... Chapter 39 ...
Len stepped away from the shallow grave and wiped his hands down his jeans, not much caring when the dirt that caked them didn't budge in the slightest. He tossed the shovel into the back of the LTD before slamming the trunk shut in annoyance. Still huffing for breath, he dug into his pockets and looked for what was left of his pot. The plastic baggy was found easily enough and he hefted himself onto the back end of the car, decidedly needing to sit down and rest for a moment. After expending the energy needed to dig the shallow grave nearby, he was hot enough and tired enough to be done with the muddy endeavor.
Holding the bag up at eye level, he sighed in disappointment when he saw it contained nothing but skuff and a single roach. Glaring down to where Dan's body was haphazardly buried, any guilty feelings he might've been briefly afflicted with immediately vanished. The empty ziplock in his hand just another reason why his former companion was now laying deep in the ground, deader than hell with a bolt hole in his head.
"Good riddance, mooching ass junkie piece a' shit!" He muttered down derisively, taking the moment to literally spit on the man's grave.
With the sentiment said, Len fished into the bag and pulled the roach out, lighting it only to hiss in pain when the damn thing nearly burned the tip of his finger off. He smoked what he could before the measly thing cashed out.
His lips pressed into a thin pale line as he shoved the empty baggy into his pocket and went back to the tent, crashing down exhaustedly on the disheveled sleeping bag. Making sure the keys to the LTD were safely tucked in his pocket, he shoved an arm under his head and pulled a deep calming breath, his mind drifting back to the chaotic events of the last few hours.
The drastic measures he had ultimately resorted to hadn't become a necessity until recently. Him and Dan had managed to make it for about a week before the traits that had been previously annoying about the man had started to make themselves unbearably apparent. Up to that point, Len had been able to keep Dan fairly in line, using his stash and a friendly demeanor to ensure it. The affable ruse had been impossible to maintain though and he had ended up having to ply Dan with even more drugs to keep him in check. With himself having to use an equal amount just to tolerate the mans stupidity, the two of them had quickly blown through most of the haul they had brought with them.
With no idea how long they'd be stuck out there for, Len had begun rationing that shit… after all, the drugs were his and he could do with them as he pleased. None to say that Dan and his addiction hadn't been too damn receptive to the idea and it was then that the real problems had started.
On the cusp of almost coming to blows, it was then that they had happened to find the motorcycle. The two of them had been roughing it along the long stretch of asphalt for days, the one where the man and the girl had first been seen. They had set up camp in different spots and had worked their way steadily down its length, scouring the woods for tire tracks... prints… anything that indicated how the couple had gotten there.
At first Len almost hadn't seen the bike from where he'd been searching on the other side of the road. A slight reflection from its rims had ultimately given its location away and it had caught his eye despite how well it was hidden. Slapping Dan on the back in an 'I told you so' fashion, they had both stalked over to pull off the foliage that was being used to cover it.
''What did I tell ya, huh?'' Len gloated, checking the bike over for anything that could possibly identify the owner.
''Holy shit,'' Dan had muttered in return, barely believing what he was seeing, ''... and here I was thinkin' we were doing nothin' but lookin' for a needle in a haystack. Hell, I ain't gonna lie, I was starting to think that maybe even the needle didn't fuckin' exist…''
Len ran his hand over the Triumph's tank, letting his dirty finger trail down the bikes length to the rear of the saddle where the girl would sit. He could practically see the indent of her ass in the leather. ''Naw man, didn't I tell you they had to have some kinda fucking vehicle hidden out here? How the hell else could two people just appear on the road like they dropped in from fucking nowhere? There ain't shit around these parts for miles.''
Dan pulled out a cigarette and lit it, his hand shaking slightly from the onset of Oxy withdrawals, ''Yeah ok, well... we found it. Now what?''
Picking up the heavy branches that had covered the bike initially, Len set them all back in place, making sure to arrange them just right. He had almost given up on finding the thing himself... almost... but he would never go so far as to say so out loud. It had still taken a lot longer than he thought it would but then again, he had assumed that they were looking for a car. There was nothing indicating that the duo had come back to their mode of transportation though but there was no real way to be sure. He dreaded to think that he had missed his window of opportunity but there was still no denying that finding the bike and the two sets of footprints pressed into the dirt around it had been incredibly gratifying.
Looking over, he saw that Dan was still waiting for an answer, a dumbass look plastered on his face. ''Now we wait, man. We set up camp nearby and keep an ear out. Motherfucker's gonna come back for it… if we're lucky, he'll bring the girl with him.''
Dan hocked a wad of junkie spit into the dirt and asked skeptically, ''And if he don't?''
''Then we get the jump on him and make him tell us where she is. If he takes off before we can, we follow him an' find her ourselves. Ain't like we won't hear him start this fucking thing up. The engine turning over will let us know he's here long before we need to worry about it. All we have to do is be ready to roll one way or the other.''
Dan shrugged indifferently, not as gung-ho about the whole endeavor as he had been initially. Len fed him two Percocets to take the edge off and had him move the car where it could easily access the road. After covering the vehicle in an attempt to camouflage it, the two men set up a tent nearby and hunkered down, the Triumph becoming the bait that everything they did from that point on revolved around.
They had quickly fallen into a pattern as the days dragged by, doing copious amounts of drugs followed by excessive bouts of sleeping it off. Even when it started pissing down with rain, Len hadn't cared. The way he figured, it was still a damn sight better than being stuck in the house under Joe's oppressive rule. Dan on the other hand had whined about being cooped up incessantly, to the point where Len had wanted to kick him out of the tent. Obviously not used to roughing it hard core, the man had been this close to being forced to sleep in the car where he could cry about it all he wanted and do so by himself.
Of course, the constant deluge of rain hadn't been the only thing Dan had bitched about. Finding his reduced ration of drugs unsatisfactory, it quickly became a bone of contention between the two of them. When Len finally had no choice but to cut him off cold, Dan's behavior had become even more unstable and erratic. Already unpredictable and fidgety as it was, he'd be laughing hysterically one minute before throwing up disgustingly the next.
Stuck in a tent with him for days and sick to death of his shit, Len had come back from hunting to find Dan digging through his personal stuff like the tweaked out addict he was. It was clear that he was scavenging for any drugs he could suss out of hiding. That had been the last straw for Len and losing it completely, he had beaten the hell out of the smaller man only to finish him off by shoving his face into a nearby puddle. When Dan's body finally stopped twitching, Len put a bolt through his head for good measure and wondered why the hell he had waited so long to get rid of this huge fucking pain in the ass.
He hadn't wanted to attract any biters to the area so he had buried the body immediately, leading him to where he was now… the sole owner of the LTD with nothing much better to do other than to wait out the storm. He did so with the full awareness that the bikes owner was likely doing the same.
A week later the rainy weather finally broke and figuring that it was now just a matter of time, Len began mentally preparing himself to act. Having done nothing but stew inside his own head for weeks, he came to the conclusion that both he and the man he was waiting for were very much alike, in more ways than just their particular taste in blondes. Both of them were bow men which meant that they both knew how to hunt. Both obviously preferred the outdoors and knew how to use their surroundings to their best advantage. The man was likely a tracker… just like himself. In fact, the only reason the bike had been discovered at all was because someone of equal skill and proficiency had been taking the time to look for it.
The roar of the motorcycles engine had woken him from a dead sleep not but two days later. Having run through the drill more times than he cared to admit, Len had swung into action immediately, rolling the car out behind the overly loud bike without a worry that it would be heard over its din. Although the girl wasn't there, the fact that it was the dead of the night had more than made up for it. The rider would lead him directly to her, the surrounding darkness ensuring that he'd never fucking know it. Wherever she was, it had to be a damn sight better than his own camp and as Len followed behind the Triumph, he could barely believing how easy it had been.
Making sure to keep the LTD's headlights off, he followed the bikes single beam ahead until it suddenly veered off the road just outside of some podunk town called Piedmont. Tired as shit and in the midst of withdrawals, Len hadn't expected it to detour like that and had ended up plowing the car into a group of biters. Scattered all over the road, they had obviously been the reason for the rider's sudden change of direction.
''Fuck!'' He threw the car into reverse and backed up, having no choice as they quickly converged on the vehicle.
The moment he was clear, Len got out of the car and strained his vision into the pitch blackness of the surrounding woods in an effort to see where the bike had disappeared to. Unable to detect a discernable break in the trees, he resorted to turning on the cars headlights, his frustration pushing him past the point of giving a shit. The hi-beams quickly lit up the massive amount of dead corpses stumbling towards him, their piteous moans loud enough to drown out the sound of the LTD's low idling engine.
Getting back in the car, Len slammed his fist against the cars steering wheel, pissed beyond belief that he had lost the dude at the very last minute when he'd been so close, "Goddammit!"
A biter fell against his window, effectively telling him that it was time to go. The cars dashboard lights made the thing look more gory and decayed than usual and he glared at it scornfully.
''Yeah, yeah… fuck you!'' He spat before backing the car up again to spin it around in the middle of the road, taking off the way he came.
Not wanting to leave the immediate area, he pulled over to the side of the road as soon as he saw somewhere safe enough to do so. Taking the car into the thick of the trees, Len angrily cut off the engine for now being stuck waiting until dawn. He kicked the seat back and lit a cigarette, staring out unseeingly into the night sky. He was too fucking amped on adrenaline and anger to sleep so he didn't even attempt it. Instead he just silently cursed the fact that it was dark as hell and he didn't have a flashlight, meaning that he couldn't track anything for shit. He just hoped that the motorcycles tire prints would still be there in the morning and weren't lost completely to the muddy terrain.
He sat there for hours until the sun began to rise in the distance, the sky lightening up into vibrant hues of orange and red.
Pulling his Stryker crossbow from the passenger seat, Len grabbed what he needed from the LTD's trunk before covering the vehicle the best he could, tucking the foliage in around it. From there he set out determinedly on foot, avoiding the biters lingering on the road by working his way even deeper into the woods. That the whole area was crawling with them didn't change a damn thing. The bike didn't just up and vanish like a fart in the wind, it must have left tracks somewhere and he was going to find them.
Trudging his way through all kinds of soggy conditions, he eventually came back to the place where the Triumph had initially veered off of the road. Keeping an eye on the biters close by, he scoured for a starting point, his hardened gaze sweeping over the saturated ground. The terrain itself was flat as fuck, causing huge puddles of muddy water to be left sitting stagnantly at the tree roots. With the boggy mess being the worst kind of shit to track in, he found himself having to search an even wider radius to detect the slightest trace of the motorcycle or its rider passing through.
Cursing under his breath the whole time, Len finally found what he was looking for. There... lost in the mud... was an imprint of a tire barely visible amongst the natural chaos that surrounded it. He followed it as far as he could before it disappeared into the mass of soggy leaves left behind by the storm. Ready to kick something in frustration, he looked up to see the edge of town sitting just past the ravine he was standing next to.
The man and the girl were obviously in the area, the few tracks he had managed to find indicating as much. With the town so close they'd have to be taking advantage of it. If he could find one key building... one he could set himself up in... he could wait for them to come to him while he scavenging the place himself. It would at least provide a more decent place to lay low so he wasn't left roughing it in the scrub when the next storm rolled through.
Feeling better for having the semblance of a plan, Len pulled out a cigarette and lit it, snapping the lighter shut with a flick of his wrist. He was so close to the two he could feel it, the reverberations of their presence practically ghosting over his skin. Caught in a moment of reflection, he honestly couldn't say what it was that was compelling him to keep chasing after the girl, despite having thought about it more times than he cared to admit. She was more of an objective now than a person, a singular reason to keep drawing breath in a shitty world that offered him nothing more.
Whatever it was, it was all encompassing and his mind could barely focus on anything else. Even when the details of their brief interaction became convoluted in a drug induced haze, she was still all he could think about.
Although the chase had been fun, he was undoubtedly ready to be done with this. This whole situation had been out of his control for far too long. The severe beating he had received from the man had left an indelible mark upon his twisted psyche, one that compelled him as much as his denial of the girl. He had given up more than the two of them could ever possibly imagine… he had killed his friend… for her.
It was damn near time to claim his reward.
…...
Another post so soon? What can I say, I found my mojo again! Yay! I just currently started on Chapter 46, making me further ahead than I've ever been. I've been on a writing spree as of late and am super happy about it after that weird lull I experienced.
As my regular readers know, I write five chapters ahead so I can make all kinds of revisions as I go. "What Still Lies Ahead" is always changing from the big picture in my mind and I find having those chapters to play with before posting allows for that (I'm always thinking of dialog or a certain scene that I'd like to add). They also mean I can do quality control and ensures that I am giving you the best story I can.
This was obviously a Len-centric chapter which for me is cool to write. He has a very dark twisted way of thinking that's fun to explore. It's very different from the rest of our story.
To me, he's the exact opposite of Daryl, which makes him equally dangerous.
Thanks for reading as always and I look forward to reading your comments!