Storm Tide Rising: Blackout Volume 2 (20 page)

Danny swallowed hard, and for a moment he looked like a trapped fox trying to find his way out of the chicken house. Finally, his shoulders slumped in resignation, and he nodded. "I was going to use the horses to carry the meat back, though," he said dejectedly.

"You still got the dogs, " Joe said, "and we'll leave you the saddle bags. Take all the meat you can carry on your back and fit on those dogs. They look strong, so you should still get a good bit of it. Me and the boys will help you load up tonight, and you'll leave at first light in the morning."

Joe leaned forward and fixed his eyes hard on Danny's for a moment. "If you try to run, I will track you down and put a bullet in your back before you make it home. And if you come back this way, it better be to buy a cow and not to poach one. I catch you or anyone else poaching our cows again and I'll kill every last one of you. I don't mind selling extra beef if we've got it to spare, but someone tries to take what's ours and I won't stand for that, you understand?"

Danny nodded, but he didn't speak. Joe whistled for Eric and Brant to come up through the woods. They helped Danny stuff the saddle bags with some of the meat he'd already salted and smoked along with some jerky he'd salted and seasoned then dried in the sun. In the end there was a good thirty to forty pounds in each of the saddlebags, and they bulged like a hamster's cheeks.

"I could leave now," Danny said hopefully.

Joe shook his head. "First light, and not before," he said. "We'll be in the area, so don't think you can slip out without us seeing you. And we'll go ahead and take our horses and saddles, thank you very much."

"I still think this is robbery," Danny grumbled.

"It very nearly was," Joe agreed. "If you don't like the price, then next time negotiate it before you steal. Remember, take only what you can fit in the saddle bags and on your back. Leave the rest on the rack and we'll take it ourselves. I'll see you at sunrise to say goodbye."

Eric and Brant untied the horses and led them away from the campfire. Joe walked with them, and when they were out of ear shot of the camp, he leaned close to them and whispered. "Take the horses back to our place. Circle around wide and then head to the highway. Ride the horses if you can, otherwise just walk with them and they should follow you. Brant, you come back with Tom and we'll set up a watch to keep an eye on Danny. We're going to have to keep an eye out too in case Danny's uncle isn't happy when he comes back with no horses."

Brant nodded and the two boys moved off through the woods. Joe circled wide to the left and crept as close as he dared through the woods. He climbed up into a leaning deadfall and wedged himself into a pocket between the fallen trunk and two other pines that were bent nearly double from the weight of the fallen tree. He made himself as comfortable as he could and watched through the trees as Danny sat staring into the dying flames. Joe didn't really like the idea of letting this guy go since he clearly knew how to reach the pastures and he knew the size of the herds. But all of the other options ended in bloodshed, and he liked them even less.

Besides, Joe was certain that there would be enough blood shed in the days to come.

Ch.30

Ahead of the Storm

Mike looked up at the sky, only to see a heavy blanket of low clouds that hid the moon and the stars. There was a time when clouds like that would radiate with the orange-yellow glow of high powered sodium vapor lamps. There had been enough lights in and around Charlotte to turn a low hanging cloud bank into a massive nightlight that was almost bright enough to read by.

But now, the low and heavy thunderclouds were dark and ominous. They shrouded everything, lit only briefly by distant flashes that randomly punctuated the near-total darkness. The lightening was still far enough to the northeast that Mike couldn't hear the thunder, but judging by how quickly the flashes were increasing in frequency and intensity, he guessed it wouldn't be long before the rumbles of thunder would be echoing across the water.

All of sudden, a massive concrete pillar materialized from the dim inky soup around them, and Alex cursed softly. "What happened?" he asked, his breath catching in his throat as he tried to whisper.

Mike looked at the twisted rubble between the spans to their left. He opened his mouth to answer, but Alyssa beat him to it. "A bomb hit the bridge," she said in an oddly calm voice. "It must have been a big one to bring down the entire center span with one hit." 

Silence settled over the lake and, like the darkness overhead, it was a testament of the turmoil that had just passed and a foreboding portent of troubles ahead. After a long moment, Alyssa turned to Mike. "That's where my mother died?"

Mike nodded but wasn't really sure she saw him clearly enough to tell. “Yes,” he said in a bare whisper, “she was on the other side and with friends. She didn't die alone.”

"We all die alone," Alyssa said, half to herself. Her eyes had a far off look in them as if she were trying to pierce the darkness and see the spot where her mother had been impaled by a jagged piece of the bridge’s steel. As if on cue, a long flickering flash of blue lightening lit up the sky behind them to the northeast. For a moment, the opposite side of the bridge was visible in the intense light. What Mike saw made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Parked near the edge of the jagged, gaping hole in the bridge were two vehicles that looked like tanks, with two rows of huge black wheels instead of tracks. The gun was shorter too, but not by much. As the light from that flash faded, the first dim rumble of thunder rolled through the darkness.

Alyssa and Alex clearly saw them as well. "We need to go, now," Alex said, his voice barely restrained, and so the three of them began paddling again. At first Alex put as much power behind his strokes as he could while still keeping them quiet. Off to their right they could hear dogs barking in the distance, but those sounds were dim echoes compared to the thunder that rumbled closer and closer. Nothing moved along the shore, and there was a foul smell that rose off the lake like a mixture of soured meat and strong fuel fumes.

Alex had sharp eyes, and he used the lightning flashes to judge the distance back to the ruined bridge. When he guessed they were well out of earshot, he slowed his pace and allowed Mike and Alyssa to catch up. "We've got to get off the water," he said. "In a half hour, maybe less, that storm's going to break, and we don't want to get caught out in the middle of that."

Mike nodded. "I agree. Between the wind and the lightning, we'll get flipped over, and I'm pretty sure this water isn't the kind you want to go swimming in right now. I've seen some dead fish floating by, and that's usually a pretty bad sign. But where do we go? We've still got four miles south to get even close to your sister's neighborhood."

"So we go the rest of the way on foot," Alyssa answered. "I don't want to get fried like a bug zapper if the lightning hits the water."

"There's a big housing development down about a mile and a half on the north shore," Alex said. "Right next door to that one is the land that was going to be a sister-neighborhood by the same builder, but the builder went belly up a few years back. The city ended up making the land a nature preserve or something. We can land there and get off the lake at least long enough to ride out the storm."

"How do you know about this place?"  Mike asked, a little suspicious.

"A group of us liked to go up and down the river and camp along the way," Alex replied with a slight shrug. "You find little places like this every so often along the lake and the river. Up the river a little way from the Whitewater center are the ruins of an old shipping company or something. It's up past Hickory where they used to load up furniture to ship out to the rest of the country. The buildings are mostly under water now and make great places to catch fish. The artificial structures give them a break from the currents, so they crowd in there."

"You're sure this place is isolated?"  Mike asked, still suspicious.

"As sure as I can be," Alex answered honestly. "Normally, you'd never see anyone down there ‘cause there just isn't anything there. It's all scrub brush and undergrowth from the forest slowly reclaiming land that was originally meant for executive style water-front properties. These days, with things the way they are, who knows? Half of Charlotte might be down there throwing a bonfire party."

"Well, if they are let's see if we can beat the rain and crash the party," Mike said, as they began paddling again. It took them longer than it should have to cover the distance, but Alex was navigating solely by the small ball compass set in the bow of his kayak. They reached the other shore to find broad grassy lawns manicured right up to the water's edge. After a few minutes following the shore to the right, the yards stopped and the woods began. It was almost like someone had drawn the division with a straight-edge.

Alex paddled to the mouth of an inlet and turned in to follow it. The main trunk split to the left with a small tributary to the right, and Alex followed the off shoot. After a while it began to narrow until what had been a small cove widened into the mouth of a stream that emptied into the lake. Alex headed for the north side of the creek, and soon the outline of an overgrown pier and boat ramp materialized out of the gloom. The wind, which had been blowing constantly in their faces, suddenly stopped. Mike felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as his ears picked up a sound behind them like tiny pea-gravel being poured slowly over sheet metal.  

The wind brushed lightly at Mike's back as they paddled up the sloping, cracked concrete of the abandoned ramp. The air temperature had dropped a good six or seven degrees in just a few minutes. The sweat Mike had worked up paddling out on the lake now felt almost clammy against his skin.

Before the bow of the inflatable canoe even touched the concrete, Mike was already out pulling on it, splashing through water that was deeper than it looked. He could walk, but with water up well above his knees, it wasn't a quiet thing to do. Still, the lightning flashes had grown even more intense, and thunder was now rolling with each strike. Two strikes hit nearby, almost on top of each other, in blinding flashes, and the thunder that followed was loud enough to make their ears hurt. It was too close for Mike.

Alex was out and pulling his kayak up the ramp, too. He trotted up the narrow clay beach and tossed the lightweight vessel onto the thin verge of grass before the underbrush started. He turned and helped Mike pull the canoe the rest of the way up the ramp with Alyssa paddling for all she was worth to help. Alyssa sprang out of the bow once the small boat had beached far enough to keep her feet out of the water. She resolutely shouldered both her pack and Mike's as the two men wrestled with the unwieldy canoe in the growing gusts of wind.

They pushed their way carefully through the dense underbrush until they broke through into a thin strip of what looked like old growth pine forest. Alex stopped for a moment to catch his breath. "You said you're from around here, right?"  he asked.

Mike gave a slight shrug. "You could say that," he replied, "but it's more like I've driven through this area so many times I know it pretty well."

"So if I told you that Highway 160 is less than a mile that way," Alex pointed a little north of east, "you'd pretty much know what that means?"

Mike nodded. "Yeah, I know that road pretty well. I've driven it a lot over the years."

"Good," Alex said, and he shouldered his kayak. "Then I'm going my own way from here. There are a couple of people I need to check up on, and the guys back at the center want to know where all the police are, so I'm going to look for some."

"No police?"  Mike asked, confused. "Those Federal Security Service guys are all over the place."

Alex shook his head. "I'm not talking about those guys, whoever they are. I'm talking FBI, Charlotte PD, North Carolina State Troopers, anyone
except
the FSS. Did you ever hear of them before this whole thing went down?"

Mike started to answer, but thought about it a moment. He frowned as he came to the realization that he hadn’t heard of them at all before the blackout.

"My point exactly," Alex said when neither Mike nor Alyssa could name another time they'd seen or even heard of the new security group. "They just materialized. Any other disaster and you've got a dozen different agencies all working on that one thing. This is the biggest disaster or catastrophe to hit our nation ever, and there's one group of guys on  top of it? That just doesn't seem right."

Mike shook his head. "I can't say you're wrong. The ones we had a run-in with weren't very pleasant, and something just didn't feel right about them. That's why we left when we did."

Alex shook Mike's hand and then Alyssa's. "I hope you find your sister, ma'am," he said to Alyssa. "If people have family left, that's who they should be with."

Alyssa started to say something but suddenly had to choke back tears. "Thank you," she finally managed.

"If you guys get in a bad spot, you can always come back to the center," Alex said. "You seem like good people, and we need to stick together."

Before anyone could respond, lightning split the sky and the thunder rattled Mike’s chest. By the time he and Alyssa looked down, Alex had disappeared into the fierce night, and for a moment neither Mike nor Alyssa knew what to say. They tied the canoe to a tree, and Mike set some tree branches in the bottom to weigh it down. He tested the rope and hoped the knot was tight enough to hold fast through the storm.

Alyssa looked at Mike, her eyes hard and determined. "I'm not going to stop for the storm. If you want to, you're welcome to, but I can't when we're this close."

Mike smiled and took his pack from Alyssa. "Never thought that you would. I'll get us there, you just have to keep up."

"Keep up?"  Alyssa gasped, her eyes going wide. Before she could snap a response back, though, Mike was already moving through the trees, his rifle in his hands. The thunder and lightning marched closer, and the steady wind picked up its force and began gusting even stronger. Alyssa stomped through the towering pine trees as the first fat drops of ran splattered against her left cheek.