Using great effort to maintain his cool, Copper took a slight side step to partially block Lilly’s path as Alyse and the boys looked on. “Lilly, I hate to break it to you, but you don’t run things… as much as you’d like to think you do. Kylee told us to stay here and that’s what we’re going to do. Between her and Dante, plus Chief and the other two, they got it covered. Sit tight.”
“Fuck that,” she shot back. “Since when do you answer to anyone besides yourself, anyway?” Lilly stared him down with her hand on her hip, a spitting image of Kylee that intimidated Copper. He’d never admit it, though.
“Not that it’s any of your business, princess,” he told her firmly, “but some shit went down back home while you were gone. Kylee is in charge and I’m going to do whatever it is she needs done. That includes keeping my ass right here and looking after these boys… and you ladies.” Alyse opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it. She looked on silently.
Scoffing, Lilly rolled her eyes. “You? Look after me?” She laughed sarcastically. “That’ll be the day, Copper.” She moved to get around him, but he blocked her path outright.
“No,” he demanded more firmly this time as he put a hand on her shoulder to halt her progress.
Narrowing her eyes, Lilly let her hand fall to her belt. She cursed under her breath, realizing once again that she had passed her knife off to Seth before he left them. She looked down at the hand on her shoulder then to Copper’s face, staring him directly in the eyes. She coldly demanded, “Copper. Take your hand off me.”
Copper shook his head. “You need to stop.”
Finally having watched long enough, Wyatt warned him saying, “Copper. Um… Lilly doesn’t like to be touched… by… um… guys.”
Lilly didn’t take her eyes off Copper. “Wyatt, I’ll handle it. Copper, I won’t tell you again. Take. Your. Fucking. Hand. Off. Me.”
Uncomfortably, Copper looked from Wyatt then back to Lilly. He lifted his hand and held it up in genuine surrender. “Know what? Fine. Fuck it. But it ain’t on me.”
With a slightly arrogant smirk, Lilly pushed past Copper in the direction of the others muttering, “Fucking lapdog…” as she went.
The panicked screaming that sent them running in the first place had died down and, as Lilly disappeared into the brush with her gun drawn, Alyse smiled at Copper playfully. “Smooth.”
He frowned and grumbled to himself before sitting back down next to the boys on the wagon’s driver seat. They sat in silence for a moment; the only sound being Copper’s anxiously tapping foot on the wooden rest.
“Goddamnit,” he finally spouted before hopping down and moving off in Lilly’s direction. He called over his shoulder to Alyse, “Stay here.”
*****
“Don’t cut him down yet,” Kylee called to Chak as she and Chief worked to put down the last of the bernies that surrounded them. “Let’s get this shit cleared out first.”
Chak stepped away from the makeshift net that held their terrified captive suspended above them from a large oak. He waited patiently for the melee to end as Chief snapped his barbed whip so hard it shattered the skull of the last threat, scattering flesh and bone and brain on the forest floor. Kylee jammed her knife through the eye of one final biter.
When it was quiet again, Chak sliced through rope and the net crashed to ground heavily with their prisoner wrapped inside. He chuckled to himself at the sight of the desperate man within. “Good trap, that one. Bull’s handiwork, no doubt.”
Ten agreed with a nod. “Yeah, Bull might not be the smartest one in the bunch, but he makes a tension trigger that’ll lift an elephant.”
“Cut the shit,” Kylee said coolly as she moved to the captive man. With Chak’s help, they unraveled him from the entangled net and bound his hands after disarming him of his pistol. He tried to thank them, but Kylee wasn’t hearing it. “Sit there and shut up,” she demanded.
The man was filthy and had obviously been on the road for a time. He didn’t have the look of a community dweller at all. But it was the pistol in his possession that defined who he belonged to.
Lilly emerged from the brush and surveyed the area. She saw the dead bernies and, stepping over them carefully, approached the others gathered around the prisoner. Kylee shot her a frustrated glance, but said nothing.
Lilly asked no one in particular, “Everyone all right?”
Chief moved to Lilly’s side as he wound his whip and stashed it on his belt. “We’re good. Where’s Alyse and the boys?”
Answering him, Lilly said, “Wagons… with Copper.” Chief nodded his approval.
Ignoring the chatter, Kylee set in on the strange man. “How many?”
The man stammered nervously, “How many what?”
Whack!
Kylee’s fist crashed into the side of his head and sent him reeling. He held up his bound hands to block his face from another attack crying out, “Wait, wait! I’ll tell you… How many what?”
“Men,” Kylee demanded of him. “How many men do you have?”
Holding his face where she hit him, he told her, “Not many. Maybe ten.”
Whack!
She gave him another one, this time boxing his ear cruelly and sending him into the fetal position. “Don’t bullshit me. How many men?”
The prisoner, now enraged and frustrated, snapped back at Kylee, “Stop hittin’ me, you fuckin’ cunt! I told you I’d talk!”
Lilly stepped forward and laid a solid kick into his guts, lurching him forward, “What’d you just call her? What’d you just say, motherfucker?”
Kylee pushed Lilly back and Chief half caught her, holding her at bay as she spewed a chain of curses in defense of her mother that would make even Seth blush. Drawing a blade from its sheath on her hip, Kylee knelt next to the man and placed the edge to his throat. “I won’t hit you next time then,” she vaguely warned. “How many men?”
The prisoner gulped audibly and the movement of his throat helped the blade nick into his skin. A trickle of blood dribbled down his neck, mixing with his stinking sweat, causing it to fade to a sickly orange color. “Around a hundred, give or take,” he shakily revealed.
As the words left the man’s mouth, Copper appeared clumsily, crashing through the underbrush. “I tried to keep her with us, Ky, but…” His voice trailed off as he realized he was interrupting. “Shit, sorry.”
The prisoner took the distraction as an opportunity and deftly moved to his feet. He threw his shoulder into Kylee, knocking her off balance, and made a run for thickets. Chief drew his whip, but Chak and Ten had arrows nocked and drawn before he could swing it. They loosed their arrows simultaneously and both hit their mark, one in each leg. The prisoner crashed to the ground in agony, less than five feet from where he started, and spouted curses at them all. Chak and Ten clapped each other on the shoulders and turned to Kylee and the others.
Chak said casually, “He won’t be going anywhere now.”
Chief looked at Ten, impressed, and told him personally, “Damn, man. Good shot.” Ten smiled happily at the compliment. “Thanks, Orville,” he said back jokingly.
Kylee narrowed her eyes with pursed lips and told Copper and Lilly, “We’ll talk about this later.” Chief and Ten dragged the prisoner back into the clearing once again as Kylee turned her attention back the matter at hand.
“Just kill me you fuckin’ bitch,” he demanded. “Kill me.”
Kylee smiled down at him encouragingly. “No. Matter of fact, if you’re honest with me, we can get you patched up, fed, and this can all go away. No one has to die. Not today, anyway.”
He stared at her for a long moment before looking down at his wounded legs. The arrows from Chak and Ten were surgical and the points jutted through the front of his thighs just above the knees. His lips quivered as his resolve deteriorated and he finally gave up. “Fine… Fine. What do you want?”
Kylee sheathed her knife and knelt again. She asked him calmly. “I want to know who is in charge of you. All of you. Who is controlling the movements of one hundred well organized, heavily armed men?”
The man sighed worriedly, knowing his answer could possibly make the difference between death and a chance at a fresh start. He winced in pain as he sat up and leveled his eyes to Kylee’s. “They call him the C…”
Boom!
Kylee flinched and slammed her eyes shut as the prisoner’s blood sprayed her face and soaked her hair. His body fell limp and lifeless before he could finish the sentence and the shot sent the others spinning around fumbling for their weapons.
To the left of the crowd, a woman emerged through the gun smoke followed by seven other men. Dressed in a tattered military uniform with her dark hair tightly drawn into a neat bun, she lowered her shotgun while her entourage kept their assault rifles trained on Kylee and the rest of the group. With a confident swagger, the woman approached them and gazed at the corpse at Kylee’s feet. “That’ll be enough outta you for today, Jonesy,” she said calmly.
Cradling her weapon in the crook of her arm, she addressed the rest of them saying at a somewhat elevated volume, “I’ll be asking the questions from here on out, people. You will speak when spoken to and only with permission. Those who choose to be uncooperative are gonna have a bad time.”
Dante, ever the diplomat, stepped forward carefully with his arms outstretched, “Ma’am… listen…”
Boom, boom, boom!
Three shots from an assault rifle tore into Dante’s chest and he dropped to the ground clutching the wound. He weakly gasped a few times, but his heart was torn to shreds. He bled out in seconds as the others watched him die in horrified shock.
The strange woman held up a hand to cease any further shooting and told the terrified group, “You see? That didn’t have to happen. But he chose to speak without permission after I gave very clear instructions.”
She passed her weapon to one of the men behind her and asked him, “I was clear in my instructions, was I not?”
“Crystal,” he replied quickly.
She began to stalk around like a shark circling prey. “It’s a very simple concept, you know. Not much to it at all, really.”
She sized up Copper briefly before tugging on his beard in an eerily playful manner. “Hm! That’s cute. I like it,” she said to him for all to hear.
She scanned the others one by one without incident, but came to a halt in front of Lilly and eyed her carefully. “My my, you’re a pretty one aren’t you?”
Lilly said nothing. She forced her burning anger and fear down into her belly and held it at bay.
The woman continued, “I bet all the boys wanna fuck you, don’t they?” Her voice was icy and cruel. “And I bet you use that to your advantage, don’t you? I know I would if I were you.”
With helpless tears in her eyes, Lilly opened her mouth to speak.
The world went black and ears began to ring as a hail of automatic gunfire rang throughout the forest. Bullets whizzed and hissed through the air, finding their marks with dull thunks as flesh gave way to lead. Screams, barely audible at first, pierced the dankness before falling silent. Then there was nothing.
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