Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) (6 page)

“DON’T YOU TOUCH HER!”

He heard the baby crying too, as well as the laughter of several men. Mitch began to wonder if what was going on was more than a simple domestic squabble. He’d followed the tracks of four men who’d clearly slept on this side of the creek that night, but now there was a woman who sounded sincerely distressed on the other side. Could she be another traveler not connected to these men at all and now the victim of a random attack? If so, it sounded like it was escalating even now. Mitch worked his way through the undergrowth as fast as he could without making noise, keeping his bow with the already-nocked broadhead low and to the front and ready as he moved.

When he at last reached the area adjacent to the downstream end of sandbar on the other side, he saw a single aluminum canoe pulled up on the sand, a line from the bow tying it to stump. The lettering on the bow identified the canoe as one that had belonged to the rental fleet in the town of Brooklyn, twenty miles upstream. Mitch figured most of the boats there had been taken by now, stolen by refugees desperate to get away from the dangers of the highways and roads. Few people could survive long out here in the wilds without supplies though, and if they kept going far enough downstream they would end up in a even more desperate situation on the urbanized Gulf coast. It didn’t make sense that the four he’d been tracking were connected to the canoe, however, unless there was another one tied up around the bend upstream. These seventeen-foot Grummans were designed for two paddlers; three adults could fit in a pinch, but not four men.
 

The exchange seemed to become more heated as Mitch crept farther upstream, staying low in the cover of the undergrowth until at last he could see what was going on. There were four armed men with their backs to him, forming a rough semi-circle on his side of a smoldering campfire in the sand. Facing them from the other side of the fire were three people—a man, a woman and a small toddler that the man was holding in his arms. It was they who likely paddled the canoe here, Mitch surmised. And it was now clear the arguing he’d heard was a confrontation between the four he’d been tracking and these other strangers who must have spent the night there on the sandbar.
 

Mitch watched and listened; hoping to hear enough to determine exactly what was going on. It was not until the woman lunged to try and reach the child that Mitch got a clear view of her face. When he did, he felt a rush of adrenaline wash over him as he tensed and squeezed his hunting bow in a white-knuckle grip. How and why she was here he had no idea, but right there before his eyes, was someone he never expected to see again:
April Gibbs
!

Nine

A
PRIL
’
S
MIND
WAS
RACING
as she played out various scenarios of what might happen next and what she and David might do when it did. With her carbine already in their hands and the .270 out of reach under David’s blanket, April was effectively unarmed but for her knife. Though she’d used it to great effect that first week of the blackout, this was a far different situation. For one thing, Kimberly was with her this time and equally in danger. For another, there were four of these men and they were all armed, not to mention no doubt hardened by the trials of survival as anyone who’d lived this long since the blackout must be. While she wouldn’t hesitate to use the Spyderco as a last resort, and would make anyone who attacked her and Kimberly pay in blood, she doubted she and David had much of a chance if it came to an all-out assault from four men. What she hoped she could do was diffuse the situation and somehow get the men to go away.
 

“Look, I’m really sorry we don’t have any coffee. If we did, I’d be glad to share some with you. But we don’t have much of anything.”

“We’ll see,” Wayne said. “Gary, see what’s in those packs! And check the blankets too.”

“You don’t have any right to go through our belongings!” April said, trying to hide her apprehension, as she now knew for sure they weren’t going to simply go away. At the very least they would take what little rice and other staples she and David had, and she knew they were going to discover the other rifle too and would certainly take that as well. Without it or her carbine and bow, she and David would have nothing with which to defend Kimberly or hunt for food, even if the men did nothing else to harm them.
 

“Our
right
is the right of survival,” Wayne said. “In case you haven’t heard of it, there’s this concept called ‘survival of the fittest.’ That means whoever is bigger, badder or has the most guns wins. It’s the law of the jungle, sweetheart, and we’re
in
the jungle now!”

“We don’t have anything worth taking,” David said. “We’re just barely getting by, and what little we have isn’t worth your time to bother with.”

Wayne just looked at him with a smirk on his face and then turned to stare April up and down in a way that David could not misinterpret. “Oh I think it’s worth my time all right! It must have been worth yours too, considering that rug rat you’re holding.”
 

April lunged to grab Kimberly from David, but Wayne quickly stepped between them, cutting her off. At the same time, the one searching their belongings, the one he’d called Gary, found the hunting rifle and held it up for the others to see. When David tried to move around Wayne to get to April’s side, Gary jabbed the butt of the rifle into his stomach, doubling him over, and barely missing Kimberly, who he was holding against his chest. Before David could catch his breath and straighten up, Gary swung the stock up in a swift uppercut motion that connected to the side of his head, causing him to collapse into the sand, dropping Kimberly as he fell. The child cried out in terror as April screamed and tried again to lunge for her. But Wayne knocked her aside with a backhand slap, sending her to her hands and knees in the sand. At the same time, Gary snatched Kimberly up and began backing away with her in his arms.
 

At the sight of her child being grabbed, the animal instinct took over and April was transformed the savagery of a lioness defending her cub. Her martial arts training and fighting instinct kicked in and she no longer cared that she was unarmed and outnumbered. She shook off the blow and leapt to her feet, quickly buckling Wayne’s knee with a sweep kick, following it up with a palm heel strike to the nose while he was still unbalanced. The big man fell with blood pouring over his thick mustache. April didn’t wait to see what would happen next before she whipped out the Spyderco folder she carried in her back pocket, snapping the blade open and locked with a lighting-fast, one-hand motion. It was a futile gesture though, as the other two men advance with their rifles pointed straight at her and Gary yelled to get her attention. He was brandishing a drawn blade of his own, a big flashy Bowie knife, the edge poised just inches from Kimberly’s delicate throat. April knew they had her at that point. If she continued the attack, she would either be shot or Kimberly would be killed. And David could do nothing for her now, sprawled, as he was, unmoving and unconscious in the sand. April lowered her hand and let the Spyderco fall from her open fingers.

“You don’t have to hurt my daughter. You can have whatever you want. Just please! Get that knife away from her. She’s just a baby! Please!”
 

Wayne was getting up now, brushing the sand off his pants and holding a bandana against his bloody nose. At the sight of this, the other two men with the rifles couldn’t suppress a chuckle and Gary grinned too as he lowered his big Bowie away from Kimberly but kept it in his hand, unsheathed and ready.
 

“Where in the hell did you learn how to do that?” Wayne asked as he appraised her again from head to toe. “I’ve got to say, I’m impressed. And the way you whipped out that blade. Crap! You could’ve
cut
somebody!”

“It wouldn’t have been the first time!” April said, as she stepped back and allowed him to reach down and pick up the knife her father had given her all those years ago, shortly before he passed away.
 

“I can believe that. But you won’t get a chance to try it again! At least not if you care what happens to that little girl of yours.”

“What do you want from us? Just give her back to me and leave us
alone
!”
 

“That would be crazy. You’d never last out here alone and unarmed. Though you might as well have been alone for all
he
could have done to help you.” Wayne nodded in the direction of David’s limp figure, collapsed in the sand.

April didn’t think David was dead, but the blow from the rifle stock had rendered him unconscious and he wasn’t showing any sign of coming to.
 

“You didn’t have to hit him like that,” she glared at Rick. He was unarmed and he was just trying to protect our daughter. You could have killed him! Now give her back to me!”
 

Wayne looked at Gary and told him to put his knife away.

“Why do we need the rug rat?” he asked.

“Because her tough little momma here won’t be trying anything stupid as long as she’s got her arms full, that’s why.”
 

“You don’t plan on bringing her with us, do you?” one of the other men asked. “I thought we would take our turns and be done right here. We don’t need another mouth to feed—especially not two more!”

“He’s right,” Gary said. “How are we going to take care of a baby anyway?”

“We won’t! That’s her job. But she’s going with us and the rest of you can keep your hands off!” Wayne said, as he wiped more blood from his bleeding nose. “This is between me and her now and she’s got some making up to do before I’m done with her!”

“Just give me my baby!” April pleaded, as Kimberly continued to cry in terror in Rick’s rough grasp. April tried to push past Wayne again to reach her, but he threw her roughly to the sand when she did. She landed near David’s still body and attempted to crawl to his side to see if he was still breathing. Wayne stepped into her path and cut her off.

“Will you just let me check his pulse? We’ve got to do something for him. I’ll go wherever you want me to if you don’t hurt Kimberly, but we can’t just leave her father here like this!”
 

“Of course we can and of course we will! If I didn’t think he was so worthless at taking care of himself, never mind you and the baby, I’d put a bullet in his head right now. But if he does wake up before the coyotes and wild dogs find him, I want him to sit here and wonder why he didn’t do a better job of learning how to be a man back when he had the chance. What did he do back in the world anyway, sit around all day and play video games while you went to work?”

This wasn’t far from the truth, but April said nothing. There was nothing she could do for David now and no use pushing the subject. She wanted to ask Wayne why they were doing this to them. She wanted to ask them all who they were and what kind of people they were to treat others this way. But she said nothing because she already knew. They weren’t people at all. The were simply animals—animals acting on their most instinctive and savage desires—exerting their dominance because in the absence of law and authority, they could do so with their superior numbers and weapons. She and David and Kimberly were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when they woke that morning on the banks of Black Creek. Maybe David would come to on his own, and maybe he would find some way to survive. She doubted it, but whatever happened to him was beyond her control at this point. She had to focus on staying alive so she could take care of her baby. She knew the only way she could do that was to comply with these brutal men, and she was all too aware of what that would entail. She rose to her feet and faced Wayne and Gary once again, calmly asking for her child and letting them know she would resist no further.

Ten

M
ITCH
WAS
HOLDING
HIS
bow at full draw, but didn’t even remember pulling it back, so automatic and unconscious was the motion. Each second that he held his right hand anchored to the right corner of his mouth, he could have relaxed the tips of the three fingers hooking the bowstring. All the energy stored in those perfectly balanced limbs of carved Osage orange would send the deadly broadhead-tipped arrow on its way with barely a whisper. Mitch knew he could easily put it through the neck or center mass of any of the four aggressors on the opposite side of the creek, and yet, he didn’t.
 

Once he recognized April, he quickly realized the man with her was David, the father of her child. He’d only met the guy once, and little Kimberly, of course, at her age looked much different after seven months than she did the one and only time he had seen her as well. How and why the three of them came to be here on this Black Creek sandbar so close to home was beyond his comprehension at the moment and there was no time to ponder it. Unfolding before him was a fast-changing and unpredictable scene that put him in a real dilemma. When the larger man stepped between April and her little girl, David had tried to intervene, only to be struck to the ground by a rifle butt. Then the bigger man had backhanded April and knocked her down as well when she tried to get to Kimberly. Mitch could have let fly his arrow then and there and killed the man easily, and it was all he could do to restrain himself. But this situation was far too volatile. He had the element of surprise in his favor, and he was certain he could nock a second arrow and take out one more before they realized what was happening, but that would still leave two. Considering that all four of them were armed and pretty much surrounding April with weapons already on her, the odds were too high that something would happen to either her or little Kimberly before he could deal with them all. Mitch cursed his decision to leave his father’s AR-15 with Jason. If he had the firepower of a semiautomatic rifle combined with a surprise ambush out of nowhere, it might be feasible to take care of this problem then and there. But wishing for something wouldn’t make it happen, and all he could do was watch and wait for a better opportunity. He relaxed to half-draw to save his muscles from fatigue, but he was still ready to take the risk of shooting any second if there was no other way.