The Pulse

by Scott B. Williams

  His eyes swept back over the trail of larger tracks they had passed, and he could see where the person who made them had stepped out of the dense woods that began at the edge of the sandbar just a few feet uphill from the log where Casey had left her things. Someone had been walking around on this sandbar before she got here, and then must have been watching her from the cover of the trees while she bathed. When she walked farther upstream, he had re-emerged from the woods and followed her. It was the only explanation for the fact that some of his tracks were covered by hers, while these last were made on top of her trail. As this realization dawned on him, he wondered if the man who made them had been on the sandbar when they rode down the bank from the highway, and had hidden in the woods watching as he and Jessica left Casey alone and went to get the canoe.

  Grant gave Jessica a serious look that conveyed the importance of keeping silent and then motioned downward with his hand, to tell her to stay put while he tried to figure this out. He crept over to the backpack and felt inside it for the Ruger pistol. It was gone! He could only hope that Casey had it with her. But now that he was looking for them, he saw moccasin tracks near the log as well, and realized the person who made them could have taken the gun if she had left it there when she walked away. Following along beside, but not touching the two sets of tracks, he moved as fast as he could while still remaining silent, which was easy enough in the damp sand. He gripped the machete so tightly his knuckles were white. Surely this person who had followed Casey had heard them calling her name. Surely she would have heard them too, but why didn’t she answer? Fear and worry gripped him as he struggled to find the answer while he followed the tracks, ducking under the river birch trees that leaned out of the forest over the sandbar.

  He didn’t have to go far to reach the end of the narrow beach, where he found Casey’s trail obliterated by a large area of disturbed sand where both sets of footprints had been erased by something. Only the man’s tracks led beyond that point, and following them a few more steps, Grant’s heart nearly stopped when he saw the answer to the puzzle. There was a deep grove in the mix of sand and mud that extended from the water’s edge several feet up the bank, and on both sides of it, a flattened mark made by something smooth and heavy sliding into the water. On one side of these impressions were more of the larger tracks, but none of Casey’s. Some of them were deep and distorted from slipping and digging into the mud. Grant had done enough canoeing to know exactly what he was looking at. It was the mark made when someone pushes a heavily laden canoe into the water from the bank.

  Almost as soon as it became clear what he was looking at, he whirled back the way he had come, knowing that the canoe they’d seen heading downriver less then twenty minutes ago had to be the one that had made these marks. Casey was in that canoe, he thought, probably hidden from their view under the camo tarp that Grant had assumed was covering the lone paddler’s gear! No wonder the man paddling it had not taken his eyes off them as he passed, much less shown any indication of wanting to stop and talk. With the strong current in his favor and his obvious experience as a paddler, there was no telling how far downriver he’d gotten by now. Grant was horrified by the thought of what his intentions might be. He turned and raced back down the sandbar, yelling: “Jessica! Quick, we’ve got to go!” The he grabbed Casey’s backpack, shoes, and underwear, and shoved them into Jessica’s hands as he hurried her back in the direction of the bridge.

  “What happened? Where is she? Why are we going back this way?”

  “That canoe we passed. She’s in it! That man we waved at must have stopped here for some reason before we all got here. He must have been in the woods when Casey walked up here to take a bath. He was probably watching her the whole time, and then followed her when she walked upriver to where he’d left his canoe. He grabbed her and put her in it, and she must have been hidden in that pile of gear he had when we saw him.”

  “How do you know all that?” Jessica asked as she ran to keep up with Grant on the way back to where they’d left the bikes and the canoe.

  “I’m no expert, but in this sand the tracks are easy to read. All the rain over the last two days would have swept away any tracks other than new ones made in the last couple of hours since it stopped. Her footprints leading upstream are covered by his, which makes it clear he was walking behind her. Then hers completely disappear and only his lead to the canoe. I could see where his feet dug in as he was pushing it back in the river. And, besides, there’s no other explanation. She can’t be anywhere near here or she would have heard us calling out to her.”

  “But wouldn’t we have heard her scream if someone grabbed her?”

  “Maybe not. He must have gagged her somehow. This probably happened when we were still trying to get the canoe and gear together at that camp. So we might not have heard anything even if she screamed as loud as she could, especially over the sound of the running water.”

  “What are we going to do? How will we ever find her? We’ve got to help her, Grant!”

  “We are going to help her. We’ve got to try to catch that guy, and that’s why we’ve got to go now, no time to waste! Let’s just throw our stuff in the canoe and go! He’s got a big head start, but he has to stop to rest somewhere.”

  “Why would he be going downstream anyway? Doesn’t that go back the way we came, towards New Orleans?”

  “No, not to New Orleans,” Grant said as he steadied the canoe while Jessica got in and got situated in the bow seat. “It runs to the Gulf eventually, of course, but first it joins the Pearl River, which is the biggest river in this region this side of the Mississippi. The lower reaches of the Pearl split apart into three rivers and lots of branching bayous that spread out to be more than five miles wide. For about 20 miles it becomes a maze of waterways, and runs through a vast river-bottom forest that is the closest thing I’ve seen in the States to a jungle. The general area is called the Honey Island Swamp, but this forest covers some 250 square miles, most of it protected as a national wildlife refuge. If he is headed there and gets there with Casey before we catch him, it will probably be impossible to find them.”

  “How far is it from here?” Jessica asked. They were now afloat, with all their belongings, including Casey’s, stowed in the middle of the canoe between them. The bicycles were left where they’d hidden them, in the dense canebrake.

  “By canoe? I’ve only done the trip once, and I think it took us about four days to get to the Pearl River from my parent’s cabin. But we weren’t in a hurry and we were stopping a lot to explore and take pictures. Then we paddled another three days through the swamps and took out almost at the coast. From here, somebody paddling like this guy was doing could be in those swamps in two days, not to mention the help he’ll get with the river up like it is after all this rain.”

  “The current will help us too, won’t it?” Jessica asked as she frantically dug into the water with awkward, choppy strokes of her paddle, doing everything she could to help them go faster.

  “It will, but we’ve also got to be careful. We don’t want this guy to know we’re following him, but since he saw us going upstream in the canoe, he knows we have a boat and that we could try to follow. But he probably doesn’t think we would be able to figure out that he has Casey, unless we were just guessing.”

  “Isn’t the gun still in Casey’s backpack? Maybe when we catch up with the creep he’ll give up when he sees that you have it, like those gang-banger punks in New Orleans did.”

  “Are you kidding? Any guy like that who has loaded up a canoe to live out here on the river probably has at least a hunting rifle or shotgun, and likely several firearms and plenty of ammo. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because I don’t have the pistol anymore and he’s likely got it too. It wasn’t in Casey’s pack, and even if she was carrying it when she left her stuff on that log, he must have taken it from her.”

  “What are we going to do when we catch up with them then?”

  “I don’t know, Jessica. I
guess we’re going to have to play it by ear and figure something out. That’s why we need to keep a sharp lookout ahead, down the river. I don’t want to run up on this guy all of a sudden if he’s stopped around a bend or something. And if he suspects we’re following him, it would be easy enough for him to ambush us and we’d never know what hit us.”

  “You really think he would just shoot us like that?” Jessica had stopped paddling now while thinking all this over.

  “Sure, why not? He obviously doesn’t care about the law or what’s right or wrong. He took Casey by force. Like a lot of other people we’ve run across since those guys tried to grab our bikes, this guy has decided that he can do as he pleases now that society has broken down and the rules cannot be enforced. I doubt he would stop at murder if he’s already gone as far as kidnapping with the likely intention of rape.”

  “I’m scared, Grant. I’m scared for us and I’m scared for Casey too. She doesn’t deserve this. We’ve got to try to help her, even if it is dangerous.”

  “Of course we will. And of course you’re scared. You have every reason to be. I’m scared of what he will do to her if we don’t find her soon, but more than anything, I just feel like a complete idiot for bringing you two out here and getting you in this situation to begin with.”

  “You didn’t know, Grant. You did the best you could, and we saw how things were when we left New Orleans, just as you predicted they would be. I think you were right that we needed to leave. It could have been even worse if we were still there.”

  “It would be hard for it to be much worse than it is now, Jessica. We may not even be able to find Casey, especially if he leaves the river somewhere and takes off with her on foot. And besides the problem of trying to help her, we’re almost out of food. Like I said before, I was counting on reaching the cabin by now, and we started out with about all the supplies we could carry on the bikes. Now we’re going to be in survival mode and we’re going to have to find more, but at least that will be easier on the river than it would be if we were still on the road.”

  “I don’t really see how, unless we can find blueberries or something like that in the woods.”

  “No wild blueberries here, I’m afraid. There are plenty of blackberries, but they won’t be ripe until May. It’s too early for a lot of things like that, but there are always cattails, and this time of year there are other edible greens in these bottomlands. But mainly, there are fish—fish and crawfish. Oh, and frogs, turtles, snakes, alligators, armadillos, beavers, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, turkeys, deer…. Everything that lives in these parts is either in the river or attracted to it because whatever it eats is in or near the river.”

  “I know you’ve got the fishing rod, but I hope you’re not serious about eating some of that other stuff. I mean, really, snakes? Alligators?”

  “All reptiles are good to eat, and easier to catch than real game like deer. Of course I’d only be interested in a small’gator, and then only if its mama weren’t around.”

  “I’ll stick to those cattails you mentioned, whatever they are.”

  “You’ll like them. But here, you need to eat something now, we need to keep our energy levels up for paddling.” Grant handed her a Ziploc bag with almonds in it. “Eat a big handful of those. That’s the last of them, but we still have some raisins, three more of the rice dinners, and a little bit of oatmeal. We can make it last at least through tomorrow.”

  TEN

  LYING BOUND AND blindfolded in the bottom of the canoe, jammed among the packs and bags crowding the narrow hull, Casey felt she had lost all sense of equilibrium and time. Only her hearing was unimpaired, and the sound of her abductor’s relentless paddle strokes and the bow of the canoe cutting through water told her that they were moving downriver at a steady pace. She had no idea how much time had passed or how far they might have traveled. It seemed like a long time, and she was sure that Grant and Jessica must have returned to the place where she was supposed to be guarding the bikes by now. She wondered if they had been successful in getting a canoe, but most of all she wondered what they must have thought when they did not find her where she was supposed to be. Would they even be able to guess she had walked upstream? Was there a chance they would find her shoes and other things she had left there? What would they think if they did? It would have to appear to them as if she had simply vanished. They might be able to figure out that she had gone to the secluded sandbar to find privacy for her bath—after all, she did leave her shampoo on the log beside her shoes and backpack, and her underwear was hanging from a nearby branch. But what would they conclude from that? She wondered if they would think she got swept away in the river and perhaps drowned. She felt awful thinking about how upset they would be, and how she had ruined everything by getting herself in this situation. Would they even try to get to Grant’s cabin now, or would they spend who knows how much time looking around for her in vain in the vicinity of the bridge? One thing she was sure of was that they would have no way of guessing what had really happened. And if they didn’t know, there was absolutely no one who would.

  She was all alone in her predicament, in the hands of this person she had not seen or even heard speak since she was grabbed from behind. Where was he taking her, and what did he plan to do to her? Casey shuddered to think about it. She had heard all too many news stories over the years of young women and girls being taken to entertain any thoughts that his intentions were anything but the worst. She knew she would have to fight for her very life, but so far she had failed miserably at that. The man was so strong, and his attack so sudden and unexpected, that her resistance to being bound and gagged had been futile. She could only hope she would have another chance whenever they got to wherever he was taking her to carry out his evil intentions.

  She decided then and there that she would fight to the death and do everything in her power to defend herself. She would claw his eyes out, kick him in the groin, bite, scratch, and gouge—whatever it took to stop him. It angered her that she had been through so much in the past few days only to become a helpless victim, and she vowed to resist and not give up. Just as she resolved these thoughts and made up her mind to survive, she heard the paddling stop and felt the canoe slow down, drifting with the current. There was a bumping sound of the paddle being set down in the hull, and then she heard the rustling of the plastic tarp or whatever it was covering her being pulled away. For the first time since she was grabbed, her captor spoke:

  “No need to keep you all covered up like that any more,” he said. “We’re a long way from the bridge or any other roads now, so you might as well enjoy some fresh air. It’s a nice afternoon to be on the river.”

  Casey was startled by the voice. Far from sounding like some crass backwoods redneck, as she expected, the man spoke clearly and precisely, with correct pronunciation and a calm, steady voice. She twisted and tried to turn her head in his direction, tried to demand that he untie her and let her go, but managed only to make unintelligible noises through the cloth gag that was in her mouth.

  “I’m sorry about that, but I couldn’t have you screaming back there for your friends and whoever else might be nearby to hear. I know you’ve got to be thirsty, and I’m going to give you something to drink soon, so just hang tight a bit. I can’t have you hollering out loud while it’s still daylight. It’ll be dark in another hour, and I’ll take it off then. I don’t think there’s much danger of seeing anyone on the river at night once we get past Franklinton. We’ll stop somewhere past there for a few minutes, then keep pushing on through the night. I want to put a lot of miles behind us before daylight.” Casey heard the dipping of the paddle as he resumed his relentless stroke.

  “I know you’re not very happy with me right now, but the time will come when you will thank me for what I did today. I want you to know that you are safe now, and that nothing or nobody can hurt you as long as you are with me. I don’t know where you and your friends came from on those bicycles, but I do know that if you w
ere on the road, you’ve seen how crazy things have gotten out there, and how dangerous it is to travel. It makes a whole lot more sense to be on the river now than on the road, and traveling the river at night is even better. Where we’re going, two people in a canoe can disappear without a trace. You don’t have to worry about running into gangs of looters and hordes of desperate refugees from the cities out here, because the ones that make it to the country are going to be too busy trashing the houses and stores they come across in the small towns and along the road. They’re not thinking about long-term survival, because in their ignorant and naïve minds, they still think everything’s going to be fixed and they’ll be able to watch their stolen flat screen TVs again just like they used to. While they kill each other over things that will never work again, you and I will be just fine, living in harmony with nature, and wanting for nothing that we really need.”

  Casey couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This guy was even scarier than the abductor she had first imagined. He talked as if he actually thought of himself as her savior. What could possibly make him think he had a right to take her anywhere?

  “Oh, and my name’s Derek, by the way. I guess you can tell me yours later. You know, you couldn’t have possibly run into anyone more prepared for what’s going on than I am. No, you don’t have anything to worry about now. I’ve been expecting something like this for years. I knew things couldn’t go on the way they were, I just didn’t know exactly what was going to happen to bring it all down. As it turns out, it seems that a massive solar flare was pretty effective. I think in the long run this will take out about 90 percent of the population of this country, and really clean things up for a new start in the aftermath. You can bet that we’ll be in that 10 percent or whatever the exact number is that ultimately comes through this. You’ll see when we get to my little piece of paradise. I’ve been getting ready for this for a long time, and you’re going to appreciate all I’ve done in advance. There’s still a lot to do, but time is one thing we’ll have no shortage of now. I’d always hoped to find someone to share it with me, and it looks like you’re that person. Of course I was hoping for a pretty girl, but you’re way more than that—you’re absolutely beautiful.”