The Darkness After: A Novel

by Scott B. Williams

  As for Stacy and Lisa, they were traumatized, which was completely understandable. But once Mitch explained who April was and why she was there, both girls opened up to her and worried about her wound instead of talking about their own ordeal. Before driving away from the property, Mitch gathered up all the weapons the fallen men had dropped and put them in the back of the truck, except for his father’s AR-15, which he put on the seat beside him. He checked the cabin and trailer for more weapons, but found nothing, then set about the grisly task of searching each of the dead men’s pockets until he found the one that held the ignition key to the truck. He then looked around the buildings until he found three extra five-gallon jerry cans of gasoline, which he tied down in the back.

  “I guess I’m glad they stole these from somewhere. At least we’ll have enough to get back to the house and then get the boat to the river.”

  When Mitch slid behind the wheel and turned the key, the engine turned over and sputtered to life. April felt a flood of relief that made her temporarily forget her pain, but she was reminded of it quickly as the rough-riding antique truck bounced along on the winding country roads leading back to the Henley land. The trip back didn’t take long, though, as it was just a few miles by road. When Mitch turned onto the lane and pulled up to the front of the house, he quickly shut off the engine and jumped out of the cab to call out to Jason, letting him know it was them and not one of the Wallace men who had taken the truck.

  April could have made it in the house just fine by herself, but Mitch was around to her side and had the door open before she could get out. He had an arm around her as he guided her up the steps and into the house where he led her to the sofa in the den. Stacy went to a closet in the bathroom to get towels, and Lisa went to her mom’s bedroom to find April some clean clothes. When they had cleaned up all the blood, April was surprised to see the jagged gash the little .22 caliber bullet had made as it tore a path through the skin at her side.

  “It looks worse than it is,” Mitch said. “But it’s a lot better that it made a gash like that and kept on going, instead of getting lodged inside you. This way at least I don’t have to dig it out with my Bowie knife like I’ve seen them do on all those Western movies.”

  “Yeah, right. I don’t know that digging around with a knife would hurt any worse though. I can’t believe how much pain such a shallow wound caused, and with that little .22.”

  “It’s because of the way it scraped along your rib, and it was probably an expanding hollow point bullet. That’s why it tore up so much skin. You wouldn’t be here if it had gone a couple inches to the right.”

  “I know. I’m lucky, I guess, just a lot of blood but no permanent damage.”

  “Let’s see if we can get this bleeding stopped for good. You might be sore for a while, and you might have a scar, but I think it will heal just fine.”

  Mitch used some large gauze pads and tape from the family medicine cabinet to make a bandage over her wound. Aside from the pain, she hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until everyone in the house had exchanged their stories of what they’d been through since the power went out. It seemed impossible, listening to Mitch recount their journey, that the last time she had slept was near the bridge over Black Creek just outside Brooklyn, and that was less than twenty-four hours ago! Since then, they had canoed from Brooklyn to here, gathered supplies, prepared the tractor and boat to go to the Leaf River, found Jason, and brought him back to the house. Then they had canoed downriver to sneak up on the Wallace place, killed the men who had kidnapped Lisa and Stacy, and she had gotten shot in the process! No wonder she was tired! When Mitch suggested they all get some sleep before trying to do anything else, April did not object.

  Thanks to her exhaustion, and probably helped by the whiskey, it was close to noon when she finally woke, feeling rested but still in pain. When she checked her bandage she saw that it had not bled through and figured that was a good sign. She wondered what would happen now, with Mitch reunited with his sister and Jason in no condition to do much of anything. She suspected Mitch might not be too keen on carrying on with their plan to go to the Leaf River and Hattiesburg, especially now that she was wounded, too. She certainly hoped he didn’t think she intended to stop now.

  She went into the kitchen, where he had already made coffee over the camp stove, and after looking at her wound, he assured her that he intended to make good on his promise to help her get back to her Kimberly. “What about Lisa?” April asked. “I don’t expect you to leave her after everything that’s happened.”

  “I’m not. She’s insisting on going with us, and I’ve decided I’m okay with that. Even though we have the truck, I still think it’s much better to go to Hattiesburg by boat on the Leaf River. I feel pretty good about our chances of getting you there without running into much trouble. The truck will still be handy, though, because that John boat is small enough that we can load it in the back. It will be much faster than towing the boat behind that old tractor. Stacy wants to stay here with Jason, and I think that’s best. They will be well-armed, and if things go as well as I hope they will, Lisa and I shouldn’t be gone longer than twenty-four hours.”

  “You could just drop me off at the river with the boat if you want. There’s no need for you and Lisa to go to Hattiesburg. I can drive a boat like this. The bleeding has completely stopped. And I know this is where you want to be.”

  “I want to be wherever you are . . .” Mitch said, before he could stop himself. Immediately he flushed and looked down at his feet to hide it.

  April was not surprised to hear this. It was obvious that Mitch had developed quite a crush on her. She knew when they first met that he was attracted to her, and that attraction had grown much stronger as the days went by and they bonded through the dangers they’d experienced. She found herself attracted to him, too, despite the fact that he was younger and still in high school. He was certainly more mature than anyone else his age she’d ever met, and probably more mature than David in many ways, but David was the father of her child.

  “I meant I just want to make sure you’re going to be okay,” Mitch said when he regained his composure. “You’ve done so much to help me. I can’t let you go on alone without knowing if you even get there okay. Lisa and I will be fine. She’s tough and can handle the trip, so don’t worry about that.”

  April opened her mouth to say something to Mitch about how she felt, but she knew it would only complicate things. She changed course and asked, “Do we still have to wait until it gets dark again to go up the river?”

  She could see that Mitch was relieved that they weren’t going to linger on his accidental admission. “No, I don’t think it will matter that much. I know you must be incredibly tired of all the delays. I’m going to tell Lisa to get ready, and then we’ll get the boat moved from the trailer to the back of the truck so we can get going immediately—if you feel up to it, that is.”

  “Absolutely! I’m ready to leave as soon as you are.”

  * * *

  An hour later Mitch was once again driving the Ford pickup, with Lisa in the middle between him and April, and the John boat tied in the bed with the bow hanging several feet past the tailgate. The drive to the Leaf River took less than a half hour, but it seemed like just a few minutes to April because as Mitch drove she was busy answering Lisa’s questions about her baby and what it was like in New Orleans when the power went out. Like her brother, Lisa was at home out here in the country, but unlike him, she also seemed fascinated with city life and wanted to know all about it.

  “Do you think you’ll ever be able to go back to New Orleans?” Lisa asked. “Jason says they’re never going to get the power on because he thinks the pulse shut it down all over the world. He says things are just going to keep getting worse and just about everybody is going to die except the ones that revert to savages. Do you think he’s right?”

  “I don’t think it’s quite that bad, but it could be a long time before it gets fixed. I do
n’t think it affected the whole world. Your brother doesn’t, either. Do you, Mitch? We were talking about it, and he told me about a documentary he’d seen about solar flares that said if a big one disrupted electrical power grids and did other damage on Earth, it would only affect the side of the planet that was exposed to the sun when it hit.”

  “So, if that’s the case, things could be totally normal in China and other countries on the opposite side?”

  “Yeah, I think so. That’s hard to imagine considering how it is here, though.”

  “Do you think those other countries will help us get our lights back on?”

  “I would hope so. I’m betting that there are a lot of people working on it right now, at least somewhere.”

  “Yeah, just not in Mississippi,” Lisa said. “We’re always last in everything. That’s what all my teachers say.”

  “Sometimes that’s a good thing, too,” Mitch said.

  They came to several intersections and forks in the gravel roads Mitch had picked for the route, and at each new turn, April half expected to encounter someone else in the road, injured like Jason or menacing them with guns like so many others had. But these roads were deserted. The last turn took them down a narrow gravel lane past a sign that said “Boat Ramp” and ended in a loop with a steep, concrete ramp sloping off into the muddy brown waters of a river much wider than Black Creek.

  “Here we are,” Mitch said, as he parked the truck. “The Leaf River! All we have to do is run it upstream to get to Hattiesburg.”

  Launching the boat only took a few minutes. With the gear emptied out on the ground, Mitch and Lisa were able to easily carry it down the ramp to the water’s edge without April’s help and then go back for the equipment and the outboard. Mitch pulled the truck over to one side and parked it out of the way, opening the hood to remove the spark plug wires, which he put in one of the bags they were taking with them.

  “Hopefully, it’ll still be here when we get back,” he said.

  April and Lisa got into the boat now reloaded with gear and weapons, while Mitch mounted the old outboard on the transom and connected it via a fuel line to the plastic gas tank. He pulled on the starter several times, getting no response from the engine with the choke in either the on, off, or halfway positions. Nothing seemed to work.

  “Probably the spark plug,” he said. “I’ll try cleaning it.” Mitch had a socket to fit the plug in his bag of tools and gear. He removed the plug and April could clearly see it needed cleaning when he showed it to her. Using the smallest blade of his pocketknife, he scraped away the black soot from the contacts and reinstalled the plug. This time, the engine sputtered to life on the third pull. It idled roughly and smoked, but Mitch assured her that was nothing to worry about. When they were all aboard, he pushed the boat away from the bank with a paddle and put the engine in gear.

  As bend after bend of lonely woods and sandbars slipped past, April began to hope that at last she was finally going to make it. This would be the last leg of the long and difficult journey. The biggest question in her mind now was whether or not Kimberly and David were going to still be where they were supposed to be.

  For the first few miles, they saw nothing but uninhabited forests. To April, they looked every bit as much a wilderness as the officially designated wilderness lands they had traversed on Black Creek. But then they came to a bridge crossing and everything changed. The first bridge was a railroad span, but a half-mile upstream of that, a larger concrete bridge that Mitch said was a state highway arched over the river. The bridge itself was deserted, but Mitch pointed out that wherever there was road access to a river like this, there were usually homes or at least weekend getaway camps. At this particular bridge crossing, there were both, and as they approached, April could see people milling about in the open spaces among the buildings atop the high banks.

  “Keep that rifle handy,” he told her as he held the throttle steady.

  April didn’t have to be told. She was nervous, though, even with it across her knees, her finger on the trigger guard. She felt very vulnerable passing so close to all these people. She hoped that the pain from the wound in her side would not inhibit her ability to handle the rifle. Even if it didn’t, what if the people on land shot first? She realized the three of them wouldn’t have much of a chance out there in the middle of the wide river, passing by not much faster than sitting ducks. She felt the eyes upon her as they motored under the bridge, but no one raised a weapon. Maybe it was because these people were fairly self-sufficient and had what they needed. But it would probably be different if they stopped there, asking for something. Once again, she was glad to be traveling with someone as knowledgeable and well prepared as Mitch. When she thought back on the days since she’d met him, she realized that not once had he needed to ask a stranger for anything.

  The only contact they had with anyone from the community on the riverbank was just upstream from the bridge where they had to run parallel to a long sandbar. A group of boys were out there in the open, some fishing and some apparently just playing. Most of them looked to be under twelve years old. They yelled at the sight of the passing boat and gave chase along the water’s edge, a couple of them picking up rocks or pieces of driftwood which they hurled at them in an attempt to get them to stop.

  “HEY! COME BACK!”

  A rock bounced off the side of the aluminum hull and hit the river with a big splash. April heard another one whiz past her head, missing by inches.

  “PULL OVER! YOU CAN’T TAKE THAT BOAT UP OUR RIVER!”

  Mitch motored on indifferently. April was glad to see that none of these little would-be river pirates had a gun. It might be too tempting for them to pass up a shot with the prospect of taking a boat with a working motor and a supply of gasoline. But that threat was soon forgotten as they were back in isolation with the rounding of one more bend in the river.

  “How much farther?” She turned to ask him.

  “Not much, maybe ten miles. We should be close in an hour or so.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mitch didn’t know every bend in the Leaf River the way he knew Black Creek, but he did know which road or highway each of the bridge crossings represented and how many there were between where they’d launched and Hattiesburg. As they got near the outskirts of the small city, he pulled over on a sandbar to study his dad’s topographical maps and take another look at an interesting option he’d seen when discussing the location of David’s parents’ house with April the day before.

  By entering the city through the back door, which was essentially what the Leaf River represented, they would have a much better chance of avoiding obstacles like roadblocks and confrontations with other people. The river didn’t run through the heart of the city, but it was reasonably close to the downtown area and less than two miles from the neighborhood where David’s parents’ house was located. An unexpected feature that had caught Mitch’s attention when looking at the maps was a small creek that flowed right through that neighborhood. Winding among the city streets, and probably altered and contained by culverts and other flood prevention structures, it made its way through the residential area where the house was located and then through industrial areas downstream, before eventually emptying into the Leaf River on the outskirts of town.

  The creek was not big enough to permit travel by boat; that was obvious from its relative size on the map. Even a canoe probably couldn’t negotiate more than a short distance of the lower end of it, but that was okay. What interested Mitch was that, whether it could be navigated or not, the creek was a route: a likely unused and mostly unknown route from the river to the neighborhood they needed to reach—and such a route was better than any road.

  Mitch was familiar with urban creeks like these—he had explored one just like this on numerous family trips to visit his cousins in Jackson. They had a creek behind their house that was hidden from the yard by a fence and overgrown with cattails and thickets. His aunt and uncle had warned him to stay ou
t of it, because they said it was full of snakes and other dangers, but that hadn’t fazed Mitch at all. With his cousins in tow, he had explored it and the stream that ran in it, following it all the way to where it emptied into the swamps of the Pearl River.

  Knowing how that little creek was so off the radar of even the people who lived right beside it, Mitch was excited to find one so similar on the map, winding among of the residential areas of Hattiesburg to the Leaf. Just as they had used that small branch of Black Creek to sneak up to the Wallace place in the dark, following such a creek would ensure they would not get lost as long as they kept it in sight.

  While they were stopped, he worked out their location on the map and memorized every bend of the river between there and the mouth of the obscure little creek. This would be the last stop, and he had high hopes that they could get there undetected, because the entrance to the creek was just upstream from the municipal sewage treatment facility. There was nothing else in that part of the city but old abandoned industrial areas near the railroad tracks.

  “How far will we have to walk?” Lisa asked.

  “It looks like it’s about a mile and a half. Hard to tell, exactly, with the way that little creek winds. I’ve gotta warn you, though, it may be as much wading as walking. And the water may be nasty, but it’ll be a lot better than getting shot at walking up the street—or having our weapons taken away by cops or something.”

  “I don’t mind wading,” Lisa said. “As long as April gets back home to her baby.”

  Mitch agreed.

  “Look,” April said. “You’ve done enough. If you’ll just loan me this map and let me take the rifle, you can just drop me off at the mouth of that creek and I can find my way there. There’s no sense in the two of you risking that trip into the city. What if someone comes along and finds the boat while you’re gone? Then you’d be stuck with no way to get back to your house.”