The motorcycle the two of them had ridden there from New Orleans was a possibility, despite the fact that Joey had taken the key and drained the gas. The lack of a key was hardly a deterrent. Grant was no mechanic by any means, but he’d owned a couple of dirt bikes when he was a teenager and he knew he could bypass the switch and push start the bike by rolling it down the hill behind the cabin if necessary. The Harley Sportster didn’t even come with a steering lock, making it a very easy bike to steal.
The empty fuel tank wouldn’t stop him either if he really wanted to use it. He was certain he could find some gas easily enough in the tank of an abandoned vehicle on the nearby road. But tempting as it was to be able to travel at the speed of a motorcycle, Grant knew it wasn’t practical. First of all, there was the matter of the roadblock at the state line that he had to assume was still in place, even though it was possible it had been dismantled in the weeks since they’d first found out about it. But even if it were possible to get through and ride south, there were all the dangers of travel by road that he and the girls had already dealt with on the bicycles. A running motorcycle would be a much more desirable target than a bicycle, and as it was a Harley, Grant knew it would be loud, giving anyone on the road ahead plenty of time to hear him coming and set up an ambush.
He thought the bicycles they’d hidden near the bridge south of the state line were probably still there, too, covered in brush in the dense canebrake and ready to ride, but even though he could travel quietly and still make good time on a pedal bike, there was still a major problem. He had canoed the entire waterway to the coast once, before all this happened, and was familiar with the terrain, even if he didn’t know the exact location of the anchorage Casey’s uncle had chosen. No road passed anywhere near that part of the river, and the surrounding swamps were impassable even on foot for the most part. He would still need a boat of some kind long before he got close, anyway, and he knew it might be harder to get one farther south where other refugees might have already taken any that might be available. That left getting one now, in the one place where he knew for sure he could find one that would work.
The road he was running on now would only take him part of the way there. It was on the wrong side of the river, for one thing, and a couple of miles south it turned away from the river valley and ran west until it intersected a nearby paved county road. Grant was only using it to make some time while it roughly paralleled the river. Once he reached the point where it diverged, he would plunge back into the woods to stay close to the riverbank. This would be the hard part; three or four miles of pushing through dense undergrowth, bypassing sloughs and thickets and keeping an eye on where he placed each step to avoid water moccasins or rattlesnakes as the light under the canopy faded. Grant knew he wouldn’t get there before dark, but he pushed himself as hard as he could. He could catch his breath later, in the boat, as there would be places where the current would keep him moving at a good clip even if he weren’t paddling.
His mind was racing faster than his body could move as he tried to process all that had happened this afternoon since he and Scully had approached the cabin. Joey was absolutely the last person Grant had ever expected to see again, and he had scarcely given the incident with him in New Orleans another thought since they’d left. He had just assumed that when Jessica slapped the hell out of him and told him she was through, that would be that. At the time, he hadn’t thought Joey had either the motivation or the ability to get out of the city, much less make his way all the way to the cabin. Thinking about it now, though, he realized he should have known that the note and map would be an open invitation to anyone who found them, even though it was intended solely for Casey’s father. Now it made sense that Joey would cool off after the altercation and seek out Jessica in an attempt to talk to her and reconcile. Maybe he’d changed his mind and decided he wanted to go with them, as she’d first urged him to do, but by the time he’d gone to the apartment she’d shared with Casey, he had been too late. By then he must have surely realized survival in New Orleans was dicey, and having nowhere else to go, he and his friend had used the map on the note to find their way out here. Joey was still clinging to a delusion that Jessica wanted him, and, unbelievably, thought she would welcome him back with open arms after all this time. Grant wondered how Joey intended to explain how he’d found them, when and if he and Zach reached the boat. But he had no doubt Joey would do what he’d said he would, fabricate some bullshit story about how he’d had an accident, probably telling them he was dead. Thinking of this, Grant was worried about what would become of Scully. Once they knew where they were going and knew where the boat was anchored, they wouldn’t need him anymore and it would be inconvenient to have him along, contradicting whatever narrative Joey had concocted for Jessica and the rest of them by then. Was Joey deranged enough to simply kill him to cover his lie? Grant figured it was certainly possible.
He doubted he could catch up with them, and had little hope of preventing them from reaching the sailboat where Jessica and Casey were waiting, but he was determined to get there as fast as he could. He was certain that Casey’s father and especially her uncle would be hesitant to take those two on, and he hoped they would question any story they presented to explain his and Scully’s absence. He just had to get there before the boat sailed, no matter what.
He pushed through the undergrowth as fast as he could without getting hurt. It was nearly twilight when he came to an opening on the riverbank at a place where there was a sandbar on either side. It was as good a place to cross as he was likely to find. After pausing to look and listen to be sure he was alone in the forest, he sprinted across the open sand and splashed into the water until it was chest deep. The main channel was less than fifteen feet wide at this point and the low bank on the other side was close enough that he could gently toss his rifle and bag across to keep from getting them wet. Then he swam the rest of the way and resumed his downstream trek, feeling his way through vegetation that now cut his visibility to a little more than arm’s length in the darkness.
Grant was not uncomfortable in the woods at night, and had no fear of the dark other than the increased chance of stepping on a poisonous snake because he couldn’t see it. To lessen the odds of that happening, he made just enough noise as he walked to scare any reptiles directly in his path, but not enough to be heard by someone on the river or elsewhere in the vicinity. An hour after his crossing he emerged from the trees onto another sandbar, much longer and broader than most on the river. The white quartz sand glowed in the light of the rising moon, and Grant knew exactly where he was. It was the upper end of the long beach that wrapped around a gentle bend just upstream from the Highway 438 bridge. He knew he was now in Louisiana, and standing near the very spot where Casey had been abducted by the deranged survivalist after taking a bath in the river. The bicycles were hidden in the canebrake just past the bridge, and a short distance below that, was the vacation home where he and Jessica had “borrowed” the canoe from among those stored in the boat shed beside it. Grant knew the other boats were still there, as he had just seen them earlier that very day, when he and Scully had motored past the property on their way upriver. Relieved at having made it to the bridge, he pushed on past it without bothering to see if the bikes were there. He couldn’t wait to get back on the river, and wrap his hands around a paddle. Driven by his desire to get to Casey and Jessica as fast as possible, he felt no fatigue and had no intention of resting, nighttime or not.
ELEVEN
Casey crouched in the mud next to her dad, the two of them looking out from either side of a buttressed cypress trunk onto the dead lake where the Casey Nicole was lying quietly at anchor. The canoe was hidden in the palmetto thicket behind them, and Jessica and her Uncle Larry were likewise concealed and waiting, approximately one hundred yards away, where the shoreline curved around close to the entrance to the main river. Larry had carefully picked these positions to allow them to lay down crossfire on anyone boarding the catama
ran. Her dad’s job was to take the first shot, so the two of them were set up on the side facing the bow of the catamaran, where one of the men would likely be exposed if he began hauling in the anchor rode. If her dad’s first shot found its mark, that first guy would never know what hit him and Larry would cut down the other three quickly with the semi-automatic AK. It seemed like a foolproof plan to Casey, but her uncle had convinced her nothing was foolproof in a gunfight, so she nervously checked the chamber of the Colt .22 automatic handgun that was her designated weapon, determined to do her part to keep these guys from shooting back.
The sound of the Miss Lucy’s powerful diesel was getting louder as the vessel worked its way around the big looping bends of the river. It would be in view in a matter of minutes. Once the men tied it alongside the catamaran and boarded, there would be no turning back in their plan to kill them all. Casey wished it didn’t have to be this way. She wished Grant and Scully were already back with supplies from the cabin and that the fishermen had never boarded and looted their boat. She wished they hadn’t knocked her uncle unconscious and left him tied up to die in the swamp. Casey wished a lot of things, mainly that this whole nightmare of a changed world really was just that: a nightmare she would wake up from. But she knew wishing wasn’t going to make it so, and that these were really bad men who stood in the way of her own survival. Just like Derek, they had chosen a path that could only lead to death. That was not her fault.
“Are you okay, Dad?” she whispered while they still had time. “Do you have a clear shot?”
“Yes. As good as I could hope for, as long as they tie up on the same side of the boat they already rammed. Casey, you stay behind this tree no matter what happens!”
“I’ll be all right, Dad. Don’t worry about me. Just focus on your shot and know I’m right here to back you up.”
She gave him a quick hug and moved back to her side of the tree. They didn’t have to wait but a couple more minutes before the big blue and white wooden boat steamed into view, looking almost as out of place against the green backdrop of forest as the Casey Nicole. For a moment, Casey held out hope that the fishermen would cruise on by, leaving the catamaran alone, but it was not to be. She heard the engine throttle back and then the clunk of the prop shifting to reverse as the captain did a quick maneuver to point his bow into the opening of the small lake. Then the boat moved forward again, though much more slowly, and, as Larry had predicted, the captain aimed for the same spot along the starboard hull he’d already damaged with his last boarding. Casey watched as he approached with the engine now at idle, and a tanned, shirtless man hopped from the rail of the fishing boat to the decks of the Casey Nicole with a line in hand. It only took him a few seconds to tie it off. Then she saw another man step aboard, and then, finally, the third one emerged from the pilothouse and climbed down to the main deck. That made three, but Larry had said there were four. Where was the other one? Casey wondered if maybe he’d gotten off at whatever place they’d gone to upriver. Maybe that was the purpose of their trip. But she didn’t dismiss the possibility that he could still be somewhere in the cabin, either.
Casey noticed that the captain had left the engine running. So they didn’t plan on taking long, probably just long enough to haul in the anchor and rig the catamaran with a towline. Her heart raced as she waited to see if the fourth one would show, but when the captain stepped aboard the catamaran, too, and all three of them stood there apparently discussing how they were going to carry out the towing operation, she assumed there was no one else on board the fishing boat.
She felt herself tense as one of the men moved forward onto the slatted foredeck between the catamaran’s twin bows and bent to untie the cleat knot securing the anchor rode. Although she couldn’t see him because of the tree standing between them, she knew her dad must be equally tense as he brought the crosshairs of the rifle’s scope to bear on this man, who by stepping up the anchor made himself the first target. Casey had no doubt her dad would make his shot count, even though she knew he’d never fired at another human being before. The range was only about seventy-five yards, and they both had a clear field of fire in the direction of the boat. She aimed her pistol squarely at the one from the pilothouse, who was standing by, and though she knew it was a long shot for a .22, she was determined to do her part in adding to the firepower of the attack. She steadied her aim as the first one bent to begin hauling in the line, and the other crew member reached to help him. When he had pulled in maybe ten feet of the rode, Casey braced for the sound of the rifle shot she knew was coming any second.
She flinched when it did, even though she was expecting it, but she saw the man go down and she squeezed the trigger to fire the first round from her pistol. She had no idea if it had any effect or not, because her dad’s first shot was immediately echoed by a rapid series of deafening rifle shots from another part of the shore. Uncle Larry was unloading part of a thirty-round magazine as fast as he could pull the trigger of the semi-automatic AK. The other two men standing on the deck didn’t have a chance. Casey kept shooting into them, too, and heard her dad fire at least twice more as well. All three of the men aboard the catamaran were down and only one was moving, trying to crawl back to the trawler. He didn’t make it; another double tap from Larry’s AK saw to that.
Casey’s ears were ringing from the shock of the .308 fired so near her head, but when the shooting stopped she stayed focused and watched both boats, just as they had agreed to do, until they knew there was no longer a threat. Only one of the three who had been shot was carrying a weapon at the time; a shotgun slung out of the way behind his back. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered for him how he carried it, so complete was the surprise of their ambush.
She had just crept around to her dad’s side of the tree and put an arm around his shoulder when from below decks in the aft cabin of the fishing boat, a figure suddenly dashed up the ladder to the pilothouse door and disappeared inside. Casey heard Larry open up again with the AK-47, but not before the engine revved to what must have been full throttle. Whoever was at the controls managed to put it in reverse in an attempt to back down with the anchored catamaran still tied fast to the bow. It was a desperate and futile maneuver, and Casey saw that the glass windows of the pilothouse had disintegrated in the fusillade of bullets. She knew anyone inside could not have survived that, but the powerful diesel was still running wide open with no one to throttle it back or control the helm. She saw the anchor line stretch taut as the mooring line the men had used to secure their boat to the catamaran held fast. The fishing boat veered wildly back and forth against the restraint, grinding against the catamaran hull and surely doing even more damage. Casey wondered how long the anchor would hold against such a relentless force.
“Come on, Casey, we’ve got to shut that engine down!”
She knew he was right; it was up to the two of them. They had the canoe, so there was nothing Larry or Jessica could do. She jumped up and helped her dad slide it into the water. As they began paddling towards the two boats, she saw Larry emerge from the woods with the AK still aimed at the pilothouse.
“I’ll try and shut it down!” her dad yelled to him.
“Okay, be careful,” her uncle yelled back. “I’ve got you covered, Doc!”
Just as Larry shouted this, Casey saw that both boats were beginning to move away from them. The heavy nylon anchor line and the connecting mooring had not parted, but the anchor was dragging in the soft river bottom mud, unable to resist the pull of so much raw horsepower. Casey and her dad paddled as hard as they could. They desperately needed to catch the two boats and get that engine stopped before the fishing boat tore the lighter catamaran apart. They succeeded just before the anchor broke completely free, finally reaching the side of the catamaran’s port hull.
“Grab the rail and just hold us steady! Stay in the canoe while I climb up there and see if I can stop it.”
Casey did as he asked, catching the toe rail with both hands and p
ulling the canoe tight alongside, careful to keep her center of gravity over the narrow hull beneath her so that it wouldn’t roll as the bigger boat continued to be pulled in an erratic sideways motion.
Before he boarded the boat, she and her dad both looked to make sure the men lying on the deck were no longer a threat. It only took a glance to confirm this, and then Casey had to look away. The high-velocity rifle bullets had made a messy job of what had to be done, especially the .308 round that had killed the first man.
She glanced back to the shore and saw Larry standing there with the AK aimed squarely at the pilothouse, ready to open fire if needed. Jessica was right behind him, clinging to her .22 rifle. Casey wondered if she had fired it alongside Larry, but it didn’t matter in the end, anyway. Her dad had made his way into the pilothouse; she assumed he was trying to figure out how to shut off the engine. First he backed down the throttle and the dragging slowed, then she felt the tension on the anchor ease completely as he found the shifter and dropped the transmission into neutral. The engine ran at idle for a few more seconds, then sputtered and died. He had found the kill switch and both boats came to rest once again.
“Dad?”
“I’m okay, Casey. Just stay where you are!”
She waited until he emerged from the pilothouse and shut the door behind him, his face pale and his knees shaky and weak.
“Dad, are you okay?”
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