The Darkness After: A Novel

by Scott B. Williams

  As much as he fantasized about living back in frontier times when he could have been a full-time hunter and explorer, he realized how hard it must have been to go weeks, months, or even years without hearing from loved ones left behind. He and April would completely miss Lisa and her friends if they were traveling back to the farm by road while the two of them were in the boat going upriver. He didn’t know what to do, but it didn’t seem to make any more sense to him to sit here and wait, either. They might not ever come back, or if they did, it might take days or even longer.

  He would leave a note outlining his travel plan in case they did return in the meantime, but beyond that, the only thing that seemed logical now was to help April get back to her child. She had tried to help him, and he had promised her a ride if she came this far with him. Now he intended to deliver whether he had the old Ford truck or not.

  After what they’d already seen, he felt better about traveling on the river than the road anyway. They might encounter a few people using the waterway, as there were a lot of old, simple outboards still in use around these parts. And, unlike Black Creek, more camps and full-time homes were scattered along the Leaf. Still, he felt like they would have a good chance of getting through to Hattiesburg if they traveled by night. There would still be plenty of moonlight, as the moon was just two days past full, and the Leaf was big enough to navigate safely at night at the kind of speeds the little Johnson 15 would be capable of.

  With the boat in front of the house, they went back inside to get groceries, the camping gear, cookware, and a supply of ammo for all the weapons. There was no way they could take all the firearms, especially the specialized hunting weapons he and his dad owned, and he wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. Between the .22 rifle and his bow, getting food wouldn’t be a problem, though he didn’t expect to have to hunt until he got back anyway considering how much food they were taking with them from his mom’s pantry.

  It would be good to have a stash of weapons and ammo here for later if something happened to the ones he picked to take, and he felt pretty good about the gun safe—for now anyway. If the house was left unattended long enough, someone would eventually clean it out, but he didn’t intend for that to happen. Before he locked it back up, he asked April to look through the handguns. When she picked up a compact Sig Sauer 9mm that she said felt good in her hands, he told her that it was hers to keep, along with the Ruger carbine.

  “I can’t do that,” April said. “I know how expensive these are. I don’t know how I would pay for them, unless David has some cash on him when we get there.”

  “Cash isn’t good for much by now anyway, I don’t reckon. Don’t worry about that. If the lights ever come back on and things get back to normal, maybe we can settle up then. Right now there’s no one else I’d rather give these to than you, and no one I know who needs them more. I’ve got that bow for you, too, back here in my room.”

  He led her into his bedroom where he knew she would be shocked to see that almost all the wall space was taken up by racks of various bows and arrows, some store-bought and many homemade attempts at copying various Native American and other types of bows used by primitive cultures he’d studied.

  “Wow! Now I can see why you’re so good with that thing. You’re obsessed!”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  “I don’t mean it in a bad way. I think it’s really cool.”

  Mitch picked a simple longbow that he’d used when he was younger, an inexpensive but good shooting fiberglass-composite with a draw weight of forty-pounds at twenty-eight inches. He strung it and let April try it. It was clear that she could handle it much better than his sixty-pound hunting bow. He picked a shoulder quiver and selected a dozen cedar shafts tipped with broadheads and fletched with turkey feathers. They were perfectly matched to the bow and with a little practice he was sure she would get good with it quickly.

  April was again apologetic in accepting such an offer, but Mitch dismissed her objections and countered with his own apology, wishing they would have more time for him to teach her what he knew. He didn’t completely dismiss the hope that there would be a way he could spend more time with her, but he didn’t want to let her know he was thinking that or dwell on it too much himself.

  They then went through the pantry and sorted through the canned goods, bags of rice, packages of pasta, and hot cereals. He noticed that Lisa had naturally cleaned out all the ready-to-eat stuff like the boxes of cold cereals, bags of chips, and other snacks. He could only hope she and her friends had taken some real food, too. They put all this stuff in a large canvas duffle bag, and Mitch carried it out to the boat. He put the extra ammo for the various weapons they were taking in a large waterproof box, and another duffle bag held a skillet, cooking pot, utensils, a small propane stove, and two sleeping bags packed in their stuff sacks. Once they tied everything down so it would ride without falling out of the boat along the road, they were ready. Mitch locked the house, leaving his note for Lisa on the dining table inside. The sun was already low by this time, its rays filtering through the perimeter pines that cast long shadows across the lawn.

  “If we go now, we’ll just make it to the river before dark. Why don’t you drive the tractor, and I’ll stand on the deck beside you and ride shotgun,” he said, holding up the Remington 870.

  “Yeah, like literally,” she laughed. “Fine by me, long as you tell me where to go.”

  Mitch looked back over his shoulder as April steered the old International tractor down the lane leading out to the road. He hoped it wouldn’t be long before he could return, but the way things were going there was no telling. He thought about his mom and dad and wondered again if it were possible that their plane had crashed before they landed in Houston. It was something he had been trying not to think about. Instead, he focused on the image of them making their way back here somehow—a journey that would be extremely difficult and dangerous but nevertheless much better than that other possibility.

  When they reached the end of the gravel lane, he directed April to turn right on the narrow county road that ran roughly parallel to Black Creek. They would stay on this one until they came to another county road that would take them to the only bridge that crossed the creek for many miles in either direction. The road that passed by the Henley farm was completely deserted, as it usually was even in normal times, as there were no other houses nearby and the piney woods started just beyond the edge of the right-of-way on either side. There were no abandoned cars here, and Mitch hadn’t expected to see any. But as they rounded the first bend, a short distance past the property line, he saw what he had feared he would eventually be seeing a lot of: someone on foot in the middle of the road. It was a male figure, but that’s all he could tell from the distance. Whoever it was, he was apparently injured, Or at least pretending to be, Mitch thought. The man was hobbling along unsteadily with what looked like a tree branch used as a makeshift crutch.

  “What should I do?” April asked as she glanced at Mitch.

  “Slow it way down,” he said, even though they were already going barely over 10 mph. “He could be armed. Keep it slow but don’t stop until we get close enough to get a better look.”

  “He looks hurt, but it might be a trap,” she said, echoing Mitch’s thoughts. She eased off the throttle and brought the tractor to a crawl.

  “You’re right. Wait until I tell you, then stop and stay here where you can cover me with the rifle while I hop off and see who it is and what he’s up to. I don’t like it that he’s heading in the direction of the house.”

  Mitch racked the slide on the shotgun to chamber a round before they got closer. The figure in the road had stopped, and lifted an arm with what appeared to be a great effort, attempting a friendly wave. Then he collapsed to his knees, apparently so weak it was all he could do to stand, much less walk. Mitch told April to stop when they were about 50 yards away, and when she took the tractor out of gear she picked up her rifle as Mitch stepped down to th
e ground.

  He moved forward cautiously, holding the shotgun at hip level and ready until he was close enough to see that the man in the road wasn’t carrying a weapon or anything else. He wasn’t even wearing any shoes, just a pair of blue jeans and a flannel shirt that was bloodied and torn. It was clear that this wasn’t a ruse—whoever this guy was he was really hurt. Mitch lowered the shotgun and quickly covered the rest of the distance to the injured man.

  He had longish, sandy blond hair that was vaguely familiar, and when Mitch squatted by his side to ask him what happened, he saw that he had been mistaken in thinking this was a stranger, some wandering refugee that had somehow found his way to this remote country road. Beneath the two black eyes and cut and bleeding lips, was the face not of an older man, as he was sure he would see, but of a boy his own age.

  “Jason!” Mitch exclaimed in shock. “Jason! What happened? Where are Lisa and Stacy?”

  SEVENTEEN

  April leapt down from the tractor, leaving the engine running at idle and grabbed one of the bottles of water they had stashed in the John boat. She had not heard what he said to the person in the road, but it was clear that Mitch wanted to help him and that he needed water. With the rifle slung over her shoulder, she hurried to his side.

  “What happened to him, do you know him?”

  “April, this is Jason! Lisa’s best friend’s brother, the one they were with. I don’t know what happened yet. He’s so dehydrated he’s just barely mumbling. Give me the water!”

  April couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She opened the water bottle and handed it to Mitch, squatting down beside him and looking at the battered face that she could now see was younger than she’d expected. Whoever did this had nearly beaten him to death. In addition to the blows to his face, his right hand was swollen and blue, with broken bones likely, and his left leg was twisted and looked like it had been broken or his knee dislocated. He was begging for water when Mitch held the bottle to his lips and wiped away some of the blood from his face with his other hand.

  “Jason, you’ve got to tell me what happened. Where is my sister? Where is your sister? Who did this to you? What did they do to them?”

  “Took them,” Jason sputtered. “I tried to stop them. I tried to fight them.”

  “Who took them?” Mitch asked, his voice trembling with panic. “Who were they, Jason? Where’s the truck? Were you all in it?”

  “Took the truck, too. I couldn’t do anything. They were just waiting for somebody to come along. They had it planned out.”

  “Who did?” Mitch asked. “Where did this happen? How long ago?”

  Mitch gave him another drink of water and waited for him to swallow so he could answer. April could see the rage and fear in Mitch’s eyes, and looking at the condition Jason was in, she totally understood. Anyone capable of hurting someone this badly was capable of anything.

  “I don’t know them,” Jason said. “Never seen any of them before, but when they first came out of the woods, Lisa said three of them were brothers, Wallace brothers.”

  “Wallace! Wallace brothers? Are you serious?”

  April looked at him with the obvious question.

  “Scumbags!” Mitch said. “Bunch of outlaw redneck scumbags! My dad has arrested every one of them half a dozen times. Headlighting deer, poaching alligators, cooking meth, stolen vehicles and ATVs, you name it. When they’re not in jail it’s almost a full-time job for Dad to just keep track of them.”

  “They’re brothers? How many of them are there?”

  “I don’t know, three or four. Their dad’s just as bad as they are. There are always some uncles and cousins or nephews or something hanging around with them. You don’t see one or even two without seeing at least a couple more. I don’t know how many people live out at that place, but they’re real lowlifes, all of them. They’ve got about forty acres of cutover bottom land over on a branch on the north side of Black Creek with a bunch of old trailers and shacks all over the place. Junk cars and all kinds of crap everywhere there’s not a tree in the way.” Mitch turned back to Jason. “Where did you run into them? How long ago was this?”

  “It was the day before yesterday, late in the evening,” Jason said. “I guess about this time of day. We had gotten to your house that morning after walking all the way from our house in Brooklyn. We went there to borrow that old truck, because Lisa said your dad wouldn’t mind and we’d seen a couple of other antique cars running since the blackout. We were going to Hattiesburg to get my mom. She was working there when all this happened and couldn’t get home.”

  “That’s what we figured you had done,” Mitch said.

  “I’m sorry. If it hadn’t been my idea to try to go get my mom, none of this would have happened.”

  “Just tell me what they did,” Mitch said. “Did they hurt my little sister like they hurt you?”

  April put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder as he trembled with dread while questioning Jason. She could only imagine what he was going through.

  “We were on the other side of the creek, not far across the bridge. I was driving and when I went around a bend, all of a sudden there was a huge pine tree lying across the road. I could tell somebody had cut it down deliberately. I stopped and was going to turn around when these three men just stepped out of the woods on either side of the road behind us, with their deer rifles pointed right at us. Lisa had your dad’s patrol rifle, but it wouldn’t have done any good to try anything. They already had the drop on us. It happened so fast and was so unexpected; there was just nothing we could do.

  “They told us to get out of the truck. I knew as soon as I saw them with their guns that it was the truck they wanted. They had blocked the road and were just waiting and hoping someone would come along with a running vehicle. I guess we were pretty close to where they lived, because they must have walked there. I thought they would just take the truck and leave us alone. But then two more of them came out from the other side of the roadblock—two older-looking men with long, wild beards and scraggly hair. They looked like brothers, too, just like the three younger ones did.

  “They started asking us all kinds of questions and Lisa got really mad. She said her dad was the game warden and if they took that truck they would never hunt in his county again when he got through with them. That’s when it really got ugly. I guess Lisa should have kept her mouth shut. When they found out who she was, everything changed.

  “One of the two older ones, the two really rough-looking ones, walked up to the truck like he was going to get in it and then he just all of a sudden punched me in the face. I never saw it coming. I remember hearing Lisa or Stacy scream, and then one of the younger ones, one of the three who had first stepped out of the woods, came over and kicked me in the head before I could get up from the first punch. I kept trying to get up, and both of them kept kicking me. Then I tried to crawl under the truck on my hands and knees, and one of them stomped on my hand with a heavy boot. I think it’s broken. When I rolled over he stomped on my knee. He must’ve crushed my kneecap or something. I can’t put any weight on it.”

  April shuddered. She couldn’t imagine the pain he must have felt as it was happening, and the pain he must still be feeling now. It was going to take some time for him to recover, both from the physical damage and the emotional anguish of knowing he had utterly failed to defend the two younger girls. Mitch was in agony, too, agony along with shock and he felt fear as he listened to Jason’s account of the attack.

  “Did they hit Lisa and Stacy like that?”

  “I don’t know. I know they grabbed them. I could hear them screaming and the men yelling at them to shut up. I was almost to the point of passing out, but I remember hearing the truck drive off. They turned it around and went back the way we came and then turned off somewhere. I could hear the engine for a while, then I think I passed out.

  “I don’t know how long I was lying there. When I woke up, I couldn’t believe I was still alive. It was barely breaking
daylight. There was nothing in sight but the road and the woods and nothing to be heard but a few squirrels and birds. I crawled to the side of the road and eventually managed to sit up. I was thirsty and could taste nothing in my mouth but blood.

  “I finally found this stick in the edge of the woods and managed to get up with it. I started back in the direction of your house, because that’s all I knew to do. I needed water really bad, but all I found was a filthy puddle on the side of the road. I was able to wash my face some in it, and I drank just a little, but the water was nasty.”

  “So that was yesterday, when you woke up, and you’ve been trying to get back here since then? Two days?”

  “In his condition he couldn’t have gone far in two days,” April said. “I’m surprised he was able to move at all.”

  “If this happened where I think it did, not far from the Wallace place, then that’s about six or seven miles from here,” Mitch said. “But I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about what they’ve done to Lisa and Stacy. Tonight will be the third night since this happened. I’ve got to go get them.”

  “How?” April asked. “It sounds like there are several of them, and they are all armed. There may be more that weren’t at the roadblock, too.”

  “I don’t care if there are a hundred. I’m getting my sister. And Jason’s sister.”

  “I’m going, too,” Jason said. “All I need is a gun. That’s why I was going back to your place. I knew there was a gun safe there, and I was going to break into it one way or another and go back to kill those bastards.”

  “You’re in no condition to do anything,” April said. “You’ve got a lot of healing to do. You can barely walk, much less fight. I’ll go with Mitch. Two of us will have a better chance than one.”