Stealing Second (The Amendments Book One 1) (16 page)

“North Branch?” asked my captor. “With a loaded weapon?” he asked
in a pinched voice, picking up Kyle’s .45 from where it lay in the weeds. He stuck the barrel into my ear. “You ain’t the brightest bulb on the tree, are you, fat boy? Carrying a loaded weapon is punishable by hanging. Did you know that?”

“
What makes us any different than the two of you?” I asked.

The skinny man sneered and ground the barrel of the .45 into my ear. “Not that it’s any of your goddamn business, but we’re employed by the United States Army. We can do whatever the hell we want, can’t we, Henry?”

“Damn straight we can, Scooter. And I say we get these folks up to the barn and have us a little party. If the ladies are real nice and cooperate, I might even find it in the goodness of my heart to let the three of you just walk out of here. I’ll warn you, though, if you even think of putting up a stink, I’ll bash your goddamn brains out with a claw hammer. I’ve done it before, ain’t I, Scooter?”

“Hell yes,” said Scooter. “
I think we still got some brains stuck in the claw in case any of you folks care to take a peek.”

Their laught
er returned with renewed energy as if Scooter’s comment was the funniest joke ever told. Mercifully, Henry stopped laughing and pointed up to a red barn. “Get moving,” he said.

We began walking, hands bound in front of
us. Violet and Cathy walked side by side with Henry walking behind them. Every now and again, he would stick his nose in the crooks of their necks and make an exaggerated sniffing sound. Cathy would scream, but Violet never even flinched. Not even once. The walk was roughly half a mile up an empty gravel road and another two hundred yards down a narrow driveway. The farm wasn’t much different than my father’s, but I knew instinctively that it didn’t belong to these halfwits. The sandy driveway was thatched with the tracks of heavy military vehicles.

As we approached the barn, I saw that we weren’t alone. About twenty people, each bound hand and foot, were spre
ad out on the lawn. Another man who bore a strong family resemblance to our captors stood over them with a hunting rifle. He strutted around without a shirt, displaying a vast array of faded black tattoos which were either prison issue or homespun.

“Look what we caught, Daryl,” said Henry. “Ain’t they pretty?”

The man he’d called Daryl gave Violet and Cathy an appraising look. “You can have the little one,” he grunted. “I want the mama.”

“Yeah, well you can have her after I’m done with her,” sq
uawked Scooter. “You went first last time. It’s my turn.”

I stared into the faces of the captives and saw their eyes were filled with pity, even terror. As the brothers argued about who was going first, my eyes fell on one of the men who was desperately trying to catch my attention. His eyes locked on mine and then
shifted slightly and looked past me. Slowly, I turned my eyes and I spotted the short-handled pitchfork. I quickly returned my attention to the man and gave him a quick nod. By this time, Daryl and Scooter each had one of Cathy’s arms and were dragging her off to a large wooden shed. Henry was squatted down in front of Violet, staring up into her face. She was standing in the soft sand of the horseshoe driveway less than ten feet away from me.

“We can do this the easy way,”
he said to her. “Or I can go get my hammer and we can do this the hard way; makes no difference to me.”

I could see from the look on Henry’s face that he meant it. Life had suddenly become cheap and in
nocence had become a luxury. Slowly, as Henry reached up and pulled Violet down to her knees, I began to inch back to the pitchfork.

Henry had been holding Cathy’s gun and ca
sually tossed it aside. Roughly he unbound her wrists, grasped Violet by her shoulders and pulled her on top of him. “Come on, baby,” he grunted. “You know you want me.”

A few feet from the pitchfork, I slipped off my backpack. The captives all seemed to be staring at me and my guts were twisting. Henry was flat on his back and
little Violet was on top of him as limp as a ragdoll. Cathy was screaming at Violet to fight and demanding that Scooter and Daryl let her go. Scooter wound back and slapped her hard across the cheek. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth, but she continued to fight as the men dragged her into the shed. I dropped to one knee and just as I reached for the pitchfork, Henry caught my eye. He let out a roar of anger and a second later there was an explosion.

Violet
was suddenly on her feet, holding her mother’s handgun in both hands, running toward the open door of the shed. Henry was clutching his chest as blood gurgled from the wound. Scooter appeared first, followed by Daryl. They each held guns, but they were confused by the little girl who ten feet away suddenly froze into a perfect shooter’s stance. Scooter raised his shotgun, but Violet cracked off a quick shot; the bullet struck him in the forehead. He was thrown onto his back as a fountain of blood erupted from his wound. Daryl dropped his gun and raised his hands.

After freeing ourselves, we bound Daryl and Henry with the same gray tape they had used on us. Henry’s wound was
high up on his shoulder, but the bullet had passed through cleanly and missed his vital organs. With Violet calmly holding the two brothers at gunpoint, Cathy and I set out to free the others. After thanking us, nearly half of the group ran off to the woods behind the barn. We returned to Violet and Cathy slipped the gun out of her hands. “You saved our lives,” I said. “Thank you.”

Violet
gave me a blank stare and nodded her head.

“Who taught you how to shoot like that?” I asked.

“Grandma did.”

“Are you kidding me?” asked Cathy.

“Grandma said I was a natural.”

Cathy bent down and took
Violet into her arms. “Oh baby,” she moaned. “I’m so sorry about this. You’re too young to have taken a life.”

Violet
’s eyes narrowed as she stared at a woman who was attending to Henry. “They were going to kill us,” she said, flatly. “They deserved to die. Why are we helping them?”

The man who had directed me to the pitchfork stepped forward. He was at least ten years olde
r than me and had the wiry build of a rodeo cowboy. He was dressed in blue jeans and a short-sleeved checkered shirt. His face was hard and crow’s feet were etched deep around pale blue eyes. He held a shotgun slung over his shoulder. “The kid has a point,” he said. “I think we ought to finish the job.”

“But then we’d be no better than they are,” said a matronly woman who sat nearby. “We’re not murderers, Ace.”

The cowboy turned to face the woman. “Aunt Janie, what do you suggest we do with them? If we leave them here, they’ll tell them what happened and we’ll be recaptured before the sun sets.”

“I won’t have any part of it,” she replied.

“He’s right,” said Violet. “I’ll shoot the bad guys if no one else will.”

“I’ll shoot them,” volunteered a tall skinny man. He had been watching the woman tending to Henry and walked over to join us. He was dark-haired
with the pale skin of a funeral director. “That Henry,” he said, wiping a tear from one eye, “he shot my dog. My Buddy never hurt anyone. No, young lady, I’ll be happy to send both of those monsters straight to hell.”

There were perhaps twelve of us there and most of them began walking over to chime in on the situation. “They raped me,” said a thin, middle-aged woman. “Let me shoot them.”

“That one,” said a short dark-haired woman, pointing to Daryl. “He killed my friend. He shot him … for no reason.”

“I say we hang them,” said a portly farmer with bushy white hair. “It’s better than what they deserve.”

“We can’t leave them here,” said a scrawny teenage kid with bright red hair. “They’ll just keep doing what they’ve been doing. I’ll shoot them. Honest I will.”

“Listen to you people,” bellowed the woman Ace had called Aunt Janie. “You sound like a pack of wild animals. This is America and these men, as bad as they are, deserve to be tried by a jury of their peers.”

“No,” said Violet, “they don’t. Ace is right, they’ll only tell the soldiers what happened here and they’ll find us. You know they will.”

Cathy and I exchanged a look and Cathy spoke up. “My daughter is right. I say we put this to a vote.
Who here thinks we should let the murdering rapists live? Who here thinks we should give them another chance to murder and rape again?”

“We promise never to do it again!” shouted Daryl. “Ain’t that right, Henry? We’re sorry. I’m sorry. Don’t do this!”

I looked at Daryl. He was wearing the same face he had likely worn when his parents had caught him stealing. He stared at us with basset hound eyes and his bottom lip was puckered out. Next to him, Henry lay on his back and stared up at the branches of the elm tree above him. The woman who had been tending to him was already on her feet. She was young and pretty and the look on her face was that she had done all she could. The matter was out of her hands. I had expected her to raise her hand, but she did not.

The only one among us to raise her hand was Janie. She stared at us in disbelief. “I will not be a party to this,” she stammered, rising to her feet. “I’m leaving. Ace, if this is what you really want to do, don’t you dare follow me.
I’m going home. I won’t travel with a murderer.”

“Suit
yourself,” muttered Ace. “I’m going to go find a rope.”

“There’s no time for that,” said Cathy. “Let’s just shoot them.”

The skinny man with the dead dog walked over and gestured for Ace to give him the shotgun. Ace looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and handed it over. I reached down to take Violet’s hand. I didn’t want her to see this, but she crossed her arms across her chest and gave Daryl a cold stare.

“
She’ll be fine,” said Cathy, who still held her protectively.

“Oh God,” moaned Daryl. “Please, don’t do this. We promise not to say a word to the soldiers. Don’t we, Henry?”

“Shut up,” grunted Henry. “Act like a man, Daryl. Goddamn it.”

“But I don’t want to die.”

“Quit your sniveling.”

The skinny man was dressed in black khaki slacks and a dirty white shirt. I watched him walk over to stand in front of Daryl and there seemed to be a spring in his step. “You killed Buddy,” he said, coldly. “Do you remember how you did it? Let me refresh your memory, asshole. You first shot him in the leg, like this,” the skinny man held the barrel of the shotgun above Daryl’s bound ankles and I heard the click of the safety. He pulled the trigger and there was an explosion.
The semiautomatic shotgun kicked a shell into the dirt and Daryl began screaming at the top of his lungs.

I shook my head and began to charge in, but Ace held me back. “Let him do it his way. You ever have a dog?”

I nodded and thought about Gunner and Thor. Whatever sympathy I felt for Daryl was gone in an instant. I looked up to see Janie and the young woman who had been tending to Henry jogging towards the woods. When I looked back to the skinny man, he was standing over Henry and pointing the shotgun down at his face. Daryl had gone silent, but his eyes were wide with terror. The barrel was less than a foot away from Henry’s nose. “Do you have any last words?” asked the skinny man.

“Kiss my ass,” grunted Henry.

“Not today,” replied the skinny man and pulled the trigger.

I turned away as Henry’s head exploded like a ripe pumpkin. Both the skinny man and Daryl were covered in bits of gore and splatters of blood. Daryl began screaming again and the skinny man kicked him hard in the stomach with a pointy shoe. The screa
ming stopped as Daryl fell to his back and began fighting for air.

“Do you remember kicking Buddy?
Do you remember me begging you not to shoot him, Daryl? Do you remember the way you laughed at me? Let me see if I can remind you how you sounded,” he said, and then the skinny man let loose with heckling laughter.

“Please,” gasped Daryl, “don’t kill me. I’m going to get married next month.”

The skinny man’s laughter rose to a frenzied pitch, but it stopped as suddenly as it had started. He stared at Daryl with cold eyes. “Like hell you are,” he said. He then raised the shotgun and stuck the barrel in Daryl’s stomach. He then pulled the trigger. Daryl’s body heaved up in a way that didn’t seem possible. He howled in pain, but the howling quickly began to subside as he began to bleed out. He stared at the thin man with his sad face and shook his head in disbelief. A moment later, Daryl began to twitch.

The thin man turned to face us and a sad smile flashed across his bony face. Then, quicker than I thought possible, he
twisted and turned the shotgun onto himself. Before I could shout for him to stop, the shotgun barked one final time.

“Aw shit!” shouted Ace. “No
…”

The skinny man was blown backwards and was dead before he hit the ground. I turned and stood in front of
Violet and Cathy, determined not to let the young girl see any more of this gruesome show. I looked down at her, but her eyes were blank and lifeless. Cathy began to weep as she ushered Violet away from the driveway towards the barn. The others began to follow her as if she knew where she was going. Cathy stooped to pick up Violet’s backpack and they continued walking.