Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) (3 page)

With Jason carrying the AR-15, Mitch felt okay with his decision to stick to just his hunting bow as his main weapon. As he had proven more than once since law and order fell apart, the silence of his deadly arrows could offer great advantage in certain situations. But in case he got in a bind and needed a backup, he was also wearing his Ruger .357 Magnum revolver in a holster on his belt.
 

“I’m sure we’ll be back in time for lunch,” Mitch reassured his little sister as he kissed her on the cheek. Lisa was clearly unhappy that she couldn’t participate in this patrol to find the trespasser. No doubt she saw it as an exciting break in the day-to-day monotony of living on the isolated farm with no outside contact, no communication and little entertainment besides what they created for themselves. Mitch knew it had to be incredibly boring for his fourteen-year-old sister, but he figured Lisa and her best friend Stacy were coping with it better than most.
 

For Mitch, there was nothing boring about it. Even before the blackout, there was nothing he would rather do than roam the woods alone with his bow and arrows. Now he was doing that everyday, and not for recreation or diversion but as a way of life. He had turned seventeen in the intervening months since everything changed, and he’d taken to this new life with great enthusiasm. If not for his worry and sadness over his parents’ absence, Mitch could not have imagined a life he would enjoy more. For one thing, he no longer had to attend that hated school with its idiotic and petty rules and regulations. He didn’t have to worry about fitting into a teenage social stratum that he neither cared about nor understood. He didn’t have to live by clocks and bells, spend hours sitting on his butt at a stupid desk, or racking his brain trying to solve insanely complex algebra problems that he could see no use for in real life.
 

Mitch knew the electromagnetic pulse caused untold suffering and death, and undoubtedly affected millions of lives if not all the lives on the planet, but if nothing else good came of it, at least it had freed him from a way of life he never felt was right for him. Now he was living
the fantasy he’d often entertained of going back in time—back to a time when all men lived by the weapons and the skills they carried with them when they set out each day into the forest to find what sustenance it provided. As always before a hunt, Mitch felt the tinge of excitement and anticipation as he strung his longbow and slung the deerskin quiver of cane-shafted arrows over his shoulder. As he strode across the yard with Jason close behind, he was eager to melt into the shadows of the trees where once again he would become that primal hunter he knew he was born to be.

Five

W
HEN
DARKNESS
CLOSED
IN
on the small sandbar, the surrounding forest felt like solid walls cutting them off completely from the rest of the world. April knew it was an illusion though, and that even though it seemed impossible to leave their camp now even if they had to, Mitch had shown her otherwise. She had followed him through these same trackless woods on another night equally dark, amazed at how unerringly he found his way. And she’d seen how he used the darkness to his advantage to stalk and kill those who had taken his sister captive. Thinking of this, April couldn’t help but feel vulnerable now, sitting there in the light of their campfire, just as those unsuspecting men had been doing before falling to Mitch’s arrows. Was someone out there watching even now? She tried not to think about it, but found she couldn’t help it. There were no human footprints or any other sign anyone had visited the sandbar recently; she had checked carefully for that as soon as they stopped. But she still couldn’t get the idea she was being watched out of her mind. These deep woods were a scary place to be at night, even if it wasn’t her first time. All she could do was hope the night passed quickly, knowing she would feel better at dawn. She
had
to find Mitch tomorrow, and she was determined to do so.

It was a mistake not to just get Kimberly and come back here with him in the first place after he helped her reach Hattiesburg. April knew this now. Mitch had, of course, invited all of them, including David’s parents to come back with him, but though April saw the advantages of getting away from the city, the others did not. They were determined to remain in the big church sanctuary on Hardy Street, living off the provisions stored there that had been collected for a Central American relief mission before all this happened. The supplies would not last indefinitely, but it was enough to see the congregation through for several weeks, and few then could foresee the situation lasting longer than that. But it had lasted longer—much longer indeed—and there was still no end in sight.

April had asked Mitch and his sister to stay there with them too, but the city was no place for a guy like Mitch and she knew it. So they’d said their goodbyes and he and Lisa set out to return to the land he knew so well, where they would hold out and wait in hopes their parents were somehow still alive.
 

As April poked at the coals of the fire with a long stick, she thought about how glad she was to be away from those people in Hattiesburg, even though they were temporarily lost and alone in the woods. It had been tolerable there at first, but as time went by, she began to hate it in the confines of the church. A group of men including the pastor had taken charge with absolute authority, regimenting their days and restricting the activities of the members and other refugees to the tasks they assigned. And April and David, as unwed parents, were forced to go through the motions and exchange the vows of man and wife if they wanted to remain. She went along with it because she had no choice, but April considered the ceremony meaningless as there was no marriage license or legal recording of it a courthouse and she did not consider herself subject to the authority of a church she did not belong to. She’d once planned to marry David when she first found out she was pregnant, but that was before they started fighting and before she realized just how immature he really was. They were on the verge of splitting up most of the time they were living together in their New Orleans apartment and she had not been intimate with him since. During their time in Hattiesburg she poured all of her love and devotion onto Kimberly, only tolerating him because their daughter needed her father too.
 

What bothered April more than the forced marriage imposed upon them was the way the leaders turned away everyone who came to their doors begging for sanctuary or a meal to sustain them one more day. Any who approached were met by armed men, just as she and Mitch and Lisa had been challenged on that day they first arrived there. If not for David’s parents and her baby already inside, she would have been denied as well. April knew that the supplies they had were limited, but there were some cases in which she felt an exception should be made. But all were turned away with equal disregard, and arguments among the members led to yet more rules and more power struggles within. April knew it was just human nature that the breakdown of one control structure would lead to the establishment of another. Most people seemed to thrive on it, but as non-members and outsiders accepted only because of David’s parents, she and David had no say in anything. The two of them were given the most menial chores and expected to work long hours for their meals and protection within the church walls.
 

But even the protection was questionable. At first there were a few shootouts at the gate and incidents of unsuccessful nighttime raids by small, disorganized gangs. Then, towards the end of summer, there was a focused and coordinated attack by a gang of outlaws who rode into town on old Harley Davidson motorcycles, their machines unfazed by the pulse. The fighting had been intense, and more than a dozen of the defenders had died behind the barricade of trucks and SUVs encircling the grounds beyond the front door. Only the advantage of numbers, their fortified positions and sufficient firepower had enabled them to prevail against such a determined horde. April knew from what she’d seen outside with Mitch that more would come. This was just the beginning, and one day a stronger, even more dangerous group would arrive at the gates. Like Mitch said, there was no place in any city that was defensible indefinitely without outside help, of which they had still seen no sign. This most recent battle was a breaking point for April. She was determined to leave and get her baby to someplace that would not draw the attention of such organized attacks. And the only place she knew like that was far from cities and towns, deep in the woods in the river lands she had traveled with Mitch. There, his family property contained the shelter, tools, weapons, natural resources and most importantly, the isolation to ride out the aftermath of this crisis.
 

The act of leaving the barricaded church in Hattiesburg more resembled a prison escape than a decision they made with the blessing of the congregation. Once David had agreed to go with her, they began hoarding a small amount of their daily rations and secreting away other things they would need when the opportunity to get out presented itself. Though it had involved considerable risk, that opportunity came when the building was once again under attack. They were able to slip away in the confusion and noise after dark, carrying their weapons, a small amount of food, and their precious Kimberly hidden away in the blankets they were now using as bedding.
 

What little food they had brought was nearly gone, but April knew that once they were at Mitch’s place starvation would be unlikely. And if necessary in the meantime, the Ruger carbine he’d given her before would provide a means of taking game. She didn’t expect to have to resort to that yet, though. She was still confident that tomorrow they would find the path they sought. David, however, was far less certain, but to her relief, he sat sulking in silence and said no more about it.

They were both too tired from a long day of paddling to sit up half the night arguing. With Kimberly snuggled up next to her in the blankets, April fell fast asleep and didn’t wake until the morning sunlight reached her face on the open sandbar. Sunny or not, the morning chill forced her to get up and stir the coals to rekindle last night’s fire. A film of frost on the upturned hull of the canoe told her the low must have dropped to near freezing. It was the coldest night of the fall so far, and certainly the coldest since the blackout.
 

She was grateful that Kimberly was still asleep, and even more so that David had not yet stirred. She wanted to collect her thoughts as she built up the fire, and as she sat there poking at the coals with a stick and feeding more fuel into it, she tried harder to visualize exactly what the surroundings looked like that day she had followed Mitch on the obscure path from the creek to his family’s home. With the flames blazing warm once again, she closed her eyes and tried to retrace her steps that day in her mind, looking for details that might make it more obvious later that morning as they resumed their search for the path. She knew it was close. It simply
had
to be.
 

The fire was crackling and sizzling now as the resin-rich driftwood burned hot. April snapped out of her meditation to move back a bit, and that’s when she looked beyond the canoe, to the far end of the sandbar where it curved around the creek bend downstream. Standing there in plain view, all of them watching her intently were four men dressed in camouflage hunting clothing. All carried rifles except for one, who was armed with some kind of modern hunting bow quite different from the kind Mitch carried. April felt a surge of panic as she glanced from the armed strangers to David and Kimberly, still asleep in the blankets. And as she looked, her eyes fell upon the semi-automatic carbine that she now wished she had not foolishly left there, some ten or twelve feet away, hopelessly out of reach.

Six

M
ITCH
H
ENLEY
KNEW
IT
would be foolish and dangerous to dismiss the unknown archer as incompetent simply because he or she had made a poor shot and failed to follow up on tracking down the wounded deer. Any number of explanations could account for that, and he was aware as he set out with Jason that whoever it was might be back on the trail now, or worse, might have found the hanging and partially butchered carcass where he had left it. To avoid running into a surprise, Mitch planned to circle around and approach the ravine from the opposite direction.
 

He knew the drainage well, and once he and Jason reached it, Mitch communicated to him with hand signals as they stalked and stopped, and stalked and stopped, each time freezing for several moments to listen carefully before moving again. This tedious approach took nearly an hour, but it was worth it because once they reached the place where the deer was hanging, Mitch was certain no one was in the immediate vicinity. Ignoring the meat they would return for later, Mitch led the way across the ravine to the opposite side, where he once again picked up the blood trail that led him here the evening before. Following it back to where he’d first jumped the doe was relatively straightforward. Mitch remembered the spot and could have walked directly to it, but once again, he and Jason took the careful approach, stalking as they backtracked the deer’s exact path to make sure no one else was following the sign from the opposite direction.
 

The real tracking work began when they reached the bloody spot where the doe had been laying up and would have probably bled out and died if Mitch had not come along and spooked it. From this point, Mitch intended to backtrack the scattered drops of blood to where the deer had first been hit. In doing so, he hoped to find footprints or some other clue to tell him who had fired that arrow and from where they had come. Jason was an eager apprentice to this business of hunting and tracking, but this was a trail far too important to risk eradicating any sign, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. So Mitch made Jason stay behind him where he could not make a misstep, and each time he found new evidence of the fleeing deer’s passing, he pointed it out both as part of his ongoing teaching and to warn him to stay clear.