Twins of Prey (3 page)

“This trash does not belong in my woods,” Tomek bitterly said to himself as he smoothed out the turkey feather fletching on the knocked arrow.

The Hunter, oblivious to the fact that he was not alone, stood at the drop off near the bank and admired his kill from above. A perfect eight-point buck, majestic and powerful, a true trophy lay below him. And as Drake had figured, the Hunter then made his way down river for about 300 yards until a feasible spot to climb down was found.

Tomek slowly moved to the spot that the hunter vacated once he headed down river to get on the bank. It provided the perfect ambush from above.

“Prey feels the safest in places it knows,” Tomek remembered Uncle telling him. “Kill him in his home and he will die without knowing.”

Because the hunter had just left that ridge, he most likely would not look up above when he returned to the area. Tomek was right where Uncle would have wanted him to be.

Drake sat motionless until he heard the unmistakable clash of boots in the water fighting against the current. The hunter may as well have been banging pots and pans together as he approached. The blue shirt and orange vest were easy to pick out against the river bank for Drake, as well. Drake positioned perfectly with the deer between himself and the brightly dressed man. Suddenly, he began to second-guess his trap as at 15 yards the hunter stopped abruptly, shouldered his gun and aimed it directly at Drake. Frozen in place, Drake’s only hope was that the man was surveying the dead buck to see if it needed a follow-up shot. Drake closed his eyes and tuned in his senses to stay as still as possible.

Click.

The sound of the safety being released could mean only one thing. The hunter was ready to shoot, but what was the hunter going to shoot at? Every inch of his body told him to run, run fast, run away. Yet Uncle's voice in his head told him otherwise.

“Stay, hold tight, trust your surroundings. Be the snake, not the mouse.”

Drake sat with his eyes still closed, slowed his heart rate with deep breaths and the next sound he heard was a familiar one.

Shheeewww........Thhwwwwaaap!

Drake opened his eyes, surprised to see the hunter on his knees and falling down, face-first into the river bank. The arrow had entered behind his right eye in the temple and exited his lower jaw, where it lodged into the clavicle. There was no sound from the hunter as the river turned red with blood from the gaping wound the sharpened, razor-like flint stone head had created. The world fell silent again and Drake had never been so happy to have a brother who could shoot like that.

––––––––

T
he boys stood over the hunter, silently surveying the body.

“
Who was he?”
Drake pondered.
“Why did he come to us? Did he have a family, and was he going to shoot me or the deer
?”

“We need to burn him, gut the buck and send his boat downstream,” Tomek said nonchalantly, breaking the silence.

Drake agreed, but it was not what Tomek said that caught his attention. That is, in fact, what Uncle would have told them to do. It was how cold, simple and calculated it was delivered by Tomek. This man was just an animal to Tomek. Drake did not spend too much time worrying about the change in his brother and laughed to himself, “
At least Tomek does not want to eat him
.”

While dragging the carcasses back to their fire pit, Tomek recollected how the stalk through the orchard happened and admitted that even he could not see Drake inside the tangles of wood, seaweed and rocks. Drake realized that Tomek had no idea he was saving his brother’s life and Drake was not sure if that was a good thing or not. Drake knew that Tomek killing a man to save his own brother is much different than Tomek killing the man just to do it.

“I found his blind and his pack,” Tomek said. “It was loaded pretty full. We need to go back and see if there are any supplies we can use. And now we have a gun.”

“You know what Uncle said about guns,” Drake quickly retorted. His concern was met with a reply that was truer at this moment than any before.

“Well, Uncle is not here, now is he?”

No, he was not there. Yet Drake remembered back to the many talks they had about firearms with Uncle.

“It is better to silently hunt with the disadvantage of a handheld weapon than to easily kill with the blast of a gun,” Uncle had said around the fire pit many a night. “There is no honor in killing with a gun.”

Until this day, Drake never really realized how true that lesson was. For the simple fact that if the hunter had killed the buck with a bow, the twins would be still be sleeping.

The dead hunter's wet clothes weighed him down as the twins turned the river bend just before their camp. Exhausted from the double drag job of both the man and the deer, the boys were not concentrating as they normally would on their stealth. This allowed neither to notice the canoe missing upon their return.

Drake dropped the man at the banks of the river and removed his clothes while Tomek went back to the orchard to retrieve the hunter’s pack. They had been taught to utilize as much as they could from a kill and this would be no different.

“Clothing is not natural and burns different than wood,” Uncle would warn them. “Never burn anything that is unnatural. The smell and the color of the smoke could alert someone to your whereabouts. Campfires are often ignored but trash burn piles never are.”

Drake was now hearing Uncle’s voice more and more each day as the logic behind the lessons they were taught became abundantly clearer.

The body was covered in driftwood as Drake ignited the tender kindling he had set as a base layer. It did not take long for the warmth of the blaze to radiate on his dark, blood-stained skin. Drake figured Tomek would see the smoke and return soon to enjoy the fire. Kneeling at the river edge to scoop up some water and begin to rinse his body, he saw Tomek’s reflection in the river. Drake anxiously turned around to see what kind of gear his brother had returned with.

Boom!

The bullet had grazed Drake’s cheek and removed the lower part of his left ear. Drake found himself now lying in the river, flat on his back. He lifted his head and deciphered the blurred figure. The hunter was alive and stood with his blue flannel shirt, orange vest and pants back on, grasping a shiny silver handgun, which was shaking in his right hand. The hunter yelled at Drake, but Drake could not make out the words. The sound of the running water mixed with an intense ringing in his ears only allowed him to see the hunter’s mouth moving. Drake attempted to get up, struggling onto one knee. Not knowing for sure if he was dizzy from the shot or if he was already dead.

The feeling of the gun barrel pressed against his temple was one he knew he would never forget, especially if his life was about to end. The cold metal pierced through his hair as it pressed against his skin. He looked down into the river watching the blood run down from his ear and cheek and disappear into the current of the river. Drake's hearing partially returned in time to hear the click of the revolver's rolling drum magazine, which seemed surprisingly loud next to his damaged ear.

With the barrel held tight to his head, he could feel the hunter’s hand quivering almost uncontrollably. Drake knew now was his moment as he heard Uncle’s voice.

“Never close your eyes just before you kill a man, that is the moment when your weakness will be seen. The snake has open eyes when he strikes the mouse!”

Without looking, Drake knew the hunter’s eyes were closed. If the hunter was a capable killer, Drake would already be dead. Drake reached to his left ankle under the water and removed the tactical knife from its holster. With his grip firm on the leather-wrapped handle, he rolled forward, swinging his leg down behind the knees of the hunter. In one fluid and fast motion, Drake reached across, grasped the hunter's waist and pulled him backwards over the leg trap. As the hunter fell backwards into the water, the shot rang off,

Boom!

The round fired harmlessly into the sky as Drake looked into the hunter's eyes now from above. Drake kept his eyes open and drove the knife deep into the hunter’s heart. He drew the blade from the man’s chest in a split second, and as quickly as he felt the knife clear the man’s ribs, Drake slashed the man's throat.

Drake pushed the enemy's dangling head underwater to finish him off while standing to his feet. He looked to his left and could make out the vague figure of a second body with his blurred vision. Alongside the fire, wearing the original blue flannel shirt was Tomek. In the fire was a body, but whose body? Drake knew he had just killed the same man Tomek had shot with the bow. Drake had seen his face close up and looked into his eyes as he died both times.

Tomek walked out into the knee-deep water where Drake stood and took his brother's head to his shoulder. Tomek then spoke softly and directly into his undamaged right ear.

“We killed twins.”

––––––––

S
itting by the raging fire with the two bodies for fuel, the twins began to inventory the hunter's pack that was left in the orchard. Plenty of canned food rations, fruit, trail mix and powdered eggs, all of which was quickly burned.

Tomek and Drake survived on their
After 5. Stay Alive
mantra to the extreme. This included not scavenging others' meal supplies. Drake was happy to find knives, both big and small as well as their matching sheaths. He was particularly fond of the wood-handled six-inch Rapala fillet knife in the pack, knowing that cleaning fish would now be much easier. The rest of the pack contained an assortment of money, deer tags and ammunition.

Also in the pack was a yellow satellite cellular phone. The twins were aware of phones and the general capabilities they possessed. Uncle had been in the woods so long before the day he found the twins even he was uneducated about the overall technological power of the small cellular devices.

“This is cool,” Tomek said while pushing random buttons on the unit and finding amusement in the different tones it produced. “We should keep it”

“First a gun and now a phone thingy? Really, Tomek?”

Drake was not exactly thrilled about the idea of keeping either item, but he knew what battles to pick and choose when dealing with his brother.

“The rifle we should keep, just in case that bear cub is around again,” Drake said, pointing to Tomek’s backside.

Two years ago Tomek had a nasty encounter with a bear cub and Drake relentlessly found pleasure in bringing it up as often as he could. Tomek had landed the cub in a leg hold trap meant for a fox and was trying to release the cub and set it free when he got a nice claw swipe across his ass cheek. Of course Tomek was too proud to let his brother care for his butt wounds, leaving him with an infection that would heal, but not without leaving quite the scar.

“At least the scar isn’t on my face there, ear boy,” Tomek snapped back.

“
Damn it. Good point,
“Drake thought to himself, as to not give Tomek any credit for the quick retort.

“If I ever see that bear again I am going to get this rifle out and shoot him in the ass!” Tomek quipped as both boys laughed.

It was the first time they had smiled together since Uncle’s death. Tomek soon grew bored with the yellow beeping cell phone and tossed it into the river.

“Time to crush some bones,” Tomek said with a sigh. It was the first time Drake heard his brother speak negatively regarding any process of the killing of the hunters. Of course he figured it was more about the fact that they now had some actual work to do.

The scorched bones were pulled from the fire pit and placed one by one onto a large, flat riverside boulder they often referred to as the whale rock due to its shape and how it emerged from the water line. Not that either boy had ever seen a whale, but Uncle explained the way the breached the water in order to breath from their blow holes. Drake as a child had drawn a face on it with a piece of sodium limestone mixed with crushed mulberries. Uncle sternly made him stand in the chest deep 40-degree water the next day to wash it off. A cold lesson learned.

The boys took turns dropping the heaviest rocks they could find onto the bones, piece by piece. Breaking them up into unrecognizable flakes and tossing them into the river. With one rib bone left, Tomek stopped his brother.

“This one is mine,” Tomek said, picking up the black and grey charcoal-covered rib. “My trophy.”

Drake rolled his eyes, knowing that Tomek was always the one who cared about antlers on a deer or the size of a fish. He guessed this kill was no different. Tomek had to have his trophy.

The next morning they awoke and enjoyed their pancake griddle breakfast with some blueberries that they had collected back in the late summer. It was a quiet September morning with the perfect amount of crispness in the air. The summer months were ending and the last fly hatch of the year was about to happen, meaning the day would be spent trout fishing and smoking the meat to preserve it for the bitter winter months ahead.

The next few weeks the twins spent nearly every minute of the day together. The schedule of separating tasks was dropped and both agreed upon what the day’s activities would be. This time of the year the twins were much like a bear before hibernation, gathering food and putting on fat for the long sleep ahead. The corn was to be picked as well as the last of the other summer vegetables. This included canning what was to be saved. The orchards were full of fruit that was picked and enjoyed by both equally.

Hundreds of pounds of apples were stored in the underground cellar. The cool temperature underground kept the stash from spoiling. A fresh crisp apple could be had on a cold January day. It was always one of the few bright spots during the dreary days of winter. Fresh apples and corn were also the best winter baits for their deer pit traps. Multiple deer every year fell into the pits attempting to feast on the small bounty of apples the twins had laid out for them on top of the false fern-covered floor surrounding the main garden.