Refuge: After the Collapse

by Scott B. Williams

  Once Larry was satisfied that they’d investigated every option, they returned to the boat. The two positions Larry had picked out were about ninety degrees apart, enough to create an effective crossfire without either team endangering the other with stray rounds. Jessica would go with Larry, and Casey would be teammates with Artie. Artie hoped he and Larry could take care of what needed doing quickly and without the help of the girls, but he was glad his daughter would be right beside him because if anything went wrong he would be ready to take a bullet for her without hesitation.

  After all this was settled, the afternoon hours dragged by with no sign of Grant, Scully, or the men in the fishing boat. Although the galley was a wreck of scattered dishes and cookware, the alcohol stove had been left where it was mounted in the counter, and its fuel tank was still half full as it had been when Larry had made coffee that morning before the attack. They cooked rice and canned beans from the stash of supplies Casey had liberated from Derek’s camp and then had hot tea, which was among the few supply items the thieves had left aboard when they looted the boat. Needless to say, all of Larry’s rum supply was gone.

  “I may never see another bottle of 10 Cane again,” he grumbled.

  “I’m sure that wherever we end up eventually, we can figure out a way to trade for something drinkable.”

  “Yeah, I guess. That reminds me though, before all this happened, I was using my alone time on the boat to go over my charts. I’ve been thinking about where we might go.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I had first thought about some of the cays along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán. There are some really isolated ones out there along the barrier reef, both in Mexico and Belize, but the more I think about it, I don’t know. That area is pretty easy to get to from Florida, not to mention Cuba and the bigger resort towns in Mexico. There may be too many other boats there already. It’s not really remote enough.

  “I thought about going farther south, too, like maybe the cays of Nicaragua or the San Blas Islands of Panama. A lot of them are inhabited by indigenous people, but those people were already living off the grid before it went down. I thought maybe we could trade with them, or at least work out something where they’ll leave us alone.”

  “Nicaragua or Panama?” Jessica asked, a look of disbelief on her face. “Why do we have to go so far? How long will that take?”

  “Not as long as you’d think, Jessica. I know your and Casey’s only experience sailing was knocking around with me in the Virgin Islands last summer, but that was a slower boat, and when you’re day sailing, there’s the getting underway every morning and then anchoring down every night that eats up a lot of your time. Offshore is different. The boat is underway twenty-four/seven. With any decent wind at all, we can reel off up to 200 miles a day. We could be in the Canal Zone in a week if we are lucky. Unfortunately, going through it is probably not an option, but I sure wish it were. Life would be easier for us on the Pacific.”

  “If we were on the Pacific, you could drop me off in Los Angeles.”

  Artie saw the look of sadness come over Jessica’s face. Her parents were in Los Angeles. She had no way of knowing if they were dead or alive. Of course none of them had any way of knowing if the West Coast of the continent was affected the same way as the Southeast, but it seemed likely it was.

  “Yeah, I wish we could, Jessica. I wish we could…. But anyway, to answer your other question, we need to go far to get away from the main sailing routes and stopovers most boats use. Places like the islands of the Eastern Caribbean, the Bahamas, Caymans, and the rest are likely to be destinations for a lot of people who had anything resembling a seaworthy boat when this happened. We’re not the only ones with the idea of sailing away, believe me. We need to get off the beaten path, not only to avoid the others, but to find places that aren’t fished out and that have a water source. The more I’ve thought about it, though, the more I think the tropics may not be the answer. Like I said, if we could get to the Pacific, we’d be set. We could sail north to British Columbia or Alaska, where we’d have the whole Inside Passage to cruise and hide out in. That place is a paradise of wilderness that’s full of fish, game, and fresh water. But we can’t get there.”

  “So what are our other options?” Casey asked.

  “There are a lot, but none of them are easy to get to. Another downside of the Nicaragua and Panama area is that those coasts are on the leeward side of the Caribbean. Getting away from there to go anywhere else would be a difficult upwind beat. There are a lot of people in those countries, and even though much of the area is still jungle and swamp, by now many of those people may be making their way to the uninhabited areas with the same idea of living off the land as we have. If we get there and find it too crowded, it would be a difficult sail upwind to leave and go anywhere else.”

  “Where else do you have in mind?” Artie asked.

  “Well, there’s always the North Atlantic. We could head to the Maritime Provinces of Canada, somewhere like New Brunswick or Labrador, or we could head out into the ocean and sail far enough east to catch a favorable wind and then cross back to the east side of South America. There are still some extremely remote places on the coasts of Brazil and the Guyanas.”

  “I’m betting Scully will be in favor of the latter,” Artie said. “From what he told me, he hates the cold!”

  “Grant would like the second option better, too!” Casey said. “He spent all last summer in Guyana. That’s where he did his graduate fieldwork. Hey, maybe we can go stay with that tribe he lived with! It was somewhere along a big river in the jungle. I’ll bet it was a lot like this place.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it. I don’t have detailed charts for that coast, but it’s a possibility. It would be a long, hard sail, but so would anywhere remote enough to consider a real refuge. One thing is for certain, though, anywhere would be better than here. We just have to get away from the U.S. mainland.”

  When the sun finally set and dusk turned to full darkness with no sign of Grant and Scully, Larry had to once again remind Casey and Jessica that it was unlikely they were in imminent danger. He said that even aside from the grid going down, they were on river time and traveling by boat, so schedules meant little. An extra day’s delay could be something as simple as engine problems or log jams they were dealing with trying to get to the cabin. It was a long way upstream on a much smaller tributary than the main Pearl, after all. Artie pointed out, too, that Grant and Scully were both competent woodsmen and travelers.

  Even after this pep talk, sleep did not come easily that night for any of them. Every hour that Grant and Scully were overdue increased their anxiety, and Artie found himself in a mental battle fighting to push away possible scenarios that kept playing in his mind. When dawn broke he had probably slept less than two hours, but he was up on deck at first light watching and listening with Casey, hoping to hear the little outboard approaching from the north. But there was nothing but the normal sounds of the wild inhabitants of the swamp until mid-morning, when Casey hushed them all to silence.

  “Listen! Do you hear that?”

  At first, Artie thought she was just hearing things, but half a minute later, he heard it too: a faint, mechanical throbbing, far in the distance to the north, clearly somewhere upriver. It was not the erratic, high-revving whine of an outboard, he knew that immediately, and there was no mistaking what it was or what it meant.

  “They’re coming!” Larry said. “Let’s get moving!”

  Artie felt his stomach twist into knots at his brother’s words. All the talk and planning had come to an end. It was time to act.

  TEN

  Once they were a few bends down the river from the cabin and well out of Grant’s sight, Joey slowed the outboard to idle and eased the Johnboat ashore on a small sandbar. He found it annoying having Scully sitting in the middle of the boat, with Zach at the bow facing aft to cover him and unable to help scout the waters ahead for obstructions. He decided it would be
better to put their hostage in the bow. That way he and Zach would both be facing forward and could talk without going through Scully. This done, they were back in the river a few minutes later, Joey running the motor about half speed, which was as fast as he dared with all the snags and shallows that made staying in the channel a constant worry.

  “How long is it going to take to get to the sailboat, Island Man? This river is so damned crooked it feels like we’re going two miles sideways for every mile we go forward.”

  “Grant said they were planning on going back tomorrow, Joey. It took them almost two full days to get up here. It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours, maybe we should have waited and left in the morning.”

  “Nevah gonna see dat boat before tomorrow. Got to go slow on de river in de night. Lotta log, shoal, and bad place, mon.”

  “See what I mean, even he says it’s not a good idea. We should have waited.”

  “And sit there all night trying to guard two people? No, I didn’t want to have to look at Grant another minute. I should have just shot him, but I’d rather he sit there in that cabin thinking about us sailing away with his girlfriends. Besides, I’m not worried about running the river at night. We’ll have moonlight, and people fish at night, don’t they? We’ll just have to go slow. But I want to get there.”

  “I hope you’re not wasting your time. I just wish Jessica and Casey had been with Grant today. We could have run him and Rastaman off and just stayed there. I would rather be in that cabin than out here any day.”

  “You’ve got to look at the big picture, Zach. That cabin is fine for now, and we haven’t had any trouble, but you can bet that people are going to start showing up there. They have to. There are too many people looking for anywhere they can go to hide and stay alive. We couldn’t have stayed there much longer even if Jessica and Casey were there.”

  “I get that, but this idea of sailing away sounds risky, too. And you heard what Grant said about Casey’s dad and uncle. I’m betting they’re not going to be too excited to see us show up looking to crew for them, even if Jessica does listen to what you’ve got to say.”

  “We’ll see,” Joey said, giving Zach a look that said he didn’t want to discuss this aspect of their plan in front of Scully. “Just help me keep an eye out for logs. If we hit something and fuck up the motor we’re screwed.”

  “I’m watching, but you need to take it easy until we get to deep water. The Pearl River is a lot bigger, and down there in the swamp we can run wide open, or at least we could in the daytime.”

  “I’m not scared of the dark. It’s probably better to travel this river at night anyway. You never know when some yahoo with a rifle might take a pot shot at us going by. There’s got to be a lot of people out in these woods that would like to have a boat and motor, even if it is a worn-out piece of shit.”

  But they quickly found that Scully wasn’t joking about shoals and logs in those upper reaches of the Bogue Chitto. Joey constantly had to shift the outboard to neutral and tilt it forward to lift the prop so they could slide over some log or gravel bar covered with just inches of water. In a few places they had to actually get out of the boat and drag it. The late afternoon light faded as they worked through this section. By the time they passed under the first bridge below the cabin, it was already dark, but the almost-full moon was rising, casting a pale light through the trees that reflected in the current of the channel. There was a long beach of white sand that stood out in contrast to the black backdrop of woods, running for a good 200 yards north of the bridge on the east side of the river. The sandbar was deserted and nothing moved in the vicinity of the bridge or on the roadway above. Another half mile downstream, they passed a large vacation home situated on a high bluff overlooking the river. The absence of candlelight from the windows or campfire outside meant it was likely deserted.

  “Looks like a nicer cabin than Grant’s,” Zach said as they motored by. “I’ll bet there’s all kinds of stuff in there we could get.”

  “Maybe, but we don’t have time to stop. That close to a bridge, somebody’s probably looted it already. I’m surprised it hasn’t been burned.”

  “There are some canoes up there, too. Look.”

  Joey could see a separate shed bathed in moonlight, and under the tin roof a couple of canoes and what looked like a kayak of some kind, all against one side in racks. “Yeah, who the hell wants ’em? Too fucking slow and only good for going downstream. That’s why they’re still there.”

  “Well, this one we’re pulling is good for something. At least for hauling stuff.”

  “Yeah, but I also didn’t want Grant to get any ideas about following us, not that it would do him any good to try and keep up with us without a motor. But he’s so stupid, he’ll probably try to walk all the way down the river to get back to Casey and Jessica. And we’ll all be long gone way before he does, if he even makes it that far.”

  They had gone another mile when Joey noticed something different about the reflections on the water ahead. He throttled the engine back to idle and slowed down. With the outboard running more quietly, all of them could now hear the sound of rushing water ahead. “Hey, what have we got here? Can you tell what it is?”

  “It sounds like rapids, but I can’t see where they are.”

  Joey yelled at Scully: “How bad is this place? Can we get through it? You and Grant did, right?”

  “Coming through in de day, no problem, mon. But de current she strong and lotta snag sticking up in de river. Gotta be careful, de boat she don’t go sideways and flip!”

  “Watch out, Joey, it looks pretty swift!” Zach yelled as they rounded the bend and saw the source of all the noise.

  “Shit! We’re already too close to turn back and look it over with that damned canoe tied behind us. The last thing I want to do is get the line tangled up in the prop. Fuck!”

  Joey tried to steer through the deepest part of the current ahead, but in the dark it was impossible to discern the channel from the shoals, much less pick out all the protruding snags and logs in time to avoid them. The rapids area was only a minor drop of a few feet over a distance of about a hundred yards, but it reached from bank to bank so there was no avoiding it. Joey was afraid to apply too much power to the throttle because the river was moving faster than he was comfortable with even drifting, but without enough thrust from the engine to maintain steerage, it was impossible to maneuver around the obstructions. The Johnboat first slammed into one protruding tree branch and then another, causing it to spin around until they were actually going stern first. Joey yelled and screamed at Zach to try the paddle, but neither of them really knew enough about boat handling for paddling to make a difference, and they would have found this stretch of river challenging even in daylight. It was hopeless in the dark, and Scully didn’t even attempt to help.

  Joey thought getting spun around stern-first was bad, but then the line between the canoe and the boat snagged on the jagged end of a protruding log, causing both boats to suddenly slam to a stop, the canoe flipping and the stern of the Johnboat dipping low enough to swamp the entire boat. Joey screamed in rage as the water flooded over his seat in the stern and the engine submerged and finally sputtered and died. The next thing he knew, he was in the water, clinging to the side of the boat with one hand and the Mossberg shotgun with the other. All the supplies in the capsized canoe were floating away in the current and everything that would not float immediately sank to the bottom. Joey focused on hanging onto the Johnboat, which finally came free of the log when both boats shifted to one side in the current, allowing the towline between them to slip off the projection it had snagged. As soon as the line was free, the two boats continued to be swept downstream. Joey turned to see Zach swimming beside the boat, desperately trying to grab some of the floating bags of food and gear. He expected to see Scully as well, but though he scanned the dark waters as far as he could see around a 360-degree arc, he saw no sign of the dreadlocked islander.

  “Zach!
Where did that son of a bitch go? Do you see him?

  Zach did not. He had been so busy trying to grab their stuff before it floated away that he didn’t even realize their hostage was missing. Both of them were now looking for him as they wrestled the two boats into an eddy, and then into still water, where they finally stopped drifting. Joey was furious. The boat was too full of water to climb back in without bailing it out, but, much to his surprise, when he put his feet straight down, he found the bottom and discovered the water was only chest deep. Forgetting the boat for the moment, he raised the shotgun to his shoulder and pointed it back upriver in the direction of the rapids. He had managed to keep the muzzle above water the whole time, so he didn’t hesitate to quickly unleash three rounds in the general direction they had last seen Scully, just as fast as he could work the pump-action slide. When the echoes of the blasts died away, there was only the sound of the rushing water, and they still had seen no movement or anything else to indicate anyone was there.

  “Where are you, you motherfucker?”

  “Maybe he just fell in and drowned,” Zach said.

  “No fuckin’ way. That dude lived on boats. You heard what Grant said. He didn’t fall in; he jumped in when we were busy trying to save the boats. The son of a bitch is probably already in the woods by now.”

  “So what are we gonna do about it?”

  “There’s nothing we can do, we just have to bail the boats out and keep going. At least he knows I’ve still got the shotgun, in case he thought he was going to try something.” Joey fired another wild shot into the woods just for good measure. “If I see your face again, you’re dead! You got that, island man?”

  Grant hoped he was making the right decision as he jogged down the deserted gravel road leading away from the cabin. Even before they left, as Joey and Zach were loading the Johnboat and canoe with most of the supplies from the cabin, Grant was quickly weighing his options. Although none of them was ideal, at least they were leaving him free and unhurt. He knew he was lucky Joey or Zach had not shot him and Scully, too. Somehow they’d been stupid enough to believe that they were effectively stranding him and that Scully was going to lead them right to the catamaran.