The Darkness After: A Novel

by Scott B. Williams

  “You can’t keep my car! I’ve got to get to Hattiesburg. You don’t understand! I’ve got to get to my baby!”

  “Like I said, I’m not stopping you from leaving, miss, neither one of you. You’re free to go, and free to get your things out of the car.” He made a sweeping motion with his hand out to the pouring rain beyond the edge of the awning, as if he were offering them the whole world. Then he handed back their driver’s licenses, but not the car’s registration papers or the keys that he had put in his pocket after searching the vehicle.

  “You can’t do this!” Mitch said. “You are the one stealing the car! You’re taking our only transportation and putting us out on the road to walk in this weather? This is highway robbery!”

  “You’d better shut up with your accusations while you’re ahead, son! My jail might be filing up, but I could make room for two more if I wanted to. I could lock you both up right now and throw away the key until the lights come back on, and I will if you don’t get out of my town before I change my mind. Things are falling apart everywhere, but my job is to protect and serve my community. I’m the one, the only one, who gets to make the decisions here about what’s right and what’s wrong, and as long as the grid stays down, I’m going to make the decisions that are in the best interests of the people here who trust me. If you two know what’s best for you, you’ll make tracks on down that highway right now and be thankful you’ve at least still got your freedom!”

  SIX

  April squeezed back through the roadblock behind Mitch as he led the way east on Highway 26 in the pouring rain. They had taken their few possessions from the Mustang—his small daypack, some of the remaining food she had brought from the apartment, and a small canvas tote bag she had stuffed some extra clothes in when she left. They had nothing to protect themselves from the weather, and the clothes they were wearing were already wet from standing out in the rain when they were first ordered out of the car. Now almost everything they had was wet, and there was no indication the rain was going to let up.

  Before leaving the car, April did manage to line her canvas bag with one of the plastic grocery bags to at least keep one change of clothes somewhat dry. She was furious and bewildered at what had happened, but had given up trying to argue with the two men who had confiscated the Mustang. Everything she and Mitch said just made the situation worse, so they had to reluctantly walk away. Still, it was almost impossible for her to accept that they were not going to get the car back unless David came back for it.

  “How could they do this to us? I can’t believe something like this could happen in America. It’s like we don’t have any rights at all.”

  “We don’t have any rights,” Mitch said. “Because right now, the usual laws don’t even apply. I guess we’re essentially under martial law, which means anybody with a gun can pretty much do whatever they want. Those guys know they’re in complete control of their town without any outside interference or higher authority to answer to, so they can just make up their own laws and do whatever they please as long as this lasts. They’re kind of used to doing that around here anyway.”

  “A lot of stuff like this happened after Hurricane Katrina,” April said, “and that was just a storm that shut things down in a limited area. Police were going around house to house in some places, confiscating people’s guns, and they even caught some local cops in New Orleans stealing brand new cars from the dealerships. It’s amazing what people will do when they think they can get away with it.”

  April stopped in the middle of the road as soon as they were out of earshot of the men at the roadblock. “We can’t let them get away with it! I’m not letting them have David’s car, just like that. I could be with my Kimberly today if we just had that car.” She didn’t budge until Mitch stopped and turned to face her.

  “What do you think we can do?” he asked. “It’s pretty clear that arguing with them won’t do any good. Do you seriously think we can go up against them armed the way they are? Do you want me to try and sneak up on them and kill them with my arrows like those other two guys? Those guys were unarmed, and they never saw what hit them. They deserved to die for what they did and what they intended to do. These cops may be thugs, too, but we can’t start fighting cops, or you will never get back to your baby and I’ll never get to my little sister and my home.”

  “Of course I’m not suggesting we fight them or try and kill them. It’s just that this is so wrong. There’s got to be someone who can help us. Maybe if we find some other policemen or the sheriff or something?”

  “I don’t think that would do us any good. Look, these guys are not going to keep the car forever. He said you could have it back; you just have to have David along to claim it. I don’t know what to tell you. I know it sucks, and it sucks for me, too, because I could have used a ride.”

  “I think they’re just keeping the car so they can use it themselves. Their patrol cars are probably useless, so now they’re just commandeering any running vehicle that someone tries to drive through their little redneck town.”

  “You’re probably right, but there’s no sense just standing here in the rain and talking about it. We’re getting wet anyway, so we might as well keep walking.”

  “Walking where? You’re walking back home to some land in the middle of nowhere. I’ve got to get to Hattiesburg. I don’t even know how far it is from here, but I know it’s going to take a long time to get there if have to walk the whole way.”

  “We don’t have any choice right now but to walk, and I’ll feel better if we get away from this town as soon as possible. It’s up to you, but it would make more sense to stick together. From where we are right now, it’s about the same distance to our family land as it is straight up Highway 11 to Hattiesburg. If you come with me, I can give you a ride from our farm as soon as I make sure my little sister is okay.”

  “A ride? How are you going to give me a ride?”

  “We’ve got an old truck in the barn out behind the house. It’s a ’61 Ford that belonged to my grandpa. It doesn’t get used much but it will run. I’ll just have to air up the tires and hope the battery still has enough of a charge to turn it over.”

  April considered this as she walked alongside Mitch, who was already on the move as he was talking. She didn’t like the idea of going so far out of her way to follow him home when that time could be spent walking straight to her Kimberly, but on the other hand, she didn’t relish the idea of walking alone, either. It wouldn’t make sense for him to walk out of his way to Hattiesburg with her with no prospect of getting back home other than to turn around and walk back, so she didn’t even suggest it.

  From what he said, his family land was sort of on the way, but somewhat east of the more direct route to Hattiesburg along Highway 11. If, and it seemed like a big if, the old truck he said was there would start and run, then maybe it made sense to go with him. After what happened this morning, she knew that two would have a better chance than one.

  “What if the battery is not charged? What then? It’s not like we can jump it off another car or something.”

  “There are other options,” Mitch said. “My mom’s car will be there at the house. Of course it won’t run, because it’s a late model Chevrolet, but we could take the battery out of it if we had to. Then there’s my dad’s tractor. The battery in it should be good. It may be slow, but it’s a heck of a lot faster than walking. We have options, but I’m sure we can get the old truck running.”

  April made up her mind to trust this new friend she had just met hours ago, so she started walking alongside him. She let go of the idea of getting the car back with a sigh, and, like Mitch, she was now ready to leave this town behind as fast as possible.

  They headed east on Highway 26 instead of continuing straight north on Highway 11 because the railroad tracks that ran roughly parallel to it were just a short distance away. It was the same railroad he’d been walking on before he met her, and he said it would be much safer than walking on any high
way, especially until they got well away from the town and its outlying residential areas. April didn’t argue with that logic, and when they came to where the highway crossed over the tracks, she followed him down the steep, muddy bank and they plodded north again along on the cross ties and gravel between the two rails as the rain poured down.

  “One good thing about this rain is that even though it’s hard to see far in it, it makes us just about invisible, too,” Mitch said.

  “We’re probably the only ones dumb enough to be out here walking in it.”

  “Just think of it as camouflage. Once we get a few miles north, we will turn off on the tracks onto one of the big pipelines. Then, we’ll really be in the boondocks.”

  “Pipelines?” April couldn’t really picture the idea of walking along a pipeline. It just wasn’t something that had ever been on her radar in the cities she had lived in. Mitch explained that you didn’t really see the pipeline itself, because it was buried underground, but each one was surrounded by a wide, cleared right-of-way that made for a reasonable walking route through otherwise trackless terrain. Most of the rural land in Mississippi was crisscrossed with such pipelines, the bigger ones running long distances into neighboring states in both directions, and the smaller ones tying into them from outlying oil or natural gas fields and remote pumping stations. They usually ran in arrow-straight lines for miles, up and down hills and across streams and rivers, over open farmland and through the heaviest forests.

  While following them was sometimes tough, they had the great advantage of usually being out of sight of roads or houses. The only people who frequented them were the occasional workers clearing paths or doing inspections. During deer season, hunters sometimes used the long sight lines of the open right-of-ways to ambush their prey at a distance with high-powered rifles. April wondered if they, too, might be susceptible to such an ambush while traveling those routes, but Mitch felt confident that people out in the rural areas were going to be plenty busy with their immediate survival and would not likely be far from home roaming areas like the pipelines. At least not this soon after the lights went out.

  “People out here in rural Mississippi tend to mind their own business anyway,” Mitch said. “Unless you’re threatening them or trying to steal something from them, you don’t have anything to worry about out here.”

  “From what I’ve seen since I left New Orleans, I don’t want to run into any other people. You’re the only person I’ve met so far who hasn’t wanted to take my car or kill me. I’m sorry the ride didn’t work out. Helping me didn’t get you very far, did it?”

  “I’m not worried about that. I’m just glad I happened to be able to help. Hey, I’m sorry to hear about your parents . . .”

  “What?”

  “You told that cop back there they were both dead. Is that true?”

  “Yeah, thanks. It was a long time ago when I lost my dad, then my mom a little more than a year ago. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  They continued on in silence, each lost in their own thoughts as they made their way north. Walking on the big chunks of rock that made up the railroad bed was not easy on her feet, and April was glad she had at least put on a pair of comfortable cross-trainers before she left New Orleans that morning. Like everything else she had on, though, her shoes and socks were soaked through and through. With every step she could feel the water squish beneath her soles, and she wondered if she would have blisters by the time they quit walking.

  Mitch had claimed he was covering around twenty miles per night those first three nights, and she thought that seemed like a long way to walk in one stretch. She had never tried it, if only because she’d never had reason to. But she was determined that if he could do it, then she could, too. She would do whatever it took to get to Kimberly as soon as humanly possible.

  Like Mitch had said, the railroad tracks ran mostly out of sight of the roads, houses, and other buildings of the town, and sooner than she expected, they were back in the countryside. Like the pipelines he seemed to know so much about, the railroads were travel corridors she probably wouldn’t have thought to use as a walking route, but it made a lot of sense, especially now that no trains were running and the roads were the routes almost everyone else would take. Mitch said he had often walked the tracks for miles while hunting or simply roaming the woods, as they led through areas inaccessible by regular roads, just like the pipelines do. They hadn’t seen another soul out here so far and now that they were well away from the town, she thought they likely wouldn’t.

  By late afternoon the rain was showing no sign of letting up, so Mitch suggested they try to find some shelter for the night. “There’s no need to be miserable,” he said. “It’s bad enough walking in this weather in the daytime. I don’t think we have to worry with traveling at night out here like I did closer to the city. Besides, we should be far enough north now that we can start heading east on one of the pipelines in the morning.”

  “That’s fine with me. How about that underpass so we’re out of the rain?” April said, pointing to a bridge over the tracks that was just visible in the distance.

  “Okay, if that’s just a small county road, like I think it is, we should be pretty safe there. It’s possible someone might come along, but I doubt anyone will. We can take turns keeping watch. I’ve got to sleep some time. Before you came along and woke me up with your car, I probably had less than an hour of sleep. I need some rest and you do, too, because we will probably have a much longer and tougher hike tomorrow.”

  SEVEN

  When Mitch and April walked under the shelter of the concrete overpass it was the first time they had been out of the rain since they left the roadblock hours earlier. He waited and listened for a few minutes to make sure there was no sound of activity on the road overhead. Then, keeping low and moving slowly, he climbed the steep bank to the roadway to have a look.

  The road was the typical rural county route common all over the state: crushed gravel over asphalt with no painted centerline or any signage to indicate a name or number. Most of these roads didn’t go over railroad crossings unless they had a fair amount of traffic, but there was no development or anything else but pine forests as far as he could see on either side of the pavement, and there were no stalled vehicles in sight.

  Without a map, he had no way of knowing where the road went, as he was unfamiliar with this county aside from occasionally driving through it on the main highways. It appeared to run in a general east/west direction, and could be a viable route to take them closer to their destination since they needed to travel east at some point, but he felt it would be safer to keep to his original plan and stay on the railroad until they crossed one of the larger pipelines. If they followed one of those to the east, they would have to cross a major stream called Red Creek, which he was sure he would recognize when he saw it, and continuing in that direction would eventually take them to U.S. Highway 49.

  Satisfied that it was unlikely anyone had seen them approaching the overpass along the railroad, he felt that the prospect of a good night’s rest out of the weather would be worth the small risk that someone might come along and discover them under the bridge before morning. He made his way back down the bank to where April waited. She was sitting on a concrete retaining wall under the overpass, out of the rain but obviously uncomfortable in her soaking wet clothes. At least she had something to change into if the grocery bags she was carrying her stuff in hadn’t leaked. Mitch had nothing but what he was wearing, but he was too tired to care and figured he could sleep anyway.

  “If you want to put on something dry, I’ll climb back up there to the road and wait,” he said.

  April opened her bag and felt inside. “Okay, I do have another pair of pants and a T-shirt. I wish I had a sweatshirt or something, though. It’s kind of chilly.”

  “Yeah, it’s the damp. Can’t get away from that, even under the bridge. I wish we could build a fire under here tonight, but it’s just too risky. Tomorrow night we
will probably be somewhere where we can.”

  “Well, it may be a damp under here, but I guess it’s better than walking out in it all night.”

  Mitch knew she was anxious to keep moving and would probably be more than willing to walk all night in the rain if he would. But he was simply too tired, and besides, once they left the railroad, it would be difficult to find their way in the dark. He promised her they would get moving again at first light, whatever the weather conditions. He knew the rain was the least of her concerns.

  He climbed back up to the road to give her some privacy to change, and as he stood looking in both directions to be sure they were still alone, he could only imagine the anxiety and anguish she must be going through. While he was worried about his little sister, the fact that Lisa was with friends in the small town where they all went to school eased his mind somewhat. He felt confident that she would be okay when he got there, and that being farther removed from big urban areas like New Orleans and even smaller cities like Hattiesburg and Gulfport, their community would not likely be inundated with a flood of refugees this soon after the blackout. He knew that could change, and expected that it likely would, but probably not before he got there and could take Lisa to the surer safety of their own land.

  Lisa was thirteen and she was quite comfortable in the woods herself, even if she was not the fanatic about it that Mitch was. She had learned how to shoot and even hunted some with their dad, and already knew how to drive and could run the tractor almost as well. So, while it was his responsibility to look out for her for the duration of this crisis until their parents could return, she was far from the helpless one-year-old that April had to worry about.