Page 61 of Backwoods
Tank was drawing closer, feet clopping across the floor. Nick hefted the bag of their items over his shoulder, using the belt as a carrying strap.
“This way,” Raven said, and pointed to their left. “We can slip around him.”
The girl had proven adept at sneaking around. He followed her lead without question. She guided him to the end of the row, where they took cover behind a stack of wooden pallets.
Nick paused, listening. It sounded as if Tank was to their right, and behind them. He nudged Raven, and they continued forward, traveling through alternating patches of shadow and darkening light. Their footsteps were silent, the sounds of their passage masked by the thin layer of sawdust blanketing the floor. But Nick’s heart was booming like a bass drum in his chest.
As Nick edged forward across another aisle, his shoulder brushed past something that came loose. He turned to catch it, but too late.
A glass tumbled away and broke against the floor.
A few aisles over, Tank grunted with interest. His footsteps quickened their pace.
Nick and Raven didn’t hesitate. They kept moving, cutting a right into the next aisle. Deep shadows dwelled in that area. Nick squinted to make out what lay ahead of him.
Raven fell over a low, dark shape that blocked the aisle. Some kind of crate. She stifled a short cry, but Nick heard their pursuer chuckle.
He had them running scared, and he knew it.
Nick groped for Raven’s thin arm, grabbed her, and pulled her upright. They ran down the aisle then, knocking past boxes and other packaged sundries, their feet kicking up a storm of sawdust. Stealth didn’t matter anymore. They needed only to get to the doorway.
“Right, go right,” Raven whispered, out of breath.
Nick whirled in the direction she gave him—and ran into a solid wall of pure muscle. He staggered backward a couple of steps, fought to get his bearings.
Tank grunted. He stepped forward into a shaft of daylight.
Outside of working on this nightmarish plantation, Nick thought the guy could have been a defensive tackle on an NFL team. He was easily six-foot-six, over three hundred pounds. This close to him, Nick found his sheer size so intimidating that he felt something in him wilt.
It’s over—we’re not getting past him.
“Y’all ain’t supposed to be in here,” Tank said, in a voice that rumbled like thunder. “Come on back with me to the house and we gonna talk to Miss Lula.”
“Miss Lula sent us in here to get some rice,” Raven said.
“You the runaway,” Tank said, pointing at her. “I ain’t fooled.” He shifted his thick index finger to Nick. “You new here—they told me ’bout you. You ain’t got the mark yet.”
Nick swung the shotgun toward Tank. It was already chambered with a shell.
“Step aside, please,” Nick said. “I don’t want to pull the trigger, but I will if you don’t get out of our way.”
At this, Tank only smiled.
“Go ’head,” he said.
As recently as this morning, Nick was a man who abhorred violence. When he saw news stories on TV of violent confrontations that ended in death and misery, he tended to think:Why did that have to happen? Was that really the only way these people could have found a resolution?He was a gun owner but never thought he’d point a firearm at anyone. Owning such a powerful weapon was the equivalent of insurance in the event of some extreme circumstance.
He realized that he had arrived at the knife’s edge of extreme circumstances, and he was surprised by the swiftness of his reaction.
He leveled the shotgun at Tank and shot the man in the stomach.
The Mossberg boomed like a cannon in the enclosed space, the windows trembling in their frames, and the recoil snapped through Nick’s wrists.
Grimacing, Tank sank to his knees. Blood peppered his abdomen. But he didn’t go down. Any other man, shot at point-blank range with a twelve-gauge shotgun, would have been flattened like a pancake.
“Let’s go!” Raven said.
Tank roared, face contorted in concentration like a powerlifter performing a dead lift. As if he were absorbing the pain, pushing his body through the agony.
