“It was an arrow, son. That fellow shot you with a damned arrow. It was the last one he’ll ever shoot though, I’ll tell you that!”
“Who was it? Where’d he come from? I didn’t see nobody. Didn’t hear nobody either.”
“I know. He just slipped right up here from somewhere upstream. It was just luck that I was almost back here when I saw him draw down on you. I didn’t have round in the chamber because I’d just killed a hen turkey over there on the other side of the hollow. He heard me rack the slide and I think it caused him to jump a little. Otherwise, he might have got you right in the middle of the back.”
Tommy was in a lot of pain. With the bleeding slowed, Benny was able to wipe away enough blood to see what kind of damage had been done. The broadhead had sliced through the triceps area and had probably done a lot damage to both muscles and nerves. But it didn’t hit an artery; otherwise Tommy might not make it.
“You’re gonna be all right, son. You’re lucky though!”
“Are you sure he was by himself,” Tommy asked, as he finally looked up and over in the direction of the fallen bowman.
“As far as I know he was. But he wasn’t carrying any gear. I’m thinking he didn’t walk way out here with nothing on him. I’m wondering if he ain’t got a boat or something upstream. I’m gonna have a look as soon as I get you situated and make sure you’re not gonna bleed out, son.”
“I’m all right. You’d better go have a look around.”
“I’m gonna make a bandage that’ll put some pressure on that wound. Since that arrow didn’t cut an artery, I can get that belt off so you don’t lose your arm. You’re gonna have a long go of healing though, the way it cut through the muscles. I just hope you can get your strength back.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m just glad you got him.”
“Me too. Anybody that would try to kill you just like that for no reason at all, ain’t no telling what he was up to or what he had done before. If anybody is with him, they’ll likely be just as bad.”
“That’s why you need to go find out now, Pop. You can make a better bandage when you get back. Just give me my spare shirt out of pack over there and I’ll keep the pressure on it myself.”
Benny knew his boy was right. If there was anybody else out here that had been traveling with that fellow, Benny needed to find them and deal with them now. Both of them got lucky this time. If he had been just a minute later returning with that turkey, Tommy would be dead. And the killer would have taken him out too if he had half a chance. If he had, it would have been a mercy. Benny wouldn’t have known what to do if he lost Tommy too. His forty-year-old son was all he had left in this world that he cared about, and besides, without his help, he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it out here alone. Not at his age.
Once he made sure Tommy could hold the pressure on his wound so he wouldn’t lose any more blood, Benny started up the creek, slipping quietly into the underbrush in the direction the man had come from. He stepped carefully and kept his eyes and ears open, the Savage pump chambered and fully loaded in his hands, the barrel out front and at the ready as he stalked. He knew he couldn’t take a chance, and if he saw anything move he intended to open up on it. Considering what that fellow had done, there wasn’t any sense waiting to see.
He’d made it to the end of the next bend upstream and still there was no sign of anyone. He was about to turn around and go back to see about his boy, deciding that the man must have been alone after all when he heard something coming from the direction of the creek. There was a steep bank off to his right, and he couldn’t see the water at its base from where he stood listening. At first, he thought it might be some strange trick of the water, a gurgling or bubbling of current, but the more he listened, the more he was sure that wasn’t it. It was a baby crying, clear as could be. There was no doubt about it. Benny’s grip tensed on the shotgun stock and he crept to the bank as quietly as possibly, keeping it pointed ahead and ready to shoot as he made his way to the edge. When he got closer, the first thing he noticed was a piece of rope tied to branch and stretched straight down, like there was a weight on the other end of it or something. The crying sound had died down a bit, and he could hear the low whisper of a woman’s voice as well. Benny took a couple more careful steps until he was close enough to peer over the edge.
Twenty-three
THE TRAIL OF THE three Mitch was following led across two more sloughs they had been forced to wade to avoid long detours out of their way. One put him in waist-deep in stagnant, algae-coated water, but Mitch expected that. The farther downstream the men went, the more low-lying and wet the land would become, until eventually it became part of the vast swamps surrounding the Pascagoula River, into which Black Creek emptied. But Mitch was determined that even if these men were planning to go that far, they would never make it. He was going to intercept them and he was going to be waiting when they stopped to meet whichever one was the forth of their party who was paddling that canoe with April and Kimberly in it.
Beyond the last and deepest slough, the tracks entered an extensive area of storm-damaged hardwoods. Mitch knew the destruction was caused by Hurricane Katrina’s passage through the state in 2005. While the area around his family’s land had been mostly spared, there were pockets of devastation throughout the forest here and there, the worst of them caused by spin-off tornados spawned by the tropical storm. This many years after, those swaths of broken and uprooted trees were utter hell to travel through. Not only were the fallen trunks and broken tops piled haphazardly everywhere, enough time had passed that the second-growth trees taking their places sprung up in rampant profusion. Mitch knew that eventually, the ecosystem would return to normal and much of the undergrowth would be choked out by the biggest and fastest-growing new trees. But that wouldn’t likely happen in his lifetime, and until then he did his best to avoid traversing such areas unless absolutely necessary. Today it was necessary though, because those he sought had clearly passed this way, as evidenced by the frequent use of a machete to clear the worst of the obstructions.
A good half-hour had passed as he worked his way into the thicket and still, there were no more distant gunshots after the second blast that seemed to come from the same shotgun as the first. Mitch thought it might be safe to assume that the shots were unrelated to April’s captors and he certainly hoped that was the case. But the trail he was following was now leading closer to the creek bank, and suddenly the machete cuts had disappeared. Mitch figured the men must have been concerned about the gunshots as well and were working their way closer to the creek in case there was a problem that involved the other guy.
They had pushed their way through the brambles here without cutting them, attempting to step on briar vines and push them down out of the way. Mitch had to do the same, but at least the three going before him had made it a bit easier by breaking down the worst of it. Realizing it would be tough using the bow effectively in such dense undergrowth, he swung his father’s rifle in front of him on its sling and held it at the ready. He could drop the bow and bring the carbine into action at a second’s notice if needed, and he was glad he’d made the decision to go back and get it even though it meant losing sight of April. It would do him little good to catch up if he didn’t have the means to quickly and decisively eliminate the threat these dangerous men posed.
He was glad their trail was leading closer to the creek, because it might mean they would rendezvous with the canoe sooner. Every minute that April and Kimberly were out of his sight was a minute anything could happen to them. Mitch wanted this chase to be over before something did.
* * *
April pleaded with Kimberly in low whispers to stop crying. She had no idea what was going on downstream in the direction that Wayne had gone. There had been no other sound since that gunshot she’d heard not long after he left, and she guessed at least fifteen or twenty minutes had passed since then. Kimberly had settled down a bit, but was still whining. April could have soothed her by rock
ing her back and forth, but that was simply too risky in the tippy canoe.
She had been focused on quieting her as best she could for the last few minutes when she suddenly got the feeling she was no longer alone. Was Wayne back already? She glanced up to the top of the bank above her, dreading to see him again, but instead was shocked to see a stranger with a heavily bearded face staring down and her and her child. April was so surprised as she recoiled back in shock that she almost lost her balance. The canoe rocked hard beneath her and the rope tugged at her neck, but she quickly frozen and focused her center of gravity as low as possible to counter the roll that would have capsized it if she had not.
“Whoa! Be careful there young lady!”
April regained her composure and looked back up. Judging by the whiteness of the man’s beard and long hair that hung over his shoulders, he was at least in his sixties, if not seventies. In his hands, held at the ready but not pointed at her, was a pump-action shotgun. Was this the man who’d fired the shot that sent Wayne off to investigate, and the second unexplained one she’d heard since he left?
“How in the world did you get yourself in such a fix? And with that child too? Be still now and don’t you turn that thing over. I ain’t gonna hurt you—neither one of you. Were you with that fellow with the bow and arrow?”
“Yes! He’s the one who left us tied up. Where is he? He can’t be far away and he’s coming back any time!”
“He ain’t far away, that’s for sure. But he ain’t coming back neither, don’t you worry about that.”
“You saw him? Who are you? What are you doing out here?”
“Name’s Benny Evans. Yeah, I saw him. I saw him shoot my boy with one of them dad-blamed arrows he had! It’s the last one he’ll ever shoot though, I’ll tell you that. I hope he wasn’t your man or something like that, young lady.”
“You killed him? Oh thank God! Is your son…?”
“Yeah I killed him; deader than a stump. My boy’s okay. That arrow just got him in the arm.”
“I’m sorry he got hurt, but I’m glad he’s okay though. That man was a murderer. They came into our camp this morning. They left my husband either dead or dying, I still don’t know. They were taking me and my daughter someplace downstream.”
“Wait a minute, you said ‘they?’ You mean there’s more of them? Where? How many are there?”
“Yes! There are three more that were with him this morning, but please! Cut me loose before this canoe turns over and my baby drowns!”
April saw the man glance nervously around him as he drew a large knife from a sheath on his belt.
“Don’t worry, they’re not nearby. They’re somewhere on the other side of the creek, on foot. I turned my ankle and couldn’t walk, that’s why the one you shot was taking us down the creek in the canoe. He was going to meet up with them again where we were stopping tonight.”
Hearing this, April saw Benny relax a bit. His knife parted the line securing her neck to the branch above and she felt an immediate wave of relief wash over her.
“Hold on now while I find a way to climb down there. I’ll cut you the rest of the way loose in a jiffy.”
“I am so glad you’re here! I can’t tell you how afraid I’ve been for my child! I don’t know how I would have gotten away from that man on my own, and especially not all four of them.”
“There’s a lot of people turned bad since the lights went out, young lady. I don’t know where you came from or how you made it this far, but it ain’t easy staying alive with all the desperadoes running around that’ll do most anything. That’s why we’re out here. Me and my boy have been in the woods for going on six months.”
April had a good feeling about Benny Evans despite his rough appearance. She knew it was risky to trust anyone these days, precisely because of what he just said. But there was just something about him that her intuition told her was okay. He was not like Wayne and his partners, and hearing that Wayne was dead was the best news she’d had since this entire ordeal began. She wished all four of them were dead, but it was enough that she was free of him. As long as she never saw the other three again that was all that mattered.
With difficulty, Benny managed to get down the steep, cliff-like bank the same way Wayne had climbed up, using exposed roots as handholds. He had slung the shotgun over one shoulder to do so, and she noticed the homemade strap was some kind of animal skin, with fur on one side. He was wearing moccasins too that looked like something he’d made himself. There was no place to stand at the base of the bank and the water was too deep here to wade in, so he climbed directly into the canoe, taking care not to upset it as he lowered his weight to the rear seat Wayne had occupied before.
“I hope you don’t mind me coming aboard,” he smiled, looking at her first and then at Kimberly, who had quieted down now that she could feel her mother’s touch again.
“We’re delighted to have you aboard, I can assure you,” April smiled back at him as she extended her trussed-up hands so he could slice the binding that held her wrists together. When his blade freed her, she threw the cut lashings overboard and asked to use the knife herself to cut away the rest of the ropes holding her ankles, which would have been difficult for him to get to without risking the balance of the canoe. Benny gladly obliged, handing it to her handle first. He kept a respectful distance in the other end of the boat, watching patiently as she finished freeing herself.
The knife was perfectly balanced in her hand, and April couldn’t help but notice that it was beautifully crafted and clearly hand-made by a skilled blade artisan. Her father had passed down to her his appreciation of well-made blades through the hundreds of hours of martial arts instruction he’d shared with her, much of it knife-focused. Though Ben’s knife wasn’t a fighting-style blade and was closer in design to the skinning knife Mitch favored, it was still perfectly balanced and in her trained hands she knew it would be highly effective. That this stranger trusted her with it in the close confines of the canoe made her feel even better about him, though she had already chosen to trust him and believe his story of his encounter with Wayne as soon as he related it. She knew that in part, it was a natural reaction to feel better about anyone after being at the mercy of a man like Wayne for most of the day.
With her hands and feet free and Kimberly held close against her breast with one arm, April passed the knife back to Ben. She assumed he would leave now; after all, his son was injured and needed his help and she wouldn’t presume to ask more of him. It was enough of a miracle that he came along when he did. She shuddered to think how things would end if no one ever came and she could not find a way to get free of Wayne’s ingenious restraint.
“Where were you going, you and your husband, before those fellows came along and did what they did?”
“We were looking for a friend,” April said. “A good friend of mine who helped me back when the blackout first happened. He lives on a remote farm not too far from here, but I couldn’t find the path that connects it to the creek. He is the son of a game warden, and a real expert in hunting, tracking and everything else to do with the woods. We would be safe there, and he would welcome us in, but I think we came too far downstream.”
“Sounds like the kind of fellow that would be a good friend to have in times like these. Me and my boy have been making do okay out here for ourselves. But we haven’t been any farther upstream yet. We were planning to go, looking for better hunting. In fact we were breaking camp this afternoon, looking to move out before dark. I killed a hen turkey just a while ago, before that fellow with the bow showed up.”
“That was the shot we heard then,” April said. “That’s why he stopped here, because he didn’t want to paddle around the bend and run the risk of being seen.”
“I reckon not. It wouldn’t look good to nobody to be seen paddling down the river with a young woman and her baby girl all hog-tied like that. Say, our camp is just right around the bend. This is a hard place to get out of the boat right here anyway.
Why don’t we paddle down there and I’ll introduce you two to my son. I need to check on him, and then we can talk. Me and Tommy have a canoe too and we can help you get back upstream if you like. We were going that way anyway and I’d hate to think about you and that little girl out here alone. How far up do you think it is to the place they left your husband?”
“I don’t know how far in miles, but we’ve been in the canoe for hours. It’ll take a long time to paddle there against the current, if it’s even possible. I don’t know if he’s alive, but if he isn’t, I need to bury him. You’ve done so much for us already, killing that monster, especially. I’d hate to put you and your son at more risk. Those other three are just as bad as he was, and when he doesn’t show up where we were supposed to meet, they’re gonna be looking for him. And they were probably close enough to hear your shots anyway. If they did, they could be heading this way right now.”
“Then we’ll get Tommy and throw our stuff in our canoe and go. We’ll take both of the boats and head upstream right away. They won’t be looking in that direction I don’t suppose.”
“No, I think you’re right. It would be the last place they would look. They’re gonna think Wayne took us and kept going downstream to wherever that camp is they were taking us to. They were already unhappy about splitting up, and they thought he wanted to keep us for himself. If you’re sure you want to do this, we’ll go, but we need to get out of here fast.”
Twenty-four
Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) Page 12
