Eric backed up and turned the SUV around. The shotgun blast had gone through the center of the windshield in a fairly tight pattern. He could see through the cracked glass as long as there wasn’t oncoming traffic with glaring lights, but he doubted that would be an issue. He headed west, but had no intention of getting on the interstate, and hoped he could find an alternate route to Lafayette. He’d seen a sign earlier when he’d turned off to the south to go to St. Martinsville. Lafayette was west, but he wasn’t sure just how far. He should have been back at Keith’s by now, and he knew Jonathan would be getting anxious, wondering what was taking him so long. All of these little problems, like finding Keith or letting Jonathan know what was up would be non-issues if the damned cell networks were still working. People really took that stuff for granted before, and not just here in America. Eric had noted that the addiction to instantaneous and constant connection had become ubiquitous, even in developing nations. Now, when it was all taken away after everyone was so used to it, life without it was a real pain in the ass. He glanced in the rear-view mirror at the woman, who was holding her child, uncertain if he would survive long enough to even reach the hospital, where it was even more uncertain if they could do anything for him.
“How is he? It’s Sammy, right?”
“Yes, that’s right. He’s about the same I think. Not any worse.”
“Don’t give up. We’re going to get there. What about you? What’s your name? I’m Eric. Eric Branson. My brother, Keith is the deputy that this truck belongs to. Do you live here in St. Martin Parish?”
“Oh, sorry. I’m Cynthia. No, we live in St. Landry Parish.”
“Is that nearby, Cynthia?”
“Yes, it’s just to the north, on this side of the river. We had barely gotten onto I-10 when we saw that truck ahead of us. You said you’re not from around here?”
“No. I came here looking for my brother.” Eric continued on through the intersection where he’d turned before. “Do you think this is the right road? Can you find the hospital when we get to Lafayette?”
“I think so. Just keep going and I’ll recognize stuff when we get closer. I used to go there a lot, but always from I-10 and never when it was this dark, with the lights all out.”
Eric nodded and drove on in silence until Cynthia asked him another question.
“You said you’re not a law enforcement officer. How did you know what to do back there? You shot both of those men with just a pistol before they could do anything.”
“I’ve had some practice. We live in a dangerous world—especially now. It pays to be prepared.”
“I just want to thank you, then. You didn’t have to help us. I thought you did it because you had to… because you were a cop… but you could have just gone on by….”
“Not really. I saw what they were going to do to you. I can’t help everyone, but I haven’t had any luck finding my brother, so I wasn’t in a particular hurry to just go back to his house and wait.” Eric briefly told her about his predicament with the boat, and how he needed his brother’s help to get it free.
When they reached Lafayette, Cynthia recognized familiar buildings and streets. She made a couple of mistakes telling Eric where to turn, but after doubling back and driving around a bit more, she spotted the hospital she was looking for, and Eric saw that there were indeed some lights on. The only entrance that wasn’t blocked off by rows of vehicles was the emergency room, and as they approached Eric saw two guards armed with rifles standing behind a barricade that had been built in front of the entrance. He rolled down his driver’s side window and slowly eased forward, hoping the sheriff’s department emblem clearly visible on the door would give him an in. One of the guards stepped forward, rifle in hand, while the other stayed back to cover him. The man was focused on Eric’s face as he drew closer.
“I thought you might be the deputy that brought his partner in the other night after the shooting, but I see you’re not. He was in a different truck too. Can I help you?”
Eric briefly forgot why he was here when he heard the mention of a deputy and a shooting. Could it be Keith? Was that why he wasn’t home? “Who was shot? A St. Martin Parish deputy? Do you know his name? Did he survive?”
“Sorry, I don’t know his name, but as far as I know, he’s still inside. His partner came back to check on him, I think.”
“This is my brother’s truck. He’s the deputy, not me. I’m here because I have a snakebite victim in the back—a small child that’s going to die if he doesn’t get help. Will they see him?”
The guard turned to his partner and signaled him to go check. “I think they will, considering your brother’s a deputy. Just hold on just a minute and we’ll see. How did the kid get on a snake?” Eric told him but his mind was still on the wounded deputy. As soon as the guard returned, followed by a couple more men rolling a gurney who took Sammy out of the back seat, Eric locked up the truck and followed them inside. Cynthia thanked him again for his help and Eric wished her luck and said he would check on them before he left. The orderlies told him where to go to inquire about the wounded officer, and a couple minutes later, Eric tapped lightly on the door to the room and stepped inside. A red-headed man who looked to be in his early fifties looked up at him from where he was lying in the hospital bed, his face puzzled as Eric clearly wasn’t a doctor or nurse.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Eric said. “I thought you might be my brother when they said there was a wounded deputy in here.”
“As far as I know, I don’t have a brother,” the man replied. He sounded weak, but he grinned as if he found that funny.
Eric smiled back. “Maybe you know him anyway though. You are with the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Department, right? His name is Keith Branson.”
The man’s eyes lit up. “Keith? You’re Keith’s brother? I’ve heard all about you from him then! The name’s Eric, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Do you know where Keith is? Have you seen him?”
“Yeah, he was just here when I woke up. I don’t know what time it was when he left, but I’m sure it wasn’t more than about an hour ago. He’s the one that brought me here. I’d be dead right now if not for him. I made a stupid mistake that got me shot. Keith covered for me though and drove me here when it was over. He wasn’t expecting you, but he was going to look for your father today. It’s Bart, right? Keith got a call from him on the VHF but he couldn’t get back in touch with him. He was going down the river today to look for him there.”
Eric felt a huge sense of relief, knowing that Keith was okay and that he’d just left this very room. He had to be on his way home then, they’d simply missed each other. He was willing to bet that Keith was probably already there now, talking to Jonathan. Helping Cynthia out of that fix and then driving her here had taken some time, but it didn’t matter now, because he would soon see Keith and tell him exactly what was going on. He did want to know one more thing before he saw him though.
“Uh, do you know Keith’s wife, Lynn?” Eric asked the deputy, whom he now knew was named Greg Hebert. “I saw something through the window at Keith’s house. Did she die?”
“Unfortunately, yes. She was killed in the terror attack we had on the bridge at the time when people were evacuating because of the hurricane. It’s been rough on your brother, as you can imagine. He was out working the river, checking on folks in the more remote areas to make sure they knew about the storm. He got to the bridge after it was over. We’ve had a lot going on around here, but that day was the worst of it.” Greg went on to fill Eric in on the details of the attack.
“I know you probably don’t feel like talking, and I can ask Keith more about it when I see him, but how in the hell did things come to this so fast in this country?”
“Man, I don’t know. It’s crazy though. I know you’ve seen it in other places. Keith told me all about your work, or what he knew of it, which probably isn’t the half of it, right? Anyway, we’re reduced to almost nothing as far as
enforcement over there in St. Martin Parish. There hasn’t been another big attack like that one since the hurricane, but there’s still trouble and we can’t be there for most of it. People are on their own now with no safety net, and plenty of them are managing just fine, and minding their own business, but desperation has driven a lot of them to things they wouldn’t have considered before. That’s how I got shot. Keith and I were clearing a store after armed looters killed the owner and holed up in there. The doctor says I’m going to be okay though. I hope so, because I need to get back out there and get to work.”
Eric told Greg about the incident on the road that very morning that brought him here to the hospital. “I hope that kid makes it, but I’m not betting on it.”
“You did a good thing, killing those thugs. I wish you could hang around here and help us take out some more of them. We could sure use a pro like you, but I don’t imagine that’s why you came here.”
Eric told him that it wasn’t, and that he had to get to Colorado to find Megan ASAP. He thanked Greg for all the info and told him he hoped to see him again before he left the area. When he left the room, he headed back to the emergency room area, where he found Cynthia talking to a man he presumed to be a doctor.
“They had the anti-venom!” she told Eric. “This is Dr. Taylor. He thinks it’s going to work. Thanks to you, we got here in time!”
“We may not be able to save that arm though,” the doctor told Eric. “It depends on how bad the tissue damage is. Cottonmouth venom is a neurotoxin that often causes severe necrosis in the extremities if enough of it is injected by the bite. I can tell you that due to Sammy’s age and small size, he wouldn’t have survived it without anti-venom.”
“And without your hard work and dedication, Doctor Taylor. What you people are doing here is above and beyond, considering the present situation.”
When the doctor excused himself to go see about another patient, Cynthia caught Eric off-guard with an unexpected request just as he was about to leave.
“You’re not going back the way we came are you? Back towards the place where they shot Danny?”
“I’ve got to go by there, yeah. It’s the only way I know to get back to my brother’s.”
“I hate to ask you this, but could you do me a huge favor? I don’t want to leave Sammy here, but I need to let my parents know what happened. They live just a few miles from where we were staying at Danny’s, and they come by everyday to check on us because they are super close to their only grandson. Word is going to get back to them about Danny being found dead in his car, and they are going to be worried sick wondering what happened to Sammy and me. They don’t know about the snakebite because we didn’t have time to go tell them. With no phones working or anything, I can’t call them, and I don’t have a way to get back out there.”
“Well, I can drive you there, or I can go tell them where you are, I suppose.”
Cynthia threw her arms around him and gave him a hug. “Thank you so much, Eric! You are too kind! I don’t want to leave Sammy here because he’s not out of the woods with this yet. But if you can take them a message, that would be wonderful.”
Eric left the hospital with a note for Cynthia’s parents in his pocket and directions to their house written on another piece of paper. He drove east into the light of the rising sun as it was just clearing the tops of the trees, thinking about how long all of this was taking. In order to deliver Cynthia’s message, he had to go north of I-10 and then make several zigzagging turns on a series of back roads that roughly paralleled the river basin. It took him nearly two hours out of his way to get there and back to Keith’s driveway. When he checked his watch as he was pulling in, he saw that it was 0930 and he immediately noticed that the Jeep Cherokee had been moved. It was now pulled up closer to the house, parked next to the sawhorses and lumber he’d seen there in the dark. Keith had to be back, because the steering of the Jeep had been locked.
Eric didn’t see either Keith or Jonathan though, and when he got out and walked up to the house where he could see the dock out back, he didn’t see a boat tied up there. He called their names and climbed the steps to check the house. No one was inside. If Keith had been back here, and Eric knew he must have, since that Jeep had been moved, he had already left again, apparently taking Jonathan with him. Eric wasn’t sure what to make of it, until he descended the steps and went to check that the dinghy was still there where he and Jonathan had hidden it in the cattails. The note folded up and tied around the throttle of the outboard where Eric couldn’t miss it explained everything. They didn’t wait on him because Keith had arranged to meet a larger boat at the schooner that could possibly pull it off the wreck. Eric’s side trip to Lafayette and then to Cynthia’s parents’ house had caused him to miss his ride, but that was okay. He’d saved her life and her little boy’s as well, and he still had the dinghy, so he wasn’t really stuck, but he did need gas for the outboard. Jonathan should have thought to tell Keith that, but he probably forgot about it and Keith had other things on his mind. That wasn’t a problem though. He was sure Keith wouldn’t mind if he siphoned some out of one of the vehicles. He grabbed the portable 6-gallon tank and walked back up to the house to look for a hose.
Eighteen
KEITH REGRETTED HE COULDN’T wait a little longer for Eric, but after what Vic said about the tide cycle, he knew they had to leave without delay if they were to have any hope of freeing the schooner today. There were only so many hours of daylight available, and it was a long way just to get down there to the lower reaches of the river. Vic would be heading out soon, but Keith knew it would take him longer to get there. Even though they couldn’t accomplish the task without him, Keith wanted to go on ahead and check on Bart and the rest of his crew. He didn’t like the idea of them being stranded in such an exposed location, and when he got there they could start making preparations for Vic’s arrival later. Thinking about all that, Keith dismissed any second thoughts he had about waiting longer for Eric. He would come along anyway as soon as he returned to the house and found the note they’d left in the dinghy.
Learning that Eric was here, was of course a much bigger surprise to Keith than even the radio call from his father had been. Jonathan had filled him in on Eric’s plans for getting Megan, and about how Bart thought it might be a good idea for Eric to try and travel part of the way north and west by way of the river, working the fuel barges. Keith wasn’t fully convinced that was the best option though, and he thought of another idea he would suggest to Eric when he saw him. It would be a faster way to reach Colorado while still keeping off the most dangerous roads. That was a discussion for later though, after the more pressing issues of dealing with the grounded schooner and Shauna’s gunshot wound. It gave him something to think about during the long run downriver though, as it was mostly too noisy at the speeds he was running to talk much to Jonathan.
They were below Morgan City and in the salt marsh estuary of the lower Atchafalaya two hours later. Both of them were anxiously looking around that last bend when suddenly, they came into view of the schooner in the distance. From far away it was a strange-looking sight, listing to one side, as it was, the masts down in the horizontal position in their tabernacles. Keith would have thought it an abandoned wreck at first glance if he’d seen it without knowing what it was. Jonathan had told him that the radio calls he’d received from Bart had been made when the masts were up, with the antenna atop the taller mainmast. That’s why there hadn’t been any more calls after that first afternoon, but the radio would work fine at close range even without the tall antenna. Keith slowed and hailed Dreamtime on Channel 16 before he got within a quarter mile. Jonathan had already told him Bart would be keeping watch with his M1-A, and Keith knew what kind of marksman the old man was. It wouldn’t do to go speeding up there unannounced, regardless of how anxious Keith was to see him. His transmission was a repeat of the replies that failed to reach him the other day, when the range was much greater.
“V
essel calling St. Martin Parish S.O., this is St. Martin Parish S.O., Deputy Branson. I have visual contact and will be approaching from upriver, off your starboard bow.”
This time Keith got an immediate reply. Bart said later he had seen their boat coming and sure enough had gone below to get his rifle when the radio broke silence. By the time Keith and Jonathan pulled up to within speaking distance, Bart, Shauna, Daniel and Andrew were all on deck to great them.
“I think you’ll be in the clear if you tie up on our port side, son. I believe it’s a little deeper there.”
“I see that what Jonathan here told me is right. It look’s like you’re in a hell of a fix, Dad.”
“I wasn’t steering when it happened! Your Navy officer brother was! Where the hell is he? Why isn’t he with you? And where is the dinghy?”
Keith filled him in briefly as he tied off and Jonathan climbed aboard. “I guess he’ll be along eventually. The good news is that I’ve got help coming, Dad. My brother-in-law, Vic, has a 45-foot shrimp trawler with outrigger booms. If he can get close enough, he thinks he can give us the lift Eric said it’s going to take to get off of this mess. You can see I’ve got twin 150s on my patrol boat. I can provide a lot of pulling power from the stern at the same time. I think it’ll work.”
“That’s good to hear, son. Speaking of your brother-in-law, how is Lynn? Did y’all make it all right through the hurricane? What about all the other trouble? Has it slacked up or gotten worse?”
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