by Ben Brown
For several seconds both men simply stared at each other, then Seth pulled Callum into an embrace. “I love you, Cal, take care.”
Callum simply endured the embrace. He did not feel love for any of the Greens, but he knew they felt it for him, so he bore Seth’s emotional farewell stoically.
“Whenever you get the chance, please come back and see us,” Seth breathed between sobs.
Callum pulled free and looked at Seth with dry eyes. He knew he would never return, but why put salt in the wound. “I’ll try. Thank you for everything; I’ll never forget your kindness.”
Seth nodded, but said nothing. With that, Callum slung his pack over his shoulder, he checked the tomahawk on his belt, and then turned and walked away.
Chapter 2
Location: The Appalachian Mountains, Carolina
Date: July 21, 1851
Time: 7:02 a.m.
Sergeant Pierre La Roux stood and then ran his hands through his lustrous black beard. At almost seven feet tall, the sergeant more closely resembled a beast, than a man. Thick, dark, curly hair covered nearly every inch of his heavily muscled body. Even the backs of his fingers seemed covered in a dark thatch. Except for the fact he wore clothes, he could have easily been mistaken for a grizzly. Although, grizzlies were nowhere near as ill-tempered as La Roux.
La Roux scanned his surroundings, then yelled, “Wentworth, where the hell are you?”
The melodic French undertones of his Cajun accent took some of the unhidden anger from his words. However, his body language portrayed a story of disgust. Disgust at what the clearing in which he now stood held.
Like a wraith, Callum moved noiselessly through the undergrowth and suddenly appeared at the sergeant’s side.
“Jesus Christ, boy, I don’t know how the hell you do that, but stop it!”
In the years Callum had spent as a Ranger, he had honed not only his woodsmen’s skills to a razor’s edge, but also his abilities as a Ranger. He could move and kill in complete silence, but his skills had not always been as sharp, and his body bore the scars to prove his shortcomings. A large scar ran from his right eye all the way to his chin, the result of a knife fight with a slave dealer. His back held fifty cruelly matted welts, the result of lashes, all of which were administered by a brothel owner who disagreed with Callum’s decision that girls of nine were too young to work in his establishment. After receiving the lashes, Callum had promptly killed the man, then freed the girls.
His whole body bore testimony to his time in the Rangers, and with every injury he endured, his resolve and skills grew. At twenty-three, and now five years in to his lifetime commitment to the Rangers, Callum had already out lived the Corps’ life expectancy. Very few lasted past three years, or even six months. Within the first couple of years of service, the vast majority of recruits either ended up dead, or found themselves too badly injured to continue. Those who made it past two years found themselves counted among the elite. Subsequently, the Corps tended to treat them as Gods among the Rangers. All the men in Callum’s small unit were like him … elite.
“You wanted me, La Roux?”
Rangers never addressed each other by rank, to do so would point out chain of command to any unwanted onlookers. Such mistakes often resulted in the death of the higher ranks, so only names were ever used.
“What do you make of this?” the sergeant asked as he gesture to a body at his feet.
Callum looked down at a badly mutilated body of a naked woman, and then returned his gaze to the big Cajun. He then looked at the third member of their team, Private Jack Anderson, and gestured for him to move closer. With Anderson stood at La Roux’s side, Callum began to scan the small clearing for signs of what had happened. He moved to a bush some feet from where the woman lay, and examined its foliage. After a moment or two, he headed back to the corpse and crouched to make a closer inspection.
The body of the unfortunate female showed all the signs of a brutal rape, as made evident by the blood pooled beneath her crotch. Her torso had also been torn open, and her innards now lay beside her. If this were not enough, countless stab wounds riddled her body. He now needed to move her, but touching her with filthy hands seemed wrong. He stared at his dirt ladened palms, and then tried to clean them as best he could. First, he rubbed them vigorously on his pants, and then examined them again. Dirt still lay in the deep cracks of his calloused hands; so using a little water from his canteen, he began to wash them.
Once done, he gently lifted her onto her side, and he could not help but hear some more of her intestines spilling forth. He grimaced and lowered his head to take a quick glimpse at her back. As with his own, a network of lash marks laced her flesh, but unlike his, her wounds were recent. He then lowered her, and shifted to peer at the soles of her feet. They were cut and bruised, obviously the result of a running barefoot through the woods. Hundreds of scratches covered her battered, naked body, further pointing to a desperate attempt at escape. Finally, his intense scrutiny turned to the sharpened piece of wood protruding from her eye.
Sickened by what she had endured, he shook his head and uttered a prayer for her. With his eyes shut, his hand drifted to the tomahawk on his side. He would find the men who did this, and when he did, he would make them pay.
He stood slowly and looked up at La Roux, who stood a good nine inches taller than he. “Well, she was obviously raped, but before that someone put her through hell. They also didn’t want her to change into a Lingerer, which is why they jammed the wood through her eye.” La Roux’s face showed nothing, but Callum could tell he was unhappy with his answer. “Am I missing something?”
La Roux nodded. “Why hasn’t she been eaten by the Lingering? I mean, look at her. She still fresh and her scent would be picked up by them for miles around.”
“It’s been a while since we’ve tangled with any undead.” Anderson said as he circled the corpse. “Whoever killed her may have something to do with the low number of Lingerers in this region.”
Callum looked back down at the woman and realized La Roux was right. Although they had not come across many Lingerers over the past few days, they had crossed paths with a few, so why were they leaving this tasty morsel untouched. He also realized something else. Women had become the most precious commodity in the badlands, certainly too precious to kill. So why had they not just raped her and then dragged her back with them.
“There’s something else,” Callum said as he reasoned out his next comment. “Why kill her at all. A woman as young as her would’ve been worth a pretty penny around these parts. Rape is just another tool traders use to keep their merchandise under control, but they would never kill, not unless they had to. She shows no signs of being bitten, so that ain’t why they did it. Also, it ain’t a warning, otherwise they would have strung the body up for everyone in the area to see. No, I reckon this is something else.”
Private Jack Anderson knelt and traced a finger over the grotesque wound in the dead woman’s abdomen. He then frowned and pulled his knife. Carefully, he placed the tip of his blade into the wound, and lifted the large flap of flesh. With his free hand, he picked up a piece of the woman’s innards, and followed it with his hand back to its source.
“What the hell are you doing?” La Roux barked as he moved to pull Anderson off the corpse.
Callum grabbed La Roux’s massive forearm. “Wait, give him a second.”
Callum knew the slim, red headed Ranger now examining the body had once aspired to be a doctor. He had even spent a year or so in medical school. However, after the murder of his parent’s, his vocation in life had changed.
Pale faced, Anderson looked up at La Roux, and all but whispered, “I think this woman was pregnant, and they cut the baby out of her.” The young Ranger gestured to the piece of innards still laid in his hand. “I ain’t sure, but I think this is an umbilical cord, and it’s been cut, not torn. If I’m right, I think it points to the baby being cut out of her while she still lived. In which case, the chil
d could still be alive.”
“God damn it!” La Roux bellowed as he kicked at the ground. “Just when you think things can’t get any worse than they already are, you have to go and tell me that. What’s wrong with the people round here. We’ve been stuck in these mountains for months, and all we’ve met are sick minded deviants. What kinda person does something like this!”
“Ones that leave trails,” Callum replied calmly.
La Roux rounded on him. “Why does this never seem to bother you? You never seem shocked by anything we see. Some insane redneck hillbilly cut this poor woman open, and then took her unborn child. Yet there you stand, calm as Billy be damned. What’s wrong with ya, don’t you ever feel anything?”
“That hillbilly raped her too. He raped a pregnant woman, then before he killed her, he took her unborn child,” Callum said as he started looking for tracks.
“Jesus,” La Roux said as he grabbed his hat from his head and threw it at the ground. “Why did you have to remind me of that!”
Callum stopped his search for tracks, and turned back to La Roux. “For the same reason I don’t let this get to me … we have a job to do. The longer you stand around here bellowing, the colder the trail gets.” Callum’s gaze turned to the private knelt by the dead woman. “Anderson, how long do you think she’s been dead? By my reckoning, it can’t be more than six hours. Do you agree?”
Anderson stood and dusted off his pants. “I’d say that’s about right.”
“Good, they went this way and they only have six hours on us.”
La Roux picked up his hat and rammed it back on his head. “They?”
“Yep, they. I’ve found tracks of at least four men, maybe five.”
Anderson looked down at the woman. “You don’t think they all ra….”
“Don’t think about it,” Callum interjected coldly. “What ever happened to her happened, and there’s nothing we can do to change that. Picturing her last moments won’t bring her back. All we can do now is give her some justice, which means we need to find those who did this, then kill them.”
La Roux slapped Callum on the back, almost knocking him over. “You should be in charge, not me.”
Callum shook his head. “Why not say that a bit louder. Talking like that, well, you may as well paint a target on your back.”
La Roux eyed the woods around them. “We’re alone out here and you know it.”
“You may be right,” Callum said as he headed into the woods following the tracks. “But if you break protocols once, then you’ll do it again, and next time you may not be so lucky.”
Without further talk, the three Rangers headed silently off in search of the woman’s killers.
Chapter 3
La Roux’s fighting skills were prodigious, but he also had weaknesses. Each man in the three Ranger strong unit had skills that the others lacked. No one, either living or the undead, could outmatch La Roux in hand-to-hand combat. On top of this, his marksmanship almost matched his bare-knuckle skills. Anderson possessed good language and negotiation abilities. His grasp of not only a number of native dialects, but also French and German, had got them out of a number of close calls.
As for Callum, his skill set spread the widest. Despite being nine inches shorter, and nearly a third lighter, Callum could almost match La Roux blow for blow. While the big Cajun had brute strength on his side, Callum had speed and guile. Callum also knew more than one native tongue, but he lacked Anderson’s patients when it came to negotiation. In his opinion, people should just blindly obey every instruction a Ranger gives. If they refused, then they would find themselves on Callum’s wrong side, which often resulted in a quick death.
However, where Callum really excelled was tracking and predicting the movements of his quarry. With this in mind, Callum now led the small band of Rangers in their pursuit of the woman’s killers. Like a bloodhound with a strong scent in its nostrils, Callum charged on with little thought of the branches and brambles clawing at his flesh. He was in his hunting mode, and nothing would distract him from running down his quarry.
They moved almost silently through the thick forestation of The Appalachian Mountains. Years of hunting not only the undead, but the living too, had sharpened each man’s awareness to an almost unbelievable level. Without thinking, each of the Rangers found just the right place to place their feet. Not once during their eight-hour pursuit, had one of them broken so much as a twig. This was no mean feat considering a thick layer of dead foliage covered the ground.
From time to time, Callum would signal for them to halt, and all three would hunker. He would then move briskly off, leaving the other two to hold position. After a few minutes, he would return and direct them along a new path. In this manner, the three moved wordlessly closer to the disgusting animals who had so vilely violated the poor woman they had discovered earlier. Despite the heat of the day, and the hunger in their bellies, none made any signs of needing either water, food, or rest. To break from their hunt could result in the loss of the prey. No, food and water could wait. All that mattered now was the capture of the filth they pursued.
A further two hours of careful tracking and the three found themselves at the edge of a craggy ravine, at the bottom of which ran a small river. Callum peered over the edge of the large rock on which he stood, and then looked back at his companions.
“They’re down there somewhere,” he said as he reached for his canteen.
After almost eleven hours without a drink, the water tasted like nectar. Callum took three deep gulps from his canteen, and then wiped at his mouth with the coarse cuff of his sweat soaked shirt, which poked out from beneath the sleeve of his Lingerer proof leather coat. The heavy leather coat meant the heat of the day was even more intense, but it would protect a Ranger from the teeth of a Lingerer’s attack. Because of this, the Rangers suffered the coats short comings.
La Roux moved to the edge of the rock and looked down. His eyes moved slowly across the terrain and he pointed to a path leading to the river below. “They must’ve gone that way.”
Callum nodded and slung his canteen back over his shoulder. “Yep, seems that way to me….”
The sound of a woman’s terrified scream, followed by a baby’s cry cut Callum off in mid-sentence. The three Rangers moved closer to the edge and peered over once more. Another scream, this time filled with pain rang up from below. Callum swung his heavy pack from his back and pulled out his binoculars. He knew the light from the sun would glint off them, possibly warning those below of their presence, but he had to risk using them. He had to see exactly where there quarry lay. He swept the river below, and at first glance almost missed the well-concealed group. Just a few feet from the river, and almost completely hidden by a scraggy tree, five men hunched around a half-naked woman. One of them stood, and Callum increased the magnification of his binoculars so he could get a clearer look. To his disgust, the man began to urinate on the woman. Callum had seen enough.
“We got five men at the bottom of yonder path,” Callum said as he quickly prepared his weapons. The two Rangers at his side did the same. “They’ve got another woman down there, and I think they’re about to rape her.”
“We need to move fast, so just sidearms and blades. Leave everything else here,” La Roux barked as he and Anderson mirrored Callum’s actions.
Callum did not wait for further instructions. Instead, he charged down the path at a full run. La Roux and Anderson were slower in preparing for the ensuing fight, but they were still only a few feet behind.
The time for stealth was over, now the bloodletting would begin. Callum hoped the noise from their attack would cause the men assaulting the woman to forget her, and turn their attention to the rapidly approaching threat. Almost instantly, bullets started flying in his direction, but they fell short.
The five men below were still using muskets, which were not only inaccurate at long range, but were slow to reload. In the ten years since Callum’s first encounter with the undead, fir
earms had advanced a great deal. Luckily for him, Rangers’ carried nothing but the best in the way of fire power.
He pulled his Colt revolver and prepared to open fire. He just needed to wait for the last of the men below to fire their antiquated muskets, then he would let loose with his six-shooter. One last shot sounded from below, and Callum felt something bite at his calf. He ignored the pain and continued to barrel down the path. He watched as the first man finished reloading, and then raised his musket to fire again. It was time. Callum centered his revolver on the man’s head, and pulled the trigger. A second later, the musket wielding animal’s head exploded, drenching the man beside him in blood.
Now La Roux and Anderson were firing as well, and another two of the five men dropped. Now only two of the murdering filth remained. Realizing their death was imminent, one swept the baby up into his arms, and the other pulled the woman up by her hair. Both now used their hostages as a shield.
Each held a large knife to their human shield’s throat, and both men grinned as if they had just saved their skin. The tiny baby, which was still covered in its dead mother’s blood, began to scream with a new vigor. Its face turned blue as it vocalized its terror and discomfort. The bastard holding it shook the child angrily, and its head snapped back and forth. Callum skidded to a stop as the baby fell silent; he gestured for the other Rangers to do the same. If the child was harmed, then he would make sure its captor would suffer before dying.
“Now I think it’s time for you good old boys to put down those guns!” the man hiding behind the woman yelled. “Throw them there guns on the ground and then step on back.”
Callum, La Roux and Anderson complied.
“Good. Now what do you fellas want?”
Callum could not believe his ears. What did they want? He looked back at La Roux, and the big man nodded for him to continue.