Twelve
ERIC BRANSON HAD MADE plenty of mistakes in his life, but he seldom made the same ones twice if he could help it. Despite being reasonably sure that the two men he’d killed at Curt Joubert’s place were the only two involved in the murder of the old man and his wife and the shooting that killed Vic, he wasn’t taking any chances when they returned. Before he’d let Keith motor into the bayou where Vic was shot, he insisted on checking out the situation on foot first. He had Keith and Bart wait after they dropped him off near the point where Keith had gone through the woods near the road the day before. It took an extra half hour, but it was worth the peace of mind when he found the house and vehicles just as he’d left them and the boat tied up to the dock out back. Using a handheld VHF radio that Keith had given him, he called his brother and told them it was safe to proceed.
The issue with the engine was air in the fuel lines, just as he’d suspected when he saw that it appeared new lines and filters had been installed. Curt had probably planned to do it after he got the starter back on. Eric found the manual and followed the procedure, and then the Caterpillar diesel started right up. A quick check of the percent of charge meter in the cabin indicated the alternator was working just fine.
With Bart on board to help him, Eric followed Keith’s patrol boat out to the river, where they brought the Gulf Traveler up to cruising speed. Bart had a grin on his face when he saw the knot meter climb to near 18 indicated, just as Vic had predicted.
“You know, if you didn’t have to worry about all the locks you’d have to go through, you could save yourself a lot of bike riding by running clear up to St. Louis and taking the Missouri on up into Kansas or Nebraska. You’d be a lot closer to Boulder there than you will in Arkansas.”
“You’re right, Dad, but that’s a lot of river miles. We’d have to get fuel along the way and there are the locks to worry about, not to mention going right by Memphis and St. Louis. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’d have to get some good intel once we get to the Mississippi before I’d consider it.”
“Maybe you can. You’re bound to pass some barge captains headed south.”
“And I’ll be keeping the hell out of their way too, I can tell you that. At least I can do that with no deep keel to worry about.”
It was just after noon when they brought the Gulf Traveler alongside Dreamtime and rafted her up to the schooner’s starboard side. Eric had already told Keith that there was more food aboard the boat than they could possibly eat on the way to Arkansas or carry on the bicycles. With Jonathan’s help, he sorted through it, keeping only enough canned goods for the river part of their journey and setting aside a good supply of high-energy lightweight foods like nuts, dried fruit, oatmeal, rice and other non-perishable staples that they could pack for the bike trip. The rest they offloaded and carried onto the schooner and into the house.
“We’ll be good with what we can carry for at least two weeks on the road,” Eric said, “as long as we can find water every couple days or so.”
“That won’t be a problem until you get west of Oklahoma,” Bart said. “Then you’ll have to keep a close watch on your supply.”
“Two weeks may be enough to get there, but you’re going to have to eat while you’re there until you find Megan, and then on the way back,” Keith said. “I know you’ve thought about that.”
“I have, but I’m not going to worry about it until I have to. If we get a chance, we’ll forage some along the way. There’ll be game in most of the out of the way places we’ll be camping. Dad’s loaning me one of his .22 rifles. It’ll be good for the small stuff and not loud enough to draw attention from very far.”
“I’ll be fishing the creeks and rivers too,” Jonathan said. “Anytime I get a chance to wet a line, you can count on me catching something. If there’s enough water for a fish to swim in, I can catch it.”
“I believe you, Jonathan,” Eric said, “but I hope we can make a quick crossing with the food we’re carrying. To do that, we need to focus on getting the bikes ready.”
“I know which one I want, and Shauna likes the other one. She rode it already and said it’ll be fine.”
“So she can ride okay?”
“Yeah, it didn’t seem to bother her, going up the road and back. She said we wouldn’t have to wait on her.”
“I hope she’s right. We’re going to have to keep pushing from dusk to dawn every night with little stopping in order to make our daily minimums. That may sound easy enough, but it’s harder with loaded bikes.”
“The trailer will make it easier though, right? Maybe we ought to build two of them?”
“Building just one will take long enough. I don’t think it’ll be any easier to pull one of those than to ride a loaded bike. Weight is still weight, especially going uphill. The main advantage to having one is that we can carry a small duffle bag on it with our bigger stuff aboard. I didn’t study them close, but I saw enough to know it was a simple, but brilliant design. Of course those two were factory made, but they were nothing elaborate, just a low-slung platform on a frame between the rear wheel of the bike and the single wheel at the back end of the trailer. A trailer like that keeps the center of gravity of the load low, and having just one wheel in line with the bike means it can go anywhere the bike can go. We can take turns pulling it if need be, but just one will be enough, considering that the bikes all have sturdy racks that we can strap a lot of stuff to as well. All we need now is a donor bike to build it from, preferably a mountain bike with sturdy wheels and knobby tires.”
“We’ll find one,” Keith said. “People that can’t get any gas have been using bikes that were gathering dust in the garage, but someone will be willing to part with one for the right trade, probably even some gas, which I’ve got plenty of. We can ask around this afternoon. Vic’s got welding equipment in his shop, and probably some scrap tubing and other stuff. He could make anything out of metal, but then so can Dad.”
“Perfect! We can probably cut up the frame and rebuild it to work then. The existing fork or rear wheel dropouts can stay the same. We just need to fabricate a central platform and some kind of tongue arrangement to attach it to the rear of my bike. Shouldn’t be much to it, should it Dad?” Eric turned to Bart.
“Nope. It’d be easier if I’d seen one of those contraptions before, but I reckon you can sketch it out for me well enough.”
Eric and Keith found a bike that would work in Lafayette. Before going over there, they drove to Keith’s place and filled a couple of five-gallon jerry cans with gasoline from the underground tank. Just as Keith predicted, it was easy enough to find someone willing to trade a working bicycle for that amount of gas, as shortsighted as that might be on the bike owner’s part. Gasoline was like gold now, and like flaunting gold, having some in one’s tank was potentially risky, but this guy wasn’t planning on leaving his local neighborhood, he just wanted the option to use his car if he had to.
The mountain bike was a brand sold in one of the big-box sporting goods stores, so it was at least a couple of steps up in quality from the cheapest department store toys. The rims were aluminum, but the frame was steel, which made it even better for Eric’s purpose. Once they got it back to the shop, Bart had no trouble cutting up the frame and reconfiguring it into a trailer with the additional scrap he had to work with. He stayed with it until it was done, and before he went to sleep that night, Eric had already tested the trailer and given it a thumbs-up. In the morning they would stow the bikes and trailer and their other gear aboard the Gulf Traveler and get underway as soon as possible.
Eric had the opportunity to talk to Shauna again before he and Keith had left to go find the bike. Jonathan already told him that he’d been keeping Andrew occupied all morning so she could work things out with Daniel, and though Eric hadn’t told her for sure he was okay with it, he already knew he was going to after talking with her early that morning.
“Is he going to be able to deal with this?” Eric asked,
referring to Daniel.
“He’s got to. He threatened to take Andrew and leave me over it, but he won’t do it. Where would he go? I’m pretty sure he’ll still be around when I get back, and I made sure he understood that he wouldn’t want me around if I had to stay here all that time wondering if you made it to Megan or not.”
“How is your hand?”
“Fine. Like the doctor said, it’ll be a long time before I have much grip strength in it, but I can put my weight on my palm to ride.”
“I hope you’re right. I’d hate for you to find out you can’t once it’s too late to turn back, and it will be as soon as we head upriver on that boat.”
“I’m not turning back, Eric. Let’s drop that subject. We’ve been over it enough.”
“That’s not all I wanted to talk to you about anyway, but it’s related. Next time you change that dressing on your hand, do you think you could find room to wrap two or three of these in there somewhere in a way that they won’t bother you? It’s a good place to hide them that’s unlikely to be checked if we’re ever searched, but if you’ve got a better idea, that’ll be fine too. I just want to distribute them among the three of us in case something happens to me.” Eric opened a drawstring bag he took from his pocket, and emptied the contents into his hand for her to see before putting the coins back inside. It was a small stack of Krugerrands, enough to buy considerable goods and services along the way. “I’m not taking my whole stash with us anyway. I’m leaving some with Dad and Keith in case we don’t make it back, but I expect that we’re going to need this for negotiation.”
Shauna took the bag and said she would find a way to conceal the coins. They were as ready as they could be and Eric felt good about their chances when he returned to the schooner for his last night aboard Dreamtime for a while. He slept until sunrise and then he and Jonathan moved the bikes aboard the Gulf Traveler and took inventory of their weapons and ammo. They could carry anything they wanted on the riverboat, but there was little point in taking stuff that wasn’t going on the TAT with them as well.
Keeping this in mind, Eric reduced their armament to the basics, keeping it as simple as possible as he had done when he first packed to leave the freighter in his kayak. He still had both M4’s; including the one with the grenade launcher, and he and Shauna both had their Glock 19s. He brought a few 203 rounds for the launcher, mainly in case of a boat attack on the river, as he didn’t plan to carry more than a half dozen overland with them.
Keith provided a spare M&P15 and a Glock 17 for Jonathan in exchange for the AK he’d been carrying, so they could keep their fighting ammo to two common calibers. The only other firearms they were taking were the Ruger .22 rifle that belonged to Bart, and the .357 Magnum revolver that Eric had given Jonathan after he shot the two sailboat thieves in Florida. Both of these weapons would be used for hunting if the opportunity presented itself, and for that purpose they didn’t need to carry a lot of ammo for them. Even so, by the time he added enough magazines for the rifles and the Glocks, the weight added up. Combined with their supplies and the gear they needed to camp, it would have all been too much to carry without the trailer. Bart had done a good job of putting it together though, and Eric was counting on it holding up long enough to get them there. They had the tire and tube from the other bike as a spare, and those would fit the rims of the two bikes Jonathan and Shauna were riding as well. Eric’s touring bike was fitted with 700C wheels, so he had no spares, but Keith had found a tube patch kit and hand pump at Greg’s house among his motorcycle gear.
With the bikes, weapons and Klepper kayak aboard the Gulf Traveler and the fuel tanks topped off, Eric was ready to depart without delay or further discussion. He got no argument out of Jonathan and Shauna, although she did hold them up another half hour as she walked up the road with Daniel and Andrew to say her goodbyes in private. Eric knew it couldn’t have been easy for her, but he saw the resolve in her face when she returned and stepped aboard from the dock. The diesel was purring and ready to open up and cruise, and it was time to cast off and go before anything else held them up. Keith and Bart bid them farewell with handshakes and hugs, while Andrew stood next his father, both of them looking lost and a little helpless and Andrew trying to wipe away the tears on his face without being seen. Eric felt sorry for the boy, but he was old enough to understand that he wasn’t the center of the world anymore, and he would be all right until Shauna returned. Bart and Keith would see to it.
Jonathan coiled the dock lines when Keith tossed them to him, and Eric backed the Gulf Traveler away from the dock and turned her around once he was past the stern of Vic’s Miss Anita. He turned to wave one last time and then gave his full attention to the job of steering her up the Atchafalaya. The plan was to run the rest of the afternoon until dark, in hopes of reaching the connection to the Mississippi River sometime the following day. What they would find there, Eric still had no idea, and it was a cause for concern since the lock and dam was a physical obstacle to his plan and everything depended on being able to get through it.
The northbound towboat and its barges that had forced them out of the channel down in the salt marsh was the only such rig Eric had seen since their arrival on the river. Keith said he’d seen barges more frequently just a few weeks ago, but for some unknown reason, the traffic on the river had decreased significantly. Whether this had anything to do with the connection to the Mississippi, Keith had no idea, but he’d heard reports of attacks on the fuel barges along the upper reaches of the Mississippi. There had been no reasonable way to get more recent information since it had been a while since he had spoken with the captain of any passing vessel over the VHF.
It would be nice to know more, but even so, Eric felt good to be moving towards his objective again. The river here was big enough to provide long sight distances between the bends in both directions, so it would be difficult for any threatening vessels to approach without warning. Eric kept to the middle of the channel as well, where the distance to either bank was mostly out of casual rifle range. The swampy forest that enclosed the river seemed to be deserted though, as they rounded bend after bend with more of the same scenery stretching into the distance ahead.
“There’s a whole lot of nothing out here, isn’t there?” Shauna said as she stood there beside Eric at the helm, scanning the banks.
“It’s one of the biggest swamps in the country. It’s always been wild here. That’s one of the reasons Keith fell in love with the place.”
“Maybe, but he fell in love with Lynn first. He would have lived anywhere to be with her. I feel really bad for him. This has got to be incredibly hard on him. Even worse now that he’s lost the house. Did he say anything about rebuilding?”
“I don’t think that’s on his radar right now, Shauna. With Vic gone and Dad there with him on the schooner, I think Keith will be content to stay right where he is until we get back. He’s going to be busy anyway, with Greg out of commission for a while. I tried to tell him to just lay low and avoid trouble, but I don’t know if he’ll listen or not. If something needs doing, he’s the kind that’ll do it without hesitating to consider the possible consequences.”
“I wonder where he got that from, Eric? Seems to run in the family doesn’t it? Like I said, that’s why you need me on this trip. I’m going to do my best to keep you from doing something stupid and getting killed before we get to Megan.”
“And after that?”
“Then I don’t care,” she smiled.
“You’ll need me a while longer, I imagine, unless Daniel can help you navigate that schooner down to the islands alone.”
“If I thought he could do that, I might be worried,” Shauna said. “He might do something stupid like try to sail it home if we’re gone much longer than he thinks we should be.”
“We could be gone a whole lot longer, Shauna. I hope you understand what you signed on for. I’m not going back until I find Megan.”
“Good. I’d be pretty let down if you even c
onsidered it. I’m in this for the duration, Eric Branson. I don’t care what we have to do to get it done.”
“The main thing is to stay alive. According to the map, we’ll be coming up on a bridge overpass after this next big bend to the east straightens out to the north again. If you’ll take the helm, I’ll go forward with Jonathan and help him keep a sharp lookout. Going under any bridge could be trouble, but at least this is the only one between here and Simmesport.”
Thirteen
THEY PASSED A SMALL community on the west bank of the river just south of the highway bridge, and several people working on hurricane-damaged houses stopped to watch as they cruised by. Studying them through his binoculars, Eric saw several rifles among the workers, but no sign that they were overly concerned about a boat passing by far out in the channel. Like everywhere else he’d been since he arrived back in the States, the hurricane had taken out the power here indefinitely, making repair work slow and difficult. The sound of a generator drifted out over the river, but the banging of hammers told him much of the work was being done by hand tools.
Vic had told Eric that the expansive forests of the swamp basin gave way to areas of open agricultural lands north of this highway bridge crossing, and that there might be more chances of encountering people along that stretch. From the river though, it seemed little different, as the levees on either side mostly hid the world beyond from view. The flood zone in between seemed wild, with a dense buffer of woodlands in most areas. From what Vic had told him of the Mississippi, the buffer zones there would be much wider, effectively isolating them from the view of most communities along the river. Eric hoped this was the case, but he knew too with the way things had changed, many others might be using the river for transportation and fishing. When they came to a small island near the lower end of one of the bends right around sunset, Eric slowed and steered for the narrow channel running behind it. There appeared to be ample water to tuck the Gulf Traveler in there and anchor out of sight of the river. And the little channel was completely hidden from the levee by a dense willow thicket.
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