by V. K. Ludwig
Clan of the Woodlands
The Jerk
V. K. Ludwig
Copyright © 2019 by V. K. Ludwig
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictional. Any similarities to real people or organizations are coincidental and not intended by the author.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 1
This book is recommended for mature readers due to adult content, graphic scenes and inappropriate language.
For the best reading experience, please see below for the order of books in this series:
Clan of the Woodlands:
#1 The Bastard
#2 The Innocent
#3 The Chieftain
#4 The Jerk
#5 The Husband
Chapter 2
… somewhere outside the District’s gate
Adair
Trails of old heat drifted from the black soil surrounding us, fine particles of ash swirling around at each step we took. Wherever the pastor was, it wasn’t here.
The dead, white embers clung to West’s dark skin and left his face speckled-looking in the cold light of my headlamp.
“I still don’t get why you made us walk down here.” He pushed two fingers into the collar of his jacket and rubbed the area along his neckline. “You said Rowan wants the scouts to observe from the tree-line. If someone spots us out here, there’s no cover left to hide.”
A few trees had remained, their trunks covered in a black crust at the bottom which turned from gray to white the farther up my eyes went.
Their needles had either gone up in flames or hung curled from blackened twigs. Branches loomed over us, naked and weak, threatening to fall and deal concussions at any moment now. The wind remained still, yet the trees creaked and moaned.
I walked to the center of the smoldered area and placed my hand on the small boulder. Still warm. “Because all we can see from the forest is a big, burned area. The satellite photos showed us that much already. I’m not leaving here until we found pastor William or at least a clue.”
“Well, there’s no damn pastor here I can tell you that. What exactly are we looking for, then?”
I shoved the ash around with the flat of my boots. The little flakes roiled into the night, soon chaffing the skin along my collar and arms. “Pots and pans. Parts of a tent, silverware, or water containers. Anything made of iron, aluminum, silver, so go tell Glenn to get the detector out, or it’ll take us forever. We need to be out of here before the sun comes up.”
“I’m on it,” he said and walked over to the other scout.
They began hovering the metal detector from left to right across the ground, the static rustle sending shivers down my sweaty spine. A dark feeling brooded over this area, sustained by the sulfurous odor which clung to the damp, caked ash.
I pointed to the area behind them. “Check close to the trees as well. If someone had a camp here, it should’ve been over there.”
I walked the range in a spiral starting from the center, leaving behind walls of soil and ash as I shoved my feet through the layers.
A hollow thump crept into my ears, and the tip of my boot excavated a long branch. It rose and stood there in all its length for the fraction of a second, dusted gray and frail-looking, then fell back into the ash.
A flicker of my headlamp stroked its surface, sending the pit of my stomach into a twitch. The more I stared at it, the more this thing turned from powder-gray to off-white, with rounded parts at the edges. It almost appeared as if it belonged to something, like a key which joined into a lock we hadn’t found yet. No branch ever did that.
I kneeled down beside the object but didn’t dare to pick it up. With a rag from my backpack, I rubbed the surface off the ash, and tiny pores came into view. The more I cleaned it, the more bile pushed onto the back of my tongue, turning my mouth bitter and my mood black.
A loud beep ripped my eyes off it and let them dart to Glenn and West, who had stopped in their tracks to let their fingers rake through the ground.
“We got something.” West shoveled soil back and forth, then rubbed his fingers against each other. “Looks silver like a coin or, no…”
“What is it?”
His moonlit outline held something in the palm of his hand, my headlamp doing little to offer more clues. Glenn leaned over his shoulder, cocking his head from one side to the other, both their eyes examining their find.
“A small cross,” West said.
“For a necklace or bracelet,” Glenn added. “Look! It had that small loop down there for a chain or thin rope.”
“Bring that thing over here.” I pushed myself up, my knees weaker than I liked. “I found something as well.”
They stood and walked over to me, their eyes still glued to the tiny, silver object. West stretched out his palm, and I took the cross between my fingers, fully intact but with streaks of deep copper and emerald blotching the surface.
“You think it belonged to the pastor?” West asked. “This is a Christian cross, isn’t it? Didn’t you say pastors are Christians?”
“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean it belonged to him. Max should be able to confirm if this was his or not. Put it in a bag and make sure you won’t lose it.”
“Maybe a fire broke out, and he had to leave in a hurry and dropped it? Why else would he leave it behind?” Glenn asked.
“I’m not so sure he left this behind.” I pointed at the dug-up object next to me on the ground. “And there’s a chance it belonged to someone else.”
West’s headlamp touched the porous surface, now all the more revealing what it truly was. He shuffled back a step, his eyes bulging from their sockets. “Is that a bone?”
I grabbed in front of my chest and pulled the gun from my holster, then kneeled down once more and turned the bone around with its barrel. “Uh-huh. A femur, to be precise.”
“The pastors?”
“I doubt it, but it’s definitely from an adult. The joint circumference is rather small compared to the length. And the angle tells me this belonged to a woman.”
“Are you sure?” Glenn asked.
“No.” I flipped my backpack onto my chest, rested it on my thigh, and pulled out one of the shirts I brought with me, just in case. I picked up the bone between the fabric and wrapped it tight before I carefully placed it in the big compartment. “That’s what I remember from my human anatomy class, but it’s been a while. Hazel should be able to tell us if it belonged to a female, or if it might be pastor William’s.”
Glenn flung a hand onto his mouth and turned away, but there was no hiding how he suppressed that one swallow which would send him barfing all over the place. In the end, it pushed over the rims, and he ran toward the trees, pieces of undigested dinner dripping from his fingers.
&nb
sp; West lowered his face, the way he sucked in his cheeks the only visible thing remaining. “An accident, perhaps?”
“In an open area like this?” My shaky voice lent itself as the prequel of a sad truth. “This was a big fire, but not big enough to burn a corpse down to the bone. No, considering how much fuel it takes to keep that much heat up, I can tell you this wasn’t an accident. Someone helped.”
“The council?”
“Anything could have happened here. Get Glenn some water so he can clean himself up. We can’t go back until we have more clues.”
I continued on my spiral path, each step turning the air inside my lungs dry, and depleted by whatever fire had raged here only a few days ago.
This place made the hairs along my arms stand up straight as any fresh battlefield would, but it looked nothing like it and lacked the smell of iron and the blood nourishing the soil.
There were no signs of struggle. No bullets in the trees or dull blades frozen into the ground.
Just silence.
And a darkness looming over the area which spread even farther than the burnt borders, the bit of wind we had whistling through the few branches, with no shrubbery left to tame it.
“Did we bring shovels?” I shouted over to the scouts and tracked the ground for hints.
Disturbed soil.
Traces of digging.
Anything.
“Nope,” Glenn responded, still holding one hand close to his mouth as if the nausea hadn’t receded yet. A clear indicator he might stay on as a scout for life.
Reality quickly caught up with everyone who ventured beyond the territory of our Clan — not everyone could stomach it.
“I should have thought of that,” I said. “Why would there be a single bone in the center? Where is the rest of whoever this person was?”
Glenn looked up from the display of the metal detector and gave a loaded cough. “You don’t think someone ate this lady, do you?”
“Nah, I never heard of anything like that happening. We have a lack of women, man, not a lack of food.”
He repeatedly nodded as if the movement reassured and calmed him at the same time. “Right. Good. It’s good you never heard of anything like that before.”
“How’s it looking over there by the trees? Nothing else other than the cross?”
“Nada,” West said, lazily pushing his boots across the surface as if he had no intention of finding anything else. I couldn’t blame him. “Chieftain Rowan should send some fighters down here and —”
“Shut up,” I said and pointed at the dirt. “Down. Down. Everyone down. Flat on the ground. Lights out!”
The rapid movement sent a swirl of ash into my eyes, turning the scheme of a vehicle into nothing but a moving shadow.
“Who’s got the Pathfinder?” I asked.
“I got it,” came back from West.
“Vehicle ahead one-o’clock. Tell me what you see.”
“Ehh…” He fumbled through his gear. “A truck.”
“I know that, shithead. What kind? Got a grill guard or anything on top? What’s the model?”
“It’s got a flatbed, but no grill in the front and nothing on top. Looks like a Sierra to me but I could be wrong. They’re slowing down.”
With each mile the truck slowed, my pulse picked up twice the speed and pumped adrenaline through my veins. Nobody wanted to see a vehicle out here, but especially not one that was slowing down.
“Nobody moves an inch. How many hours of weapon training did you get?”
“Forty-two,” West said.
Glenn released a deep sigh. “Eleven.”
I almost laughed at Glenn’s number. Then the truck came to a full stop less than nine-hundred feet in front of us, and my heart boomed away in my ears.
“Pull back low crawl,” it burst out of me. “Keep your heads down and shut up.”
I shoved myself back over the ground, keeping my limbs low and my head even lower. Layers of ash rode up against the hem of my jacket. They spilled over the threads and rubbed themselves onto my stomach, covering my skin in what might have been someone’s hair, or shirt or flesh at some point.
“What now?” Glenn whispered from somewhere behind me.
“Sh.” I jerked my arm around and fanned my hand over the ground, gesturing him to keep down.
A breeze carried over their voices as they left their vehicle, too far to be distinguishable, but too close for me to ignore how my limbs turned bloodless and numb. They must have seen us, or they wouldn’t have stopped.
They brought out a floodlight and hooked it to the side of the door, the bright cone searching the ground in front of us. I glanced over my shoulder. Our truck stood right there, less than thirty feet behind the burnt trees. As soon as their light strayed the rims, we would be exposed.
“Truck,” I whispered and gestured my hand in a circular motion. “Go around and get in the truck. Stay down.”
We continued our retreat, but the floodlight inched up on us with each sway it took. Deep-chested laughs hollered our way, only overwhelmed by the blasting music they had turned on.
I dug my hands into the dirt and fell back by another few inches, my stomach dragging over grit and what must have been a smooth rock. It pressed cold against my naked skin, driving a shudder deep into my core.
Then it cut me.
I pressed my mouth onto my sleeve and hollered a “Fuck me!” into the thick layers of fabric.
“What the hell happened?” West whispered, and both scouts halted their movements.
“Something cut me.” I lifted my weight off the wound and let my hand wander down my torso, my fingertips soon touching the slippery layer of blood.
“How bad is it?” Glenn asked.
I lifted my stomach off the ground some more and gazed down at myself. “Hard to say. I don’t think the cut is very big, but that motherfucker got in deep. Keep backing up and wait in the truck for me. Don’t start the engine until I tell you and get your weapons ready.”
The sound of their bodies chaffing the ground told me they had set back into motion. Whatever sharp corner protruded from the rock seemed hooked into my skin. With each breath I took, the grit and ash inside the wound sent a burning sensation along the side of my body.
I let my hand search for the rock, placed my palm over it, and sent my fingers out to find the sharp culprit. They wandered over a smooth surface and met the occasional groove, one of them letting the flesh of my fingertip sink in like a mold.
Three seconds later, my thumb found the offender. A pointy end pressed into my fingertip, almost like a shard. I traced along the knifelike edge.
Then my thumb disappeared inside the rock.
The darkness which had loomed over this area crept under my skin and paralyzed my body.
Panic choked my breath.
With my hand resting on the object so it couldn’t cut me again I crawled back, my head a bit too high and my limbs a bit too shaky.
And there in front of me, underneath my palm, rested a skull so small, my hand enclosed it almost entirely.
It hadn’t been there before, but my body dragging across the ground must have revealed it. The foreboding silence around us wormed itself into my ears, making the whistles of the wind and the moans of the trees fade into a different reality.
The moonlight barely touched its razor-sharp edges, almost as if the rays knew better than me and avoided being cut. Blunt force had left a jagged hole behind, hairline cracks spreading from it all over the skull.
Nausea swept up from my stomach. A few days ago, I might have stroked the hair of a boy. Now my thumb rested inside his head.
Panic tugged on my legs and arms, and I wiggled myself back until the sole of my boot hit against the rim of our truck.
Light touched my fingertips.
A shout hollered from twelve-o’clock.
“Start the truck,” I yelled and pushed myself up on all fours.
No need for hiding anymore.
My
knees buckled underneath me. First one, then the other. The engine roared up right beside me. I pulled myself up on the hood and dragged my paralyzed body around it.
Shouts grew louder, and the floodlight blinded my eyes. A hand pulled me into the truck and pushed me onto the passenger seat, then the tires spun on the slick ash for a moment before our truck set into motion.
West turned our truck around and stepped on the gas, his gun resting on his left leg which he bounced up and down in a fast jitter.
A shot fired.
Less than a second later, the rear window of our cabin crumbled into tiny shards.
“Heads down,” I yelled.
Glenn rolled himself into the foot space, his head cradled underneath his arms. I grabbed my gun, turned around onto my knees, and fired three shots through our broken rear window.
If I hit anything, I couldn’t tell. Most likely not, because their truck had quickly caught up with us, and its lights illuminated our cabin.
“Turn around,” I shouted at West. “You’re driving toward the District’s gate.”
West made a turn which scrambled me against my door and made Glenn cry out in panic. The moment we headed north, the cabin turned pitch black once more.
“They stopped,” West said, the reflection of his eyeballs in the rear mirror the only speck of white.
Their truck grew smaller behind us, until the only thing left to see were their headlights, turning on and off, sending alternating flashes of light. Short, short, short. Long. Long, long, long. Short. Long, Long. Then short.
Chapter 3
The Woodlands