The People In The Woods

by Robert Brown

  The crack of a shot outside made him spin around.

  “That sounded like a rifle,” Tobiah said.

  “Carl!” Brandon shouted.

  They all ran for the door as the rifle fired twice more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Adrenaline coursing through his veins, Nick almost rushed headlong out the door, but Tobiah grabbed him at the last minute.

  They peeked around the doorframe. A gunshot briefly flared near where Carl had been covering their approach. Another shot replied, although they couldn’t see from where it came.

  Then three more shots sounded in rapid succession. They saw Carl’s heavy frame huff around the corner.

  Nick stepped out the door and fired three times. He had no idea what he was firing at, but he had to cover Carl’s escape. He aimed at the bushes where Carl had been.

  Someone was shouting something, but he didn’t hear what it was.

  “Turn off your flashlight; you’re a sitting duck!” Tobiah shouted again.

  Nick yelped in fear as he realized his mistake. He was shooting blind into the night while advertising his presence to whoever had shot at Carl. He hit the button to turn off the light. After a moment standing there, he realized they still knew where he was and so he moved to the end of the porch. Tobiah and Brandon knelt inside either side of the door, guns at the ready. Carl huffed up onto the porch and went prone, looking down the sights of his hunting rifle.

  Silence.

  Nick and his friends peered into the darkness, trying to spot the hooded figures they knew lurked somewhere out there.

  They saw no one. There was no movement, and no shots came.

  Until they all came at once.

  From diagonally across the intersection, half a dozen muzzle flares erupted behind a row of bushes. The shrubbery flickered in and out of sight as the guns fired. Bullets smacked into the walls of the house. One hit the pillar just inches from Nick’s head. Dimly, he realized he was firing back, as were the other three men. Nick was too frightened to remember to look for the red dot of his laser sight. He simply fired, hoping to hit something.

  After a minute, the firing from the bushes died down. Nick had run out of shots and was fumbling in the darkness, trying to reload his magazine. His ears rang, and he couldn’t hear what his friends were doing, or even if they were alive.

  On the other side of the porch, Carl’s shadowy bulk shifted. He crawled to the door. Nick’s battered eardrums couldn’t catch the quick, whispered conversation, so he moved to him.

  “You all right, Professor?”

  “Yeah. Is everyone else?”

  “Yeah. Those guys can’t shoot for shit.”

  Nick didn’t think they had been any more successful, but he decided to not bring that up.

  “They killed a man in there,” Nick told him.

  “The farmer?”

  Before Nick could reply, they heard a metallic thunk down the street. A tongue of flame licked the night, followed by a brilliant flare and whoosh.

  Brandon’s taxi went up in a ball of flames.

  “Motherfuckers!” Brandon shouted.

  He burst out of the doorway, leaped off the porch, and ran for the intersection.

  “Brandon, don’t!” Nick cried.

  “Cover him!” Tobiah said.

  Tobiah and Carl started firing, although they still had no idea where the enemy was. Nick figured it was to keep the cultists’ heads down. Nick finally got his gun reloaded and fired a cluster of shots around the burning car.

  Brandon made it to the intersection, paused, and then ran down the street toward his flaming taxi, firing as he went.

  “We have to help him!” Nick said.

  Even as the words came out of his mouth, he was running after the taxi driver. He didn’t stop to see whether the others were following.

  When Nick got to the intersection, he had to shield his eyes from the glare of the burning vehicle. Brandon stood not far in front of him, his arms slack.

  “You all right?” Nick asked.

  “They hopped into a car and drove off. I hit the car at least once. Hope I killed one of those sons of bitches.”

  Tobiah joined them. Carl, his face glistening with sweat, caught up a few seconds later.

  “Now what the hell do we do?” he asked.

  “Get out of here,” Brandon said over the roar of his burning taxi. “We got to call the cops.”

  The crash of a breaking window back at the house made them all turn. A wavering light appeared in the doorway, gaining in intensity.

  “Shit, they set fire to the house,” Nick said. “They’re burning the evidence!”

  Carl, who was closest to the intersection, ducked behind the line of bushes and moved closer to the house. He rose, leveled his rifle, and then lowered it again.

  As Nick caught up to him, he saw why the forklift driver hadn’t fired.

  A car was zooming away down the county road, its tail lights two dwindling dots in the night.

  “Let’s go,” Brandon said. “Even in the middle of nowhere like this, someone is sure to have heard the shots and seen these fires. We don’t want to be here when the cops show up.”

  They traveled at a fast walk down the county road in the opposite direction from where the second car of cultists had left. Brandon told them that this route would get them to another road that would take them into town.

  “That’s a few miles, though. Let’s see if we can get a ride.”

  He called the other team stationed near the remains of Clayton’s house, clear on the other side of town. He tried each person in turn, but no one picked up.

  “I hope they’re all right,” he said, putting the phone back in his pocket.

  “They have bad reception out there,” Nick said. “Maybe they just didn’t receive your calls.”

  “Let’s pray to God you’re right,” Tobiah said.

  He didn’t say that just as something to say. As the flames rose higher above the distant farmhouse, the man stopped in the middle of the road and began praying loudly for the safety of their friends. Nick wanted to go. Every second they spent close to the scene of the battle increased their chances of getting caught.

  But he bit his words and bowed his head with the rest.

  Tobiah followed with a prayer for the soul of the farmer. Thankfully, it was short. When Tobiah ended with a loud “Amen,” Nick found himself joining in with the others.

  “Now let’s get out of here,” Tobiah said.

  At least he’s a practical Bible thumper, Nick thought.

  They walked along the county road for a time in silence. Nick couldn’t shake the image of that dead man nailed to the wall of his own living room. This had escalated all too quickly. The cult had only been warming up with those animals, gaining courage and working its way up to a killing frenzy.

  But why the farmer? Had he disturbed a ritual, or had he been part of it? This final ritual spot completed the pentagram. Nick assumed that animal sacrifices had been made at all points of the five-pointed star, including ones they hadn’t seen. Did the ritual now call for human sacrifices at each point?

  That meant four more deaths.

  Unless more rituals were planned beyond that.

  One detail confused him—the condoms. He had seen seven of them. He had found clusters of condoms at two other locations, too—the mound of boulders with petroglyphs and the cave with the Thunderbird. He had counted seven of them in the living room. He’d have to check his photos, but he bet that seven had been at each of the other two locations as well.

  Seven condoms, eight cultists that they had seen.

  But one cultist was a woman.

  Were they each taking turns with her? Was that a part of the ritual?

  Had they taken turns with her while that farmer hung bleeding on the wall?

  Nick shuddered. How could it have come to this? Who the hell were these people, and why did they hate Republic and its people so much?

  And why had they d
one the sexual part of the ritual at the petroglyph points and not at the points of the pentagram? The petroglyph sites were farther out from Republic, so perhaps they weren’t convenient for making a pentagram. However, with those ancient carvings, the cult would have seen them as having power. They would probably conduct more rituals there, maybe even sacrifices.

  The sound of a police siren in the distance, rising in pitch, broke into his thoughts. The men found an overgrown area by the side of the road and hid as the patrol car shot past.

  When they got back on the road, Brandon checked his phone. “We’re coming to an intersection a little ways ahead. We’re getting a signal now. I’m going right, you boys go left. That’s the direct way back to town. Try to reach the other team and get them to pick you up. I’m going to call the police.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” Carl asked.

  “That’s my car burning back there. They’ll be sure to find a serial number or something to trace it back to me. If I don’t hand myself in, I’m going to face some hard questions.”

  “But what will you tell them?” Nick asked.

  “I’m going to say that I was driving along when those motherfuckers in the hoods stopped me. They held me up and robbed me.” Brandon grabbed his wallet from out of his pocket. “Here, take this and give it back to me later. Then they looked set to kill me when I ran off into the fields and got away from them. They burned my car out of spite. I’ll pretend I don’t know nothing about that murder or the house.”

  “They might arrest you on suspicion,” Tobiah said.

  Brandon nodded, looking grim. “They might at that. Here, take this.” He took off his gun and shoulder holster and handed them to Tobiah. “Can’t be found with this.”

  Nick put a hand on his shoulder. “Take care.”

  The taxi driver snorted. “You’re the ones in trouble. I’m going to be safe at the police station.”

  Brandon stopped and dialed 911. Nick and the other two men quickly walked away, leaving him alone in the dark.

  “I hope he’ll be all right,” Nick said quietly.

  “Must be half the cops in Jackson County at that fire by now,” Tobiah said. “They’ll pick him up in just a few minutes.”

  “No, I mean, what if the cops rough him up or something?” Nick said.

  “Oh, because all our cops are rednecks and will beat up a black man as soon as spit?” Carl said. “You got a lot to learn about the town you live in, bud.”

  “It happens in big cities back East too,” Nick objected.

  “Not as much as those idiots in Black Lives Matter say it does. Even when it does, most of them got it coming. Hell, half the time it’s a black cop doing the shooting. Brandon is well-known in these parts. The cops aren’t going to hurt him.”

  Nick shrugged and said nothing. Tobiah called Clayton and managed to get him on the phone. After a brief conversation, he hung up.

  “They’re coming for us,” he said. “They found traces of another ritual at the ruined village near where Clayton had his trailer. No cultists, though. Looks like we had the whole gang up here.”

  Nick let out a sigh of relief. “At least they’re safe. You know, we’ve never seen more than eight of those people. I’m beginning to think that’s all there is.”

  “Good,” Tobiah said. “I have a twelve-round clip. That means I can miss four times.”

  Nick touched the Glock in the holster on his belt. Tobiah’s words weren’t simple bluster. He meant them. Tobiah saw this as a war between good and evil. After what he had seen, Nick couldn’t help but agree. Only a few days earlier, although it felt like years, Nick had looked at all this as a bit of a lark. It had gotten serious too quickly. A man was dead, and the cult members had burned down Clayton’s house and tried to kill the three people inside it. They had to be stopped.

  At least the police would be on the case now. Brandon would tell them all they had seen, framing it as his own story to protect the rest of them.

  But how much did they know, really? Eight young people, one a woman. Some stick figures inspired by Native American rock art and a horror movie from the Nineties. Some ritual sites in the woods. What did the police have to go on? The sheriff seemed like a good man, and capable in his own way, but this wasn’t his usual type of case.

  With a trembling resolve, Nick realized their work wasn’t done. These guys had assumed Nick was an expert in the occult and could track down the killers. Now it seemed he had grown into that role, gaining the knowledge and at least part of the courage he needed to fight the evil in the woods around Republic.

  He rested his hand on his borrowed firearm. Yes, he would continue to hunt these bastards because they were hunting him. He would track them down and if they tried to resist, he would shoot them.

  When he decided to do this, a strange feeling tremored through his body—a mixture of fear, excitement, and nausea. But over all these emotions rode another one, far stronger than the rest put together. An emotion he hadn’t felt in many years.

  Determination.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Clayton and Trisha met them a couple miles outside town in Clayton’s pickup truck. The three men piled gratefully into the back and sat still as they drove back to Matt’s shop, utterly worn out from the night’s tension.

  They resolved to meet back at the store early the next afternoon. Wayne had arranged for all the group members who worked at the feed mill to have the next couple of days off. They would need the group’s full strength now that events were coming to a head. They planned to go around to each of the ritual sites by day, as well as to a couple more abandoned settlements on Nick’s map that they hadn’t yet checked. Then they would meet and figure out their next move.

  Nick said he would join them in the afternoon. He wanted to check on some things at the university first.

  He drove home, more asleep than awake.

  Cheryl was waiting up for him. She sat on the sofa, all the downstairs lights on, the can of pepper spray sitting next to her.

  “Anything happen?” he asked.

  “Not around here,” she said, rising to give him a tight embrace. “I heard about the fires over the police scanner.”

  “Police scanner?”

  As if on cue, a small black box crackled on the coffee table.

  “Patrol car 18, returning to station.”

  “When did you get that?” Nick asked.

  “Today. If you’re out there in danger, I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Smart woman.” They sat.

  “Elaine thinks I’ve gone nuts,” his wife said with a smile. She grew serious. “So, what happened?”

  Nick told her everything, then went back and told her everything that had occurred since he’d first seen the stick figures in the woods while jogging. He left nothing out. Cheryl listened without interruption or expression. When he finished, she sat thinking for a minute.

  “You’re doing the right thing, Nick. You shouldn’t have kept it from me, but other than that, you’ve been doing what you had to do. I’m proud of you.”

  Right then, there were no better words she could have said. They hugged, and the hug turned into a kiss, which turned into them creeping upstairs so as not to awaken their daughter and making quiet love in their bedroom until they both fell into an exhausted sleep.

  The next morning, during his Anthropology 101 class, Nick performed an experiment. He skipped the scheduled lecture on cultural diffusion and instead spoke about local Native American legends, with specific reference to petroglyphs and the legend of the Thunderbird. He studied each of the sixty faces staring blankly back at him for signs of interest or discomfort. He found nothing but the usual passivity and mild boredom.

  After that morning, he did the same with his Alternative Religions course, a higher level and much smaller class. That class was made up of upperclassmen, many of whom were anthropology or sociology majors, or who were majoring in other fields but were interested enough to take t
he course as one of their electives.

  Here, the faces registered more engagement, and Nick found himself second-guessing every expression. Was that girl expressing guilt or simple innocent disgust when she suddenly narrowed her eyes as he discussed animal and human sacrifice? Was that boy’s eager question about the Thunderbird simply idle curiosity or a quest to add to his own religious beliefs? Was that jock’s suppressed yawn a confession that he had been killing someone the previous night or the result of midweek partying?

  Nick couldn’t see these students as simple kids anymore. Now they were all potential murderers.

  Frustrated that his little trick hadn’t produced anything, he went to Bennett’s office. A young co-ed was just leaving. With hungry eyes, the archaeologist watched her go.

  “My, my,” he muttered as Nick came in. “Did you see that?”

  “Uh, yeah. Hey, I had a few more questions about the petroglyphs.”

  “Sure,” Bennett said, glancing at his computer. Nick figured that Bennett would rather be looking at porn in honor of his having been in close proximity to a real woman. Nick wondered if Bennett ever went to Dream Cum True. Perhaps Nick would see him going in there the next time he and his friends went to the Drunken Indian.

  Friends? Nick wondered. He was thinking of those hicks as friends now?

  Yes, he realized. They had helped him out. Even now they were taking turns driving by his house to make sure his family was safe. They may not be up for intellectual conversation, but they had his back. That was real friendship.

  “Um, your questions?” Bennett asked with an air of impatience.

  “Oh, right. Sorry, I’ve been feeling distracted lately. I was wondering whether the various symbols had some sort of hierarchy of importance. Were some considered more sacred than others?”

  “Well, it’s hard to tell at this far of a remove. Of course, plenty of ink has been spilt over this issue,” Bennett chuckled. “If you want my personal interpretation, I think the symbols of the wolf, moon, and of course the Thunderbird take precedence over human and animal figures and abstract shapes. They appear more prominently and are often at the center of the composition.”