Benjy cautiously edged forward, far enough to see the carnage in the sand. Bloody remnants of clothing lay in a heap, bristling with buzzing black flies more luckless, waylaid refugees from Brigham ville.
“Help me,” a weak voice said. “Oh, please, help me”
Benjy poked through the tangle of branches, 12-gauge first. It was a woman. She lay on her back on top of a fallen log ten feet from the pile of bodies. Her arms were tied at the wrists with close turns of heavy rope. The same kind of rope bound her mid-section to the downed tree. Half her face was smeared with blood. It looked as though she’d taken a terrible beatingand worse. The hem of her long dress was pushed way up over her waist, exposing her naked flesh. Apparently, she had been abused, used and left for the stickies to finish off.
Over the bead sight of his shotgun, Benjy scanned the stream channel and the bordering trees. There was no sign of the coldhearts who had committed these atrocities. Though it looked safe to advance, part of him still wanted to withdraw, to slip silently away, while another part of him couldn’t help but think what if it had been his Uda bound there, helpless like that? What would he expect from an armed passerby?
Then the woman raised her head slightly and said, “I know you! I know you from Brigham ville.”
Benjy didn’t recognize her, not with the gore all over her face, but her words made up his mind for him. He could consider turning his back on a total stranger, but not on a neighbor.
The second that Benjy stepped through the wall of willows into the middle of the dry stream channel, he realized something wasn’t right. He could feel it, hard and cold, in the pit of his stomach. He started to retreat at once.
“No, don’t leave me here,” she begged him. He took a good look at the woman as he continued to back up toward the tree line. Her black hair was cropped so short he could see the white skin of her scalp showing through on the sides of her head; she had huge, coal black eyes. Frenzied eyes.
He knew he’d never seen her before in his life.
As Benjy turned to run, the pack of cannies concealed in the willows rushed him from all sides. His legs felt as if fifty-pound rocks were strapped to them, and they seemed to move in slow motion. At his back came a shriek of feminine laughter, then a heavy cudgel crashed down on his head from behind.
At the stunning impact, the fingers of his right hand clenched reflexively. The 12-gauge fired, blowing a smoking crater in the sand at his feet. Benjy was already, mercifully, unconscious as he sagged to his knees. Before he could slump onto his side, a heavy-bladed machete split his skull down the middle, from the back of his head to the bridge of his nose.
The black-haired cannie female who had lured Benjy to his doom wasn’t really tied up, and the blood on her mouth wasn’t her own. She was first to reach the cleft skull with an eager tongue.
Chapter Three
Running in an easy, loping stride, Jak moved at right angles to the companions’ line of travel. He picked his way through the gaps between willow islands, cutting a wide arc across the river bottom. His goal was to outflank and overtake the invisible hunters, and once he had position, to hit them hard from the blind side. Though the leapfrog maneuver was really a job for two, Jak had left the Brigham ville dirt farmer behind. Benjy was tangle-footed, and he had no fieldcraft. Following the yard-wide trail Ryan and the others had made in the sand was about all he could handle.
As the white-haired teen ran through the blinding heat, he had little doubt who their stalkers were. From the scant human remains he’d seen in the streambed, he figured no way were the sneaking bastards a band of stickies. Stickies liked to tear their victims to bloody shreds, but they rarely ate them. And stickies never bothered to steal personal belongings, either; they had no use for such things. They ran around half-naked and preferred to do their chilling cuerpo a cuerpo , using the powerful grip of the suckers and adhesive glands on their fingers and palms to rip away flesh and crack bone.