The Darkness After: A Novel

by Scott B. Williams

  “Seems like it, I’m afraid. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  On the east side of the highway, unlike the section they had just traversed, the pipeline company had not cleared the right-of-way recently, and they had to push their way through underbrush and tall grass. In some places it was easier to move just inside the edge of the pine forests than out in neglected open areas, but even there they had to detour around thickets, pick their way over fallen trees and slog through deep mud. After about twenty minutes of this, April was beginning to get discouraged. At that rate it would take all afternoon just to go two or three miles. But then they crested another small ridge and suddenly came upon a wide-open clearing that turned out to be the right-of-way of a railroad crossing the pipeline at a perpendicular angle and running north and south.

  Mitch grinned and suggested they take a short break to rest a bit and make a plan. “This is fantastic! How could I have forgotten all about this railroad? I don’t know what I was thinking. That just goes to show how much easier this would be if I just had a map.”

  “So what do we do now? Do we follow the railroad?”

  “Yep. This has to be the railroad that goes right through downtown Brooklyn. That’s the little town where our school is. All we have to do is follow it north to get to Black Creek. I was thinking we would have to find another pipeline or power line right-of-way in order to stay off the roads, but I was also afraid that looking for one would take us too far east, out of the way. We need to go to Brooklyn first anyway, before we go to the land, because Lisa’s friend’s house is right on the outskirts of town and that’s where she’s supposed to be.”

  “How far from the town is your land then?”

  “Come over here, I’ll show you.” Mitch found a shady spot in the edge of the woods and using his feet, kicked away the pine straw and other debris to clear a patch of sandy soil. Then he found a suitable stick and began roughing out a map. “It’s less than ten miles, depending on how you go. Look, here’s the creek.” He drew a squiggly line in the sand. “Here’s Highway 49, the four-lane we just crossed back there. I’m guessing only about a half mile back, considering how thick it was between here and there.” Mitch drew an arrow-straight line that intersected the creek at sort of a right angle. “Highway 49 runs north and south. Brooklyn is just to the east of the highway, on the north side of the creek, right here.” He scratched out a rough circle. “Our land is downstream, about here, where the county line is.” He made an approximate square on the south side of the squiggly line, a good bit to the east of the highway and the circle that indicated Brooklyn. He drew another line that roughly paralleled the highway, also going through Brooklyn. “This is the railroad you’re looking at. We’re about here, I think.” He pointed with the stick. “We need to go north to Brooklyn, and this railroad will take us there. After that, we go downstream to get to our land.”

  “What will we do, follow the creek?”

  “No, not directly. There are too many bends and too many swampy places, not to mention the woods are too thick, even worse than what we’ve just come through. We can backtrack a bit on the railroad to here,” he pointed again. “There’s a hiking trail that runs along the south side of the creek, which is the side our land is on. The trail goes within a half mile of our house. Not many people use it anyway, and I’ll bet no one is on it now.”

  “How long is all of this going to take? Every day that goes by is another day that something could happen to Kimberly. She could be going without food or something else she needs. It’s driving me crazy.”

  “I know you’re anxious, but it’s better to get there safely than to not get there at all. At least on the railroad we can walk at night if we need to. I’m guessing it’s about one o’clock right now,” he said, looking at the angle of the sun. “We can get to Brooklyn sometime tonight, I’ll bet, if we keep walking. If it’s late when we arrive, we can camp somewhere in the woods around Black Creek and then walk to the Burns’ house where Lisa is staying first thing in the morning. We’ll get her and still have time to make the hike to our house tomorrow and see about getting that old truck running.”

  “I just hope you’re right that the truck will still run, and that it’ll still be there when we get there,” April said.

  “Don’t worry about that. It’ll be there, and it’ll run. Hey, while we’re resting for a few minutes, do you still want to try shooting my bow?”

  “Sure, but what would I shoot at?”

  Mitch pointed out a steep clay bank on the other side of the railroad tracks, created when the railroad bed was graded. He looked around and found a couple of discarded plastic soda bottles and walked over to the bank, fixing them in place by putting them mouth down over twigs he pushed into the clay.

  “Those are small targets,” April said, when he returned to her side and showed her how to hold and draw the bow.

  “Yeah, but it’s actually better to practice by shooting at small targets instead of large ones. It helps you focus. Archery is more mental than physical. It’s all about focus and not thinking too much about the target.”

  “Sounds kind of like martial arts,” she said.

  “Well, I suppose it is a martial art. At least it used to be.”

  “And now it is again,” she said. “Probably one of the more useful skills to have now, as you have already proven.”

  April quickly learned that Mitch’s expertise just made it look easy. There was nothing easy about it, including simply pulling back the sixty pounds of resistance in the longbow’s sturdy limbs. She could do it, but it was a bit too much weight for her to hold steadily enough to take aim, and Mitch said she would be better off starting out with a draw weight of around forty pounds until she perfected the technique. With his bow she had to shoot from a partially drawn position, and her first few arrows went completely wild, missing the mark by several yards and in no consistent pattern. When Mitch demonstrated the correct technique, easily pinning the small plastic bottles to the bank behind them with the first arrow every time April got angry at her own lack-luster shots.

  “It just comes with practice,” he said. “You well know what I mean. You made disarming a man with a gun and smashing him where it hurts before he knew what hit him look easy, too. And you promised to teach me that, too. We’ll save that for another time, though.”

  April knew he was right, but seeing how difficult it was made her want to master the bow even more. She was determined to do so, and Mitch said he had a lighter weight target bow at his house that she could take with her and keep, if she wanted it. When she asked how he knew so much about archery, he told her that he had read practically everything he could get his hands on about the many variations of the bow and arrow around the world. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of this weapon’s development in different cultures and the role it played in shaping history. This simple piece of bent wood had been instrumental in enabling primitive hunters to dominate their environment and had later played a key role on medieval battlefields until the refinement of firearms technology. He could go on and on about it for hours, that was obvious, and April had rarely met anyone who was so passionate about anything. In this way Mitch reminded her a lot of her dad.

  When they started moving again, following the railroad north, they were able to walk side-by-side again, unlike on the pipeline, and this enabled Mitch to keep talking about his favorite subject. April was interested, and wanted to know more, but she also wanted to know more about his father and his job as a game warden. Mitch told her stories that his dad had told him, about some of his encounters with poachers, marijuana growers, and other criminals who operated in the boondocks where he worked every day.

  “Dad always said that being a game warden was one of the most dangerous law enforcement jobs there is. That’s because practically everyone you come across out there is armed: hunters, both the legal and illegal ones, dope growers, meth heads, fugitives, you name it. He says he’s been shot at more times than he can remember,
but so far he’s never been hit. He’s one heck of a woodsman, though, and that gives him the advantage. He usually sneaks up on the bad guys and has them in the cuffs before they even know what’s happening. He’s kind of a legend around Perry County. Everybody up there knows who he is. He taught me just about everything I know about the woods, even if he’s not much of a archer.”

  “I just always thought those wildlife officers and rangers did stuff like rescuing baby animals and making sure no one sets the forest on fire,” said April. “It sounds like a really tough job.”

  The easy walking on the railroad and their conversation made the afternoon seem to go by fast, and by sunset Mitch estimated they had covered seven or eight miles since getting on the tracks and should be getting close to Brooklyn.

  “Isn’t it amazing? We’ve been walking all afternoon, and haven’t seen a soul on the railroad, and look at how many people there were back on Highway 49.”

  “I guess they just don’t know about the railroad,” April said.

  “Most of them probably don’t. But it’s also just the way people think. Most of them are still thinking like they did before the blackout. They drove cars on roads, so they think they’re supposed to walk on roads. Even if they crossed right over the railroad, which I’m sure some of them did, it wouldn’t occur to them to use it. It’s just human nature, I guess.”

  When full darkness finally overtook them, neither wanted to stop, as Mitch was sure Brooklyn was within reach and April just wanted to take every step she could that would bring her closer to Kimberly. With no glow from lights to pollute the night sky, the array of stars stretching overhead above the railroad was spectacular. April had never seen such a sky living in the city, and the starlight alone was enough to see by as they walked the tracks. Two hours later, the rising moon gave them even more light, and by the time it was high above the tree tops she could see quite some distance both ahead and behind along the tracks. Sometime around midnight, when they were both getting tired and ready to stop, something ahead in the distance took shape as they approached; it was an iron bridge and April could hear the sound of running water.

  “Black Creek,” Mitch whispered. “We made it!”

  TWELVE

  Mitch kept his voice to a whisper as he warned April that they needed to slow down and approach the railroad bridge over Black Creek with caution. A paved road converged from the left and ran parallel to the railroad here, with just a few yards of open grass separating them. The road crossed the creek on a separate span upstream from the railroad bridge.

  “That’s Brooklyn just on the other side of those bridges,” Mitch whispered. “Not much there, just a few houses, a country store, and the canoe rental place for people that come here to run the creek on summer weekends. Our school is down the road that turns off to the east at the crossroads ahead.”

  “Can’t we walk on into the town tonight and go to your sister’s friend’s house and see if she’s there?”

  “We could, but it’s probably not a good idea this late. It’s after midnight, and even though I know a lot of people around here, if we go walking into town this late at night, we’re liable to get shot. I’m sure everybody’s on edge and anyone who sees us on the street that late will think we’re strangers up to no good and probably shoot before asking questions. Let’s just hole up in the woods by the creek and wait until daylight. It’s only a few hours anyway.”

  Mitch was almost as anxious as April. It would be hard for him to wait until morning, too, but he knew it was the smart thing to do. He was looking forward to seeing Lisa and was really glad his long trek from New Orleans was almost over. As they settled into a dark grove of hardwoods near the banks of the creek, he thought about how good it was going to be to be home again sometime later that very day. On their land, he could weather this disaster until the power was eventually restored, and he would have been content but for two things: First, his parents were at best stranded hundreds of miles away and at worst could have died in plane crash. Second, his new friend, April, was still a long way from her child and he still had to somehow help her get to Hattiesburg.

  Again he found himself wishing that it wasn’t true that she had a daughter and a boyfriend who was the child’s father. If she only had herself to worry about, none of them would have to leave the security of the land where they would have everything they needed. They could remain hidden from the rest of the world until someday when things were back to normal, and by then, maybe she wouldn’t want to leave. But that was just a nice fantasy to keep his mind occupied and help pass the time. He knew it was impossible.

  * * *

  When they both finally fell asleep, it seemed like mere moments before the sunlight filtering through the oak and river birch branches overhead woke them again. Mitch walked to the edge of the creek and splashed his face. His stomach was grumbling, and he knew April had to be hungry, too. They had walked a lot of miles on too little food, but now that they had almost reached their destination, they would soon have plenty to eat. Hopefully Mrs. Burns would have groceries at her house and could offer them breakfast before they set off with Lisa to take her home. When April was ready, Mitch picked up his bow and they made their way out of the woods, up the bank to the paved road. There was no point in walking the railroad bridge across the river, as it was dangerous if someone made a misstep between the trestles, and besides, he didn’t feel like they had a reason to hide any longer.

  From the elevated car bridge, they could see little of the creek, as it was shrouded in early morning mist steaming off the cool water. The road into the little community had been cleared of stalled vehicles, with most of them pushed to the side or into the gravel parking lots of the store and the canoe rental place. There were a few people stirring already. A handful of older men were standing around the pumps of the one gas station in town, and another man was sitting on his front porch at a house on the other side of the street.

  The man on the porch quickly got to his feet when he noticed them walking down the road. As he did, he picked up the shotgun that was leaning against the wall beside his chair and stepped down to his front lawn. Mitch had seen him around before but didn’t know his name. He realized their sudden appearance first thing in the morning could be alarming. Everyone would recognize his dad at a glance, but they might not realize who Mitch was, especially in his full camo. The men at the gas station had also noticed them and were headed their way in a tight group, one carrying a rifle loosely in his hand and the others wearing pistols in plain view.

  Mitch waved and held the bow up with his other hand to show that he had not drawn an arrow and was not carrying a gun. He whispered to April to wave too before he greeted the men. “Good morning, folks! It’s Mitchell Henley, Doug Henley’s son!” The men were visibly relieved. They didn’t want trouble, but with their town such a short distance away from Highway 49, it was inevitable that some of the refugees would be making their way there out of desperation. The people here would want to help them if they could, but there would simply be too many to allow them to stay, and they had to be wary of the few who might try taking what they wanted by force.

  Mitch knew one of the men from the store well, as he often bought gas for his truck there or stopped by to get a soda. Mitch introduced April and related the story of his long walk from New Orleans, leaving out the part about the three men they’d killed but not the confiscation of April’s Mustang.

  “Those bastards are probably driving it right now,” the man said, “using it for a patrol car since their own damned cars won’t run.”

  “I’m sure they are, Mr. Holloway,” Mitch agreed. “If Dad was around, we could drive that old Ford truck of grandpa’s down there and straighten this right out. He wouldn’t put up with it. I told that police chief who he was, but they claimed they never heard of him.”

  “Well, everyone one around here sure knows who Doug Henley is,” Mr. Holloway said. “Especially all them damned spot lighters and dope growers out of Louisi
ana. You can bet they’re all scared of Doug Henley, and he’s been sorely missed since everything shut down last week. I sure hope he’s all right, and your mother, too. They’re fine folks. Like you said, if their plane had the chance to land, then your dad will be able to take care of himself and look out for your mom. I’ll bet he’s on his way here with her right now, and he’ll get here, too, come hell or high water.”

  “You’re probably right, I’m sure he will. But I know it could take a long time. It took long enough for us to get here just from New Orleans. I’ve been frantic to find my sister, Lisa. She spent the night before all this happened with her friend Stacy Burns.”

  Mitch knew that Mr. Holloway knew Lisa and her friend Stacy well, as Mitch sometimes had both girls with him when he stopped at the store. Stacy stayed over at the Henley’s farm even more often than Lisa spent the night in Brooklyn with her. Of course, Mr. Holloway also knew Stacy’s brother, Jason, and her mom, Pam Burns. In a town the size of Brooklyn, it was impossible that a storekeeper would not know every resident for miles around.

  “Mitch, I’m afraid I’ve got to tell you that Lisa and Stacy aren’t here. Neither is Jason. They left several days ago and I haven’t seen ’em since.”

  Mitch was shocked. He had felt so sure he’d find them in town, and to find out he was wrong practically knocked the air out of his lungs.

  Pam Burns was a divorced single mom, and had a good-paying job as an emergency room nurse at a hospital in Hattiesburg. Mitch knew she was going to be working the evening before he had to take his parents to the airport, and the girls would be fine going home after school with Jason until Ms. Burns got there late that evening. But according to Mr. Holloway, she never made it home:

  “Jason said she called him that night when her shift was over, saying the nurse who was supposed to relieve her didn’t show up. She told Jason she had agreed to stay and work a double if he could promise her he would get the girls up in the morning and to school on time. Jason told her he would, and if it hadn’t been for the pulse happening that morning, she would have gotten home shortly after they left in the morning. But it did happen, and they never heard another word from her. The three of them walked down here to the store several times that first day to get something to drink and see if anybody knew what was going on.