Prologue
*Authors note: This is a rough draft. This has not been edited by my editor. There will probably be, even though I will try to remove them, notes I leave for myself mixed in with the story. There will be grammatical mistakes - probably lots of them. There will also almost certainly be continuity and other issues, as well.
I hope to write a chapter or maybe two per week. I'm not sure if there will be a specific day where I'll post. We'll just have to see how that goes.
Anyway, I hope you like the work in progress that hopefully turns eventually into a book. I would love to read your comments. Thanks for reading.
“How many squirrels you think we’ll get?”
“About none if you don’t stop talking.”
“Are you going to be a sour ass all your life or what?”
“Depends on how many more times I go hunting with you.”
The teen everyone called runt hid a smile and pretended to be hurt by his friend’s comment. “You’re just pissed because easy-rider Patsy Snider gave you the big dump-ola.”
“She’s not like that--”
Runt laughed. “Not like what?”
“You know, easy.”
“Not for you, she wasn’t.”
“Just shut up.”
“Wait, what... you liked her?”
Paul stopped and put his palm up, letting Runt know he should be quiet. Runt rolled his eyes and asked, “What gives?”
Runt soon heard what was causing his friend to act strangely. Singing or more precisely humming came from somewhere just up ahead, on the other side of a bramble of thorn bushes.
“Where are we, Paul?”
They got permission to hunt on Walker’s farm, but it appeared they had gone severely off course and ended up on someone else’s land. “You smell that?”
Runt nodded. “Well, at least we know we’re near the ash ponds.
“I’ve hunted on Walker’s land enough to know you can’t smell the ash ponds from there. We’re way the hell turned around.”
“No wind, either.”
“Shit. We’re not supposed to be here, wherever here is.”
“I told you we should’ve stayed near Wolf--”
Paul motioned for Runt to shut up. “What the hell is she humming?”
“White Snake?”
It wasn’t White Snake. Hell, it wasn’t rock and roll, country, or anything either could put a name to or even remotely recognized. “Will you stop for even a minute,” Paul whispered.
Paul then pointed to an opening in the sticker bushes and a trail that veered off to their right. A structure lay almost invisible in the distance, obscured by several bushes. “Is that an outhouse?”
“If a redneck shits in the woods--”
Paul walked towards the opening, leaving Runt without an audience for his joke. Runt sighed and hurried to catch up. A tall but ramshackle fence fashioned from dozens of small trees lashed together with what looked like baler twine stood just a few feet opposite the gap that led off to the outhouse.
Interspersed with the humming was the sound of something smacking water and then being rubbed against a wooden board or something. This process was repeated several times.
They lingered over odd sounds for several moments, their curiosity slowly getting the best of them. This culminated with Runt motioning towards a tall elm tree that stood several feet away from the far corner of the fence. Paul eyed the tree for a moment and then the fence. “Let’s have a look,” he whispered.
Having spent a good portion of their youth outside, engaging in BB wars, bottle-rocket wars, or just about anything that had to do with war, the boys had, in their desire for their version of air superiority over their enemies, climbed their fair share of trees, hoping to get off the kill shot. Not only that, they had climbed trees to retrieve dead squirrels that had gotten tangled in tree limbs on their way to the earth. They scurried up the tree like two silent monkeys escaping a predator.
A girl Paul guessed was close to their age sat in a wooden chair near an old school bus made into a mobile, mobile home. Rectangular cardboard cutouts replaced windows that looked to have been busted out long ago.
The girl, who had fiery red hair, sloshed a tattered shirt in a bucket of brackish looking water, before slapping it back on the washboard. She worked the shirt up and down as the boys voyeuristically looked on. “Who are these people?” Runt asked.
Paul slumped his shoulders. “I have been three-wheeling all around these woods, but I’ve never seen this place.”
“The girl is hot,” Runt said.
The sound of footsteps somewhere too close to the tree stopped Paul from replying to the affirmative. “Come on down, boys, a man’s ragged voice came from below.”
“Fuck,” Paul said, as he spotted the man below.
“Man, we’re screwed,” Runt whispered as he rolled his eyes. “My dad is going to kill me.”
Paul nodded in agreement before he began to climb down slowly. As he grabbed hold of a limb to steady himself, he noticed several sharp, spike looking things protruding from some of larger tree limbs. How they had not stepped on or grabbed any of them, he wasn’t sure. This was bad, he thought. Somebody doesn’t just do that for no reason. He then thought about the Purlee’s who supposedly placed booby traps all around their pot farm, and a police officer lost an eye when the bb bomb went off.
Once at the bottom, the man, fully bearded, with long brown hair to go with it, looked down at the boys. He was tall. Maybe six-foot-three or four. “You all staring at my daughter?”
“No, sir,” Paul said. “Never seen this place before, is all. Just trying to see what was going on--”
“Uh-huh,” the man said, as he pushed his circular framed glasses up his nose. “Now, what am I going to do with you, two little bastards?”
“We didn’t fucking do anything, man,” Runt said.
Paul elbowed him. “Just shut up.”
“I’m going to call your parents, but first, you’re going to give me that shotgun.”
The two boys hesitated. Both knew something was wrong. They were in the middle of the woods. Paul couldn’t imagine how there would be running water or electricity, much less a phone the man could use to call their parents. Hell, they didn’t even see a car, well, besides the bus, and it didn’t seem to be very mobile. Twenty minutes earlier, they hadn’t known these people lived here. Paul wasn’t even sure where here was.
“I’m not giving you shit, much less this shotgun,” Runt protested.
The man began to nod. “Okay.”
Paul was getting ready to tell the man that they would just leave and never come back. Before he had a chance, the man pulled a black pistol, by the look of it, a .45 caliber 1911 pistol, and without hesitating, shot Runt in the chest.
Paul watched as his friend struggled to take a step before falling face-first to the ground. The last thing Paul saw was the man turning towards him, and with a grin, he said, “For the Order.”
