Feral Nation Series: Books 1-3: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series Boxed Set

by Scott B. Williams

  Learning that Eric was here, was of course a much bigger surprise to Keith than even the radio call from his father had been. Jonathan had filled him in on Eric’s plans for getting Megan, and about how Bart thought it might be a good idea for Eric to try and travel part of the way north and west by way of the river, working the fuel barges. Keith wasn’t fully convinced that was the best option though, and he thought of another idea he would suggest to Eric when he saw him. It would be a faster way to reach Colorado while still keeping off the most dangerous roads. That was a discussion for later though, after the more pressing issues of dealing with the grounded schooner and Shauna’s gunshot wound. It gave him something to think about during the long run downriver though, as it was mostly too noisy at the speeds he was running to talk much to Jonathan.

  They were below Morgan City and in the salt marsh estuary of the lower Atchafalaya two hours later. Both of them were anxiously looking around that last bend when suddenly, they came into view of the schooner in the distance. From far away it was a strange-looking sight, listing to one side, as it was, the masts down in the horizontal position in their tabernacles. Keith would have thought it an abandoned wreck at first glance if he’d seen it without knowing what it was. Jonathan had told him that the radio calls he’d received from Bart had been made when the masts were up, with the antenna atop the taller mainmast. That’s why there hadn’t been any more calls after that first afternoon, but the radio would work fine at close range even without the tall antenna. Keith slowed and hailed Dreamtime on Channel 16 before he got within a quarter mile. Jonathan had already told him Bart would be keeping watch with his M1-A, and Keith knew what kind of marksman the old man was. It wouldn’t do to go speeding up there unannounced, regardless of how anxious Keith was to see him. His transmission was a repeat of the replies that failed to reach him the other day, when the range was much greater.

  “Vessel calling St. Martin Parish S.O., this is St. Martin Parish S.O., Deputy Branson. I have visual contact and will be approaching from upriver, off your starboard bow.”

  This time Keith got an immediate reply. Bart said later he had seen their boat coming and sure enough had gone below to get his rifle when the radio broke silence. By the time Keith and Jonathan pulled up to within speaking distance, Bart, Shauna, Daniel and Andrew were all on deck to greet them.

  “I think you’ll be in the clear if you tie up on our port side, son. I believe it’s a little deeper there.”

  “I see that what Jonathan here told me is right. It look’s like you’re in a hell of a fix, Dad.”

  “I wasn’t steering when it happened! Your Navy officer brother was! Where the hell is he? Why isn’t he with you? And where is the dinghy?”

  Keith filled him in briefly as he tied off and Jonathan climbed aboard. “I guess he’ll be along eventually. The good news is that I’ve got help coming, Dad. My brother-in-law, Vic, has a 45-foot shrimp trawler with outrigger booms. If he can get close enough, he thinks he can give us the lift Eric said it’s going to take to get off of this mess. You can see I’ve got twin 150s on my patrol boat. I can provide a lot of pulling power from the stern at the same time. I think it’ll work.”

  “That’s good to hear, son. Speaking of your brother-in-law, how is Lynn? Did y’all make it all right through the hurricane? What about all the other trouble? Has it slacked up or gotten worse?”

  Keith had known it wouldn’t take long for Bart to ask about Lynn. He was very fond of his daughter-in-law, as he was of Shauna, evident by the fact that she was here with him along with her new husband and stepson. It was hard talking about it, especially since this was the first time after all those weeks Keith had been able to even tell anyone in his immediate family Lynn was gone. He told him what happened after he and Jonathan had boarded the schooner and sat down with everyone. He also told his father and Shauna how glad he was to see family again, at a time when he really needed them. “I’m looking forward to seeing Eric again too. Him coming here with you was the last thing I ever expected.”

  Keith had a look at Shauna’s hand while they were waiting on Vic, and told her about the hospital in Lafayette. “I can take you there as soon as we get done here. My partner’s truck is parked at Vic’s so we can leave straight from there. We won’t be able to get the schooner to my house anyway. The hurricane blew down a lot of trees around there, and there’s still some in the water we haven’t cleared out enough for larger vessels to pass. There’s an empty dock at the house next to Vic’s though, and I’m sure he can work out something with his neighbor to let us tie it up there.”

  “I’m surprised to hear there’s a hospital open at all,” Bart said.

  “Lafayette was on the west side of the hurricane, so they weren’t hit quite as hard there. It’s also a small city, so it wasn’t on anyone’s radar for all the mayhem that’s been going on in bigger places. The bridge over the swamp was a special case I guess. Some of the protesters got the bright idea several months back to try and stop traffic there by standing in the middle of it. It worked until the guns came out, but unfortunately, someone somewhere else was paying attention. The real terrorists took the bridge idea and ran with it, taking it to a whole different level.”

  “I’m so sorry about Lynn,” Shauna said. “I can’t imagine how hard this has been on you, Keith.”

  “I think what happened there is what we’ve been seeing in a lot of places, Bart said. Whether they are Islamic jihadists, commie anarchists or agitators trying to start a race war to bring down the country, they’re all sorta borrowing from each other’s playbook for their tactics. I suppose they all have a common enemy, and that enemy is a country they all hate with equal passion, even if not for the same reasons. Just like they hate the regular folks that are trying to hold it together. I don’t know what the solution is, son.”

  “Me either, Dad. But we’ve about lost our entire sheriff’s department in St. Martin Parish. I’m still doing what I can, but it’s never enough. Just this morning, Jonathan and I came upon another roadside ambush. Three men dead just a few miles from my house. And this is a parish where in my whole career we didn’t see a dozen murders before this year.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by another radio call. It was Vic, calling to let them know he was almost there.

  Bart glanced at his watch and looked over the side at the water level. “Good thing he’s here. It’s down from peak but we might have time before it gets too low if we hurry.”

  When Vic arrived on site with his Miss Anita, it was soon apparent to everyone what an expert boatman he was. He first anchored just downstream of the stranded schooner so he could assess the situation. Keith picked him up in his boat and using his depth sounder they surveyed the bottom in the immediate vicinity to ensure there weren’t any other obstructions they might run afoul of when positioning the trawler.

  “I wish Eric were here,” Keith said to Vic. “He’s the expert diver. I don’t exactly know what we’re dealing with under there. Just what Jonathan told me that Eric saw.”

  “I can check it out for you if you want me to,” Jonathan said. “I’m not an expert, but I’ve used a mask and snorkel in Florida. Like Eric said though, the water’s so murky here you can’t see anything. You have to go by feel.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary to try and mess around under there near that old wreck,” Vic said. “It’s too dangerous if you can’t see. You might get hung up and drown, bro. Maybe if you just check around in the area just in front of the schooner and be sure we didn’t miss anything we might hit. As long as I can get in position abeam of the bow without running aground myself, I can get one of the outrigger booms over it. I’ll put the other one out opposite and we’ll get some anchors on it so she won’t list too far with the weight. I think it’s gonna work as long as we’ve got enough water. It looks like just a little bit of a lift is all you need.”

  It took another hour to get all this done and by then, the tide was noticeably lower. When they w
ere ready, Bart was at the helm of the schooner and Jonathan and Daniel were aboard the Miss Anita helping Vic. Keith had rigged a long towline from one of Dreamtime’s anchor warps to the stern of his patrol boat, and was standing by 200 feet downriver, waiting for the signal to pull from astern. Shauna and Andrew were with Bart in the cockpit, ready to help him anyway they could.

  At first, Keith didn’t think it was going to work at all. When Vic loaded up the big winch for the steel cable they’d attacked to Dreamtime’s samson post, he wasn’t sure if the post was going to be ripped out or if the trawler would simply move too much to get any purchase, but he knew something had to give. He eased his own engines into gear and took up all the slack in the towline, gradually increasing power until the heavy braided nylon was fully stretched and ready to pull. The schooner gradually began to slide back, and then the weight of the keel apparently found another place to break through the wreckage beneath it and the hull slowly began to settle back to level. This wasn’t good, because now with the keel straight down, there was more draft to deal with and it probably wasn’t going to budge.

  But Bart said they could remedy that by getting an anchor out into the nearby marsh, attached to the halyards from the mast, so they could heel it back over a bit like it was before then try again. The problem with that solution was that both masts were still down, which meant they had to scramble to get one of them stepped again so they could set the kedge from the halyard before the tide fell too much. That took nearly another hour, and then Jonathan volunteered to wade into the muddy marsh with the anchor. When they heeled the schooner back over to between 10 and 15 degrees using a tackle connected to the windlass, the hull finally began to slide aft with the pull from Keith’s boat and then suddenly, Dreamtime was floating free. The mast would have to be lowered again for the trip upriver, but Bart deemed the vessel seaworthy after checking carefully in all the nooks and crannies of the bilge for leaks and other signs of damage and finding nothing.

  “I think we’re good to go,” Bart said. “If there was any damage to the hull, it was only superficial. The keel is probably gouged up pretty bad, but I’m pretty sure the prop and the rudder didn’t hit anything, so no issues there. The only problem we’ve got now is that there are only a few hours of daylight left. We won’t have time to get much past Morgan City before dark at our cruising speed.”

  Bart had dropped Dreamtime’s main anchor just downstream of the submerged wreck so he could do the inspection. Vic was still anchored just upriver, and Keith had pulled his patrol boat alongside the schooner after picking up Jonathan and Daniel from the trawler.

  “Vic knows this river like the back of his hand,” Keith said. “He says it won’t be a problem to navigate it in the dark. He’s not worried about hitting hurricane debris out in the channel, because the towboats have been using it since the storm. If you stay directly in his wake you’ll be fine. I know he’d rather head on back than anchor overnight down here. If you’re comfortable with it, I think we should let him make the decision.”

  “Oh I agree. He came all the way down here to help us. I don’t have a problem trusting that he knows the river. I just can’t figure out what would keep Eric so long. I hate to leave without him, but I guess maybe we’ll run into him along the way.”

  “I can’t figure it out either, Dad. All I can think of is that he must have run into some kind of trouble. There’s no other reason he shouldn’t have been back to the house before we left. And even though he missed us, there’s no reason he shouldn’t have had time to get back down here by now. I’ll keep an eye out for the dinghy on my way to Vic’s. Maybe I’ll spot him and save him the trouble of going all the way down until he meets you. I just hope he doesn’t get off on one of the side channels trying to take a shortcut or something. I’d hate for him to miss us and get all the way down here and find us gone. I don’t know how much gas he’s carrying, but he sure won’t find any around here.

  “Not enough,” Jonathan said. “He said we’d have to get some from you or somebody else upriver just to have enough to get back down here.”

  “Well, I doubt lack of fuel is what’s keeping him now. If he made it back to the house, he would know to get some out of one of my vehicles or the bikes, even if he doesn’t find my underground storage tank.”

  Keith was torn about going on ahead of the two boats, but it didn’t make a lot of sense for him to spend hours chugging up the river at eight knots or less when he had those big engines and plenty of fuel in his patrol boat. Shauna’s hand wasn’t a matter of life or death at this point, but she was still in a lot of pain and the sooner he got her to the hospital, the better. He knew he could make it to Vic’s before dark in his much faster boat, and with Greg’s truck waiting there, he could drive her to the hospital tonight. Bart encouraged him to go ahead with that idea. Shauna tried to argue, insisting that she had waited this long and she could wait longer, but Daniel and Andrew urged her to go too.”

  “You and Andrew could go on along with them if you want to,” Bart said to Daniel. I’ve got Jonathan to spell me at the helm, and Vic knows where he’s going, so we don’t have to worry about navigation. Go on with her and Keith and we’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  Keith could tell that Daniel wanted to do just that. It was natural that he would want to accompany his wife to the hospital, but he looked at her and then back at Keith and Bart and said they would stay to help with the boats. He said he knew Vic could use an extra hand aboard the Miss Anita to give him a break from the helm, and that he trusted that Keith was more than capable of getting Shauna to the hospital safely on his own, because he was trained and well armed and his boat was fast enough to evade most anyone they might encounter. Daniel hugged his wife and kissed her good-bye, and then Keith helped Shauna over the rail of the schooner and into his patrol boat, and the two of them sped away to the north.

  * * *

  Bart hadn’t tried to convince them one way or the other, but after Keith and Shauna were gone he had to admit he was grateful that Daniel and Andrew were willing to stay and help. The two of them, especially Daniel, had come a long way since they left Florida, and in more ways than one. He had learned the importance of working together as a team and had finally come to understand that this situation was equally hard on everyone, and that there were no special cases. Bart was proud of both of them for remaining on board as dedicated members of the crew until Dreamtime was safely tied up in her new temporary berth next to Vic’s.

  When both vessels had their anchors up and were ready to go, Bart pulled just near enough alongside the Miss Anita for Jonathan to hop aboard. He would help out Vic while Daniel and Andrew remained on the schooner with Bart. This was going to make the long trip upriver easier on everybody, and when they started heading north, Bart couldn’t have been any happier to leave that desolate expanse of marsh astern. After what he’d seen in Florida, and especially after their experience with the two boats that followed them out to sea from the barricade, the hours he’d spent stuck and helpless on that stranded boat seemed to drag on forever. Trouble would have found them if they’d been there long enough, Bart was sure of that, but now they were free and once again en route to their destination. Things were coming together, mostly as planned, but there was sadness too, as Bart followed Vic up the river, his thoughts returning to Keith and all that his youngest son had been through in recent weeks. Losing a wife was hard, as Bart knew all too well, and at Keith’s age he shouldn’t have to deal with that. Bart had known he would be facing trying times as a law enforcement officer dealing with the riots and violence, not to mention the aftermath of a major hurricane, but he hadn’t expected to get that news. Bart had been looking forward to seeing his daughter-in-law almost as much as his son, but now he’d missed his chance. The happy reunion he’d looked forward to, being together with both of his boys at once for the first time in years, would be marred by Lynn’s absence. He knew it could be worse though. With all the men Keith said they lost in his depart
ment, it was a wonder he too wasn’t among the fallen.

  Bart was also getting slightly concerned about Eric, but he still wasn’t overly worried. Whatever had delayed him, he was confident Eric could handle it, but it was puzzling that he would be delayed so long. Talking to Jonathan about it, the kid certainly didn’t get the impression that Eric was going to be gone much longer than it would take to drive to the sheriff’s office and back. Something had diverted or detained him, and Bart couldn’t help but wonder what that might be. He didn’t get his answers until a few hours later.

  They had passed under the low bridges at Morgan City just before sundown, and by the time it was fully dark, were motoring past heavily wooded banks on a lonely stretch of the Atchafalaya to the north. Bart saw Vic suddenly cut his speed, and he eased back his own throttle to keep from closing the gap between them. Andrew climbed up on the cabin top with the binoculars at Bart’s suggestion, to see if he could see anything, and a moment later yelled that he saw a light flash on and then go off not far ahead on the river. This immediately made Bart nervous. Were they about to meet another towboat pushing barges like the one that had run them out of the channel before? An encounter like that at night would really be dicey, with an even greater risk of collision. Bart had hoped the tows wouldn’t be running at night, and none had passed by the night they spent stranded in the marsh. But when he scanned the river where Andrew said he’d seen the light, there was nothing out there that he could see.

  “It just flashed on for a second.” Andrew said.

  Bart knew Vic must have seen something too, and he was about to ask Daniel to give him a call on the radio when Andrew shouted again. “It’s Eric! I can see the dinghy now!”

  Bart saw that he was right. The dinghy was approaching them out of the dark from off to port. Eric slowed just before he reached them and expertly brought the inflatable alongside the schooner. “I see that Keith’s plan worked!” Eric said, as he handed Bart a line. “I got the note he left, saying his brother-in-law had a boat that could do the job. Where is Keith now? Where’s Jonathan?”