Darrel Sparkman - After the Fall

He let his breath out slowly. It was too quiet. The silence of the forest was so loud it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. No birds were singing, no insects buzzing, even the breeze seemed to hesitate, waiting for permission to move, waiting to see what would happen. The heat was stifling, even in the shady confines of the trees. He stood in one place over ten minutes. In a country filled with raiders who preyed on settlers and army patrols alike, it didn’t pay to be in a hurry. Army dispatches could wait, and he hadn’t lost anything on the other side of that clearing.

For just a moment, he could feel a presence ahead of him, something real and tangible… and then it was gone, leaving him with an unfathomable feeling of relief. Not once did he doubt what he felt. A mystical concept to most people, something you had to feel to understand, the sixth sense of any good woodsman was a phenomenon he couldn’t begin to explain.

Finally, the blanket of silence lifted like fog leaving the ground and the small creatures of the forest took up their daily business. A thrush called inquiringly for its mate, a tree frog began a perfect insect imitation, and a blue jay looked disgustedly down at a beetle it had just dropped on the ground. The forest finally gave up a small breeze, whispering through the pines with a lonely sigh and cooling his sweaty brow.

The clearing was about a hundred feet across, surrounded by tall trees keeping half of the open space always in shadow. Outcroppings of rocks dotted the glade, and the native grass grew short in places, evidence of the thousands of deer living in the forest.

The girl’s body lay near the center of the clearing, the afternoon sun sending its creeping shadows slowly around the edges, never to touch the middle. He stopped a few feet from her. Usually callous at the face of death, today his feelings started at nausea, and then gave way to dull, throbbing anger. He stood for a moment, shoving down the bile rising to find release, and putting the anger away for a more useful time. Forcing his eyes away from the body, he took in the surrounding area. He’d seen hundreds of dead bodies, but never anything like this. No one could be ready for this.

Even through the assault on his senses, he could not shake the feeling someone was watching him. And with that thought, he cocked the hammer on his rifle. Noise be damned. If someone was watching, let it be a warning.

He turned from scrutinizing the forest and forced himself to contemplate the body. Having been a woodsman since childhood, he could read the message on the forest floor as easily as someone else could read a book. It’s just a matter of understanding what you see.

But there wasn’t much to see—no tracks or anything to give a clue about who did this. Nearby was a branch, presumably used to rough up the grass, getting rid of tracks and indentations. The leaves on the branch were wilted and wrinkled, but still had green color. Today then. Early.

Finally, when he’d looked at everything he could see from his position, he reluctantly walked closer to the body. Hours—no more. The buzzards circling above hadn’t worked on her yet, nor had small scavengers done their damage.

He took in the smooth features of the girl’s face, the luxurious canopy of hair, half-open blue eyes staring fixedly at the sky. She’d once been a beautiful girl, but death had robbed her of that—especially this kind of death. Now, she was just one more naked piece of garbage left on mankind’s doorstep, with stark horror stamped on her face.

Trent tried to force himself to be objective. He’d suppressed his anger earlier. Now it was flowing again, and quickly turning into resolution. The animal that would do this to anyone, but especially a girl—

He paused long enough to scan the tree line again.

“I will find you.” Count on it.

The girl was spread-eagled on the grass. From the cuts and burns on her wrists and ankles, he knew she’d been restrained, her arms and legs tied to short stakes driven in the ground. The holes in the ground would be about the size for tent stakes anyone could find in abandoned hardware stores or could make yourself. Her clothing, cut from her with a knife after someone staked her down, remained under her, catching the pooling blood turned black and covered with ants.

That wasn’t all the work done with the knife. The sharply defined wounds on her body were distinct and sharp, her face covered in blood, brown hair matted with leaves and dirt. The girl’s breasts had been sliced open and her nipples were gone. Her stomach, cut open and pulled apart, was such a mess he couldn’t tell about other damage. Her legs were scratched and bloody, with much of her brown pubic hair sliced away.

Taking a huge breath, and starting with the body as the center of his search, he walked around the clearing in ever widening circles. As he walked, he absentmindedly swore in a low monotone voice dripping with anger and loathing. He’d seen dead people before, had killed more than he liked to think about, all in the name of survival. Neither the smell nor the visage of death was new to him. He looked back at the girl, lying on the grass. Nothing like this. Never anything like this.

“Well, hell.” His soft curse was a short epitaph of emotion and feeling. No one deserved to die like this. He could see where the pieces of rope tying her to the stakes had cut into her arms. The girl had possessed spirit. She had fought— hard . Looking at her, he became obsessed with the ‘why’ of the killing. Why this way? Why so brutal.

Revenge? Maybe. Doubtful.

Rape? It happened. But mutilate the girl afterwards? No. Even a raider wouldn’t do that. They’d save her for later.

So, this wasn’t people out on a killing spree. Although the wounds would have been terribly painful, they did not coincide with any kind of torture he’d read about. He searched his memory, thinking of all the men—or women—he knew. He searched for anything to help him understand. Finally, he had to admit he didn’t have a clue—and that was a place he didn’t like to be.

He often moved within their camps. They knew he was no threat to them, understanding that he didn’t judge them. Those who knew him generally wouldn’t bother him, and he responded in kind. But this didn’t make any kind of sense.

Raiders killed in anger. They killed to protect hunting rights, often laying claim to a certain section of country. Some of the wilder ones he knew would kill just for the sheer joy of battle, but that same battle would involve another man and be in a stand-up fight. Who would do this?

This killing was different, and that difference chilled him. It was not a killing over clean water, or a place to sleep, or something to eat. Someone had done this for the sheer joy of killing. From this perspective, an inkling of understanding dawned on him, and he looked at the body again. All the wounds were methodical and precise. If there was anger here, it didn’t show in the way the girl was killed. At least, nothing showed on the surface. He didn’t see mad slashing or stab wounds. One thing he suspected.

Whoever had done this had liked it—a l ot .

Trent stopped by the branch used as a broom to rough up the grass. He squatted on his heels and looked closely at the ground. Whoever did this tried to brush out their tracks, sweeping the branch across the grass and dirt until they came close to an outcropping of limestone leading into the forest. He assumed that would be the killer’s escape route. Slowly and methodically, he looked for sign, and finally, close to the first rock, found the only clue he was to find. He could see a smooth, rounded, impression in the dirt that could be a heel print. Moccasins? Trent put his foot beside the print. The print was smaller than his. Not much, but it was a start.