The Mountain Page 10

  “We’ve got to go, honey.”

  “My side hurts.”

  Outside the car, Mark had struggled to his feet. He turned, leaned over Brenda’s shoulder, and said, “Come on, y’all. They’re hauling ass down the mountain.”

  “Her side hurts.”

  “Gonna hurt a hell of a lot more if they catch us,” Mark said, and then took Thel by the hand. “C’mon, let me help you.”

  She shook her hand free and crawled across the seats, wincing with every movement. Then she was out of the car and on the ground beside Mark, Eddie, and Brenda.

  “Which way?” Mark said.

  “Down.”

  Mark looked at the thick foliage and underbrush coating the mountainside below them. “Through that?”

  “You got a better idea, Christmas tree boy?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Forget it,” he said, even though he wanted to tell Mark that all of this was his fault, that none of it—the dead guy back in the trees, the blood and guts all over Brenda; the Honda totaled on the side of the mountain and Thel’s injury (whatever the hell it was)—would’ve happened if not for his half-assed idea about stealing Christmas trees.

  Mark and Eddie and the girls headed into the brush, Eddie pausing at the trunk of the car to cast a wistful look at how a load of Butchie Walker’s buckshot had mangled his guitar case.

  “Too bad it’s not a shotgun,” Mark told him, nodding at the case. “We could blast our way outa here.”

  “Yeah, well, too bad you’re not a fucking helicopter.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  They fought through the overgrown brush with great difficulty—with no tools and nothing to carve a passageway, all they could do was force their way through it. Briars snagged their pants; spindly thorn-laden branches raked them as they made their descent. Once, they had to stop and disentangle Thel’s hair from a thin piece of a tree branch. Mark just snapped the end off the dry twig, left the brittle piece of it in her hair and urged her to move forward.

  The footing was unsure, the going slow and tedious. Eddie could only hope that Butchie and his pals were having as hard a time as they were. Somehow he didn’t think that would be the case. Those guys knew their way around the mountain—it seemed like they’d caught up with them on the road with little or no effort at all. The fork in the trail sure as hell hadn’t slowed them any. One thing that worried Eddie: Butchie and his gang weren’t making any noise; no beam from the flashlight was sweeping over or around the landscape. Could be they knew another way down, a quicker way, and in no time at all Eddie and his friends would be headed off at the pass. Or maybe Butchie and his merry men would just magically appear and mow them all down.

  Anything could happen now.

  And all of it bad.

  “Thank God!” Mark said as he broke through some scrub-brush, onto another narrow trail, a grateful smile appearing on Thel’s face as she and Brenda followed him through.

  “Whew,” Eddie said when he joined them. “About time.”

  They stood in the middle of the trail, all of them looking a little worse for the wear than when they’d left the car. Mark’s shirt torn, small bits of green burrs clinging to his socks and pants legs; a square flap of his shirt hanging down, exposing a scraped and bleeding patch on his chest, blood trickling from a cut in the bend of his elbow. Brenda’s arms a crisscross of scratches where she’d forced her way through the brush, her shirt nothing but a torn and bloody rag. An angry welt ran across the bridge of Thel’s nose, drawing a thin red line down her cheek. Rivulets of sweat streaked her face. Her torn and dirty blouse, sodden with sweat, was plastered to her body. All of them had nicks and cuts on their hands. Eddie’s stung from the slits he’d received while pushing back the brush to try and help Brenda and Thel make it through with a minimum of damage.

  Eddie noticed the path angling back up the mountain, the steep incline leveling off ten or so yards on either side of them until it dropped into a gradually sloping descent, circling down and away toward a copse of trees. Directly in front of them, another solid wall of vines and heavy foliage intermingled with the pine trees and firs and sturdy oak.

  “What do you think?” Mark said.

  “Sure as hell ain’t going up,” Eddie said, nodding at the wall of vegetation lining the trail. “Or into another round of that bullshit.”

  Brenda cast a wary eye over her shoulder. “Why don’t we just get going, know what I mean?”

  “Where are they?” Thel said. “Why don’t we hear them?”

  “Yeah,” Mark now. “At least we’d know where they were, which way we should be going.”

  They were left with two choices: take the trail back up the mountain, or follow it down and hope it took them back to the road before Butchie and his boys could catch up to them. It really wasn’t much of a choice at all. They sure as hell weren’t going to haul ass up the mountain, and no one in their right mind would be willing to fight their way through the thick foliage waiting on the opposite side of the trail.

  “C’mon, let’s go that way,” Eddie said, by way of breaking the stalemate that seemed to have seized them.

  They started down the path, Brenda and Eddie in front, Mark and Thel following close behind. Eddie asked, “What time is it?”

  Mark, holding his wrist up to the moonlight, said, “Eleven-fifteen.”

  “Gee, it feels like we’ve been up here forever.”

  “Nah, man. We let you guys out at ten-thirty, forty five minutes ago.”

  “Heh,” Brenda said. “Time flies when you’re having fun. Must stand still when you’re running for your life.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t we be running? I mean, the faster we get out of here the better.”

  But Thel told her she couldn’t run, that she thought she’d busted a rib when the Honda smacked the tree, and every step she took shot a jolt of pain through her side. Besides that, except for a few thin slices of moonlight filtering at various intervals through the treetops, the trail was dark, the footing unsure.

  “Just go as quickly as you can,” Eddie told her. What he didn’t tell her was, that she was cool and everything, but if push came to shove he wouldn’t hesitate to haul ass and leave her in the lurch. He didn’t care how much he liked her, how much of a friend she was to Brenda, he couldn’t allow himself to give up his life trying to save hers. He wasn’t wired that way, even though it shamed him to admit it to himself.

  They followed the trail until they reached the bend in it, Eddie letting out a disheartening sigh when he saw that it did not continue down like they all had hoped, but that it too began a steady rise up the mountainside. They were turned around so bad, they didn’t know which end was up or which way would lead them back to the Holler. And the only sure descent was back into the briars and the brush, a route none of them was willing to take.

  “So what do we do now?” Mark said.

  “What can we do?” Eddie told him. “Sure as hell can’t go back the way we came. Hell, we might be walking straight into their arms—wherever they are.”

  The fact that Butchie and his gang had not shown up should have been cause for celebration. Maybe they’d given up and gone home—after all, it hadn’t exactly been a picnic fighting their way down the mountainside. Maybe Butchie wouldn’t want to put forth the effort. Eddie damn sure wouldn’t have, had he not been forced into it. But somehow he didn’t think the man who’d shouted, ‘You’re gonna die on this mountain tonight’ would let go so easily.

  Brenda, sweeping the back of a hand across her forehead, said, “I say we keep going up. We’re bound to run across a way down, sooner or later. Keep going, keep a sharp eye out. We make it ‘til daylight, it’ll be easier to find a way out of this. The main thing is to keep moving, maybe find a place to hunker down and hide. They could be coming up the trail right behind us.”

  Brenda had no idea how right she was.

  Chapter Eighteen
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  Moments after the crash, Butchie and Bobby and the last remaining Markham twin poured over the edge of the mountain. Hitting the path just beyond the drop off, they double timed it back to the split in the trail, because Eddie was right: they didn’t want to hack their way through the briars and brambles of Rickert’s Mountain. The well-worn byway would be much easier on them.

  Once on the path, they slowed their pace. Butchie couldn’t wait to see the look on their faces when they stumbled up the mountainside, right into his waiting arms. He didn’t, however, count on them going in the opposite direction, and as he and his mates made it down the long sloping hill, it became painfully clear:

  “They went down the path thinking it would take ‘em down to the Holler. They didn’t know you have to go up to go down.”

  “Shit,” Joey Markham said. “Now we’re gonna have to chase ‘em all the way up the Peak.”

  “Unless they got smart and forced their way a little farther through the brush,” Bobby Jarvis said. “And picked up one of those other trails. That’s all they’d have to do, you know.”

  “Would you?” Butchie asked him. “Would you slog through that mess if you didn’t have to?”

  “If somebody was firing a shotgun at me, damn straight I would.”

  “Good point, Bobby. We’ll just have to keep an eye out for—”

  “They didn’t go into that shit,” Joey said, his face a grim mask of determination. “They don’t know the mountain like we do. They saw the trail heading down and thought they were home free. We’ve got ‘em now, if we catch ‘em before they reach the Peak. So many trails leading outa there, we might never figure out which way they went if we don’t get them before they reach it.”

  They hit the level patch of land at a trot.

  Butchie’s damaged wrist was going numb, but not enough to quell the jolt of pain shooting through it every time his feet padded against the ground. At the downward slant, they stopped and stared out across the horizon just in time to see Brenda Sykes and her friends disappear into the pine trees.

  “Quiet,” Butchie said. “Go quietly. They’re not running anymore, probably think they lost us.”

  “Maybe they think we gave up and turned back.”

  Joey looked up at the moon, and then back at his companions. “We ain’t givin’ up.”

  “C’mon,” Butchie said, because Joey was right: they couldn’t stop now. Too much had happened. Blood had been spilled, his whole goddamn operation exposed. Not to mention what that prick had done to his wrist. If they didn’t take care of them tonight, no telling what kind of shit they’d wind up in tomorrow, with their trailer full of moonshine, cocaine and stolen firearms, and a shit-load of pot stacked up in the barn.

  “Goddamnit.”

  “What?” Bobby said.

  “We left the barn door wide open, all that herb layin’ out on the table and sacks of it stacked against the wall. We got our shit hangin’ in the wind, boys. We’ve gotta take care of those fuckers, and then go take care of business.”

  Butchie led them down the path, the shotgun clutched in his left hand while his right dangled loose at his side. The cool breeze washing over him felt good, but not as good as it was going to feel once all this horseshit was over with.

  “The fuck are those guys?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Bobby told him.

  Joey kept silent, and kept his eyes trained in front of him.

  “You know her, but you don’t know them?”

  “Never seen ‘em before.”

  “I’m gonna know ‘em,” Joey said. “And they’re gonna know me. Gonna know they messed with the wrong son of a bitch tonight.”

  “I hear ya, brother,” Butchie told him, as they reached the tree line and started up the steep incline that would take them to Rickert’s Peak.

  They left the rolling fields of briars and brambles and thick foliage behind and moved forward. Pine trees and firs and overgrown scrub brush dotted the steep landscape they now traversed. Moonlight washed over the treetops, casting an eerie glow across the craggy face of Rickert’s Peak, which loomed in the distance.

  Butchie could hear them scraping and scrambling up ahead, probably the girls struggling against the extreme angle of the rise. He pulled Joey to his side. “Listen,” he told him. “They’re bound to hear us sooner or later, so why don’t you take off across the mountain, catch the path over there and follow it up, just in case they hear us and try to hoof it out that way. You run into them, they’re all yours.”

  While Joey loped off across the mountainside, Butchie turned to Bobby. “Let’s go,” he said. “Quietly.” He flexed his hand a couple of times, wincing at the pain flaring in his wrist. Then he leaned forward, wrapped his hand around the rifle’s stock, and started climbing.

  * * *

  The path leveled off into a clearing, spread out in front of the base of a cliff in front of a smattering of tall pine trees, which stood silent witness throughout the open space. Moonlight bathed a long abandoned campsite at the foot of the rocky wall, casting the shadows of two thick logs which sat by a round grouping of charred stones; pieces of burnt wood, busted glass and old discarded liquor and beer bottles lay scattered amongst the rocks. A winding path split in two at the bottom, and then angled up either side of the cliff. Eddie wondered where the trails led, how difficult they would be to climb, and what kind of hiding place they might find if they ventured up there. He breathed a sigh of relief when he and his friends broke into the clearing. Not much of one, though, because they were still a long way from being out of harm’s way.

  They stood for a moment, taking a breather, Thel bent over, holding a forearm against her side, still with a bit of a grimace on her face.

  “What now?” Eddie said, as Brenda armed a band of sweat from her forehead.

  “Get the fuck off the mountain,” Mark told him. “As soon as we fucking can.”

  Thel straightened her posture, took a deep breath and winced. “I’ve got to rest a minute.”

  Mark turned and peered through the trees, at the dark trail below. “We can stop a minute, can’t we, guys?”

  “Sure we can,” Brenda said. “We’ll rest up a while and go find another way out of here.”

  “Maybe we should go up,” Eddie suggested, and Mark said, “Up? What are you, nutty? We need to go down, dude. Up. You’re kiddin’, right?”

  “I just thought, you know, we could get a good look from up there, find out for sure if anyone’s coming after us.”

  “I can’t,” Thel said, her eyes scanning the rocky formation. “I can’t make it.”

  Eddie, laying a gentle, reassuring hand on her shoulder, said “That’s okay. Maybe I’ll just hustle to the top real fast and take a look.” To Mark, he said, “You guys catch a break by the logs, I’ll be right back.”

  A cool breeze blew through the clearing and Thel turned to face it, a pleasurable sigh crossing her lips as the wind lifted her straight blonde hair. She ran a hand across the side of her head, frowning when it touched a twig that was still snarled there, fooling with it for a moment while following Mark, Eddie and Brenda past a row of trees.

  Brenda glanced over her shoulder. “What the…”

  Thel screamed.

  Framed in the moonlight was a man’s naked body, nailed to the wide trunk of a pine tree like a bizarre human scarecrow, forearms hanging down, nails hammered through his upper arms, his stomach split wide open; a dry, dark cave where his guts should’ve been, nothing at all attached to the ragged stump of his neck. Dried blood painted his chest and sides, covering his lap and legs, as well as the ground beneath him.

  A look of horrified revulsion crossed Mark’s face, as Eddie gasped out, “Jesus.”

  From down below came the unmistakable sound of someone clawing and scraping their way up the mountainside.

  “Oh, shit,” Eddie said. “C’mon!”

  He took off across the clearing, Thel behind him, Mark and Brenda on either side of Thel. A dis
tant rustling of tree branches stopped them dead in their tracks. Then an “Oomph!”, and a sound like a fifty pound sack of animal feed being dropped off the back of a truck. A thumping thwack sent a shaking hand fluttering to Thel’s mouth. She took a backward step, she and Brenda howling in fright when a severed head came bouncing across the forest floor, strands of bloody tendons flopping end over end in the moonlight as it rolled to a stop directly at their feet.

  They turned to see two figures step into the clearing, turned back and a soft, husky laugh echoed from the darkness.

  Mark, Eddie and the girls huddled next to a tree. Mark, his right palm pressed against a rough patch of bark, peered around the trunk. Tears streamed down Brenda’s face as she hid behind him. Something whistled through the dark and pain exploded in Mark’s hand; he tried pulling his hand back but an arrow had nailed it to the broad trunk of the tree.

  Butchie Walker, smiling, leveled his shotgun as Thel ran screaming across the clearing. A roaring blast sent her sprawling to the ground, shrieking and squirming and clutching her thigh; Butchie grinning, pumping his weapon and stepping forward as a giant in bib-overalls lumbered out of the darkness, blood dripping off the curved head of an ax he swung slowly back and forth.

  Butchie said, “What the—”

  An arrow struck him in the eye and the shotgun dropped to the ground; fire roared from the barrel as the howling dope-farmer fell to his knees, clutching the wooden shaft of the arrow while another found his chest… over and onto his side while Bobby Jarvis turned and ran into a man who had stepped out from behind a tree, one eye wide and wild, the other dull and lifeless. His fist came up, pounding Bobby’s stomach, moonlight glinting silver off the bloody tip of a blade that sprouted from Bobby’s back; Bobby on tiptoes, screaming and shaking and clutching his assailant’s arm, blood spreading across the back of his shirt as the blade ripped upward. Then he was shoved to the ground, screaming and twitching and stuffing slippery coils of intestine back into the gaping hole that had been cut into his stomach.