The Siege (20 page)

“Just a little bit off the mark, I guess,” Hocker said sullenly. “I think I must’ve gone too far to the left. We should’ve come to it by now.”

Tasha glanced around, trying to see how he could know where he was. All she could see were the stark limbs of trees overhead and the dusty, coal sky beyond that. A chilly breeze raced through the pine boughs, making soft, hissing sounds that reminded Tasha of a snake.

“Real good,” she said, not letting go of her grip on his arm. “You make one hell of an Indian scout!”

“No sweat, no sweat,” Hocker said, shaking his arm loose from her. “We ain’t more than a coupla’ hundred yards off, one way or another.”

“Yeah, but which way?”

Hocker deliberated for just a second, then pointed to the right. “This way, I think. Come on.”

Tasha sighed deeply, wishing they would just spread out their sleeping bags here for the night.
Hell, even sleeping without a tent would be better than thrashing around in the friggin’ darkness
, she thought.

But she followed, and it wasn’t long before she heard Hocker swear softly under his breath. It didn’t take her long to realize what had gotten him angry, either. Up ahead, through the screen of trees, they could see the warm, yellow glow of light.

“If that’s the farmhouse I found,” Hocker said softly, “I guess it ain’t unoccupied like I thought. Come on, let’s go see.”

“Let’s just spread out the bags here,” Tasha said, trying to keep the pleading whine out of her voice. “I’m hungry, cold, and tired. All I want to do is—”

“Shh!
Quiet!
” Hocker hissed. He slapped at her in the darkness and connected a glancing blow to her arm. “I can hear voices. Stay behind me and be real quiet!”

For what seemed like the hundredth time today, Tasha wished to God she had the courage to dump Hocker and head out by herself. Is that what she lacked, courage? What would have been the worst that could happen? She’d hitch a ride with some horny old businessman and she’d end up in his bed for the night. Would that be so bad? At least the bed would be in a warm motel room somewhere, with clean sheets and blankets, and a shower in the morning. Better than
this
by a damned sight!

But she did what Hocker said and kept her mouth closed as she crept forward through the black-drenched woods, keeping as close as she could to him.

The woods abruptly ended, and before them stretched a wide field. Dusty moonlight cast rippling shadows over the furrows where the tangled vines of potatoes grew. The land sloped gently upward, and at the crest of the hill stood a large barn. The light they saw came from a single bare light bulb, hanging from a wire in the center of the barn.

“What the fuck’s going on up there?” Hocker whispered as he knelt at the edge of the woods, staring up at the barn.

Tasha surely didn’t know, and furthermore, she didn’t care. It looked to her like some kind of meeting—just a bunch of farmers, by the looks; but if it was some kind of gathering, the group of men up there didn’t look like they were having a good time.

“Can you see what they’ve got there?” Hocker asked. “It looks like some kind of big vat or something.”

“I don’t know,” Tasha said. “And I don’t really care. Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’m exhausted!”

“Hold your ass,” Hocker hissed.

He watched intently as the men, maybe twenty or twenty-five in all, stood motionlessly inside the barn while one man, the best-dressed of the lot, stood near a large black kettle. He seemed to be addressing the men, who were lined up in a ragged line. Because of the distance, Hocker couldn’t make out their faces very well, but they all seemed uninterested in what the well-dressed man was saying. While he spoke, he held a large ladle in one hand and stirred something in the kettle.

“That’s probably some homemade kooch,” Hocker said, smacking his lips.

Tasha moaned softly and said, “I just want to get some sleep.”

“Just a second,” Hocker said firmly. “I wanna check this out. Then we’ll see if I can find that farmhouse. I think it’s down that way.” In the dim light, she could see him pointing off to the right.

Hocker figured the men were migrant workers, in the area for the potato harvest. They didn’t move as the well-dressed man spoke with them. After stirring the kettle a while longer, he knocked the ladle on the edge of the kettle, and the men began to crowd around closer. For the first time, Hocker noticed that each of them held a cup of some kind in one hand; as they drew up to the kettle, the well-dressed man doled them out a small amount of liquid. In the harsh light of the naked bulb, the liquid looked dark, a deep purple.

“Hot damn! That’s what it is!” Hocker said excitedly. “They’ve got some kind of home brew.”

“Good for them,” Tasha said sourly. Hocker stayed crouching as he watched each man receive his portion and then walk away to sit down in a corner of the barn, and quickly drink it down. It was one drink per customer, no refills. That made Hocker think it must be some potent, son-of-a-bitching drink!

He also thought how great the barn would look with flames licking out of its loft windows and angry red sparks spiraling skyward beneath a heavy belly of smoke.

Yes-sir-ee bob-cat!
he thought, feeling a tingling in his groin, the same tingling he felt whenever he contemplated torching a building. His hands began to tremble with excitement at the thought as the funny tingling spread up into his belly. Hell! It felt better, by far, than what he had felt the few times he had played with himself and the sticky white stuff had shot out of him. That felt good, too, but it didn’t come close to what he knew he’d feel if, once those men left for the night, he went back there and checked to see if there was enough hay in the loft,
maybe even some gasoline!
to get things really going.

“Look, Hock. If it’s something to drink you want, you can head to town and score a six-pack. If it’s the damned barn you’re so psyched up about, I found another one while I was slugging my way through the woods after the cop nabbed me. This one definitely ain’t being used. It was all overgrown with trees around it. Actually, we could have made our camp there for the night if I’d gotten back sooner.”

“Another barn?” Hocker said.

“Umm. On the other side of town. Do you want to try to make it there tonight?”

Hocker shook his head, still keeping his eyes fixed on the men in the barn. The well-dressed man had finished dispensing the liquid, and it nearly broke Hocker’s heart to see him grab the edge of the kettle and overturn it, spilling the remainder of the dark liquid onto the ground.

“Naw,” he said, his voice rasping. “We can camp like I said, in the woods behind that abandoned farm house. If no one shows up, we’ll check it out in the morning. Maybe we can play house there for a few days.”

“Sounds like fun,” Tasha said, convinced that Hocker wouldn’t catch her sarcasm.

“But before we bug out of this town,” he said, “you have to show me where that other old barn is, okay?” He smiled widely as he pictured the black skeleton of the barn burning as raging tongues of orange flame roared into the night sky.

VIII

T
he first Tasha knew there was any trouble was when a booted foot slammed into her side, jolting her out of a deep sleep.

Cops!
she thought as she doubled up in pain, not knowing whether to hide deep in her sleeping bag or scramble to her feet and fight like hell. As she rolled over, she opened her mouth to scream and got nothing for her effort but a mouthful of dry leaves, dirt, and pine needles.

“Hock!” she sputtered, but the cry was lost as she spit to clean out her mouth.

The small campfire they had built before going to sleep had burned down to orange coals, but the moon, now high in the trees, shed enough light to see by. She wasn’t sure if Hocker was still tangled in his sleeping bag or if he was one of the four figures she could see silhouetted against the sky. When one of the figures swung wildly at another, though, she had her answer.

Bitter panic rose from her stomach to her throat, choking her as she beat aside the sleeping bag. One of the silhouettes loomed over her, as tall as a tower, threatening to crash down on her. The foot came out of nowhere, catching her on the underside of the ribs. She doubled up in pain just as a crushing weight fell down on her.

Her screams caught in her chest, and the only sound that came from her mouth was a strangled grunt as she clawed desperately at the face pressing down on her. By simple luck, her finger wrapped around the man’s throat, and she held him back long enough to see his face, lined in harsh relief by the moonlight. The memory of that leering, grinning face, more skull-like than living flesh, etched itself like acid into her brain. Wide, staring eyes, swirling whirlpools of black thicker than the night, gazed deeply into her eyes, ripping like a wild animal into her soul. A sickly, sour breath washed over her face like a spray of vomit.

With a strength charged by adrenalin, she loosened the grip with one hand and raked her fingernails across those eyes. The effect, even in her panic, was stunning; the man seemed barely to notice! His dead weight still pressed her down, crushing the breath out of her! The face loomed closer, and when the man opened his mouth and viciously chomped his teeth several times, drawing closer to her face, Tasha was positive she would spin backward into unconsciousness, a faint from which she would never awaken.

But then, just as suddenly, there was a loud explosion and a flash of light close to her ear. The weight of the man lifted off her. She looked up, horrified, to see that the man’s entire head was blown away from his shoulders. His headless corpse lurched up, staggering once in the pale moonlight, and then crumpled to the ground, where it twitched spasmodically before lying still.

A whining buzz filled her ears as she looked, horrified, at the dead man.
Jesus Christ! Where did you get a gun?
she wanted to yell to Hocker, but he had already turned to face the two other attackers. Tasha extricated herself from the sleeping bag and groped about on the forest floor, seeking something she could use to protect herself. She found a wrist-thick branch and, giving it a testing heft, stood up to help Hocker.

Hocker was circling the small clearing where they had camped. The gun waved menacingly in his hand, glinting in the moonlight.

“Come on, you fuckin’ scumbags,” he growled. “Come
on
! You want it? I’ll
give
it to you!”

The whole situation didn’t make sense, but what happened next made the least sense of all. In any conflict, Tasha would have bet good money that, even two men, faced with a gun, would back down. Maybe because they knew one of their group was already dead, they wanted revenge. Maybe they were escaped convicts, desperate men on the run with nothing to lose. (
Like us
, Tasha thought.) Whatever it was, first one man then the other coiled back. Then, with gut-deep grunts, they launched themselves at Hocker.

The gun blasted twice. Tasha barely registered seeing one of the two go down, but even on the ground, he clawed at the mulchy soil to propel himself forward. His feet scrambled wildly on the ground, like he was trying to burrow into the soil. The other man slammed into Hocker like a runaway bull, pushing him back in a flurry of arms and legs into the brush. The sound of them thrashing in the woods filled the night.

Tasha moved forward, thinking she might be able to help, but as she stepped over the fallen man, she felt a clamp-like hand wrap around her ankle. She squealed and instinctively raised the stick up high and brought it down hard on the man’s head. Once, twice, three times! She pounded as hard as she could. Each blow made a sickening hollow
thump
that made her believe she was beating on a pumpkin instead of a real person’s head. She had a fleeting image of the man’s head splitting open, and what spilled out was not brains, but rotten pumpkin fiber.

Worst of all, though, was when she vividly imagined the man’s face and those eyes glaring up at her.

They were
dead man’s eyes
! The image terrified her; and charged her with even more frantic energy. Again and again, she slammed the stick down where she knew that face was. She wanted to smash the skull until it was pulp; she wanted to knock that black, hypnotic gaze out of his eyes. She didn’t stop hitting even after the grip had loosened on her leg and let go. Tears blurred the silvery-lit clearing as she slammed, and slammed, and slammed!

What brought her back to reality was the sound of gunfire, muffled in the distance. She looked over to the bushes where Hocker and the other man had disappeared, but now, except for a faint rustling, all was quiet. Silence settled back down on the night like a heavy blanket. Even the wind seemed to have stopped. Moonlight washed the clearing with dull silvery light.

“Hocker?” she called out feebly. The sound of her voice, twisted and strained, intruded unnaturally on the night. Again, she heard a rustling of leaves, and the only thought that filled her now was:
Hocker’s dead! Now that guy’s coming for me!

Her grip on the stick tightened until the palms of her hands hurt, but she waited in the clearing, figuring either Hocker would come out of the brush, or
that
man.

This is it!
she thought as tears flooded her eyes, making it almost impossible to see.
I’m gonna die!