by John Grit
“This is bullshit.” Brian’s voice was loud and angry. “We should stay together.”
“Lower your voice,” Nate said. “No, just shut up. There is no time to coddle you. Get in the tank.”
Deni put her arm over Brian’s shoulder. “He knows what he’s doing. We have to go. He is safer in this dark without us.”
“Bullshit!”
She pulled Brian towards the water tank. “He doesn’t have to worry about shooting one of us in the dark if we are not here. Believe me, he is safer without us.”
“I’m not going.” Brian would not move. He jerked away from her.
Nate slung his rifle across his back, waded into the water, and held the tank closer to shore. “Deni, get in the front.”
When she was sitting on a pile of ammunition cans, Nate walked to Brian. “Get in.”
“No!”
Nate yanked the shotgun out of Brian’s hands and put it in the water tank next to the outboard. Brian started to fight him, but he pinned his arms behind his back, then stunned him with a vicious slap and jerked him bodily to the edge of the river, lifted and dropped him in. Shaking Brian violently, he said, “Crank that kicker and get out of here. You have to stop being so self-centered. What about her? She doesn’t know how to get to Mel’s or open the bunker. Now act like a man and help her.”
Brian was too stunned to say anything. Nate had never hit him before.
Nate said, “Don’t stand up. Stay low to keep the tank from turning over. Now go. Stay in the bunker and wait for me.”
Brian pulled the rope several times, but the motor did not start. The gas was old and the engine reluctant.
Nate waded back in the water and turned the outboard so he could adjust the choke and pull the starter rope. On the second try, he had the motor running. He eased the choke open and the motor idled smoothly after a few minutes. He shoved the water tank into deeper water. Brian put the outboard in gear and twisted its throttle.
Nate stood knee-deep and watched them be swallowed by the dark. He hated Chuck Shingle more than ever.
First, Nate took his poncho off and stuffed it in his pack and jumped up and down to make certain nothing in his load made noise. It took some time for him to get used to the cold rain. Once his clothes were soaked, he stopped shivering in the wind.
By the time Nate sat on a log and peered into the dark and rain towards the house, he knew the storm was waning. Rain came down in sheets, but the wind had slacked off and the brooding gloom of the woods was still but for the torrent that now fell straight down. Soon it would be perfect for hunting.
The crack of a rifle shot caused Nate to flinch and involuntarily slide off the log onto his stomach. He was ready when another rifle shot sliced the night and saw the muzzle flash back in trees across the field. He doesn’t know we’re not in the house. I got you, you son of a bitch! Keep shooting.
Slowly, he crawled into the open and headed for the other side of the field. Another shot cracked, and glass shattered from a window. He prayed the rain would continue until he reached the tree line on Shingle’s side.
When he was across the field and in cover, Nate stood and started the hunt. Flowing through brush and seeking out darkest shade, he silently walked on soggy leaves. Thunder rolled from miles away. The rain tapered off to drizzle. Then it stopped, leaving the woods dripping and nearly windless.
There was no more shooting. Shingle was no longer where he was when he last shot. Now the odds were not so much in Nate’s favor. Come on; take another potshot at the house, asshole. He held his rifle tighter and moved on, searching, all senses on high intensity. All of his will focused on surviving, he did not want to leave Brian alone in this broken world where all the Chuck Shingles had free rein. He never wanted to be a cop. But tonight I am the law.
Water dripped from trees above and crashed onto palmetto fronds, sounding like rifle shots to Nate’s tension-heightened ears. Slowly, but steadily, his hunting ground grayed to increasing light in the sunless morning. The sky broke clear ahead of the coming sunrise, and it grew much colder.
He had no idea where Shingle was.
Nate took an hour to work his way around to the back of the farm. From the trees, he could see the open bedroom window they used to sneak out of the house hours ago. Once more, he searched the wall of dripping green surrounding him. There was something about a two-foot area off to his left that caught his attention. Leaves carpeted the ground; fresh, moist dirt had been kicked up along with leaves. He searched further until he came across a spot of bare earth.
Boot tracks.
Shingle saw the open window. He knows we are not in the house.
Nate moved on.
Now the hunt really begins.
Nate checked for tracks only every fifty feet, keeping most of his attention on the wall of green where death could be hiding, waiting. He knew where Shingle was going. He also knew Shingle could circle back and wait in ambush. Shingle was not smart, but he was vicious, and that viciousness gave him a predator’s cunning.
To be safe, Nate kept further back in the trees from the edge of his field and pasture and off to the side of Shingle’s trail. He stopped and glassed the field down towards the river. Sunrise was breaking and three does were feeding near the far tree line: their backdoor retreat to the safety of cover. Fog misted above the winter-brown grass. One doe jerked her head up, looking. The other two noticed and stopped feeding, looking in the same direction. They were not looking at Nate.
Their tails lifted halfway. Standing as statues, they continued to look. One lost interest after thirty seconds, flicked its tail, and started feeding again. Then the second and third also lost interest and began to feed.
Shingle was near the cache.
Beat you to it, you son of a bitch. They’re gone; it’s just you and me.
Nate continued the death hunt.
Ever slower, Nate eased through the woods, searching every inch of the brooding, wet gloom before each step. Death loomed close. It was a matter of whom saw who first and who got off the first accurate shot.
Where will Chuckey wait for his chance to kill me?
Chapter 15
Shingle was not there. Nate had to admit to himself that simple fact. He circled the area from the cache to the rain-flooded swamp. Shingle had kept away from the cache and circled, getting just close enough to see that some of the supplies were gone and no one was around. Tracks led upriver.
Nate’s heart rate jumped. Does he know about Mel’s place?
Resisting an urge to run Shingle down, which would be his death warrant, as he was likely to blunder into an ambush, Nate followed Shingle’s trail, tension bridling his nerves.
A strange, paradoxical sense of urgent energy and weariness overtook Nate. Kill Shingle and his worries would be over. But he knew that was ridiculous. There were more Shingles to come. Days of worry over Brian’s fate suddenly culminated and pressed down on him. There had been no time to grieve for his loss. The living son was paramount to grief over the loss of wife and daughter. They were past pain and life on this earth. Brian still had a chance. What if he kills Shingle? More like him are surely to come in this lawless land of disease, hunger, and death. He had been a soldier in two wars, serving a year in one and then the other, but he knew he only needed to do his duty and survive long enough and his war would come to an end. He would have the rest of his life to live in peace. That knowing had kept his resolve strong. This was a war with no end, no victory, no peace to look forward to as reward for his troubles. There was only Brain and his own belligerent will to see Brian have his chance for a life that someday may come…if the human race gets its act together and rebuilds.
Nate thought it ironic that his problem was tyranny through lack of government, but he remembered well the story of his grandfather’s fight with the tyranny of government under Nazis and his near fight with tyranny here in America. A fight he called off out of love for his wife. Nate’s connection with his grandfather was never more
close or strong. The fact his grandfather died in World War II, long before Nate was born mattered little.
The squelching of someone walking through mud, sinking deep and pulling his boots out, interrupted his mental storm. Nate froze. Concentrate on staying alive, fool! Whoever it was, he could not see him through the dripping wall of green. He squatted, getting low, to look under the brush.
Nothing.
Shingle was too far ahead.
Nate tried to gain on him while moving quietly through the woods. Shingle was not being so quiet and had an advantage of speed. He would never catch up with Shingle this way.
It grew colder now that the front had passed and the skies cleared, and Nate’s clothes were still wet. He shivered and continued to stalk.
When the sun was high, and the woods no longer dripping, Nate found where Shingle had turned from the river and headed upslope to higher ground. It would have been a perfect place to ambush him if only Nate had been able to get there sooner. He resisted the urge to rush ahead. Following Shingle’s tracks, keeping off to the side, he paralleled the trail.
They climbed out of the swamp, coming to water oaks, palmettos, and pines. Nate noticed more and more wild hog tracks as he worked his way upslope. The hogs had fled the flooded lowland for better feeding areas. A gray ghost slipped past him, its white wail raised fully as a warning flag for other deer. The buck never saw Nate, his attention was on Shingle. Ahead, he heard the grunting of feeding hogs, rooting up old acorns. Shingle was between the hogs and Nate. So close, but Nate still could not get a glimpse of Shingle because the woods were so thick.
A boar rumbled, low and throaty. Shingle cursed. “Shit. Get out of here before I shoot your ass.”
When Shingle spoke, the woods came alive with panicked hogs running in all directions, squealing, grunting, and crashing through the brush. Nate rushed in for the kill, using the confusion and noise to close on Shingle.
A sow nearly ran Nate over as she fled. Nate dodged and kept running. He pushed through palmettos, and came to an open area torn up by rooting hogs.
There was Shingle, standing on a windfall and pointing his rifle at a rumbling boar, its hair standing up straight, tusks clashing. The boar circled around and Shingle followed it with his rifle, turning on the log.
Nate was already aiming and starting to squeeze the trigger. Shingle’s eyes caught Nate standing there and grew large with fear, his deformed face looking more grotesque than Nate remembered it. He got his rifle halfway up before Nate fired. Shingle fell, collapsed, his rifle firing into the ground. The boar fled. All before Nate’s shot stopped reverberating through the surrounding trees and rolling down to the river.
For a short moment, the woods were silent. The clamor of the hogs was gone. Then a sound shrieked from Shingle’s mouth, as if a demon had reached in with a clawed hand and wrenched it out of him. He clutched his breast pocket where Nate’s bullet entered as if it held a treasure he feared Nate might take from him. Blood flowed between his fingers. His chest convulsed with shallow, rapid breaths.
Nate always considered Shingle a hollow man. He could never find anything in his eyes except when angered or afraid or in pain. Most of the time he was just a deep pit of emptiness. Life ebbed from him, but Nate could not tell if he was nearly dead or if he was just a little less alive than he normally was. Nate put a bullet through his head to be sure.
Shingle lay in the mud, a disinterred body, a zombie with a rotting heart or no heart. Nate could not decide if he had done him a favor, then decided it did not matter. What did matter was he could do no more harm but stink up the woods for a while until the hogs ate him.
In Shingle’s pack, Nate found personal items stolen from victims, mostly jewelry and money. There was little food and what there was came from the cache. He dumped everything out, keeping the food and ammunition. There was a knife, some matches, and a lighter in his pockets he took also. Anything that was not useful for survival he left on the ground. The pack, he tied to his, the rifle too.
When there is no way to buy replacements or supplies, taking items that can save your life from someone you killed in self-defense is not immoral. Nate eyed the jewelry and cash with distain and looked at Shingle’s slack face. He seemed more at peace than Nate had ever seen him, but only a little less alive. How many people suffered and died because you wanted that useless crap?
Nate started for the farm, his steps lighter than before, a heavy burden lifted from his shoulders. There was no remorse, his soul had already turned the page, had already forgotten Chuckey Shingle. Too much had been wasted on him already.
Nate let the cow into the pasture and brought feed for it. Then he fed the chickens. Afterwards, he checked the barn for anything they may have missed when they packed everything to the cache. Entering the house, he checked every cabinet and drawer in the kitchen, finding a bottle of beer under the sink. He opened it and drank it hot with a simple meal of cold pork and bread, enjoying his last beer for a long time, perhaps the last beer he would ever drink. He was not much of a drinker, had never been drunk since he left the Army, but that beer tasted good for some reason.
Before leaving the house, Nate searched every inch, finding nothing of value but family photos. He put them in his pack, telling himself they were for Brian.
The cow was munching on brown grass as Nate headed back to the cache. There, he left both Shingle’s and his own pack and headed straight for where Deni told him he would find the canoe.
There was no sign of anyone else in the area, and he moved fast through the woods. The canoe was not hard to find with Deni’s directions.
By late afternoon Nate was paddling upriver and past the farm, his pack, and Shingle’s both, loaded with food from the cache. They sat in the bottom of the canoe, tied in for safety in case of a capsize. He rounded a sharp bend, staying in the eddies and close to shore where the current was not so strong, and looked upriver to see smoke. A thin column rose straight up with no wind to push it sideways or disperse it in the treetops. It could be seen by anyone on the river in either direction.
Nate turned the canoe and slid its bow into the mud. After pulling it out of the water, he snatched his rifle up and entered the swamp.
Twenty minutes later, voices came to Nate’s ears.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” A little boy said, his voice weak.
A woman touched his face gently with the palm of her hand as he lay on a blanket under a cedar tree. “I know, sweetheart. Daddy’s trying to catch a fish to go with this rice I’m boiling.” The boy’s ribs showed under thin skin when he pulled his T-shirt up to scratch. The woman pulled the shirt back down, her eyes filling at the sight. “Keep your shirt down to protect against skeeters.”
“It’s the last we have. What about tomorrow?” A girl asked.
Nate came in close enough to see through the brush. There was a woman, about thirty, a boy, about five, and a girl Brian’s age. The girl gathered firewood while the woman comforted the boy. The woman and girl were thin and weak also.
The woman’s eyes were sunken and without hope, but when she looked at her children they warmed with affection.
Their clothes were filthy and tattered and their bodies not much cleaner. It appeared they had been traveling a long time, perhaps months. It must be bad if they prefer living like animals in the woods. He remembered Deni and how she too was living in the woods and what she told them about the violence and lawlessness.
Nate went looking for the man. He found him throwing a cast net, pulling nothing out but weeds and the occasional shiner or small bream. A pump shotgun stood leaning against a tree ten feet from him. He was thinner than the rest of his family and obviously weak from starvation. A partially healed wound ran six inches down his left arm. It appeared to be a knife wound and had been closed with fishing line.
He needs to open that up and let it drain. It was red and oozing fluid.
Stepping from behind a hickory, his rifle ready, Nate spoke. “I have food.”
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br /> The man dropped his net and lunged for his shotgun, tripping on a root and falling on his face in the mud.
“Don’t touch that shotgun!” Nate warned. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The man looked at Nate and then at the shotgun, just out of reach.
“Don’t,” Nate said.
Nate thought the man was still coiled to spring at the shotgun.
“Mr., I’m between you and my family,” the man said.
Nate lowered the rifle slightly. “I don’t want to hurt you or your family. They’re hungry, I have food to spare. My farm is just downriver a ways.”
The man’s eyes involuntarily jerked towards his family back in the woods.
“They’re fine. I didn’t hurt them. And I won’t. Stay away from that shotgun and I won’t hurt you either.”
The man seemed to calm down but was still suspicious. “You have food?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want for it?”
“Nothing. I just don’t want to be robbed or killed for my trouble. And for future consideration, if you want to travel unnoticed, don’t build a fire in broad daylight.”
The man backed from the shotgun, stood there and said nothing.
Nate slowly walked to the shotgun and picked it up, keeping his rifle ready but not pointing directly at him. “Take what fish you got there, no need to waste it.”
The man picked up the fish, his hands shaking.
“Calm down. I’m telling you the truth. I mean you no harm as long as you mean me none.”
“You better not hurt them. Or I swear I’ll take that rifle—”
“All right. We will leave your shotgun with your wife. If you want, you can come back with the food alone.”
He stood there considering that but said nothing.
Nate thought he was calmer and perhaps starting to believe him. Obviously they had been through hell and trusted no one. “Let’s go. I have a friend and son worried about me. I’m afraid they will come looking for me soon and want to get to them before that happens.”