The Hill of Tara

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

She overlooked the graveyard, holding a margarita in her left hand, her right occupied as it caressed the stock of her rifle. Carter wasn't sure if any of that was appropriate, given the circumstances.  Not that the boss cared.  She seemed to have a hard time caring about anything.

"How'd they die?" The boss asked, settling down into a century old lawn chair. The weather-worn plastic groaned and creaked beneath the weight of her body and gear. A mutilated corpse lay not three feet from her. She hardly seemed to notice it.

"Arrows, I think." Carter grimaced, trying his very hardest not to vomit. The smell was awful—the stench of corpses that had just recently begun to rot, mixed with the equally awful stink of human waste.

"One each?"

Carter crouched down, covering his nose with his free hand. A woman lay face down in the dry dirt, black fletching sprouting from her back. The arrow had punched through her spine at an angle, and drink into her heart. The one had died instantly, taken by surprise—her pistol was still stuck in the back of her waistband.

"Y-yeah." Carter gagged. "This... one." He paused, almost saying 'woman.' It was easier to deal with bodies if he told himself they weren't people anyone. He rose, stepping past her. A man lay on his back not far from the woman, and Carter vomited a little in his mouth at the sight of this one. An arrow stood out of the man's eye socket. His mouth hung open, perpetually screaming in pain. A sawed-off shotgun lay clasped in his hand, drawn but unfired.

"Boss... can we go?"

"Not yet." She sipped at her drink set it aside. "Need ta know where he fired from. Need'a make sure we ain't headin' in the direction he went."

"Can you help?"

"When I gone and finished my drink." She held up the margarita glass. It was polished and clean, filled with a turquoise blend of mix and tequila. Carter couldn't fathom how the boss had found any of that unspoiled. "Gonna be a bit. If you wanna go, best get started without me."

"So not fair." Carter mumbled, pulling his collar up over his mouth as he stepped over the corpses, searching for where the archer would've fired from. The city of El Bajio stood in the distance, perhaps a half-mile's walk. The building's there would've provided an optimal vantage point, but it was too far away for the precision the archer had eliminated his targets with.

Sixteen dead. Each felled by a single black arrow—carbon fiber shafts with plastic fletchings and stainless heads. Hunting arrows, fired from a compound bow. Carter couldn't have have discerned any of that himself, he had no idea what made a compound bow different from a regular bow, but the boss had spoken with absolute certainly. She tended to be knowledgeable about such things. This was the third time they'd come upon a scene like this in the last month, and each time they'd head in the opposite direction. The boss hadn't set it, but Carter could tell they were running from whoever shot these. He sometimes wondered if the shooter was chasing them. It wasn't a pleasant thought.

The arrows hadn't come from the direction of the city, to the east. It was all flat between here and there, easily visible. Carter would've guessed the archer had fired from the ridge, to the south, but that was the direction he and the boss had come over to get here, and they hadn't seen any sign of another soul up on that ridge.

The dead had been raiders, banditos—people who moved from town to town, taking what they could. They would've been paranoid of attack and had even gone as far as to set up barricades between themselves and the ridge. It didn't line up. Additionally, the bandits seemed to have been heading north, towards the border of the States. As such, it seemed doubtful the archer had headed southward to meet them. If that was the case, Carter and the boss would've run across the killer.