by John Grit
Austin stayed where he laid, his face bleeding from shallow wounds on the left side. He licked his lips and strained to see through the forest underbrush, his finger on the trigger of his pump shotgun. The muzzle shook, as he looked over the front bead of silver and listened for the sound of steps on dry leaves. Someone was already hurt, and chances were someone was going to die in the next few moments. His heart pounded in his chest.
More rustling of leaves, this time much slower. Nate moved in, his rifle shouldered and ready. Reducing the yards between them allowed another sound to reach Nate’s ears: crying. He swallowed and moved in closer, remembering the day he was forced to kill Carrie, a teen who wasn’t right in the head – a result of being put through hell by sadistic captors. One day, she shot one of Ramiro’s men, and Nate fired into the woods where she was hiding, not knowing it was her. It was one of the worst days of his life.
Nate looked down and saw what looked like blood on the leaf-carpeted forest floor. His eyes ran along a trail of crimson, ending in a stand of thick-growing palmettos, where the sound of crying emanated. He stepped behind a large pine. “I mean you no harm. If you give up now, we’ll help you as best we can. If you keep shooting at us, you’ll die.”
The crying stopped.
Deni kept quiet, scanning the woods for danger in case the wounded one wasn’t alone. She wasn’t ready to reveal her position until she was certain no one was out there waiting for a shot at her or Nate.
Nate tried again. “Come on out. We have no interest in hurting you. Your shot only took out a mirror.”
No answer came from the palmetto patch.
“We don’t have all day,” Nate warned. “We’ll just drive away and leave you here.”
A woman’s nervous voice came from the palmettos, “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.”
The palmetto fronds rustled for nearly a minute, then a woman appeared. She seemed to be in her late twenties, but it was difficult to tell, because she was so gaunt and her eyes so full of dread, giving Nate the impression she might be forty instead. Her right arm was crimson, and she was filthy. Her clothes were tattered and hung loose on her, especially around the waist. A rope tied around her kept her dirty jeans from falling down. She held a rifle backwards in her left hand, the muzzle pointing behind her. After dropping the rifle, she said, “I’m unarmed now. I guess you’ll do with me as you please.”
“We won’t hurt you,” Deni assured her. “The two men with me aren’t the kind to abuse a woman.”
Nate asked, “Are you alone? We just don’t want to get shot at again.”
“I’m alone,” she answered.
Not taking her at her word, Nate kept his eyes searching the woods for danger. “Walk toward us and keep your hands in sight. Once we know there’s no danger to us, Deni will take a look at your wound.”
Something about the way her eyes flashed to her right for a second alarmed Nate, but he said nothing for the moment. She walked slowly toward them. When she was ten yards away, Nate said, “Stop there and turn around, so we can see if you have a gun hidden on you.”
She did as he said. “See. I’m unarmed.”
“Okay, set down where you are,” Nate said.
After she sat on a rotten log, Nate asked her, “Are you telling us the truth about being alone? This is still a dangerous situation until we’re sure there aren’t any more people out there waiting to shoot us. The safest thing for you is to be honest and believe we mean you no harm. We would like to help you, but don’t want to get shot doing it.”
She seemed to be thinking over what to say next.
Deni lost patience. “Well? I think we’ve been very forgiving, since it was you who shot at us. I can tell Nate already feels bad about shooting you, but he can’t undo that. We can help you, though, if you don’t have more people out there waiting to shoot us.”
“I’m the only one who had a gun,” she answered.
Nate raised his rifle and pointed in the woods. “That may or may not be true, but I’m almost certain there are more people out there.”
In a panic, the woman screamed, “Don’t shoot! It’s just my little children. They’re not armed.”
Suspicious, Nate wasn’t about to expose himself until he was certain the danger was over. “Tell them to come to you.”
“They’re too far away to hear me,” she replied.
If the children were that far away, there would be no danger of me hitting them by shooting into the brush. Nate whispered to Deni, “That doesn’t make any sense. She’s lying.”
Deni looked at him and nodded.
Without a word, they backed off, staying behind cover.
The woman held her bloody arm and looked around, confused. “Where are you?”
There was no answer.
A barrage of gunshots rang out, coming from near the truck. Austin’s shotgun boomed in response. Nate and Deni separated, moving in, ready to put a bullet in anything that moved. The woman was a ploy to draw them away from Austin and the pickup.
Fifty yards from the truck, Nate saw a man shooting at Austin from behind a pine tree. A buckshot load from Austin’s shotgun sent bark flying. A cloud of powdered bark drifted off with the breeze, as Nate nailed the man in the back of the head.
Deni fired at someone on full-auto, her M4 chattering and echoing in the shaded forest.
As near as Nate could tell, there were four of them before the two were taken out – all men. One man saw Nate and took cover behind a pine tree that wasn’t quite thick enough to stop a full metal jacket .308 round. He paid for his mistake with his life.
The last one ran, crashing through brush at top speed. His frantic dash was stopped by a load of buckshot that Austin sent his way. The bark of his shotgun echoed and faded into the distance.
The woods became deathly quiet. No one moved. Staying behind cover, they scanned the woods for more danger, their weapons ready. After five minutes, the woods came back to life. Insects buzzed, birds chirped. Nate could hear Deni’s heavy breathing ten yards away, but there was no sign of anyone else in the forest besides Austin.
Deni moved in, making use of all available cover and concealment. Nate stood where he was, covering her with his rifle.
Approaching the truck, Deni called out in a low voice, “Austin, are you wounded?”
“No,” he answered back.
“Well, hold tight and stay alert. There’s another one out there we have to hunt down. I think we got all of them except her, but be ready if there’s more.”
“Will do,” Austin said, as he stuffed shells into his pump shotgun.
Nate turned and headed for the woman, expecting her to be gone and hoping she would be. What if she surrendered? Where would they take her? There was no sheriff department to hand her over to. They might as well let her go. What if she fought? He didn’t relish the idea of shooting a woman.
Deni and Nate moved through the woods with extreme caution, taking it slow, with more looking and listening than walking. When they got to where they had left the woman, she was gone. That was no surprise to either of them. One strange thing that bothered Nate was the fact he found no blood where the woman had been when they left her. How could that be, since her arm was covered in blood?
He did his best to follow her tracks, while Deni stayed off to the side and kept her eyes on the woods, so he could concentrate on tracking the woman. It didn’t take him long to realize she wasn’t bleeding much, if at all. Either she hadn’t been hurt as seriously as it appeared, or she had managed to stop the bleeding someway. Since she had no pack with her, he wondered how she could have administered first-aid to herself. Worries of another ambush and doubts the woman wasn’t alone forced him to consider stopping the hunt and turning back to Austin.
After another 100 yards of ever increasing anxiety, Nate froze in his tracks. He heard voices, many voices. Cocking his ear and listening intently allowed him to discern the voices of several children, perhaps as many as five or six. He moved quickly
to Deni and whispered, “There are children with them. Sounds like there are quite a few people just ahead.”
She cocked her head and appeared to be as puzzled as him.
He motioned to follow, and they turned back to Austin and the truck. On the way, they stopped near the place they had last seen the woman to talk quietly.
“I don’t think the woman was ever wounded at all,” Nate said. “She must have had some ketchup or something to put on her arm to fake a wound.”
“Who the hell are they? What are they doing out here?” Deni wanted to know.
Nate thought for a moment. “I have a suspicion they were with that group on the road. Not the ones we fought at the bridge, but the other group, the one that was attacked by a helicopter. It seems some of them got away during the Guard’s sweep of the area.”
“You think they’ve been out here all this time?”
“I doubt it,” Nate answered. “Not unless they managed to take a lot of supplies with them when they made their escape, and I know they didn’t get much of my stuff, because Brian and I retrieved most of it. This is a long ways from where all of that took place, but still, I doubt they’ve been hiding here for so long. They live by stealing, and there isn’t anything to steal out here.”
“Until we came along,” Deni added.
Nate nodded in agreement. “I’m sure their camp isn’t far from the trail we came in on. They probably still have vehicles, and they wouldn’t walk far from their transportation. I expect the trail we came in on turns to the left and they’re camped right next to it – or right in the trail.”
Deni furrowed her brow. “Good thing they took that shot at us. We would’ve driven right into their camp, and there’s no telling how many there are.”
“Maybe they wanted to keep us away from the kids,” Nate suggested.
She nodded. “Maybe. It was certainly a tactical mistake for them to ambush us here, so you might be right. They were more concerned with protecting their camp than killing us.”
“Let’s get back to Austin and turn that truck around,” Nate said. “We’ll put some miles between us and them, then use the radio.”
~~~
Other than their intense thirty minutes after someone shot at them, their trip proved uneventful. They were not able to contact anyone with the Army National Guard, but were able to contact several HAM operators who promised to relay the message to someone in charge. Arrangements were made to contact them again in two days. They loaded the radio up and headed home.
Chapter 6
A cool breeze came out of nowhere just before they reached Mrs. MacKay’s farm, cooling the three occupants of the truck, as it rattled along the dirt road. Nate began to relax for the first time since the ambush. With Deni behind the wheel, the pickup pulled into the drive and passed through the open gate. Those on security duty all had stern faces for some reason.
Approaching the main buildings, Nate knew something was wrong. He noticed the long faces and furtive glances, eyes darting away when he looked back. He jumped out of the pickup before it stopped rolling and ran toward the house.
“Hey! What’s wrong?” Deni yelled after him, jumping out of the pickup and running.
Austin went looking for Renee. He wanted to find her before someone told her about his injured face.
Mrs. MacKay met him on the porch, her face wet. “It’s Brian. He’s been beaten.”
Nate grabbed her by her shoulders. “Where is he?”
“Come.” She led him down a hall as fast as her old legs could carry her. “He’s unconscious. We have done all we can for him. I don’t know how badly he’s hurt.” Deni butted ahead of the others. Ramiro and two other men got out of her way to let her pass and followed.
Nate rushed by Mrs. Mackay when she entered the room. Kendell and a short, heavyset Hispanic woman got up from chairs and moved out of the way. Renee was sitting in a chair by the window, her face rigid with worry. Nate’s breath caught at the sight of his son. He was unrecognizable. His eyes were swollen shut, nose broken and ripped at the bridge, his left arm in a sling. Nate held a wrist and checked his pulse. He tried to open one of Brian’s eyes to check his pupil, but had no luck. It was too swollen. Nate ran his shaking hands over Brian’s scalp and felt the back of his head, checking for any damage to his skull, knowing it could be fractured and he wouldn’t be able to tell, but feeling his head anyway. He ran his hands down Brian’s free arm and then gently removed the sling. His hand stopped midway down the forearm.
Mrs. MacKay spoke, her voice cracking. “You can see we set the break. We’ll splint it later.”
Nate carefully put the arm back in the sling and checked Brian’s legs. Then he felt for broken ribs.
“We think he has two broken ribs on his right side,” Mrs. MacKay said.
Nate had already felt the breaks. He checked Brian’s jaw and opened his mouth. Two front teeth were missing, the inside of his mouth cut. His face was cut from being kicked with a boot. Someone had cleaned the cuts and sewn the deepest ones closed with fine thread. Nate straightened from where he leaned over Brian. Without warning, he collapsed to the floor.
Ramiro and Deni tried to help him up, but Nate pushed their hands away. “I’m all right, damn it.” He got up and sat in a chair. His chest heaved as he stared at Brian. Without looking up, he asked, “Who did this?”
No one spoke. They looked away with their downcast eyes.
Deni looked around the room, her face wet. “Someone answer him, for God’s sake!”
Kendell answered. “It was Slim, the guy you hit when he called me a nigger. I saw the last of it. Brian was workin’ in the field. They were about two hundred yards away. I was runnin’ to help and yellin’ to make Slim stop kickin’ him. Brian was on the ground. When he pulled a knife, I shot at him and he took off, disappeared into the woods. I don’t think I hit him. Some men are after him.”
Nate’s breathing became erratic. He turned his head and looked up at Kendell. “Thank you for saving Brian’s life.”
Deni knelt beside the bed and held Brian’s hand, her face streaming.
Kendell’s face contorted with pain. “He’s goin’ to be alright. He’s got to be.” He smeared his tears. “That bastard took it out on Brian. He shoulda come after me or you. The coward. I bet he waited until Brian wasn’t lookin’ and caught him off guard. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten close enough to take his gun from him. Brian woulda killed the bastard.”
Nate waved them away. “Leave me alone with my son.”
Mrs. MacKay was the last to leave the room. She closed the door to the sound of Nate crying.
Nate was in the chair when the sun rose in the morning, and he was still sitting there when Brian woke three hours after the sun had set again. He was alert for only a few seconds before falling back into unconsciousness. Nate could not be certain Brian could see him through his swollen eyes. He spoke to let him know his father was there, but he had no way of knowing if Brian understood. Despair weighed Nate down like a block of cold lead in his stomach. He reached up and rubbed his forehead with a shaking hand.
What would be the purpose of life if Brian died? Since he had lost his wife and little girl, everything had been about keeping him alive. There had been times when he hadn’t liked himself so much, especially when he knowingly put Brian in a kill or be killed situation and did it over and over again. My God. He was only thirteen years old when he was first forced to kill. He regretted not protecting his son from that, from so many things, and regretted pushing him so hard, forcing him to grow up before his time. I promised you it would get better someday. He bent down and whispered in Brian’s year. I’m sorry. I should never have left you alone. It’s my duty to protect you.
Deni checked on them both several times during the day, but Nate didn’t want to talk, and he didn’t want anything to eat She concealed her shock when he turned his face to her; Nate didn’t just look haggard and strained, he appeared to have aged ten years. She put her hand light
ly on his shoulder and left the room in tears.
Late in the night, Ramiro checked on them but left when Nate said he wanted to be alone with Brian. Worry hid the boiling rage within him that grew by the minute. He kept his thoughts on his son and what he could do to help him recover. He tried not to think about hating the one who hurt him, but there were moments when the hate boiled over and came to the surface. In the back of his mind he knew there was nothing to be done for Brian. He would live or not, and it was out of his hands. He thought of praying but remembered how useless that had been when his wife and little girl were sick and dying. Fear he would just anger God kept him from praying. After all the things he had done over the last year, how dare he ask God to spare his son? His massive shoulders shook, and weakness overcame him. In desperation, he found himself on his knees begging God to punish him, but to give Brian a chance to live. He looked at his son, but Brian laid there, seemingly close to death, only his chest moving with each shallow breath. Suddenly embarrassed and grateful no one had walked in to see him act so stupidly, he got up and sat in the chair. He wasn’t a believer, so why the hell was he grasping at straws? Because he couldn’t lose Brian. More importantly, he couldn’t allow Brian to lose his life. Brian was going to have a life, and if he had to pray to the sun and the moon, or to a God he didn’t believe in, he would do it, do anything.
More long hours ticked by, and Nate had no choice but to get up from the chair and take care of himself. He was back in 55 minutes with a meager meal in his stomach, a bath and clean clothes. He sat there, watching Brian breathe. The lantern had been extinguished to save kerosene. The dim glow of a 12-volt automobile taillight attached to the wall above the headboard illuminated Brian’s face. It was one Nate had wired and installed. Drained, he finally fell asleep in the chair.
~~~
When Nate opened his eyes again, the sun was up. He stood and stretched his aching back and stiff muscles, then looked out a window and judged it to be midday. He noticed people gathered around a pickup. Several men watched as a man was forcefully dragged from the pickup and into a nearby utility shed. The man’s hands were bound behind him. Nate checked Brian one more time and then ran out of the room, down the hall, and out the front door, his rifle in his hands.