah, he’s gonna realize the kid’s really his. He thinks she’s just confused about that right now and he’s going along with it because he thinks he should.”

“I’m not worried about David. April told me it had been over between them for a long time, probably three or four months now. They broke up way before she talked him into helping her sneak out of Hattiesburg and come out here. Even back when I helped her get there, things weren’t that good between them.”
 

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be jealous. He’s bound to be. You said he was the first time you met him. He’s not going to like it when he realizes he’s been replaced.”

“Yeah, but it won’t matter. It’s not up to him anyway. It’s April’s choice. Besides, we don’t
know
that he’ll ever get his memory back.”

“He’s sure as shit doesn’t know anything right now; he’s almost like a little kid. The way he follows Tommy around you’d think they were a couple of ten-year-old school buddies.”

“Yeah, Tommy’s kind of simple, but he’s solid. I always feel pretty good when I’m away, knowing Tommy and Benny have got the house. They’re good people, and Benny’s a real woodsman. Both of them are. They’d have to be, living out of a canoe for nearly seven months the way they did. And you guys are bitching about one night camped out in the rain… You’ve already forgotten how good you’ve got it!”
 

Mitch knew they had not really forgotten; he was just giving them a hard time, trying to make light of their discomfort. Jason had been beaten nearly to death in the early days after the collapse, and Corey had found his parents murdered and his family home ransacked and burned. Both of them were survivors, and they were doing fine considering their total lack of experience at this kind of thing in their lives from before. Mitch was sure they would find Jason’s deer nearby in the morning, and soon after, the three of them would be packing meat back to the house, another successful hunt completed. As he imagined April’s arms around him again, he also thought back to the three gunshots they’d heard that afternoon. Tomorrow he would find out what that was about as well, although he was sure it wasn’t anything significant.

Eleven
 

L
ISA
AND
S
TACY
RAN
to the barn to get the travois and found it still piled high with firewood that Tommy and David had left on it that morning. The two of them quickly tossed the load of cut logs aside and then practically ran back to the house pulling the empty rig behind them. It was a great design Benny had come up with shortly after he and Tommy arrived there with April. Seeing how far they were having to go into the woods to carry wood, he looked around the barn and found a wheel from an old mountain bike Mitch had broken in half years ago jumping ditches. Benny had mounted it between two long support rails made of oak lumber he also found in the barn, carving handles at the towing end so that it resembled a stretched wheelbarrow one person could pull behind while walking. The travois was narrow enough to weave through the woods yet stout enough to haul two or three hundred pounds. The loading surface was narrow but wide enough for Tommy to fit as long as they were careful not to dump him off on a bump. Lisa figured if David could do the towing, she and Samantha could walk alongside him on either side and make sure he stayed aboard.
 

Samantha was ready to go when they reached the house and was carrying her rifle and a couple of blankets to put under and on top of Tommy. April watched from the porch, Kimberly in her arms and her carbine slung from her shoulder: “Be careful!” she warned. “Don’t fool around out there; just get Tommy and get right back as quickly as you can. If Uncle Benny doesn’t find whoever shot him, Mitch will when he gets back in the morning!”
 

They hurried down the drive at almost a jog; the fastest pace Stacy could pull the travois. Samantha was behind her with her rifle and Lisa was in front, taking point with her 10/22 carbine, for which she now had three extra magazines in her pockets. Lisa knew that April really wanted to go and would have gladly taken her place in the lead, but Kimberly had to come first for her, so she would wait this one out. Lisa was determined to make that wait as short as possible. When they were half way to the road, she turned off into the woods to take the shortest route back to Tommy. They had just entered the trees when she heard the sound of someone running, crashing through the underbrush and apparently coming right at them. Lisa stopped and motioned to Stacy and Samantha to do the same. She barely had time to raise her rifle to her shoulder before a surprised figure burst into view, almost on top of them. Lisa’s finger had just found the trigger when she realized who it was.