Into The Darkness (12 page)

Before
they left, Dylan, with squinting eyes, quickly scanned the dimly lit room for
anything they could use on the long journey home. The opposite wall was covered
with a mural of the local landscape. Next to the wall was a stuffed bobcat
lunging at a stuffed pheasant. There was also a deer head and a trout mounted
on the wall. Dylan walked over to the pheasant and removed several of the large
feathers to use as fletching for the river-cane arrows. As he walked back toward
the door to leave the room, he held up the feathers for the mayor to see, and
said, “Just a little something for my troubles.” The mayor cursed at them as
they walked away down the corridor.

“We’re
lucky no one else is here,” said Richard, as he nervously scanned the area.

Dylan
rubbed the lump on his head from the chief’s handcuffs. “You’re right. We need
to leave immediately, and move way downstream before we set up camp.”

The
men walked toward the gray light coming through the glass doors at the end of
the corridor. The building appeared to be devoid of other people, and eerily
silent. Near the exit, Richard noticed a room with an open door and commented
that it looked like an employee lounge and he wanted to check it out. He opened
the cabinets and gave a verbal inventory of the items he saw.

“Paper
plates, cups, spoons, pepper, more plates…nice…a case of instant noodles,”
Richard said, as he held a box of noodles toward his companions.

Dylan
and Kevin went into the room and looked around.

“I
don’t see any more food,” said Kevin, with a sullen tone.

Dylan
grabbed a box of trash bags and removed one. He put the eating utensils in the
bag with a bottle of dish soap and vegetable oil. He said they could use the
vegetable oil to cook with and provide some fat calories. Dylan also wanted to
use the oil to rub on the bows he was making. The oil would make them
waterproof, allowing him to finish the bows. Dylan carried the trash bag over
his shoulder as they left the building. They did not see anyone on the way back
to the rafts.

The
men wasted no time in getting the rafts back to the riverbank. Dylan reminded
Kevin to engage the pistol’s safety. They pushed away from the bank and floated
downstream, staying on the opposite side of the river.

After
several miles, the rain stopped and the gray clouds began to dissipate, but the
current remained swift. When they came to a section of riverbank with plenty of
driftwood, they got out of the rafts, pulled them out of the water, and carried
them to the nearest bushes to conceal them.

Kevin
went directly to set lines for catfish as Richard began to gather wood for the
fire. Dylan positioned the nearly finished bows and river cane by the fire. He
wanted to finish the bows by tomorrow so they could begin hunting. The food supply
was getting really low. As he sat by the fire, Dylan felt the lump on his head
from being hit with handcuffs and looked at the deep scratches on his forearms
from struggling with the chief. Sergeant Haber had taken the first-aid kit when
he stole Dylan’s raft. Dylan knew that their situation provided the perfect
conditions for an infection. An infection now could be fatal. He also knew he
had to eat to maintain his health. As soon as he placed the bows near the fire
to finish drying the wood, he began exploring the area for food to scavenge. He
returned to camp with nothing but hunger. This meant they would have to eat
more of their rations and hope for fish by morning. Supper was some bread that
was beginning to go stale, and instant soup in a cup.

Dylan
was thinking about his family and trying to ignore his hunger as he sat by the
fire. A noise in the tall weeds caught his attention. He rose up and turned to
the direction of the noise. Kevin and Richard stopped what they were doing and
stood quietly in reaction to Dylan’s movements.

“Look,
over there,” Dylan said, pointing to the tall weeds that moved in unison with
the sound of dry grass crackling.

“It
has to be an animal,” said Kevin, as he picked up a club-sized piece of
driftwood.

Dylan
picked up a rock and signaled to Kevin that he was ready to jump the animal.
Their sprint towards the animal was noisy and the furry creature ran away. It
was large raccoon.

“I
saw the little bandit,” said Dylan. “It went into a hole.” Dylan looked at the
rock in his hand and said, “I have an idea. Help me find a large flat rock and
we can make a deadfall trap. I can see where it ran to. It used a little trail
in the weeds to get to that hole. Let’s put a deadfall trap on that trail.”

“What’s
a deadfall trap?” asked Kevin.

“We’ll
balance a large flat rock up by a stick. When the raccoon uses its path and
walks under the rock, it will bump the stick holding the rock. The rock will
fall and you get a flat raccoon.”

They
found a sufficiently flat rock, but the sun had begun to set before they had it
positioned correctly and struggled to see their work in the dim evening light.
They decided against using any of their food as bait and went to sleep hoping
for catfish or raccoon for breakfast.

A
large hawk swooped low over the men and screeched, waking them at sunrise. It
was a clear morning. There were no clouds in the sky to block the radiance of
the sun’s ascent. Dylan had slept by the fire and turned the wood each time he
woke from his restless sleep, so that it would be evenly and completely dry by
morning. He got up and felt the wood. It was still warm. He thought that if it
had been warm all night long, the wood had to be dry, so it was time to apply
the finish. Dylan retrieved the little bag of walnut hulls and began to crush
them with a stone. This created a dark paste that he rubbed on the bows, and then
wiped off the excess. The wood was stained black from the hulls and he placed
the bows near the fire to let the residual paste dry. Dylan looked toward the
deadfall trap and then looked again at the bows by the fire. He thought about
how convenient it would be to hunt after the bows are finished this morning. They
would soon be able to take game down silently.

“I’ll
check the deadfall. How about some fish?” Dylan asked.

After
a quick nod, Kevin stood, stretched, and walked to the fishing lines he had set
last evening.

Dylan
crept toward the trap. He did not want to make noise and scare a loose raccoon.
To his delight, he saw that the rock had fallen and a raccoon’s tail was just visible,
protruding from underneath the flat stone. Quickly, he lifted the rock,
revealing the fatally trapped raccoon. When he picked it up, he realized the
body was still warm and was surprised that he had heard nothing when the trap
collapsed. Dylan proudly showed the raccoon to Richard, then rotated the darkened
bows and bundles of river cane drying by the campfire. Kevin was coming back to
the campfire with the fish lines. He held up one finger indicating that he had only
caught one fish.

Still
holding the raccoon Dylan looked down at Richard and spoke. “I’m glad we got
this. It looks like we only have one fish coming our way.”

Richard
turned toward Kevin, who was approaching the campfire, and put more wood on it.
He looked back at Dylan. “I’m starving. Do you know how to clean that thing?”
Richard asked, pointing at the raccoon.

Dylan
tapped the knife in its sheath and nodded. He took the catfish from Kevin and
went to the river to clean both for breakfast.

While
Dylan was cleaning their catch at the water’s edge, Richard approached Kevin
with the map. Richard showed Kevin landmarks on the map as a guess to their
location. He wanted the other men to know what to expect before they crossed
the Montana state line into North Dakota. Richard pointed at two locations
downstream where roads crossed the river. At these locations, there were public
recreation areas and there could be people on camping trips who had become stranded
after the grid collapsed. With roads so close to these recreation areas, maybe
other stranded people who were traveling on the road had decided it would be a
good place to stop. He thought there was a good chance for desperate people to
be there, so they needed to be cautious. Further downstream he showed Kevin a
lake on the map. Using his fingers to measure the lake to scale, Richard
determined the lake was at least one hundred miles long. Kevin shook his head
and looked away. He knew that meant endless rowing and another dam to get
around.

Dylan
was back at the campsite now with the cleaned catfish and skinned raccoon.

“Richard
just showed me on the map what we have to look forward to,” said Kevin.

Dylan
traded Richard the map for the cleaned game. Richard began to cook the meat and
Dylan studied the map where Kevin indicated their estimated position was.

Kevin
explained to Dylan as he pointed to various locations on the map. “We are low
on food and have a lot of rowing to do on the lake. I guess it’ll take about a
week to get there and a lot of calories to do it. With these recreation areas
and roads coming up we could run into some desperate people when we stop to get
food or camp for the night.” Kevin pointed to the roasting meat and the two
bows by the campfire to emphasize his conclusion. “We have to find more food
and get those bows completed.”

Dylan
nodded his head. “I can finish the bows this morning. We have a dozen good
arrows to start with. The river cane will need feathers and points to make them
useful. The pheasant feathers will work as fletching, but I have no idea what
to use for arrow heads.”

Dylan
put the map down and inspected the two bows. He rubbed the residue of walnut
hull paste off the bows, then for a finishing touch, rubbed vegetable oil on
the stained wood to waterproof them. He cut a length of paracord to use for
bowstrings and strung the bows, handing one to Kevin. Dylan then cut a notch at
the end of each river cane and attached pheasant feathers to the notched end.
They practiced shooting with the blunt-tipped arrows, not wanting to damage the
razor sharp tips of the carbon-fiber arrows that Dylan had found in the deer
stand.

Satisfied
with the performance of their new weapons, Dylan and Kevin set their bows and
arrows down, and rejoining Richard, ate the fish and raccoon. They were not
able to find anything else in their surroundings to eat.

The
men left their camp that morning with two new weapons and the hope that those would
serve as another means of getting food. The land was barren for miles as they
floated downstream. Dylan and Kevin had their bows ready just in case they saw
something to hunt as they went along. There was nothing but clear sky and
grassland until late afternoon, when they came upon irrigated farmland. They
could see massive irrigation equipment on wheels that previously allowed the
mechanism to be moved in a circle around the field. They went ashore to filter
more drinking water and look at the crops in a nearby field.

Dylan
ran into the field with his bow. He yelled back down to his two companions.
“Look, soybeans, a field full of soybeans!”

Kevin
and Richard went up the incline of the riverbank and into the soybean field.

“How
do we eat them?” asked Richard.

Dylan
grabbed a pod from the plant. “Just boil them and open the pod. The beans are
inside. They are immature right now, but still delicious.” Dylan opened the
bean pod to show Kevin and Richard the individual green-colored beans inside.
“This is something we can take with us.”

Richard
immediately ran to his raft to get something to hold their harvest of beans. He
came back with a pillowcase and began to pick the beans. Kevin did the same.
Dylan volunteered to survey the area for animals to hunt. He strode down the
row of beans next to the motionless irrigation equipment. He decided to walk
toward a ravine bordered with trees. He noticed a buzzard circling over the
ravine, and, as he got closer, thought that the treed area might have game to hunt.
Near the tree line, he paused and stared into the greenery. Dylan stood quietly
for several minutes as his eyes slowly scanned for any motion, then he heard a
noise. There was a slight movement in the short grass and a ground squirrel
emerged. Dylan remained still and the ground squirrel did not appear to notice
him. Dylan did not want to damage a good arrow on the little morsel. He thought
that maybe the blunt tip of a cane arrow might be sufficient to stun the
rodent. He slowly put the crude arrow to the string and pulled back. The ground
squirrel stood on its hind legs and stared at the man curiously, unaware of its
impending fate. The blunt tip of the arrow struck the ground squirrel in the
chest. The impact caused a high-pitched squeak from the creature. Dylan picked
up the pathetic little animal, held it up for inspection, and said to himself,
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

He
was able to retrieve his primitive arrow before he began the walk back. As he
walked away from the ravine he looked closer at what he had earlier thought was
a large stick on a flat rock. It was a large black rat snake warming its body
in the sunlight. Dylan positioned himself behind the snake and used his bow to
pin the snake’s neck to the rock. The captured snake was at least three feet
long. Still pinning it to the ground, he cut the snake’s head off with his
knife. He put his arm and head through the strung bow to carry it across his
torso, so he could carry the decapitated snake in his right hand and the ground
squirrel in his left. The sun was getting low in the sky and it cast his shadow
across the ground. He saw the silhouette of a primitive hunter-gatherer. Dylan
knew that this was how it would be from now on, kill or be killed. The world
had new rules now and he had better learn fast.