Herd Mentality~Ch. 8: The Best Laid Plans of Deer and Men
A continuing horror story...
The wailing began in earnest. It was distinct, and loud, and just down the driveway out of sight. It was Tom. He was screaming for Jess. In the cabin, Alan was trying to find the location of the noise from the slit through the window, while Beth tried to keep Jess indoors.
“Beth, do you hear your son right now, he’s yelling for you. He’s not dead… oh my god, he’s not dead. He’s not dead!”
No one had slept that night, so they didn’t bother trying to take shifts keeping watch. Everyone watched, and when they couldn’t watch the forest any longer they watched the fireplace. Jess had done pretty well for the most part, focusing on the task at hand and the burning desire to find Tom. Hearing him scream, as terrible as it was, gave her a huge sense of relief.
“You’re right hun, you were right.” Hearing her son again had forged a new resolution of her own; one with seeds that stretched decades into the past, when it was just her and her little boy at home playing legos on the floor. A mother’s purpose brought out of retirement.
“It’s an obvious trap,” was all Alan said. His eyes swept the tree line for movement. It wasn’t an uncommon tactic of war to wear down the enemy psychologically. Leave a wounded enemy out in the street and pick off his rescuers with the rifle as they come. If he doesn’t yell loud enough, hit the bait in the leg and get him going again. He’d personally seen an Iraqi sniper put rounds into a dead Marine just outside their cover in an attempt to piss them off. Once an hour, the body armor of Lt. Fisher would ping and another piece of him would come off. It took half a day for them to finally extricate. There wasn’t much left of him after eight hours.
This was why Alan didn’t advertise he was a veteran. He had spent the rest of his life trying to get over what happened to him from 2003 to 2005, his years walking through hell. Yet, here he sat, reliving it all over again. It felt even worse now that the bait was his son.
He was absolutely furious.
“Jess, help. Help. HELP! HEELP MEE PLEASE.”
“What are we going to do Alan? Do you think you can make it over to him,” Beth asked.
“No.”
“No?! What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means No. Look out there. Where is he, Beth? Where am I running to? You think I’m just gonna shuffle on down there, toss him on my shoulder, and outrun the not deer back here? I’m fifty-five god damn years old, woman.” Alan had about had it with her stupidity. Try as he might to be mindful of her feelings, there was no more gas left in the empathy van. He needed to be a Marine right now, not a husband. Once his family was back together he would mend fences.
Beth was hurt by this, she couldn’t help it. She had lived almost a third of her life in a four bedroom suburban split-level. She had walked out of Men in Black because the big blue monster being vaporized terrified her. This was a horror movie in real life, and she didn’t know how to survive it. If only there were a way to make her feel better, but there wasn’t. Everything sucked at this moment. Alan knew to embrace it, Jess had learned, but Beth was struggling with the concept.
“This is their gambit. They had three options as far as I could see last night. One, they just bumrush, brute force the door and take us. Unlikely, though, since I hit one with the shotgun earlier and they knew about the gun safe. They break down the door and I'm gonna tear them apart.
“Second option, they lure us out somehow. I was scared as shit when Jess brought up burning us out, because then we’d be fucked, our hand would be forced and we’d have to bail into the forest. Spent all night thinking about that. Turns out, they’re more psychotic than I originally had thought, and decided on using Tom to bait us into the trap.” Alan ground his teeth at the screams. “It’s annoyingly effective.”
Beth began to cry, realizing that even if they successfully rescue her son, they still have no way to escape. At least they’d be together, though.
“If you laid a trap like that, would you expect us to go directly to the sound, or would you assume we could see through the bullshit?”
Jess shook her head, unsure. “Depends on how smart I thought the thing I was trapping was.”
He thought for a moment, “Beth, we're gonna hide you in the shed, okay?”
“What!?”
“Jess is going to be with you with the rifle. If I thought my prey was dumb, I’d assume they would walk directly into my trap, especially this one. Blind emotion would necessitate it. Jess almost ripped your arms off trying to get out of here. Imagine how an angry dad with a gun should be reacting like right now.
“If I walk over that direction, they’ll take their eyes off the cabin and follow me down there. It’ll give you two a chance to move into the shed. If they get me, at least they don’t know where you are anymore.”
“Why would we hide in there? Why not just stay in the cabin?”
“Once they’re done with me, they will assault the cabin. That's what I would do, draw out the firepower, then grab the hostages. All I can do is try and fuck up their plans a bit and break their line of thinking. Mistakes are made when you have to improvise. All we can do is try and have them make mistakes and pick them off.”
“Like First Blood. Become the beast in the forest.”
“Doubt it, but what else is there to lose?”
Keep it coming!