“Good. Glad we’ve got that figured out.”
“But,” Grace pressed, “I also know you could have just as easily killed me the second I was pushed through that door. You could kill me right now, and for some reason, you haven’t.”
“He hasn’t yet.” One of the other, previously silent men slithered into the conversation.
Max shrugged apathetically after giving his underling a dirty look. “Maybe I’m keeping you around for my amusement.” He tapped himself on the temple with his index finger. “Or maybe I’m trying to mess with your head, Grace. Ever think of that?”
“I would know it if you were,” remarked Grace, her stare firm. “Over the years, my experience has made me sort of an expert on the deed.”
“Very well,” Max relented. “You know what? Screw it…what’s the use? I’ll level with you, Grace. There are about a half-dozen reasons why we’re here right now, and the biggest one—the one that’s been causing me the most headaches, is survival. Winter is fast approaching, and I don’t have near enough food for my people to endure it…not to mention our shelter situation bites the big one.”
“Having a roof over your head is one thing, but if you came here for food, I hope you’re not too disappointed with what you found.”
Max cleared his throat. “I can tell you all aren’t exactly thriving,” he said. “Not sure what happened to all of it; maybe you’re hiding it. Maybe you buried it somewhere for safekeeping. If you did, we’ll find it eventually. Fact remains, you’re still doing a hell of a lot better than we ever did…I don’t think the boys have ever had it this good.” He glanced at his men. “Stomachs full?”
The other men at the table nodded in unison.
“See? It may be a little food to you, but a little food goes a long way when you’ve been living on scraps for months on end.”
“So that’s it?”
Max cocked his head inquisitively. “No, not quite,” he replied. “I’m also interested in the vehicles you have here…as well as the fuel it takes to run them. And—”
“Women?”
“There’s that sass again. Something on your mind you wanna divulge?”
Grace rolled her lips. “I couldn’t help but notice that we’ve been separated by gender. And, aside from the sick at the Masons’ across the road, I haven’t seen any of the other men around. And a girl is missing. A blond girl about five years younger than me. Her name’s—”
“I’ll look into it,” Max said with apathy, holding up a finger. “Certain behaviors are intolerable, but it’s difficult to herd feral cats, Grace, especially when they’re…hungry. And my men are hungry, feral cats.” He paused. “Your men are being kept separate because they have a tendency to cause the most ruckus, while the fairer sex…well, let’s just say your type tends to be more…submissive.”
“Not all of us,” Grace rasped.
“So I’m gathering,” said Max, then paused. “I don’t know if you realize it or not…maybe you’ve been absent, unconscious, or something. Who knows? But there’s been a little war going on between your people and mine for about the past year or so, and it all started when some of my men came by looking for a bite to eat. They were told to leave by having guns pointed at them. Then they were shot without any further warning, and a few of them died from their injuries. And my brother was one of them.”
Grace’s forehead puckered. “Oh…I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you, Grace? Are you? Because I had to become a husband as well as a father that day. My brother left a family behind,” Max said, his tone gaining fervor. “With no one else left to watch over them, it had to be me. I did the best I could…not ever having been a family man. And his wife…boy, did she have issues. She was on medication for some mental illness—manic depression, paranoia, something along those lines. When the meds ran out, she started doing the strangest things…like taking walks by herself in the woods. Sometimes they were short little jaunts; other times she’d be gone for days.”
Grace cocked her head to the side. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to understand that you and your friends living here are not the only ones dealing with a set of problems,” said Max, folding his arms. “Things escalated quite a bit between our groups a few months back when we had another little run-in, and even more of my people were killed. And since then…since that day…” He trailed off as if a thought had entered his mind that seemed to cause him a distinct level of discomfort. “Since that last little…incursion, some of our own remain missing, in particular…some of my own. Namely, my brother’s crazy widow and her daughter. My niece, Isabel.”
Grace’s lips set in a grim line as the narrative began to pull on her heartstrings. “I…wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Max’s brows knitted. “You were living here then, were you not?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“You didn’t move here last week, did you?”
“No.”
“Then how could you not?”
Grace hesitated. “We don’t aim a gun at anyone unless it’s called for. Unless we have to.”
“Funny how that works,” said Max, snapping his fingers. “We’re not so different, you and I, your people and mine. We all…do what we have to do. All things being equal, if it weren’t for our little error in judgement, going on vacation right when the shit hit the fan, we would’ve never been in this mess, and we probably would never have bothered any of you. As luck would have it, though, this valley of yours was right next door and has proven itself to be the land of plenty, at least up until recently, for some reason. Either way, we have come to claim what’s rightfully ours after so much was taken from us. And now that we’ve claimed it, it belongs to us. It belongs to me. All of it.”
Chapter 21
Town of Edinburg
Shenandoah County, Virginia
Thursday, December 2nd
Sasha’s head was pounding. After experiencing what it had been like to have a 9mm bullet strike her in the head, the pain was an alarmingly familiar feeling to her. It startled her at first until the point her eyes opened, and she was able to see where she was.
She was lying on a hardwood floor, and the rolled-up towel she’d found in the kitchen and used as a pillow had slipped out from under her head. It was old and smelled of dirty dishes, and she could detect that some of the stench had diffused into her hair.
Sasha rolled her head over, now able to distinguish her surroundings, recalling the decision had been made to stay overnight and try to wait out the lingering DHS agents. She stretched her aching back and arms and felt a sudden pressure on her leg, like something had grabbed her.
She sat up a bit and lifted the quilt she’d been using to cover herself while she slept, exposing a hand holding tightly to her thigh. Mark Mason was snoring with his back to her, still sound asleep, while his hand was busily exploring her upper leg.
Sasha shook her head and rubbed one of her eyes, then exhaled a puff of air against her bangs. “Hey! Hey, kid.” She nudged him with the back of her hand. “Get up. You’re dreaming.”
Mark stirred in his sleep and made a few grunting noises.
Sasha nudged him again with added effort, this time reaching down and removing his errant hand from her leg. “Seriously. Come on, kid, get up. Rise and shine. It’s time for Sasha’s wine.”
Mark’s body jerked, and he slowly came to, rolling over and yawning. “What’s going on? Did you say something?”
Sasha leaned forward and coughed a few times, then pulled one of the remaining cigarettes from her pack. “It’s time to get up,” she said, placing the cigarette between her lips. She pointed to the window at the growing daylight. “We gotta get out of here soon.”
Mark yawned again and nodded his head, then reached over to wake his brother up.
The three sat on the floor together to get their bearings, then gathered their belongings in preparation for their departure.
“
I was having the weirdest dream,” Mark said. “I was being chased.”
Chad elevated his arms above his head and stretched. “Who was chasing you? DHS?”
“A bunch of women,” Mark replied, a sly grin appearing on his face. “It was a good dream.”
Sasha blew out a large cloud of cigarette smoke into the air. “Could’ve fooled me.” She sniggered.
Chad glanced out the window to the cul-de-sac.
“Are our friends still here?” his brother asked.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Chad said, glowering. “Those motherf—”
“They’re still here? They stayed all night?” Mark moved in to look for himself.
“Sure as hell did.”
“Forget them,” Sasha directed, pulling on her boots. “There’s no sense in trying to figure them out. Let’s just get going.”
Watching in all directions for signs of danger, the trio exited the house from the rear door and traversed the backyard to a large field of thick, tall grass and sporadic trees.
Chad led the way, being the first to cross the transition between the yard and the field, though there wasn’t much difference between the two. Sasha followed him, and Mark marched nearly in parallel. Then suddenly, a screech, just before a—
CLANK.
Someone, possibly the previous owner, had placed bear traps around the edges of the backyard, and not having seen them, Mark put his foot right into one.
As Mark tried hard not to cry out, Sasha and Chad pulled hard on the rusty jaws that had clamped their jagged teeth into his ankle. But even their combined efforts weren’t enough to overcome the contraption’s tensile strength.
The trap’s teeth had embedded themselves into Mark’s skin, and he was bleeding from the lacerations. He twisted and writhed in pain while he tugged with all his might on the mechanism, attempting to free himself.
Chad was growing increasingly frustrated. He yanked his hands away from the trap and pounded his fist on the ground. “There’s got to be some way to break this piece of rusty shit free,” he began, looking around the yard. “We need to find something to pry it open with…something we can use for leverage.”
Sasha’s eyes grew wide. “Like what?” she asked, looking around in the grass. “I left the Jaws of Life in my other purse.”
Mark’s jaw was clenched, and his facial muscles tensed as he spoke through the pain. “Look in my backpack. There’s a…Bowie knife in there. Try to pry it open with that.”
Sasha looked at Mark awkwardly, but didn’t say anything as Chad rummaged through his brother’s backpack, finally extricating a large Bowie-style knife. He removed it from its sheath and dug the blade’s tip between the jaws.
Sasha recognized the knife immediately. She knew where it had come from and who its previous owner had been. In fact, she would recognize the blade and accompanying handle anywhere, even if she had come across it in a pawnshop surrounded by other similar blades. She furrowed her brow.
Chad focused his efforts and soon made progress, separating the jaws just enough for Mark to slide his foot from the trap’s grasp while trying his best not to further tear the skin. Once his leg was free, he began unlacing his boot.
Sasha only stared at the knife. “Mark, where did you get that?”
“What?”
“That knife.”
Mark spoke through his teeth, his hands moving to his leg, trying to rub away the pain. “I found it on the ground…when we were cleaning up. After we wiped your old buddies off the map. Why?”
Sasha shook her head while she gazed at the knife, helpless to take her eyes from it. “No reason. It’s nothing.”
Chad removed a triangular first-aid bandage from his medical kit and rolled Mark’s sock down enough to expose the wound. “It doesn’t look too bad, but some of the cuts are pretty deep. I think they got into the meat.”
Sasha reached for the bandage. “Here, let me do it,” she said, pointing to the med kit.
“Are you a nurse or something?” Chad asked.
“No. But I’ve had plenty of experience treating wounds,” Sasha replied, peering up at him with her head downturned. She proceeded to clean the lacerations and applied a disinfectant, followed by an antibiotic ointment before using butterfly strips to close each wound. She finished with the triangle bandage, using tape to wrap Mark’s ankle. “You have to watch this, kid. Keep it clean and make sure it doesn’t get infected. Tetanus is one thing, but Lord only knows what other gross bacteria is living on that trap. I hope you guys have enough first-aid supplies with you.”
Chad regarded their backpacks. “Both of us have IFAKs and a separate trauma kit, but they won’t last forever.”
Sasha nodded. “There’s plenty of pine trees around here. We can use sap to disinfect and seal the cuts if we have to.” She looked to Mark. “How about it, kid? Can you move?”
“I think I can,” said Mark, and he stood while gingerly placing his weight on his injured leg. “It doesn’t feel broken.”
Sasha grabbed Mark by the arm and supported him while they proceeded farther and deeper into the thicket. Several feet in, they encountered a fence line compiled of ancient, rusted barbed wire, petrified wooden posts, and a long row of sporadically growing Osage orange trees.
Reaching for his belt, Chad extracted a multitool and used the wire cutters to cut away the fencing.
Sasha helped Mark down to his knees, then reached for a greenish, oddly-textured fruit lying amidst the sporadic grass. “I haven’t seen one of these in years,” she said. “I think my dad used to call them hedge apples. Farmers used to plant the trees where they wanted a fence line. The branches are just as thorny as that barbed wire, but don’t cost nearly as much. Probably don’t rust as much, either.”
Mark nodded. “We always called them brain fruit. There’s a couple of trees growing in the woods behind the house. Chad and I used to bring the brains home and squish them in front of Megan to gross her out.”
Chad snickered. “Yeah, those were the days. Try that shit with her now, Meg would probably shoot your ass.”
Mark nodded. “No doubt.”
The trio continued on after Chad finished separating the fencing. Mark tried walking under his own power several times and, although confident he could do so, decided to pretend he couldn’t in order to remain in body contact with Sasha. While she was busy helping him along, occasionally he would turn his head to stare at her or catch a whiff of her hair. There was something about her he found irresistible, regardless of the point she had made clear to him earlier, and knowing she was probably twice his age or more. But to Mark, bearing those things in mind only made it even more intriguing.
Commotion from behind slowed their movements and eventually brought all three to a dead stop. They looked toward the cul-de-sac in time to see a handful of vehicles within the DHS convoy had started to move out while leaving several others to remain behind. Then what happened next scared them half to death.
Two of the blacked-out SUVs broke away and turned toward them, bouncing over a yard and crashing through a wobbly privacy fence seconds after. An armored MRAP left the road and followed, and the vehicles accelerated in the general direction of where Mark, Chad, and Sasha were hiding.
“Dammit! They made us!” Sasha gasped.
Mark looked to his brother frantically, then to Sasha. “How? How did they—”
Sasha grabbed Mark’s face. “It doesn’t matter. We have to go, now! Come on!”
Chad stood and reached for Mark’s pack, swinging it over top of his own, then ran off as Sasha hoisted Mark to his feet, noticing it took less effort now than it had earlier.
The three darted from their position and made a break for it, but their foot speed was no match for the velocity of the vehicles in pursuit.
Harshly spouted demands to halt where they stood and drop their weapons blasted over the MRAP’s loudspeaker, and several warning shots sounded off behind them.
“Stop! Or we will open fire!”
Out of breath and out of viable options, Chad hit the brakes and turned to face the incoming trucks. “Go! Keep going! I’ll hold them off!”
“What? Are you insane?” Sasha questioned. “That’s fucking suicide! You need to ru—”
At that moment, a single thundering gunshot went off. The bullet struck Chad’s body, the force causing him to spiral nearly one hundred eighty degrees. His eyes went wide, and his arms fell to his sides as he slithered to the ground underneath the weight of the backpacks.
Hearing the shot and his brother’s agonized screams, Mark dashed for him, diving to the ground where he fell.
Though still alive and breathing, the trauma to Chad’s body was extensive. Blood poured from a large wound in his shoulder and through a sizable hole in his jacket.
“I think…my collarbone is…broken,” Chad wheezed, barely loud enough to be heard. “I can’t move my—”
“Shut up,” Mark said. “Don’t talk. Don’t move. Just stay still.”
Mark unsnapped the quick disconnects on the backpacks still clinging to his brother’s arms and freed his body from them, then ripped Chad’s jacket off to examine the wound.
Sasha fell to her knees and grabbed hold of him, reaching in and making an abrupt move for his MP5.
Mark reacted fiercely, elbowing her in the stomach. Then he turned and angrily grabbed Sasha by the throat. “What the hell are you doing?”
The MRAP’s driver continued to bark orders, but Mark couldn’t hear him.
Fear and misery mounted in Sasha’s eyes, and she fought against Mark’s grip on her throat until he let go. “Mark, they’re right behind us,” she said, anguish in her voice. “We’ve got to get rid of these guns befo—”
“No way.” He pulled away from her and turned back to his brother, digging into his pack for the trauma kit.
Sasha quickly overcame the pain from the shot to her stomach. She pulled on Mark yet again and fought the MP5 from him, using the quick-disconnects on the sling mounts to her advantage. Then, as he snapped his head to face her, she tossed the weapon as far as she could into the tall grass.
Divided We Stand (What's Left of My World Book 4) Page 22