Red River Blue
Chapter 37
She smelled them before she heard them. Human body odor had the potential to smell as bad as walkers sometimes but they were still two very distinct and different scents. As Harley walked the wind picked up, blowing hard enough to make the leaves on the smaller trees around her dance. Along with the smell of the greenery and the smell of pine, she breathed in the very distinguishable smell of someone that hadn't had a bath since the last time it rained and hadn't changed his clothes in longer than that.
Harley paused, frozen in place and listening to the woods around her much more carefully than she had been a few moments before. The prison was still well over a mile away, too far for anyone to hear her if she screamed. She was alone and she knew no one was coming to save her. Harley's hand moved slowly down, getting a solid grip on the knife in her belt. Bending her knees slightly she listened, hoping that there wasn't more than one person following her.
Sensing that she was onto him and that the game was over, a man stepped forward. A branch cracked under the heavy tread of his boot and Harley flicked her head in his direction. The long braided rope of her hair swung back behind her shoulder. The man she spotted was average height for a guy, so slightly shorter than her. But he was still much heavier.
She flicked her eyes over the man, taking in what information she could gather from his appearance. He had long hair and a dark scraggly beard. He was overdressed for the warm weather, which she knew meant he was living on the road. A nomad without a group or a home. Hoping that there was some small chance that the man might just be hungry, Harley slipped the rope that was holding the two rabbits together down her arm and let the animals drop to the ground with a quiet thump. And even if he wasn't hungry she knew the man might hesitate between taking the food and chasing her, which would buy her a few extra seconds headstart.
Harley flinched back the way she had come, making the man surge in that direction. It was a trick she knew from playing basketball. Rotating the flinch into one fluid movement she darted back in the direction of the prison. Harely knew the terrain and she was a fast runner. If she got ahead of the man she knew he was never going to be able to catch her. But before she made it even a few more steps she slammed directly into the body of a second man that had stepped into her path.
The man's large hand clamped down on the bare skin of her upper arm, dirty fingernails digging into her flesh. Harley's hand was already on the handle of her knife. She jerked it out and slammed it into the man. He managed to deflect the blow from hitting him square in the center of the chest. When Harley stabbed someone she aimed to kill. She missed his heart. But he wasn't lucky enough to escape being stabbed altogether. Her knife had been freshly sharpened by her very bored and bedridden father. The glinting blade cut through the material of the man's shirt before it sunk deep into his shoulder, buried into his flesh all the way up to the hilt. The man hollered in pain and slumped to the ground. Harley lost her grip on her knife as he fell, her hand now slippery with fresh blood.
When she jerked away from the man's grasp the strap of Harley's backpack slipped from her shoulder. She jerked her other shoulder and let the bag drop the rest of the way to the ground. Whatever was inside wasn't worth dying for and Harley knew she could run even faster if she was unhindered. Before she could take another step she was seized roughly by the long braid of her hair that hung halfway down her back. Her neck jerked painfully and she yelped as she fought against whoever was pulling her forcefully backwards. Then she felt the muzzle of a gun pressing into her neck as the man adjusted his grip on her hair to keep her from running away.
"That's about a fucking 'nuff of that," the man hissed. Harley started calculating the odds in her head, trying the guess how long the man had been on the road from the very bad smell of him. She decided there was about a fifty fifty chance of him still having any bullets left in the gun that he was now jamming into the side of her head as he breathed his nasty shit breath close enough that she could smell it.
"Bet you don't even have any fuckin' bullets," Harley hissed back, jabbing her elbow into the man's ribs as she tried to twist away and loosen the man's grip on her hair. The man called her bluff. He tossed her to the ground like a rag doll and shot at the dirt next to her. Then he pointed the gun at her and laughed. While she was focused on the man with the gun, another man came from the side and slammed the hard toe of his boot into her ribs, tossing Harley onto her stomach. Harley had taken a few hard hits when she was playing sports but she had never had anyone kick her with the intention of causing her as much pain and injury as possible. She grunted instead of screaming like a little girl and tried her best not to throw up.
The man with the gun grabbed Harley and flipped her over onto her back, sitting down on top of her to keep her from running away. He pointed his gun at her but his attention was directed at his companions. A man she hadn't seen yet was tussling with the man that kicked her, angry that the man had marked her up before he got his turn. The kicking man was yelling about her stabbing someone named Tony.
"Shut it the fuck down," the man on top of her yelled, "You can kick the shit out of her after we get done!" The man who had kicked her swore under his breath and shoved at the other man one more time. Then to Harley's disgust he stomped over and grabbed her arms, pinning them to the ground above her head. The man on top of her tossed his gun a few feet away. Harley watched it bounce away into the dry leaves, thinking it might as well be a hundred miles away. She was never going to be able to get ahold of it with one disgusting ass pig on top of her and another one holding her arms down.
Harley's mind raced. She considered every possible course of action she could think of but nothing was coming to mind that was going to get her out of the horrible situation that she was in. She could try screaming. There was a small chance someone might hear her if they were outside the fences far enough. Or it might attract enough walkers to distract the men. But it would probably just earn her another kick to the ribs and she could already barely breathe from the first blow. So she kept her mouth shut. She couldn't fight. Her arms and body were pinned to the ground. The only part of her that was free was her legs. And right now her heels were scraping uselessly against the dirt.
The man on top of Harley looked down at her. He had a sickening smile. A lock of greasy grey hair mopped down into his face, bobbing as he moved. The first thing he did was pull a flask from his vest pocket and took a large swig from it. Then he offered the flask to Harley with another laugh. She turned her head to the side as the man attempted to forcibly pour the liquor down her throat. Most of it splashed around on her face but some of it made it's way into her mouth. It tasted like liquid fire and Harley gagged on the first drink she ever had in her life.
Bored with humiliating her, the man returned the flask to the pocket he had retrieved it from. He reached down and gripped the neckline of her shirt, ripping it open to expose the lacy black bra she was wearing underneath. The man clucked his approval. It wasn't every day that they managed to snatch up a girl this young and attractive and it was even less often that they caught one that was clean and dressed in appealing looking undergarments. If the other men in his group weren't so fucking eager to destroy everything and everyone they came across he might have considered keeping the girl around for a while and having his way with her more than once.
The man moved his filthy hands down her torso to the button of her jeans. Harley tried twisting and wiggling to get away but the man only laughed harder at her. He was hunched over, torso raised slightly higher than it had been before as he yanked as her pants trying to pull them down. She finally had a little more room to move her legs and Harley bent one knee, sliding her foot up through the dirt. She might have been able to knee him and getaway even without a distraction. But there was a distraction.
A loud echoing boom sounded through the forest, shaking the trees and the ground under Harley's back. The men all turned their heads away from her, looking off into the woods and making guesses as to what might have made the noise. Harley saw her chance and took it. She brought her knee up as hard and fast as she could, slamming it into the balls of the man that was on top of her. Luck had been with her when the governor chose that moment to fire at the prison. And it was with her again when her knee not only found it's target but sent the head of the man she had kneed slamming into the face of the man that was holding her arms down and breaking his nose with a sickening crunch.
Yanking her arms free, Harley slammed her fists into the face of the man that had ripped her shirt. One after the other, punching his eye and cutting her the knuckles of her other hand on his unbrushed teeth. She brought her knee up again, hitting him hard where it counted and shoving him off her. Another man made a grab for her but she was already on her feet. Adrenaline surged through her body, sending her flying through the woods. Her shirt ballooned out behind her like a superhero cape. But her burst of energy only got her a few yards away before she was gripping her kicked ribs and gasping for breath. She couldn't run. And if she couldn't run those men were going to catch her. And if they caught her they were going to kill her. She didn't want to think about what they were going to do before they killed her.
Harley forced her body forward, her eyes scanning for any possbile escape. A huge tree loomed up ahead. One she recognized. There was a rough wooden ladder on the side of it, leading up to a tree stand that she and her Uncle Daryl used to sit and wait for deer to come and nibble at the heaps of scraps they left out to try and bait them. Harley grabbed at the wooden planks and pulled herself up, wincing at the pain in her side. She climbed, not stopping even when she was standing on the treestand. Higher and higher she went until she was sure she was up too far for the men to reach her. She was tall for a girl, but she was light. They would break the branches and fall if they tried to climb up after her.
With the men below less of a threat now that they couldn't get to her, Harley looked out over the tops of the shorter trees. There was a huge plume of dark black smoke rising up from the prison. She could see a small group of people had gathered outside the fences in a threatening formation. One of the vehicles they had was a tank.
Harley glanced down. The men that had tried to rape her were gathered loosely around the base of the tree, looking up at her. Harley felt the anger starting to swell up inside her, along with a fair amount of fear. Not of the men below but for her family back home in the prison. Her little sister was in there. Wren was a pain in the ass sometimes but it was still Harley's job to protect her. She needed to get home right now. And the men below were stopping her from doing that. Nothing in her life had ever felt as bad as knowing the people she cared about might be in danger and there was nothing she could do but sit in a tree and watch them burn.
"Come on down before we have to come up and get ya," one man hollered up at her. Another man had taken her bow from where she had dropped it along with her bag. He tried to fire an arrow up at her but the branches below her were far too thick for him to get any kind of decent shot off. His nose was bleeding down his face and Harley figured the more noise he and his friends made the better. The walkers would hear them and then they would smell the blood and more would come. If she was lucky too many would come and she would get to see these assholes get eaten alive.
"Go ahead and try it," Harley taunted. Hoping to get the men to yell some more, she added on an insult, "Yer probably glad I climbed up here so yer friends wouldn't find that yer really a faggot!"
Harley's comment had the desired result. The man's friends started laughing and the man started yelling back up at her. Two walkers stumbled almost right into the men before the man with the grey hair got wise to what Harley was doing and shut his men the hell up. He pulled his gun out and aimed up at her. Harley didn't think he would be able to hit her through all the branches but she swung herself around to the other side of the trunk just in case.
Gripping the branch she had grabbed tighter, Harley yelped at a sudden stinging pain in her ankle. Leaning back from the trunk she looked below her feet. The branch she had just bounced on had a large beehive hanging from it. She was surprised to see one with bees in it. Wren and Carl had hunted out almost every beehive in the area on their never ending quest for honey to put on the breakfast biscuits Carol made for them, bland because they were running low on salt. Harley figured the only reason they hadn't gotten the one under her feet was because it was up dangerously high in the tree she had climbed.
Harley's first instinct was to swing back around the other side of the tree, away from the beehive before it's inhabitants got angry. But then she heard the sound of gunshots being fired in the distance. Her home was being attacked. She knew the men below would eventually get bored and leave if the walkers didn't chase them off. But she didn't have the time to wait them out.
If she didn't want to get stung a million times, Harly knew she was only going to need to knock the hive down with one good kick. Her ankle was already burning something fierce only from the one sting. A hundred like it might kill her or at least hurt her badly enough to make her fall. Harley bent her knees, taking hold of a lower branch with her hands. She hissed her pain. Bending at the ribs was so painful that little white dots swam in front of her eyes. Harley took a few deep breaths, ignoring the men below that were once again hollering up at her.
Lifting her foot from the branch she tottered slightly as her balance was questioned. Then she stomped her foot down on the top of the beehive as hard as she could. Harley was scared she might rip the hive in half, but it detached cleanly from the branch it was hanging from. The hive tumbled down through the branches.
"What in the hell is that?," Harley heard one of them men ask his companion. She smiled, knowing he was about to find out exactly what was coming at him.
The hive suffered enough damage on the way down that when it hit the ground it broke wide open. An army of angry bees swarmed out, engulfing the group of men near the bottom of the tree. Within moments they were all running away through the woods, waving at the air and swatting at themselves to try and get the bees off. The man Harley stabbed in the shoulder couldn't run. He fell down and started rolling around on the ground screaming. His screams attracted more than just the bees. Harley climbed down much more slowly than she had climbed up, minding her hurt ribs and watching to make sure none of the other men had come back. While the walkers ripped the injured man apart, Harley dropped quielty to the ground and took off in the direction of the prison.