I liked the knives. I found a few good pocketknives. They went into my pack.
But what I really liked were the few bows and arrows we found. Danny and the other boys couldn’t pull them, but I could. I guess I’d built up some muscle with all the archery practice I’d done.
I thought about taking a sweet little compound bow hunting with me, but it was too noisy. My homemade bow didn’t shoot as hard or as fast, but it was much, much quieter. I did keep every single arrow I found though, all twenty-three of them. Those would be useful, although they were aluminum and made more noise when drawn than my homemade arrows.
I found a pistol I liked. It was a Beretta .22, the one with the tip up barrel. It fit into my right pants pocket like it was made for it. I found a box of .22 long rifle cartridges, loaded the pistol, set the safety, and stuck it in my pocket. The revolver from Al’s cabin stayed in my pack, although I was thinking of finding a holster for it.
Three days later, I found a holster that fit the revolver. That night I strung the holster on my belt and left it there. The next morning, I left to search for seed with Danny feeling like a total badass carrying two loaded pistols, and, of course, my bow and arrows. Danny was mad cause Mr. Johns wouldn’t let him carry a gun even though he was the same age as me.
I was hunting by myself just outside town when I heard men talking. I shushed Sackett and crept towards the voices, leaving Sackett to wait out of sight.
I was hidden under a thick bush, lying flat on the ground. I could see the men now. There were four of them. One was Tolliver.
“Yeah, that little bitch from the cabin was good, good and tight,” Tolliver said.
“I enjoyed that one almost as much as when we had that lady and her two girls right here in town,” the man gestured toward town.
“The third man, a big muscular and filthy fellow wearing torn jeans and Al’s jacket said, “I enjoyed the littlest girl most of all,” he paused and grinned, “and I really liked killing her.”
That was it. I rose to my feet, nocked, drew, and released an arrow without conscious thought. My arrow took the filthy man wearing Al’s jacket square in the throat. He gasped, gurgled and collapsed. The others had hardly reacted before I was running away through the woods.
I collected Sackett and we got the hell out of there. I covered our tracks, then went into a stream and waded for over a mile before climbing out of the water onto a rock outcrop. I had to drag Sackett up on the rocks by his collar, but he didn’t mind. From there we hightailed it to a defensible campsite I knew.
What had I done? I’d killed a man. There was no doubt of that, not like the time I shot at Tolliver and put one through the skin over his ribs. This arrow hit exactly where I pictured placing it, and the light went out in the man’s eyes before he even fell. He was dead. Of that, I was certain.
Yes, I’d killed a man, the man who had killed my little sister. As I sat there I just got madder and madder. I thought killing a man would upset me much more than this, and maybe it would later. But right now I was just mad I hadn’t killed all of them. It was a side of myself I’d never experienced. Now I knew what Al had been going through.
I decided, consciously this time, to kill the rest of them for what they had done to my family, and to the Kingcades. Hell, I was a Kingcade now too.
It never once occurred to me that other people would think me foolish, a boy not yet grown, vowing to kill three men, dangerous men who had killed many people.
I never, even though I watched lots of horror films, thought of myself as being someone who could take a human life. Now I understood. If the circumstances were right, anyone could and would kill. It was something to remember.
More important was planning how I was going to kill the three men. Should I attack quickly, or give them time to let their guard down?
The arrow I had used was one I found in one of the houses. I didn’t think they’d believe it was me who shot the filthy man, not yet. Give them time. They’d learn.
Chapter 20
I stayed put with Sackett for two days, then I went looking for Tolliver and his men. I thought I’d feel bad about killing the man who killed my sister, but I slept great and had no bad dreams at all. I felt something changing in me. There was a confidence I never had before. It felt good. I just hoped I wasn’t being a damned fool.
When me and Sackett returned to where I’d killed the man, we found Tolliver and the other two men gone. The body of the man I shot was still lying where he died and the buzzards were picking at him. The man’s friends hadn’t even stopped to bury him before they ran, cause that’s exactly what the tracks showed. They ran.
I left the dead man where he was. I certainly didn’t respect him enough to bury him. The tracks led back to town. I lost them on a sidewalk leading to the richer part of town. Sackett didn’t need tracks. He had his nose.
Sackett led me to a house in the better part of town. It was two or three times the size of the house I grew up in.
“Are they in there, Sackett?” I whispered.
Sackett just gave me a blank look and lay down. So I sat and watched the house. No one came out that evening, but there was a lantern burning in one of the rooms and smoke rising from a chimney.
Late the next morning I saw Tolliver and two of his minions exit the building. They were both heavily-armed and headed for the poor part of town. After they were gone, I slipped into the house and searched it. It was empty. I looked in the garage where, near a dead Buick, I found a small can of gasoline. I carefully poured out the kerosene from the three glass lanterns I found in the living room, and replaced it with gasoline. I had no idea if anything would happen when they lit the lanterns, but I could hope. All I knew was that we had a kerosene lantern and my dad said never to use gasoline in it.
The living room was a mess and smelled sour and shitty, shitty like poop. I assumed the men were sleeping in this room because it had a fireplace.
Before I left, I crawled onto the roof from an upper window and stuffed a couple of sheets into the chimney vent.
Yeah, it was childish of me, but my goal was simply to make them angry. Angry men lose the ability to think clearly. King taught me that and I’d learned that lesson myself when I involuntarily loosed the arrow into my sister’s killer's throat.
Now I was gonna be cool, calm, and collected, whatever the fuck that meant. I wasn’t gonna do anything without thinking it out beforehand. And I had thought about it a lot. I was gonna kill those three men. I reckon my Mom wasted her time on me with all those 'ye shall not kill' ten commandments stuff and forced church attendance. Apparently I wasn’t destined to be a preacher.
I followed the men at a distance. Okay, I followed Sackett, who followed the men at a distance. I was curious to see if they had a routine.
Three days later, I knew what it was. Every morning they went into the poor part of town and forced an old couple to feed them. They forced another family to feed them supper. I doubted any of these people had enough to eat themselves.
I went back to the Johns’. They were glad to see me, and the deer meat we brought. Mr. Johns kept asking me to stay, but I never agreed to that, even though I thought I might like to stay. These were good people and I liked them. I liked them a lot. I wasn’t much good at playing anymore, but I enjoyed my time with Danny. He was becoming a friend.
After three days, I gathered my stuff and slipped away after dark. It was time.
By first light I was set up within an easy bow shot of the route the men took to breakfast. I watched as Tolliver and his two loudmouth buds walked past me and Sackett like we were never there. While they were eating breakfast four blocks away, I set up my hide. Hey, I heard it called that in a movie once. I didn’t make it up.
I’d seen some bricks piled in the back yard of the house that owned the bushes I was hiding in. Looking around some more I found a wheelbarrow and a shovel. I dug a hole deep enough to crouch in and lined the top with bricks. I hauled the dirt out of sight.
I dug another hole for Sackett and lined the top of it with bricks too. I hoped the bricks would stop any bullets that angled down into the holes. My math teacher would shit if he knew I actually could use math for a real world problem. I just hoped I got the right answer.
Me and Sackett were in place the next morning. As Tolliver and his men walked past, laughing loudly and taking turns swigging from a bottle of hard stuff, I waited. When the time was right, I stood, drew, and loosed an arrow. It flew straight and took the nearest man in his left side. Only the feathers stuck out of his side. I watched him collapse as I ducked into the hole. It was a kill shot.
Then the other two men began firing in the direction the arrow came from. At first they shot the house. Then the bushes. Then the bushes we were hiding under. It sounded like a war, which it was. They just didn’t know it yet.
I crouched deeper in the hole as bullets shattered the bricks by my head. I felt a burn across my left shoulder and a jolt against my head. Was I shot? I felt blood running down my shoulder and then down my head onto my neck.
I head footsteps and peeked out of my hole. Tolliver and the other man were running away. The man I shot lay where he had fallen. He didn’t move. I remembered when King taught me how to shoot a deer in that spot. He said it worked every time. He was right.
Sackett and I slipped behind the house out of sight. I stopped the blood flowing from my shoulder and head by wrapping them with pieces torn from my shirt. Once I was sure I wasn’t leaving a blood trail, I went back to the Johns', being careful to leave no tracks.
Right now, I was mad at movie writers and producers. In the movies, any old thing would stop a bullet. The lying sacks of shit. Those bullets had smashed the bricks I laid around the rim of the hole to protect me and hit me anyway. I’d been lucky. My knees shook as I realized that I could have been killed.
In spite of all the action movies I’d watched, I realized I knew nothing about protection from bullets. Crap, something else to learn, and without the fucking Internet. Shit, I also noticed that when I fucked up, I cussed more. I guess it was a good thing Mom wasn’t nearby at the moment. Dad didn’t care, he’s the one who taught me all the cuss words. Everybody thought me cussing was cute when I was a baby. Maybe they were drunk or something.
I was feeling kind of weak when I climbed onto the Johns' back porch and knocked. Mr. Johns answered the door with his shotgun in hand.
“Oh my lord. What happened to you, Trevor? You’re bleeding.”
“I got shot.”
“Mrs. Johns, come out here, please.” Mr. Johns pulled my crude bandages off one by one. “Who did this to you, Boy?”
Some men.
“What men?”
“The men that killed my mother and sisters.”
“That’s terrible. Why did they shoot you?”
“Probably because they were trying to kill me before I could kill the rest of them.”
“You killed one of them?”
“Two.” I managed a smile even though the stuff Mrs. Johns was applying to my wounds stung like hot pepper sauce mixed with gasoline. “I got an arrow into one of them this morning. He’s dead, dropped right where I hit him.”
“Was he trying to kill you when you shot him?”
“No, I shot him from ambush.”
“Trevor, that’s murder.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“But it’s murder.”
“Those men also killed the entire family of my friend King, and others too. They rape and kill women for fun, just like they did to my mom and sisters, and Zee.”
Mrs. Johns shuddered. “Kill them then.”
“Mrs. Johns, you know that murder is wrong in the eyes of God. I’m shocked that you, of all people would say that.” Mr. Johns eyes grew dark as he stared at his wife.
“Bub, things have changed and it’s high time you understood that.”
“We must follow God’s laws, woman. We must.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about church laws and such, but if I don’t kill those men, they’re gonna kill someone else, and me if they can catch me. They’re bad men, and there ain't no police to catch them and put them in jail.”
“So you take the law into your own hands?” Mr. Johns said.
“Yes,” I said. “Now it’s every man’s duty to right his own wrongs. There’s no one else who will do it for you.”
“The Bible says to turn the other cheek,” Mr. Johns said as Mrs. Johns finished bandaging the second wound.
“It don’t say to commit suicide,” I said.
“Boy, you are on the edge of heresy. Are you a heathen?”
I smiled. “My mom called me that a lot.”
“I can’t have you in this house, Trevor. You have to leave.”
“There’s a lot of smites and smotes in the Bible, Mr. Johns. Maybe you should reread that part.”
“Get out, you heathen.” Mr. Johns pointed to the road.
“Thanks for the bandages Mrs. Johns.”
“I’ll walk you to the road Trevor.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
Mrs. Johns stopped me at the road. “Mr. Johns is a good man.”
“Yes Ma’am. I know he is.”
“He’s just stressed by the way things are now. He is clinging to the Bible more than he ever did before, much more. I think he would defend us if we are attacked. He loves his family very much.”
“Yes Ma’am, I can see that.”
“Mr. Johns just needs more time to adjust. His mother raised him alone. He never had a father.”
“Yes Ma’am. I understand, and I have no hard feelings.”
“I think you should leave here and get away from the other men. You’re too young for such killing.”
“I’ve thought about it, Ma’am.”
“Then why not do it.”
“Because I’m afraid those men will kill you and yours. You folks have been really nice to me.”
“Oh…”
“Ma’am, I suggest you dig into that box of pistols Mr. Johns put in the rafters in your garage and arm yourself. I think you should carry two pistols, one in the open and another concealed.”
“Oh, I…”
“And I think Danny should as well, and any of the other kids who are old enough.”
“Do you think those men are that bad?”
“Ma’am, you folks have survived this long. You have to know that there are bad people around. What about the raiders you spoke of?”
“Well, yes, of course. But Bub says that those times are over and we should put all fear aside and trust in the Lord.”
“Ma’am, God gave us fear for a good reason.”
“Uh.”
“Use your fear to help you survive. That’s what King taught me.”
“Boy, you need to be moving on now,” Mr. Johns shouted from the porch.
So I turned and walked away. Trying to tell some folks anything could be like talking to a rock.
“Come on, Sackett. Let’s get outta here.”
Sackett walked by my side as we left. Less than a block away from the Johns, we ducked out of sight and traveled through yards and such.
I had a bad headache and my shoulder hurt enough that I wasn’t sure if I could pull a bow. I needed a place to hole up and heal. I patted the pistol on my belt. I was glad I had it now. I didn’t pat the one in my pocket. That would be a tell.
Me and Sackett went back into the forest. I wasn’t running away. I’d find those two men when I was ready. King told me never to court trouble you weren’t ready for. Since I got myself shot, I figured I’d acted precipitously. I wouldn’t do that again, at least I didn’t plan to do that again.
I thought as I walked. Surviving took much, much more thought and planning then I ever suspected it would. It required more focus than I’d ever previously given anything in my life.
Now it seemed that revenge was the same. Without focus, without deep thought and planning, you could get yourself killed. That would sure suck.
I realized I needed to know more about the two men who were my targets. I had no idea how to learn more about them without being killed. But I would figure it out. I had to.
It was a two-day walk for me to get back into the part of the national forest I knew. I felt good when we were there, even though me and Sackett were both getting hungry. I couldn’t pull the bow yet and I was afraid to fire a pistol for fear it would give my location away.
Sackett was disgusted. I could see it in his eyes. Then he got busy and brought me a rabbit. Before I finished gutting, skinning, and cooking the first rabbit, Sackett was back with another. I gathered he was as hungry as I was.
We both fell asleep near the fire. Sometime after midnight, it rained. Then it poured. Sackett and I took a blanket and huddled against the trunk of a big oak tree. At least it was warmer now. We wouldn’t freeze, but it was still a miserable night. In my concentration on how to kill the two men, I forgot to watch the weather signs.
We dried out by the fire, and, by daylight, were on our way. All around us, the birds were singing under a sky so blue it seemed unreal. It would soon be spring.
Sackett and I visited the tunnel camp, the cabin, and my stash near the dead man’s trailer and recovered supplies and stuff useful in a long term camp. I thought it might take as long as two months before I was ready to go after the men again. No need to be miserable during the wait.
Chapter 21
Me and Sackett set up camp at another rock overhang on the edge of the area I was familiar with. It was a good spot, two hundred yards from a creek, and with a view through the trees of a large meadow, tinted by the first dandelions of spring. In a few days I’d dig a bunch of dandelion roots, and cook some of the greens with deer meat. King said they were good to eat, but the greens could be bitter unless you took just the tender tips of the leaves. The meadow was maybe twenty acres. I’d be able to find more dandelions than I wanted.
EMP (Book 3): 12 Years Old and Alone Page 16