Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2)

by R. E. McDermott

  Bollinger cast an appraising eye down the long straight road. “This is good surface. It shouldn’t be too hard to roll her past the lock, presuming we can just figure a way to get her up the bank to start with.”

  “Let’s go see what we’re up against on the other side,” Kinsey said, and they started walking down the quarter-mile length of the lock.

  “Whoa. Slow down there,” Wellesley said, and led them around the storage building to a bicycle rack holding a dozen battered bicycles. “No use walking when we can ride. The lock workers used these to get back and forth. There’s another rack at the opposite end of the lock.”

  Kinsey grinned. “No argument here, Lucius.”

  They pedaled to the opposite end of the lock, only to find more problems. Even more tows jammed both banks of the canal. The bank sloped steeply to the water’s edge, and the jumbled riprap stones protecting the bank from erosion were even larger here, sharp corners pointing skyward at odd angles. Kinsey’s heart sank at the sight of it.

  “Even if we manage to get the boat out, there’s no way we’re getting the trailer back down over that crap, even with the planks,” Bollinger said. “What are we gonna do, Chief?”

  Kinsey said nothing for a long moment. The access road ran straight and true beside the canal another quarter mile, then turned sharply to the left, away from the water. A tall bridge loomed over the waterway in the near distance.

  “Okay,” he said. “This whole area is marsh, with inlets and bayous all over the place. We only draw three feet or so of water, so we can likely get up most of them. We just need to find one that gets us close enough to the canal on the east side of the lock for us to use the trailer to get the boat across and back into the canal.”

  “But how, Chief? There’s probably a dozen inlets like that, and the marsh grass and cane is six or eight feet high. It’ll be like a maze. We won’t know which one to go into, and even if we get close to the canal, we likely won’t know it. We can’t see anything from water level.”

  “Which is why we’re gonna have a look from up there.” Kinsey said, pointing to the top of the highway bridge arching high above the canal and the flat land it ran through.

  Wellesley cleared his throat, and Kinsey turned his attention from the bridge to one of the boats about halfway down the road. A group of men was starting to form at the rail of one of them, obviously in expectation of a visit.

  “I figure y’all are eager to have a look at that bridge,” Wellesley said, “so let’s ride down together. I’ll stop and fill the boys in and y’all can head on up the bridge. These fellas haven’t had anyone new to talk to in a while. Stop now and I doubt y’all will get away before nightfall.

  ***

  Accessing the bridge proved easy. The lock road turned left and intersected State Route 384 a half mile north of the bridge; then it was a straight shot back south. They ate up the distance quickly, and minutes later they hopped off to push their bikes up the bridge, the old single-gear, fat-tire conveyances no match for the steep incline. Soon they stood atop the bridge, surveying the flat land spread before them, the sun glistening off channels crisscrossing the half-submerged terrain.

  “I’ll be damned,” Bollinger said.

  A wide channel roughly paralleled the south bank of the canal, punctuated at intervals with side channels that extended northward toward the canal like crooked, arthritic fingers. One of those fingers ended at the southern abutment of the bridge they stood on, the ‘fingertip’ separated from the canal itself by a narrow strip of land. At the bridge abutment there was a gravel parking lot, and Kinsey grinned as he pointed down at it.

  “You see what I see, Bollinger?”

  “Well, I’ll be double-damned. A boat ramp!”

  Kinsey nodded. “That takes care of the hard part, and there’s not any riprap on the canal side down this far, so we should be able to get her back in without any problem.”

  “And getting there’s a piece of cake,” Bollinger said. “We just go back out into the river and turn into the first wide channel south of the lock.”

  Kinsey grinned. “Well, let’s get to it. If we can talk the towboat guys into helping, we may be able to get around the lock and well down the canal before dark. But first, we need to have a long talk with our new friends. I’ve got an idea.”

  ***

  Matt Kinsey stood on the lock wall in front of the assembled group, glancing at his watch. This was taking far longer than he’d anticipated and he was eager to get away. He’d had Wellesley assemble the towboat men so he could present them with his proposal, but it had ignited a much more spirited debate than expected. Finally, Kinsey put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. When he had the group’s attention, he held up both his hands in a stop gesture and raised his voice.

  “Okay, fellas, I understand this is a big decision, but I can’t give you any more time. I have to call Pecos Trader and put the proposal to Captain Hughes, and I’m not even sure he’ll go for it himself. But first I need to know how many of you are in. It’s entirely your call, and not everyone has to agree. But if you’d like to give it a shot, I need to know now, because Bollinger and I need to get out of here.”

  No one said anything for a long moment; then Lucius Wellesley shook his head. “I don’t know, Kinsey. We’ve got a pretty good setup here, and it sounds like those folks over in Texas have already attracted some unwanted attention. I mean, I sympathize, but I’m not sure puttin’ ourselves in the middle of that is very smart. I think it might be best if we just stay here and lie low until things get back to normal.”

  Some of the others nodded their agreement.

  Kinsey sighed. “You might be right, Lucius, assuming things do get back to normal, but from the way I understand it, the time frame for that happening, if ever, is years not months. How long you figure you can stay here?”

  “We’ve got food and water for maybe six months, a bit longer if we ration it,” Wellesley said, “and enough diesel, gasoline, and lube oil in all these barges for years. I figure when push comes to shove, we can trade for what we need.”

  “And trading means letting people know you’re here with fuel to trade,” Kinsey said, “so you’ll be sitting on a goldmine with no means to defend it. Just how long you think that’s going to last before either gangs out of Lake Charles or FEMA shows up to take your boats and cargo? You got what, three or four handguns between you all?”

  Wellesley said nothing for a long moment, then glanced at the other towboat men before turning back to Kinsey. “Would you and Bollinger mind taking a walk down to the other end of the lock for a bit. I’m not the king here, and I don’t speak for these other fellas. We really need to discuss this among ourselves in private.”

  “Understood,” Kinsey said as he and Bollinger walked toward the far end of the lock. When they were well away from the group, Bollinger shot Kinsey a questioning look.

  “Ah, you sure about this, boss? How do you think Captain Hughes is going to feel about us ‘recruiting’ extra people? Shouldn’t we have checked with him first?”

  Kinsey shook his head. “I thought about it, but I figure Wellesley’s gonna be standing right beside us when we use the VHF, so I didn’t figure he should hear my idea for the first time while we’re on the radio. And we don’t have time to engage in a lengthy debate and negotiation. They either want to go or they don’t. As far as Hughes goes, he can always say no, but I don’t think he will. If even a few of them take the deal, it will add guys with needed skills, and from the looks of ’em, I’m thinking at least half of them have some military service, and I’m betting the others are probably at least hunters. We start increasing our dependent population, we’re gonna need more shooters to protect them. Besides, that’s not the only thing they bring to the table, there’s also—”

  Kinsey turned at a shout from down the lock wall, to see Wellesley waving them back. They turned and walked back to the group.

  “Well,” Wellesley said when they reached the
group, “it appears we should get on the VHF to your Captain Hughes.”

  “How many?” Kinsey asked.

  “All of us,” Wellesley said.

  Crap, thought Kinsey.

  Chapter Six

  M/V Judy Ann

  Intracoastal Waterway

  West End of Calcasieu Lock

  Lake Charles, Louisiana

  Day 26, 2:40 p.m.

  The relief in Hughes’ voice changed to irritation when he learned of Kinsey’s freelance recruitment efforts.

  “You did what? Thirty-seven guys? Dammit, Matt! You know—”

  “They’ve got their own food, at least for six months or so. Water too. And they’re bringing their own housing with them. Over,” Kinsey said. Beside him, Wellesley nodded, suddenly concerned Hughes might reject the deal.

  But news the recruits wouldn’t strain existing resources mollified Hughes to some extent, and as Kinsey presented the merits of his case a bit more fully, he sensed Hughes’ resistance weakening. Kinsey sealed the deal.

  “Is the chief engineer with you, Captain Hughes? Over,” Kinsey asked.

  “Yes, Dan’s standing right beside me. Over,” Hughes replied.

  “Well, ask him how he’d like a couple of twenty-thousand-barrel barges full of lube oil of various grades. It seems like I recall hearing him moaning about how hard it was going to be to find any. Over,” Kinsey said.

  There was a long pause until the radio crackled again. “This may be the only time I’ve ever seen Dan Gowan speechless,” Hughes said. “He’s nodding his head so hard I’m afraid it might fly off his shoulders.” Kinsey heard Hughes sigh into the radio. “Put Captain Wellesley on and we’ll work out the details. If he gives me an ETA at the Neches intersection, we’ll send the patrol boat out to escort his little convoy in and keep the cons off him. And, Matt,” Hughes added, “this will likely be the last we hear from you before you return, so Godspeed in finding your family. Over.”

  “Thanks, Cap,” Kinsey replied. “Here’s Captain Wellesley. Over.”

  ***

  Kinsey and Bollinger sat at a table in the galley of the Lacy J, one of the towboats trapped east of the lock. They had a chart booklet open on the table between them, and Wellesley was hunched over them, studying a chart.

  “We appreciate this, Lucius,” Kinsey said. “Obviously, Pecos Trader didn’t carry inland charts.”

  Wellesley laughed. “Well, it ain’t like these boats are likely to need them anytime soon.”

  “Still, we appreciate it,” Kinsey said. “I knew the route, but operating with a Louisiana road map and a general idea leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Wellesley waved away their thanks. “No problem. Y’all about ready to shove off?”

  “Yeah,” Bollinger said, “thanks again to you fellas.”

  As hoped, their new shipmates had readily agreed to help get the Coasties’ boat over the narrow strip of land and back into the canal. If many hands hadn’t made ‘light work,’ they had at least made it much faster and possible without necessitating the use of the electric winch.

  A dozen towboat men had taken their flat-bottom aluminum skiffs and motored over to come ashore by the bridge abutment and meet the Coasties at the boat ramp they’d discovered earlier. The patrol boat nosed into the ramp and Kinsey untied the trailer tow rope and tossed it to the men ashore before Bollinger backed the boat back out into the bayou. Their new helpers pulled the trailer toward shore until the wheels engaged the sloping concrete ramp and then held it there until Bollinger drove the boat onto the trailer, and Kinsey splashed down to hook the securing cable into the pad eye on the front of the boat and used the hand winch to pull the boat the rest of the way on to the trailer. Bollinger hopped out of the boat as well, and the mass of men clustered around the trailer, straining and grunting, to roll it up the boat ramp.

  Even with a dozen extra men, the task had been difficult, with the combined weight of the boat and trailer increased by Dan Gowan’s improvised flotation pontoons. They worked the trailer up the ramp in increments, all of them heaving on a count of three. It took two dozen heaves to get the trailer to level ground, but after that, rolling it over to the canal had been relatively easy.

  They reversed the process to relaunch the boat into the canal, the challenge here being the muddy slope of the canal bank. They countered that with wide wooden planks the Coasties had brought along, lashed to the trailer in anticipation of just such a situation. They laid the planks end to end behind each wheel, providing a firm path for the trailer to roll into the water until the boat and trailer were both afloat. The boat had separated from the trailer easily and was now tied alongside the Lacy J, the floating trailer in tow behind her, with the planks lashed down securely.

  “About that,” Wellesley said. “That was a bear even with a bunch of folks to help. And I ain’t so sure you’re gonna find convenient shortcuts at the Bayou Sorrel and Port Allen locks. I’m thinkin’ you and Bollinger here are gonna have a tough time gettin’ around those locks. I mean, you really think that electric winch is gonna work?”

  Kinsey’s nod was less than confident. “I think it will if we can find some sort of reasonable slope to pull the trailer up and something heavy and stationary to hook the winch cable to. For that matter, we got plenty of spare gas in the boat; if we can find an abandoned car or truck, we can use that. Don’t worry, Lucius. We’ll make it work.”

  Wellesley nodded and held out his hand. “All right then. I best get to work before the rest of the fellas think I’m goofin’ off. Y’all have a safe trip, and I hope to be meetin’ that family of yours one of these days before long.”

  Kinsey stood and took the outstretched hand as Bollinger rose to follow suit.

  “Thank you, Lucius,” Kinsey said. “When are you leaving for Beaumont?”

  “It’ll be a few days, at least. We got enough folks to take all six tows on the west side of the lock. I mean, I can’t see leavin’ all that fuel here. Even if we can’t use it, it’ll sure come in handy for trading. And besides, the boats will give us some extra beds when we get to Texas. Likewise, we’re stripping all the tows on this side right down to parade rest. Not just the food, but mooring lines, spare parts, basically everything.” He smiled. “I got a feeling we ain’t gonna be sendin’ in any purchase orders any time soon.”

  “That’s a fact,” Kinsey said. “Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.”

  “You know, it feels good for a change. We been sittin’ on our asses for weeks, gettin’ on each other’s last nerve, but now we got a plan and it just feels good to have a purpose.” He smiled again. “Even if we don’t really know what the hell we’re doing.” He grew serious. “But the problem is gettin’ it all to the other boats. Some of that stuff is heavy and gettin’ it up on the lock, all the way down to the other end, and back down on to the boats is gonna take some time.”

  “Something tells me you’ll make it work,” Kinsey said.

  “You can count on it,” Wellesley said.

  M/V Pecos Trader

  Sun Lower Anchorage

  Neches River

  Near Nederland, Texas

  Day 26, 6:45 p.m.

  “So how long before these towboats get here?” Gowan asked.

  Hughes grinned across the coffee table. “You mean how long before you get your hands on that lube oil, don’t you?”

  Gowan shrugged. “I can’t deny it was welcome news. We got diesel coming out of our ears, but lubes are gonna be hard to come by, especially in the quantities we need. It’s not like we can raid an AutoZone for a thousand gallons of lube oil. Two barges full is about a gazillion times overkill, but it means we’ll have enough for anything we do in the future, to say nothing about its trade value. Everyone’s worried about fuel, but machinery won’t run very long without lubrication.”

  Hughes nodded and looked at the group assembled in the sitting area of his office, his ad hoc advisory council, for want of a better term. There was no doubt he wa
s in charge (whether he wanted to be or not), but it wasn’t the military, and the situation on the ‘Ark,’ as everyone had begun to jokingly refer to Pecos Trader, was outside anyone’s experience. He needed all the help he could get and had no problem whatsoever listening to the advice of subordinates.

  His three senior officers sat across the low coffee table from him on the sofa, Dan Gowan in the center flanked on either side by Georgia Howell and Rich Martin. Torres sat to his right in an armchair, filling in for the absent Kinsey as security chief. But perhaps the most surprising member of the informal advisory council sat beside him on the love seat. He glanced at his wife and silently marveled at how quickly she’d adapted over the last week.

  Laura Hughes had rebounded quickly from the harrowing ordeal of her family’s rescue. With their twin daughters safely aboard Pecos Trader and with neither the obligations of the farm at Pecan Grove nor her large animal veterinary practice to occupy her, she’d quickly become bored. She first attempted to ‘help’ in the galley, where her suggestions to make things ‘more efficient’ did nothing to endear her to Chief Cook Jake ‘Polak’ Kadowski. Rebuffed there, she’d found a perfect outlet in seeing to the needs of the Coast Guard dependents who’d joined Pecos Trader in Wilmington.

  Essentially passengers, the five Coast Guard wives made themselves as unobtrusive as possible and tried to keep their nine kids out of the way. The officers and crew of Pecos Trader were kind, but there were neither facilities nor activities for dependents on a working ship, and no one really knew what to do with the non-sailors. For their part, the women never complained, as they understood they represented a disruption to the normal rhythm of shipboard life, but they were nearing their wits’ ends. As one woman confided to Laura soon after she arrived, they were all going ‘totally frigging Loony Tunes.’

  But if the Coastie wives had been hesitant to address the situation with the captain, Laura was anything but. He wasn’t the ‘captain’ to her, but ‘Jordan,’ and she quickly pointed out that unless accommodation was made for the children and if the women weren’t somehow blended into shipboard life, things would go downhill in a hurry, especially since they expected even more passengers as the families of other crewmen were rescued.