Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) (17 page)

“This is like trying to find your way through a maze,” Paul said. “Except there aren’t any paths, the right way or the wrong way.”

“It can’t be much farther. We might have veered off a ways, but we’re still in the creek bottom. It’s just that the farther downstream you go, the wider and wetter the bottomlands get.”

“Wayne’s the one who’s it got easy,” Jared muttered. “Just riding the current downstream with nothing in his way and a hot girl to stare at all day. No wonder he wanted to take the canoe!”

“It may be easier, but it’s a hell of a lot riskier. You all know that. But women make men do dumb things.”

“Yeah, it’s like he’d rather take a chance at getting shot than to leave her behind. I mean, she’s fine and all, but I don’t know why he’d want to be bothered with trying to keep her. And especially with that baby. Two more mouths to feed and she’ll always be looking to get away somehow.”
 

“He’ll get tired of her, just give him time. He may even be tired of her by the time we get back home.”

“If he hasn’t already gotten himself shot,” Paul said.

Gary really didn’t think that had happened, especially considering the two shotgun blasts were spaced apart by at least 15 or 20 minutes. It seemed more consistent with someone hunting, but even so, the hunter had to be close enough to the creek that Wayne’s passing in the canoe might be noticed. If something did happen, Gary wanted to be there to back him up. Knocking that punk out this morning on the sandbar had been a little taste of action, but it took so little effort it was hardly notable. It was nothing like going up against a worthy adversary. And his trigger finger itched as he wormed the muzzle of the AK through the briars. It had been awhile since he’d engaged a real armed tango, and the prospect of encountering that shotgunner gave him that old rush of adrenaline he had been missing lately.
 

He finally found the end of the blow-down clearing and once again they entered a deeply-shaded area of mature hardwood timber. The winds that leveled the area behind them hadn’t touched this area. Gary knew hurricanes were strange that way. Microbursts of intense downdrafts or isolated tornadoes within the cyclone’s path would level some houses in a neighborhood and leave others without so much as a lifted shingle. It was the same in the forest, and he was glad to find another of those untouched, pristine areas where travel was once again not only reasonable, but pleasant. They stopped to regroup on a soft carpet of deep green moss in the shade of a giant beech, and after a moment of cussing the thicket they’d just left behind, Gary hushed the others so they could listen carefully. A faint sound drifted through the trees from not far ahead—the sound of running water.

“The creek!” Gary whispered. “Let’s fan out a bit and slip up to the bank. I want to be sure no one’s there first, then we’ll pick our way downstream.”

* * *

Mitch hated following three armed men through a tangle like the one through which the trail led. He knew they didn’t have any reason to suspect that they were being followed, at least no reason that he was aware of, but still. What a perfect place to lie in wait and ambush your pursuers. They could cut him to pieces with rifle fire in here before he ever saw them. He tried not to let these thoughts creep into his mind as he followed the tracks, but he knew it would be a relief when the trail emerged from this mess. Mitch wanted the space to be able to use his bow if possible, though he knew that odds were, he’d be finishing this fight with his dad’s Smith & Wesson AR more than likely.
 

Carrying it at the ready as he pushed through the briars brought back a flood of memories of the times the two of them hunted together. Many times while following up on a covey of quail flushed by Old Charlie, his dad’s English Setter, they had busted through briar patches similar to this, shotguns at ready for the fast-action that would follow when the singles burst out of cover in ones and twos. To Mitch at ten years old, it had been a lot more exciting than just trying to kill a few birds. Stalking into the briar patches with his dad on his flank, both their guns locked and loaded and ready in a two-handed, low grip, Mitch had imagined they were at war. The enemy would appear at any second, but they would be ready. He would look out for his dad and his dad would cover him. Together, the two of them were an unbeatable team. On some hunts the imaginary foe would be Viet Cong hidden in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Other times it might be a band of renegade Apaches or outlaw train robbers. No matter what, it was never just quail hunting in Mitch’s mind, and thinking back to those days, he really wished now he had his dad with him to cover him for real. This time when he found his quarry, they would be shooting back if he gave them half a chance.
 

It was a relief when he came to the place where the men emerged from the thicket and entered another patch of real forest. They had not stopped to lie in wait for him and now the conditions were more in his favor for seeing them well before they saw him. The trail across the moss-covered ground was harder to follow, but here and there were still places where a boot had torn the bright green ground cover or overturned a few leaves. Such places were fewer now though than before, and Mitch figured it was because they were moving with more care, for the same reason they had stopped cutting through the briars shortly after they entered the blow-down area. They had heard the gunshots too and were trying to move quietly as they made their way to the creek to investigate.

Twenty-five

B
ENNY
E
VANS
HAD
NO
doubt that this woman who said her name was April was telling the truth. Seeing the way that fellow who had tried to kill his boy left her and her little girl tied up, he doubted that she was lying when she said she didn’t know the man he’d just shot before today. Benny figured a fellow like that who would try to shoot an unarmed man in the back with an arrow for no good reason would do most anything. And seeing how he believed what she’d said about the man, Benny took her warning about the other three being nearby to heart too.
 

What she said about going upriver made a lot of sense. Even if it wasn’t the direction she wanted to go, it was smart thinking because it would be unexpected by most people. Around these parts, at least before the big blackout, people either floated downstream in canoes or used johnboats with outboard motors if they needed to go upstream for some reason. Even now he hardly ever saw anyone trying to get upriver under their own power, but Benny didn’t mind it himself. His granddaddy had taught him how, way back when he was a kid growing up in south Louisiana. You didn’t paddle a pirogue upstream anyway—you poled it. Back in his granddaddy’s day, nobody had motors on small boats, but they all knew how to pole a pirogue. It wouldn’t do to get way off downstream and not be able to get back up, so poling was as natural as paddling in those days, people just lost the knowledge of it, for the most part. Benny wasn’t one of them though, and he’d taught his boy Tommy how to use a pole too. It worked in a canoe as well as it did in a pirogue. You just had to have a long enough pole and an eye for reading rivers, so you’d know how to keep your boat where you could always find the bottom to push off of.
 

Benny Evans liked poling upstream, and in fact, that’s how he and Tommy had reached the place they were camped now. Benny always told Tommy that only dead things floated downstream, and it was true. Any thing that fell in the river would get washed along with the current, but it took effort to go against it. It made Benny feel more alive when he made that effort. This whole new lifestyle made him feel more alive, in fact, and even though a lot of it was hard work, he knew it was good for a fellow to live like this too. People had gotten too soft before the blackout. Now they had to harden up if they were going to make it.
 

As long as he had Tommy, Benny was determined he
was
going to make it. Losing Betsy after nearly fifty years had been hard on him, but at least he wasn’t alone. When her medicine had run out and she passed on, Benny and Tommy buried her in the backyard and locked up the house for the last time. The two of them had been ranging up and down Black Creek ever since, hunting and fishing along the way and trying to stay out of sight and out of trouble. They had managed do so for the most part, but Benny knew that what happened today had been a really close call. If he hadn’t made it back to that clearing when he did, his boy would be dead. And if those men that the woman warned him about found out he’d killed one of their own, he and Tommy were going to sure enough have a gunfight on their hands. Benny had no intentions of getting tangled up in a shootout like that, so he was ready to do just what April suggested and get upstream on this creek as fast as possible. He just had to get Tommy and their own canoe and gear first. He knew Tommy wouldn’t be expecting him to come around the bend in a canoe, and Benny didn’t want to surprise him and risk getting shot, so when he got close he whistled a signal.
 

“It’s so he’ll know it’s me and that it’s all right,” he whispered, when April gave him a look like she thought he was crazy for making loud bird sounds. When a nearly identical whistle from downstream replied right away, Benny told her it was the call of the bobwhite quail.

“I had no idea,” April said. “I think I’ve heard that before, and I knew it was some kind of bird, but I’m a city girl.”

“I can tell you are, young lady, but you’ve survived this long, so eiher you’re doing something right, or somebody up there is looking out for you. There he is.” Benny nodded in the direction of a clearing that came into view a few seconds later as the canoe rounded the bend. He knew his boy would be completely shocked to see him paddling another canoe, and one with a pretty young woman and a little girl in it to boot.

“It’s okay, Tommy!” he called, careful to keep his voice low as he steered the bow into the mud bank. “This here’s April. And her little girl….”

“Kimberly,” April said, as she held her baby in her arms and greeted Tommy. “I’d get out, but I turned my ankle so bad this morning I’m afraid I can hardly walk.”

“I had a little trouble myself, Miss April.” Tommy had a hunting rifle cradled awkwardly in his arms as he kept pressure on his wound with a blood-soaked, wadded-up T-shirt.

“I know. I’m sorry that happened, but I’m sure glad that man is dead.”

“Tommy, I know you’re hurt, but we’ve got to get out of here, son. April here says there’s three more of them fellows just as bad as that one laying there, and they ain’t far away either.”

As he said this, Benny saw April staring at the dead man with little visible emotion. He couldn’t imagine how scared she must have been, after what they did to her child’s father and then the way they took her and that little girl. Benny figured the two of them wouldn’t have lasted long after those fellows had their fun. It was just a miracle really, that he shot that hen turkey when he did, and it was that gunshot that led to the bad guy being dead instead of the young woman and her child.

Benny walked over to the body and removed the holstered automatic pistol. Then he found the man’s sheath knife and after searching his pockets, some spare magazines for the pistol and a large folding Sypderco that April said was hers when she saw it. He was ready to go then.

“We ain’t got time for that,” Benny said when he saw Tommy turn to try and finish packing up the tent. Let’s just throw everything in these two boats and go. We’ll sort it out later. With any luck at all, they’ll naturally think we went downstream from here and they’ll head that way.”

“I don’t think I can be much use with a pole with this arm like it is, Pop.”

“That don’t matter, you just worry about keeping that bleeding stopped. We’ll tie April’s canoe to our stern and tow it. It won’t make no difference at all. You can hardly feel the weight of a canoe, towing it like that. I can manage the poling for a while by myself. As long as we get around a couple of bends up I think we’ll be all right and I can rest when I need to. But now ain’t the time for talking about it. We’ve got to do it and now! And we’ve got to be as quiet as possible about it too.”

* * *

As he slipped quietly closer to the sound of moving water, Gary Haggard was pretty certain that he was still moving directly towards the source of the two shotgun blasts. Now that they were almost to the banks of Black Creek again, he was also fairly certain that whoever fired that shotgun had to have been close to the creek as well. He had his finger resting lightly on the side of the trigger as the kept the AK in front of him, ready for action. A quick glance to either side confirmed that Paul and Jared were staying even with him on either flank as he closed the distance, and both of them were ready to engage as well.
 

Gary hadn’t heard anything else besides the two shots. No voices or other human sounds, just the two widely-spaced blasts that interrupted the birdcalls and other natural sounds of the woods for a few moments, before all returned to normal once again. There was no way of knowing exactly where Wayne was in the canoe. For all he knew, he could be a mile farther downstream by now, but Gary knew he had to check this out. It was aggravating, and all of it was Wayne’s fault for being so stubborn, but it was too late to argue with him now.
 

He finally caught a glimpse of water through the thick screen of greenery, and motioned for Paul and Jared to wait while he advanced the last few feet. If there was anyone near the bank, he wanted to be sure he saw them first before they had a clue that he and his friends were there. Gary crouched low and took two or three slow steps at a time, stopping to look and listen in between each move. When he finally had a full view of the creek, he was almost certain it was the right spot because directly across, in the forest on the opposite bank, was a good-sized clearing that looked man-made and looked like it had been there for a long time. The clearing was grassy but free of briars and brush, and in the middle, there was a well-used campfire ring surrounded by large logs that seemed positioned in such a way to favor sitting around the fire and talking.