Chapter 2 #2
We’d barely left Rynkirk behind when another car pulled up behind us.
There was only one road leading out of town in this direction, so the presence of another car wasn’t suspicious and didn’t deserve any special attention.
The only reason I even noticed the car was because it didn’t have its running lights on despite how dim it was under the trees’ heavy canopy.
Sure, it wasn’t nighttime, but in such low lighting having their lights on would still be safer.
Then, shortly after the car appeared behind us, Brody brought our truck to a sudden stop. A tree lay across the road, completely blocking our path. We had no choice but to come to a stop, along with the car behind us, and both vehicles were left idling in the middle of the road.
“Now what?” I asked Brody. “Should we call someone? Let them know that a tree has fallen down here.”
Brody didn’t look at me. His hands gripped tight to the steering wheel as he glared at the tree.
“It didn’t fall.”
“What?”
“That tree didn’t fall,” he repeated. “I’m a lumberjack. I know what a fallen tree looks like. There’s no disturbed earth where the tree roots pulled up. It didn’t just fall. It was placed there.”
Grabbing the stick shift, he put the car in reverse, but when he looked in the rearview mirror, he froze.
I turned in my seat to see what had caught his attention behind us, and nearly had a heart attack.
Several men climbed out of the other car, each wearing a mask that covered their face, and several of them holding weapons. It looked like something I’d seen one of the movies I’d watched while waiting in the hospital and I almost suspected I was dreaming.
Except I wasn’t dreaming.
I dug my fingers into the truck’s leather seat hard enough to make my nails hurt, and the pain made it very clear that I wasn’t dreaming.
Brody’s hand squeezed my shoulder.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Before I could say anything, he reached into the backseat of the truck and pulled out a surprisingly large gun. The sight of it left me speechless as my mouth gaped like a fish, yet he held the weapon with a casual kind of ease as he opened the door.
In one fluid motion, Brody stepped out of the truck, braced the gun against his shoulder and pulled the trigger.
I was almost certain that I’d never heard a gun in real life, because I was surprised by the noise it made.
In movies, gunshots had a deep resonant sound, but the one in Brody’s hands made a shallow popping noise.
I was so surprised by the unexpected sound, that for a moment I forgot to be scared.
One of the masked men dropped to their knees, clutching their leg where a patch of red quickly spread over their thigh.
“That was a warning,” Brody shouted without lowering the gun or even removing his finger from the trigger. “Next shot is going between your eyes.”
Like a cliché Mexican standoff, Brody and the masked men stared each other down, none of them even daring to blink.
Right. Brody was retired from the military. I’d been so focused on the word “retired” that I’d overlooked the whole “military” part of his explanation.
When he said he was a lumberjack, I believed him without question. He fit the stereotype of a lumberjack to a T, right down to the red flannel shirt. The image of a soldier, however, didn’t fit him and I hadn’t been able to picture him in that position.
Until now.
Seeing him standing there, unafraid as he faced multiple enemies with a gun in his hand, I could easily imagine him in the middle of a war zone.
It was a strange shift in perspective. His familiar face became a stranger to me all over again. A harsh noise echoed in my ears, and it took me several moments to realize it was the sound of me hyperventilating.
The door on my side of the car opened. An iron strong grip on my arm pulled me out of the car. I was half tangled in the seat belt and fell out of the seat. The ground rushed up at me, and I threw out my hands to keep from face planting in the dirt.
I managed to catch myself, but a sharp pain shot through my wrist, and I cried out.
A masked man stood over me, luckily without a gun, though he did have a baseball bat.
It was pathetic. If we were both on our feet, I would have been significantly taller than him. Brody and I were almost of a similar height, so how was he able to stand his ground with such confidence while I ended up beaten down in the mud.
Again.
The masked man raised the baseball bat, preparing to swing it down at me. I covered my head with my arms in a feeble attempt to protect myself.
Another gunshot rang out with its startling little pop.
The man standing over me shouted and stumbled away.
I looked up just in time to see a clear hole right through the man’s wrist, before he gripped the wound tightly with his other hand.
Blood gushed between his fingers and formed a small puddle under his feet just inches from where I kneeled on the ground.
Immediately following the gunshot, Brody slid across the hood of the truck Dukes of Hazard style. His feet landed right in front of me, putting himself between me and my attacker. The butt of his gun slammed into the masked man’s face, creating a satisfying crunch as bone and cartilage broke.
Through it all, Brody didn’t say a word.
No snappy one-liners and jeering taunts like the hero in an action movie would usually make.
No, Brody was completely focused with lethal intent.
This violent side of him may have been a stranger to me, but I was quickly learning that this formidable soldier side of him was a source of safety and protection.
Blinded by the pain of a shattered wrist and face, the masked man that tried to grab me stumbled back to his friends. Brody tried to follow him but was stopped when another gunshot was fired. Our attackers had started firing back.
Rather than follow them, Brody ducked down behind the body of the truck, bringing me with him to ensure I was safe as well.
A few more bullets bounced off the truck as our assailants piled into their car and drove away back toward town.
As their taillights disappeared into the gloom of the forest, my last sight of them was a clear view of the empty spot on the back of their car where their license plate should have been.
“Are you all right?”
My gaze snapped back to Brody, my eyes wide enough that I could feel air sneaking under my eyelids. My breathing was still rapid and shallow, though I’d managed to keep myself from having a complete panic attack.
In contrast, Brody was completely calm as he inspected my wrist.
“Does it hurt?” he kept asking. “You landed weird when they pulled you out of the car. I’m sorry. I wasn’t focused enough. I never should have let anyone get that close.”
My laughter sounded hysterical, even to my own ears. “Not focused enough? If you were any more focused, lasers would have been shooting out of your eyes. I’m the idiot who can’t even defend himself against a baseball bat.”
“Stop,” Brody said, his voice hard. “Don’t talk about yourself like that. You’ve already been through a lot, and most people wouldn’t know what to do if they got jumped by a bunch of armed men in the middle of a deserted road.”
His voice may have been harsh, but his hands were gentle as he carefully inspected my wrist.
“You knew what to do,” I grumbled, though I obediently kept my hand held out for him to manipulate as he wanted. “You didn’t even hesitate.”
“That’s different. I’ve had training. Your wrist seems okay. I’m not seeing any obvious injuries. How does it feel?”
I swiveled my wrist around on its joint. It was a little sore, but didn’t seem to be broken or sprained.
“It’s fine. But, now what are we going to do?”
When he looked at me with confusion, I nodded toward the tree that was still blocking the road.
“Ah, right,” Brody said, as if he’d only just remembered the obstructing tree existed. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”
Standing up, he jumped into the back of his truck. After rooting around in the truck’s toolbox for a moment, he held up a whole chainsaw for me to see.
I wasn’t sure what my face was doing, but whatever expression I made must have been hilarious, because Brody outright laughed at me.
“What? I’m a lumberjack. What else would I be carrying in the back of my truck? Give me a few minutes and I’ll get that tree out of the way, then we can get out of here.”
The chainsaw wasn’t small. Most people would require two hands to support it, yet Brody easily carried it with one hand as if it weighed nothing. The muscles in his forearms bulged as he lined the chainsaw up with the side of the tree, and my throat suddenly felt dry.
Swallowing a few times, I had to look away.
My gaze trailed idly over the ground and caught on the puddle of blood that my attacker had left behind.
Sudden pain assaulted me, like a thin needle being inserted into my skull just above my left eye.
The image of blood mixing with dirt hovered behind my closed eyes, shifting into a new but similar scene.
As the peace of the forest was broken by the sound of a chainsaw revving up, I continued to sit there in the dirt, marveling at the feeling of my first true memory filling my mind.
Brody’s home wasn’t what I expected. When he’d described the place, he made it sound like a typical house with a homegrown garden on the land.
Instead, what I discovered was a significant patch of land with multiple houses and buildings in various stages of construction and a garden large enough to be considered a small farm.
The sun was going to set soon, and its last rays of light cast everything in a golden glow.
It didn’t look real, like something from a movie set rather than real life, and I stared out through the window at the scenery in awe.
The moment the truck came to a stop, even before Brody had shut off the ignition, two other people immediately approached us.