Chapter 192
I suppose at this point I could give out all the details of what I did and to whom. Or at least record them here for a future reveal or even for “posterity” or “historical accuracy”. But I’m not going to. Not even as Capt. Dunn have I ever needed or wanted that kind of recognition, or perhaps it is more honest to call it notoriety. As plain ol’ Edie I certainly don’t want to be known or remembered for what I did that night. But I won’t be sorry for it either. Ever. Refuse to be. It was war. And they were part of the evil that had been rotting the heart of my country. They were also the ones that directly threatened the lives of my family.
Clean up hadn’t been “clean” and I stopped to use some snow to remove as much of the evidence as I could before heading back up the mountain to Winn and the kids. I shouldn’t have bothered because I was about to get dirty all over again.
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The smell of the battlefield followed me up the mountain for a ways. They were going to have to rebuild part of Dunnville again, assuming they could find the resources to do it with. This time the dead … the enemy dead … was going to be a problem as well. The dead gangbangers and cartel members had been put carted off by the county to be dealt with in a field located where the old migrant camp had been. That was full, or so I heard, so this time they might just feed the bodies to the energy incinerators. I didn’t care either way and it wasn’t my problem. I just knew that it would bother some people who, despite what they’d been through, still seemed to have the need to be “decent people.” For all I cared they could do it the Medieval way and plant the bodies in a large field and then plow them over to become fertilizer. It made sound gross, was gross if the textbooks described it correctly, but people should get some benefit from being victorious and that didn’t include having to treat the bodies of the fallen enemy with “decency.” There wasn’t anything decent about war and perhaps the reality of becoming “fertilizer” would make some types think before acting.
The smell lessened for which I was grateful but then I smelled it stronger in wafts coming from the wrong direction … ahead of me rather than behind. My Capt. Dunn persona had been melting away allowing me to be just plain ol’ Edie, but at that realization Ice Bitch slammed into me so hard and fast it was painful. So was how my heart was thudding in my chest. Something was wrong. Something was bad wrong.
I stayed to the tree lined path that marked the road as well as the understory of the forest and the overgrowth of the ditches. The weeds and trash always come back before the trees. It is like the Creator gives the animals some advantage when they first come out of their burrows and hidey-holes as winter turns to spring. Stuff to eat and stuff to hide in until the balance of late Spring and early Summer return. The weeds also help to dry out the mess that winter leaves behind.
Up in the mountains though Winter hadn’t quite turned loose though Spring was not far off, but it was further off than down in the Valley where town was. Down in the Valley mud wasn’t the problem it still was on the mountain. And in the mud I saw tracks … boot primarily but there were a set of heavy treaded tires as well. Well until I saw the jeep the tire treads belonged to where it had slid down into a ditch and turned on its side. The reason it was in a ditch is because the driver had lost control … from a previous injury or one that occurred right before or after the wreck I couldn’t tell from my vantage point.
I finally worked my way up and took a closer look. Nothing and no one else was in the jeep when I came abreast of it. No boobies to make it a trap either. No evidence beyond the likelihood that the driver had missed the sharp turn the road made before a washout and hadn’t been able to make the turn in time. Jeep was nose down and on the driver’s side on what would have been the left side of the road, assuming it could have still been called a road. It was little more than a goat track at that point with neither Winn nor I interested in using the tractor to grade it out to make it easier to travel no matter how our few visitors would complain about it. It also told me the Jeep more than likely had been traveling in the dark. It was mid-day, though overcast so no bright sun. Even though the vehicle was in the light, the hood over the engine was dead cold adding to the evidence the accident had happened hours before. I was listening for any out of place sound as I did my investigating.
It looked like they had tried to back out but only gotten stuck worse and then pitched over in the wet and muddy clay. With the driver still belted in, after further thought, I figured someone had gotten PO’d and put a bullet in the driver which explained why his head was the wrong shape and the dash covered in a bloody mess. Bullet came from the passenger rear. Voids in the mess that spread most of the front told me there had been others still in the jeep when the mess had been made.
I continued to listen but didn’t hear any battle sounds … no sounds at all. The forest denizens had hunted their holes back up despite this being prime foraging time. Had to be something significant still happening with the animals so hungry and desperate to fill their bellies. Only total fear and self-preservation would make the animals that quiet under those circumstances.
A few yards further and in addition to the smell of gunpowder and biologicals – stereotypical smells of the battlefield – I smelled smoke. It was acrid which told me it wasn’t just burning forest I smelled, but possibly a building with plastics and rubbers rather than just a clean fire.
I started picking my path even more carefully. Last thing I wanted to happen was to walk into a crossfire. Slowly I realized the fire or whatever it was came from beyond our homesite. I wanted to breathe a sigh of relief but couldn’t. And good thing too as I nearly walked into a booby.
I stopped just in time and didn’t trip it. I heard a strangled off groan from the underbrush, ducked, then crawled around to find something that froze my guts. Not in fear, but in ice cold fury.
“Who are you? What business are you here for?” I hissed with the point of my k-bar ready to take out his uninjured eye.
But he wasn’t going to talk. The strangled groan had been his last gasp and he expired. I nearly cursed.
I was doing my best to control my rage when I heard the nearly soundless short whistle that Winn uses to get my attention when we are hunting. It sounds like a Winter Wren.
I turned to a block of ice until I heard it again and then followed it. My heart nearly seized up.
He was just getting his breath back. “Kids are safe. Whoever they are by-passed the house. Except they left this one to cover their backs and he got … got nosey.”
I took his coat in both fists and pulled Winn into a sitting position and leaned him against a handy tree. “Look at me Edie. I’m okay. Little roughed up but that’s all. He tried to get back to the road to signal those he was waiting on. I … couldn’t let that happen.”
He said he could tell I was in a bad way when the only sound I made sounded like Tug when he’d tangled with something that had teeth and claws and had barely made it back home to be tended and bandaged.
“Babe … we’re all here. Home is still here for you to come back to.”
He knew the words to use and I came back some but, not all the way. Those bastards had just written a check they couldn’t cash.
Winn whispered, “Get me to the house. I’ll be fine. Mostly just fetched up against a stump. I’m bruised … not shot. The blood is his.”
He admitted later he hoped to never see the look in my eyes again. He said my eyes weren’t even the same color they normally are and that my face looked covered in ice.
I got him back to the cabin and inside. Amazingly the kids were sleeping and didn’t wake up. Winn whispered they’d been sleeping off and on ever since I left. I guess it was the Creator making sure they wouldn’t have the nightmares they could have by having them sleep through the worst of their anxiety. Tug was standing watch, and it took him a minute to stop being stiff legged with me. His ruff was standing up and his lip was in a snarl until I told him, “Watch. Guard.”
Once he heard my voice, different though it might have sounded, the dog put his alertness to use and followed me up the stairs after I left Winn resting and doctoring on himself. He admitted his ribs hurt but they’d hurt worse and so had the rest of him.
“I’m fine Babe, just took a tumble where he surprised me by charging. I’d been expecting him to shoot but for whatever reason he took another route. Just go … and do your thing. But when you are finished, come back soonest. You hear? You come back home. We’ll be here waiting. And before you go out, grab a block of that pemmican you made and a canteen. Your lips and face are chapped from the cold.”
That was my Winn. His spandex and cape may have been a little frayed but he was still fit for his duty as a protector. I let him boss me but knew I needed to get out of there before I didn’t want to go even worse than I already didn’t want to. At the stop of the stairs I looked at Tug and again ordered, “Watch. Guard.” And then I added the order to, “Protect.” I watched the dog turn into a wild thing I knew would tear the throat out of anyone that tried to breach the house and I smiled grimly in approval.