Mitch knew that he would return to search again, as many times as it took to try and find out what happened. But he still had his sister and the others back at home to think about, and he knew that after all these days they would be really worried considering what Jason told them he’d set out to do. With a heavy heart, he made his way slowly back upstream, still looking for anything he might have missed. When he reached the campsite again and what remained of the two bodies left lying there, he spent even more time trying to decipher what might have happened. But there had been at least two good rains since the day those two men died there, and any sign he might have missed before would be much more obscure now.
While there, he also found the tree where the man he’d exchanged gunfire with had been hiding. The man was not dead there as he had dared to hope, and if he had indeed been wounded, Mitch could find no evidence of it. He considered trying to track him down, but decided there was little point. Following that man would not lead him to April, and since he wasn’t there when the one who had taken her in the canoe was killed, he wouldn’t know what happened to her either. The man was long gone anyway by now and the trail was cold. It would take him days to catch up, if he ever did, and he felt that he needed to get back to the farm sooner than that.
He continued on upstream in the direction of home, still stopping to check sandbars and mud banks along the way for anything unusual. He didn’t rule out the possibility that the canoes had gone upstream, but he really doubted it. That doubt disappeared, however, when he came to sandbar where someone had clearly camped recently. It was about five miles upstream from the place where the shootings happened, and as Mitch scoured the sand looking at the washed-out, poorly defined tracks, he saw faint keel marks above the high water line that indicated two canoes had landed here. Did they go upstream after all? It sure looked like there was a good possibility of it, though he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t someone else who’d landed here. It was certainly enough to give him hope though, and for the rest of the journey back to the farm he was on high alert for anything unusual. He crossed the creek when necessary to check a sandbar on the opposite side, and he stopped often to look and listen. It was during one of those stops that he heard someone approaching through the dense forest.
Mitch nocked an arrow and waited behind a tree. The sound was certainly that of a human and not an animal, he could easily tell by the heavy footfalls. Whoever it was, he or she was being quite careless and making no attempt to travel with caution. Mitch tensed as he caught a glimpse of movement first and then saw the outline of a man. The man had stopped when he came to a small rotting log, and Mitch saw him squat down in front of it and begin tearing away the rotting wood, as if he were digging for something. Apparently he found what he was looking for, because next he began desperately shoving something in his mouth with both hands. Mitch bent and twisted to get a better view through the foliage. The man was eating grubs he’d found in the log. His clothes were torn to shreds and his hair was matted and covered with mud, like most of the rest of his body. It took him a minute to see through all the dirt, but then Mitch realized the man he was looking at was David! April’s David!
* * *
David tried to run from him when he first called his name and revealed himself, but Mitch doggedly pursued him until he stumbled and fell. When he attempted to reassure him and remind him who he was, and that they had met seven months ago when he led April to the church sanctuary in Hattiesburg, David just looked at him with a blank stare. He didn’t know who Mitch was and April’s name meant nothing to him either. Even when Mitch brought up Kimberly, David showed no sign of recognition. Clearly the blow from the rifle butt had done serious damage. He wondered why he was out here and in this shape when the last time he’d seen him, he was unconscious, under a tree and Jason was supposed to be going back for help to get him to the house. But for whatever reason, he’d apparently spent all those days since crashing through the woods, eating bugs and drinking from mud holes. But at least he was alive. It took some doing, but Mitch finally persuaded him to come along with him. He told him that where he was going, there was plenty to eat and that he would be safe.
While they walked, Mitch tried every thing he could think of to jar David’s memory, but nothing seemed to work. He didn’t know much about amnesia, but he’d heard that it was sometimes temporary and sometimes much more long-lasting. He wondered if David would ever be normal again, and then thought that his memory loss might be merciful, as the man wouldn’t have to suffer with the knowledge of what happened to his child and the woman he loved. Unfortunately for Mitch, that pain would never go away and he would never forgive himself for not acting immediately when he first saw what was going on there on that sandbar. He’d been worried that he would put them in more danger by acting rashly, but now realized it would have been worth the risk considering what happened anyway. For now, all he could do was take David to the house and check on Lisa and the others. Then he would return to look for more evidence of those two canoes even farther upstream, in case that was really the way they went. He knew he would never be able to stop searching, even if he had to break it up into short forays in between taking care of his other responsibilities to the others.
When he and David finally reached the hidden path that led from the creek bank to the Henley property, Mitch was shocked to find two canoes upside down and partially concealed in the canebrake where he and his dad usually kept their own canoe. Looking at them carefully, he was quite certain that one of them was the one that had been on the sandbar when April was captured. He tried to verify this with David, but David said he had no idea who they belonged to. Mitch slung the bow he’d been carrying in his hand onto his back and brought the AR-15 around to the ready position for the approach to the house. Had whoever taken April somehow gotten her to tell them where the house was? Could they have done something to Lisa and the others as well? Mitch’s mind was racing with the possibilities as a rush of adrenaline flowed through him. Fortunately, David seemed to understand the need to be quiet, and he obediently followed Mitch without uttering a word.
When he reached the barn on the back edge of the yard, Mitch told David to stay put while he stalked closer to reconnoiter. Using his old path he’d used as a child to sneak up on his parents at the house, Mitch slipped into position where he could see the porch and the front door. The house seemed intact and he saw nothing out of the ordinary at first. Then the front door opened and an old man with long white hair and a huge, bushy beard stepped out of his house. Mitch instinctively raised the AR to his shoulder and placed his sights on the center of the man’s chest. Who was this stranger and what had he done here? His finger was on the trigger, but he was not going to fire just yet. He had to know more; especially whether or not the old man was alone. The door opened again and someone else stepped out. Mitch saw that it was his sister, Lisa! She seemed to be fine and did not seem to be afraid of the old man. In fact they seemed to be carrying on a conversation as he watched them walk to the rail of the porch. He lowered his rifle and his focus shifted to the door again when it opened and someone else walked out of the house. It was a woman, and in her arms was a small child. The woman walked to his grandfather’s rocking chair and sat down, apparently equally at ease with the old man as was his sister. Mitch blinked and rubbed his eyes, straining his vision to make sure it was not playing tricks on him. Could it be? Was it really her? It didn’t seem possible, but it had to be and it didn’t matter how! Mitch stood and stepped out into the open yard. April and Kimberly were alive!
* * *
Thanks for reading Into the River Lands.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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More by Scott B. Williams
THE FOLLOWING LINKS WILL take you to the Amazon Kindle versions of my most popular books that are available now. New books are coming all the time so stay up to date by signing up for my book alerts via my newsletter.
The Pulse Series:
The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid
Refuge After the Collapse (Book II of The Pulse Series)
Voyage After the Collapse (Book III of The Pulse Series)
The Darkness After Series:
The Darkness After (Book I of The Darkness After Series)
Into the River Lands (Book II of The Darkness After Series)
Apocalypse Series:
Sailing the Apocalypse: A Misadventure at Sea
Nonfiction:
On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean
Getting Out Alive
Paddling the Pascagoula
Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It’s Too Late
Bug Out Vehicles and Shelters
About the Author
SCOTT B. WILLIAMS HAS been writing about his adventures for more than twenty-five years. His published work includes dozens of magazine articles and twelve books, with more projects currently underway. His interest in backpacking, sea kayaking and sailing small boats to remote places led him to pursue the wilderness survival skills that he has written about in his popular survival nonfiction books such as Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It’s Too Late. He has also authored travel narratives such as On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean, an account of his two-year solo kayaking journey through the islands. With the release of The Pulse in 2012, Scott moved into writing fiction and has written several more novels with many more in the works. To learn more about his upcoming books or to contact Scott, visit his website: www.scottbwilliams.com
Voyage After the Collapse Excerpt
IF YOU ENJOYED INTO the River Lands, you might like this preview of Voyage After the Collapse: Book III of The Pulse Series (a parallel series set in the aftermath of the same event as The Darkness After Series).
Excerpt from
Voyage After the Collapse: Book III of The Pulse Series
Copyright © 2015 by Scott B. Williams
ONE
TARA HANCOCK MADE HER decision and she intended to stick to it. Sure, it was risky, but everything she did in this new reality entailed risk and danger. By now she’d come to realize that she had to take chances almost daily if she and Rebecca were to survive. Today the risk was different though, because it was not about the two of them and she could have just as well chosen to mind her business and stay put. She and her daughter were relatively safe for now and she could keep it that way, leaving her less fortunate neighbors to fend for themselves. She had tried to help them after all, even if she had failed. But the Owens reminded her too much of her parents for her to leave them stranded. Like her mom and dad, they were too old and frail to hold their own in the midst of the violence they had escaped for now by coming here. Tara couldn’t do anything for her parents now, as they were impossibly far away, but there was one more thing she could try that might help Mike and Lillian Owens, and she was determined to do it.
She knew that she and her daughter were lucky to have the means to be where they were, anchored safely off the north side of Cat Island. Several miles of water separating the chain of barrier islands from the coast provided a safety buffer between them and the madness ashore, but it would not do to stay here long-term. The distance from the mainland simply wasn’t enough, especially if the situation everywhere didn’t improve fast. At this point there was no reason to believe it would, so Tara knew that if she expected to keep her daughter safe, they had to keep moving.
As long as they had the Sarah J., her parents’ restored Tartan 37 sailboat, they could do that. The small yacht was well stocked and meticulously maintained, and could take them almost anywhere while providing a comfortable place to live at the same time. The Owens were aboard a somewhat larger sailing vessel, and with their deeper draft and inadequate ground tackle, they had found themselves hard aground on the shoals near the island after a line of thunderstorms blew through the night before.
Tara had tried to help them get off the submerged sandbar into which their keel was firmly buried, but the Sarah J. was only equipped with a small auxiliary diesel, and her attempts to pull the heavier yacht back to deep water were futile. It was going to take more horsepower to do the job, but in the wake of the collapse, there was no marine towing service to call, even if they still had a means to do so. They spent the morning trying various angles with anchors and the onboard winches to pull the heavy Catalina 42 off, but every attempt failed. Tara was completely out of ideas aside from attempting to contact the people aboard the other two boats that she knew were anchored around the point on the south side of the island.
One had arrived a couple of days before the second one showed up, but it was this second one that gave her some hope of getting the Owens’ yacht afloat again. Though it appeared to be heavily damaged when it chugged past them on the way to the other side, the old wooden shrimp trawler apparently had a reliable engine. Like her parents’ classic Tartan 37, the trawler was clearly old enough and simple enough that its engine’s starting ability was unaffected by the electromagnetic pulse from the solar flare. Tara knew too that the engine in such a vessel would be many times more powerful than a little sailboat pusher. Named after her mother, the Sarah J. was a sailing vessel, after all; not a power boat. The engine was needed to enter and leave marinas and tricky inlets, but otherwise the wind provided the means for really going places.
“I’ll be careful, I can assure you,” Tara told Mike Owens when he tried to talk her out of her latest idea.
“You can’t be careful enough these days. You know that by now. You never know about folks like that. They went around to the other side of the island for a reason. It looks to me like they want to be left alone.”
“Maybe they just anchored in Smuggler’s Cove because they could. I know catamarans don’t draw much water, and most shrimp boats don’t either.” Tara was familiar with Smuggler’s Cove, a shallow anchorage on the south side of Cat Island, because she had sailed there with her parents on the Sarah J. years before. While it was off-limits to many deeper-draft sailboats like the Owens’ Wind Shadow, the Sarah J., with her keel-centerboard configuration, drawing barely over four feet with the board up, could get in there just fine. Tara would have anchored there when she and Rebecca first arrived at Cat Island, but she knew the old paper charts on board were outdated since Hurricane Katrina and she was afraid the storm had altered the depths there. For all she knew at the time, there could be sunken wrecks or other manmade debris from the hurricane, hidden by the murky brown waters of the sound where many such obstructions awaited the unsuspecting mariner. Her parents had been using an electronic chart plotter for all their cruising in recent years, but like all electronic devices, that was useless to her now, so she had erred on the side of caution and anchored in deeper waters off the north side of the island. Maybe the strangers had better charts, or maybe they simply weren’t worried about it because their boats drew even less than hers. Whatever the reason they were there, Tara didn’t think it automatically meant they were up to no good. Maybe they were just as afraid as everyone else.
“I won’t get too close if they seem threatening in any way,” Tara assured Mike Owens. “I’ll sail in close enough to speak to them and if they are unfriendly, I’ll head back out.”
“If you don’t run aground first,” Mike said.
“I’ll be careful, like I said. But I’ve got to try. That shrimp boat can pull you and Lillian off. I know it can, if they are just willing to do it. But if I don’t ask, it’s not going to happen. And who knows, they may leave any time.”
Tara knew Mike and Lillian Owens were probably going to be in danger eventually an
yway, whether the shrimp boat pulled them off the shoal or not. Mike had already said they weren’t leaving the immediate area, but Tara didn’t see how they could stay there. For one thing, there was no all-weather anchorage at any of the barrier islands, and even summer thunderstorms could wreak havoc, as had the one last night that caused them to drag anchor. A tropical storm or hurricane would be disastrous out there. But aside from that, Tara knew others would be making their way out to the islands one way or the other, and that might become a problem, especially if not all of them were simply seeking refuge. Some of them might see a big sailing yacht such as the Owens’ Wind Shadow as easy pickings—a source of food and supplies, shelter and transportation all in one. Looting, robbery and worse was already happening on the mainland they’d left behind. And Tara was certain it would soon be spreading everywhere, even to seemingly safe refuges like this. But she couldn’t tell Mike Owens and his wife what to do. All she could do was make this last attempt to help them get afloat, and if that worked at least they would have the ability to make a choice to stay or leave when the time came. If she could do that much for them, Tara knew she and Rebecca could sail away with a clear conscious.
Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) Page 16