Crossing the Line (23 page)

Just when they thought they had moved to the cover without detection the sound of feet falling came from the edge of the forest. Tracy bit her lip to keep from gasping with fear. She closed her eyes and leaned harder against the tree.

Ivy gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder before vanishing around the side of the tree trunk. Ivy moved from one tree to the next, following the sound of the feet as they shuffled closer to where Tracy was hiding.

There was only one set of footsteps. They were heavy and sounded a bit off balance. Whoever was stalking them was trying his best to move quietly, but in the stillness of the night he still made more noise than anything else.

Ivy reached what she decided to be a good ambush point and set the pistol down on the ground. She took the shotgun off of her back and held it like a club. She knew once she began the attack there was little chance that the man’s companion wouldn’t rush into the forest, but two men were easier to take out than the entire ranch.

As she leaned against the tree to keep from throwing a shadow a sharp pain announced itself in her bare forearm. She softly hissed with pain and looked down to see that an old fence post was leaning against the base of the tree’s trunk. Barbed wire was wrapped around the top of the post and had snagged her skin. Fresh blood ran from the wound on her arm, but she paid that little attention.

She put the shotgun back over her shoulder and picked up the post. It was a solid piece of wood, though it had been softened in spots by the weather over the years. Still the four feet of
timber was reinforced with barbed wire that ran from the top down two feet. It had obviously been part of a large fence because the wire had been wrapped around it dozens of times, leaving it looking like a generic mace.

She held the end of the post in both hands, as her fingers could not encompass the twelve inches of its circumference. New weapon in hand she waited for the footsteps to draw near enough that she could attack.

A twig snapped behind her. She looked over her shoulder and saw Tracy crouched down with her stolen rifle in her hands. The other girl didn’t have to tell her that she was going to attempt to provide cover.

The sound stopped the footsteps dead in their tracks. Their stalker was close and Ivy was sure that he was now considering changing his course toward the movement. “I think they’re in here!” he called back out of the trees.

Ivy sprang into action, not wanting to attempt to take more than one man on at a time. She rushed to the voice, whose owner turned around shocked when he heard her approach. Her first swing knocked the man’s ball cap off of his head and sent him sprawling.

Ivy raised the mace above her head and brought it down solidly between his shoulders, missing her intended target of his skull. He yelped with pain and tried to scramble away. The barbed wire tore through the fabric of his flannel shirt and left tiny gashes along his spine. Ivy had hoped the damage would have been much worse. She began thinking that she may have miscalculated her actions.

She withheld the urge to scream with rage as she swung the club a second time. This time it hit the man solidly in the back of the head. There was enough force behind the blow that his head bounced off of the ground. The barbed wire did more of the desired effect this time. It came away from the skull with bits of hair and flesh clinging to its
rusted spikes.

The man seemed knocked out by the blow, but that was not good enough. Ivy knew she could not leave any survivors. She rolled the big man over, grunting at the strength it took to move his dead weight. She was preparing to stand so that she could strike him in his bloodied face when his eyes popped open and his hand wrapped around her throat.

Ivy let out a shrill shriek despite herself as the fingers tightened around her esophagus. She fought back her hysteria and kept the club out of the reach of the man’s other arm as he attempted to grab it.

One of the man’s eyes was full of blood from some internal hemorrhage. Ivy focused on this for a moment, transfixed on the way the blood seemed to be sloshing about beneath his iris. As the fingers tightened around her thin neck she lashed out her free hand and drove her thumb into the blood-filled eye.

There wasn’t a satisfying pop like she would have imagined. As her filthy fingernail penetrated the eyeball the optic fluid oozed out more like the innards of a squeezed grape. Her thumb pushed deep into his head, shoving the deflated eye back against the nest of its optic nerves.

The man’s hold on her neck loosened as he let out a loud cry of pain. Ivy pulled her thumb out of the eye socket and scrambled back away from her wounded victim as air once again rushed into her lungs. She began hacking despite herself. It felt as if the inside of her throat had been scraped by steel wool. She knew it wasn’t actually bleeding in her windpipe, but it sure as hell felt like it was.

More footsteps approached now. She wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the forest or not, but it sounded like at least three separate pairs of feet rushing toward her. She forced herself to stand and ran back to her hiding place, clutching the club to her chest as if it could protect her if she was shot at from behind.

She dashed back behind the tree and knelt down. In the darkness she felt around the ground until her hand fell on the muzzle of her set aside pistol. She held her breath and closed her eyes against the sweat that ran from her brow.

“Bitch poked out my eye!” the man screamed.

“Keep your voice down,” the second man said. “She’s got to be around here somewhere.”

A deep growl came from the area of the men. Ivy felt relief sweep through her. She knew Brute would have no problem killing the men.

“Sic ’er, Zeus,” the second man said. The growl turned into a loud snarl.

Ivy’s heart plummeted in her chest. It wasn’t Brute with the men, but another member of his “pack”. From the sounds of it the dog had not gone feral.

Sudden, rushing footsteps came in her direction. She
stilled her shaking body against the tree and raised the pistol. If the dog was following her trail it would come face to face with her and she would capitalize on the close-range.

“Shit, she really did put it out,” the second man said. Ivy could barely hear him over the sound over the approaching footsteps and the thumping of her heart. She finally released her breath and tried to calm herself.

Remembering that Tracy had been covering her, she looked for her friend, but found no sign. She crawled back a few more feet and used a slightly smaller tree to brace herself. More sweat ran down from her forehead. She wiped it away with the hand holding the club and waited for the dog to appear in her range of attack.

The beast that came into view did not look like
what she had pictured. He was nowhere near as big as Brute. In fact, he looked like a normal sized teenage boy save for his dreadlocked hair and sharpened teeth. A long scar ran down from his hairline all the way down to the tip of his nose. His fingernails and toenails were long enough to be called claws. And when he set eyes on Ivy pure hatred filled his eyes.

He crouched down lower to the ground, staying on all fours. He began moving toward her cautiously, feeling her out. His eyes narrowed and his chapped lips pulled back to bear his sharpened teeth. He snarled and lashed out a hand at her though she was still far from arm’s length.

Ivy forced her hands to stop shaking as she trained the gun on the young man. She hoped that she would not have to shoot him. He seemed as much a victim as she was.

Without making a nose Brute burst
from the forest between them. He dropped to all fours and snarled at the young man. “No kill,” Brute said.

“Brute,” the young man said. He rose to his hind feet and Brute followed suit. “You come home.”

“We no kill girls,” Brute said. “We kill bad men. We kill masters.”

“Bad, Brute.”

“No, good.”

The younger dog seemed to consider it and then snorted. “Kill masters.”

A gunshot rang out in the forest. Ivy jumped and both dogs turned toward the sound. They dashed through the forest without seeming to care for their own safety. Ivy followed after them, holding the pistol with her finger just outside the trigger guard. The men were incredibly fast and seemed to know exactly where they are going.

Even at their quick pace four more shots were fired before they reached the gunfight.

Both men were lying on the ground now. Tracy was crouched at the base of the tree with the smoking
barrel of the thirty-ought-six trained on the unmoving men. Ivy rushed over to her friend and knelt down next to her. Tracy looked over at her and she instantly noticed the change in her eyes. She had lost even more of her former jovial personality when she gunned the men down. The longer the night drew on the more animal she became.

Brute walked over to the unmoving men and picked them up as if neither of them weighed anything. The one that had choked Ivy out flinched involuntarily. The other man remained completely still and when a beam of light fell on his face Ivy was more than convinced than he was dead. An enormous hole that had spread from
the side of his eye to his ear
and his eyeball was dangling out from
socket. As the man spun around lifelessly in Brute’s hold Ivy saw the back of his head had an even more enormous hole spanned most of the back of his cranium.

Brute tossed the dead man aside. He hoisted the other man higher off of the ground, lifting him to the full extent of his arm. He growled in the man’s face and grabbed the man’s lower jaw with his free hand and pulled it off with seemingly no effort. The man thrashed wildly in his grasp. Blood poured down the man’s face.

He dropped the man to the ground and stomped on his head.
He applied his full weight and there was an audible
crack
as the skull was smashed.

Brute looked at the girls and said, “You stay with Brute.”

“Okay,” Ivy nodded her head.

“Brute go get the rest of the dogs.”

34

The door to the garage hadn’t been locked to Anna’s surprise.
She stepped out into the darkness of the night and was surprised again by the lack of lighting around the garage. The sudden flood of artificial light coming from the open door cut a line through the thickness of the dark night. After she was sure it was all clear she motioned for Lynne to follow her out.

No sooner than they had closed the door behind themselves did they realize their mistake. From either side of the garage came men. In their panicked state it seemed like an entire army, but it was actually closer to a half dozen. Lynne raised the rifle and trained it on the men, but when she pulled the trigger it didn’t fire. She tried to cock the weapon, but did not have enough time to chamber another round.

The men were on them in what seemed like an instant. There were far too many arms grabbing them for the young women to do any substantial damage, but they swung their weapons to the best of their abilities and left a couple of the ambushers with superficial wounds.

A hard forearm to Anna’s temple sent the world out of focus. She fell back against the side of the garage and groaned in agony. She was thrown to the ground and her arms and legs were pulled savagely. When she regained her wits she realized she had been hogtied. She looked through the
mass of legs and saw that Lynne had been bound in the same way.

The men used a log to lift them simultaneously from the ground and began carrying them through the night. The bumpiness of the ride combined with the agonies of their previous battles and made both young women start sobbing with pain. Their ruthless captors paid no attention as they made their way toward their destination.

“Ain’t never had a black one before,” one of the men said. “I betcha that Deloris decides to keep her as a bitch.”

“Ain’t none of my concern. We got the girls now we just gotta hope that Brute is dumb enough to come for them. Juggernaut will be waiting,” another man said.

Anna closed her eyes tightly and prayed that it would all be over soon. She still couldn’t shake the numb feeling that had come over her when she murdered Greg. She had expected killing someone to make her break down completely, but it hadn’t happened. She was beginning to wonder if killing was actually a part of her nature. And, if so, was she any different than the men that held her captive now? Sure, it had taken a lot of pushing to get her to kill, but that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t continue now that she had acquired a taste for it. In fact, a dark part of her hoped that she would have a chance to torture and kill every one of the men carrying them. She would spend extra time on the one that had cracked her in the head. His death would come dreadfully slow, so slow that he would piss himself and beg to die before she finally let him. It was this newfound darkness that terrified her now. She no longer cared if she survived the night or not, just so long as the darkness was kept at bay. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if this alter ego were ever to become the primary personality.

Lynne wasn’t thinking of anything of the sort. Her mind was adrift in memories that seemed to come from long ago, but were actually just fragments from the last year or so of her life. The memories
of her friends brought such a deep sadness to her heart that she felt as if she was crumbling apart. The friend she was going to miss the most, she realized, was Gabby. Gabby had always been there to pick her up when she fell. Gabby had been her backbone while she was adjusting to college life. She had always found it amazing that such a small young woman was able to carry such inner strength. Just knowing that Gabby had died at the hands of some punk frat boy made her sick to her stomach.