Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (30 page)

“An RV park?” he asked Cormier.

Cormier shook his head. “Not a park, I think a squat. Likely they were running from Baton Rouge in their RVs and made it here before they ran out of gas. Luckier than some, I suppose. They have shelter and they can fish from the river, and they’re hidden from I-10 by the trees. But by now, I suspect they are as desperate as everyone else.”

Kinsey nodded and turned his gaze back upriver. There were more than enough desperate people in this cruel new world; right now the only ones who mattered to him were his family.

“We’ll be coming up on Krotz Springs in an hour or so, and after that there are four small river towns scattered between there and the Mississippi levee. How much faster can we go?” Cormier asked.

Kinsey moved to the door of the little cabin and looked into where Bollinger stood at the wheel, then glanced down at the throttle lever. He moved back to where Cormier stood astern of the cabin. “We have a bit of throttle left. Your boats are dragging us down, but I think Bollinger can get another ten knots out of her if need be. Why? Do you expect trouble?”

Cormier shrugged. “These days, I always expect trouble. Then I can be happy if it doesn’t happen. I just want to know what our options are if we run into it.”

Despite Cormier’s worries, they made it by Krotz Springs and the other villages upriver without incident. They stayed to the opposite bank, as far from the towns as possible, and accelerated past at full speed. The sun was well on its way toward the western horizon when Cormier pointed to a channel to the right.

“That’s the channel to the Lower Old River lock. I think that’ll be the easiest place to cross.”

Kinsey nodded and moved into the little cabin with Cormier close behind. Space was tight, so Cormier stood just outside, where he could talk to both Coasties. Kinsey ordered Bollinger into the side channel, and they all stood silent as he negotiated a bend and came to a split in the smaller channel.

“The right fork goes to the lock. Take the larger fork to the left,” Cormier said. “That’s the old riverbed, and it dead-ends at the Mississippi levee.”

Bollinger did as ordered, and they approached the dead end, a narrow sandy beach. Beyond it, a grassy slope rose like a great wall, filling their vision from left to right.

“That thing must be a hundred feet high,” Bollinger said.

Cormier shook his head. “More like fifty or so,” he said. “But it will seem like a hundred when we’re trying to carry a three-hundred-fifty-pound boat. That’s why I picked this spot. There’s grass on both sides, so we can drag the boats up and slide them down the other side.”

Kinsey looked up at the towering levee. “You sure this is gonna work?”

“No,” Cormier said. “But I’m sure five of us have a better chance of getting aluminum boats over the levee than you two had of getting your Coast Guard boat weighing many times as much around those locks, trailer or no trailer.”

“Point taken,” Kinsey said.

It went surprisingly well. They stripped everything from the first boat to lighten the load, and Cormier produced wide web strapping they slipped under the floating boat in two places as lifting straps. Grunting and straining, they walked the boat out of the water and across the little beach, two men on either side, with the fifth man lifting the stern.

They set the boat down at the foot of the levee, and Cormier ordered one of his men up the slope with one end of a long rope. While the man climbed, Cormier tied the other end of the rope to the bow ring of the boat and then waited for his man to reach the top and take up the slack. By prearrangement, the others positioned themselves around the boat, and on the count of three, pushed and pulled for all they were worth, sliding the boat up the slope through the long grass as far as possible. The man with the rope gathered in the slack as the boat advanced to a stop, then braced himself, the friction of the boat on the slope sufficient to help him keep it from sliding back. In a dozen heaves they had it resting on the crest of the levee and started back down for the second boat.

More confident now, they loaded both outboards, trolling motors, and other gear in the second boat after first positioning it at the base of the levee. It made the boat heavier, but it would be faster and easier than carrying the heavy gear up the steep slope piecemeal. Twenty minutes later, the second boat rested beside its twin on the levee.

Gravity was their friend now, but the big concern was the boats might slide down too fast and damage their thin aluminum hulls on a hidden rock. They sent them down the slope bow first, with the rope tied off to the transoms now, and two men holding back on the rope. Two others guided the boat down the slope, while the fifth walked in front, checking for any obstacles that might damage the boat. They had the boats in the water and fully outfitted just as the sun reached the horizon.

Kinsey turned to Cormier. “Who you gonna leave with our boat?”

Cormier nodded to one of his men. “I’m leaving Breaux. I told him to move it into the little inlet up in the trees to the right of the beach. You see it?”

“I was going to suggest it,” Kinsey said. “When should we take off?”

Cormier looked west, then turned back to Kinsey. “This channel puts us in the Mississippi directly across from the prison farm, but a wooded island in the middle of the river will screen us from sight. And I doubt anybody is in the fields of the prison farm at night, or maybe at all now. I say we wait until full dark, maybe two hours, then take off. We lash the boats together, so we don’t lose each other in the dark, and go on the trolling motors, using y’all’s night-vision goggles. We’ll hug the west bank until we get well past the prison; then we can stay close to whichever side is least inhabited.”

“The trolling motors are gonna be slow,” Kinsey said.

“They also going to be pretty quiet,” Cormier said, “and we’re gonna have a strong current behind us. But we do need to save the batteries, because we definitely need quiet when we go through Baton Rouge. We switch to the outboards when we’re safely past the prison, then go back to the trolling motors to go through the city.”

Kinsey nodded, and they took advantage of the waning light to eat a meal. Then they said their goodbyes to a forlorn Breaux, the man obviously irritated he’d drawn the short straw and boat-sitting detail, and watched him scramble up over the levee and out of sight.

The minutes dragged for Kinsey. Being this close to his family and unable to fly downriver grated on his nerves. But ever so slowly the sky darkened until finally they were wrapped in the inky blackness of a post-event night. After whispered conversation with Cormier, they cast off and moved down the short channel and into the stream of the mighty Mississippi.

They moved on a single trolling motor, propelling both of the lashed boats, and Kinsey was amazed how quickly the bank slipped by in his nightvision goggles. Cormier had been right about the current.

By mutual agreement, Cormier’s man, Bertrand, was at the helm, wearing one of the Coasties’ pairs of NV goggles. Kinsey and Bollinger were alternating overwatch duties, trading off the other pair of NV goggles every half hour to keep their eyes fresh.

It was near the end of Kinsey’s first watch when the channel turned almost due south. He glanced over to where Cormier sat, staring into the dark.

“We’re turning due south,” Kinsey said softly. “We’re past the prison, right?”

Cormier nodded in the green-tinted world.

“That wasn’t too bad,” Kinsey said.

“It ain’t going downstream I was worried about,” Cormier said. “It’s clawing back against this current with the outboards blastin’. We won’t be exactly hard to spot.”

“They might hear us,” Kinsey said. “But it will be night, and we have the NV equipment.”

“They might have it too. You ever think of that?”

“Yeah, but I’ve been trying not to,” Kinsey said.

Mississippi River

Southbound

Just North of Baton Rouge

Day 29, 1:25 a.m.

Their approach to Baton Rouge was signaled by increasingly large fleets of idle river barges tied up along both banks and glowing green in Kinsey’s night-vision goggles. They made a sharp bend to the right, and a bridge loomed across the river in the near distance.

“That’s the 190 bridge,” Bertrand said softly. “Should I kill the outboard?”

“
Oui
,” Cormier replied, and the rumble died abruptly as Bertrand switched back to the trolling motor.

The quiet was eerie, but short-lived. As they moved closer to the city, Kinsey heard sporadic gunfire, and here and there distant fires flared green in his glasses.

“You sure you can recognize this place, Kinsey?” Cormier asked.

“I’m not sure of anything,” Kinsey said, “But the place I saw on the chart was just south of the I-10 bridge and almost directly across from the Port Allen Lock. If we start hugging the east bank at the bridge, we should be able to spot it. Besides, any dock in the area should work. We’ll be close to LSU and I know the way from there. We just cut across the campus to Connie’s neighborhood.”

When Cormier spoke again, there was doubt in his voice. “Just how much do you know about Baton Rouge?”

“Not a lot,” Kinsey said. “We visited Connie fairly often, but my brother-in-law always did the driving around town. Why?”

“Because not every neighborhood around LSU is a good one, and it sounds like we’re headed right into the projects,” Cormier said. “The locals say to stay off streets named after presidents if you don’t want to end up dead. And that’s when things were normal; I can’t imagine how it is now.”

“Okay, what’s the alternative? Beyond this short stretch, there are no other good landing spots for at least four miles. That would make it a long hike to Connie’s house, to say nothing of getting back to the boats. Besides, I know my way from the LSU campus, but we get too far away and we’re gonna be groping around in the dark with no clue where we are.”

Kinsey heard Cormier sigh. “No, you’re probably right. We’ll just have to slip past the projects. It’s the middle of the night, and if we don’t show a light, we should be okay. The LSU veterinary school is right near the river. We can use that as a landmark.”

“I-10 bridge coming up,” Bertrand called softly from the stern. “What y’all want me to do?”

“Hug the east bank,” Cormier said. “Let’s see if we can find Kinsey his dock.”

Bertrand did as ordered, and the bank grew more distinct in the green glow of Kinsey’s NV goggles. They passed a dock almost immediately under the I-10 bridge. Kinsey shook his head and waved Bertrand forward. The riverbank was lined with large blocks of empty and idle barges now, and Kinsey was beginning to worry the dock he was looking for would be blocked. Then he saw it through an opening in the blocks of barges, a floating dock with a crane in place, tethered to shore by a movable ramp designed to accommodate the changing level of the river.

“That’s it,” Kinsey said. “Take us in.”

Bertrand reversed the trolling motor to slow the boats, but momentum and the current behind them were strong. The boats slowed ever so slowly as the little electric motor strained. It was obvious the motor could not counter the powerful current, and for a long, terrifying moment, Kinsey was afraid they’d be swept past the dock. But the Cajun handled the joined boats expertly, maneuvering them so they bumped along beside the dock at much reduced speed, allowing Kinsey to grab one of the ropes hanging down from the dock, no doubt placed there for that very purpose. Kinsey held them alongside in the current as Bertrand killed the trolling motor and rushed to tie them up securely to the dock. Only then did Kinsey release his grip on the catch rope.

“I think we should be safe using the headlamps here as long as we keep them in low-intensity red-light mode,” Cormier said. “Anyone who spots us from across the river can’t get to us, and we’re well below the levee, so we don’t have to worry about anyone spotting us from this side.”

“Agreed,” Kinsey said. “But first Bollinger and I should take the NV glasses and sweep the area to make sure we’re alone. We can’t stumble ashore lit up like Christmas trees.”

“Okay,” Cormier said. “But hurry, eh? We need to do this fast. This place ain’t gonna be too healthy in daylight.”

Kinsey murmured agreement, and Bertrand passed his NV goggles to Bollinger. Moments later, the Coasties were moving up the sloping ramp toward solid land, night vision in place and M4s at the ready. The ramp terminated in the well-worn gravel parking lot of what had previously been McElroy Fleet Services, empty except for a battered flatbed truck of indeterminate but ancient vintage.

The offices were in a utilitarian metal building, the windows smashed and front door standing open. They entered to find the large one-room structure ransacked. Metal desks and filing cabinets were overturned, no doubt savaged by looters frustrated at the lack of anything of value. They exited the building and made their way around the periphery of the parking lot, examining the open shops and work areas. All were vacant and vandalized. Satisfied the area was secure, Kinsey signaled Bollinger, and they started toward the dock.

“I wonder if that heap runs,” Bollinger said as they neared the old truck. “A ride sure would be sweet.”

Kinsey stopped and opened the truck door, grimacing as it squeaked. “Not locked, but good luck finding any keys.”

“Not a problem, boss,” Bollinger said. “I wasn’t always the model citizen you know and love. I have a few skills from my misspent youth.”

Kinsey grunted and raised the hood. “Surprise, surprise. No battery. It’s probably the only thing of value the looters found. I doubt anyone wanted this old beater, but you’re right, it’s worth a shot. Let’s go get the others.”

Cormier looked in their general direction as they moved across the dock in the darkness, obviously locating them by sound. “That you, Kinsey?”

“It is,” Kinsey replied. “And we found—”

“We got a problem,” Bertrand blurted. “I clicked on my light to check the lines, and the stern line is already chafing. We can’t leave the boats tied up like this and bouncing around on this current; if one line breaks, the other will go quick. And what if we don’t make it back before daylight? We can’t just leave the boats here in plain sight. We gotta find a hiding place out of this current.”