Twins of Prey (11 page)

“Ah, aaaah, ouch, careful,” Drake said.

“How the hell, I saw you get shot?” Tomek said still holding tight to his back from the dead brother.

“I guess when I put the other one’s coat on, it had some sort of a lining in it that stops guns,” Drake said referring to Ravizza’ bullet-resistant vest-lined coat had just saved his life.

“Are you hurt at all?”

“Yeah, the bullet did not break my skin but I am pretty sure it broke my rib cage or something. It hurt like hell once I woke up.”

“Woke up?” Tomek asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, the impact just knocked me out, I guess. How did I end up down there?”

“You fell.”

Drake rolled his eyes at his brother’s obvious answer but did not want to further push the conversation.

“What woke you up?” Tomek inquired.

Drake did not say anything. He just smirked and held up the pistol that Tomek’s arrow had forced out of Magee’s hand and over the edge of the tram road.

“Well, I am glad you woke up, even though I didn’t need you. I had him dead to rights anyway,” Tomek said in his usual boastful manner.

“You needed me as bait and I drew him out for you,” Drake said, taking off the jacket and looking at his chest for the first time. “Too dark here to see much, but it is already bruised. Let’s head back to the cabin so I can wrap my chest.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me. I am hungry anyway.”

Tomek led the way back down the hillside using the easiest route that could be carved out in the dark. The topic of their conversation was light-hearted. Both seemed just happy to still be not only alive but together.

“What is going to happen when if we don’t get them all?” Tomek asked.

“Well, I am sure they will come back with more. But just like Uncle with the lumber company, if we keep making it hard for them each time, hopefully they will eventually just quit.”

Tomek was satisfied with his brother’s answer, but they both knew that it was just the simple way out. Their lives had been forever changed and this valley was no longer only theirs.

“What about the bodies?” Tomek asked.

“I thought about that earlier. We will have to collect them for burning later. If we light a fire big enough to break bones, when we are done it will for sure give away our position,” Drake said.

“Or we use the fire as a trap,” Tomek said.

“It would work at least for one of them, but I am hurt. You would be alone and if they came together, we could be in trouble,” Drake said.

“How long will you need to rest?” Tomek asked as they reached the river.

“There will be time to burn them and break bones later,” Drake said, reluctant to admit he had no clue just how injured he truly was. “Just stay focused. We need to eliminate them all first.”

“How long will you need to rest?” Tomek asked again, this time hoping for a valid answer.

“I have no idea, but there is no way I can pull a bow back,” Drake said.

“Good thing you have a gun now, then, huh?” Tomek teased.

“Hahaha, ouch, ouch... Don’t make me laugh,” Drake said, as his laughter was met with severe pain in his ribcage.

“Are you ready to go swimming again, brother?” Tomek asked, picking up the stilts. “With your injury, there is no way you will be able to use these.”

“Walk your ass across the river, go get the dugout and come get me.”

Drake was not asking, he was demanding.

“Walking all the way upriver to get the canoe and then coming back down in the dark to find you, not to mention that we will still be downriver of home and we will have to walk back up...” Tomek’s negative tone was interrupted by Drake.

“Fine, I will wade back across. We are going home anyway, so I can warm up, again, there.”

Tomek sat atop a fallen tree that branched out into the river and put the stilts on. He began to cross the river again with ease, showing off his balancing skills, this time in the dark. Annoyed, Drake stepped into the water at the edge and stood there, knee-deep and building up the courage to wade in further.

As he leapt forward again, the ice cold rushing flow of the water stole his breath and forced him to cough, which in return made his ribcage feel as if it were on fire. Only this time was not as bad as the first, he thought. The frigid cold of the river also felt good on the outside of his injured body. The cold bullet vest-lined jacket remained pressed into his ribs, providing some pain relief and it helped control some of the swelling. Jumping forward with his legs under the water and letting the current take him a bit downstream until his feet landed again seemed to be the easiest way to move, as both arms were useless for traditional paddling. Keeping his left arm at his side, pressing the coat’s interior against his chest, he made his way even with his stilted brother.

Slowly inching his way closer and closer, Drake was silent as he finally reached his brother at the halfway point of the river. Knowing they were headed back to the cabin was plenty reason enough for Drake to kick out the left stilted leg of his twin and watch Tomek plummet from his perch, joining him in the river. The splash alone was enjoyment enough, as Tomek’s flailing arms and legs did not make for a graceful entrance into the water.

Tomek’s head was back above the surface as quickly as it had gone under. Swimming arm over arm, dragging the stilts still connected to his legs behind him, he struggled until reaching the shore line. Joining him at the shore, Drake held his breath in an attempt to keep from laughing and inflicting further pain upon his now-numbing chest.

Drake enjoyed watching Tomek squirm about trying to unhook his legs from the stilts. Untying the knots was no easy task with bitterly cold, wrinkled fingers. As Tomek sat there, he looked up to see Drake standing above him with a large smile.

“Ha ha ha, jerk,” Tomek sneered.

Drake remained silent, shivering as he too was cold from the swim, but for some reason this time being soaked was not as harsh as his first fall into the river. Drake held tight just looking down at his brother with delight. Given that his ribs were not throbbing at the moment, he forgot about the challenges he and his brother still faced.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” Tomek said, beginning to think his brother’s stare was bordering on creepy.

Drake smiled, turned to walk away, and said,

“Happy Memorial Day.”

O
pening the hollowed-out oak tree door to the cabin was a welcome sight for both of the twins. Having restlessly battled for almost 40 consecutive hours, the brothers were cold, wet, hungry and hurting. Entering their home again instantly made them forget the two remaining troubles that awaited them in the woods.

There was something about the smell in the hill residence. It could have been from the birch bark and alabaster that lined the walls and ceiling for years, or just the fact that there was little to no airflow. The cool dryness of the stale-smelling home was so ingrained in their heads that even the slightest whiff of something similar out in the wild would make them think of home.

The twins were quick to strip themselves of their wet clothes and find clean, dry replacements from their stash of surplus camouflage fatigues. While the fire in the wood stove had gone out shortly after they originally left the cabin days before, the ground was well-insulated and it had not been anywhere near freezing outside. The semi-warm cabin was a pleasant and welcomed comfort.

Tomek sat on his bed fumbling with Magee’s handgun, which he had taken out of his brother’s soaked backpack as quick as Drake had set it down. Removing the magazine and each of its rounds, he meticulously dried each one of them by hand, polishing the brass to make them appear brand new.

“What is your fascination with the guns, man?” Drake asked.

“Well, it seems to me they have been a big help. I mean, if not for this gun right here, we might both be dead,” Tomek reasoned, proud to prove his point.

“If not for gunshots going off we would not be able to track these people as well.” Drake reminded him while quietly sitting in pain watching his brother complete the cleaning and reloading of the pistol. “What now?”

“I am going to keep it right here just so we both know where it is at,” Tomek said, walking by Drake and lying the pistol down in a cubby about the size of a small bucket they had dug out of the side rock wall years before.

“Why there?” Drake asked, knowing there was no better hiding places inside the cabin but wanting to see if the two of them were again on the same page without discussing it. Tomek ignored the question, only looking at the cubby and working out the perfect placement.

“Be gentle when you set it down there.” Drake warned his brother.

“Why?” said Tomek sarcastically? “It is not going to go off. Quit worrying.”

“You know damn well why you had better be gentle. That is the entire reason you are using that particular cubby, isn’t it?” Drake asked, knowing that his brother could not ignore that comment.

“Yep, great place for a gun, huh?” Tomek replied, smirking.

Drake knew that the cubby was probably the perfect place for a weapon and was a little annoyed with the fact that Tomek had come up with using it. In an attempt to prevent his twin’s ego from overinflating, Drake just rolled his eyes and offered a resigned “Yep.”

Drake then headed over to the hand-built hickory medicine cabinet to look for what was left, if anything, of Uncle’s old supply of medicine. Disappointed in only finding a large supply of penicillin, he turned around to talk to Tomek.

“Grab me a beeswax candle from...” Drake stopped his sentence short in the observance of his twin brother already fast asleep in the cot.

“
Never mind. I will get it myself,”
he thought.

Reaching above the cots to the cupboard that held the candles was painful, but the stretch did have a therapeutic feel to it. Bumping his leg into Tomek’s cot caused his sleeping twin to roll over and mumble in his sleep something about “killing the girl.”

Drake rolled his eyes and felt somewhat sorry for his brother who seemingly could not even rest in his sleep without dreaming about their next fight.

Lighting the candle, Drake was able to see for the first time the extent of the damage done to his ribs. Magee had shot him just above his left nipple. Without the tactical Kevlar coat of Ravizza, the lead round would have disintegrated Drake’s heart, causing an instant death. While instant death was certainly not the outcome, a large dinner plate-sized blue and purple contusion was. Feeling around with his fingers, he could not confirm any actual broken bones. Drake began to think that he may have escaped the entire ordeal with just muscle and tissue damage. Drake knew that without some sort of medical intervention, the muscles in and around his wounded area would tighten up, rendering him useless in the remaining fights against Henderson and the sheriff.

“
Healing oils. I need to make Uncle’s healing oils,
” he thought to himself, as he began rounding up the supplies located throughout the cabin. This task in itself was not an easy one. Moving around basically underground in the dark of the glowing candle to collect items strewn about, with an intense pain that was almost more than he could handle.

Having collected what he believed to be everything he needed, Drake sat down at the main table they used for making weapons and eating meals during the cold months. Drake lit another beeswax candle he and Uncle had made from last year’s abundant supply that was gathered from their colony of hives kept in the orchard. Each handmade candle being four inches around and three inches tall would provide several hours of both heat and light. Right now it was the heat that interested Drake.

Placing the candle inside of a baking pan they used for roasting meals, he lit the wick that was also handmade from multiple braided strands of a willow tree. The light of the second candle now burning on the small table was enough to cause Tomek to roll back over and face the wall while grumbling about the girl again in his sleep.

Drake then placed a small, six-inch terracotta flower pot they had used to grow a tomato plant the previous summer upside-down over the top of the candle with the rim resting on top of pan sides, allowing air to flow through the pan and up under the pot. Placing a Petoskey stone on top of the small hole in the pot kept the flame’s heat inside, causing it to quickly heat up the exterior of the pot itself.

Grabbing a larger terracotta pot, Drake again placed it upside-down over the smaller pot with the rim also resting on the sides of the pan. Leaving the small one inch hole on the bottom of the larger pot uncovered forced an abundance of hot air inside the pots to exit through it. The hot air that aggressively escaped through the second pot’s hole was replaced by air being drawn in from the bottom and rushing to feed the flame. This caused the unit to produce a soft but constant roaring “hiss” upon reaching the perfect internal temperature.

The simple homemade convection torch was, of course, taught to them by Uncle for times when they needed to centralize a direct heat source. The air escaping the top hole could quickly turn a metal rod red hot. Uncle used this method any time he may have needed to melt lead to fix a tool or for heating steel while forging knives.

With the terracotta pot convection oven now putting out heat at full capacity, Drake enjoyed the extra warmth it added to the room as he began separating fresh wintergreen leaves he had stored in a jar from their stems. Placing the small wintergreen pieces into a bowl as he ripped them up, Drake savored the fragrance they emitted. However, it was not the fragrance he was after.

Uncle and the boys had spent many hours walking in the woods collecting anything they were to find that may be useful along the way. Wintergreen was one of their most sought-after items. Chewing on the tasty leaves alone was a pleasure, but their real magic was held inside of the leafy stems themselves. Grinding and boiling the leaves released menthol. Menthol was very useful to them for many skin ailments, including rashes and the occasional simple sunburn. Upon coming into contact with the skin, the menthol would open the pores, providing an almost instant cooling sensation.