Their prospects didn’t improve over the next hour as they rode along the levee, farmland to the west of them, swamp and marshland to the east along the river. They were crossing a gravel road that led toward the water when Lucas stopped abruptly and cocked his head.
“What is it?” Sierra asked.
He shushed her and then motioned to her to follow and spurred Tango down the gravel road. Sierra goaded Nugget after him and they disappeared around a bend just as a Crew patrol rode into view, their horses’ steel shoes clacking on the levee like ball-peen hammers.
Lucas guided the big stallion onto the grassy shoulder and Sierra followed, the color drained from her face at the prospect of being stopped so close to their objective. She looked like she was going to speak and Lucas held a finger to his lips, his stare unflinching. She nodded silently, the message received, and they made their way farther from the road, the river only footsteps away.
After thirty seconds he paused and listened, breathing evenly, and leaned forward to pat Tango reassuringly. When he didn’t hear any sounds of pursuit, he tilted his hat forward and coaxed Tango along the shoulder toward a collection of abandoned homes by the water, their tin roofs dull under a slate gray sky.
He dismounted at the last house in the line and rested a hand on Sierra’s leg. “Let’s take a break. The horses can eat – there’s plenty of grass in that field.”
“Why don’t we keep going?”
“Because I want to nose around, and if there are Crew patrols actively working the area, that changes things.”
“Wonder what they’re looking for?” she asked, almost to herself.
“I’ve been thinking about the roadblocks. That’s probably how they’ve kept the virus at bay – it’s not to keep people from escaping Crew territory. It’s to keep travelers from crossing from Mississippi.”
She nodded. “Makes sense. But I’m not sure how that helps us.”
“It doesn’t. But it tells us they’re afraid of whatever’s over there.” He regarded her. “If they’re afraid, maybe we should be, too.”
“We’ve gotten the vaccine.”
“Right, but remember that Elliot said no vaccine’s a hundred percent.” Lucas looked away and sighed. “I suppose it’s a little late to worry about that now. Take a load off Nugget and let her graze.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Like I said. Look around.”
Chapter 31
“Sierra!”
Sierra twisted toward where Lucas was waving at her from beside one of the houses. She stepped around the horses, who were munching on grass, and walked toward him. As she neared, she saw a smile on his face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Help me drag this out of the garage,” he said, motioning to something in the dark interior. Sierra peered inside and her eyes widened.
“It’s a boat.”
“Makes sense,” Lucas said. “What’s the point of having a waterfront home if you’re not going to play in the water?”
They moved inside the garage and she studied the skiff – maybe eighteen feet long and fashioned from aluminum. Lucas reached over the transom and began unscrewing the outboard motor from the hull. “We aren’t going to need this. The gas will have gone bad a long time ago.”
He lifted the motor free, set it down next to the wall, and then tested the weight of the boat, which was resting on a rusting trailer, its tires disintegrated to piles of black dust. Sierra hefted the bow and nodded. “We can do this.”
“On three,” he said, and gave a quiet count.
They heaved the boat free and carried it onto the dirt. Sierra barely made it out of the garage before giving a small cry and dropping the bow. “Sorry,” she said. “It got away from me. It’s heavy.”
“I know. Don’t worry. I can drag it down to the water from here.”
“How are we going to get across, though?” She looked inside the boat, empty except for a couple of filthy vinyl cushions.
“There’s a pair of oars in the garage. Can you grab them?”
“Sure.”
Lucas didn’t wait for Sierra, instead hauling on the yellow nylon rope tied to the bow, his boots digging into the moist soil. The bass boat scraped along the dirt until he got it onto the grass, his work suddenly easier as the friction reduced by half. Sierra came at a half run, carrying a pair of wooden oars, and he continued pulling the craft down the bank, maintaining his momentum as she followed him to the river.
Once in the water, he climbed into the boat and she handed him the oars. He fit them into the oarlocks, testing them with a tug to make sure they were secure, and then stepped out of the boat and gave her the rope. “Hang onto it while I stow Tango’s and Nugget’s kits.”
“What are you going to do with the horses?”
“They seem happy enough in that field. There’s a fence around it, so that should keep them from wandering too far. Plenty to eat, and there’s water in a cement cistern near the gate. Owner kept horses, that’s for sure. They’ll be fine for a day or two.”
Sierra gave him a worried look. “What if it takes longer?”
Lucas frowned. “No way to get them across, so we’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t. Besides, it’s not like they’ll die if we’re not with them. They won’t run out of food or water with the rain and amount of grass here.”
Lucas was gone for fifteen minutes. When he came back, he was carrying his M4 and the night vision monocle, and his tactical vest bulged with extra magazines. Sierra climbed into the boat while he held it steady, and then he pushed it away from the shore and hopped in, his legs and boots soaking.
The current carried them south, and Lucas pulled on the oars to steer them toward the far bank, but the further into the middle they drifted, the faster the rush carried them downriver. Sierra pointed at a large industrial complex on the Mississippi side about half a mile south of them, its cranes reaching for the sky like skeletal arms.
“That’s where they used to make oil rigs. I remember it from my trip here. They’d build them over there and tow them down the river to the Gulf.”
“Long way,” Lucas said, twisting to get a look at the massive buildings on the bank.
“My cousin’s compound is north of that. If we can make it to the landing there, it shouldn’t be that long a walk–”
She was interrupted by the crack of a rifle from the Louisiana side, and a fountain of water plumed skyward ten feet away. Lucas heaved on the oars with all his might while crouching as low as he could manage and yelled at her from the awkward position.
“Get down!”
~ ~ ~
The leader of the Crew patrol was urinating near the water while his men took a break beneath some trees on the bank when he spotted an aluminum boat in the middle of the river, maybe three hundred yards away. Fishing on the river was allowed, with permission from the Crew – at a cost – but crossing to the Mississippi side wasn’t, and it looked to him like that was what the boat was doing that far from the shore.
He finished draining his bladder and buttoned up, and then raised his binoculars to get a better look. There were no fishing poles that he could see, but that didn’t necessarily mean much – they could have been using hand lines.
A man wearing a cowboy hat was rowing hard, fighting the current, and it was obvious that he was no fisherman, judging by the rifle strapped to his back. He adjusted the focus and his eyes narrowed at the sight of a woman in the bow, her back to him as she gestured at something ahead of the boat. He could see from her slim curves and athletic frame that she was young, probably in her twenties, and his interest quickened when he spotted a tattoo on her bare arm, her olive wifebeater offering an ample view of tanned skin.
She turned to speak to the rower and his breath caught in his throat. He recognized the face – it was the woman on the flyer they’d received a few days before.
He called out to his men as he made his way up the bank, and they came at a run.
>
“What?” one of them called.
“Out on the river. It’s the woman Houston’s looking for.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. She’s got the mark.”
The man eyed the boat. “They’re making for the Mississippi side.”
“I know.”
“Out of range for these things,” the gunman said, holding up his AK-47.
“Maybe out of accurate range, but the bullets keep traveling. We can adjust our aim by watching where they hit the water,” the leader said, and snatched the rifle from the man and jogged back to the shore. He took up position behind a tree and used the trunk to steady his aim, and then flipped the firing selector to single shot and drew a bead on the boat.
The first shot went wide, and he cursed. He’d misjudged the distance, which was growing longer by the second. They were more like four hundred yards, judging by how badly he was off. Any chance of an accurate shot discarded, he switched the rifle to continuous fire and called to his men.
“Empty your rifles at them. We throw enough bullets their way, we may hit something,” he ordered, and then opened up, the assault rifle bucking in his hands like a wild animal.
~ ~ ~
Sierra ducked down as the river around them erupted in a spray of water. She cringed as the chatter of rifles from the western shore reached them a moment later.
“Oh, God, Lucas…”
“Stay down,” he said, but got cut off by a bullet punching through the transom and exiting through the bow not eight inches from where Sierra was crouched. “Lie as flat as you can on the bottom. That’s the safest place,” he said, and renewed his effort on the oars, aware that at any moment a round could end his life.
More slugs peppered the river around them as he strained, his arms burning from the exertion, sweat coursing down his face. He didn’t dare look over the hull to see how far they were from the shooters, leaving only his arms above the boat as he followed his own advice and lay on his back as he rowed, Sierra’s legs beside him.
Another hole appeared in the back of the boat, and then another, and Sierra screamed in fright.
“Are you hit?” he hissed from between clenched teeth.
“N-no.”
A round punctured the hull beneath the waterline and a brown stream began filling the boat. Lucas swore under his breath but kept rowing – reaching the Mississippi side was now their only hope.
“Hang in there,” he said.
“We’re sinking,” Sierra said, panicked.
“Just a little leak.”
“No, really, we are.”
There was a lull in the shooting, and the next barrage was more scattered as they crossed the midpoint of the river, now well over six hundred yards from the gunmen. Every foot they were able to put between the Crew and the boat increased their survival odds, and Lucas offered a silent prayer that the current carry them to safety.
Spray geysered skyward ten yards behind them, and then five, but the pattern was wide, and none of the rounds struck the hull. Lucas continued stroking with the oars, willing himself to greater effort, ignoring the water sloshing along the bottom of the boat, easily three inches and rising rapidly.
When it became obvious they were out of range, the shooting stopped, and Lucas risked a look over the transom. He guessed that between the current and the rowing they were over a thousand yards past the shooters. He felt in his vest for his bandana, and when his fingers snagged it, he pulled it free and called to Sierra.
“Scoot down and hold the oars while I plug the hole.”
“They stopped shooting.”
“Yep.”
She did as he asked, and he maneuvered around so he was facing the transom. Lucas rolled the bandana as tightly as he could and jammed it through the hole. The fabric saturated instantly, but the flow eased to a trickle, and he sat up to study the damage. The hull looked like Swiss cheese; it had been hit at least a half dozen times. That neither of them had been wounded was a miracle, and he thanked his maker for that favor.
“Okay, let me have the oars. Hard part’s done – we’re way more than halfway there now,” he said. Sierra relinquished them and scooted back to the bow, keeping her head down as she did, wary of another volley of shooting.
“That was too close,” she said with a shiver.
“We’re lucky they’re bad shots and don’t carry anything better than AKs. If they’d had my Remington or something with a decent scope, we’d have been toast.” He fell silent and resumed rowing, keeping the bow pointed at the oil rig plant, the reality of the danger they’d willingly subjected themselves to quashing any banter. The only sound present was the sloshing of muddy water in the bottom of the boat, the creak of the oars, and his breathing, rhythmic as a metronome with each pull.
Chapter 32
The bow scraped onto the bank just south of the manufacturing site, around the bend and out of view of the Crew, and Lucas pulled it from the water with Sierra’s help and dragged it into the dense underbrush so it wouldn’t be easily spotted should the Crew decide to launch a river patrol looking for them. He had no reason to believe they would, but he couldn’t be sure, and prudence dictated that they have a means of getting back to the Louisiana side.
Lucas removed his soggy bandana and studied for a moment the bullet hole through which the water had leaked, and then selected a nearby sapling. He unsheathed his Bowie knife and sliced off a branch, trimmed it so that it tapered, and walked back to the boat.
“What are you doing?” Sierra asked, eyeing the stick. “Making a spear?”
“No,” he replied, kneeling and jamming the thinner end through the hole until it wedged firm. “Buying us a little insurance.” He sawed the excess branch from the exterior of the hull and pounded the wood to set it firmly in the gap, and then straightened and inspected his work. “That should hold. It’ll swell with water, and the external pressure will keep it in place.” He toed it with his boot. “Not going anywhere.”
“They nearly got us.”
“Like being nearly pregnant,” Lucas countered. “Ain’t so until it is.” He tried a small smile. “You okay?”
“Just shaken up. I get that way when about a thousand bullets almost hit me.”
“I know the feeling.” He paused. “You said your cousin’s compound is near here?”
“That’s right. Maybe a mile up the main road.”
Lucas checked the time. “Got about an hour of light, tops. Want to fan this until tomorrow?”
She shook her head. “Let’s get it over with. With no tent, we’re just as exposed no matter where we go. Maybe there’s a spot where we can spend the night safely.”
Lucas didn’t offer his thoughts on that possibility. “Then let’s go.”
They walked together, he with his M4 at the ready, she with her AR-15 in hand. Once off the plant access lane, they turned north along the road that traced the course of the river. The ground was still spongy from a morning cloudburst, and the air was fragrant with the scent of blooms, decaying vegetation, and wet earth. Vines and moss hung from the trees that lined the strip of cracked asphalt, now overgrown in many spots, the pavement having largely given up its battle against nature’s encroachment.
A rustle sounded from a tree to their right, and Lucas spun to face the source, only to relax when a curious squirrel leapt from one branch to the next. Sierra grinned nervously and they resumed their march, the sound of their boots muffled on the grassy shoulder. Lucas wore a serious expression after the near miss on the river. His gray eyes roamed over the road ahead, his senses on alert and his nerves clamoring a warning with every step. He realized that his disquiet was a function of residual adrenaline burning through his system. but that didn’t make it any less real, and he continually swept the area ahead with the barrel of his M4, the safety off and his finger on the trigger guard.
Half an hour later Sierra slowed, a frown in place, and stared at the remnants of a drive on her right. “I think this is it,�
� she said in a hushed voice.
“Okay.”
They veered off the road and followed the driveway for fifty yards until they arrived at a gate partially ajar, hanging off rusting hinges attached to a high wall on either side. Lucas noted the bullet marks marring the surface and nodded once – the evidence of an attack was as clear to him as though captured on film.
“This look familiar?” he asked.
Sierra’s voice was barely audible. “Yes.”
When they entered the compound, it was immediately obvious that it had been long deserted: the walls of the buildings were cracked and dark with mold, the roofs staved in, and the windows shattered. More bullet gouges pocked the areas around the openings, the doors ruined by termites as well as gunfire. Sierra gasped at the sight, and Lucas put his arm around her, trying to offer comfort but failing. She shrugged him off and made for one of the far buildings, and Lucas tailed her, his steps more deliberate than hers, taking in the surroundings with a wary eye.
Her boot kicked an empty can hidden beneath a carpet of leaves, and the walls echoed with the sound when it bounced off the nearest building. Lucas winced at the noise, but Sierra ignored it and continued her beeline to the structure. She hesitated at the doorway, and Lucas whispered to her, “Let me go first.”
She shook her head and pushed past the half-open rotting slab of door to the dark, dank interior. Beetles scuttled away at her intrusion, and a juvenile water moccasin slithered into the shadows, its patterned scales shining in the dim light.
Lucas entered and nearly ran into her. Sierra stood in the gloom, shoulders heaving as she sobbed quietly. He didn’t try to quiet her this time, intuiting that she needed to vent her grief and frustration at a fruitless end to their quest – it was clear nobody had survived to tell any story, and there would be no leads found in the rubble. If her son was alive, the answer to where wasn’t in the haunted ruins, and she’d now be forced to confront the hard fact that they had no plan to find him and, absent one, little room for optimism.
The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels) Page 88
