Refuge: After the Collapse

by Scott B. Williams

  His message was deliberately vague, but clear enough that either Scully or Grant would understand, if for some reason only one of them made it here to the place the catamaran was supposed to be. He painted a winding line representing the river, and at the end of it, the mouth where it entered the Gulf. On this rough map he drew the approximate shapes of the five barrier islands that stretched away in a chain to the southeast of the river mouth, labeling them in order: Cat, West Ship, East Ship, Horn, and Petit Bois. The message was simple:

  Casey Nicole, Cat Island. De boat lock!

  “What do you think, Doc?”

  “I guess that makes sense. Hopefully it won’t make any sense to a stranger. But with any luck, Grant and Scully will find it before anyone else does, anyway.”

  “They may even find it today, Doc. If only we knew! I just don’t want to take any chances, though. That’s why I didn’t want to make it easy for someone else to leave here with this boat.”

  Back aboard the Casey Nicole, Larry and Artie reassured Casey and Jessica that Grant and Scully would be able to find them, and that the old trawler was perfectly capable of carrying them out to Cat Island. They waited until noon, giving Grant and Scully a bit more time to show up, but when they did not, Larry said it was time to get moving. He said he didn’t want to try towing the catamaran in the dark. At least until they had a workable system figured out. If they left now, he hoped, they could cover a few miles and then stop somewhere along the way to anchor for at least part of the night before continuing to the Gulf the following morning.

  Jessica was on the verge of tears as Artie hauled in the anchor, but she volunteered to take the first turn with Artie in the kayak, as they set up the towline and prepared to move the big catamaran out of the lake and into the river. Larry wished he could help with the paddling, but he was grateful that all his crew were willing and able. He knew Casey was as sad as Jessica, even if she didn’t show it. He was beginning to wonder himself what could have delayed Scully and Grant so long. It was possible that anything could have happened, but he tried to shut out thoughts of the worst and focus instead on steering the boat as it began to slowly gather way under its human-powered tow.

  Scully never had any intention of letting the two American college boys take him all the way downriver to the catamaran. From the moment they’d left the cabin in the Johnboat, he had been thinking about his options. The first mistake they’d made was not tying him up hand and foot. The one called Zach had mentioned it before they left, but Grant had intervened, arguing that he would drown if something happened along the way and he was tied so that he couldn’t swim. The two of them had foolishly heeded that warning, thinking they could keep him in control with one of them pointing a gun at him. And it did work in the daylight. Scully knew he could have probably tried something even then, but he also knew he didn’t have to take unnecessary risks. Night was coming soon, and the darkness would be on his side.

  In those first few miles down the river, he had contemplated what he might do. He didn’t think even the two of them combined were a match for him in a hand-to-hand fight, but the fact that they’d chosen the Mossberg as the weapon with which to guard him gave him pause. Scully had a lot of respect for what a 12-gauge shotgun could do to a man at close range. It was a formidable weapon even in inexperienced hands, and he certainly didn’t want to give either of them the opportunity to shoot at him with it. He wanted that shotgun back, as well as the boat and the motor that belonged aboard the Casey Nicole. Also, he wanted to stop these two idiots from going down the river at all, but his top priority was getting out of the hostage predicament he found himself in without getting shot.

  Their inexperience in boat handling showed constantly through those first few miles down the river, as they struggled to avoid snags and other obstacles and awkwardly ran aground on the gravel shoals. With all the stopping and getting in and out of the boat, it was already dark by the time they passed the first bridge, the place where Grant had told him earlier that he had stashed the bicycles that he and the girls had ridden out of New Orleans. Not far below the bridge was the house where Grant had found the canoe that he had taken when they’d given up on reaching the cabin by road. Grant had said the place was just a weekend vacation getaway for someone, and that apparently no one had been back there since the pulse. At the time Scully had looked upon the mansion-like cabin with contempt. Who was rich enough to build a home this big and not even live in it? But he was no stranger to such part-time getaways for the wealthy, for they were found on the resort beaches throughout the Caribbean as well.

  When they motored past the bridge and this house, Scully did not see a fire or any other sign that anyone was around. It was surprising that refugees had not yet taken up residence there, but after seeing how hopeless most of them were, Scully assumed most had died before getting this far out in the bush. Even the boats stored there for recreational use in normal times were untouched. That same day when he and Grant had passed going upriver, they had seen two canoes and a kayak still stored on racks under a shed.

  With the night enveloping the river and the darkness of the surrounding forest closing in, leaving only moonlight reflecting on the water to guide their way, Scully smiled to himself at the incompetence and apprehension his captors displayed. When they reached an area of minor rapids, really just a long series of shoals where the channel was restricted, Scully had to force himself not to laugh at Joey’s panic. Not knowing what to do, he let the boat get swept up in the current, then turn sideways and go completely backwards. Scully had never seen such foolishness, and, seeing it now, he knew he was about to get his chance. He had only seconds to wait until the towline to the canoe got caught on a log, capsizing the smaller vessel and dragging the stern of the Johnboat down until it filled with water and forced them all into the river. While Joey and Zach had their full attention focused on saving the two boats and their supplies, Scully took a deep breath and submerged, letting the river carry him downstream as he swam underwater to gain distance from the two of them.

  Free-diving came as naturally to Scully as walking, and a lifetime of spearfishing and diving on the reefs made him completely comfortable underwater. He had no doubt he could hold his breath long enough to reach a dark area of the bank hidden in the shadows of overhanging bushes, but, unlike in the ocean, the visibility in this river water was practically zero at night, and he was making his way along the bottom by feel alone.

  Focusing on getting as far from the scene as possible before surfacing again, Scully was swimming fast when he suddenly hit something solid. He felt a searing pain down the outside of his right leg, from mid-thigh all the way to his calf. Something hard and sharp had raked across the flesh, tearing it open as he moved across it. Scully stopped and felt blindly around him in the dark water as he drifted, his hand touching something hard and cold. His fingers closed around it, feeling its shape. The object seemed to be a piece of twisted steel angle iron. His other foot bumped into something else that felt like a piling. Coming into contact with even more immoveable objects, he realized he was in the midst of some kind of submerged manmade structure. Caught in the current, he suddenly feared he would get tangled up or trapped beneath the surface if he didn’t come up to get his bearings.

  His leg was burning in pain. Putting his hand to it, he knew it was bleeding profusely. Keeping both hands in front of him to protect his face, Scully surfaced slowly, careful to avoid making a splash. Turning in the water to see where he was, he looked upstream for Joey and Zach. He saw Joey standing in waist-deep water near the edge of the swift water, and heard him cursing before blasting several rounds from the shotgun randomly into the night. Satisfied that they were looking in the wrong direction for him, Scully quickly assessed his surroundings and saw the tops of numerous wooden pilings protruding out of the river where he had struck the unseen object. It looked to him like the remnants of an old bridge that had collapsed and was now abandoned. He had not noticed it when he and Grant motored
upriver, probably because what was left of it was well outside of the main channel. Moving as quietly as possible, with only his eyes above the water so he could see, Scully dog-paddled sideways across the current to a dark area of the bank near the base of a giant cypress tree.

  He had to get out of the water and do something to stop the bleeding from his leg. It was impossible to know how bad it was as long as it was underwater, but he knew it needed attention. He also had to stay out of sight and be quiet as long as Joey was nearby with that shotgun. Scully was convinced that Joey was completely crazy, and that he was so angry now after dumping the boats there was no doubt he would shoot to kill. Scully had hoped both of them would lose their guns when they went in the water. It was bad news that Joey had managed to hang on to his. Along with this freak accident hurting his leg, it changed everything.

  His plan had been to get away amid the confusion while the two of them were dealing with the rapids, and then take the Johnboat back, either by force or stealth, while they were busy trying to gather up all the stolen supplies that were floating away in the current. Now all he could do was watch from the dark shadows under the tree as the two of them splashed around grabbing what they could of the supplies and gear, their curses echoing from bank to bank. He waited until both of them were focused on bailing out the Johnboat; then he quickly pulled himself out of the water, grabbing roots and cypress knees until he was atop the bank, sitting on the forest floor. The blood was pouring down his leg and dripping onto leaves on the ground under him, most of it coming from the worst part of the gash, which he could now feel on the outside of his upper calf. Scully held pressure on it to slow down the bleeding, just as Doc had done for Larry when a machete slashed his forearm to the bone. Scully was sure his wound was not nearly as serious, but it still required immediate care, and he had little with which to work. He moved his hand away just for the couple of seconds it took to remove the T-shirt he was wearing, then used that to fashion a makeshift bandage he could tie tight enough around the calf to stop most of the flow. It was not enough, though; the shirt was not big enough to dress the entire gash. Scully needed something more, and he knew he wasn’t going to find it on this part of the riverbank.

  From where he sat he could make out Joey and Zach in the moonlight, still bailing and reorganizing the stuff in the Johnboat and the canoe from where they stood in knee-deep water outside of the channel. He had no doubt they would get underway again, but there was little he could do about that now. He needed to get to higher ground, because the trees he had seen that provided what he needed did not grow in the swampy bottoms. He didn’t expect to have to go far, though; he’d seen them all along the way on this upper part of the Bogue Chitto in the daylight, standing tall on the drier ridges nearby.

  Scully looked one last time at the two in the river and then turned his back on the scene, limping through the undergrowth, heading away from the stream. The jagged cut was painful, and he knew it would become more so before it got better, but he was grateful to Jah that he could at least walk. He crossed a bay thicket flat that extended some one hundred yards from the river. Then the vegetation changed slightly as the land began rising. He picked his way past giant oaks and other hardwoods. The T-shirt around his leg was completely drenched in blood, but at least it was still holding back the flow.

  As the terrain began to rise, Scully hobbled painfully uphill, rewarded for his struggle by seeing what he was searching for: pine trees mixed in among the oaks. He climbed higher until the forest was almost nothing but pines, and from this point he could barely hear the sound of the fast-moving water where the boats had capsized. The pine groves here were open, and the light of the moon passed easily through their needle canopy, allowing him to see at least parts of their scaly trunks. Scully was looking for just the right pine tree; a pine tree with recent damage like so many he had noticed the day before. When he had asked about them, Grant said they blew down or broke easily in storms, sometimes by straight-line winds and sometimes by the powerful tornados he said were common here.

  The reason for the downed trees didn’t matter. What Scully needed was a wounded pine, and at last he found it—a formerly tall, straight-trunked specimen that had been split nearly in two from top to bottom by what could only have been a direct hit by lightning. Scully felt the places where the bark had been peeled back and almost literally blown off, and there he found what he sought—a sticky mess of oozing pine sap, as thick and difficult to wipe off the skin as the epoxy Larry used to build boats. He wiped away as much of the blood from his wound as possible, using the shirt, then applied a handful of the sap directly to the cut, starting with the deepest part. It was too dark to see how much blood was still coming out, but he knew that the more sap he packed onto it, the faster it would stop. His hand was now a gummy mess of blood and resin, as was his entire leg, but the sap was working. The wound was quickly sealed. Scully knew that as long as he didn’t move quickly, the blood flow would slow and the bleeding would stop. He didn’t think he’d lost enough blood to be a real problem, but without the pine sap to stop it, he knew he probably would. Not wanting to risk getting it started again, he sat down, his back to another nearby tree, closed his eyes, and tried to relax. At this point, it didn’t make sense to get moving again before dawn, anyway, and when daylight came again, he was going to need his strength.

  THIRTEEN

  “There’s no sense in wasting all our ammo! You’ll never see him in the dark,” Zach said, after watching Joey blast another round of buckshot wildly into the woods.

  “Maybe, but I could have gotten lucky and hit him, anyway.”

  “Maybe you did, but maybe you didn’t. He could be watching us and waiting for his chance to get the boats. I think we need to just get out of here.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It just pisses me off that he got away. How in the fuck are we going to find the catamaran now?”

  “It can’t be that hard. From what they said, it sounds like it’s a big-ass boat. There can’t be many places on the river a freakin’ sailboat like that could be. We’ll find them; let’s just get out of here first.”

  “How much stuff did we lose? Did you grab it all?”

  “I don’t know. I grabbed what I could. Shit was floating everywhere, except for all the heavy stuff that sank. I lost both of the damned rifles. The stove and all that canned shit sank, too.”

  “Fuck! What about the money? Where is the bag with the money?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see it. I’m still looking, but some of those bags floated away before I could reach them.”

  “Motherfucker! There was almost ten grand in that bag!”

  “I know, but fuck, don’t blame me! You’re the one that dumped the boat! I was just trying not to drown. Don’t worry, we’ll find it when we go downstream. It probably didn’t sink.”

  Joey was furious, but after tying the canoe to the stern of the boat with a shorter towline to avoid a tangle like the one that had capsized it, the two of them got back in the Johnboat and let it drift back into the slower current downstream. Joey pulled the starter rope half a dozen times, but the outboard refused to even fire.

  “Motherfucker!” he screamed at the night. “What the hell?”

  “It got wet, didn’t it? Didn’t the whole top of the motor go under?”

  “I guess. But so what? It’s a fuckin’ boat motor! Isn’t it supposed to be able to handle getting wet?”

  “Yeah, but it looks like an old worn-out piece of shit to me.”

  “Well, it got them up the river, and it was running fine before.” Joey yanked on the starter cord again and again, but still the motor refused to start. He pulled the canoe alongside and untied the paddles that he had somehow had the foresight to lash to the thwarts. “Here, keep us in the middle!” he ordered, passing one to Zach. “I’m gonna get this bitch started if it’s the last thing I do!”

  But though he yanked the pull cord until his arm was tired, the result was the same every t
ime. The outboard simply refused to start. Joey was so furious he considered unscrewing the mounting clamps and dumping it in the river, but then he thought better of it and settled for simply smashing the bottom of his fist down on top of it, cracking the plastic casing that covered the innards.

  “Piece of fucking shit!” He muttered.

  “I guess we paddle….” Zach said.

  “And get there when, next month sometime?”

  “You got a better idea? Maybe we can work on it in the daytime and get it running, I don’t know. Why don’t you take the cover off? Maybe that will dry the inside out and it’ll start later. It can’t hurt at this point.”

  Joey muttered under his breath but did as Zach suggested. Maybe it would start later. He sure hoped so. He picked up the other paddle and began stroking. If the motor didn’t start, paddling down the whole river was going to suck. As he took out his frustrations on the paddle, he wondered what that crazy-looking dreadlocked Rastaman was doing, and where he could be. Joey didn’t think it was likely he had drowned, as much as he would have liked to believe he did. The guy was an islander, after all, and probably a good swimmer. Hell, it was probably he who found the money while they were busy trying to get the boat out of deep water. The thought made him furious. Joey wondered if he could be watching them even now, following along from just inside the forest along the edge of the bank. It was certainly feasible, as they weren’t going any faster than a man could walk. He eyed the shotgun, resting on the thwart in front of him, and was glad he hadn’t lost it. The lever-action carbine he had taken from Grant, and the hunting rifle that had belonged to Zach’s roommate had both gone into the river. Though he they had felt around on the bottom with their feet as they searched for the bag with the money, both weapons were lost, and they had given up on looking for them in the dark. It sucked to lose them, along with all that cash and half of their food supply, but nothing sucked as badly as the motor failing. They simply had to get it started again; but for right now, Joey just paddled as hard as he could, nervously scanning the black walls of forest on either side of the river as he did.