Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) (4 page)

They crept on this way for almost another hour, until the morning sun was high enough that its rays began to filter through the canopy of the trees and reach the forest floor in scattered spots. It was in this muted sunlight that Mitch at last found what he was looking for. In the middle of a sandy dry wash that wound through a stand of tall hardwoods, he saw the deep prints and disturbed sand where the deer’s hooves had dug in as it made its first startled leap. Leading to this spot from the other side of the grove, a set of evenly spaced hoof prints clearly showed where the animal had been walking at a normal pace until its grazing was so rudely interrupted by an arrow strike. Remembering that he’d found the broken shaft buried in the deer’s right flank, Mitch could be fairly certain of the angle from which the arrow had flown since he could see the direction the doe had been walking when she was hit. Considering the density of the grove of trees surrounding the sandy wash, he also knew that the archer could not have gotten a clear shot from that angle from more than thirty or forty yards away.
 

That there were no human footprints overlaying the deer’s tracks in the area that it had been hit seemed strange. Why did the shooter not follow up to try and find his wounded game? Or, if he thought he’d missed the shot entirely, why did he not at least walk over to look for his arrow? Mitch wouldn’t have been surprised at this kind of behavior before the blackout, but could anyone who’d survived this long in the aftermath really be that lazy when it came to hunting? He doubted it, figuring instead something else must have distracted him to cause him to give up the deer. Motioning for Jason to stay put, Mitch began a systematic search in the area he deduced was the most likely spot from which the arrow had flown. It only took a few minutes to prove his calculations correct. Next to the base of a giant white oak tree, the leaves littering the ground had been squashed into the soft mud by heavy, lugged soles, the kind commonly found on hiking or hunting boots. Mitch compared them to his own size eleven moccasins and judged them to be at least one size bigger, meaning the shooter was almost certainly an adult male. Though he looked for additional tracks and signs that the archer had a companion, there were none to be found. The boot prints led from the direction of the creek to the huge tree trunk, from behind which the man must have shot the deer and then turned back to retrace his steps to wherever he’d come from.
 

“Do you think he’s still close by?” Jason whispered as he rejoined Mitch after being waved over.
 

“It’s possible, but he hasn’t been back here today. For some reason he just took the shot and turned around and went back the way he came.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yeah, I could see this happening before, when people hunted for sport and killed animals for no reason, but it makes no sense now.”

“So what do we do?”

“Follow him, of course, at least if there’s a trail to be found. I want to know where he went and whether or not he was alone.”

The problem was that following someone’s trail through this environment was a challenge for any tracker. Mitch was good at it and getting better every day, but he knew he was still a long way from the realm of the real experts, like the Apache scouts and mountain men of old he’d read so much about and tried so hard to emulate. The biggest obstacle was all the leaf litter that was several inches deep on the forest floor in most of the area. The few exceptions were places like the sandy wash and the clay and mud banks along the creek and its tributaries where heavy rains and flood waters occasionally swept the ground bare. Mitch knew he couldn’t find all the tracks in between these scattered places, but from the few he did find, he could guess the path most people would take to get around thickets and other obstacles. Just like deer and other game, humans moving through the woods usually sought the path of least resistance and were fairly predictable if one knew what to look for.
 

One thing he was sure of, the tracks he could see led back in the direction of Black Creek. Whoever had made them had probably come into the area by following the waterway, either in a canoe or other small boat or by walking along the banks. The latter would be extremely difficult and slow. Mitch figured a canoe was more likely. So he and Jason would make their way to the banks where they could search the bare areas for more tracks or possibly the drag marks that would show where a canoe landed.
 

Before the electromagnetic pulse, Black Creek was a popular destination for weekend canoeists, especially in the summer months. And in the fall and winter, hunters sometimes used the waterway to access remote areas of the national forest lands that bordered much of the stream. As one of only two game wardens assigned to the county where their farm was located, Mitch’s dad, Doug Henley, had arrested his share of poachers and other outlaws that operated on the creek out of small, outboard-powered Johnboats and the occasional motorized canoe. That was the main reason he was so careful to make sure there was no obvious path leading from the banks of the creek to their land, which at its nearest corner was less than a half a mile away. Now that most motor vehicles had been rendered inoperable, the creek was even more likely to be used by those traveling through the area, and Mitch had been patrolling its banks on a regular basis, keeping an eye on this backdoor entrance to their land while also watching the county road out front.
 

This was mainly because he knew that while most of the recreational paddlers who passed through the area only saw a small portion of the stream, Black Creek continued on much farther beyond the national forest area, merging eventually with the parallel stream, Red Creek, and then emptying in to the Pascagoula River. The total downstream distance from the area of their land to the urban centers of the Mississippi Gulf Coast was only a little over one hundred miles. Mitch knew that it was inevitable that some of the survivors from the heavily-populated coastal region seeking refuge in rural areas would make their way up the rivers and streams eventually. Black Creek was just one of many arteries that made up hundreds of miles of river lands in the Pascagoula Basin. These streams would offer savvy survivors an isolated route to travel, as well as a source of water and plentiful game and fish along the way. It was something that was on his mind a lot as Mitch thought about how he would keep his little group safe as the weeks and months went by with still no relief in sight from the outside.
 

So far, if there had been anyone passing by on the creek by canoe or boat since Mitch and Lisa had returned to the farm from Hattiesburg, they did not stop. On the larger Leaf River, they had seen a few others with working outboard motors mounted on aluminum Johnboats. Most such motors in use on these rivers by fishermen before the blackout were the small and simple two-stroke variety with no electrical circuitry that could be affected by the pulse. It was less common to see outboards on Black Creek because of the wilderness designation and the numerous shoals and snags, but Mitch knew that was likely to change now, especially any regard for rules and regulations.
 

When he and Jason worked their way to within sight of the creek, Mitch headed straight for an area of clean-swept mud and found what he was looking for: the continuation of the hunter’s trail. He only had to follow the clearly visible footprints a short distance to confirm his suspicions that the man who shot the deer was not alone. There, on the top of a small bluff overlooking the stream, the tracks merged with many others. It took Mitch a few minutes to sort them out by working his way up and down stream from where they joined, but at last he concluded there were four separate sets of footprints, including those of the mysterious bowhunter.
 

“I wonder how they got here?” Jason whispered.

“I’m betting by boat. These tracks are leading downstream. They could have come from downriver somewhere and may have a camp down there where they left their boat.”

“Do you want to follow them?”

“Absolutely. We need to know, Jason. Maybe they’ve already left the area, but we have to try and find out.”

The trail here was much easier to follow, as there were many patches of bare mud or sand along the banks where the four men couldn’t have avoided leaving tracks even if they’d tried. It was obvious that they
hadn’t
tried, probably because they thought they were totally alone in a really remote area and it didn’t matter. Mitch was moving faster now, with Jason close behind, but he still wasn’t taking unnecessary risks. At regular intervals he still stopped to look and listen, not wishing to suddenly run upon these men who were likely armed and who outnumbered him and Jason by two to one. It was during one of these deliberate stops that a sound far away in the forest reached his ears. At first, Mitch wasn’t sure that it wasn’t just the sound of the creek gurgling around some submerged tree or stump, but the more intently he listened, the more certain he was that what he was hearing was the sound of
voices.

Seven

A
PRIL
FOUGHT
TO
KEEP
her voice steady and calm as she responded to the greeting of “good morning” from the first of the four men who strode across the sandbar. Not wanting to show concern and to appear calm, she remained seated by the campfire. Jason and Kimberly were still sleeping behind her, unaware of the unexpected visitors.
 

April tried to reassure herself that although she had been quite startled upon seeing strangers appear so suddenly out of nowhere, her surprise did not necessarily mean the four were up to no good. Maybe they were simply fellow survivors out hunting to support themselves and their families. It was likely they were just as surprised as she at encountering others in such a remote place.
 

“You sure didn’t pick a very safe place to camp, out in the open like this,” the same man who’d greeted her said as the four of them stopped a few paces away, on the opposite side of the smoky driftwood fire.

“We were only staying here long enough to sleep. We stopped for the night when it got too dark to paddle.”

“So where are you going? There’s nothing but woods downstream for days.”

As April considered how she would respond to this, she saw David stir out of the corner of her eye. He sat up with a start when he realized they were not alone. His eyes met hers and she hoped her expression conveyed that she was trying to remain calm despite the underlying fear she could not shake at being surprised this way first thing in the morning. David hadn’t experienced nearly what she had since the pulse occurred. He had been in Hattiesburg the entire time, and though there had been attacks on the church, this was the first time since the event he had traveled without the protection of a large group. But April had already survived a few dangerous confrontations. With her determination and the skills she’d learned from her late father, not to mention Mitch Henley’s help, she’d managed to prevail each time. She knew the reality of the dangers they faced in this lawless world, where anarchy and survival of the fittest now reigned. She could delude herself into believing these men had only innocent intentions, but hard experience had taught her not to take anything for granted. And if her distrust proved warranted, she didn’t want them to know what she was capable of, either. The element of surprise had saved her before and it would be her best chance again, if it came to that.
 

But David had none of this experience or skill. Sure, he’d helped defend the church when the attacks from the outside came, but that was all long range stuff, shooting from behind the safety of a barricade at people who were too far away to even see the expressions on their faces. Here, the advantage of distance was already lost. The four strangers were upon them and her rifle was out of reach.
 

“This is my husband,” April said when the one doing the talking gave her a questioning look upon David’s awakening.
 

David got to his feet, picking up a drowsy Kimberly as he did, and extending his hand to introduce himself. “I’m David Greene. This is my wife, April, and our daughter, Kimberly.”
 

The man nodded but did not except David’s offered hand. When he didn’t, David began apologizing. “Look, if we’re trespassing on your land, we’re sorry. We just stopped for the night to get some rest. We thought this was national forest land.”

The man just chuckled a bit to himself and turned to grin at his companions, who were also smiling. He raised one arm and turned first one way and then the other, taking in the surroundings in a sweeping gesture meant to indicate everything in sight was included in his next comment. “The old boundaries are no more, David. Who can say who owns this land when there is no one here to claim it but us? The forest service and the government are abstract entities, and at best, absentee owners. For all we know, they do not even exist in the way that they once did. The lines are being redrawn and old designations and names mean nothing. This
is
our land at the moment because this is where we are, but I’m not questioning your right to camp here. I’m just naturally curious and wanted to know where you’re going and where you came from. It’s dangerous to travel at all these days, and even more so with a woman and a small child.”
 

“We’re going to….”
 

“We came from Hattiesburg,” April answered for him. “And we’re not alone. We are with a group of people from my husband’s church. They are in several canoes but some pushed on ahead of us last night and will wait for us until we catch up this morning. The others are somewhere upstream; behind us. We are going to a youth camp the church owns that is right on the banks of the creek, in the next county downstream. The whole congregation is going there, because staying in the city is no longer safe.”