Refuge: After the Collapse Read online

  The man at the helm ignored him, allowing the bigger boat to continue its glide directly toward the catamaran as Larry scrambled to place a fender into position to cushion the blow. He knew the fisherman didn’t care about his own topside paint. The tire fenders were for docking alongside concrete wharves and the scarred and battered hull planking of the heavy boat was stout enough that they were not really needed anyway.

  At the last minute the captain put his helm hard over so that his hull came alongside the catamaran rather than ramming it bow first, but even so the impact was enough to knock Larry off his feet. The Casey Nicole was pushed several yards, until her strained anchor line brought both boats to a stop. Larry heard the sound of splintering wood and fiberglass. He was furious as he scrambled to get back up and see what had broken. Before he had a chance to even look, the two men on the foredeck of the fishing boat had boarded the Casey Nicole.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Larry screamed.

  The one carrying the shotgun stepped closer. Larry found himself staring into the black abyss of a cavernous barrel pointed right at his face from three feet away. Before he could say another word, the man suddenly diverted his aim skyward and pulled the trigger, unleashing a thunderous blast that temporarily shattered both Larry’s nerves and his ears. He couldn’t hear what the gunman shouted next over the ringing in his ears, but the meaning was clear as he brought the muzzle of his weapon back in line with his face. Larry dropped to the deck as fast as he could, still focused on the shotgun. As a result, he was completely caught off guard by the other man’s kick, which landed on the side of his head and sent him sprawling.

  TWO

  Casey Drager woke with a scream. It took her a few seconds to realize that she had been having a nightmare, and that Derek, the deranged hunter who had taken her to his hideaway deep in the swamp, was not on top of her, holding her down and demanding to know why she’d betrayed him. Casey took several deep breaths as her dad put his arms around her. Then the others she had awakened joined him in telling her that everything was all right, and she was safe now. Slowly, she remembered where she was and what had happened. She remembered what she had done to Derek, and that he could never bother her again outside of her nightmares.

  Casey trembled as she hugged her dad, looking past his shoulder at the dark, rain-sprinkled waters of the Pearl River flowing past the sandbar where they’d all been reunited the day before. After all she had been through since leaving New Orleans, it was almost incomprehensible that her father, Artie Drager, a doctor at the V.A. Hospital in Mobile, Alabama, had managed to find her in such a remote place. Scully, the wild-haired Rastafarian she had met only once, almost a year before, while visiting her uncle in the Virgin Islands, was here as well. And as if that weren’t enough, her best friend and college roommate, Jessica, and Grant, her older grad student friend who had urged them both to get out of New Orleans with him, were both here too. A little over a day ago, Casey had doubted she would ever see any of these people she loved again.

  But it was true and they were really here. She and Grant and Jessica had listened in fascination as her dad and Scully told them of their voyage all the way to New Orleans from the Caribbean with her Uncle Larry. She remembered the catamaran project that had been under construction on the beach during the summer vacation she and Jessica spent with him. It had looked a long way from even floating at the time, but he had completed and launched it and it had carried the three of them all the way to the lower reaches of this very river.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to wake everyone up. I just thought…”

  “It’s okay, Casey. You just had a bad dream. You’re safe now though. I’m never letting you out of my sight again until things are back to normal, and probably not even then!”

  Casey didn’t answer. She just hugged her dad tighter, making sure she wasn’t dreaming this too. The night before she had told them all most of what had happened since that day Derek had grabbed her and tied her up, stashing her in his canoe like so much baggage and taking her away to a place deep in the swamp from which he thought she could never escape. She had not mentioned the gory details of what she’d done to Derek to ensure he would not follow her, but she knew that Jessica and Grant knew. They had found the secret camp after she’d escaped, and she knew they could not have missed the body lying face down by the fire pit, the skull split open by a bloody axe she’d tossed to the ground when the deed was done and her captor was no longer a threat.

  Casey wished that part had simply been a bad dream, that it had never happened; but she knew it had, and she knew that at the time she hadn’t had much choice. If she hadn’t acted then, she wouldn’t be here now with the ones she loved. She regretted that she’d worried them all with her scream in the dark, but now that everyone was awake, they were up for the day. Scully pointed to the lightening sky to the east and said that it would be daylight soon. Raining or not, they were all anxious to get moving now that everything had changed once again with their reunion on the riverbank. The conclusion of her father’s quest and the end of their ordeal on the river was an incredible relief, but the future was still very much uncertain and the greater repercussions of the event that had set all this in motion were still unknown and unknowable.

  “I still think we should all stick together,” she heard Jessica say as Grant once more brought up the subject of trying to reach his parents’ cabin, far upstream on a tributary of the main river. This had been the subject of intense debate the evening before as they sat around a small campfire and discussed what lay in store. The cabin was the reason she and Jessica had left New Orleans with Grant in the first place. After the power went out and it became obvious that food and other necessities would soon be impossible to obtain in the city, Grant had talked the two of them into leaving with him on bicycles. It had seemed like a preposterously difficult thing to do at the time: pedaling some ninety miles to cross the Causeway over Lake Pontchartrain, and then the state line into rural Mississippi. Now Casey realized that in comparison to what they’d actually been through, that ride was nothing, and would have been easy if only they had been able to complete it as planned.

  “But it will only be a couple of days; three at the absolute most,” Grant said, trying to reassure Jessica that the separation would be brief. “It will make a tremendous difference to our future. We just don’t know how long this situation is going to last.”

  “It can’t last forever,” Jessica said. “We’ve got some food, and like Casey’s dad says, there’s more on Larry’s boat. I just think it’s too risky to stay in these woods any longer. I want us to all get on that boat and get as far away from here as possible.”

  “I do too; believe me! There’s nothing I’d rather do, but the fact remains, we’ve got to eat, and there’s going to be six of us on board for who knows how long. I’m just saying that we’re facing a lot of uncertainty. The canned goods and other stuff in that cabin could make a big difference a couple weeks or a month from now.”

  Casey wasn’t sure which course they should follow. On the one hand, she could see the advantage of getting their hands on any supplies that might be available. Her ordeal with Derek, living mainly off of game he killed in his hunting forays near the hidden camp, had certainly made an impression. While hunting was natural for someone as experienced and well equipped for it as he was, she couldn’t imagine living that way over the long term. Using game, fish, and wild edible plants as a supplement was one thing, but she knew that Grant was right; they needed more canned and dried provisions that would keep while they traveled.

  Jessica’s worries were valid too. If Grant took the Johnboat with the outboard upriver in an attempt to reach his parents’ cabin, anything could happen. Their recent experiences had already proved that. A boat with a working motor would make him a target for desperate people seeing him go by. She knew there were a lot of stranded people that would love to get their hands on such a conveyance. Any form of mechanized transp
ort was priceless now. Armed or not, Grant could be ambushed before he knew what had happened. In their discussions the previous evening, it had been decided that if he went, Scully should go with him. One of them could operate the boat while the other literally rode “shotgun” in the bow to keep a lookout for danger. Scully was the logical choice, because there was no way her dad was going to let her or Jessica out of his sight for a minute, and besides, even more than Grant, Scully was at home in the bush. While they were gone, she and Jessica could continue downstream in one of the canoes with her dad to the place where her Uncle Larry was waiting with the catamaran. Grant and Scully would tow the other canoe behind the Johnboat to serve as an extra cargo barge for the food, tools, and other equipment in the cabin.

  She knew her dad was torn on the idea of splitting up as well, but he finally joined in favor of Grant and Scully making the attempt, while Jessica remained adamantly opposed to it. Casey wondered how much of Jessica’s reluctance had to do with the inevitable attachment she must have developed to Grant after all those days alone with him. She wondered how Grant felt about that as well, and if the two of them had bonded to the point that her own long-term crush on the older grad student was now hopeless. But whether that was the case or not, Casey couldn’t begin to process romantic feelings right now anyway. What she’d been through was simply too much, and just being alive was enough for her for now. Being reunited with both her friends and her father just made her appreciation for life that much sweeter, despite the image that kept replaying in her mind of the brutal way she’d taken another life to save hers, like a video on an endless loop. She knew she was going to have to be strong, though, and put her feelings of remorse aside. Life, as well as death, was different now, in the aftermath of the pulse. Reality had changed for everyone, not just for her. All that any of them could do was simply try to survive until things got better.

  “I think that if Grant and Scully are willing to take the risk, we need to let them try, Jessica,” her dad said. “By the estimates Larry plotted on the map before Scully and I set out, we calculated we had more than enough fuel for the outboard, especially since the return trip is downstream. If they get there by tonight or sometime tomorrow, they can load up everything they find of use and easily be back at the catamaran to rendezvous with the rest of us the day after. One or two extra days is not going to make that much difference in the long run.”

  “It’s not the extra day I’m worried about,” Jessica cried, upset at being outvoted. “Anything could happen to them up there. We don’t even know if there’s anything left in that cabin. Other people have probably found it by now and taken all the stuff.”

  “Maybe,” Grant said, taking her in his arms as her tears ran onto his shoulder, “but maybe not. It’s pretty far off the beaten path by road. We won’t know for sure if we don’t go there. You’ve got to understand that this is a risk worth taking, Jessica. The supplies in that cabin could mean the difference between life or death in the long run.”

  “Not’ing gonna happen, girl,” Scully chimed in. “I an’ I going wid he an’ dat Mossberg ready wid I. Travel in de bush is my specialty an’ we going quickly an’ come bok safe. Not to worry ’bout a t’ing. Soon we all sailin’ back to de island, find some place in de sun where everyt’ing gonna be hoppy again.”

  “Scully’s right, Jessica. With the two of us to watch each other’s back, we’ll be fine, and we’ll be armed.”

  “We’ve got plenty of weapons to choose from, thanks to that Derek’s obsession with guns and Casey’s presence of mind to bring them all with her, so you guys need to take one of his rifles, too, in case you need something with more range than a shotgun.”

  “I’ll take that short lever-action then, if you don’t mind, Artie.” Grant said. “I’ve shot those before and it’ll be handy to use in the boat if we need it.”

  Hearing this, Casey was glad the Winchester was going to be out of her sight for a while. It had been Derek’s favorite and he was always walking around with it slung over his shoulder every waking minute that she’d been with him. She hoped they wouldn’t need it or the shotgun, but she was glad they were going to be well armed. Casey didn’t know Scully well, but from what little time she’d spent with him during that vacation on the islands and from what her Uncle Larry had told her about him, she felt good about Grant having him along. She was going to worry about them both until they were all together again, maybe tomorrow; there was no way around that, but at least they were as prepared as possible under the circumstances. Casey turned to Jessica and put her arm around her shoulder to reassure her:

  “They’re going to be fine, Jessica. You know Grant can take care of himself, and Scully’s one tough customer, from what Uncle Larry says. Chances are, they won’t see a soul on the whole trip anyway. After seeing what you’ve seen of the river, you know how remote it is out here.”

  “I just don’t want anything to happen to him, Casey. You know, if it hadn’t been for Grant, we would still be in New Orleans. We’d probably even be dead by now.”

  “I know, Jessica, I know. It’s going to work out, though. We’ve come this far, and soon we’ll all be heading out on the boat to someplace better. Look at it this way: if they get that food from the cabin, you won’t have to eat fish and other dead things.”

  “I don’t care about that anymore. I already know I can’t be a vegetarian right now. I’d rather eat a live rabbit than see something happen to Grant.”

  “I know, I feel the same way, but even if we want to, it’s going to be hard to catch enough animals and fish to live on; like Grant said, there are six of us now. Scully and Larry will know how to get most of the food we need from the sea when we get to someplace safe, but it may be a long voyage to get there. I don’t like the risk either, but this really is our best chance, I think. Come on; let’s just help them get ready. The sooner they leave, the sooner they can get there and then get back to us.”

  Grant and Scully were both anxious to be underway as quickly as possible. The five of them shared a hurried breakfast of coffee and rice made from the supplies taken from Derek’s camp, and then goodbye hugs were exchanged all around before they shoved the flat-bottomed aluminum boat and the canoe that had been Derek’s into the river. Scully made the towline fast and started the engine. Casey fought back tears as she watched the two of them motor away in the rain, and, holding hands with Jessica and her dad, stood watching until the boat disappeared around the first wide bend upriver.

  “We might as well get going, too,” her dad said. “I’m not sure how long it will take in the canoe, but I’m guessing it’ll be sometime after noon before we get down to where your Uncle Larry is waiting.”

  “It’ll be great to see him again,” Casey said. “I didn’t expect to see him again for years, at least.” Her recent vacation to the islands had been the first time she’d seen her free-spirited uncle since she was in high school. Uncle Larry seldom came back to the mainland, and even on the islands, his job as a yacht delivery skipper made him a moving target, and always hard to find.

  “You’re going to be amazed when you see that boat, Casey. I’m still amazed and I’d been living on it for weeks when I left to find you. I just can’t believe he built it by hand. What I really can’t wait for you to see though, is what he named it.”

  Casey wondered what could be so special about the name of her uncle’s boat. Her dad had mentioned it like it was a big deal at least twice now, and her curiosity was piqued. Regardless of the name, she was looking forward to being aboard any boat bigger and more comfortable than a canoe. After this experience, she didn’t care if she ever saw another canoe again. A big boat with indoor bunks and a real galley would be an incredible luxury. As they set out downstream, she paddled hard from the bow of the canoe, anxious to make rapid progress and get there as soon as possible. With her dad paddling and steering from the stern and Jessica adding to their efforts from amidships, they were moving at nearly maximum hull speed for the slender cr
aft.

  After leaving the sandbar where they’d been reunited, they were once again traveling through swampy, low forestlands where the river flowed practically at the bases of the trees on either margin of the channel. There was no sign of human activity for miles as they paddled through the dismal gray morning, the rain finally giving way to mist and overcast skies. After taking a twenty-minute break on a muddy bank studded with cypress knees, they paddled on until mid-afternoon found them in an area that her dad recognized as being close to their destination.

  “It can’t be much farther,” he said. “I remember passing the entrance to that lake, because it looks a lot like the one that Larry picked to anchor the boat in,” he said, pointing to the mouth of an oxbow that extended far into the forest to the west of the river channel. “I remember thinking that if we’d only known about it, we could have brought the catamaran that much farther upriver, but I think Larry was nervous enough as it was. He was feeling more and more closed in the further we got from the Gulf.”

  “He’s a sailor through and through, Dad. It would take something like this to ever get him inland, even for a minute.”

  “Yeah, the sea’s in his blood, all right. I don’t know where he got that gene and why I didn’t, but he certainly knows what he’s doing out there. I just can’t tell you how incredibly lucky we are to have him and his boat in this situation. After what I’ve seen, I know he’s right when he says that a boat is the only really safe place to be.”

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t want Grant going the other way!” Jessica said, still unhappy about the decision made earlier that morning.

  “He’s going to be fine, Jessica. You’ve got to stop worrying so much. You’ll see. They’ll be back with us tomorrow with a boatload of stuff. It’ll be worth it.”