Mississippi Rose | Book 1 | Into Darkness

by Lopez, Rob

  But she did. He had a boat and a crew now. With no law to worry about, he pretty much ruled the lower Mississippi. And that was a big problem for Darla and her boat. There was no reason for Eric to stop at taking just one.

  The southern route was blocked now by the radiation cloud from the blown reactor. She wasn’t sure how long those things took to clear, but it was probably something measured in weeks. Maybe years.

  Crap. If only she’d been more insistent on getting Eric off the Pride of Orleans. If only Gene hadn’t been so keen to play the nice guy. And what was likely to have happened to him? Darla hoped he’d just been shoved off the boat and would turn up on the bank somewhere. Eric was a callous son of a bitch, but she didn’t figure him for a murderer.

  At least, she hoped he wasn’t.

  Darla paced the path, guilt gnawing at her. Out in the field, in a sea of mud, a single figure sat on an upturned bucket, head in her hands. It took Darla a while to realize it was Ms. Roberts. The woman’s suit was a mess and she appeared to be barefoot. Darla stared at her for a while, her antipathy to the woman slowly draining away. The FEMA representative looked utterly defeated. Darla stared some more, then waded out through the mud.

  “Hey,” said Darla quietly.

  Ms. Roberts didn’t look up.

  “I suppose you’ve come to gloat,” said the FEMA woman.

  “No,” said Darla, looking around at the carnage. “Nothing to gloat about.”

  Eleanor Roberts lifted her head. She’d been crying. Her makeup had run and was smudged all over her cheeks. “Feel free to,” she said. “Everything’s just a mess.”

  “Where did everybody go?”

  “They left. They know we can’t provide for them now. We failed.”

  “Did the mayor leave too?”

  “He’s dead.” Eleanor took a deep, halting breath. “We went up to see if we could get people safe passage into Baton Rouge. We came up against a National Guard checkpoint. My husband reached into his pocket to show his ID and the soldiers shot him.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Mayor Roberts was my husband. Like me, he believed his position meant something in this country. He believed in his duty to the people.”

  Darla was silent for a while. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No doubt you thought that people like my husband and I were just self-serving parasites. That we were only interested in telling other people what to do.”

  Darla watched as someone in the distance pulled aside some tent fabric to see what was underneath.

  “I don’t believe your assessment of me was any fairer,” she said.

  Eleanor gazed toward the far end of the field, where some home-owner guarded his house with a shotgun.

  “No,” she agreed. “It probably wasn’t.”

  “What about the chief of police? Wasn’t he with you?”

  “He took some of his people and headed out to Gonzales. He said he was going to try and get help, but I know he has his family there. Everybody’s thinking of themselves now.”

  “Maybe he could bring help.”

  “Gonzales is choked with refugees. I don’t think any department is in a position to help now. We’re on our own.”

  Darla looked back toward her boat, the tall stacks gently puffing smoke.

  “Come on,” she said. “Get yourself out of the mud. You can clean yourself up on the boat.”

  “I don’t think worrying about my appearance is going to change anything,” said Eleanor.

  “Neither will sitting around. Your husband wouldn’t want you to give up and we’re not done yet. I didn’t bring my boat this far to just quit.”

  21

  They held a conference on the Mississippi Rose. Everyone with a stake in the enterprise was present or represented.

  “We can get more food by bringing another barge down,” said Carl, “and we can supply the patients with water from the boat. What we can’t do is replace the missing medical supplies. The doctor thinks it’s imperative we move the patients to a better location, maybe another hospital.”

  “Like where?” said Darla

  “That’s for everyone here to decide.”

  For a while, nobody wanted to be the first to offer an idea.

  “Baton Rouge is off limits,” said Eleanor. “I don’t know of any other hospital within easy reach that might take them. We may need to go some distance upriver.”

  “There’s a boatload of armed convicts out there,” said Aguilar. “I don’t know how far we can risk going without running into them. As it is, they could well come back. We need to find a way of defending our position here.”

  “We’ve got four pistols between us,” said Carl, “and only two magazines per pistol.”

  “We’ve got a rifle,” said Darla.

  “That won’t be enough, and it doesn’t solve the problem of how to keep the patients alive. We need a better location. Anybody got any better ideas?”

  Aguilar tried again.

  “What about the Port Allen Lock?” she said. “It’ll take us from Baton Rouge all the way down to the Gulf. The lock gates don’t need power to work, so we should be able to get through. If we make it to Morgan City, we can get the patients to a hospital there.”

  “I don’t think any city’s a good idea now,” said Eleanor. “They’re going to be places of chaos. You saw New Orleans when we left, and the storm will have flooded large areas. Any city we find along the Gulf coast will have been affected by the hurricane.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “No, but we won’t know which ones are safe until we try to dock. Everyone will be having the same problems that we’re having here. Food supplies are running low everywhere and there’s likely to be conflict. We need to avoid areas of dense population.”

  “But that’s where the hospitals are.”

  “I know, and it pains me to say this, but they’re not safe.”

  Darla thought hard about all the places she knew along the river, ticking them off in her mind.

  “What about Angola?” said Jacques suddenly. He’d been silent the whole time and everyone turned to look at him.

  Carl looked confused. “Where’s that?”

  Darla gave Jacques an annoyed look, like maybe he should keep his mouth shut. “He means the Louisiana State Penitentiary,” she said with a frown.

  Everybody who’d heard of the place gave Jacques a shocked look. Angola was a name of dread in New Orleans. People who got sent there tended not to come back.

  Jacques was nonplussed by the reactions. “Angola is isolated,” he said, “and it has a hospital.”

  “Sure,” said Darla, “for executions maybe.”

  “It has a fully stocked infirmary and hospice. We know many of these patients are going to die. Let them die in a good place. Angola is fully self-sufficient. It grows its own food, raises its own horses and cattle, has recreational facilities, workshops, a church and a cemetery. It is a community away from any city or town and people do not go there.”

  “And for good reason, I imagine,” said Carl. “We’ve just had a breakout at the local penitentiary. We’ve got convicts on the loose and they’ve already killed people. If this Angola’s as big as you say, I don’t think we want to be anywhere near the place.”

  “Nobody breaks out of Angola,” said Jacques phlegmatically.

  “In normal times, maybe. But these aren’t normal times.”

  “Angola’s full of lifers,” said Darla, “and they get life for a reason. They are not the kind of people we want to run into.”

  Jacques gave her a cool look. “They are not all lifers.”

  “And how would you know?” demanded Darla.

  “Look,” said Carl, trying to calm things down, “even if the prison has control of all its prisoners, they’re going to have their own problems. I don’t think they’ll take kindly to a bunch of people arriving on their doorstep asking for entrance. Most people try to get out of prison, not in.”

 
Jacques turned to him. “The warden is a man of God. He will help.”

  “Great,” said Darla bitterly, “a religious nut and a crew of killers. Fantastic combination.”

  “It is,” said Jacques seriously.

  “Actually, Jacques is right,” said Eleanor. “May I call you Jacques?”

  “Bien sûr,” said Jacques.

  “The Louisiana State Penitentiary is indeed self-sufficient, and isolated,” continued Eleanor. “It’s the one place that won’t be swamped with refugees, for obvious reasons. Many of the staff live on site with their families, so there’s less incentive for them to abandon the facility, especially without transport. If the warden can maintain control of security — and that remains a pertinent question, I grant you — it’s possible that they are one of the few safe havens left in the state. Even if they only agree to take in the sick, I think it’s our best option. It was my decision to bring the patients here and it’s my responsibility to see that they get the best care. I say we go to Angola.”

  “I don’t know,” said Carl doubtfully. “What does everyone else think?”

  There was an awkward pause, then Aguilar spoke.

  “I still think the Gulf is a worthwhile option,” she said, “but heading north brings us closer to Natchez, and I want to get back to my family.”

  The rest of her crew and the Coast Guard, who were all homeported in Natchez, agreed.

  “Darla?” said Carl. “What about your crew?”

  Darla was silent, so Manny spoke for them. “We ain’t got no home to go back to, so whatever the captain says is good for me.”

  Darla shifted in her seat. Whatever anyone else might say, the decision was hers.

  “The Mississippi Rose wasn’t built for open waters,” she murmured. “I’m not leaving the river until I know what’s happened to Gene.”

  “So we need a direction,” said Carl gently. “And a destination. Are you willing to take us to Angola?”

  Darla blew out her lips. “It’s the dumbest idea I ever heard.”

  “Granted, but do you have a better solution?”

  Darla didn’t.

  “That settles it then,” said Carl. “How long do you think it will take us to get there?”

  “The rest of the day, depending on the current. There’s a ferry dock there we can use for unloading.”

  “That will do. Now we just need to figure out what happens if we meet the Pride of Orleans on the way. Can you outmaneuver her on the river?”

  “Sure, but we can’t outrun her.”

  Carl rubbed his jaw. As the only one with any training in naval tactics, he likely could picture quite vividly how any encounter between the two boats would end.

  “I think we should wait until nightfall, then, to get upriver undetected. You know Eric better than anyone. If he really is in charge of that boat, what do you think he’ll do next?”

  Darla thought about it for a while.

  “He’ll come back. He’s not done here.”

  “Do you two have a history?”

  “Oh yeah. He won’t be happy knowing I’m still out on the river.”

  Carl frowned. “Maybe we should head south instead. Hole up somewhere until nightfall. Just can’t think where.”

  Darla pondered the issue.

  “No,” she said. “We head north. We’ll hide in the Port Allen Lock. Like Aguilar says, we won’t need power to operate it. The lock gate’s high enough to shelter behind. Come nightfall, we’ll slip out. If he’s anywhere on the river, that’s the best chance we’ll have of getting past.”

  “Seems reasonable,” said Carl. “What does everyone else think to that?”

  Nobody agreed, but nobody disagreed either. Carl took that as consensus.

  “Let’s get the patients aboard,” he said. “We’ll move out as soon as we can.”

  ***

  While preparations were underway, Darla took Jacques to one side.

  “How come you know so much about Angola?” she demanded.

  Jacques contemplated the question, like he was wondering how much to disclose.

  “I did fifteen years there,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “Armed robbery.”

  “You lied to me, Jacques.”

  “I did not lie. I was not completely honest.”

  “That’s the same thing.”

  “It is not. I answered your questions with truth, but there were some questions you did not ask.”

  “You told me you trained as a chef.”

  “But I did. I simply did not tell you where.”

  “You’re supposed to disclose any felony convictions in your application.”

  “And you are supposed to pay taxes on every booking you take.”

  Darla took a step back. “Oh, you’re playing that game, are you?”

  Jacques gave her a harsh look. “I have no interest in playing games. We are both survivors in a hard world. I recognized that in you immediately. From the moment I heard about you, I was interested. When I discovered this boat, and your passion for it, I knew your business was in trouble. I learned a lot in Angola. It changed me. I knew I needed a project to keep me engaged. To stop me going back. You, and this boat, became my project. I wanted this boat to be the best on the river, and I knew you wanted that too. That is the only reason I took this job.”

  Darla grew uneasy. “How did you hear about me?”

  Jacques looked away for a moment. “When I was paroled from Angola, I was put in transit at Elayn Hunt prior to my release. I shared a cell for two days with a young man named Eric Whelan. I found him to be a very foolish and angry young man. He wanted to convince me he was tough. He knew where I came from and what I’d done. There are no secrets in prison.” Jacques tapped absently at the bulkhead, as if recalling his incarceration. “After he told me about all the jobs he’d done, he told me about a girlfriend he had, and how he’d given her everything, even a child, and how she betrayed him and sent him to prison. He said she used his money to set herself up in business, buying a boat. And he told me exactly what he was going to do to her once he got out.”

  “And what was that, exactly?”

  “The details are not important. You can use your imagination.”

  “So why did you come looking for me, if not to warn me?”

  Jacques sucked in his breath. “A warning like that can be a burden. I will admit that, if you had not impressed me when I met you, I would have walked away. Maybe I would have warned you then. But I stayed. I knew when he was due out of prison.”

  Darla wasn’t sure she understood him correctly. “You took a job on my boat to protect me from Eric?”

  “Oui.”

  “Why?”

  “Atonement. I killed a man.”

  “You said you went down for armed robbery.”

  “They never found the body, so I was not put on trial for that. It was a separate case.”

  Darla felt chills. “And if Eric never turned up, what were you going to do?”

  Jacques shrugged. “Cook.”

  “Just that?”

  “Oui.”

  Darla released her pent up breath. “I don’t understand you, Jacques.”

  Jacques shrugged again, like he could care less.

  “Was Manny in on this?”

  “Non.”

  “What about Zack? Did you know him from your former life?”

  “Non.”

  “So it’s just a coincidence I’ve got the freakiest crew on the river?”

  Jacques shrugged once more.

  “I don’t know where I stand with you guys sometimes.”

  “You are the captain. There is nothing to understand.”

  “As simple as that, huh?”

  “Oui.”

  Darla gave him a long look. “Who was the man you killed?”

  “Someone who tried to cheat me.”

  Darla hesitated a moment. “And if I try to cheat you?”

  “I am not in that life anym
ore.”

  “But if I do?”

  “You will not.”

  “That’s not an answer. I need to know if I can trust you, Jacques.”

  “I have served my time. I am not the person I used to be.”

  “Eric said that some sins don’t wash off.”

  “That is because he has never tried. Do not compare me to him. He is proud of what he did. We are not the same.”

  22

  The patients were brought aboard the Mississippi Rose, many of them looking sicker than when Darla had last seen them. The turmoil of the past few days had done them no favors, and there were fewer staff to take care of them. Darla didn’t inquire as to where the rest went as it was pretty obvious. It meant, though, that there was more room on the boat for them all and it didn’t take long to get everyone on.

  Carl came up to the pilothouse.

  “We all set?” he asked.

  “Sure,” replied Darla, “but we’re going to need to coal up, first.”

  “I don’t really want to be on the river for longer than we need to. How far can we get on what you’ve got?”

  “Honestly? Not far.”

  Carl drew his pistol and pulled back the slide to check there was a round in the chamber. “Let’s hope we don’t meet anything while we’re waiting, then.”

  They set out from Point Clair for the last time, the Coast Guard standing watch on the Texas deck. The sky was clear and visibility was good. The Mississippi Rose churned her way upriver, spewing smoke from her stacks as she burned through the last of her precious fuel.

  The stranded towboat and barges were still where they’d been left, though half the barges were gone now. As they approached they detected figures moving around on the barges. Carl checked them out through his binoculars.

  “Looks like they’re scavenging the beans,” he said. “There’s kids there with buckets. Well, we won’t be interfering with them. Doesn’t look like there’s anyone on the coal barge. Wait … there’s a guy with a rifle. Looks like an AR-15. He’s pointing it this way.”