The Savage Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 4) Read online

  Mitch agreed. They had been living in the damp and cold for days on end. Here in the deep forest, there was never enough sunlight this time of year to dry things out before it rained again. The watertight metal roof was going to greatly increase their standard of living. More than any of them, Benny needed to get out of the cold and wet. But even if he did Mitch wasn’t sure he would ever get rid of that cough without some antibiotics to knock it out.

  “I think that now that we’ve got the roof on, it’s time to go see if that trading post is for real. Kimberly is going to be okay now, but Benny needs stronger medicine.”

  “Give me a few days,” Benny coughed. “I think it’s gonna clear up on its own. Wouldn’t wanna see you go all that way for my sake. If that baby’s okay, that’s all that matters.”

  “You matter too, Uncle Benny!” Lisa said. “I’ll go with you Mitch! I can ride a horse. They won’t need me here as much as they need Jason and David.”

  “If you’re going, I’m going too,” Stacy said.

  Jason cut her off and said he didn’t think it was a good idea as soon as his sister volunteered, and Mitch agreed. He didn’t want to take more than one companion, but he still hadn’t decided who that would be. Jason had to stay here to guard the camp. David couldn’t be entirely depended on and didn’t know enough to be much help anyway, either here or with Mitch. He knew for sure he wasn’t going to take him. That left Lisa and Stacy, but there was no need for both of them to go. Samantha was still in a state of severe depression and she really needed at least one of the younger girls to talk to when April was busy with Kimberly. So it made sense that Mitch should take his little sister, though he had not given that idea much thought before she volunteered. He hated to expose her to the risks, but on the other hand, she was fearless and could shoot and take care of herself in the woods as well or better than anyone there. Considering all this, Lisa was the logical choice.

  * * *

  Several more days went by before Mitch was ready to leave. There were lots of details to take care of, like taking a complete inventory of all the firearms and the ammunition they had for them. Mitch had no intention of letting go of any of his personal weapons or those of his dad’s that had not been in the safe when the house burned. He had wisely cached some of those away from the house so they wouldn’t all be in one place, and he’d done the same with the AKs and other guns taken from the four men who’d abducted April a few months prior. But the main haul of captured weapons came from the men who’d been killed during the recent attack on the farm. There was a mix of high and low quality, but among their weapons were several decent AKs and ARs. With most of the rifles there were plenty of magazines to go with them, as the men had been carrying all their extra ammo in loaded spare mags.

  “I imagine any semi-auto with hi-capacity mags will be as good as gold,” Mitch said, as he set aside the least desirable ones that would be offered in trade first. “We need to hold back on some for future trading, if this works out, but I want to take enough with me to let them know I’m serious. And if everyone is in agreement, I propose taking a couple of the horses too. We have more than we need and with the cattle competing for forage we need to turn all the livestock out of the fence anyway. Lisa and I can ride two there, take two to pack the guns and bring back our haul, and take two more of the poorest ones to offer in trade. Horses have got to be a hot commodity too, I would think.”

  “Wow, ten AKs with three loaded mags a piece, three AR-15s with three mags, two Glock 9mm pistols and a couple of horses. What do you think you can get in trade for all that?” Jason asked.

  Mitch rattled off his wish list and asked the others in the group to add anything he may have forgotten. Antibiotics and various First Aid supplies were a top priority, as were items of clothing, especially shirts and trousers, footwear and warm outerwear. Farther down in priority were non-perishable food items, such as rice, dried beans, cornmeal, sugar, and coffee. There was no way of knowing if all this was available or how high the price would be, but they could hope to get at least some of it. With Lisa’s help Mitch would try to remember the sizes and particular items of clothing each person needed most.

  Benny was still coughing, and though he argued that he was getting better, Mitch didn’t believe it. If the trading post at Purvis had any kind of antibiotics, he knew it would probably be one of the most expensive items on the list, but if at all possible he intended to strike a deal if it would save Benny’s life.

  Kimberly was completely over whatever made her ill, and April now doubted she had caught it from Benny. With that worry out of her mind now, April readily agreed when Mitch asked her if she wanted to come with him to pick out the two horses he would try to trade in Purvis and to turn out the cattle at the back gap. It was the afternoon before he and Lisa planned to leave, and Mitch desperately wanted some alone time with April. Lisa and Stacy would look after Kimberly for a few hours, both of them knowing full well why April wanted to go to the farm with Mitch. Though they had tried not to make it obvious while in camp, it was clear that feelings other than friendship had developed between the two of them.

  With both of them paddling, Mitch and April made short work of the trip upstream to the landing place. Mitch hopped out on the sandbar to pull the canoe up, but April threw her arms around him before he even stepped out of the cold water.

  “It has been driving me crazy to look at you every day without doing this,” she said as she kissed him and pulled him closer.

  Mitch slid the bow of the canoe onto the sand with one hand as he wrapped the other one around April’s slim waist and pulled her closer. Then he grabbed her in a great bear hug, and laughing, picked her up out of the water and carried her up to the top of the sandbar. They rolled over and over in the powdery white sand, not caring that it stuck to their clothes and hair. Mitch was in heaven in April’s arms, and if not for what he feared had happened to his parents and so many others that he cared about, he would be celebrating the extreme circumstances that brought this amazing young woman into his life. That she felt the same for him was more than he’d dared to dream. What had been a fantasy when they were walking here alone together had now become reality. Mitch Henley was in love, and he wanted that afternoon with April to last forever.

  Eleven

  “I CAN’T IMAGINE A scenario where we’ll be gone more than a week,” Mitch said as he and Lisa sat down to eat a quick breakfast with the rest of the group. The packhorses were loaded and Amigo and the horse Lisa was riding were saddled and ready, waiting in the woods near the canoe landing.

  “At the most it’ll take three days to get there and three to get back, and that’s leaving a whole day to spend doing the trading,” he went on. “But even if it is longer, I don’t want any of you to worry about us. You know how things are out there. If we have to go out of our way to avoid danger, or have to hide out and wait somewhere, then we will. But Lisa and I can take care of ourselves. I don’t want any of you leaving here to look for us if we’re late for some reason. We’ll be back, and if all goes as planned, we’ll all be better off for it.”

  It hurt Mitch to see the sadness in April’s eyes as the time to leave drew near, especially after all the happiness that shone in them yesterday that he’d wanted to last forever. It was going to be painful to tear himself away from her today, but the sooner he and Lisa left and got back with the stuff they needed, the sooner they could have a day like yesterday again. And he hated to prolong Benny’s suffering if there was a chance of finding medicine to help him. The old man was so weak that morning that it was an effort for him to stand and shake Mitch’s hand and give Lisa a hug before they left.

  “I love you, Uncle Benny,” she said. “We’ll be back in a few days, I promise.”

  “If nothing else, I’m sure I can find you some whiskey if there’s any kind of a trading post there at all.”

  “Don’t forget it then, son. Even if they’ve got the antibiotics, I’ll need something to wash ’em down with.”r />
  Jason went with them in the canoe for the short trip up to where the horses were tethered, and then he took the boat back down to the camp. Mitch and Lisa mounted up and with the extra four horses in tow, set off at a walking pace for the gravel road and the trail that would take them to Brooklyn.

  They reached Mr. Holloway’s camp on the creek bank near the ruins of the town by late afternoon. Mitch wanted to pick his brain again for details and see if he could recall anything else he’d heard about Purvis and the rumored trading post they hoped to find there. They found the old man sitting by a small cooking fire, the quarters of a small animal spitted on a green stick propped over it to roast in the flames.

  “Got him with the SKS,” Mr. Holloway said. “It shoots straight enough, I reckon. But he was close.”

  “What is that?” Lisa asked.

  “Tabby cat! Kinda lean and scrawny, but he’ll do. There’s plenty for both of you if you’re hungry. I’m still working on all that beef jerky your brother gave me, but I don’t pass up a shot at anything that moves around here.”

  “I’ll vouch for that!” Mitch laughed.

  Lisa turned down Mr. Holloway’s offer, but the two of them sat down with him to talk while he finished his cooking. It was too early to press on, because the route from here would be more exposed and Mitch planned to wait until after dark for the next leg.

  “I wouldn’t go riding up there to the gates of Purvis with that girl in plain sight if I were you,” Mr. Holloway said. “Best to leave her and the trade goods somewhere in the woods until you know if they’re still in business or not.”

  “I’d already considered that,” Mitch agreed. “Especially since the last word you heard from anyone who has been there was over three months ago. There’s no way of knowing if the town has been able to hold out that long. A lot could have happened in three months.”

  “You got that right. I hope I’m not getting you into more trouble than it’s worth to go find out. Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut about it.”

  Mitch told him that was nonsense. He said that even if he had not heard about Purvis, he would have gone out in search of the things his group needed. That was what brought him here to Brooklyn in the first place. As they sat there talking, Mitch gleaned a few more details of what Mr. Holloway had seen and heard since the blackout event. With Brooklyn right along the major highway route from the densely populated Gulf Coast, he’d had a lot more contact with people, both good and bad than Mitch.

  “In the beginning most folks expected relief would be coming in from up north or somewhere. Nobody could imagine that it might have shut down the whole country the same as here. But since so many people saw the lights in the sky the night before, people that knew about such things insisted that it was a natural solar storm that caused it, not a terrorist attack or some other man-made event. The more time went on without hearing from one single person who’d come from somewhere that wasn’t affected, the more those folks figured it might be worldwide.”

  “I think we have to assume by now that it is,” Mitch said. “And if that’s true, we might not ever see civilization at the level it was before in our lifetimes. Just imagine what it’s going to take to start over. It can be done all right, but it’s going to take a lot of time, and people are going to have to cooperate and stop killing each other.”

  “Like that’ll happen,” Lisa said.

  “It will, if enough decent people get together and put an end to the raiders and bandits, like we did with the bunch that attacked the farm. That’s another reason why I’m interested in what’s going on in Purvis. It sounds like the people there had the right idea from the beginning. And there could be lots of other places like that scattered around the county.”

  This discussion lasted until well after sundown, and Mr. Holloway practically begged Mitch and Lisa to stay and camp there with him that night. It was obvious that he was lonely and craving conversation, but Mitch said they couldn’t stay any longer because then they would be stuck there the next day too. He planned to get on the road to Purvis while they still had several hours of darkness in which to travel. Because of his prior knowledge of the area, he knew a route that involved small, rural county roads all the way to their destination, and when he laid it out for Mr. Holloway, the old man who’d lived there all his life agreed that it was the best option. The first leg of the journey from Brooklyn would take them along a remote paved road that paralleled Black Creek and was surrounded on both sides by the national forest. He planned to follow it until dawn and then get well out of sight into the woods to hole up until darkness returned again. This time of year the days were short and the nights long, so there would be more hours available to travel than to hide. He expected this first night to be the easiest, due to the remoteness, but after that the route would take them past numerous houses and farms as they neared the town, requiring even more caution and stealth.

  “We’ll stop in on our way back,” Mitch told Mr. Holloway as the two of them mounted up and prepared to head out. “I’ll let you know what we find there, and if we’re successful, I’m sure I’ll have something for you.”

  “You just keep an eye peeled. Don’t go stumbling into someplace where some old codger like me can take a pot shot at you!”

  “Never again, Mr. Holloway! You cured me of that the first time!”

  * * *

  Despite his confidence in front of Mr. Holloway and Lisa, Mitch couldn’t stop the knots from churning in his stomach as he led the way west on the small paved road that crossed Highway 49. He was at home in the hidden realms of the deep woods, but riding out here in the open, even at night, he felt like a helpless target of opportunity for anyone who might be inclined to take a shot at him or his sister. The only consolation he had was that there were likely few, if any, survivors left in the isolated homes and farms along the route. If every habitation had already been pillaged, there was little reason for bandits to be in the area unless they happened to encounter a group of them on the move to someplace else. And the mass exodus of refugees on the highway had long since ended, the fleeing urban dwellers attempting to move north either long dead or settled elsewhere by now. Even so, Mitch wasn’t about to cross such a wide-open highway without watching it carefully first. He left Lisa with the horses and went ahead on foot to check. Once they were finally on the other side, he began breathing a little easier. Heavy woods bordered the narrow paved road they would follow for the next several miles, providing an escape route they could take at the first hint of danger. Despite that, he didn’t want to ride in a close knot with Lisa and the extra horses. If someone took a shot, he’d rather it be at him than his sister, giving her time to react. With his father’s AR slung across the front of his chest and close to the reins, he rode point, keeping approximately 100 yards ahead. They couldn’t talk riding that way, but they didn’t need to anyway. The pace he set was an easy walk for the horses and one they could have maintained on foot, but speed wasn’t nearly as important as stealth on this leg of the journey.

  The road was desolate and deserted and they traveled this way until the first gray of dawn without seeing or hearing signs of other people. Spotting a good place to get off the road, Mitch waited for Lisa to catch up, and then they dismounted and let the horses drink from the deep puddles of rainwater standing in the roadside ditch. When the animals had their fill, Mitch and Lisa led them on foot into a stand of tall Longleaf pines, where they found a place to camp on the other side of a low rise hidden from the road. They were both worn out after almost 24 hours of moving since leaving the camp the morning before.

  “We’re doing great, Lisa. I’d say this puts us about halfway between Brooklyn and Purvis. Tomorrow night we’ll be able to get to the outskirts of town if we don’t run into anyone and have to detour. We’ll have to be more careful, though. There will be more chance of running into someone the closer we get.”

  The morning sun brought warmth to the relatively open ground beneath the pines, and Lisa a
nd Mitch slept well, waking late that afternoon refreshed and ready to get moving. They were on the road again as soon as it was good and dark, and within an hour they had passed two home sites where everything had been burned to the ground the same as theirs. This was the case everywhere there had been a dwelling within sight of the road. The most prominent relics of human existence dotting the landscape that were not completely destroyed were the cars, pickups and other vehicles that had been useless since day one. All had their windows broken out and had been ransacked, but few were burnt the way the houses, barns and other outbuildings they passed were. The darkness made the entire scene creepier than it would have been in daylight, but gave Mitch some comfort at least for the knowledge that no one would see them until they were quite close, if anyone was still hanging around any of these places. But if anyone was living out there, they were apparently well off the road. It was a cold night, but there were no campfires in sight, even when they reached a crossroads where an entire neighborhood had once stood on the outskirts of the town that was their destination.

  The last major highway they had to cross before reaching the town was Interstate 59, the direct route out of New Orleans that ran northeast to Hattiesburg and points beyond. As expected, abandoned vehicles stalled in the lanes or pushed to the shoulder were visible as far as they could see in the starlight. The road they’d been following crossed over the super highway on an exposed overpass that Mitch didn’t want to risk. He picked out a route down the embankment north of the bridge, watching from the woods for a good fifteen minutes for movement before sprinting across. After another wait to make sure he’d not been spotted, he whistled for Lisa to follow with the animals.