North of Springville
By
Justin Rowland
Copyright 2012 Justin Rowland,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0829-3
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Chapter 1
The wind crept up the canyon wall as Jedidiah neared its edge. He could hear the screams on the wind, but could not discern whether they were screams of play or panic. On his belly now, he crawled the last few inches to gaze out over the lowlands below his perch, high on the cliffs. Even though the cabin was well over a half-a-mile away, the flames told the story. By the light of the fire combined with the bright moon overhead, he could see frantic figures moving about the burning structure in the distance. Jedidiah shook his head thinking how preventable this was had someone been more mindful of the fire. At that, he lifted himself up a few inches, backing away from the edge to disappear back into the darkness, when he stopped short for a better look. He had surveyed this valley several times before as he passed through the territory. And, though he had never made himself known to them, he knew that the cabin was occupied by a family of five. Why then did he see so many figures? He couldn’t be certain, but he thought he counted at least fifteen people moving around the burning cabin and surrounding out-buildings. He continued to cautiously back away from the edge before raising himself up to a crouching position. Once he was well clear of the cliff and into the tree line, he stood up and made his way back to his pack that was stashed in the dark of the forest. The thick canopy overhead blocked the moonlight, but he found his binoculars with sure hands and, turning back to the cliff’s edge, he made his way back down with the same meticulous care he had used in his first approach. Bringing the binoculars to his eyes, he could see that this wasn’t just the results of a poorly tended fire. These were not just screams of panic, but screams of terror. He could see that the man he knew to be the husband and father had his hands bound and was hanging upside down from the front porch as the house burned down around him. A handful of men stood over the rest of the family watching him squirm and scream as the flames licked his body. While the family screamed and the men laughed, the burning man’s wife suddenly lunged from the ground striking one of the men in the head with a rock she had gripped firmly in her hand. She grabbed the wounded man’s scattergun as he fell to the ground and with lethal precision put her husband out of his misery. Instantly, one of the other men shot her dead. Jedidiah watched as the flame exploded from the muzzles, waiting for the report of the weapons he knew would follow. And as the crack of the shots reached his ears, his body began to react.
Within seconds, he had his pack on and was moving toward the homestead. Given the terrain, he figured he could close the distance within ten minutes and, as he moved through the trees and underbrush, he began to do a mental check of his combat load. He knew he had a full thirteen-round magazine in his side arm and two full thirty-round magazines for his rifle. That could hardly be called a “combat load” in terms of ammunition, but he’d have to make do. Jedidiah had a habit of routinely touching his sheathed knife as he moved to ensure it stayed put, so he knew it was right where it belonged. He began to run through the picture in his mind of what he had just seen. He remembered seeing approximately four or five men standing around the surviving family, and the rest seemed to be preoccupied with the out-buildings. Though he was outnumbered, he hoped to use the numbers to his advantage and all of the activity as concealment.
The sounds grew louder as Jedidiah closed in. He knew he was compromising noise discipline for speed, but he moved with such purpose that only a trained ear could have differentiated his movement from the sounds of the night. He spoke softly as he closed in upon the scene. “Father, I could use some help here. A suppressor would be great.” And with that prayer, he reached the tree line. With one movement, he crouched while letting his pack slide off to one side. From the shadows of the forest, he looked out over fifty yards of plowed field that separated him from the flurry of activity. He pulled out his binoculars once more to get another look. As he scanned the property, he began to take deeply controlled breaths to lower his heart rate. The main barn lay between him and where he’d last seen the rest of the family. The burning cabin on the opposite side of the barn worked well to silhouette their movements. The bulk of the raiding party was hard at work loading their mules, horses, and dogs with food from the family’s root cellars and barn. They took everything from bags of grain to jars of canned vegetables. He could see now that there were men and women and they handled the food as though it was a valuable commodity. He could easily begin to pick off the bad guys with his rifle from a safe and concealed location, and had he been able to confirm that the children were dead, he would have chosen that method. But if he began to kill the bandits while the children were still alive, he feared it would complicate matters. Time was of the essence. Several minutes had already passed since he began his descent from the hills above. If he hoped to save the children, and if they weren’t already dead, he needed to move.
He pulled his hood low and walked into the action like he belonged there. He had no way of knowing the location of the children. He could only assume they would still be in the vicinity where he last saw them. He continued to be especially concerned for the eldest daughter. Judging by the behavior of these raiders, a teenage girl would surely be raped, but as horrible as that may be, it might be enough to at least keep her alive. The two younger boys, he half-expected, might already be dead.
He heard no other shots as he approached the nearest structure, but he did not under-estimate the brutality of this band of thieves. He was well within the danger zone now and, nearing the barn, his peripheral vision picked up some movement against the barn wall just feet from where he was. There, crouched in the dark, was a woman with a jar of canned vegetables. She had apparently slipped around the corner to enjoy her stolen spoils while the others continued loading. Greedily, she devoured the jar’s contents with a long gun lying in front of her on the ground. A split second later she looked up from her sinful feast and saw Jedidiah. She shot him a glance of anger and disgust for interrupting her meal, but that expression was immediately replaced with one of surprise as she realized that this man was walking in from the dark and she did not know him. As she filled her lungs with air to sound the alarm and reached for her gun, Jedidiah stepped on her rifle while pulling his knife from its sheath, driving his blade through her throat. He felt the blade glance off her spinal cord as the tip exited the back of her neck, sticking into the barn’s wall. While she gargled and convulsed, he scanned his surroundings for additional threats. Confirming that he had not been compromised, his focus shifted back to the woman. With what he could now identify as green beans all over his hand, he withdrew the knife and wiped it and his hand on the back of her shirt. He immediately searched her for anything useful. In her right front pocket, he found his own treasure––fingernail clippers. He smiled to himself and prayed aloud as he put them in his own pocket. “Nice… Father, I appreciate that.”
His attention then turned to her weapon. It was a .22 rifle without any shells. He dragged her body as close to the barn as he could, and laid her parallel with the wall. He hoped this would help to conceal her in the dark. Because it added nothing to his combat effectiveness, he laid the .22 tightly against the body and, looking up, he noticed numerous knot holes in the barn wall, allowing him an unobstructed view of everyone inside the barn. The light was dim, but the fire fully engulfed the house providing ample illumination to get a closer look at the unsuspecting raiders. He counted twelve men and women in a flurry of excited movement as they ransacked the barn. Their weapons ranged from AK-47s to crossbows and everything in between. There was no way of knowing if they all had the ammunition and skill to effectively deploy their weapons, but Jedidiah had stayed alive long enough to learn that handling everyone like an expert killer would lessen his chances of being taken by surprise.
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