After a while, Hope came closer to the fire, and taking Professor’s spot, sat on the dead wood log next to Presley. They did not talk, but Presley felt her closeness, not only physically, but he felt her complete presence. The awkwardness he felt before disappeared.
“Tired?” he asked. He did not look at her, but was observing others preparing their lairs and putting more wood on the fire. The lookout post was arranged and everyone was ready for a good night rest.
“A little, yes. But it’s ok. I’ll be fine before dawn. Looks like we will have a peaceful night.”
“I believe we will.”
He looked at her discreetly. He found her to be very beautiful. Even though he was only able to see her face, he was certain that under the all those thick layers of clothes, she must have a nice figure. But it was her eyes; her big, warm, blue eyes that drew her to his attention.
“You were with the Pongos for a long time?” he asked.
“We were their prisoners for about a month. They brought us from our shelter east of where we were when we joined your group. They killed many of our people and kept just ten of us. I will never understand why. Maybe because we had nothing else that would justify their troubles in attempt to overcome us. There were no other spoils, but us. They dragged us to that building and kept us to be their slaves.”
“So, it happened after we overtook our compound from another pack. I wonder how we did not notice you before…”
“They brought us there during the night, maybe that’s why you never saw us. We didn’t know about you either, until that time when they attacked you. When they returned after that first battle, all bewildered and bloody, and in smaller numbers, we were happy. Happy and hopeful, for we knew they finally met their match, somebody who could fight them back and, not only survive, but hurt them and punish them. Except our happiness and optimism did not last long… After losing that battle, they beat us very badly, to satiate their rage, I suppose. They killed my little brother that night simply because they couldn’t harm any of you…” she stopped telling her story, fighting off tears.
“I’m sorry,” Presley said.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Do you have anyone else?” he asked.
“No. There is no one else left. My parents died during the White Plague outbreak. I only had my little brother, and now he is gone too.”
They were silent for a while.
“It wasn’t easy,” she continued. “We were all alone, my brother and I. For a long time we hid from everybody. We were fortunate to be found by Phyla’s group. But these people were not as tough as your men. They were as frightened as my brother and I. They didn’t have a lot of weapons, or knew how to fight. Somehow though, we managed to hide for a long time, from both Pongos and gangs of men who forgot what the word ‘man’ meant. It was hard. But when those monsters enslaved us, we truly learned what hell looked and felt like. They fed us very poorly and didn’t allow us to make fire, to keep warm. I don’t know which was worse, being hungry or perpetually cold. They had no mercy or remorse, and didn’t care if we lived or died. They constantly beat our men and took the women to have ‘fun’ with.”
“They were taking women for sex?”
“Yes. It was like that almost every night…”
“Did they…” it slipped his tongue, but he quickly stopped himself.
“What?”
“Nothing. Sorry.”
He wanted to ask if they took advantage of her like they did the other women, but he stopped short of finishing the question, afraid such an inquiry was too personal, and would probably hurt her. Rough as he was he did not know how to put such a question delicately.
“No, they didn’t,” she said, grasping what he meant. “Only once, one of them took me and ordered me to undress in front of a bunch of them. But when they saw me in my underwear, he stopped me, and kicked me out laughing. They weren’t attracted to my physique, I guess. They were into bigger women. I suppose I was lucky. I do not know what I would have done if that happened to me.”
“How are the other women from your group coping with such an experience?” he asked.
“I really don’t know. I guess they blocked those memories from their mind. They never talk about it and I think they would be very offended and traumatized should somebody ask them about it.”
“Good to know,” he said in a low voice. “And it’s good that you didn’t have that experience since, in hindsight, I would feel very stupid and thoughtless for asking.” He was pleased, and somewhat relieved, that she lived through that entire nightmare untouched by those beasts.
For a while, they sat in silence. Presley finally realized how tired he was. He stood up and grabbed his rucksack. He unzipped his sleeping bag, and then unfolded it and stretched it across the ground, covered with a thick layer of pine needles.
“We should sleep now. I wish you a good night,” he said.
“Good night,” she replied somewhat confused, or hesitant, as if she would rather stay where she was. He looked at her. She stopped his gaze. He enjoyed looking directly into her eyes.
“Good night, then,” she said and went to where she left her sack.
He lied down and folded himself in his sleeping bag. The ground was soft with a layer of pine needles. She could lie next to him, he thought. It would be warmer that way. Then he fell asleep.
Chapter IV
Fred, the leader of the scout trio, was laying under a thicket of branches of a big, dead pine tree, which hung almost to the ground, watching the farmhouse, a couple hundred yards away. His friends were somewhere behind those walls, captured by the local people. It was just by chance Frank was a good distance behind at the moment of their capture, marking their path with a line of stones that would give direction to the main party in case they stay separated for the night. When he came up around a big bolder, he saw Lester and John surrounded and subdued by a group of five men. Their hands were already tied and then they were taken away. He followed the strangers all the way to the farm, careful not to be detected. He knew there was nothing he could do at the moment but observe and wait. After all, engaging in confrontation could result in someone’s death. So he spent the whole night there, hiding underneath the tree, enveloped in his sleeping bag. It was a long, cold, sleepless night.
He looked through his binoculars, trying to detect any movement inside the house and around the perimeter. But, it was quiet. He observed a barn, some fifty yards to the left of the house and was instantly alarmed by the sight of two carcasses lying in the middle of the yard. He realized he was looking at corpses of two big dogs.
This confused him, and as he tried to understand the meaning of the dead animals, the entrance door to the house opened, and two men walked out, barefoot in their long johns, followed by another man holding a shotgun. Frank immediately recognized Lester and John. The armed man pushed them towards the barn and, then, lifted his rifle and shot one of them in the back of the head. Frank saw John fall to the ground on his face, and Lester started frantically running in zigzag fashion, trying to dodge the bullets. The killer was not in a hurry. He let Lester run and then lazily lifted his rifle taking the aim. But before he had a chance to pull the trigger, Frank dropped him with a single shoot to the head.
“Over here!” Frank yelled and then turned his attention to the house. Another man came out the door, but Frank quickly forced him back inside with a barrage of bullets he let out. He continued shooting at every window and door until, finally, Lester hid under the tree next to him. Lester’s hands were tied and Frank cut the rope with one single stroke of his knife.
“The bastard killed him, didn’t he?” cried Frank, turning his attention to the house once more.
“Yeah,” said Lester shakily, still stunned by what happened, shaking from shock and freezing cold. Frank trove him his sleeping bag.
Frank took a quick look at his friend’s face, noticing bruises and cuts all over and a swollen upper lip. “What happened to you?” he asked.<
br />
“They beat us.”
“Why?”
“They wanted to know if we had any company.”
“Did you tell?”
“No. We told them that we were alone, but they saw the flare fired from the lake, and started torturing us. But we stuck to our story.”
“Flare? What flare?” asked Frank.
“I think Presley sent somebody to look for us and they fired a flare to signal us the way to them.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yep, I think I can!”
“Ok. We need to warn Presley and the others right away. Take my boots and sleeping bag, and head back towards the lake. I’m sure Presley will send somebody to look for us. Find them and show them the way back here. In the meantime, I will hold these bastards in check. They need to pay for what they did to John.”
“There are seven men, well, six of them now, inside the house. They are not the owners of the house though. There is a family there, a middle–aged couple. They have no ties to those bandits. Be careful who you’re shooting at.”
“All right, I’ll try. Go on now. Find Presley.”
“Don’t bother with your boots. They are too small, I can tell,” said Lester, and, still barefoot, disappeared through the break of the pine tree branches.
***
Presley woke up early. He put some more logs on the fire and, after a while, went to replace the man on the last watch. The man was sitting on a big tree trunk just at the edge of the forest, staring at the clearance towards the frozen lake.
“Any movement, Jerry?”
“Nothing is going on, chief, nothing at all.”
“All right, go back and warm yourself up. I’ll sit here for a while. After breakfast we will go…”
In that instant, a shot rang out in the distance, then another, and another…
“Go get five men and send them over,” Presley ordered. “I’ll wait here. And send someone else to keep watch.”
“I’ll come back. I’m not tired.”
Several minutes later, a group of heavy armed men appeared from the woods.
“Rodney, you were there with the patrol last evening. Lead us to that farm. I think our boys are in trouble. Let’s go!”
Half way between their camp and farm they met Lester. His feet were turning blue from the cold. One man gave him his jacket and told him to sit on the sleeping bag he was carrying over his back. They rubbed his feet with snow in an attempt to warm them up. The man will probably lose some toes, thought Presley. Shivering and tattering, Lester told them what happened and where they would find Frank.
“Sam, take him to the camp and come back with five more man,” ordered Presley. “Let’s go!”
When they came closer to the farm they stopped, trying to figure out where Frank was. They did not want to startle him or confuse him with the villains. Then they heard shots fired from the cluster of old dead pine trees, some thirty paces to the right. To the left, in the middle of spacious clearance, they spotted the house, a long, gabled farmhouse made of wood and stone.
“Come with me,” Presley ordered one man, “the rest of you, wait here.” They went forward, crouching, towards the trees. When they got closer, Presley whistled through his teeth, and the same whistle came back to him in response. Following the sound of the whistle, they found Frank hiding under the thicket.
Frank was propped behind the dead trunk aiming towards the house.
“You ok?” asked Presley.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Frank.
“Did you see any of them?”
“No. They are all inside. Some of them may have taken off through the back. I didn’t dare move from here, but if I was in their position, I wouldn’t stay idle. I would try to get out from the house and ambush the ambusher.”
“Go back to our men,” Presley said to the man that accompanied him, “and tell them to spread out, left and right. Then go back to meet the rest of our guys and lead ‘em here.”
“What’s the plan?” asked Frank.
“I don’t know. I don’t like this. If we have to fight like this, every step of the way, we won’t last for long. And we won’t get far. We are in unknown territory now, and I don’t know what to expect.”
“These men who killed John are not from the farm. They are bandits. I don’t know if Les told you, but there are some innocent people inside the house, probably the real owners. If we are able to free them somehow, maybe they could tell us what to expect in these parts.”
“Yes. But we need to come up with a plan how to do it best. We cannot storm the house without risking hurting the innocent ones or getting hurt ourselves. We have to find another way to get in and neutralize the bastards. But, I don’t want this situation to last very long. I would like to move our group forward, unnoticed, and as quickly as possible.”
“I agree. Maybe we could just circumvent this place altogether and be on our way. John is dead, I’m sure of it. There’s nothing we can do for him now, short of burying his body…”
“No, Frankie. I think that there is something in what you said about those farm people being able to help us learn what these parts are like. We have to free them.”
“Well, how are we going to do that?”
“I don’t know. Not yet at least.”
“Maybe they aren’t even alive anymore,” Frank said. “Maybe those bastards already killed them.”
“Yeah, maybe they did,” said Presley grimly.
One of their men snuck up next to them.
“Our guys are here,” he said.
“Bring them over here,” said Presley, still not knowing what to do. He was trying to figure out the best way to get closer to the house, to see what was going on inside, and then, based on his observations, come up with an action plan. Soon, six more men lined up underneath the canopy of the pine tree, to the left and right of Presley and Frank.
“All right… Let’s see, there are six of them, and two hostages, and there are ten of us. The house has three windows facing us. Presume there is a man behind each window. There must be at least one, watching the family. What could the remaining two be doing? They could come from behind either to jump us or go get enforcement if they are only part of a bigger gang…
“No, I don’t think that’s what they are doing,” said Frank.
“What do you mean?” Presley asked.
“See that little gable in the middle of the roof?”
“Yes?”
“There is somebody behind the window.”
“Can you see him? I don’t see anything.”
“Yeah; he is wearing a white jacket. I could take him. I saw movement. Somebody must be there.”
“No. Don’t take him yet. What about the sixth guy? What may he be doing?” Presley thought aloud.
“The sixth guy might be the leader,” said a man to Presley’s left. “So he could be anywhere. Giving orders and being wise.”
“Is that what you think leaders do? Give orders and act like wise–asses,” chuckled Presley.
“No, sir; I’m just thinking…”
“But I agree with you. That may be the layout. So, our first worry is the guy on the roof. He has the best view. If he has a scope on his gun he could be dangerous.”
“I don’t think those guys are very clever… or even very dangerous, except when they catch somebody by surprise,” said Frank.
“Did anyone ask Lester how they’re armed?” inquired Presley. He forgot to talk to Lester about it himself, but he trusted one of his men asked the question. He knew his men well and always gave them freedom to make decisions and think independently. He never worried about being smaller in their eyes in case he oversaw something.
“A couple of shotguns,” a man confirmed his expectation. “And pistols; and, don’t forget Lester and John’s rifles.”
“That is why they didn’t respond to my fire,” Frank exclaimed. “They just didn’t have the means.”
“So, they may be just a bunch of bad cow
boys, bullying the neighbourhood,” another man said.
“They may be,” Presley concurred.
“So, what are we going to do?” Frank pressed.
“All right: we’ll surround them… Leave them no choice but to negotiate with us,” Presley decided.
“Negotiate!” Fred demanded. “You would cut a deal with those scum?”
“It is the fastest way to resolve this situation. We’ll ask them to give up the house, the people from the house and their weapons. Then we’ll let them go.”
“But they killed John! Don’t you think they deserve the same?” Frank was insistent.
“Yes I do, but you already punished John’s killer. More could die if we try to force them out, first be their hostages. I would like to avoid it.”
“Maybe they already killed them.”
“I doubt it. They wanted their food. Lester told us it was all about the food. And those people wouldn’t surrender their stock. But now, knowing we are here, they will probably keep them as an asset.”
“I don’t know, chief. I am not so sure this is the right way to go.”
“Go on, boys! Spread around!” Presley commanded. “Freddy, you keep that gable window in check. I would position a man with a rifle right there… If I were in their shoes, I would. If you think that guy has even a remote thought of shooting at me, drop him right away. In ten minutes, I’ll be in the middle of the yard to call them out to talk. Then, we’ll see… Go!”
Ten minutes later, Presley came out to the open, with a white robe tied to the wooden stick. He made a couple of steps forward and stopped. Minutes passed by slowly. Then, a shot rang out across the clearance and, a split second later, a body fell to the ground in front of the house, breaking the gable window.
“Did you have to shoot him?” asked Presley over his shoulder.
“I saw the curtain move,” Frankie replied.
Presley stood motionless. He waited for something to happen. A couple minutes passed and, then, the house entrance door opened and a figure appeared. He was holding up a white piece of cloth in his right hand. He made several steps forward and then stopped.
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