He glanced down at the ground with a worried look. Except snakes—he was terrified he’d scream like a schoolgirl if he saw a snake slithering around in that muck on the ground and they were far too close to Bee’s Landing for him to pull out his gun and start blasting away. He swallowed. So far, so good. But now that the weather had died down, he was expecting wildlife to reappear, at least for a while, before slipping off to wherever the creatures of the forest had gone to hunker down for the storm’s first act.
“No snakes,” he muttered to himself like a mantra. “No snakes[MP6]…”
The next hour passed in a long tedium of taking careful steps through the storm wreckage, pushing branches out of the way, wiping sweat from his face, and panting with exertion as he climbed over, went around, and sometimes through every tree, bush, and broken branch between the beaver pond and Bee’s Landing. At last, Cisco pushed through a bush that tugged and cut his clothes with nasty thorns and emerged into a small clearing where the rest of his team—and Jenkins’ squad—waited for him and the stragglers he brought.
Jenkins smiled and walked over, looking refreshed—as if he’d just gone on a merry jaunt around the block with his sweetheart. The fool didn’t have a drop of sweat on him. Cisco’s mood darkened instantly, and the smile faded from Jenkins’ face.
“Uh…”
Cisco waved him off. “Your man say it’s time to stop? Because it sure looks like everyone stopped.”
Jenkins looked back at the cluster of hardened criminals and nodded at his own lieutenant, the poacher who led them through the woods. “Yep. Says the neighborhood is only a short walk straight through those bushes there. Maybe five minutes.”
“That’s closer than I expected. Gotta make sure these losers don’t give us away by being too loud. Hey,” he hissed at the group. They all turned to face him. “You best stay quiet, if you want to live to see some payback. Voices carry out here—I heard you a long way off before I got here.” They nodded and turned back to their conversations, albeit quietly.
Cisco exhaled and let the heavy pack he carried slip from his shoulders and drop to the damp earth with a squelch and jingle of gear. He carried a little entrenching tool taken from the stockpile of nature center supplies they’d found—mostly construction gear like shovels and rakes—along with plenty of ammo for his rifle and a couple MREs from his personal stash.
“Want me to get ‘em started on the shelters?” Jenkins asked, peering up through the shredded canopy.
Cisco grunted approval. In the time they’d spent fighting their way through the storm-wounded forest, the sky had lost the blue they’d spotted at the beaver pond. Clouds had closed back in and a steady breeze cooled them as they struggled forward. The eye was passing—or collapsing…that was the word, wasn’t it? Cisco shook his head. It didn’t matter.
“Yeah, let’s get to it. Have Ranger Rick over there build one of those things you told me about and then he can help the others build one like it.”
Cisco pulled his little plastic canteen free of his pack and shook it. The water inside sloshed a little, but there wasn’t much left. It had been a hot, thirsty slog through the forest. He twisted off the cap and took a drink as he walked over and joined the crowd around Jenkins’ poacher friend.
“…how it works, see? We ain’t got time to build proper shelters—ain’t nothing that’s gonna stand up to what’s comin’, at any rate…” he said as Cisco joined the group. “So first thing’s first, we gonna build us little lean-to’s. Big enough for a man or two to stretch out and hide, keep some rain and most of the wind off us, too.” He looked around and settled on a suitable sapling that had been tossed down in a heap on the far side of the little clearing they occupied. “Right here, see this? This ‘un’s about the right size. We gonna need about five or six of these.”
When no one moved, Cisco cleared his throat and pointed at the poacher. “What you waiting for, putas? Get the man some more of those.” They jumped into action like he’d cracked a whip over their heads. He smiled.
In seconds, the group of about twenty men had gathered the fallen timber the poacher needed to continue his shelter building demonstration. He glanced up at the sky. “Yep, she’s coming’ back, boys. Now look here—we gotta be quick. You stack ‘em up like so, facing south—“
“Why south?” one of the others asked. He pointed east. “Storm’s coming from that direction. That’s where the wind came from before…”
Poacher grinned, showing yellowed, tobacco-stained teeth. “The wind started in the east. By the time the eye hit, it was coming from the north, headed due south,” he said, pointing with his arm. “You gotta remember, the hurricane’s a circle. She’s rotating. So, the wind on the back side gonna be wrapping around the eye, movin’ south to north,” he said, miming the motion with his hands in the air. “That means she’s gonna start blowin’ from that direction.” He pointed south, and half the men turned and looked as if the storm were right there.
Cisco pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, Mr. Science, get on with it. I’m sure we all feel smarter for the little weather lesson but show us how to survive this thing.”
Poacher cleared his throat and glanced at Cisco nervously. “Uh, yeah…as I was sayin’, we gotta place the wood this way, east to west, so we make a wall facing south. Like this.” He stooped down and moved the saplings and branches piled at his feet into a neat little wall, held up with a pack someone had left on the ground.
“How you gonna keep it together? You move that pack,” one of the audience said, “and it’ll fall.”
“The ground’s soft from the rain, right?” Poacher said as he rustled through the underbrush and came up with four long sticks, each about an inch thick. “Who’s got axes and hatchets?”
Four hands went up. “Gimme one,” Poacher said. The audience mumbled to themselves while a hatchet was produced and handed over.
“Now, we just line up the shorter branches like this and drive ‘em home. Alternate, one on this side here, the other over on that side, and back on this side at the end.” He set to work, using the blunt back of the hatchet head like a hammer to pound in the sticks—now stakes—and pin the mini log wall in place. He stood up a moment later and beamed at them. “There you go.”
“That’s good enough to stop the wind coming straight at you, but what about the rain? We gonna be lying in the rain for a few hours?” one of the men at the front asked.
Poacher handed the hatchet back. “Nope. Grab some pine boughs—branches—and lay ‘em on top. Shoot, you could get some long branches like these,” he said, as he put his foot on the wall. “Lay ‘em sideways like this,” he added as he dropped a support branch perpendicular to the logs, “and then cover it with pine boughs. All this stuff is green—see?” he said and picked up a thin branch still heavy with leaves from the ground. He bent the smaller shoots around his hand. “Strip the leaves, peel the bark and you got yourself some rope to tie it all together.”
“This really gonna work?” Jenkins asked. The men all looked at him—and Cisco—then back to Poacher.
“We’ll find out,” Cisco growled. “Get to work, everyone. The clock’s ticking.” He glanced at the sky. “The storm’s gonna be back before we know it.”
As the crowd dispersed to find their own logs and building supplies, Cisco followed suit. He wasn’t about to share a shelter with one of those sweaty animals and decided to make his with plenty of space to stretch and relax. He swallowed. Not like he’d be able to relax all that much laying on the ground. He looked down as he carefully searched for suitable building material. There could be snakes everywhere in the tangled mess at his feet.
“No snakes…” he muttered to himself. “No snakes…”
Chapter 18
Lavelle Homestead
Bee’s Landing Subdivision
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
Darien paced the kitchen like a caged animal. They’d gone the entire day hunkered down in Lavelle’s h
ouse, as the hurricane raged around them. Several windows had broken—they’d heard the glass shatter and pelt the heavy plywood sheathing installed inside the window frames—but so far, the storm had failed to breach the house.
That didn’t mean they were safe. Darien frowned as he peered through the gun slit in the plywood that covered the kitchen window. On the west side of the house, the glass was still intact, having been spared the brunt of the storm’s fury. He watched as the sun set over a murky twilight that had lasted all day, a result of the impenetrable clouds that swirled around the hurricane’s eye. Wind and rain had lashed the house and the edge of the forest preserve since before the sun rose and turned the world gray. Now the sun had almost set and the grays all crept toward black.
“I can’t believe she’s out there in that,” Mia whispered as she stood next to the table and hugged herself.
Darien glared at the covered window. “She’s in Cisco’s camp—which is even worse.”
“I can’t blame them, then.”
Darien turned. “Who?”
“Gary…G-Gary and Mitch,” she stammered.
Darien narrowed his eyes and stepped toward the table. “What do you mean, you can’t blame them? They didn’t have anything to do with her capture.”
Mia glanced away, toward the hallway that led to the living room at the back of the house. “Oh…I…I mean…”
Amber stepped into the kitchen from the direction Mia looked, her face ashen and streaked with tear tracks. She walked forward like a zombie, arms and legs limp and her back slumped as if all the air had left her. “It’s my fault,” she said quietly as her foot snagged the linoleum tile on the floor and a sharp squeak pierced the constant low drone of the wind outside.
Darien put his hands on his hips. “Okay, enough with the weepy stuff. Will someone please tell me what the—“
“Mitch and Gary left!” Amber blurted, her eyes wide and bloodshot. “They left to get my mom!”
“What?” Darien said, uncomprehending.
“Because you wouldn’t go after her!” Amber screamed.
“I’m just gonna go check on the kids…” Mia muttered as she quietly fled the room.
“Whoa, hang on a second,” Darien began, hands up in front of his chest. “Wanna run that by me again?”
“I said, Mitch and Gary took off—they went to go rescue my mom. And it’s my fault!”
Darien blinked. “But you just said—”
Amber chopped at the air with her hand, irritated. “Doesn’t matter—it’s all my fault. If I had been faster, if I had fought harder, if they’d never taken me…then mom wouldn’t have gone out there to find me…”
“Hey,” Darien said sharply. “We’ve been over this—it’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault around here, it’s mine because I let Cisco loose…”
“Don’t you dare,” Amber said in a low voice. “Don’t you dare try to take this away from me.”
“Now you want it to be your fault?” Darien turned away. “I can’t.”
“I don’t have anything left!” Amber cried as she sank into the chair, sobbing. She buried her face in her hands, her auburn hair splayed out around her on the table.
A particularly strong gust shook the house—at least that’s what it felt like to Darien. One second the walls were stable, the next, two pictures by the back door moved, just slightly, just enough to make someone uncomfortable with the fact that the wall moved. Thunder boomed outside the house, muffled, but still loud.
“Look, this isn’t the best time for going on a guilt trip, Amber—”
“Mom could be dead out there right now!”
Darien slapped a hand down on the table, the sound loud enough to make her flinch. “I know!” He stepped away from the table and took a few deep breaths to calm himself.
Harriet stumbled into the kitchen. “What is going on in here?”
“Not now,” he growled and held up a hand to stop further questioning. “Amber, this is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to avoid by making everyone stay here. While that storm is out there, we’re blind and deaf. If Cisco snuck up on us—”
Harriet scoffed and crossed her arms. “Not likely—have you seen what it looks like out there? There’s at least a dozen trees down that I can see from the upstairs windows…”
Darien glared at her until she looked away, huffed once, and walked out of the kitchen with an exasperated sigh. He’d pay for that later, but first he had to bring Amber back to earth so he could deal with the news that two of his fighters had up and left—and no one had bothered to tell him until after the fact. Some leader he was shaping up to be.
“My point is,” Darien tried again, “that if we run out there now—”
“Yeah, I know, thanks,” Amber snarled, “you’ve told me this a hundred times already. We can’t go out because then we’ll leave the place undefended—as if I cared that much about a house I don’t even live in anymore! I want my mom back!” She stood and turned toward the door, then back at Darien, her eyes overflowing with tears. She wiped at her face with the heel of one hand and a staccato sob escaped her lips.
“Amber, I’m on your side,” Darien said as he stepped closer to her, unsure what to do. He caught Harriet’s eye, as she watched from the hallway, and she looked at him like he was an idiot and made a go on motion with her hands.
Darien shrugged as Amber stood in front of him sobbing, her whole body shaking with the release of emotion. Harriet made an exaggerated eye roll and mimed hugging someone.
Darien nodded in understanding and awkwardly reached around Amber. She flinched at his touch, then recoiled and began pummeling his chest. “Don’t you touch me, it’s all your fault!”
He ignored the bruising blows to his sternum—the girl was strong—and instinct made him step closer and embrace her. When she discovered she couldn’t move, she melted and fell against him, sobbing into his shoulder.
“Yes, it’s my fault,” he muttered into her hair, and watched as Harriet smiled broadly and nodded as if to say finally. He also noticed her eyes gleamed with moisture, too.
“I hate you,” Amber whispered.
Darien looked away from Harriet toward the covered window. He could barely see the whipping branches and white sheets of rain through the narrow opening. “Good. Hate me,” he whispered back. “I hate me, too. It is my fault,” he said, and when she tilted her head back and looked at him with round eyes, he continued: “And I swear to you I’m going to get her back.”
She pushed back against him and he quickly let her go. She nodded and stepped back further. Then Harriet was at her side, offering a box of tissues and soothing murmurs. Mia appeared from the other entrance, down the hallway that led to the stairs, and wiped at her own tears.
“We’ll all get her back,” Mia said firmly, though she looked ready to collapse.
“How?” Amber blurted through her tears. She crumpled the first tissue, sniffed, and snatched a second one from Harriet. “When?”
“Marty says the storm is getting weaker,” Harriet said helpfully. “Maybe it’s almost over?”
“How does he know that? Did he hear it on the radio?” asked Mia.
“He said his knees don’t hurt as much,” Harriet replied with a shrug. “Well, he said, either the storm is weakening or he’s dying…”
Amber snorted and wiped at her face again. “That’s not very comforting…”
“Or accurate,” Darien agreed. “But he may have a point.” He turned back to the window and leaned over the sink to get a better look. Several tall trees on the border of the forest preserve had lost the fight against the all-day wind and rain, and raw, exposed root balls lifted into the air under big gaps in the foliage. “I can see further out there now, even though it’s getting on sunset.” He turned back to the women. “We could be coming up on the eye.”
“That’s bad, isn’t it?” asked Mia. “We…Jimmy and I…we haven’t been through a direct hit before…”
“The
winds are usually the strongest around the eye, yeah,” Darien said as he crossed his arms. “But if it really is the eye, then we could see a stretch of clear weather.”
“That’s good, right?” Mia asked as she looked from Amber to Harriet, then Darien. “It means we’ll be able to go after Cami!”
Darien grunted. “And Cisco will be able to come after us.” He sighed. “And now we’ll have to go track down Mitch and Gary…”
Light erupted down the hallway toward the front door and wind howled down the hallway. “The front door!” Darien yelled. He bolted forward to go shut it when the light went out and the door slammed with a sound that stopped Darien in his tracks.
“Mitch!” Amber said, and flung herself into his arms, heedless of the water that dripped off him.
“Where were you?” Darien demanded. “You almost got shot—we thought—“
“Outside,” the wiry youth said over Amber’s head. He winked at Mia. “Dad and I went to go get your mom back,” he said as he held Amber at arm’s length.
“Why are you here, then?”
Mitch let go of her arms to run a hand through his sopping hair. “Because Dad wouldn’t let me come.” He looked down at the bandage on his leg, covering the wound he’d suffered when he’d chased the men who’d abducted Amber. “Said I was wounded and he wouldn’t be able to worry about me and the storm and Cami.”
“But…but you left an hour ago!” Mia blurted.
Mitch grinned, his teeth flashing white through his black beard. “Well…dad said I couldn’t follow him—he took John Douglass, by the way—“
“I guess everyone’s doing whatever they want around here,” Darien muttered.
“—but he didn’t say anything about me staying put,” Mitch continued, “so I went around to the other houses and raised the banner.”
Amber shook her head, hands raised to either side of her face. “I don’t understand. What banner? The storm’s still—“
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 14