The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3) (21 page)

“But it’s more than just the house, April. It’s all the stuff in it. My tools and other gear… the stuff I need to make more bows and arrows and everything else we need… so much of that stuff
defines
me, April! I can’t imagine my life without it. Especially some of the special things Mom and Dad gave me.”

“I understand how you feel Mitch, but we are
not
our stuff. It doesn’t make us who we are. I know it’s sad to lose those special things, but even though you lost the physical part of them, no one can take away your memories of them.”

“Unless you’re David,” Mitch smiled for the first time since he’d sat there. “He lost you
and
the memory of ever having you!”

April pulled Mitch close and kissed him passionately. “And that’s a
good
thing, because now I’m yours. We
are
going to get through this, Mitch. I’m going to help you. We’ll do what we have to and we
will
survive.”
 

“I know we will April, but everybody has got to understand it’s not going to be easy. The house and barn are gone now, and I don’t think we need to try and build anything back there. It was good while we had it, but like I always worried, it was also our vulnerability. Being fixed in one obvious location like that made us a target. I think going forward that we need to be more flexible, and try to stay hidden… blend into the forest… We can build shelter nearby so we still have access to what’s left on the land, and keep an eye on the cattle and the horses we’ve just acquired, but we don’t have to live on the property itself. Property lines mean nothing now anyway, and here we are, surrounded by all this national forest. I’d like to set up somewhere closer to the creek. We’re going to have to redouble our hunting and gathering efforts and think about other resources we haven’t been using. Benny was talking about building fish weirs and traps a while back before this happened. We can plant gardens in the spring, dispersed in several places along the creek, so they won’t be easy to find. It’s all going to be hard work, April, but what choice do we have?”

“I’m with you, Mitch. I never would have dreamed a year ago that I’d be living out in the country without power like a pioneer woman, but I did it. Now it looks like we’re going a step further, living in the woods like wild Indians! But I can do this. I
totally
can with what you’ve shown me already, and I can’t wait to learn more!”

“Then we get started tomorrow! We’ll talk to the others about it and discuss some possible spots for our winter camp. We need to get to work on getting at least one small shelter built immediately. There will be a lot more rain coming the rest of December and probably January too. There always is. And some of the nights will be cold.”

“Speaking of December, Benny and the girls never got their Christmas tree before the shooting started out there. Do you think we can still have one for them Mitch? Even if we don’t have a house to put it in?”

“Of course we can! Lisa told me about the one Stacy found that Benny wouldn’t cut because it was too big to get through the door. Well now it’s not, because we no longer
have
a door!”
 

* * *

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The Forge of Darkness
.

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If you enjoyed
The Forge of Darkness
, you may enjoy reading
The Pulse Series
, set in the same grid-down world. Turn the page to read a sample excerpt from:
Voyage After the Collapse
 

Book III of The Pulse Series

Voyage After the Collapse Excerpt

C
OPYRIGHT
© 2015
BY
Scott B. Williams
 

Chapter One

Tara Hancock made her decision and she intended to stick to it. Sure, it was risky, but everything she did in this new reality entailed risk and danger. By now she’d come to realize that she had to take chances almost daily if she and Rebecca were to survive. Today the risk was different though, because it was not about the two of them and she could have just as well chosen to mind her business and stay put. She and her daughter were relatively safe for now and she could keep it that way, leaving her less fortunate neighbors to fend for themselves. She
had
tried to help them after all, even if she had failed. But the Owens reminded her too much of her parents for her to leave them stranded. Like her mom and dad, they were too old and frail to hold their own in the midst of the violence they had escaped for now by coming here. Tara couldn’t do anything for her parents now, as they were impossibly far away, but there was one more thing she could try that might help Mike and Lillian Owens, and she was determined to do it.
 

She knew that she and her daughter were lucky to have the means to be where they were, anchored safely off the north side of Cat Island. Several miles of water separating the chain of barrier islands from the coast provided a safety buffer between them and the madness ashore, but it would not do to stay here long-term. The distance from the mainland simply wasn’t enough, especially if the situation everywhere didn’t improve fast. At this point there was no reason to believe it would, so Tara knew that if she expected to keep her daughter safe, they had to keep moving.

As long as they had the
Sarah J.
, her parents’ restored Tartan 37 sailboat, they could do that. The small yacht was well stocked and meticulously maintained, and could take them almost anywhere while providing a comfortable place to live at the same time. The Owens were aboard a somewhat larger sailing vessel, and with their deeper draft and inadequate ground tackle, they had found themselves hard aground on the shoals near the island after a line of thunderstorms blew through the night before.
 

Tara had tried to help them get off the submerged sandbar into which their keel was firmly buried, but the
Sarah J.
was only equipped with a small auxiliary diesel, and her attempts to pull the heavier yacht back to deep water were futile. It was going to take more horsepower to do the job, but in the wake of the collapse, there was no marine towing service to call, even if they still had a means to do so. They spent the morning trying various angles with anchors and the onboard winches to pull the heavy Catalina 42
off, but every attempt failed. Tara was completely out of ideas aside from attempting to contact the people aboard the other two boats that she knew were anchored around the point on the south side of the island.
 

One had arrived a couple of days before the second one showed up, but it was this second one that gave her some hope of getting the Owens’ yacht afloat again. Though it appeared to be heavily damaged when it chugged past them on the way to the other side, the old wooden shrimp trawler apparently had a reliable engine. Like her parents’ classic Tartan 37, the trawler was clearly old enough and simple enough that its engine’s starting ability was unaffected by the electromagnetic pulse from the solar flare. Tara knew too that the engine in such a vessel would be many times more powerful than a little sailboat pusher. Named after her mother, the
Sarah J.
was a sailing vessel, after all; not a power boat. The engine was needed to enter and leave marinas and tricky inlets, but otherwise the wind provided the means for really going places.

“I’ll be careful, I can assure you,” Tara told Mike Owens when he tried to talk her out of her latest idea.

“You can’t be careful enough these days. You know that by now. You never know about folks like that. They went around to the other side of the island for a reason. It looks to me like they want to be left alone.”

“Maybe they just anchored in Smuggler’s Cove because they could. I know catamarans don’t draw much water, and most shrimp boats don’t either.” Tara was familiar with Smuggler’s Cove, a shallow anchorage on the south side of Cat Island, because she had sailed there with her parents on the
Sarah J.
years before. While it was off-limits to many deeper-draft sailboats like the Owens’
Wind Shadow
, the
Sarah J.
, with her keel-centerboard configuration, drawing barely over four feet with the board up, could get in there just fine. Tara would have anchored there when she and Rebecca first arrived at Cat Island, but she knew the old paper charts on board were outdated since Hurricane Katrina and she was afraid the storm had altered the depths there. For all she knew at the time, there could be sunken wrecks or other manmade debris from the hurricane, hidden by the murky brown waters of the sound where many such obstructions awaited the unsuspecting mariner. Her parents had been using an electronic chart plotter for all their cruising in recent years, but like all electronic devices, that was useless to her now, so she had erred on the side of caution and anchored in deeper waters off the north side of the island. Maybe the strangers had better charts, or maybe they simply weren’t worried about it because their boats drew even less than hers. Whatever the reason they were there, Tara didn’t think it automatically meant they were up to no good. Maybe they were just as afraid as everyone else.

“I won’t get too close if they seem threatening in any way,” Tara assured Mike Owens. “I’ll sail in close enough to speak to them and if they are unfriendly, I’ll head back out.”

“If you don’t run aground first,” Mike said.
 

“I’ll be careful, like I said. But I’ve got to try. That shrimp boat can pull you and Lillian off. I know it can, if they are just willing to do it. But if I don’t ask, it’s not going to happen. And who knows, they may leave any time.”
 

Tara knew Mike and Lillian Owens were probably going to be in danger eventually anyway, whether the shrimp boat pulled them off the shoal or not. Mike had already said they weren’t leaving the immediate area, but Tara didn’t see how they could stay there. For one thing, there was no all-weather anchorage at any of the barrier islands, and even summer thunderstorms could wreak havoc, as had the one last night that caused them to drag anchor. A tropical storm or hurricane would be disastrous out there. But aside from that, Tara knew others would be making their way out to the islands one way or the other, and that might become a problem, especially if not all of them were simply seeking refuge. Some of them might see a big sailing yacht such as the Owens’
Wind Shadow
as easy pickings—a source of food and supplies, shelter and transportation all in one. Looting, robbery and worse was already happening on the mainland they’d left behind. And Tara was certain it would soon be spreading everywhere, even to seemingly safe refuges like this. But she couldn’t tell Mike Owens and his wife what to do. All she could do was make this last attempt to help them get afloat, and if that worked at least they would have the ability to make a choice to stay or leave when the time came. If she could do that much for them, Tara knew she and Rebecca could sail away with a clear conscious.
 

What she wanted to do was to go to a
real
island somewhere—an island surrounded by more ocean miles that would protect her and her daughter from the mobs and gangs that were running wild in the coastal cities. What island that would be and where, she wasn’t quite sure; but she thought maybe somewhere in the Bahamas would work. She knew she and Rebecca could get there, because her parents’ boat was capable of sailing most anywhere and since retirement they had cruised the islands each winter themselves. She just wished they could be here too, aboard the vessel they had worked so hard to refit and equip for those trips. But she tried not to think about it, because it only made her depressed. The truth was, she didn’t know when she’d ever see her mom and dad again, or if they were even still okay. She had escaped with her daughter in the nick of time and it was all because of
their
dream that she had the means to do so.

Chapter Two

Before the world turned upside down, Tara had been working as a teller at a local bank branch in Gulfport. While it wasn’t exactly her dream job, it was steady income that paid the bills after Brad Hancock left her for another woman and simply disappeared, abandoning both his wife and daughter. His selfish actions had devastated 13-year-old Rebecca. The bastard not only left, but he had avoided all contact and communication with his only daughter who had adored him since she was old enough to say ‘Daddy.’ It was as if he was dead to her, except that she knew the truth—that he did it on purpose and had gone away to live with a new woman who already had a daughter that could take her place.

Tara had to pick up the pieces and take care of the two of them as best she could, and she didn't mind the work, because nothing in the world was more important to her than taking care of her child. The hours were relatively easy, allowing her to take Rebecca to school in the mornings on her way to work and pick her up in the afternoons with only an hour of after-school daycare to pay for. And now that Rebecca was in the eighth grade, there were often extracurricular activities she had to stay late for anyway, so she didn’t mind. Besides, in a couple more years Rebecca would be driving herself to school. Tara was already putting money aside for a down payment on a second car. Other than that, her living expenses were low. Her only indulgence was a membership to a gym within walking distance of their apartment. Tara needed that. Working out and venting her anger on the heavy bag during her kickboxing class was her way of dealing with what Brad had done. And besides, she liked the way it made her look and feel.