Ever Onward (43 page)

Besides, part of him still wanted to
‘out-fox the fox’!

“Hey, Hillbilly”, Tiny weazed. “Take
five! My leg’s killing me!”

Hec cast his wolf-grey eyes back down
the trail. Tiny was hanging on to a sapling, rubbing his knee.
Sloan was already slumped down on a boulder. Further back, Nuts
Willson was still slugging up the path, his head wrapped in a blood
stained shirt. Behind him, creeping along like a snail out of its
shell, came the kid. Hec hawked up a wad of phlegm. The little shit
still wore the red tam, only now you couldn’t tell where the hat
left off and the skin began. Hec figured the kid would be lucky if
he made it up Marcy.

“See anything?!”, Sloan
croaked.

Hec shook his head. Not since crossing
the log footbridge a half hour back had he seen any sign of the
three they were after. He fingered the bullet in his pocket. Smart
bastard! Leaving that note with the 30/30 shell had shaken them
all! ‘Payback’s a bitch!’

“Who the fuck does this guy think he
is?!”, Tiny had raged. “The fucking Lone Ranger?!”

But the messaged had had its affect.
Every step of the way since then they had expected an ambush. Just
a few minutes ago Nuts had shot a tree-stump. Turning his back on
the others, Hec started up the trail. They’d follow. They had no
choice.

Twenty minutes later the five of them
scrambled up a steep draw and left the stunted trees behind. Near
5,000 feet above sea level, the climate was too harsh for anything
but rock to grow. A splash of yellow paint and the odd cairn were
all that marked the mile-long path up the wind-blasted cone of
granite. Knowing that now they were the most vulnerable, Hec had
them spread out. Creeping forward, weapons ready, they peered into
every crevasse, checked behind ever outcropping; yet they found
nothing.

They were half-way up the barren
summit when the bullet slammed into the rock beside Tiny’s head,
chipping off jagged shards that stung his face and neck. The sound
reached them a moment later, distant and low, quickly blown away by
the wind. Tiny put his hand to his cheek. It came away
red.

“Christ! I’m hit!”

Leaving the tall Asian standing
half-way up the exposed slope, the other four dropped to the
ground. Donny the Geek and Nuts Willson both fired wildly up into
the jagged outcropping fifty yards ahead. Hec grinned. He knew they
weren’t there. The bullet had struck before they heard the gun. A
long-shot. Probably from somewhere near the top. Hec spit. Nice
shooting.

While the others gathered around
Sloan, Hec scanned the open slope to the right. The rock dropped
away into a scrub-filled gully. His hunter’s eye followed the gully
around and down. Panther Gorge lay in that direction; an open,
windswept cliff that dropped a 1,000 feet to the forest below. A
rough, steep hump blocked the view from the top. He’d been that way
once, and once was enough! But now it seemed he’d have to try it
again. They’d beaten him to the summit and now lay waiting, but if
he could get around behind them ---

Hec called for Sloan and the others to
follow, then slid down into the gully, not much caring if they came
or not.

“Any sign of them?”, Flame yelled,
Earl’s battered .306 cradled in her arm.

Eddy, a dozen yards further up, shook
his head.

Flame turned back to Josh. “Looks like
you scared the sit out of them, Lover!”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Josh flipped down
the rear sight of his Winchester and glanced around. Eddy, near the
summit, commanded a 360 degree view. Josh himself could see the
trail over the rocks below him, but the large bulge towards Panther
Gorge bothered him. When Sloan and the others started up, they’d be
in the open. Unless...

Josh made a sudden dash for the top of
the bulge. Flame, cursing, followed. When she got there, Josh was
already firing.

“What the...?” Then she saw the flash
of a red tam disappearing round a rock shoulder 200 feet
below.

Josh was already moving back up the
summit. “They’re trying to go around instead of over!”, he yelled.
Scooping up his pack, he began jogging down the far side, his back
sending shafts of pain down his spine.

Flame and Eddy followed.

“Where will they come out?”, Flame
asked, doing her best not to lose her footing on the steep
rock.

“They’ll stay in the scrub, maybe even
move down into the trees,” Josh replied. “Probably pick up the
trail at the Panther Gorge Fork.”

“Then we’ve lost them?”, Eddy
growled.

“Not if we get there first!”, Josh
hissed, bounding down the rocky path.

“Are you sure you know where the Hell
you’re going?”, Sloan demanded.

Hec, not bothering to reply, continued
to force his was through the scrub. Tiny pine needles scraped his
legs. To the right the land fell away down a sheer cliff. Clouds
floated below him. In the distance a hawk cried out. Hec kept
going, ignoring the curses and grunts behind him. He knew that
whoever reached the fork at the far side of Panther Gorge would
control the only trail down from Marcy; and with or without Sloan,
Hec intended to get there first.

He almost made it. Leaving the other
four to fend for themselves, Hec jogged along the rugged slope and
through the thick scrub, cutting the John’s Brook Trail just above
the fork. Scanning the upper slopes for and sign of those he
hunted, he sprinted down into the stunted trees, confident that he
had arrived first. Rounding a large, frost-split boulder, he came
face to face with Flame’s Smith & Wesson.

“Go ahead, asswipe,” she grinned.
“Make my day.”

A bit melodramatic, but effective.
Hec’s rifle slid to the ground, a resigned grin on his stubbled
face.

“No need to get excited, miss,” Hec
drawled. “I mean you no harm.”

“Bullshit!”, Flame hissed, slamming
her gun into his face. The heavy barrel knocked out what few teeth
remained and Hec dropped like a stone.

Eddy appeared, shotgun in hand, murder
in his eye. Prodding the limp form with the stubby barrel, he
cursed and drew a knife. Bending down, he yanked Hec’s head back by
the hair, exposing his throat.

“Eddy, no!”, Flame cried, reaching for
his hand.

Eddy looked up, the glittering blade
matching the fire in his eyes. “Why not?”, he hissed. “The bastard
would do it to us!”

“Yes he would,” Josh said, coming up
to stand beside Flame. “And if you want to be just like him, go
ahead, cut his throat. But before you do, think about this. If we
start killing in cold blood, what makes us so different from any of
them?”

Eddy’s face clouded, his rage and
humanity warring within. The knife moved, pressed against Hec’s
white throat, then fell away. Eddy stepped back, his shoulders
shaking in dry heaves. “I...I loved her!”

Flame took him in her arms, gently
stroking the back of his neck. Eddy’s muffled sobs filled the still
air. Josh embraced them both, then backed away, taking a length of
rope from his pack.

“Flame, help me get this one tied and
into the trees. The others will be along soon. Eddy, watch the
trail.”

Moments later, when Hec was bound and
gagged and tied to a tree, they were all back at the large, split
rock.

“What now?”, Flame asked. “Wait here
and take them like we did the first one?”

Using his light field
glasses, Josh peered through the split, searching their back trail.
Sloan and Tiny were halfway down the rocky slope. Nuts Wilson
staggered along some distance behind. The red tam was nowhere in
sight. “If we can. The third one looks about done in, but the two
out front might put up a fight.” He glanced at Eddy, who once again
had taken up his deadly shotgun. “We’ll try it again, but be
ready.”

Sloan was raging. How the hell had the
shit hit the fan so fast? Just yesterday he was somebody important.
People feared him; jumped when he looked there way. And now, here
he was, stuck out in the middle of nowhere, crawling along some
god-forsaken mountain; dirty, tired and aching all over. To make
matters worse, some crazy asshole was trying to kill him --- and
doing a damned good job of it too!

Up ahead, Tiny looked in even worse
shape. The big Asian was limping badly, blood still oozing from
when that bastard shot at them. Then there was Nuts Wilson. Good
old Nuts, crawling along behind them; already a walking corpse.
Sloan looked for the last member of his merry little band, but
Donny the Geek was nowhere to be seen. Probably didn’t make it over
the last ridge. No big loss there. The little faggot never was
worth shit anyway!

Then Sloan saw Tiny waving to him from
the base of a gigantic boulder. A weathered signpost leaned beside
the trail. Sloan grinned. They’d made it! Now he’d get the fuckers!
That bastard Hec too! But first, the two men and the woman. Sloan
gripped his Uzi and shuffled forward.

Nearing Tiny, he read the aged
signpost. Weathered, overlarge wooden fingers pointed to three
trails; right back up to Marcy, left over to Haystack and continue
on down to J.B. Lodge.

“See anything?”, Sloan
asked.

Tiny, the right side of his face awash
with blood, hefted his long rifle. “No, but soon as they come into
sight, they’re mine!”

Sloan patted his machine-pistol. “This
baby needs close range. We’ll take cover behind this rock. The
first one that comes by is dead meat. You handle any still up the
trail.”

Both men grinned and headed
around the rock. A hundred yards behind them, Nuts Willson, his
world having shrunk to a silent litany of pain, continued to hobble
down the bare rock.

Eddy and Flame, waiting on the far
side of the rock, listened to Sloan and Tiny planning their deaths.
Josh, already hidden in the trees beside the trail, kept both men
in his sights as they wound their way around the massive boulder.
Eddy and Flame were to jump the first one, while he moved in behind
the second. With any luck there’d be no shooting at all.

But luck had something else
planned.

Flame, hidden in the shadowy split,
watched as Tiny climbed passed. Sloan, following close behind,
nearly browned his shorts when she stepped out beside him and
pressed the long barrel of her .44 into his ear. At the same
moment, Eddy stood up and shoved the sawed-off shotgun into Tiny’s
considerable gut.

“Give me a reason, Shit-Face.
Please!”

Tiny decided then and there that he
was not in a giving mood. Sloan, however, was. He swung his Uzie
upwards, pulling the trigger as it rose, shouldering Flame at the
same time. Nine millimeter slugs stitched their way up the split
boulder. Rock-chips and dust filled the air. Flame fell

backwards, the deafening boom of her
Smith & Wesson mingling with the coughing chatter of the
machine-pistol. The back of her head struck the rock. Stars
exploded inside her brain, followed by a numbing
blackness.

His finger still depressing the
trigger, Sloan swung the jerking weapon round in a sweeping arc.
Two yards in front of him, small holes erupted in Tiny’s back.
Punched forward, Tiny impaled himself on Eddy’s shotgun. Both
barrels of the powerful weapon went off, ripping open the large
Asian’s stomach but not checking his fall. Eddy and Tiny went down
in a tangle of legs, arm and intestines.

Josh, hearing the gunfire, rushed
towards the large boulder. What he saw when rounding the corner
made his heart leap to his throat. Flame lay in a heap, the back of
her head covered in blood. Eddy was also down, frantically trying
to get out from under Tiny’s dead weight. Sloan, however, had
vanished.

Dropping his rifle, Josh knelt beside
Flame and gently cradled her in his arms. Her long, red hair was
sticky and damp on one side.

“NOOOOO!”, he screamed. The word came
out like a howl.

Then a boot struck him hard in his
side. Pain lanced through his body. His vision blurred. Blinking
back tears, he fought to focus.

And out from the depth of the shadowy
crack stepped Sloan. A vein pulsed on his forehead; a twitch tugged
at the corner of his cruel smile. Fierce, savage hate burned in his
haggard eyes.

Each man held the other’s gaze, then
Sloan slowly raised his Uzi. Smoke still curled from its short,
stubby barrel.

“Any last words, asshole?”, Sloan
grinned.

Since Flame’s limp body lay against
his Beretta, Josh’s hand slid to the Tanka knife at the small of
his back. In his heart he knew it was a useless gesture, for only
in the movies could knives be thrown with any accuracy --- but it
was still better than nothing.

“Go ahead,” Sloan mocked, seeing the
knife pulled free. “Take your best shot.”

Josh held up the glittering blade.
Jessie’s ‘gift’ from a lifetime ago; back when the future still
held promise and death and killing were but dark dreams.

Sloan’s taunting voice cut through
such whimsical thoughts. “Nice blade. Maybe I’ll take it with me to
remember you by. After I’ve finished with the red-head. Want to
watch?”

Something inside Josh snapped. Shoving
Flame aside, he lunged to his feet. Another useless gesture, but a
needful one just the same. At least now he was off his bloody
knees!