Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) (19 page)

Twenty-seven

A
PRIL
STIFFENED
WITH
FEAR
on the canoe seat at the sudden sound of machine gun fire ripping through the silence just a short distance away downstream. Benny paused mid-stroke with his pole in the canoe in front of her from which he was towing hers. His son, Tommy, the bleeding from his arm finally under control, also turned to look back as the staccato echoes of rifle shots faded away.
 

Before anyone could speak, there was another short burst, then another and another, followed by several single shots in rapid succession.

“That sounded like an AK-47,” Benny whispered. “In fact, I know it was. You reckon that fellow’s friends have found our campsite already?”

“Yes,” April whispered back. “It’s got to be them. One of them was definitely carrying an AK. I didn’t realize it was full-auto though.” April thought back to the brief education Mitch had given her about firearms during their time together. Before all this happened, she would have thought any black gun that looked as menacing as the patrol rifle his father used in his job as a game warden was a machine gun. But Mitch had told her no, that despite the common appearance of full-auto assault rifles in movies involving drug dealers and other criminals, they were rare in civilian hands. He told her they were highly illegal without a special permit and most of what people thought of as “assault rifles” were actually semi-auto lookalikes. He did say the AK-47 could be converted back to the original design fairly easily, however, but not many people would risk it because it was a serious federal crime to do so. The semi-auto versions were popular and common though, so April guessed that with no one to enforce restrictions like that now, it was probably happening a lot. To men like those four who had taken her and Kimberly, laws of any kind meant nothing, so she was hardly surprised.
 

“I don’t know who they could be shooting at with that thing though,” Benny said. “Maybe just firing it off up in the air because they’re scared after finding their friend I shot.”

“Yeah, that’s probably got them fellows pretty jumpy, Pop.” Tommy agreed.

April wasn’t so sure about this. Those men didn’t seem to be the type to scare easy from what she’d seen. Whatever the reason for the machine gun bursts, the sound told her they were nearby and that she’d been right to urge Benny and Tommy to leave immediately. She hoped she was right about going upriver, and she was sure glad Benny had the knowledge and skill to get them out of sight going this way against the current. Paddling would have been a lot slower, and hopeless for her alone with Kimberly. But Benny had managed to get them around two big, sweeping bends of the creek before they heard the machine gun fire. With any luck at all, the three men would assume whoever took her and Kimberly and the canoe had gone the other way. Maybe they would take off that way in hopes of catching up. But whatever they did, she didn’t care as long as they didn’t find her and her child and she never had to lay eyes on them again. To that end, she urged Benny on in their quest to get upstream as far and as fast as possible.

“We need to keep going,” she insisted. “They are still way too close for comfort.”

“I agree,” Benny said. “I know I don’t want nothing to do with them fellows, especially with them toting full-auto rifles. They’re gonna be itching to shoot anything that moves after finding their buddy with that load of buckshot in his chest!”

“We’re gonna give them the slip, going this way, Pop. I think she was right about that.”

“Yep, it was the right choice all right. Like I always said, dead things go downstream, and we’d end up dead for sure if we went down that way now. Life is upriver, boy!”

“Wish I could help you out with the poling.”

“Don’t worry about that, son. I’ve got it. I’ve got to do something to keep myself young and spry!”

April smiled at the exchange between this gentle father and his grown son. She knew she was incredibly fortunate that Benny had found her when he did, and that he had a good heart, unlike so many of the strangers she had encountered since the lights went out. She knew there had to be more good people just trying to survive after their world collapsed around them, but lately, they sure seemed few and far between. She’d seen so many of the other kind who were taking advantage of the misfortunes and weaknesses of others that she had about lost her faith in humanity. But she instinctively knew Benny and Tommy were good folks; simple country folks with enough knowledge of the outdoor life to be able to adapt to the sudden and severe changes the solar pulse had wrought. They didn’t need to hurt others to get what they needed to survive, because they were already pretty self-sufficient before the grid went down anyway. April figured that in a lot of ways, these two were much like Mitch and his family.

With Benny’s ability to pole the canoe upstream at a reliable and efficient pace, she began to have hope once again that she would find Mitch. By looking more carefully, maybe she would see the path to the Henley land that she had somehow missed on the way downstream. But first, she knew they would reach the sandbar where David had been left for dead, but probably not before the end of the day tomorrow, because even with Benny’s skill at poling, upstream travel was far slower than downstream. April dreaded what she would find there. She had little hope that he would be alive, if he still was when they’d left this morning. Kimberly was too young to be fully aware of what happened to her father, but she would know something was wrong and she was already looking for him expectantly. April would somehow have to hide from her the truth; while they were burying her daddy in some lonely shallow grave lost in this vast river land forest.
 

* * *

Mitch couldn’t believe his bad luck. After he made his way across the creek and started stalking his way upstream to the clearing, the third and last surviving man of the three he’d been trailing stepped into view in front of a tree. Still unaware anything was amiss regarding his companions; he presented a wide-open and clear shot just as he came within sight of the place the other two had crossed. Mitch had seized the opportunity and quickly drew his bow and released. This last man, who was clearly the most cautious and experienced of the three, once he knew something was up, would be a much more difficult and dangerous target.

And that’s exactly what happened. Mitch had just released his arrow as the man spotted the fallen figure of the first one he’d killed on the opposite bank. Recognition that something was way wrong about the way his friend was lying face-down in the mud caused the man to instinctively flinch and duck, and Mitch’s arrow never even touched him. It was rare that Mitch missed a shot, and when he did, it was almost always due to something out of his control.
 

 
Before he could get a follow-up arrow on the string, the man realized what had just happened and dropped to his knee and unleashed a burst of automatic rifle fire in his direction. Mitch dove to a prone position and crawled behind a fallen log as bullets cut through the leaves and tore bits of bark off trees and branches all around him. He was quite sure that the man had not actually seen him; he was just laying down fire in the vector he knew the arrow came from. He was trying to force Mitch to keep his head down and keep him from getting off another shot, and it was working; at least for the moment.
 

Mitch knew he couldn’t wait to see what happened next though. His dad had taught him basic gunfighting tactics that he had learned both in his dangerous backwoods law enforcement job and in his former days as a Marine. Mitch had no doubt his opponent had similar knowledge and skills, based on the way he’d seen him check out the campsite. If he was right, the man would make a move soon, thinking he had every advantage with the firepower of his automatic rifle. Against an opponent armed only with a bow, he could lay down a heavy barrage of fire to prevent a counterattack as he moved in for the kill. But the one thing he didn’t know was that he wasn’t going up against just a bow. Mitch slid the AR-15 sling around his shoulder as he stayed pressed as close to the ground behind the log as possible and placed the longbow in the leaves beside him. He had just brought it to his shoulder when the next burst of AK fire came his way. This time it was only three rounds. And a few seconds later, another short burst of the same, and then another. The man was coming closer now; ducking from the cover of one tree trunk to the next as he fired his short bursts each time he moved. The bullets were ripping high over his head and Mitch was sure his attacker still hadn’t seen him and didn’t know exactly where he was. But he would be on top of him in a moment where he couldn’t miss. He couldn’t afford to let him get that close. When he stepped out again, Mitch opened up with a double-tap of the semi-automatic AR and saw the man spin and fall, crawling for cover behind the base of a big oak after he hit the ground. Mitch fired two more rounds and was certain he hit the man in the thigh or hip and likely the lower leg too before he dragged himself fully behind the tree. He heard him suppress a scream of rage and pain, and he knew his enemy must have been surprised indeed to get hit by rifle rounds when he thought arrows were all he had to worry about. Mitch kept his sights on the tree, ready to fire again at the first sign of any attempt to return fire. The distance between them at this point was barely over thirty or forty yards. Any attempt to get closer or move laterally would be extremely risky if the man was still able to shoot back, but Mitch wasn’t sure he was. The high-velocity 5.56mm rounds could do a lot of damage even with a leg shot, and with any luck at all he might have even hit the femoral artery.
 

He watched and waited. It was a familiar game, just like hunting, where a wounded animal would sometimes freeze in hiding for many long minutes before either making a dash to escape or succumbing to blood loss. But Mitch didn’t have all day. In fact, the day was about to run out and the low angle of the sunlight filtering through the trees told him it would be dark in an hour, and there would be too little light to read tracks even sooner. After a good fifteen minutes and still no sound or movement from behind the tree, Mitch knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He began slowly backing away, keeping low and never taking his eyes off the big oak tree. He would go back into the forest downstream and then make a wide circle around where the man was hiding and make his way to the campsite from the other side. He knew if he was careful, the wounded man would never know he had left. Mitch absolutely
had
to find out what happened to April before it was too dark to see. Finishing this guy off could wait until later; if he didn’t bleed out on his own by the time Mitch found the information he needed.

Twenty-eight

J
ASON
B
URNS
HAD
FINALLY
convinced Mitch’s sister, Lisa that there was no point in trying to follow him down the trail of the those guys he was tracking. He knew Mitch wouldn’t want her to be anywhere near danger like that if it wasn’t necessary, no matter how much his little sister might want to give him a hand. He said their time was best spent trying to find David, who had mysteriously vanished after Jason and Mitch had last seen him unconscious on the riverbank. But though they scoured the area for clues, there was no trace of David other than a single set of footprints leading straight into the creek. They looked on the other side for indications he had crossed it, but on that side was the big sandbar that was already covered in tracks made by April, David, the four strangers, and then Mitch. It was a confusing jumble of footprints that had frustrated Lisa for the better part of the afternoon and she still had no idea where the injured man could have gone after he apparently woke up on his own and walked into the creek.
 

They had eventually given up while there was still enough light to find their way back to the farmhouse, but Lisa had insisted on returning early the next morning, this time alone with Jason, so they could search farther up and down the banks on both sides and try to pick up a trail David might have left. Mitch had not returned, of course, and Lisa was still arguing that they should have followed him yesterday, because he might have gotten into a situation he couldn’t handle, having four bad guys to deal with all on his own.
 

“I’m telling you, Lisa, we did the right thing! We might have just messed things up and made it worse if we had followed. Mitch knows more about this stuff than all of us put together. He’s going to be okay. You’ll see. I’ll bet he gets back early today, and with April and her kid too.”

“I hope you’re right, I’m just worried about him, that’s all. The whole time he was with April before, it seemed like he was in danger. Now, she comes out here, apparently looking for him, and here he goes again.”

“Well, it’s not like he had much choice. He would have done the same for any woman and child he saw taken by men like that.”

“Yeah, I know, I was just hoping we could all just lie low on the farm and avoid these kinds of situations. You know how risky it is. You were beaten half to death yourself.”

“I was, and if it weren’t for Mitch and April coming along when they did, I would have died there on the side of that road. And no telling what would have become of you and Stacy.”

“Well, since we can’t catch up to Mitch or the men who took April, the least we can do is keep looking for David and not give up until we find him. If Mitch does bring her back, she’s going to be glad to see him. And the little girl will need her daddy.”