Ever Onward (66 page)

The parent in Josh wanted to shout out
a warning, wanted to clutch his child to him and shield him from
the cold, cruel world. The man in him however, knew that his son
was right. It would never truly be over as long as Jocco
lived.

Josh nodded.

Jessie smiled and father and son
turned towards the shattered doorway. Flame was waiting.

Inside the woman had stopped
screaming.

“Can’t see a bloody thing!”, Flame
growled through the smoke.

Two shots suddenly rang out, followed
by a muffled scream.

“Out back!” Jessie yelled, already
sprinting for the kitchen.

“Wait!”, Josh called, but both Jessie
and Flame were gone. Browning in hand, he followed.

Charley Little Dog lay sprawled on his
back, his vacant eyes staring up at the early stars. Blood trickled
from the hole in his forehead. A gun went off to their right, the
loud report echoing off the mountains. All three crouched, weapons
ready, peering into the fading light.

“Over there!”, Eddy yelled, pointing
with the still smoking barrel of Nate’s 44-40. “They shot Charley
and headed for the trees!”

“How many?”, Josh asked.

Eddy emerged from the growing dark.
Bobby was leaning against him, blood pouring from the wound in his
leg.

“A man and a woman!”, Eddy answered.
“I got off a shot, but missed.”

Flame was already half way to the
forest. Jessie was right behind her. Josh turned to
Eddy.

“See to Bobby, then find Cobb. We’ll
be back.”

Eddy nodded. As Josh hurried after
Flame and his son, Bobby called after him. “You get him, Mr.
Williams. Get him good!”

Josh was already at the
trees.

Chapter 51
: ‘EVER ONWARD’

High in the hills

Sequoia National Park

California, May
27
^th

“It hurts, Jocco!”

“Shut the fuck up!”, the man
hissed.

“But I can’t stop the
bleeding!”

Jocco leaned closer to the woman, his
cruel mouth just inches from her own. “Then die, bitch, but keep
your fucking mouth shut!”

Pam turned away, hatred and pain
coursing through her. Since entering the forest they hadn’t stopped
running. At first it hadn’t seemed too hard. They’d escaped death
and now they were free. Then the pain had set in. She’d pulled
Lonefeather’s knife out back at the lodge. It hadn’t bled much
then, or hurt much either, but after stumbling around in the dark
for twenty minutes her shoulder ached like hell. Now she was
bleeding like a stuck pig.

“I got to rest.” Even to her own ears
the words had a distant, far away quality. She found herself
sitting on the ground, half propped against a tree. Blood still
poured from the shoulder wound. Part of her realized that she was
bleeding to death. The other part didn’t give a shit. All she
wanted to do was close her eyes.

“Here, take these.” In Jocco’s
outstretched palm were two red capsules. Slowly she reached for
them, dropping one. Jocco cursed and, scooping up the wayward
capsule, shoved it and a quantity of leaf mould into her mouth. Pam
gagged once, then dry-swallowed the lot. As she tried not to retch,
a plan was forming in Jocco’s mind. He knew that William’s would
follow. Most men wouldn’t, but the good professor wasn’t like most
men.

“You just rest there, Pam. I’ll see if
I can find us some water.” Jocco’s voice had taken on that velvety
smoothness that should have sent warning bells clanging in her
head. Pam the Bitch, however, was too far gone to notice. What with
the shock from her wound and the loss of so much blood she wasn’t
thinking straight. The fact that the drugs were starting to kick in
did little to help her cognitive faculties. Grinning like a cat
full of cream, Jocco watched for her eyes to glaze. When they did
he gave her his orders.

“Just sit still, Pam. Pretend to be
sleeping. When you hear them coming keep quiet. Let them walk right
up to you.” He placed her chrome-plated .38 in her open hand. “When
they bend down to check you out, let them have it. I’ll cut loose
from the side. Got that?”

Feeling like a boat adrift on a
tranquil sea, Pam nodded. The pain had faded to a dull throb and
the night had taken on a strange beauty. Moonbeams began to dance
before her eyes.

“Sure, Baby,” she mumbled. “Let them
walk right up then blast them.”

In the moonlight Jocco’s grin looked
like a wolf’s snarl. “That’s my girl. I’ll be just off in the
shadows.”

As Jocco stood, Pam grabbed his pant
leg. Her voice had a little-girl-lost quality to it. “You won’t
leave me, will you Jocco?”

The man who would be king patted her
head like he would an obedient hound. “Now, would I do that to my
best girl?”

Pam’s grip fell away, a contented
smile on her pale face.

Jocco backed quietly into
the shadows. Once there, he looked about for some place to set up
his ambush. Half way up a hill a jumble of rocks offered the best
cover. From there he could clearly see Pam stretched out in the
moonlit glade. It was a bit further away than he liked, but the
M-16 on full rock n’ roll would easily make up for the distance. Of
course, Pam would also be hit, but then she was as good as dead
already. Besides, this far away he’d have a good head start if
anything went wrong. Finding a crevasse in the rocks, he laid his
rifle down and lit a smoke, content to wait for his plan to
unfold.

Josh felt uneasy. For one thing there
was a full moon, its silver light filtering down through the trees
made them all stand out like sore thumbs. For another the trail was
just too damn easy to follow. Besides the blood scattered about,
the quantity of which Josh didn’t think it humanly possible to
loose and still be alive, they were making no effort to cover their
tracks. Either they were running scared or they were laying a trap.
Knowing Jocco as he did, Josh bet on the latter.

Jessie suddenly gripped his arm. “Look
at that, Dad. Up ahead. Its Jocco’s girlfriend.”

There, in plain view in a small
clearing, was a woman propped up against a lone pine. She was
dressed in torn fatigues with a dark stain all down her left side.
In contrast, the moonlight turned her long blonde hair almost
white.

“Looks like she’s been hit,” Jessie
continued. “Maybe Eddy didn’t miss after all.”

“Let’s make sure,” Flame said, raising
her shotgun.

“No,” Josh whispered, gently easing
the Defender’s short barrel to one side. “No sense letting Jocco
know where we are.”

Flame grinned and drew Josh’s Tanto
from his belt. The sharpened steel glittered in the moonlight.
“You’re the boss, Lover, but I’ve got a score to settle with that
bitch. If she’s not already dead, she soon will be.”

Josh gripped her wrist with one hand
and gently retrieved his knife with the other. “Something’s wrong,
Flame. I don’t like it.”

“You think its a trap?”, Jessie
asked.

Josh glanced around. “Could be. Out
there in the moonlight we’d be sitting ducks.”

“Want to scout around first,
Dad?”

Josh smiled at his son. “It couldn’t
hurt. You and Flame check out those rocks up there. I’ll work my
way through the pines downslope. In ten minutes we meet at the far
side of the clearing. That way we can come up behind
her.”

Flame pulled her hand free. “Look, you
two boys can play Daniel Boon if you want to. Me, I’m going to have
a one-sided chat with that bitch right now!”

Josh frowned. He knew that when Flame
got her back up there was no reasoning with her, yet he tried
anyway.

“How about this?” she said after he’d
had his say. “You two go off and I’ll cover you both from here.
Once you reach your positions, you can cover me?”

Josh nodded reluctantly, knowing it
was the best offer he was going to get. “But wait till you hear us
both whistle before leaving these trees.”

“Sure thing, Lover,” she said. “Now
get going. I have to take a leak.”

From his position high above in the
rocks, Jocco saw the three of them at the far edge of the clearing.
In the bright moonlight they looked like three pale ghosts. His
hand reached for his M-16. Part of him wanted to off the bastards
then and there, but another part, the part that had gotten him up
the slippery ladder of success, told him to wait. ‘Too far off’, he
reasoned. ‘Over a hundred yards at least. Best wait till they’re
all right up to Pam.’ It displeased him greatly when the three
split up, each one slipping into the shadows like a
wraith.

“Shit!”, Jocco swore, then cursed
again for speaking out loud. The forest around him had gone as
silent as a grave and he knew that he was out of his element. The
bustle of the city streets were his domain, while those good old
boys down there were born and bred in an outhouse. Then he saw the
boy's blond head moving towards him and a cruel smile twisted his
features.

“Come on you little shit,”
he whispered as a new idea burst upon him. If he could capture the
kid he’d have a hostage to bargain with! “Uncle Jocco has a
surprise for you.” Slithering back into a large crevasse in the
rocks, he crouched down to wait. Soon the quiet scuffle of boots
could be faintly heard coming up the slope.

Flame had quickly answered the call of
nature and now sat scanning the small clearing. The woman propped
up against the tree hadn’t moved an inch in the last five minutes.
Flame didn’t think she’d ever move again.

“Men,” she muttered to herself.
“Always acting like tough little boys. Any fool can see the bitch
is dead.” She hefted the riot gun and a new thought popped into her
mind.
Even if she was dead it could still be a trap!
Jocco
was a user of people. The fact that his girlfriend had bit the big
one wouldn’t stop him from still using her. He could be out there
now waiting for them to step into his scope and here she sat with a
bloody scattergun that was only good up close. She needed a long
distance weapon if she was going to be any help to Josh and Jessie!
The dead bitch by the tree might just have one
. Squinting
into the moonlight glade, she couldn’t be sure.
That ‘might’ be
an M-16 beside the body --- then again, it might be a bloody
stick.

“Only one way to find out,
girl,” she muttered. Flicking the safety off the stubby little
shotgun, she stepped out from the shadows.

Both Jessie and Jocco saw Flame at the
same time. Though they didn’t know it, there was only a large
boulder between them. Jocco swung his rifle round and sighted on
the long legged woman moving cautiously towards Pam. The
cross-hairs of the night-scope centered on the side of her head. It
would be a long shot, but a triple-burst should do it.

Then he heard Jessie
whistle from the far side of the rock. Shocked by the nearness, he
retreated back into the darkened slit. The sound of Jessie’s
approaching feet became louder. Then a shadow blocked the opening
of his lair. Like a creature of the night, Jocco crouched, ready to
spring. Jessie’s form was silhouetted in the moonlight. The youth
raised his left hand and whistled again. A distant response came
from the far side of the glade. Jessie was about to move on when
Jocco struck. Bounding out of his hole, he slammed the butt of his
rifle into the back of the boy’s head. Even as Jessie was
collapsing, Jocco was hauling him back into his
den.

Pam was wasted. Whatever
Jocco had given her had
really
done the trick! The pain was
gone, along with the fear and the worry. The fact that she was
still bleeding to death struck her as kind of
'funny'
. Like
the little girl in Lewis Carrol’s classic, Pam the Bitch was lost
in Wonderland and she didn’t give a shit.

“One pill makes you
taller,

and one pill makes you
small.

And the ones that Mother
gives you, \

don’t do anything at
all.

Go ask Alice,

when she’s ten feet
tall.”

Inside her head the old song sounded
great! With the Jefferson Airplane pumping out the background, she
and Grace Slick were both wailing away at the mike. Barely
breathing, Pam the Bitch rocked on silently towards eternity. What
snapped her back to reality was the barrel of Flame’s riotgun being
shoved rudely into her open mouth.

“Wha-ta-fawk?!”

“Easy does it, Blondie!”, Flame
ordered. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

Pam tried to focus on the person
standing over her. It seemed to take her a long time to recognize
Flame, for it was a long way back from Wonderland, and the fucking
White Rabbit had taken a powder! Climbing out of the deep well of
her mind she realized there was something she had to do. Jocco had
ordered it.
‘Off with her head!’
the Red Queen screamed. The
queen wore Jocco’s handsome sneer. Like the puppet she had become,
Pam jerked her hand up from her side. In it was the silver-plated
.38.

Flame, seeing the flash in
the moonlight, leaned forward --- hard. The perforated barrel of
the Defender snapped Pam’s head back against the pine tree,
breaking off two teeth in the process. The blonde’s eyes rolled
back white as she slipped to one side, the unused revolver still
clutched in her hand.