Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) (7 page)

When April got back to her feet and put the man who’d hit her on the ground with a sweep kick and punch, drawing her knife when he fell, Mitch took aim again, certain he would have no choice but to intervene quickly. But the fight was over as soon as it started when one of the others grabbed Kimberly and put a blade of his own to her throat. April had no choice but to drop her weapon, and Mitch was relieved he didn’t have to shoot just yet. With two rifles aimed at her at point-blank range, and Kimberly’s throat exposed to a knife, there was little Mitch could do at the moment that wouldn’t make things worse. The best he could hope for was that April could buy some time without either of them getting hurt, giving him time to figure out a safer way to extract her and Kimberly from this mess.

He noted that David was still sprawled unmoving on the sand, and wondered if he was dead. The blow from the rifle stock struck his skull hard enough that Mitch had heard it clearly, even from the sixty-odd yards to his side of the creek. Dead or not, he was certainly out of commission. Whatever happened next was largely up to the four men and how April handled herself. Mitch knew she was smart enough to know her limits, he just hoped the men wouldn’t try to do anything to her out in the open right then and there. He had no doubt of their intentions though; it was just a matter of when and where.

Watching what happened next, he could tell that the big man; the one she’d swept to the ground and pulled her knife on, was surprised and impressed with her abilities. The other men shared a good-natured chuckle at his expense, but not in a mocking kind of way. Mitch could tell they respected him and he figured they were probably all good friends; maybe this guy was just a bit older and they looked to him as a leader or something. Mitch saw the compound bow that he’d laid down when he confronted April, and seeing it, he knew this was the man who had wounded the small doe. Putting together the story that the trail he’d followed told, he figured it must have been a coincidence that they stopped to camp on his side of the creek while April, David and Kimberly unfortunately chose this particular adjacent sandbar the same evening. Mitch didn’t know who arrived first, but he figured the men must have seen them the evening before and stayed out of sight until morning. That was probably why he found no evidence of a fire where they camped. He figured they waited until daylight, and then crossed the creek in an area of shoals just downstream and out of sight. April and David probably never saw them until they were upon them. These details mattered little anyway at this point. What was important was that he was here now and his presence was still unknown to any of them. He would find a way to do something, but he had to make sure he didn’t make a mistake when it was time to act because there would only be one chance.
 

At least the tension was diffused somewhat after April dropped her knife. The one who had been holding Kimberly put her down at the other’s request, and April swept the child up in her arms. Mitch couldn’t hear all of the conversation that ensued, but at one point he heard April asking to be allowed to check on David and he heard the man’s refusal to let her do so. He heard the man say that they were going to leave him for dead, whether he was or not. The others were going through the scattered belongings where the three had slept and Mitch gathered they were getting ready to leave, taking April and Kimberly with them. It was what he expected they would do since they apparently weren’t going to do anything to her here, and he was relieved because it would buy him a bit more time. That they were also taking Kimberly likely meant they intended to keep them both alive, at least for the immediate future.

Mitch had a tough decision to make. Jason was waiting back there barely within earshot of this spot and unaware of what exactly was happening. Mitch could forget about him and immediately follow wherever these four took April and Kimberly, but he knew it might take hours of trailing them before he found the right opportunity for a rescue that did not involve too much risk. On the other hand, if he had that rifle Jason was carrying, the odds would be much more in his favor, even if he used the bow to silently take out the first one or two. Besides that, if he just disappeared now, taking no telling how long to follow until the right moment presented itself, Jason would have no way of knowing what happened. Even if he somehow managed to follow the tracks the rest of the way here, he would arrive only to find an abandoned canoe and a dead or unconscious stranger lying on the sandbar. He wouldn’t know what to make of it, and not knowing what happened to his friend, he would probably go back to the house and tell the others. Then Lisa and everyone else would be worried and upset and likely come looking for him. There were a lot of complications with that scenario.
 

Besides, if David
was
still alive, he was going to need help when he came to. Mitch decided the best thing he could do was wait until the men left, to make sure they did indeed set out to wherever they were going with April and Kimberly, then he would get back to Jason as fast as possible. He could easily pick up the trail when the two of them returned, as the four hunters would probably be just as careless today as they were the day before. After all, they had no reason to suspect anyone knew of their presence here or what they’d just done. He knew they would be leaving on foot, as the one canoe would be useless to a party that size. When Mitch returned with Jason, the two of them could use it to move David to this side of the creek, the side the farmhouse was on, if he was still alive. Then Mitch would take the rifle and set out in pursuit. Jason could go back to get help for David if he was still unconscious and unable to move on his own. Even if not for the matter of helping David, Mitch wouldn’t take Jason with him because what he had to do required ultimate stealth.

Letting these men disappear from his sight with April and Kimberly as captives was the hardest thing Mitch had done in a long time. Even after thinking his plan through and knowing he was doing the logical thing, it was oh so hard to overcome his urge to use his arrows now, or at least stay close enough behind them to see their every move. He saw the one who’d held the knife to Kimberly’s throat take a length of rope out of his hunting pack and fashion one end into a loop. Then, he saw the leader take the rope and affix the loop around April’s neck like a leash, which he let out some six feet or so, wrapping the other end in his free hand to keep her close behind him. April was carrying Kimberly in her arms, the child hugging her close and no doubt terrified after all this yelling and fighting and seeing her daddy fall and not get back up. Mitch was glad that at least they were letting April carry her, but he wondered how long she could hold up doing so, especially in these dense and trackless woods that required ducking and weaving and negotiating mud and other tricky terrain.

The other men were carrying their rifles and packs as well as what they had taken from April and David’s belongings in the camp. Mitch recognized the Ruger Mini 14 and the bow he’d given April all those months ago, and he also noted there was a bolt-action rifle they must have brought with them from the church, if that’s where they came from. He wondered what could have happened to have caused April to come back here, to Black Creek, but he figured whatever it was, she must have come here looking for him, hoping to bring her family to the sanctuary of the Henley farm. Mitch was determined that she would get there too, whatever he had to do. He watched until they melted out of sight among the trees, heading in a downstream direction, then he turned and ran as quietly and swiftly as he could back to where Jason waited.

Eleven

W
AYNE
P
ARKER
COULDN
’
T
REMEMBER
the last time he’d had such a lucky day. Sure, there had been a few in the last seven months that weren’t as bad as most, but this was a real
score
. This was like walking into the Beau Rivage casino back before the collapse and winning a grand on one pull at the five-dollar slots. But it was better than that, because there wasn’t much you could do these days with money, whether it was ten dollars, a thousand dollars or a million. But a girl like this? That was something worth finding! Too bad the other guys thought it was their lucky day too. Wayne had put them off for now, convincing them they needed to move out without delay, but the issue would come up again, he knew this all too well. He would deal with it when it did.
 

He adjusted the noose of braided nylon rope around the girl’s neck so that it was just snug enough to be persuasive, but not enough to cause pain or restrict her air flow. He wasn’t worried about her trying to run. She couldn’t as long as she had that little girl in her arms, and he knew there was no way she would run off and leave her. That was clear from the way she fought; as mean as a mama bear protecting her cubs. But nevertheless, Wayne wanted to know she was right behind him, following every step he took, and the rope would reassure him of that.
 

“So, that sorry excuse for a husband of yours said your name was April,” he said as he looked directly into her eyes, his hands still on the noose, as he let the backs of his fingers rest on the soft skin of her neck. “I like that. I think it suits you; all fresh like spring. And Kimberly, your little girl; that’s a nice name too.”

When she said nothing, Wayne continued….

“I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, but that’ll change. We’ve got all the time in the world, but I don’t think it’ll take you long to realize how much better off you and your daughter are now. You’re both safe with me. Nothing’s going to happen to you as long as I’m around.”

“Nothing would happen to us if you would just leave me and my child here. I can take care of myself without any help. I don’t
want
any help!”
 

“Maybe. But maybe not. That was pretty impressive, the way you caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect you to be carrying that blade either. I’ll look forward to hearing where you learned to move like that. I haven’t met many women who could have done that; really not any….”

When April didn’t reply, Wayne carried on:

“I don’t know where the three of you came from or where you thought you were going, but if you’ve survived this long since the blackout, you’ve got to know how dangerous it is everywhere. Anyone that’s going to stay alive now has got to play it smart, and the smart ones have got to stick together. We know what we’re doing and we’ve made it fine this far. You’ll see when you meet the rest of our little tribe and realize how well prepared we are. It’s not like some of us didn’t see something like this coming for a long time before it did.”

Wayne Parker had been expecting America to collapse any day for at least the last seven or eight years. He didn’t see how things could possibly keep going the way they were with the state of the economy and the way people seemed so divided on every issue. He had grown up in Jackson County, the home of Ingalls Shipbuilding and much of the other heavy industry of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Thirty-two years old when the lights went out, Wayne had worked in the oilfields off Louisiana since he’d graduated high school and then completed an underwater welding course shortly thereafter. He had made good money out on the rigs, working mostly two weeks on and two weeks off, but his ex-wife had taken most of it and the child support for his two sons that came out of his checks left him little better off than when he was single in his early twenties. But at least the bitter divorce cured him of any romantic notions he had entertained before about marriage. What was left after the child support payments, taxes and bills, he spent on temporary girlfriends, deer hunting and fishing boats.
 

Of those three, it was the deer hunting he loved the most. He couldn’t get enough of it and eventually he put all the extra money he could spare into buying some land with a few other guys he knew from work. The property was up in George County, less than an hour’s drive from the rental house in Moss Point where he was living with his girlfriend, Tracy when the pulse hit. Whenever he was in from his hitch, especially if it was deer season, he practically lived at the cabin he and the guys had built there. The property they purchased together totaled nearly 200 acres, and it joined up to the tens of thousands more of federal and state public lands, most of it part of Desoto National Forest and a state wildlife management area. All in all, it was a vast expanse of river bottom forest, swamp and bayous and was virtually a wilderness once you got away from the few roads that skirted the edges.
 

When Wayne was out there with his friends, surrounded by woods in every direction, thoughts of his job, and the traffic and congestion of the coast far behind, he felt more alive than anywhere else. Things had changed a hell of a lot on the coast since he was a kid growing up there. For one, the legalization of gambling and the consequential growth in the form of casinos, hotels and housing for the influx of people to the area transformed the sleepy fishing towns he remembered into bustling resorts. People moved in from everywhere, many of them from up north and other places far from Mississippi. They brought new ways of doing things and new ideas with them, changing the places he knew and loved to better suit the way they wanted to live. And they could do it because they had money. They bought out local politicians and got their way practically every time. And because they had money and spent it freely, they drove up the price of everything, leaving the locals who couldn’t afford to keep up out of luck. It got even worse after Katrina hit in 2005.

The devastating hurricane not only leveled a lot of the new development, but finished off for good most of the holdout enclaves of the old Gulf Coast. Federal money and insurance payouts funded a bigger than ever developmental push, and the growth that ensued changed the coast faster in a few years than the entire twenty or so since gambling was legalized. The old marinas and waterfront bars were wiped out, and fancy yacht basins were built in their place. Wayne gave up on keeping a fishing boat in the water ready to go. It simply cost too much for dockage and insurance to be worth it any more. He sold his Pro Line 25 Center Console and went back to mostly fishing the river with his bass boat. But even that kept him too close to the crowds for comfort during his precious time off. Deer hunting was the answer, and to extend the time he could hunt, Wayne took up bowhunting in order to take advantage of the special seasons when firearms weren’t allowed. Even that wasn’t enough to suit him, so shortly before the blackout changed everything; he’d taken to hunting turkey in the spring and wild hogs in the summer—anything to get him out in the woods as much as possible.