Read Online The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3) by Scott B. Williams - Free Book Online

armed with military-style semiautomatics: AR-15s and AK-47 variants. They were moving in silence, communicating with hand signals like they were in a war zone expecting enemy contact at any minute, and Benny knew if he was spotted he was a dead man. But after several excruciating minutes during which he barely dared to breathe, they passed by his position. Benny remained motionless as he watched them go, until the one bringing up the rear was at least a hundred feet down the road. Stepping as carefully as he’d ever done in his life, Benny eased his way back to the road and quickly slipped across again. He had to follow these men, but he wanted to be on the same side of the road as Tommy. The girls would not have time to get back with the travois before these men got there and David had no idea they were coming. It looked grim for all of them, and Benny didn’t see a way out of what he knew was surely coming.

Ten  

    T IME DIDN ’ T USUALLY MEAN much to David Green because he had no memory of anything beyond the recent past and little concern for any future beyond the present day. The only life he knew revolved around the Henley farm and most days since he got there had been the same until this one, when everything suddenly changed. But sitting there waiting with his helpless friend, it seemed to David that the minutes were dragging by impossibly slow. He wanted the girls to hurry up and return with April or Samantha and the travois they were going to use to get Tommy home, and he wanted Benny to hurry back too. But it seemed like he’d been waiting there forever. It was still raining and the dim light was turning to twilight. David and Tommy were alone except for the dead boy Benny had shot and the two steers the strangers had killed. David didn’t want to be out there waiting when it got dark, but he didn’t think Benny would come back until he caught the other one that shot his boy. He kept whispering to Tommy, telling him he needed to try and get up on his own if he could. He said the others might not come back for him and that it would be dark soon. He also told Tommy he was sorry for what happened to him.  
    “You didn’t deserve to get shot, Tommy. All you were doing was what you were supposed to—protecting the cows. They shouldn’t have shot you for that, but they did. I wish I could have stopped them from doing it, Tommy. I really do, but neither one of us knew there was another one hiding over there across the road.”
    Tommy’s eyes were open and he seemed to hear him but he didn’t respond. David could see that he was still breathing, but he was too weak or in too much pain or both to talk. Benny had slowed the worst of the bleeding by packing the entrance and exit wounds with strips of cloth ripped from a flannel shirt he’d been wearing under his jacket. The crude bandages were soaked through with blood, but they were effective in blocking most of the flow. Benny had warned David and Lisa that when they moved him onto the travois they would have to take care that the bandages did not come loose.  
    David thought he heard something in the woods behind him and he looked anxiously in the direction Lisa and Stacy had gone to get back to the house . He hoped it was the two of them coming back, but he waited and waited and there was nothing. Then he looked back to the road and saw something move over on the other side. His heart pounded in his chest as he watched for it again, and then there it was: a man stepping slowly out of the woods and into the open by the edge of the road. Even in the poor light, he could tell by the man’s shape that it wasn’t Benny. He was much too tall and thin, for one thing, and he moved differently. David reached for Tommy’s rifle with shaking hands and twisted to get a better view through the trees behind which the two of them were hidden.  
    The man stood there for what seemed a long time, waiting and listening no doubt, before he walked into the road. David’s