Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) (11 page)

It would be a bit of a pain to arrange all these checkpoints, but by doing so, they would all arrive back at the land at roughly the same time. And if Wayne did run into trouble out there on the creek, chances were they’d be close enough by to help him out of a bind before it was too late. Gary knew there was no other option than the canoe if they were going to take the girl and her kid that far. Even if she hadn’t screwed up her ankle, she might not be able to make it carrying such a burden. They were looking at a solid three-day trek, maybe four if there were any more delays. It was a good thing for her that the canoe was available, and that Wayne had plans for her that extended beyond what he could have done right then and there.
 

And so it was that Gary Haggard focused all his attention on the way forward, despite all his training and experience that should have kept his mind and senses open to other considerations. His thoughts were completely occupied with keeping his eyes and ears open for danger lurking in the woods ahead, as well as working out the route through all of these obstacles. His immediate goal was reaching that first check-in point before dark, and knowing Jared and Paul were close behind him, where they were supposed to be, he had little reason to concern himself with his back trail. He knew they would eventually return to this more remote area of the creek, maybe even permanently, but for now he was looking forward to getting back to the relative comfort of the cabin and their familiar land. Just like during the war over there, it was always a relief when a patrol was over, and this one seemed over already now that they were on the return leg to home turf. He had little reason to expect anything else would happen that would be half as exciting as this morning’s encounter on the sandbar.

Sixteen

W
AYNE
P
ARKER
STEERED
THE
canoe for the bank and ran the bow up on a narrow strip of sand in the shade of a big cypress tree. He couldn’t stand it another minute. The little girl had started up crying again and nothing would stop her. April kept trying to sooth her with reassuring words, all the while begging him to pull over and let her give her child something to eat. Wayne didn’t see any way around it. They were making way too much noise and his threats to get them to shut up weren’t doing a damned bit of good.
 

“She’s hungry and she’s scared to death! Any child would be scared in this situation, even you should know that! She’s never going to stop crying unless I can hold her in my arms and touch her. I can’t do that with my hands tied. She can do this for hours. Days even! Believe me, I’m her mother. I should know!”

“Fine then! But if you don’t get her quiet, we’ll be leaving her behind. So whatever you’re going to do, you’d better make it work, and fast!”
 

Wayne stepped out of the canoe and opened the Spyderco folder April had pulled on him in their scuffle. The blade was honed to a razor’s edge and it went through the multiple wraps of three-eight’s inch nylon rope around April’s wrists like they weren’t even there. It didn’t bother Wayne to cut them, because it was just cheap line anyway, part of the bow painter supplied with the rental canoe, many more feet of which was coiled and lying on the bottom of the boat. He didn’t want to be fumbling with untying knots, especially now that he was handling his captive alone. He’d already seen what she was capable of, and figured having the knife open and ready and in his hand would give her pause. It wasn’t worth taking any chances and he didn’t really want to have to seriously hurt either her or the kid. Before he freed her he made that point clear too, warning her that Kimberly would be the one to pay if she tried anything stupid. He didn’t think she would take that risk, and he was right. He opened one of the MREs from his pack and gave it to April. The little girl was obviously hungry from the way she gobbled up the portion of peanut butter inside.
 

When they shoved off again, April was sitting in the bottom of the boat, facing him, her back against the thwart of the bow seat, the rope about her neck tied to it with just enough slack to allow her to sit upright and breathe easy. Although her hands were free, he felt she was still pretty secure. Being tied to the boat by the neck was a good deterrent to prevent her from doing something stupid, like causing him to dump it while they were moving. She wouldn’t have a chance to save herself and Kimberly at the same time, and she had to realize that. Untied or not, her hands were occupied anyway, because in this position she could hold Kimberly close, and finally, the squalling kid had settled down and shut her mouth.
 

Wayne knew that the child was all that mattered to this woman. He knew she hated the fact that she was stuck in that position facing him, and that he was staring at her all the while as he steered and paddled, but as long as she had that little girl in her arms, she would endure anything. She was good mother, as well as a fighter and a survivor. She had exactly the traits Wayne felt a woman should have to live in this harsh new reality. The more he looked at her, the more he came to realize that she was just about perfect for him. Now that the screaming kid was quiet, he could finally talk to her. The way he figured it, three or four days of floating down the river would give him a good start on getting to know her.
 

“So April, how old is Kimberly, exactly?”

She said nothing, nor did she look up at him. She had not looked up at him once since they had started back downriver with her in this new seating arrangement.

“I know you don’t want to talk to me, but you will. I want to know everything about you. I want to hear your story, where you’re from, where you were when the solar flares hit…. I want to know what you did that day and how you survived this long since. And what I really want to know is why you ended up out here in this canoe. Where were you two going and what did you expect to find out here? How did you expect to take care of your baby way out here in these woods alone, and with a husband who couldn’t even hunt, let alone defend you?”

April still ignored him.

“Did you not know Black Creek runs for more than a hundred miles through pretty much nothing but national forest land and other remote country? Or did you even know the name of the creek you were on? Were you hoping going downriver would take you someplace better? You had to know that reaching the coast wouldn’t do you much good. That’s where I’m from, and let me tell you; it’s the last place you want to be right now.”

“We weren’t going to the coast,” April said, finally breaking the silence but not looking up at him as she spoke. “We were looking for my friend, and believe me, we would be safe with him if we had found him.”

“Out here? On the creek? Just where does this friend of yours live? We haven’t seen much sign of life out here in more than a week.”

“He’s here, and not far either. You’re lucky you
didn’t
see him, because he wouldn’t like the fact that you’re here, trespassing and hunting on his family land.”

“His family land? This is national forest land. Public land, as if it even mattered now anyway.”

“Not all of it. You just think it is because you’ve been following the creek. No one could find his land though if they didn’t know where to look, but he keeps an eye on who’s coming and going along this creek.”

“Well, I don’t see him now, do you? Where was he this morning when we found you on that sandbar? I think your imaginary friend may have overslept just like your husband, do you suppose?”

“Screw you! I don’t even want to be reminded about what you did to David! If it wasn’t for my child, you would have had to leave me there dead too before I would have gotten in this boat with you!”

“But you
do
have your child, April. And if you want to keep it that way, you’ll just sit there and not rock the boat.”

Wayne knew she would comply. It seemed to him that she was not as upset about the way they had left her husband as she should be. He wondered if the man lying back there in the sand really was her husband or if she had just made that up. It didn’t really matter to him one way or the other. He knew it could be too, just that she had simply seen so much death and suffering since the lights went out that she was numb to it by now. If that was it, she was not alone, that was for sure.

Wayne had long reached that point, in fact, he’d reached it by the end of the first week when he’d finally made his way back down to the coast only to find Tracy missing. Not knowing where she had gone or what had happened to her was one thing, but then he had gone to his boyhood home in Moss Point and found his parents dead, murdered in their living room, apparently from repeated blows with a blunt object. All because somebody thought they needed the perfectly running 1968 Ford pickup parked in the carport more than his 74-year-old father did. Wayne spent most of a day digging their graves with a shovel in the backyard, and then he had set out to return to the woods. There were run-ins with desperate types who were far less prepared than he and his friends at the hunting camp, and Wayne showed no mercy as he dealt with them as ruthlessly as they no doubt had done with their victims. Killing people came easy to him now, easier than killing game really. The deer and other animals he took for food were just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and taking their lives was just a simple necessity of survival. Killing looters and gang members was different. It seemed most people he met these days
needed
killing for one reason or another. The man with April, whether he was really her husband or not, had not really done anything wrong, at least that Wayne knew of. But he was stupid; stupid and incompetent and simply a victim of natural selection in a world where the stupid and the weak were getting scarcer by the day.
 

He could have left April and her kid there too, and maybe that’s what the other guys wanted, but his hatred of humanity did not extend to everyone. A woman like her would be a good thing to have around. He firmly believed that in these circumstances, no matter what he had to do to make her comply and go with him back to the camp, she would come around eventually. She would warm up to him and the others as well and be grateful just to have a safe place to live with plenty of food for her and her child. Wayne was certain of this, because what other choice did she really have? He’d seen enough by now to know that no matter what people said, or what they believed, when conditions were hard enough, they would break down and submit. And this April, no matter how strong-willed she was, would be no exception.

Seventeen

W
HEN
HE
LEFT
THE
sandbar and entered the heavy woods in the direction he had seen the men go with April and Kimberly, Mitch found plenty of evidence of their passage to know for sure he was on the trail. The most obvious signs were fresh-cut briar vines and small branches still oozing fresh sap where they had been sliced through with a sharp blade. And there were more subtle signs that did not escape his practiced eye; things like clumps of overturned pine needles and leaf litter kicked up by a shuffling boot. It was easy to see they were fresh by the still damp undersides that had been holding moisture against the earth before being disturbed. Actual footprints mattered little to Mitch; he knew he would find them again from time to time, as there would be many areas of mud and sand that the group would have to cross.
 

He came to the first such place not far at all from the sandbar where the trail began. It was a deep gully that would be half full of water during rainy times such as late winter and early spring, but now it was mostly dry in the bottom, with only a few puddles of still water remaining in the deeper holes. The banks were steep and slick with mud and clay. Deep ditches and gullies like this one were typical of the many obstacles that anyone attempting to follow the creek on foot would encounter.
 

Mitch knelt at the edge and examined the tracks, seeing a long slide mark from near the top on his side that went all the way to the bottom of the ditch. That one of them had slipped while climbing down was not surprising. Mitch had done the same many times while scrambling in and out of such gullies. Some of them in the area were deep and with near vertical banks, making them impossible to climb into or out of without using exposed roots and the trunks of small saplings for handholds. There was nothing to hold onto at this particular spot April’s captors had picked for crossing however, and he figured they probably didn’t want to spend the time to look for a better route.
 

Mitch carefully climbed down to the bottom to see if he could determine which one of them it was that slipped, thinking that because of the way April was carrying Kimberly, it could have been her. When he got to the dry streambed, the footprints he found were a confusing mess that was impossible to decipher. He could clearly see one set of tracks continuing across and up the opposite bank, which was equally steep. Whoever made them had difficulty going up that way because each print was smeared with slip marks on the downhill side, leaving little indication as to the type or size shoe or boot that made them. Mitch figured it was probably one of the men, because in the bottom of the gully he saw that there were many more tracks leading downstream, in the direction of Black Creek. Whoever had climbed up straight across obviously had a difficult time of it, and the others went looking for a better place to gain the top bank on the other side.
 

Mitch bent low and followed the main group until he came to sandy wash some three feet wide in the bottom of the ditch. Here the individual footprints were distinct, and it was here that he finally found what he was looking for. Dropping to his hands and knees in the wet sand, he examined a print that was clearly made by a foot that was significantly smaller than any of the others. Tracing the distinct outline made by the edges of her shoe sent shivers down Mitch’s spine. April had been right here, her foot landing in this exact spot he was touching now! This knowledge was one of the things he loved about tracking, whether following the trail of an animal or a fellow human being. The tracks told a story he could read like a book, and there was no question that the one he sought had occupied this exact same space where he now knelt, and just a short time prior. If only she could know he was here; that he was right on her trail not far behind and coming to get her! Surely that knowledge would give her hope in a situation where she must have little left. Mitch couldn’t imagine what must be going through April’s mind right now, alone with her child in the hands of four armed men she had little chance of escaping on her own. She would be frightened for herself but even more so for Kimberly, and she would surely be grieving for what happened to her little girl’s father. Mitch knew she would be wondering where they were being taken and what their fate would be when they got there. She would be sick with worry for her child, but he was determined to catch up quickly and make sure her time of distress was as short as possible.