“I won’t hear of it,” Mitch said. “I’m not about to drop you off and leave without knowing if you ever found Kimberly and David or not. That’s not an option, and it wouldn’t be even if you were not injured. We’ll be fine. With a route like this to get there, I’m not really worried about running into trouble. If we do, then three is better than one.”
Twenty minutes after they shoved off again, Mitch spotted the mouth of the small creek flowing into the river from an opening in the bank to their left. There was nothing around the opening but scrubby woods; the only sign they were near a city was the railroad bridge upstream in the distance. Mitch slowed the engine down to idle speed and steered into the entrance. It was just wide enough to go upstream a bit and get the boat out of sight of anyone passing by on the river, but when he pulled up the bank and they got out, he still took the precaution of removing the spark plug from the outboard and hiding the paddle. He considered taking the outboard off and hiding it, then sinking the boat completely in the shallows, but decided against it as they might need to make a quick escape and it would take too long to recover it and get going again. Instead he pulled it into some reeds and tied the boat securely to a nearby tree. The only way anyone would find it would be by walking along the creek bank from the opposite direction or by entering the branch in a boat from the river, as they had. All he could do was try not to worry about it.
When they started walking, he had the shotgun slung over his shoulder and muzzle down by his side, and in his left hand he carried the bow, an arrow nocked and held in position across the riser with his index finger. He instructed Lisa to stay right behind him. She was carrying the .22 hunting rifle. April brought up the rear, walking with the 5.56mm carbine at the ready and the bow and quiver he’d given her out of the way on her back. She seemed to be doing okay and was able to walk at a pace that did not slow them down. He knew she was in pain, though; she just didn’t complain about it.
The lower reaches of the creek were like any other stream in the region, the banks overgrown with vegetation and the streambed a mix of dark, smelly mud, red clay, and white sand. Getting through the underbrush required bending and weaving and making detours around briar thickets, and they had not gone far before they had to wade midstream in water almost waist deep when there was no other way around.
But the part of the creek bed still in its natural state was relatively short. They had only gone a few hundred yards upstream when the natural clay and mud banks were replaced by concrete retaining walls installed by the city. Looking less like a stream and more like a man-made ditch, this corridor was still hidden from the outside world by dense thickets of overhanging bushes growing atop the walls on either side. Mitch knew that beyond those walls they were now passing in close proximity to streets and buildings. In normal times they would have heard traffic noises, but this afternoon the only sounds of the city were faraway barking dogs and the occasional distant shout from somewhere among those silenced streets.
Mitch moved slowly, stopping to look and listen often, just as he had when approaching the Wallace place. Lisa already knew the drill from hunting with him, and Mitch knew that April had caught on fast the previous night, so there was no need for any of them to speak. The ditch soon began crossing under city streets as they traveled farther upstream. From studying the map in advance with April, Mitch knew how many to count before they would be in the vicinity of the house they were looking for. In some places the six-foot wooden privacy fences of backyards that were adjacent to the creek were visible from the ditch. Mitch could only hope no one would see their movement through the cracks or from windows of some of the houses that were situated high enough to have a view of the drainage.
The street they were looking for spanned the creek atop a giant concrete culvert. Getting out of the ditch here was not easy. Mitch handed his bow to Lisa and pulled himself up hand-over-hand, and then after she passed all the weapons up to him, he gave them a hand and helped them gain the top of the concrete wall. April grimaced with pain as soon as her full weight was on her arms, but she kept quiet.
When they emerged from the bushes surrounding the ditch and stepped up to the edge of the street, the scene that greeted them was like something from the aftermath of a war. A school bus that must have been on its morning route the day of the pulse was stopped in the middle of the street, its yellow paint blackened from fire as all of the tires had been burned sometime since it came to rest. The house immediately adjacent to it was a burned-out shell, and farther down the street was evidence of more house fires. Those houses that had not been burned had broken windows and bashed-in doors. Mitch slung the bow over his shoulder and put the arrow back in his quiver, deciding the situation warranted carrying his shotgun at the ready instead as they started walking.
Despite the apparent rampage that had taken place here, the neighborhood was eerily quiet now. There was no sign that anyone was in these houses today, and that did not bode well for finding David and Kimberly at David’s parents’ house, as it was just four blocks away from where they exited the ditch.
“Oh my God,” April said. “Where has everybody gone? What happened here?”
“Looters,” Mitch said. “Looking for food or whatever they could find, probably. It looks like this happened a couple of days ago, at least.”
“We’re too late!” April said, with panic in her voice. “Come on, I know where we are now,” she said, looking around at the next intersection. “The house is not far.”
Mitch gave in to her desire to quicken the pace. He didn’t see the need for stealth at this point, as it certainly seemed like the neighborhood had been taken for all it was worth, destroyed, and then abandoned. They passed more stalled cars with smashed-in windows, and more burnt houses, some of them still smoldering and smoking. Then after one more block, April sprinted ahead, crossing a green lawn to a house with brown cedar siding and a two-car garage facing the street.
“Wait, April! Be careful!” Mitch and Lisa caught up with her as she vaulted up the steps to the front porch. The house had not been set afire, but the front door had been smashed in and was hanging ajar. April couldn’t wait any longer and went in, her carbine at hip level and at the ready. When Mitch followed her into the foyer he could see that the house had been ransacked like the others on the street. Drawers and cabinets were open and random stuff was strewn everywhere. But it was clear that there was no one here now, at least not anyone alive.
Just enough fading afternoon light filtered through the windows to allow them to find their way around inside. April went straight for the bedroom where David and Kimberly slept when they visited his parents. Mitch was right behind her as she made her way to the empty baby bed and collapsed beside it, reaching through the rails to clutch the blanket that certainly still smelled of Kimberly. He didn’t know what to say as she pulled the blanket through the bars and buried her face into it sobbing, but when he glanced back into the bed where the blanket had been, something caught his eye.
“April! There’s a note! Look!”
Mitch reached into the bed and got it for her. Of course, if David was going to leave her a note this is where he would put it, because he would know that if she somehow made her way here, this was the first place she would look. Mitch and Lisa could not refrain from looking over her shoulder as she read the note.
April was on her feet again immediately, transformed from utter hopelessness and despair to radiant joy. David’s message was a short one: He and Kimberly had gone with his parents to take shelter in the nearby church that his mother and father belonged to. Members were gathering there with all the supplies and weapons they could bring from their homes to protect themselves from the gangs that were taking over the city. April knew right where the church was, as she had been there with David and his parents once to attend his cousin’s wedding.
“Look at the date he put on there, April. That was what, five days ago? That means they probably took shelter there before all this looting happe
ned.”
“Yeah, I know it! Let’s go. We can get there before dark if we hurry.” She was stuffing the blanket in her small pack as she spoke, not about to leave it behind.
Her sense of relief and renewed hope was contagious, and Mitch and Lisa were just as eager as she was to get to that church and see her reunited with her child. When April turned and led the way back through the house to the front door, Mitch didn’t try to stop her, because he was sure no one had seen them enter. But when she reached the threshold, something shattered one of the windows on the opposite side of the kitchen, beyond the foyer. Only a fraction of a second later a rifle report echoed from across the street out front. Mitch barely had time to register how wrong he’d been.
“GET DOWN, APRIL!” he screamed, as he grabbed Lisa and pulled her to the floor with him.
April didn’t have to be told twice. She dove back into the kitchen and took cover behind the refrigerator as several more shots rang out and bullets tore through sheetrock and splintered wood door casings. The firing sounded like it was coming from more than one weapon, but it was not the rapid fire of semiautomatic rifles. Ordering Lisa to stay put, Mitch belly-crawled to the front living room where he raised his head just high enough to get a quick look outside.
He saw two runners dash out from behind a parked car across the street, while another person remained in position, still firing a steady barrage of shots to provide cover for the two who were trying to get closer. Even at a glance, Mitch could tell that the two who were running were young teens. They were probably a gang of looters, maybe part of the same bunch that had already ransacked the house before. They were both carrying rifles, and they had split up to try and get to flank positions on either side of the house.
Mitch jabbed the muzzle of his shotgun through the closest windowpane to open fire, but the nearest runner dropped out of sight in the drainage culvert in front of the house before he could take aim and the other one made it to the corner of the adjacent house on the same side of the street. The shooter behind the car was still sending rounds in the vicinity of the front door, where April had almost been hit. Mitch fired a couple of rounds at the car, but he knew the distance was a bit far for buckshot. Cursing under his breath, he withdrew to the hallway to get away from the front wall.
This was serious, and Mitch was thinking fast, trying to come up with a solution. If they went anywhere near the front walls, the only place where they could effectively return fire, it would only be a matter of time before one of them was hit by the high-powered rifle rounds. If the two runners got them pinned down from both sides, there would be no escape. Motioning for Lisa to follow him, he crawled to the kitchen where April was and quickly explained the situation to her.
“I’ve got to get out the back door and get around to one side somehow. They’re trying to surround the house. I don’t know how many there are, but I’ve seen at least three. I need you to trade weapons with me. Take the shotgun and just keep shooting often enough to keep them from rushing the front door. Lisa, you help her out with your .22. Both of you just shoot out toward the street, but stay back here and don’t get near the front walls. They may think the shotgun and that .22 are the only weapons we have. I need the carbine for the reach, especially for that guy across the street. Just keep up the noise and try to keep their attention focused on the house.”
April took the shotgun and the pile of shells Mitch emptied out of his pockets. “Be careful, Mitch!”
With the Ruger carbine and the one extra thirty-round magazine, he crawled to the sliding glass door off the den that opened onto a patio. After a quick check that no one was in the backyard, he made his exit. Although the house was of wood frame construction with cedar siding, Mitch was glad to see that the raised foundation it was built on was brick-veneer up to a height of about two and a half feet. It would provide reasonable cover as long as he stayed low. He made his way to the back corner and looked out. From this vantage point, he couldn’t see the car the most distant shooter was hiding behind, but he was in a position to see the ditch that one of the other two had leapt into. Mitch watched as that kid stuck his head up just enough to fire into the house. Only an inch or so of his skull was visible. The crack of Lisa’s .22 and the blast of his shotgun answered the rifle shots coming into the house, echoing out across the once quiet suburban neighborhood, and Mitch knew that all the attackers were still focused on those inside. They thought they had everyone inside pinned down, and had no way of knowing one of their targets was stalking them.
He crawled low and slow along the side of the foundation, sliding through a muddy flowerbed until he reached the front corner of the house. From there, he was only thirty yards or so from both the street and the culvert, and less than a hundred yards from the car at the other house. The one in the ditch was staying low, so Mitch decided to focus on the shooter behind the car. He braced the carbine against his shoulder from the prone position and waited until the rifle barrel appeared over the hood again. When it did, he could only see the top half of the shooter’s head. It was a small target with the rough open sights of the Ruger, but Mitch had been hunting with open sights since he’d started out with BB guns. He exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger. One minute there had been a target, then there was none. He was sure of a hit, even though he couldn’t see the fallen body behind the car.
With the rifle from across the street silenced, Mitch turned his attention back to the kid in the culvert. All the shooting had stopped at this point, and Mitch guessed that the two runners had been depending on the covering fire and didn’t know what to do. Hopefully they also didn’t know where the rifle shot that had taken out their partner had come from. He was aiming at the approximate point where he had last seen the nearest attacker’s head, and suddenly a figure sprang out of the ditch at a dead run in the opposite direction, heading back across the street. Mitch aimed at the center of his back, his finger tightening on the trigger, but he hesitated. He saw the other one running away as well, crossing the street farther up the block. He could have easily taken them both out before they disappeared into the backyards beyond the row of houses across the street, but he couldn’t bring himself to shoot them in the back. It was clear that they were just kids, probably no older than Lisa. With the main shooter down, the fight had been taken out of them. He yelled into the house to warn April and Lisa to stay alert and cover him, then worked his way across the street to confirm that the one he’d shot was indeed dead.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, as he returned to get April and Lisa.
“Did you hit the one behind the car?” April asked.
“Yes. There wasn’t much left of his . . . face,” Mitch sputtered, “but he looked a good bit older than those other two boys. Probably some thug they looked up to even before all this happened, and he put them up to it. Letting them take the risk while he stayed back at a distance, thinking he was safe.”
“You’re not worried they’ll try and follow us?”
“No. Those two were scared as hell. I think they’ve seen the light, and I’ll bet that’s the last time they’ll try to assault an occupied house. I could have killed them easily, but I’ve about had enough of killing for a while.”
“You and me both,” April agreed. “I just want to get to that church as fast as possible.”
“There might still be some looters out there, even if these kids have run off for good,” said Lisa.
“She’s right,” April said. “All I want to do is run, but it’s probably safer to take our time, huh?”
Mitch could see the agony on April’s face. “Well, if my years of hunting have taught me anything, it’s that a fast moving target is harder to hit than slow one. And even though those kids were probably just following that one guy, they may have retreated just to get some backup. If you’re up for it, April, I think we better make a run for it now before anything else happens.”
“I think you’re right,” April said and smiled.
She was so
excited about the prospect of seeing Kimberly that she seemed to have forgotten all about her wound. There was no slowing her down, and Mitch and Lisa had a tough time even keeping up. The route to the church took them across Hardy Street, a major thoroughfare through Hattiesburg. Once they were on the other side of the four-lane road, the church was just a couple of blocks away.
Mitch saw that it was an old building, and like many older Protestant churches in the area, the architecture resembled a medieval fortress, with decorative parapets atop the two-story walls and massive double doors of heavy timber guarding the front entrance. The members had added additional fortifications by pushing dozens of vehicles together to form a barricade across the front and sides. Mitch saw from a block away that there were two armed men standing behind the row of big SUVs in front of the doors. Their weapons were AR-15–type rifles, and upon seeing the three strangers running their way, they immediately brought them to ready position.
April, Lisa, and Mitch skidded to a full stop, holding their arms high with their weapons pointing harmlessly to the sky.
“Don’t come any closer or we’ll shoot!” one of the men shouted. “Just turn around, and go back the way you came!”
“My baby is in there!” April screamed. “I’m here to see her and her father, David Greene. His parents are Mr. and Mrs. Richard Greene. They are members of your church, and I know they are here!”
At this, Mitch could see the men with the rifles discussing something among themselves. They were understandably cautious, considering what had happened in the city.
“You! If you’re the mother, leave your weapon and walk slowly up here to the sidewalk. You other two, put your weapons on the ground and keep your hands up where we can see them!”
The Darkness After: A Novel Page 18