Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2)

by Williams, Scott B.

  At the sight of her child being grabbed, the animal instinct took over and April was transformed the savagery of a lioness defending her cub. Her martial arts training and fighting instinct kicked in and she no longer cared that she was unarmed and outnumbered. She shook off the blow and leapt to her feet, quickly buckling Wayne’s knee with a sweep kick, following it up with a palm heel strike to the nose while he was still unbalanced. The big man fell with blood pouring over his thick mustache. April didn’t wait to see what would happen next before she whipped out the Spyderco folder she carried in her back pocket, snapping the blade open and locked with a lighting-fast, one-hand motion. It was a futile gesture though, as the other two men advance with their rifles pointed straight at her and Gary yelled to get her attention. He was brandishing a drawn blade of his own, a big flashy Bowie knife, the edge poised just inches from Kimberly’s delicate throat. April knew they had her at that point. If she continued the attack, she would either be shot or Kimberly would be killed. And David could do nothing for her now, sprawled, as he was, unmoving and unconscious in the sand. April lowered her hand and let the Spyderco fall from her open fingers.

  “You don’t have to hurt my daughter. You can have whatever you want. Just please! Get that knife away from her. She’s just a baby! Please!”

  Wayne was getting up now, brushing the sand off his pants and holding a bandana against his bloody nose. At the sight of this, the other two men with the rifles couldn’t suppress a chuckle and Gary grinned too as he lowered his big Bowie away from Kimberly but kept it in his hand, unsheathed and ready.

  “Where in the hell did you learn how to do that?” Wayne asked as he appraised her again from head to toe. “I’ve got to say, I’m impressed. And the way you whipped out that blade. Crap! You could’ve cut somebody!”

  “It wouldn’t have been the first time!” April said, as she stepped back and allowed him to reach down and pick up the knife her father had given her all those years ago, shortly before he passed away.

  “I can believe that. But you won’t get a chance to try it again! At least not if you care what happens to that little girl of yours.”

  “What do you want from us? Just give her back to me and leave us alone!”

  “That would be crazy. You’d never last out here alone and unarmed. Though you might as well have been alone for all he could have done to help you.” Wayne nodded in the direction of David’s limp figure, collapsed in the sand.

  April didn’t think David was dead, but the blow from the rifle stock had rendered him unconscious and he wasn’t showing any sign of coming to.

  “You didn’t have to hit him like that,” she glared at Rick. He was unarmed and he was just trying to protect our daughter. You could have killed him! Now give her back to me!”

  Wayne looked at Gary and told him to put his knife away.

  “Why do we need the rug rat?” he asked.

  “Because her tough little momma here won’t be trying anything stupid as long as she’s got her arms full, that’s why.”

  “You don’t plan on bringing her with us, do you?” one of the other men asked. “I thought we would take our turns and be done right here. We don’t need another mouth to feed—especially not two more!”

  “He’s right,” Gary said. “How are we going to take care of a baby anyway?”

  “We won’t! That’s her job. But she’s going with us and the rest of you can keep your hands off!” Wayne said, as he wiped more blood from his bleeding nose. “This is between me and her now and she’s got some making up to do before I’m done with her!”

  “Just give me my baby!” April pleaded, as Kimberly continued to cry in terror in Rick’s rough grasp. April tried to push past Wayne again to reach her, but he threw her roughly to the sand when she did. She landed near David’s still body and attempted to crawl to his side to see if he was still breathing. Wayne stepped into her path and cut her off.

  “Will you just let me check his pulse? We’ve got to do something for him. I’ll go wherever you want me to if you don’t hurt Kimberly, but we can’t just leave her father here like this!”

  “Of course we can and of course we will! If I didn’t think he was so worthless at taking care of himself, never mind you and the baby, I’d put a bullet in his head right now. But if he does wake up before the coyotes and wild dogs find him, I want him to sit here and wonder why he didn’t do a better job of learning how to be a man back when he had the chance. What did he do back in the world anyway, sit around all day and play video games while you went to work?”

  This wasn’t far from the truth, but April said nothing. There was nothing she could do for David now and no use pushing the subject. She wanted to ask Wayne why they were doing this to them. She wanted to ask them all who they were and what kind of people they were to treat others this way. But she said nothing because she already knew. They weren’t people at all. The were simply animals—animals acting on their most instinctive and savage desires—exerting their dominance because in the absence of law and authority, they could do so with their superior numbers and weapons. She and David and Kimberly were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when they woke that morning on the banks of Black Creek. Maybe David would come to on his own, and maybe he would find some way to survive. She doubted it, but whatever happened to him was beyond her control at this point. She had to focus on staying alive so she could take care of her baby. She knew the only way she could do that was to comply with these brutal men, and she was all too aware of what that would entail. She rose to her feet and faced Wayne and Gary once again, calmly asking for her child and letting them know she would resist no further.

  Ten

  MITCH WAS HOLDING HIS bow at full draw, but didn’t even remember pulling it back, so automatic and unconscious was the motion. Each second that he held his right hand anchored to the right corner of his mouth, he could have relaxed the tips of the three fingers hooking the bowstring. All the energy stored in those perfectly balanced limbs of carved Osage orange would send the deadly broadhead-tipped arrow on its way with barely a whisper. Mitch knew he could easily put it through the neck or center mass of any of the four aggressors on the opposite side of the creek, and yet, he didn’t.

  Once he recognized April, he quickly realized the man with her was David, the father of her child. He’d only met the guy once, and little Kimberly, of course, at her age looked much different after seven months than she did the one and only time he had seen her as well. How and why the three of them came to be here on this Black Creek sandbar so close to home was beyond his comprehension at the moment and there was no time to ponder it. Unfolding before him was a fast-changing and unpredictable scene that put him in a real dilemma. When the larger man stepped between April and her little girl, David had tried to intervene, only to be struck to the ground by a rifle butt. Then the bigger man had backhanded April and knocked her down as well when she tried to get to Kimberly. Mitch could have let fly his arrow then and there and killed the man easily, and it was all he could do to restrain himself. But this situation was far too volatile. He had the element of surprise in his favor, and he was certain he could nock a second arrow and take out one more before they realized what was happening, but that would still leave two. Considering that all four of them were armed and pretty much surrounding April with weapons already on her, the odds were too high that something would happen to either her or little Kimberly before he could deal with them all. Mitch cursed his decision to leave his father’s AR-15 with Jason. If he had the firepower of a semiautomatic rifle combined with a surprise ambush out of nowhere, it might be feasible to take care of this problem then and there. But wishing for something wouldn’t make it happen, and all he could do was watch and wait for a better opportunity. He relaxed to half-draw to save his muscles from fatigue, but he was still ready to take the risk of shooting any second if there was no other way.

  When April got back to her feet and put the man who’d hit her on the ground wit
h a sweep kick and punch, drawing her knife when he fell, Mitch took aim again, certain he would have no choice but to intervene quickly. But the fight was over as soon as it started when one of the others grabbed Kimberly and put a blade of his own to her throat. April had no choice but to drop her weapon, and Mitch was relieved he didn’t have to shoot just yet. With two rifles aimed at her at point-blank range, and Kimberly’s throat exposed to a knife, there was little Mitch could do at the moment that wouldn’t make things worse. The best he could hope for was that April could buy some time without either of them getting hurt, giving him time to figure out a safer way to extract her and Kimberly from this mess.

  He noted that David was still sprawled unmoving on the sand, and wondered if he was dead. The blow from the rifle stock struck his skull hard enough that Mitch had heard it clearly, even from the sixty-odd yards to his side of the creek. Dead or not, he was certainly out of commission. Whatever happened next was largely up to the four men and how April handled herself. Mitch knew she was smart enough to know her limits, he just hoped the men wouldn’t try to do anything to her out in the open right then and there. He had no doubt of their intentions though; it was just a matter of when and where.

  Watching what happened next, he could tell that the big man; the one she’d swept to the ground and pulled her knife on, was surprised and impressed with her abilities. The other men shared a good-natured chuckle at his expense, but not in a mocking kind of way. Mitch could tell they respected him and he figured they were probably all good friends; maybe this guy was just a bit older and they looked to him as a leader or something. Mitch saw the compound bow that he’d laid down when he confronted April, and seeing it, he knew this was the man who had wounded the small doe. Putting together the story that the trail he’d followed told, he figured it must have been a coincidence that they stopped to camp on his side of the creek while April, David and Kimberly unfortunately chose this particular adjacent sandbar the same evening. Mitch didn’t know who arrived first, but he figured the men must have seen them the evening before and stayed out of sight until morning. That was probably why he found no evidence of a fire where they camped. He figured they waited until daylight, and then crossed the creek in an area of shoals just downstream and out of sight. April and David probably never saw them until they were upon them. These details mattered little anyway at this point. What was important was that he was here now and his presence was still unknown to any of them. He would find a way to do something, but he had to make sure he didn’t make a mistake when it was time to act because there would only be one chance.

  At least the tension was diffused somewhat after April dropped her knife. The one who had been holding Kimberly put her down at the other’s request, and April swept the child up in her arms. Mitch couldn’t hear all of the conversation that ensued, but at one point he heard April asking to be allowed to check on David and he heard the man’s refusal to let her do so. He heard the man say that they were going to leave him for dead, whether he was or not. The others were going through the scattered belongings where the three had slept and Mitch gathered they were getting ready to leave, taking April and Kimberly with them. It was what he expected they would do since they apparently weren’t going to do anything to her here, and he was relieved because it would buy him a bit more time. That they were also taking Kimberly likely meant they intended to keep them both alive, at least for the immediate future.

  Mitch had a tough decision to make. Jason was waiting back there barely within earshot of this spot and unaware of what exactly was happening. Mitch could forget about him and immediately follow wherever these four took April and Kimberly, but he knew it might take hours of trailing them before he found the right opportunity for a rescue that did not involve too much risk. On the other hand, if he had that rifle Jason was carrying, the odds would be much more in his favor, even if he used the bow to silently take out the first one or two. Besides that, if he just disappeared now, taking no telling how long to follow until the right moment presented itself, Jason would have no way of knowing what happened. Even if he somehow managed to follow the tracks the rest of the way here, he would arrive only to find an abandoned canoe and a dead or unconscious stranger lying on the sandbar. He wouldn’t know what to make of it, and not knowing what happened to his friend, he would probably go back to the house and tell the others. Then Lisa and everyone else would be worried and upset and likely come looking for him. There were a lot of complications with that scenario.

  Besides, if David was still alive, he was going to need help when he came to. Mitch decided the best thing he could do was wait until the men left, to make sure they did indeed set out to wherever they were going with April and Kimberly, then he would get back to Jason as fast as possible. He could easily pick up the trail when the two of them returned, as the four hunters would probably be just as careless today as they were the day before. After all, they had no reason to suspect anyone knew of their presence here or what they’d just done. He knew they would be leaving on foot, as the one canoe would be useless to a party that size. When Mitch returned with Jason, the two of them could use it to move David to this side of the creek, the side the farmhouse was on, if he was still alive. Then Mitch would take the rifle and set out in pursuit. Jason could go back to get help for David if he was still unconscious and unable to move on his own. Even if not for the matter of helping David, Mitch wouldn’t take Jason with him because what he had to do required ultimate stealth.

  Letting these men disappear from his sight with April and Kimberly as captives was the hardest thing Mitch had done in a long time. Even after thinking his plan through and knowing he was doing the logical thing, it was oh so hard to overcome his urge to use his arrows now, or at least stay close enough behind them to see their every move. He saw the one who’d held the knife to Kimberly’s throat take a length of rope out of his hunting pack and fashion one end into a loop. Then, he saw the leader take the rope and affix the loop around April’s neck like a leash, which he let out some six feet or so, wrapping the other end in his free hand to keep her close behind him. April was carrying Kimberly in her arms, the child hugging her close and no doubt terrified after all this yelling and fighting and seeing her daddy fall and not get back up. Mitch was glad that at least they were letting April carry her, but he wondered how long she could hold up doing so, especially in these dense and trackless woods that required ducking and weaving and negotiating mud and other tricky terrain.

  The other men were carrying their rifles and packs as well as what they had taken from April and David’s belongings in the camp. Mitch recognized the Ruger Mini 14 and the bow he’d given April all those months ago, and he also noted there was a bolt-action rifle they must have brought with them from the church, if that’s where they came from. He wondered what could have happened to have caused April to come back here, to Black Creek, but he figured whatever it was, she must have come here looking for him, hoping to bring her family to the sanctuary of the Henley farm. Mitch was determined that she would get there too, whatever he had to do. He watched until they melted out of sight among the trees, heading in a downstream direction, then he turned and ran as quietly and swiftly as he could back to where Jason waited.

  Eleven

  WAYNE PARKER COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he’d had such a lucky day. Sure, there had been a few in the last seven months that weren’t as bad as most, but this was a real score. This was like walking into the Beau Rivage casino back before the collapse and winning a grand on one pull at the five-dollar slots. But it was better than that, because there wasn’t much you could do these days with money, whether it was ten dollars, a thousand dollars or a million. But a girl like this? That was something worth finding! Too bad the other guys thought it was their lucky day too. Wayne had put them off for now, convincing them they needed to move out without delay, but the issue would come up again, he knew this all too well. He would deal with it when it did.

  He adjusted the noose o
f braided nylon rope around the girl’s neck so that it was just snug enough to be persuasive, but not enough to cause pain or restrict her air flow. He wasn’t worried about her trying to run. She couldn’t as long as she had that little girl in her arms, and he knew there was no way she would run off and leave her. That was clear from the way she fought; as mean as a mama bear protecting her cubs. But nevertheless, Wayne wanted to know she was right behind him, following every step he took, and the rope would reassure him of that.

  “So, that sorry excuse for a husband of yours said your name was April,” he said as he looked directly into her eyes, his hands still on the noose, as he let the backs of his fingers rest on the soft skin of her neck. “I like that. I think it suits you; all fresh like spring. And Kimberly, your little girl; that’s a nice name too.”

  When she said nothing, Wayne continued….

  “I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, but that’ll change. We’ve got all the time in the world, but I don’t think it’ll take you long to realize how much better off you and your daughter are now. You’re both safe with me. Nothing’s going to happen to you as long as I’m around.”

  “Nothing would happen to us if you would just leave me and my child here. I can take care of myself without any help. I don’t want any help!”

  “Maybe. But maybe not. That was pretty impressive, the way you caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect you to be carrying that blade either. I’ll look forward to hearing where you learned to move like that. I haven’t met many women who could have done that; really not any….”