Refuge: After the Collapse Read online

  If that was Larry’s kayak, and Artie knew that it was, then these men must have somehow gotten it from Larry. There could be no other explanation.

  Artie tightened his grip on the Saiga. A part of him wanted to fire a warning shot and order them to stop, but the fishing boat was already about to round the next bend upstream and would be out of sight in just another minute. And the men were armed. He couldn’t risk a firefight with Casey and Jessica right there beside him. Even though they would have the element of surprise, there were just too many unknowns. Maybe Larry made a trade with these fishermen for something they had that he wanted; but what, fuel? Surely they must have some gas on board, even though their boat was diesel powered. They might have a generator or something they would need it for. But would Larry give up something as useful as the kayak for a few gallons of fuel? Artie didn’t think so, but maybe if it was a lot of something…like maybe a lot of food as well as gasoline. But it still worried him, and as the fishing boat chugged upriver out of sight, Artie knew what they had to do.

  “Come on, we need to hurry,” he whispered to Casey and Jessica, “We need to paddle as fast as we can and get to the catamaran.”

  “Do you think those men saw Uncle Larry?” Casey asked.

  “Yes, that was his kayak tied to the rail. I don’t know why he would have let them have it, and I want to make sure he’s okay.”

  “Do you think they stole it or something?” Jessica asked.

  “I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that it was the same kayak.” Artie told them that it had crossed his mind to fire a warning shot to try to force the captain of the boat to stop so he could question him about it, but then he’d reconsidered because it seemed too risky. They were armed and would likely as not return fire.

  “Oh my God, they’re going upriver the same way Grant and Scully went!” Jessica said, more worried than ever now.

  “You don’t have to worry about that, Jessica. That boat is way too big to go much farther upriver and certainly can’t get even as far as the sandbar where we camped last night. They’ll probably turn off on one of the side channels we passed this morning. They probably have a hunting camp somewhere in the swamp. We know it’s not on the main river, or we would have passed it this morning. They will probably be long gone before Grant and Scully come downstream tomorrow. What we need to do is get to Larry and the catamaran as quickly as possible.”

  When they got back in the canoe, Artie grabbed his paddle and began digging it into the water in long, forceful strokes. He wasn’t as worried about keeping quiet now. The diesel engine of the riverboat had shattered the silence anyway, and he figured that if those men had recently visited Larry where the catamaran had been anchored, it wasn’t likely that anyone else was in the vicinity between here and there. He remembered the distant gunshot they had heard earlier, and his worry for his brother increased. Maybe it wasn’t just some random hunter, as he’d told the girls. And seeing Larry’s kayak on that boat definitely ramped up his concern.

  Twenty more minutes of nonstop paddling brought them to the entrance of the oxbow lake in which the catamaran was anchored, and as they paddled into view from just upriver, the long, upswept gray hulls of the unusual vessel looked completely out of place against this deep-woods background, even with the rig down and stowed across the decks. Larry was nowhere in sight, but Artie assumed he was down below.

  “Larry! Hey Larry, it’s me, Artie!” he shouted as they closed the distance to inside of a hundred feet. There was no answer and his brother did not step up to the deck as expected.

  “Oh my…wow, I can’t believe this!” Casey said, staring as she stopped paddling and then looked over her shoulder from the bow at her dad and Jessica. “Why did he do that?”

  “I told you that you had a surprise coming!” Artie grinned as he watched Casey take in the name of her uncle’s catamaran. The hastily painted lettering that read Casey Nicole was clearly visible on the stern of the port hull, which was the closest side from the direction they approached and couldn’t be missed. Artie had known all along that the name was going to elicit a reaction like that from his daughter. He just wished Larry had been on deck to see her face the moment she saw it.

  “Awesome!” Jessica said. “He named her after you!”

  “I…. I just can’t believe it.” Casey whispered, dipping her paddle again, clearly wanting to get closer.

  The canoe skimmed across the calm water, and Artie called his brother’s name again, still getting no answer. Could he be asleep down below? Surely the shouting would have awakened him by now. Then, as their angle of view changed and they drifted adjacent to the stern of the other hull, Artie felt a rush of adrenaline at what he saw: a four-foot-long area of the starboard hull, near the stern, was smashed in and broken. Artie saw exposed plywood and the torn fiberglass sheathing that had covered it under the gray primer. Something had hit the boat with a tremendous impact. He yelled out his brother’s name again as loud as he could and still got no answer. Frantic now, he dug in with the paddle and with frenzied strokes steered the canoe until it was alongside the hull, just forward of the damaged area. Then he stood and grabbed the wooden toe rail on the deck and held the canoe alongside.

  “Tie us off and stay here, Casey! Larry! Larry, are you okay?” Artie banged on the hull with his free hand as he shouted. “Larry! Where are you?” After checking that Casey had secured the canoe, he pulled himself up to the deck with both hands and clambered aboard. He was about to step onto the bridge deck that spanned the gap between the hulls when he saw the condition of the cockpit. The companionway hatches had been ripped off of their attaching hinges and stuff from inside the cabins was strewn everywhere. A sickening sense of fear for his brother overcame him as he realized that the Casey Nicole had been ransacked, and clearly by whoever had also smashed in the side of the starboard hull. Such damage could only be done by an impact with a bigger boat, and Artie didn’t have to wonder who had done this; he knew. He and the girls had watched the perpetrators of this attack steam right by less than half an hour before.

  “Pass me that rifle and stay in the canoe,” he said to the girls as he pointed to the Saiga he’d left in front of the stern seat. Jessica handed it up to him.

  “Where is Uncle Larry, Dad?”

  “I don’t know, just don’t come up here until I tell you it’s okay.”

  Sidestepping the clutter on deck, Artie made his way across the cockpit of the catamaran, steeling himself as he approached the port companionway, where Larry’s bunk was. Larry wouldn’t let anyone do this to his boat without a fight. Would he find his brother below, badly wounded or already dead? He didn’t want to consider the worst, but he had to know. Calling out his name again, Artie peered down into the cabin. The galley was a wreck of pots and pans on the cabin sole, along with cushions from the bunk forward of it. Boxes and bags that had contained their food stores, and had been neatly organized in the lockers below the bunks and cabinets, were strewn everywhere. But there was no one in the cabin. When Artie was sure of that he crossed the cockpit to the starboard hull and entered the nav station.

  The electronic instruments, including the Garmin color chartplotter and the Icom VHF radio that had been useless anyway since the pulse were missing entirely, ripped out of the wooden cabinet faces that had housed them, the broken wiring dangling loose in the holes left behind. Just as in the port hull, the interior of the starboard hull was a wreckage of broken and empty containers. Practically everything of value had been taken by the marauding fishermen, but where was Larry? He was not in this hull either, and there was nowhere else on board he could be. Artie was frantic now as he climbed the companionway steps to go back on deck. He had just exited the cabin when he was stopped in his tracks by a scream from Casey: “Dad!”

  Artie knew by her tone that she was not in danger. It was worse than that. Dropping the rifle, he rushed back to the stern deck to find that Casey was pointing to something on the bank beyond the bows of the catamaran
. The boat had swung around slightly on its anchor, revealing an area of muddy shoreline they had not seen when they first approached. Lying among the twisted cypress roots, half in and half out of the water, was a still figure that Artie knew immediately from the thick blond hair and deeply tanned arms was his younger brother.

  FIVE

  It had been more than three weeks since the solar flares, and Joey Broussard had finally accepted the fact that the lights weren’t going to come back on anytime soon. As he walked along the deserted gravel road in the Mississippi woods with his buddy, Zach, the afternoon sun and the humidity made him long for an ice-cold beer. As he daydreamed about the beer he could almost taste it, but he had stopped wondering how long it would be before he could actually down one again. It was just torture to do so. Living without cold beer sucked. Being out here in the middle of nowhere sucked. Not being able to listen to his music sucked. And most of all, knowing his girlfriend had left him when he needed her the most really sucked.

  It wasn’t like he was in love with her or anything; Joey knew their relationship wouldn’t have survived more than a semester or two whether the blackout occurred or not. Jessica was hot and all, but he was sure there were plenty of hot girls in his future through the rest of his time at Tulane and beyond. In fact, he was quite sure there would be plenty as young and fine as she was long after he finished medical school and started knocking down the big bucks as a surgeon of whatever sort he decided upon later. At least that’s what he was supposedly shooting for. In reality, Joey’s main focus was on having a good time, and as long as he kept his undergrad grades reasonably respectable, the cash infusions from his dad that enabled his lifestyle continued to flow. He was only in his sophomore year and there was plenty of time later to get serious. He would worry about the future when the future arrived.

  Most of the time he’d been spending with Jessica definitely qualified as good times. Like him, she was a night owl who liked to party. During the wee hours, after her late-night play rehearsals, they had run all over the city together and somehow found their way back to his crib in time for more fun before their morning classes. She was still living with her roommate Casey, but lately before the blackout she’d spent at least three or four nights a week with him. He hadn’t wanted her to move in full time, that would be way too much of a commitment for him, but it would have been nice if she’d stuck it out by his side when everything turned to shit in New Orleans.

  And now she was supposed to be here, but wasn’t. Finding her so he could talk some sense into her was the main reason he and Zach had made the dangerous journey to this backwoods cabin in the first place. That and the fact that they didn’t really have a better option for someplace to go that was safe from all the madness they had left behind. But when they got here, Jessica and her friends were nowhere to be found, and there was no sign they’d been here either. He didn’t even know if she or her friends were still alive, but he did know that she had left him and left New Orleans with the intention of coming here. Like a fool, she had followed Casey and that asshole friend of hers, Grant, that she apparently trusted more than she did him. Why did she think a prick like that had all the answers? Why couldn’t she have just waited in the city with him a little bit longer?

  The cabin was secluded and all, and was well stocked, just as Grant had said it was, but little good it had done any of them, since they hadn’t arrived to use it. Joey had known all along that it was dumb to try and ride that far on bicycles. He had tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. He could live with the knowledge that he had tried his best to talk her out of it, and that left him with a clear conscience, but he was still pissed, even though he knew it damned sure wasn’t his fault. If she were dead, as he feared she might be, it was because of her own hardheaded actions.

  When Joey and Zach had finally arrived at the cabin, it was clear that no one else had been there in the two weeks since the blackout. The door was still locked and the considerable amount of canned goods and other staple foods packed in the pantry was untouched. There was a Honda 5KW generator with several gallons of gasoline in two jerry cans, a propane grill with a large, still-full bottle of cooking gas, as well as a two-burner camp stove with a half dozen one-pound disposable propane bottles. The well had a manual backup pump that allowed access to the cold and pure water deep below ground, and besides that, the Bogue Chitto River ran clear and swift just forty feet beneath the base of the clay bluff upon which the little cabin was situated. The cabin was indeed a first-rate getaway, but Joey and Zach missed the city, and both of them were ready for this disruption of their routine to be over.

  But as bad as this was, out in the middle of nowhere and cut off from the outside world, staying back there in New Orleans was far worse. Joey had tried it at first, stubbornly refusing to give up on his belief that the blackout was simply a temporary glitch of the utility grid that would be corrected quickly. Joey came from money, and unlike many of his pre-med classmates at Tulane, he wasn’t living in a crappy apartment or sharing some run-down rental house with a roommate or two. No, Joey’s house was in the Garden District of New Orleans, on a street where the neighbors were mostly already successful doctors or other high-earning upper-middle-class professionals. His dad had bought the property as an investment that Joey could live in while he completed his education, but Joey found it to be extremely conducive to extra-curricular activities as well. It was not something he wanted to give up, the electricity and other utilities out or not. Joey had hung on as long as he could, determined to protect his house and his stuff from the looting and burning that became rampant in the aftermath, when people discovered grocery stores were empty, cars didn’t run, cell phones didn’t work, and the police were just as bewildered and helpless as everybody else.

  After Jessica said she was leaving with Grant and the subsequent altercation, Joey had locked himself in the house, trying to ignore the sting of her slap across his face. When he’d pushed her new friend through the porch railing outside his door, instead of taking his side, as he expected a loyal girlfriend to do, she’d turned on him like a rabid dog, defending this virtual stranger that her roommate, Casey, was so enamored of. Joey had let her have a piece of his mind after it happened, but no matter what he said, she insisted she was through with him and rode away on the bicycle with Grant without looking back. But Joey knew women and knew how to get his way with them. They could say whatever they wanted when they were really pissed, but in his experience they almost always softened up after a few days and came back. At the time, he’d figured she would be back by the next day at the latest, just as soon as she realized how stupid it was to try and ride out of the city by way of the Causeway on a bicycle. He would wait her out and wait out this bullshit panic that had nearly everyone in the city in its grip. He had finally managed to find a couple of cases of hot beer, which he paid some swindler a hundred dollars for, and when that ran out, there was always whiskey and tequila.

  Throughout the afternoon after Jessica left, he’d noticed the increasing frequency of sporadic gunfire nearby and the smell of smoke from burning houses that made breathing difficult, even with his doors and windows closed and locked. The few law enforcement officers who were still attempting to do their duty, at least in affluent neighborhoods such as his, were clearly becoming overwhelmed. Throughout the day, he heard the commotion and knew it was simply a matter of time before the looters got to his own door. Joey was at a loss as to how to stop them once they did. If the New Orleans Police Department, with all their weapons and training, couldn’t control the rioting, what could he do, alone and unarmed, hiding in his upscale enclave in the midst of a city gone mad? But one thing he knew for sure, if he did leave the house vacant at a time like this, it would be stripped and probably burned in no time flat. He was determined to do all he could to prevent that from happening, reasoning that most of the looters were looking for easy targets and would probably avoid occupied houses since there were so many already empty.

&n
bsp; Those first few days after the world had turned upside down had seemed like a nightmare that was impossible to wake up from. He had thought it was bad enough the second day, when he realized he couldn’t buy cold beer from a store anywhere within walking distance, and options beyond that were out of the question. Joey had spent his childhood in Baton Rouge, so he was no stranger to blackouts that lasted for days after the occasional Gulf hurricane, but cars? Who would have thought anything could shut down all the cars and trucks on the road? Or destroy cell phones and computers and just about everything else electronic, for that matter? Joey had witnessed the strange, glowing colored lights that lit up the sky that night before everything changed. But at the time, the spectacle was nothing more than an unexplained but still awesome fireworks display that he and Jessica watched through his bedroom window. Both of them were pretty well wasted from a party they’d been to earlier, and this light show seemed like the perfect finale to another evening well spent before they passed out in each other’s arms. It wasn’t until the next morning when he discovered he couldn’t use his phone or start his car to get to his first class that Joey knew something was wrong. And it was only hours later, after stumbling around the city on foot among other bewildered residents, that he understood the significance of the lights from the night before. But even so, at the time he had stubbornly refused to believe that it would not all be back to normal in a day or two. He clung to that belief the day after that, and he was still trying to hang on to it, as he stayed locked in his house alone, the night after Jessica had pedaled away with Grant.