Authors: W.C. Hoffman
“What is that?” Tomek asked while remaining in the shadows provided by the door light.
“Stay here, I will go look.” Drake said.
“Check both of their bodies on the way down there,” Tomek urged.
“That is my plan. Guard the door. If anyone but me comes up from that tunnel, kill them. “
“Check the bodies!” Tomek demanded.
“I did,” Drake replied.
“And...?”
“There is only one here,” Drake said, making his way down the dark tunnel with no light. Moving only by feel with his back against one side of the wall in a tactical fashion to minimize the square footage of his body exposed to an attack, Drake held tactical knifes in both hands with the one in his left pointed blade down, ready for a strike.
“Which one is missing?” Tomek asked. Hearing his brother’s response from down the tunnel was nearly impossible over the dull roar that was growing in volume by the minute. Unable to stand and not knowing which body his twin had found, Tomek’s lack of patience overtook his duty to protect the door.
Sliding his feet across the floor he felt the wetness of the blood that had poured out of each wound during the battle he had with the sheriff. Reaching the spot on the wall where he felt the chain still connected to the bear trap, he worked his hands down. Feeling the cold metal of the trap’s jagged teeth, Tomek was relieved to feel the flesh of his enemy’s body. The sheriff lay there, motionless, breathless, lumped, cold and dead.
“
Where is she
?” Tomek thought to himself. He attempted to look down the tunnel, but the darkness provided no clue as he could see no more than a few feet ahead of himself.
“Drake, you find her?” Tomek yelled out again, hearing a reply from his brother but unable to make out exactly what was being said.
Drake returned to the door and in an attempt to pry it all the way open to let in as much light as possible, he felt the entire wood shift and drop a few inches into place. Looking over what he could not see from the outside, it was clear that the heavy oak that had kept them safe, warm and hidden for so many years was broken from their use of the boulder. It was able to open and close, but pushing it over enough for it to remain propped open was no longer an option. Holding onto the door in order to keep it from closing completely out of both fear of it not opening and the need for some type of light, Tomek braced the wood on the roundness of his shoulder blade. While bearing the weight, he reached around in the dark feeling for something he could place in the jamb in order to keep it slightly propped.
Drake yelled again from the tunnel area of the furnace room, yet again Tomek had no clue what he was saying. Only able to make out the word “help,” Tomek’s fingers reached across something smooth, curved and hard on the floor. Tomek picked it up and immediately realized he held the rib bone from one of the original twin hunters that he had kept as a trophy. Jamming the rib between the wood frame on the interior of the door and the outside ground allowed him to leave the door propped open about six inches.
Leaving the door, he raced back toward the sheriff’s body and entered the tunnel. After only taking three bounds in the dark, he slammed into the wall, losing his balance and falling to the hard dirt floor. Only upon landing, it was not hard, compacted earth that he felt. The coldness of the water he had splashed down into was 10 inches deep.
Getting back up to his feet, he yelled for his brother.
“Drake, where are you?”
Finally close enough to hear the response, he rushed through the knee-deep water upon hearing Drake yell.
“Furnace room is flooding! Get down here!”
Turning the corner into the furnace room, the water was considerably deeper. Unable to see in the pitch black, the coldness of the water rushing in at the depth of his chest took his breath away.
“Where is it coming from?” Tomek yelled.
“That fucking boulder must have taken out the smoke valve and created some form of suction! I am holding this log up trying to block it. Help me grab onto that end!” his brother responded, trying to shake the rising water out of the way of his mouth.
“We are not going to be able to stop it. Let’s go!” Tomek yelled, standing next to his brother over the rushing water pouring in through the eight-inch chimney pipe.
“Run!” Drake said as he released the log. The overpowering blast of river water rushing into the small furnace room was like being hit with a tidal wave. Drake’s plug was not stopping the flood, but it was building up pressure in the tube. That pressure knocked both of them down into the deeper water, causing them to flip and turn under the tow with no control.
Once hitting the ground and walls, they regained their orientation and pushed off the bottom with their feet lifting their heads above the water line. With only a foot between the quickly rising water and the ceiling of the furnace room, Tomek heard his brother’s voice in the dark.
“This way! The door is here. We have to swim back out the tunnel and get out!”
“Let’s go, then!” Tomek replied with a half-gargled voice, due to the water in his mouth. Pressing their heads above the water turning them sideways and putting their ears against the ceiling in order to take what would either be their last breath or the one that would save their lives, the twins filled their lungs with as much air as they could hold. Diving underwater, pushing off of the ceiling with their hands, they both knew that upon leaving the furnace room, a left turn would take them back up the tunnel to the main living quarters.
The sloped design of the tunnel itself provided them with the advantage of the lower areas filling with the river water first. Running short on breath, Drake’s head crested the water. Grabbing onto Drake’s leg, Tomek pulled himself up to meet him above the water line as they both gasped for air, blowing water out of their lungs and mouth.
“We made it,” Tomek said, relived.
“We made it through the tunnel, at least. Let’s get out of here. Go to the door,” Drake said.
“What about her?” Tomek asked.
Walking quickly, still through the dark, the twins made their way up the dry tunnel toward the brightness of the light being let in by the door. With the water still rushing in behind them, the tunnel would be full in less than a minute and the room would not take long after that.
“She has to be in here somewhere. We have to get her out!” Tomek said, this time grabbing on to his brother’s arm to make sure he was listening.
“Dead or alive, I don’t know what she is, who she is. Come on, man. Forget her. She is not the same as us. She is not a twin. She was never part of our life, never part of our plan. She is not a child of Uncle and never will be. We would have had to kill her, anyway. She is nothing but a mouse,” Drake said while turning the corner into the living room, stepping over the body of the sheriff.
The light extruding from the half-opened door was a welcomed sight. The fact that Henderson was standing in the doorway having heard everything that Drake just said was not. The twins stopped where they stood, looking at their sister while wiping the water from their faces that ran down from their soaked hair. The light behind her framed her as if she was some sort of an angel sent to save them. Only she was not an angel. Henderson was a survivor, a fighter, and she stood there between the boys and freedom. Climbing out of the door, she looked at them in disbelief of having heard her own brother’s thoughts regarding her life and said, “You were both right. That boulder did make a good trap. Only I was the bait, and here you are looking death in the eye. I may be a mouse, but this mouse always has an escape plan. And one more thing, Drake. You might be a snake, but snakes can't breathe underwater.”
With that, she kicked out the rib, slamming the door shut. The dead tree that had been the first line of defense their entire lives was now the top of their coffin, locking them into the rapidly filling pit of water.
A
gain in the dark, the brothers bumped into one another as they raced to the door using only their sense of touch to locate the handle. Turning it and pushing up as they normally would produced no results. The bitter coldness of the river water began to remove the dexterity in their hands. Tomek could feel the inner workings of the lock system freely spinning as if they were not engaged at all. As if the entire door was broken. Drake pushed him aside, only to have the same results.
“Push on it! Push with me!” Drake yelled, placing his shoulder into the door. Tomek joined him in the fruitless attempt at budging the heavy slab of oak. Looking behind them, the water continued to rise as it had now engulfed the entire tunnel and was starting to pour into the living quarters where they stood.
“How do we get out?” Tomek asked in a calm voice. The gravity of the situation had not yet hit him as hard as it had his brother. Tomek had figured Drake had a plan all along. This made hearing his twin brother's response all the more painful.
“We don't,” said Drake. And with that they continued slamming their shoulders and backs into the door as hard as they could, feeling it beginning to budge with each impact.
“Come on. We’ve got to break this damn thing off its frame,” Drake said, with the water level already up to his knees and rising every second.
With each slam, Henderson could see the door shift from the outside. She watched each one, knowing that the brothers she had strived so long to save would soon be dead because of her. As horrible as she knew she would feel in the future, at this moment there was no room for empathy or grace. Had she not kicked the trophy rib out, she would have met a worse fate than drowning at the hands of the boys.
The slams grew closer and closer together and the tree door raised up and fell back down a little more with each one. She could tell the water was getting higher as each impact was less severe due to them not being able to run at the door. The slams were coming at a rapid pace, but there was no yelling. No screaming, no pleading, no begging, no arguing. Just impacts.
Henderson threw her body weight down onto the rounded tree door in an attempt to provide just a little more bracing. She could feel all four of their hands against the door, pushing up with each attempt at reaching breathable air. Again and again she lay there, feeling her brothers trying to fight death. With her head flat against the bark, she could hear the room filling with water. She could hear the splashes of them moving around, which preceded each impact.
Just as fast as the impacts were coming, lifting herself and the door partially up, they were gone. No more splashing, no more slamming. Just the sound of running water coming from inside the cabin. With her hands draped down around the sides of the trees, she felt the cold river water as it escaped from the cracks in the frame. With the top of the door being at the ceiling of the cabin, she knew the entire room was flooded and it was over.
The mouse had survived.
Henderson got back up to her feet and walked toward the river through the switch grass. Ignoring the rock patch Drake had taught her to use just hours earlier. Reaching the river, she could not help but look at the boulder lying there in the cold rushing water. The top third of the rock stood out of the water, causing a small set of swirling white foamy rapids around it. Henderson looked, tried to think of some type of metaphor for how the rock had saved her but was unable to be clever in the moment. A simple shoulder shrug was all she could offer up as she knew that the boulder there in the water was the reason she was alive.
Stumbling down the river bank she knew she was miles from Pine Run. She knew that no one would believe her story until she showed them the truth. She knew she was now the only cop in town. Not only had the murders of the Senator's baseball-playing hunter sons been solved, so had the homicide of three lawmen and a K-9. She knew she would have to answer the questions and she knew many would blame her. For so long in her life she was the one with the questions. Now she had the answers and she would never again have to wonder if her brothers were alive or not.
Crawling into the dugout canoe she and Drake had beached all these thoughts ran through her mind. For now through, none of them mattered. Pushing off with her hands against the algae-covered rocks, the canoe was taken over by the current. Henderson laid down in the boat and closed her eyes, just the way Drake had originally found her. This time the canoe effortlessly slid its way past the bend. Had it done so the first time, her entire world would have been much different.
Deputy Annette Henderson was headed downstream floating toward Pine Run and never looked back. For had she taken one last glance behind her, she would certainly have had one more unanswered question.
“How?”
Want to name a character in Twins of Prey III ~ Ascension?
Find out how by using the link below.
Twins of Prey III Kickstarter - CLICK HERE
Or keep reading for the 1
st
Chapter in book 2!
Twins of Prey II ~ Homecoming
http://www.wchoffman.com/my-book-store.html
What did Henderson not see?
What happens when she gets back to Pine Run?
Find out in book No. 2
Twins of Prey II – Homecoming
.
To read chapter 1 of book 2: Turn the Page!
To Purchase book 2 click here:
http://www.wchoffman.com/my-book-store.html
To stay up to date with W.C. Hoffman and the
Twins of Prey
series, Join his mailing list and become a “
Twin
.”
http://www.wchoffman.com/become-a-twin.html
You can also join W.C. Hoffman on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorWCHoffman
T
he stage was set inside the high school’s gymnasium. Being as small of a town as Pine Run was, this was the largest spot they could use for such an event. Rows and rows of chairs had been placed along the court floor and every bleacher was extended outward in an attempt to fit the maximum occupancy. This was the certainly the biggest event Pine Run had ever hosted. Although it was no cause for celebration.