"Now that she's relishing her victory?" Leon asks skeptically. "Not a chance."
"Have to agree with him, Moe," Felix says. "You'll have to save revenge for another day."
"And what a glorious day it will be," I say, only half joking.
Leon looks over, smirking. "You can ask Lauren. I'm sure she'd be game."
"For a number of things," Felix adds.
"Yeah, maybe," I reply, not taking the bait. It doesn't deter them. I wouldn't expect it to, giving each other shit over the girls we’ve dated has always been a part of our friendship. I just smile and laugh along with them, not giving them an inch. When we catch a glimpse of our campsite through the trees, they cease their bombardment on my love life.
"Damn, they couldn't even start a fire?" Leon asks. "They're really milking this bet for all it’s worth!" he laughs. When we step into the clearing I immediately sense something’s off. It's not only the absence of a fire, but the absence of everything else. The girls are nowhere in sight, and when I strain my ears, all is silent around me.
Leon drops his pack by the fire, shaking his head. "They're screwing with us," he says. He walks up to the girl’s tent and opens it up. He shakes his head again and starts off into the treeline. Felix drops his pack next to Leon's and races to our tent. I see him rummaging through our stuff and hear him curse. "The food and medical supplies are gone!" he yells, frantic.
Leon's returned from the treeline, yelling for the girls to come back: "Ha-ha, very funny! But seriously, the jokes over. You can come out now!" But there is no return call, and the girls don’t reappear. The sun has stained the sky red, the color of fresh blood. This doesn't make sense. This is too real. The sweat beading down my face too wet, my mouth and throat too dry. Why am I still standing here? I should have pulled myself out of this nightmare by now. I should be awake, telling myself it wasn't real while I wait for my pulse to come back down. Felix is in front of me now, his lips moving, but I can't hear anything outside of the pounding of my own heart in my ears. Felix puts his hands on my shoulder and starts to shake me. I want to tell him to keep shaking, to rouse me from my sleep. Then he moves his hand and slaps me across the face. The sting and heat break me out of my stupor, and the tears come before I can stop them. This is real, but it's still every bit a nightmare.
"Where are they, Chavo?" I ask, my voice barely more than a whisper.
"I don't know, Moe. But we'll find them," he says, his eyes blazing. I look to Leon and he looks exactly what he is in that moment: a man out for blood.
"I believe I might be able to help you there," a voice calls out of the treeline.
Like a machine we snap to attention, drawing our weapons towards the voice. "Show yourself!" Leon barks as he pumps the shotgun, chambering a shell. I have a death grip on the handgun I stole from Gibbons as I aim down the sights. A figure appears from behind a large tree, featureless against the blood-red sky behind him. His hands are splayed above his head as he steadily walks towards us. It's not until he's a dozen feet away, and Felix curses under his breath that I recognize him. Eli: the bastard who used his family to try and raid us near Breckenridge.
Leon is on him the instant he recognizes him, swinging the butt of the shotgun across his face, and sending him to the dirt. Eli makes to get up but Leon is already on top of him, pinning him to the ground and reigning down furious strikes to his face. Leon snarls and grunts against Felix and me, as we try and haul him off. "Calm down, Lee!" I yell in his ear
"Why?" he snarls. "This son of a bitch has our girls! We should beat him till he drowns in his own blood!"
"And then what?" I yell. "How does that bring them back?" That gives him pause. He stops trying to break free but his body remains tense, coiled like a snake waiting to sink its fangs into its prey. I keep hold of him. "Believe me, I want to hurt him just as bad as you do. But we need to find out what he knows. It's our best shot to get them back." His body uncoils marginally and he nods his head, agreeing with my words. I let him go and return my attention to the man laying at our feet.
Eli slowly rises to his knees and puts his hands behind his head, so Felix can pat him down. He's unarmed, carrying nothing but a handheld radio, a flashlight, and billfold with three folded pictures of his family. His features are thrown into sharp relief as Felix shines the flashlight on him. His face looks nearly as battered as mine did after Gibbons got a hold of me, but aside from his nose which bleeds freely, none of the injuries look new. The eyes staring back at me tell me his wounds aren't merely external, either. If hatred wasn't coursing through me, I might feel sorry for him. But he lost any compassion the moment he stepped out of the treeline.
I squat down next to him so we are at eye level. "Where are they?" I ask forcing myself to remain calm. "Where are they, and how do you know?"
"They're at my camp. I was out scouting when they radioed in taking four female captives. I was told to report here and see if anyone else showed up...I didn’t know it was your girls until I saw you three. I’m, sorry.” Tears leak out the corners of his eyes, his voice raw—painful, even. I can’t tell if this is an act or genuine sympathy. Either way, it doesn't stop my hand from flying forward and wrapping around his throat. He chokes as I squeeze, his eyes bulging in surprise. I lean in so my face is only inches from his.
"Where is your camp?" I ask in a deathly whisper. "How many men? How are they armed? I want every useful piece of information you have, or I swear to God, I will rip your throat out with my bare hands!"
I release my grip and he coughs and gasps for air. "Five miles from here!" he speaks between spasms of coughs. "Nine men— cough — heavily armed — cough — AR-15's — cough — 12 Gauge shotguns — cough — 9mm pistols — cough —thousands of rounds of ammo. They'll have your girls under guard." My stomach drops at his words. How the hell are we supposed to rescue the girls against such a superior force?
"If your camp is that large and has that much firepower, why are you alone and unarmed?" Felix asks.
The question hits somewhere inside of him. "Because I don't have a choice in what I do anymore," he says. His answer seemingly unravels whatever has held him together. He cries freely, deep mournful sobs he makes no attempt to stop. A part of me, deep down, in a place where the harshness of this new world and the brutality I've witnessed has not reached, feels sympathy for this man. But I don't let it show. I must be iron. I must not convey even a flicker of hesitation.
"What does that mean? Explain yourself!" I bark. He's shaking his head back and forth, my words not registering in the slightest. I let my hand fly again and slap him across the face, trying to snap him out of it as Felix did to me earlier. Sobs continue to rack his body, his head hanging defeatedly. Every second that passes is a second longer our girls are at the mercy of those monsters, and I'm not going to waste time while Eli melts down. I grab the back of his head with one hand and force him to look at me as I unsheathe my knife, the serrated steel gleaming ominously. "Answer my question or I start removing fingers!"
The tears stop, but his cheeks are still soaked with them. Long strands of bloody snot hang off the bridge of his mouth. In all my life, I don't know if I've seen someone look so broken. When he speaks there's a hollowness in his voice; not only defeated but without even a whisper of hope. "I mean what I said: I don't have a choice in what I do anymore. Not since the night you all escaped. Clint didn't take that very well."
"Who's Clint?" I ask.
His eyes flash at the name—hatred, pure and undiluted. "He's the boss. The one who recruited my family in the first place."
"Go on," I urge, knowing there's more to the story. He coughs once and spits a wad of bloody phlegm onto the ground before continuing. "I guess you could say we've fallen out of favor with him since that night. We're like dogs to them. They feed us the scraps of whatever's left from their meals. Any task: fetching water, cooking, cleaning, anything else that needs to be done, falls on us to do. What's worse, he still forces us to scout camps to raid."
> "Force?" Leon asks acidly. "You sure seemed like you were acting on your own free will when you were gonna sell us out. Why the sudden change of heart? And for that matter, if it's so bad at that camp, why not just keep walking while you're out being forced to scout out decent people to exploit? Why keep coming back?"
Eli shakes his head. "I know what you must think of me. I have no excuses for what I chose to do, other than I thought it was the only way to keep my family alive." He looks over at me then, his eyes pleading. "But I know now there are things worse than death. We've been haunted by the things we've done. There hasn't been a single night my wife hasn't cried herself to sleep since the first camp we turned in. But every day we would see our children eat, and we convinced ourselves it was worth any price to pay. Then you came along and showed us how wrong we were. You showed us mercy when few would have, and told me there was another way. We would have stopped that night if it were up to us." His hand closes into a fist and digs into his thighs as he finishes the sentence.
"But Clint wouldn't let that happen? Would he?" I ask. It's all starting to come together, the edges of the puzzle snapping into place, giving me a sense of how it will turn out.
"No. He wouldn't," he says bitterly. His muscles are tense, his knuckles white as they dig into his leg. He closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath before he continues. "We knew he wouldn't just let us go, we were too valuable for him to let that happen." He turns, addressing Leon. "So we were going to do like you said, wait till we were sent out again and keep walking. I don't know if Clint sensed we were up to something or he just wanted to ensure his investment, but ever since then, he won't let us leave camp for any reason without leaving one of our children behind. So when he sent us out to scout we didn't have a choice but to go, afraid of what he might do if we refused. We couldn't bring ourselves to turn in another camp, though. So we lied. And kept coming back without anything to report." He points to his beaten face and lifts his shirt, revealing bruises dotting his torso purple and green. "As you can see, he didn't like that much either. But I could live with it, much more than I could selling out another camp."
He pauses, and fresh tears leak out his eyes. "But I couldn't live with him hurting my children, though," he says in anguish, his voice cracking. "That bastard took my son's arm and stubbed out his cigarette on it: for motivation, he said. And then he started making suggestions of what he might do to our daughter if we didn't find something soon. She's eleven years old, and he was talking about...about," he can't get the words out, his body racked with sobs once again. I feel sick to my stomach. What he's describing is atrocious. This Clint is the kind of wickedness I hoped to avoid by bypassing the interstate. And he's the man who holds our girls captive. The urgency to get them back has multiplied a hundredfold.
"I get it," I tell him, needing him to focus. "You started reporting the camps again."
He nods. "I didn't have a choice. I couldn't let him have my daughter. Even if it cost my soul, I couldn't let it happen."
My voice is gruff as I ask the question I fear I know the answer to. "What does he want with our girls?"
Pain ripples across his face again, but it's different from earlier. It's not his own, but in the answer he must give me. "A couple weeks ago they brought back hostages: two young girls, maybe college age. We were low on supplies at the time and Clint needed a way to find more." The sickness I've felt in my stomach is creeping upward and I'm in serious danger of vomiting where I stand. I know where this is going, but I need to hear it confirmed. "He's going to trade them off for food and supplies," I say. It's not a question.
"Yes." One word—one pinprick sized word is all it takes for my world to crash around me. I lose my stomach, falling to my knees as convulsions rack my body and tears fill my eyes. I wipe my mouth and rise to my feet, nothing but blood on my mind. I thought I knew fury: in Denver when I first learned what it meant to take a man’s life; on the trail when we were attacked and nearly lost Emily in the scuffle; but nothing comes close to the wave that has swept over me in this moment. It is a feeling Leon shares as he grabs Eli by the collar and yells in his face.
"Where the fuck are they? Tell me where they are, or I swear the last hours of your life will be pain beyond anything you thought possible!"
"It doesn't matter where our camp is. There's no way any of you walk out alive if you storm in there. You're outmanned and outgunned." Leon tosses him and Eli lands on the ground several feet away. Felix and I have to hold Leon back once more to keep him from launching at Eli. "They're family!" he screams, voice breaking. "We don't abandon family!"
Eli gets to his feet, and he no longer looks broken and void of hope. His features have hardened, his face a mask of fierce determination: the face of a man on his final stand, ready to lay it all on the line. "I know you won't, and neither will I. Ever. I could have kept out of sight, let your girls be sold like livestock and called you in the moment you returned here. But I didn't. Because our only chance of getting our families back is if we work together."
Leon turns toward Felix and I, breathing like a cornered bull. We share a look between us that doesn't need words, because we know each other inside and out, and hear the unspoken question in the air: do we trust him? It's Felix who answers first. "What choice do we have?" he asks. None, and that's all we need to know.
Chapter 17
I'm on one knee, gun in hand, extra clips loaded and ready. I conceal myself behind the trunk of a thick tree, as does Leon a few trees over to my right, and Felix to my left. Eli stands alone some twenty yards out, in the middle of a small clearing a half mile from our camp. He twirls a glow stick between his fingers, appearing at ease as he waits. Appearance is everything. This has to look like another night of work for him. He can't convey anything is amiss for our plan to work.
Eli made the call an hour ago, relaying the false report of four individuals entering our camp, two of whom being young girls in their late teens. He also reported the group carried two rifles and that they were beside themselves, convinced the four abducted girls had abandoned them and took off with the supplies while they were gone. Given the distance of their camp, whatever task force they send out should be arriving any minute.
And then I hear it: the movement of several men stalking towards us, their footfalls barely audible in the quiet night. It won't be quiet for long. They emerge out of the shadows, four of them, each carrying a rifle or shotgun. Eli pockets the glow stick and waits as they approach. I can't believe I've gotten used to this: this feeling of controlled adrenaline and nerves—like that moment right at the crest of a roller coaster—when your stomach flutters and your body is tense and alive, and you know any second you'll be pitched forward into a blurred world of speed and action. I feel it now as Eli addresses the kill squad.
“They're a half mile out. The two men are sitting around the fire. The girls went to sleep not long after I radioed in."
"Asleep?" one of the men drawls. "And how do you know they're asleep?" You can hear the amusement in his voice. He's loving this. Two more girls mean more food for him to eat. Maybe even a chance to taste the merchandise—a thought that makes me sick when I think of our girls.
Eli doesn't share the amusement, his response terse. "They went into a tent and didn't come out the twenty minutes I scouted. I assume it was to sleep."
"Could be scissoring each other," the man replies, drawing crude laughter the other men. "I wouldn't mind getting a glimpse of a couple dykes going at it."
"Well, then you better hurry. Wouldn't want to miss the show," Eli says, not bothering to mask his distaste. The man is quick, the butt of his rifle slamming into Eli's stomach before he can react. Eli doubles over and the man drives his knee into Eli's chin, sending him onto his back. "Mind your mouth when you talk to your superiors," he scolds, earning another round of mean laughter. "Get on your feet you pathetic worm. We still have a job to do."
Eli scrambles slowly to his feet, clutching his stomach. "This way," he gasps.
I'll give him credit, he knows how to keep his cool, not letting his anger surface as he leads them toward us. Our eyes stay glued to Eli, waiting for him to get in position and signal. He coughs and I start counting. 5) Take the gun off safety. 4) Pull back the hammer. 3) Center the iron sights. 2) Take a deep breath to steady the nerves. 1) Engage.
We execute our plan perfectly. Eli hurls himself to the ground. Felix takes the lead man down with a bolt to the chest. Leon takes out the rear man. Leaving the middle two to me, who I take out with two short bursts. It lasts all of five seconds. Incredible how efficient guns have made killing. I feel no remorse for taking the lives of these men, only a dull sadness that this is the world we now live in—a world without police or armies, and where the only way to put an end to wicked men is by bloodying your own hands. A world where I will stain my hands red, fighting for those I love.
Eli radios in the mission was a success, and that we will be escorting the two phantom girls back to their camp. It’s hard to feel grateful toward Eli after all he's done, but as we step out from behind our cover, I know he is the reason we’re still alive: we wouldn't have stood a chance without him to facilitate the surprise attack. We strip the corpses of their weapons, yielding two AR-15 rifles, two 12 gauge shotguns, and four Glock 19s—a compact version of the handgun confiscated from me in Salida. But for all their firepower they don't carry much ammo, only what's already loaded. No extra mags or shells to speak of.
"Just a precaution," Eli explains. "Clint only sends out enough ammo to get the job done. Say's it's in case something like this ever happens, and the weapons are stolen."
"Smart of him," I say as I sling the AR around my neck. I pull back the charging handle, chambering a bullet before switching it to safety. "Still, I think we can make do with this."
"Absolutely," Felix replies. Seeing him with the second AR in his hands makes me feel better about our odds. Leon and I are sufficient in handling most firearms, thanks in large part to Felix's Uncle Frank, but Felix is on a whole other level. Leon and I always said he was an idiot for not entering shooting competitions, but he would always shake his head and insist it would only take the fun out it. Amazing to think these weapons could have ever been used for fun—for sunny afternoons coupled with cold beer and boisterous laughter. For anything besides the cold instruments of death they are.
Echoes of a Dying World (Book 1) Page 19