The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3) (2 page)

She was on his mind now as he pushed through the wet undergrowth, the rain seemingly set in for the duration. It was going to be a long, miserable night if they had to camp in this, and a part of him wished that Jason hadn’t made that shot after all. If not for the rain and the pressing darkness, he would have insisted that Jason do all the tracking, since it was his deer and that was the only way he was going to learn, but Mitch knew that would take a lot longer and he was impatient. He pushed on ahead, an arrow nocked on his bowstring, ready for a quick shot if the buck should bust out of cover and try to make another run for it.
 

Even when he wasn’t on the trail of a wounded animal, Mitch kept an arrow ready on the string when he was in the woods. The practice had proven its worth countless times since the breakdown, and he had no intention of changing his ways anytime soon. In addition to his bow and the dozen hunting arrows carried in a buckskin quiver slung low and close to his side, his Ruger .357 Magnum rode in a holster on his belt. The revolver was there anytime he was dressed, from when he woke before dawn until he turned in for the night. All three of them were carrying firearms, even though they had no intention of using them for hunting. There was just no way of knowing who they might run into out here, so Mitch made it a point to keep everyone armed at all times. Jason had the AR-15 that was the state-issued patrol rifle Mitch’s dad had kept in his truck. He was wearing it slung behind his back so that it wouldn’t interfere with the use of the bow, but would be easy to bring into play if needed. Corey wore the Glock 10mm pistol that Benny had taken off the corpse of the man who’d abducted April. There were plenty of guns to go around for everyone; that wasn’t the issue. The main limitation was the amount of ammo they had on hand for each. They were well stocked in some calibers like .22 Long Rifle and 5.56mm, but with so many different weapons among them, ammo for some of the handguns, rifles and shotguns was in short supply. Mitch hoped they had enough to make it last, especially if they had to continue defending the farm from outsiders finding their way into the area. Discussing this often with the others however, they all wondered how many survivors were actually left, as it had been nearly nine months since the collapse. Would those who were still hanging on keep to themselves, like his small group was doing? Or would they still be roaming the countryside, looking for others who had more than they, like the men who tried to take April and Kimberly?
 

Mitch and those living with him still didn’t know if there was anywhere that was unaffected by the solar flares. They had to believe there must be, but how far away? No one they had met knew and everywhere in the region practically everything electronic or controlled by electronics was down. The result was far worse than a mere power outage though; the pulse had affected transportation and communication as well. In short, they were on their own, with bleak prospects of help or resupply. Most people, accustomed as they were to the comfort and conveniences of modern living, had fallen to pieces in the aftermath. Cut off and stranded, facing the prospect of individual responsibility for their survival for the first time in their lives; they found this new reality more than they could handle. Many were undoubtedly already dead. Those who remained were desperate; surely losing hope as the days, weeks and now months passed with no change in sight.
 

Mitch too, had been stranded in a world mostly alien to him on that first day. It was rare that he found himself in any city, but of all days that one when the solar flare hit was the one morning he had skipped school to drive his parents to the airport in New Orleans. After dropping them off, his father’s brand new Ford F-150 stalled at an intersection along with hundreds of other vehicles crowding the streets in the morning rush. Mitch did the only thing he
could
do, and started walking out of the city. Fortunately, home was less than a hundred miles away to the northeast, in rural Mississippi. Mitch could get there in a matter of days and he had to, because his little sister was there alone until he returned.
 

There wasn’t a day since that morning he set out that Mitch didn’t think about his mom and dad. He had no way of knowing if they were alive or dead, but others in the streets had seen jet aircraft falling from the sky. The plumes of smoke in several places on the horizon confirmed it was true once he was out of the truck and talking to other drivers around him. Mitch had to assume that unless his parents’ flight had already landed in Houston, they too were probably victims of a plane crash. There had been enough time for them to get there if the flight actually left when it was supposed to, but Mitch simply didn’t know and he knew he never would unless they showed up at the farm one day. It was more than 400 miles from Houston to these south Mississippi woods, but if anyone could find a way to get back home, Mitch knew that Doug Henley could.

The skills and knowledge Mitch learned from his father were keeping him alive today. Mitch knew he was fortunate to have been raised the way he was and where. Out here in the backwoods, far from big cities and even small towns, his family had been largely self-sufficient even before the blackout. Mitch had learned to do many things the old way, including hunting and preserving foods. With more than two decades of outwitting poachers and other outlaws, his game warden father had seen it all and Mitch absorbed plenty listening to his tales of their mostly illegal tricks and methods. All of this backwoods knowledge was crucial now, and certainly would be more so the longer things went in the direction they were headed.

So while Mitch would have preferred to be back at the house, warm and dry and in the company of April rather than out here in the woods in the rain, the discomfort and inconvenience was nothing new to him. If they didn’t find Jason’s deer before dark, they would find a place to settle in for the evening and resume the search in the morning light. Next time Jason would be more careful with his aim. Mitch was sure of it.

Three
 

T
HE
SUDDEN
REPORT
OF
a high-powered rifle shattering the quiet of the piney woods stopped Benny Evans in his tracks. The shooter had to be close, probably within range of where he stood, but there had been no sound of a bullet impact and a quick check of the girls behind him reassured him they were both okay as well. The rain that had been falling for several minutes was enough to muffle smaller sounds, like people talking or moving through the woods, making the gunshot even more startling. Benny hadn’t expected to encounter anyone out here, but it wasn’t far to the dirt road that ran by the front of the Henley property. Tommy and David were out making their rounds of the perimeter, but they’d already passed this way and Benny and the girls had spoken with them as they worked their way to the back of the 600 acres. Tommy was carrying his .308, of course, and the shot Benny just heard could have come from a rifle like that, but it was in the wrong direction to be Tommy’s. Besides that, his boy wouldn’t be wasting ammo for no good reason. When two more shots followed the first, even as Benny contemplated this, he began to get concerned.
 

He quietly put down the axe he’d been carrying in one hand and reached for the Remington 12-gauge slung over his back. At the same time he turned and motioned for the girls to keep quiet and be still. They had been following just a few feet behind and were just as confused and startled by the sudden gunshots as he. Benny crouched to watch and listen, waiting for any sign of movement or other sounds out there among the pines. Just seconds later the silence was disturbed again. Something big was crashing through the brush ahead of him, from the direction in which the shots had come. Benny raised his shotgun and tensed as he strained to see through the screen of trees. Whatever it was, it was coming his way and making a lot of noise. Seconds passed and then he knew—
the cattle!
The small herd of brown and white Herefords was running right at him, busting their way through the woods in a panicked stampede. Benny backed up to where the girls were crouching and hurried them close to the base of the biggest nearby tree. The terrified herd split around them at the last minute, rushing past Benny and the girls on both sides. But just as he thought they were all gone, Benny noticed one of the yearling steers bringing up the rear, its gait hobbled by a useless leg. As it made its way past him, trying desperately to keep up with the rest of the herd, Benny saw the glistening blood that coated its hindquarters.

So that was it! Someone had shot at Doug Henley’s cattle!
Until he saw the wounded animal, Benny hadn’t realized what had happened, so he hadn’t thought to try and get a count of the animals running by. But there had been three shots. Unless the other two missed, there could be cattle down in addition to this one that was obviously wounded.
Mitch was going to be furious when he found out about this!
 

“Lisa, you and Stacy need to get back to the house! Tell April and Samantha there’s a trespasser out here somewhere and that y’all need to stay inside and keep the doors locked.”
 

“We can’t leave you out here alone, Uncle Benny,” Lisa said. “Just because it was one person doing the shooting doesn’t mean there aren’t more. April and the others would have heard it anyway, and Tommy knows we don’t have a rifle with us. I’ll bet he and David are headed back this way already. We can sneak up there with you and see who it is in the meantime, and help you make sure they don’t get away.”

Benny considered what Lisa said and figured it made sense. Mitch Henley’s little sister was a brave one, and she and Stacy had both seen their share of violence since things fell apart. He didn’t want to put them at any unnecessary risk, but he knew they could both be quiet and it wouldn’t hurt to find out more before he sent them back to warn April. There was no use raising a major alarm if it was just one or two desperate wanderers passing through that took a shot at the cattle because the opportunity presented itself. They could slip up close enough to see who had done it and size them up without being seen. Benny was sure that was the way Mitch would handle this if he were here, and once he had an idea who he was dealing with he would take the appropriate action to make them wish they’d never seen those cows. It was hard enough looking after the livestock without worrying about some low-life rustler shooting it for meat.
 

So far, the small herd of just over two dozen animals had survived and had stayed within the fence. Mitch and Jason had expanded it since the collapse, using all the barbed wire on hand and cutting their own posts, so that it now followed the boundaries of the entire property. The expansion allowed the cattle to range from the bottomlands near the creek to the more open woods and pastures, and would help stretch what little leftover hay and feed there was in the barn through another winter. Most of the time the herd stayed out of sight of the house and yard, now that they were foraging more. But Mitch wanted to keep them around and keep them alive as long as possible, because with as many people as they had staying on the farm now, he knew the time would come when finding enough deer and other game close enough to home would become difficult. Beef would have to be slaughtered, and he hoped to put it off a lot longer, but Benny agreed that it was inevitable.

* * *

Benny hadn’t been thinking about the cattle at all though until he heard the shots and saw the stampeding herd. His quest today with Lisa and Stacy was far more important. It had brought the three of them out to the edge of the property near the road because there were a few Eastern red cedars mixed in among the pines growing there. But just before all the unexpected commotion, Benny had been about ready to call off their search for the day and go back home. Heavier rain was coming, and it was getting late. He’d told the girls they probably wouldn’t find the tree they were looking for until tomorrow, even though Stacy was sure they already had a half hour earlier:
 

“This one is the perfect shape! Look at how even it is all the way around!”

Benny had just laughed. “We couldn’t even get that one through the door without cutting it half in two! And that’s if we could even drag it back to the house. That thing’s nearly fifteen feet tall!”
 

“But it’s
so
pretty!”

“Yeah, but it
is
big, Stacy,” Lisa said. “I think Uncle Benny’s right. It probably won’t fit.”
 

“I
know
it won’t fit,” Benny said. “The ceilings in that house ain’t but eight feet high. Besides that, the doorway’s only three feet wide and that thing’s got a spread of seven or eight feet at the base! We’ll find a smaller one just like it. We just gotta keep looking.”

It was a pretty cedar all right, shaped just the way a Christmas tree was supposed to be, but it was simply too big to work. Looking for a Christmas tree was about the last thing Benny Evans ever expected to be doing again, especially after everything that happened in the last few months. Even before, when Betsy was still alive, the two of them had stopped making a fuss over holiday decorations. Betsy had a small artificial tree they still set up in front of the living room window every year, along with a plastic holly wreath they hung on the door, but that was about it. He couldn’t recall how many years it had been since he’d last cut down a live cedar for a Christmas tree, but he figured it was when Tommy was a young boy, certainly no older than these two fourteen-year-old girls. Tommy was forty now, so that had been a little while. Regardless of that, Benny was just delighted that the girls wanted to spend time with him and that they both were already calling him “Uncle Benny” even though he’d only known them a few weeks.

Benny still couldn’t believe the good fortune that had befallen him and his son since the day he’d found April Gibbs and her child tied up in that canoe under a steep bank on Black Creek. The man who’d left them that way had tried to kill his boy with an arrow, but his aim had been off enough that the broadhead cut through Tommy’s upper arm instead of the middle of his back. Benny had sent that bastard straight to hell with a blast of double-aught buck from his 12-gauge, but it had been a real close call. Now, thanks to April, he and Tommy practically had a new family along with a real place to call home. Benny was a woodsman at heart and had taught his boy all he knew, but living out of a canoe for seven months straight, always on the move and always in hiding in the deep woods had gotten pretty old. The truth was, Benny himself had gotten older than he wanted to admit. He was doing okay for nearly 70, but living outside like that was hard, even on a young man. Things were a lot easier here on the Henley farm, even if they
were
still harder than life before all this happened.