Authors: W.C. Hoffman
Tomek admired the man as he lay there. Proud of the handiwork he had just completed. Proud of the fact that only ten minutes prior, he had decided to die, looked death in the face and defeated him on his own accord. Walking over to the table he saw the gun sitting there. Picking it up he placed the barrel to the back of the sheriff’s head and pulled the trigger.
“Click”
As the hammers firing pin clashed against the empty chamber, Tomek realized that not a single round remained in the weapon. Knowing he had plenty of rounds remaining from the other weapons they had scavenged, he turned to retrieve one. It would only take one.
Turning around meant he never saw the glass pickle jar hit him in the back of the head. The impact shattered the jar into pieces, causing multiple cuts to both Tomek’s neck and the sheriff’s hand. Tomek lunged forward, crashing into his bed where his head impacted the corner and he was out. No bright lights, no dizziness, no flashes, just out. Unconscious and lying on the ground vulnerable, this was the sheriff’s only chance and he knew it.
Grasping onto the handle of the handmade knife that connected his body to the tabletop with his left hand, the sheriff attempted to pull it up and out of the table. Unsuccessful due to his hand slipping from the blood on the weapon and the depth that the blade had driven down into the top, the sheriff knew he had only one option left.
Bleeding hard with continuous blood pouring from both the wounds on his face and right hand, he removed the belt from his pants and wrapped it around his right wrist. Once tight enough to restrict the blow flow and after a series of deep clear inhaled breaths the sheriff grabbed onto his right wrist. He then pulled his hand back with all the weight of his body could muster for leverage and watched as the leading edge of the blade left above the table cut and sliced its way through the rest of his hand, exiting between his middle and ring finger. The belt had done its job and this new gash that had left his blue hand looking much like the claw of a crawfish hardly bled. What he had saved in blood he made up for in pain as his body flickered in and out of shock.
Holding the severed hand up into his chest he wiggled free of the table top and stood over Tomek’s body. Looking around the room for some sort of a weapon the sheriff’s eyes glanced to the cubby where Tomek had placed the pistol that belonged to Magee. Working towards the other side of the room, dragging his feet along the blood-soaked dirt floor, the sheriff kept his eyes focused on the gun in an attempt to not pass out.
Losing his sense of balance once reaching the wall, he fell to his knees. Unable to breathe through his mouth due to the stone knife’s damage, the sheriff forced himself to inhale deeply through his nostrils. Looking down, he was able to gain his composure. Unable to stand yet at the base of the wall and still down on one knee, he reached up over his head, feeling around inside the cubby for the pistol he hoped was loaded.
As his outstretched fingers crawled up and over the bottom edge of the cubby the cold feeling of the black polymer grip belonging to the gun was a sigh of relief. Knowing that if the gun was loaded, he would be able to take out Tomek and at least he would be alive for now. The thought of Drake’s location as well as how the sheriff planned to escape back to Pine Run with his injuries were bridges he planned to cross as he got there. Now, in this moment, all that mattered to him was killing his way back out of the underground cabin.
Reaching in and lifting the gun up was enough movement to trigger the covered bear leghold trap that was under the weapon. The very reason Drake had originally told Tomek to be careful placing the pistol in the cubby to begin with was that they both new what was beneath the false dirt floor of the small cubby. Using the gun as bait had worked perfectly, as the spring-loaded rusty iron tension-loaded claws slammed forcefully shut on the lawman’s arm.
The trap’s teeth buried themselves into the flesh, only stopping once they reached bone. With his entire arm, from elbow to wrist, caught in a trap that was meant to hold a bear in place, the sheriff was going nowhere. Still, the force of the deathly jaws slamming onto his arm shocked his system to the point where he sprung up to his feet. With the pain releasing every last bit of endorphins left in his body, the sheriff sprinted toward Tomek’s lifeless body.
Connected to the base of every bear trap the boys had ever set was a holding chain that is staked into the ground and this trap was no different. If the power of a 400-pound black bear was not enough to pull the trap stake loose, the sheriff certainly did not stand a chance at reaching Tomek. Lunging away from the wall cubby, the sheriff began to move across the room. Three steps later, the chain pulled taut, digging the teeth deeper into his arm, separating the bones from their connective tendons.
The sheriff’s forward momentum being suddenly jerked back forced his feet out from under him and up into the air, where gravity joined along with the effectiveness of the chain stake in slamming the man back onto the hard-packed dirt floor. Lying on the ground, with his outstretched trapped arm above his head, the sheriff looked up one last time.
Pushing his heels against the ground and trying to move backwards toward the wall to regain his balance, much like Ravizza did on the pine needle-covered floor, the sheriff reached the cubby wall again, where he sat up leaning his back against it. Looking across the room, with the only light coming in from the oak tree door cracked open a few inches and a single flickering candle on the counter top the sheriff’s nodded up and down and his level of consciousness drifted in and out.
Staring at a still-motionless Tomek, the sheriff began laughing. Not a silent chuckle to himself about the improbability of the situation he was in, but a full roaring maniac’s laugh. The full-breathed guttural cackles were met with blood spouting out of his torn-apart mouth with each burst. His cheeks that now resembled loose flaps of skin were now covered in a bloody mud made from the dirt picked up during his impact with the floor.
The combination of his wounds eventually overcame him and on his biggest laugh, the sheriff gathered all the air in his lungs to yell at Tomek, “You can’t kill me!”
Upon finishing the words, he slumped back into the wall, his head dropping to the floor as his body fell away from the cubby. Lying there with his face on the ground between his legs, ear to the dirt, with his right arm help up in the air by the tension of the chain, the sheriff’s gruesome battle with Tomek was over.
“M
y sister?”
“Yes, I am your sister, only you do not remember me.” She said.
“It was so long ago and you were so young, my...
our
father had moved me away and was soon coming to get you when she, our mother, that is, vanished,” Henderson said, while stepping toward Drake.
Drake was unsure what bothered him the most. Was it the fact that what she said might have been true, or was it that for some reason he believed her?
“You have to be lying, Uncle told us... me about our...
my
mother” Drake said, poorly attempting to hide Tomek’s existence.
Looking at her long-lost younger brother, the deputy extended her hand, “I do not know who this Uncle is, but if he saved you two, then I want to thank him. For all these years we thought you were gone or, even worse, dead,” Henderson said.
“
Us two
?” Drake replied, trying to keep up the charade that he was alone in the woods.
“Yes, your brother. Please, God, tell me you know you had,
have
a twin. He was different. You could see it in his left eye,” Henderson said, referring to the fact that Tomek’s left eye was blue, while his right eye and both of Drake’s were green.
Stepping closer again to Drake, Henderson looked into his green eyes, “My name is Annette. Don’t you remember me at all?”
“No,” said Drake.
“What about your brother or our parents?” asked Henderson.
“No,” said Drake. “Uncle would have never lied.”
“Your brother’s name was,” she began to say, but was interrupted by her younger brother.
“His name is Tomek,” Drake said, cutting her off. He knew that hearing his brother’s birth name would be too much to handle in his state.
“Is he alive?” his sister asked.
Unable to speak, Drake only nodded. The rush of new information about his life was more than he felt he could take. Had he just slammed the rock down on her head, he would be on his way back to the warm cabin. Yet, no. Now he rested on the rocks of the river bank, wet, cold and sore, pondering his existence in these woods. He spent the next few minutes thinking silently, as Henderson continued to provide him with info about their life before Uncle. Every bit of it was all things about them that she should have had no other way of knowing. It was clear to him that they had not swayed far from the personalities they had as toddlers.
“
Was everything Uncle had told them untrue?”
How could she have known so much about them and not be telling the truth?”
“What will Tomek say?”
It did start to make some form of sense. From the moment the twins set eyes on the deputies days before, Henderson was a constant topic of discussion. Drake and Tomek had both talked about how there was something about her. While Tomek’s motive was most likely more violent, Drake thought that the female deputy’s presence was more important than the others. However, until now he had no idea why. Drake had figured it was most likely the fact that she was a female. He also knew that her skin color was the same as his which was a new experience for both of the twins.
Uncle had taught them that nature adapts and prevails in hopeless situations. Much like the flow of a river will round the edges of stone, nature will take you and change you as well.
“Is she the new stone in our river?”
“Could she be shaped to fight, survive and live their lifestyle?”
Breaking his train of thought was her hand on his shoulder shaking him back to reality.
“Can you take me to our brother?”
Drake was startled by her touch. In his state of lifeless daydreaming, he never observed her getting that close to him. He knew that if she wanted him dead at this point, he would have been. Reaching under his arms and lifting him up to his feet, she pulled him close to her body in an embrace.
The simple hug, with her hand on the back of his neck holding his head upon her shoulder instantly dumped a rush of emotions that, for some reason, calmed him. The strange presence of these feelings made him almost subconsciously hold her tighter. In his sister’s arms, Drake felt safe for the first time since Uncle’s December death. Holding Henderson as if he was never going to let go, Drake realized that since learning he had a sister, whether it was true or not, he wanted it to be real.
Leaning back from the boy and running her hand across his head she continued to ask him questions.
“How did you survive?”
“What do you remember?”
“Who is Uncle?”
Rubbing his hand across his swollen ribcage, in between coughs he struggled to talk in full sentences. “Lets head back to Tomek. I have a lot to tell you about.” Drake said as he reached out for the short rope tied to the front of the canoe. Pulling it up onto the rock bed in order to secure it for a later time when they could come and retrieve it. As the bottom of the handmade boat grinded across the rock ledge shore, Drake looked at this woman, this person who was now, apparently, also his sister. He did not see her as a threat, as an enemy or as one of Uncle’s dreaded government officials. Henderson was just a girl, a survivor, one of them. Drake knew he had come to this conclusion much too quickly and that his brother would never be so easily swayed. For that reason he decided it was best for her to know as much about their way of life, before and after Uncle’s death, as possible.
“Yes, please take me to him. I want to meet him and learn more about you both. All these years our father has said that you were both dead, but somehow I knew different. All these years later I moved back to Pine Run and here you are. The guys are not going to believe this.”
“Guys?” Drake asked.
Henderson continued, “Yeah, the guys I work with. We got separated when a cougar attacked us two days ago. I have heard a few gun shots and have been trying to work my way back toward them. When I found the boat, I figured I would just float to town and meet back up with them. Only I found you instead. This is amazing! This is a miracle.”
Weak and cold, Drake was not sure that informing his new found sibling of how her little brothers had systematically taken the lives of each of her fellow officers was a good idea. However, he knew that she would eventually find out and it may be better for him to tell her than Tomek. He half-expected Tomek to boast about each one’s death and only having known his sister for 25 minutes, he was unsure about the reaction that may bring. As they walked back, Drake began the short version of a long story. He explained to the deputy how they were raised, how they hunt, trap, grow and survive.
Reaching the whale rock, Drake sat down to rest. With the sun raised fully into the early morning sky, the warmth of the rock’s surface was a welcome change from his wet shirt. Lying down on his back, the pressure seemed to be lifted off of his rib cage, which provided temporarily relief. As his constant coughing subsided, lying next to him, with her head propped up on her hand, he did not see Henderson as a cop and actually cracked a smile. The thought still flabbergasted him, yet for some reason he was at peace with Henderson. Drake knew he was trained to hate her, but he did not.
“What happened to your chest?” Henderson asked him.
“I was shot, with a rifle, in the dark and from a distance.” He said.
“What? Who in the hell shot you and how are you alive?” Henderson said sitting up with concern on her face.
“Well, his name tag like yours said Magee.”
“Magee does not miss and you obviously were hit with something,” she continued to prod, asking only open-ended questions the way she would with any normal investigation that she would handle as a detective.