“What do you think, man? I guess he’s not here, huh?”
“Probably not, but maybe he’s nearby. Let’s pull up over there where the dinghy is out of sight and go have a look around.”
“Why not just tie up to the dock dude? That’s what it’s for.”
“Because we don’t know who might come down that bayou, that’s why. Better we see them before they see us. The dinghy will be out of sight in those cattails over there. It’s just a precaution.”
“Duh, I guess I’m pretty stupid.”
“Everybody’s got to learn somehow. You’re doing fine, Jonathan.”
When they were ashore, Eric cautioned Jonathan once again, telling him to bring his weapon but to stay put at the water’s edge until he checked for trip wires and other security measures his brother might have implemented. He immediately spotted a couple of small cameras mounted in inconspicuous locations under the cornices, and figured there were probably more of them hidden around the property. Keith would be able to run them off batteries and use the recording capabilities, but with no Internet connectivity, they would be useless for remote monitoring. He didn’t really expect to run into Claymores or anything like that, but he knew he could never be too careful because he had no idea what his brother had been up against here. When he was sure it safe to proceed, he waved Jonathan forward while he checked the vehicles.
The sheriff’s department SUV was sporting several bullet holes in the side panels and one through the rear window glass. There were deep scrapes and dents in the bodywork as well; clearly indicating Keith had been dealing with some trouble here. He looked into the interior with his weapon light, and saw that there was a two-way radio mounted under the dash, as he expected. Maybe he could use it to reach Keith in his boat. It would be his next step, after he checked the house. A closer look at the old Toyota truck revealed that it was sitting on jack stands under the front axle, the drive shaft disconnected and the transmission pulled. Looking into the Cherokee that he assumed was Lynn’s car, he saw that it had a steering lock on the wheel.
Eric told Jonathan to wait and keep a lookout while he went up the steps leading to the house to have a look in the windows. The screen porch door had no latch, so Eric opened it and went in, calling loudly for Keith again just in case, before rapping hard on the front door. No one was home, he was sure of that now, so he shined his high-intensity Surefire weapon light through the window to look inside. A sweep of the small dining room revealed something on the buffet table against one wall that stopped him cold. More than a dozen framed pictures of Lynn were carefully arranged around a collection of candles and a vase of wilted flowers. A thick book that appeared to be a photo album was laying flat on the table, with what looked like a hand-written letter placed on top of it. Eric didn’t have to guess that what he was looking at was a shrine. Something had happened to Lynn since the last time Keith had spoken with their father. Seeing this, Eric wondered if Keith was even living here anymore, but he’d obviously put that shrine together, and Eric noticed sawhorses and lumber in the backyard and a folded extension ladder on the ground next to them. Keith or someone had been making repairs since the hurricane, but that didn’t mean he was spending the nights here, it didn’t mean he’d be back tomorrow, either. Eric couldn’t afford to waste a lot of time waiting for nothing. Every minute that he left Bart and the others stranded down there in the marsh, they were at risk. He descended the steps to tell Jonathan what he’d discovered.
“I’m going to see if I can reach him on that radio in his patrol truck first. If not, I’m going to go find the sheriff’s office. If anyone is there, maybe they’ll know where Keith is. He may even be spending the nights there, for all I know. If he is, it’ll be worth it to go there and find him so we can get going sooner. But you need to stay here and wait, just in case Keith happens to come back while I’m gone. We don’t want to miss him so we can’t both go.”
“That’s fine with me man, but what are you going to do, break out the window in his truck? Even if you can get in there to use the radio, you’ll still have to hotwire it to drive it anywhere, won’t you? You might get shot if you’re seen driving a stolen sheriff’s department truck.”
“I’m not stealing it. Keith’s my brother, man. He won’t mind if I borrow it. Besides, I don’t think I’ll need to break in or hotwire it. I’ll just use the key.”
“You found the key?”
“No, but I know where it is. I’ll bet there’s one for each of these vehicles in the same place. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Eric crawled under the rear of the SUV and felt around until his fingers ran over a small lump on the bundle of wiring leading to the trailer light connection. He unwound the electrical tape from it and crawled back out with a key in his hand. Bart had been in the habit of hiding spare keys under his vehicles long before those little hideaway magnetic boxes came on the market. Eric and Keith did the same as soon as they were old enough to drive, because Bart wasn’t coming to rescue them if they were careless enough to lose a key or lock one up inside a vehicle. The lesson had stuck for Eric, and he’d guessed right that it did for Keith too.
“It’s a wonder someone else didn’t find it and steal it already,” Jonathan said.
“Nah, it isn’t obvious unless you know what to look for.”
Eric opened the door and slid into the seat so he could reach the police band radio control head. He turned the switch and tried adjusting the volume and squelch, but the radio was dead. Thinking maybe it required the vehicle auxiliary power to work, Eric turned the ignition key but still got nothing. “So much for that idea. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? I’m going to see if I can find that sheriff’s office. You keep a sharp lookout while you’re waiting for me. Watch the road and the bayou. If Keith shows up, tell him I’ll be right back.”
Eric unslung his M4 and put it and spare mags for it on the seat beside him. When he left Keith’s gravel driveway, he turned north onto the narrow paved road that paralleled the bayou, guessing it would take him to an intersection where he could turn west in the direction of town. He’d been there with Keith that one time he came to visit, and it wasn’t like St. Martinsville was a big city. He passed a deserted cafe and convenience store after he made his turn, and soon spotted a sign indicating St. Martinsville to the south at the next junction. There was also a sign pointing to Interstate 10 to the north, and Keith wondered if major highways like that were still in use here or mostly abandoned as he’d heard so many of them were in Florida. There was no one traveling on the smaller roads he was following, but then again, it was 0300. Like most of the other towns and cities he’d passed through since arriving back in the States, there were few signs of life here at night. City streetlights, storefronts, billboards and everything else of the sort were blacked out. If people were at home in the houses he passed, they were asleep or keeping a low profile. Even in the dark, Eric could see considerable evidence of hurricane damage. Much of the debris had been pushed out of the streets, but the piles hadn’t been loaded up and hauled away. Like south Florida, the grid was down indefinitely and the people who remained here were getting by without it. He found the sheriff’s office building after driving around several blocks in the main part of town. Much to his dismay though, there was no sign that Keith or anyone else was working there. The front doors had been boarded up with heavy plywood, and there were no patrol vehicles parked outside. Keith pulled up as close as he could get to the main entrance and got out to look around. Upon closer inspection, he saw dozens of bullet holes in the plywood panels over the doors. What that indicated, he wasn’t sure, but the building certainly wasn’t in use and hadn’t been for a while. He wondered if the sheriff’s department had relocated their operations elsewhere, but there was no one around to ask.
While driving around looking for the building, he’d noticed a large bayou just a block and a half to the east. Eric got back in the truck and drove over there, looking up and down the banks for any sign of
a patrol boat. There were houses on the opposite shore with small docks, but he didn’t see any boats at any of them. Wherever Keith was, it was unlikely that he was working from here. Eric hated to do it, but he resigned himself to going back to his brother’s house to wait. Driving around out here in the dark with no real idea of where to look was just a waste of time, not to mention an unnecessary risk, as he soon discovered.
He had retraced his way north to the road that paralleled the interstate and was driving towards Keith’s road when he came around a curve and saw two vehicles blocking the narrow lanes. Both of them had been heading the same way Eric was traveling, but they were now stopped alongside each other. The one in his lane was a small crossover-type hatchback car. The other one sitting to the left of it was a full-sized pickup truck.
There were people outside at the rear of the truck, and Eric had come upon them so quickly when he rounded the bend that they were caught by surprise in his headlights. Everything happened fast after that point, but he’d seen enough to get an idea of what was going on. Eric wasn’t here to help strangers, but the girl or young woman that was struggling and trying to fight back as two men forced her into the bed of the pickup made him instantly think of Megan. Besides that, these people were in his way. He would either have to drive around them on the shoulder or turn around and try to find another road to take him back to Keith’s. Seeing him come to a stop, one of the men had already let go of the girl to move towards the cab of the pickup, probably to grab a weapon. Eric figured he would get shot at no matter what he did, so he flipped his lights on high beam and then quickly searched the console of the Tahoe until he found the switch that activated the blinding, high-intensity blue police lights. Using the lights as a diversion and keeping low, Eric exited the vehicle just seconds before a shotgun blast shattered the windshield.
Sixteen
THE MAN IN HIS driveway stopped immediately at Keith’s command, putting his hands up in the air and dropping to his knees as ordered without hesitation. Keith had centered his riflescope on the stranger’s chest at first, but now moved the reticle to his cheeks. The intruder looked young—despite the thin beard that shadowed his face. Keith could now see that he had a rifle slung over his back and a large revolver in a holster on his belt. He had every right to go ahead and pull the trigger. This guy was trespassing on his property at a time when people were regularly murdered in their homes. Since his patrol truck was missing too, it was likely this guy was connected to that, his accomplice already gone while he came back to steal one of the other vehicles or break into the house. But Keith wouldn’t shoot him unless he had to, at least not before he got some answers. Watching him carefully for any signs of non-compliance, he slowly stepped forward into easier speaking range.
“I want you face-down on the ground with your arms straight out to the sides!” Keith yelled again. The stranger hesitated longer than he liked this time. “DO IT NOW, OR DIE NOW! YOUR CHOICE!”
“WAIT! Don’t shoot! You’re Keith Branson, aren’t you? The deputy sheriff that lives here?”
Keith paused, surprised to hear his name, but kept the rifle trained on the stranger’s chest as he answered.
“Maybe. Who’s asking?”
“My name’s Jonathan. I’m here with your brother, Eric! We came here to find you, man!”
Keith was really confused now as the stranger’s words sank in. Eric? How could his brother Eric possibly be here now? He started forward again, still cautious.
“Don’t move!” he warned, as he quickly closed the gap, keeping the rifle on the stranger despite what he’d just said. “What do you mean, you’re with my brother, Eric? How do you know Eric?”
“I met him in Florida, man! He stopped near my campsite in the middle of the night when he first sneaked ashore in his kayak. We ended up hanging out a while and then he invited me to come along as crew when he sailed here.”
“Eric Branson? My brother? Look, I don’t know how you know his name, but you’re full of shit. Eric is somewhere in Europe. I haven’t talked to him in nearly six months.”
“No, dude! I’m not bullshitting you. He’s here! Or at least he was until just a few hours ago. We came up here to find you because the schooner got stuck in the river down near the coast. Bart and Shauna and Daniel and Andrew are still on board it, waiting on us to get help.”
Keith lowered his rifle upon hearing this and walked directly to the kneeling man, still reeling in disbelief as he tried to process all that he heard. But as soon as he heard the man say his father’s name, he knew it was true. Now the mystery of his father’s radio call was about to be solved.
“Schooner? What schooner?”
“It’s a Colvin schooner, man. It’s named Dreamtime, but that’s not the real name. Bart and Eric renamed it before we left the boatyard.”
“You sailed with them from my father’s boatyard, on the Caloosahatchee?”
“Yep, that’s the one. All the way across the Gulf. We were gonna motor up the river right here to your place but that freakin’ barge captain ran us out of the channel and we hit an old wrecked boat sunk by the hurricane. The schooner is stuck good, man! Eric said it’s going to take a crane or something to get it off. That’s why we came up here to find you. Bart figured you would know somebody.”
“How did you get here then? And where is Eric now? Where is my truck?”
“We came in the dinghy. It’s over there in those weeds,” he pointed to the patch of tall cattails growing at the edge of the bayou just upstream from Keith’s dock. Keith hadn’t even glanced that way when he arrived and stepped off his boat, but it was conceivable that a small boat could be hidden there. “Eric didn’t know who might come along, so he didn’t want to leave the dinghy out in the open, tied to your dock. He hid it like he always does. He’s an expert at that shit, you know. Can I put my hands down now?”
Keith was now standing just a few feet away. There was no reason to doubt this guy anymore after all he said. He had to be telling the truth to know even half of what he’d just told him. “Yeah, sure. I’m sorry, but the way things are these days, you can never be too careful.” Keith stepped forward and extended his hand. “What did you say your name was?”
“It’s Jonathan. Jonathan Coleman.”
They shook hands when the young man got to his feet. Keith saw that he was lean and tan from outdoor living, and that the weapon he wore on a sling was some kind of AK-variant rifle.
“I’m still confused about how my brother Eric fits into all this,” he said. “I got a VHF radio call the day before yesterday, late in the afternoon, from my father, so I already knew he’d somehow made it here to Louisiana on a boat. But I never could get back in touch with him and I couldn’t find the boat he might have called from. I suspected he might have been farther away than I first thought, and what you said confirms it. But Eric? I never expected Eric to be with him.”
“He came back here to get Megan,” Jonathan said. “I met him the first night he was back, after he paddled ashore near Jupiter. He went to Shauna’s house first and found it looted and deserted. Then, he and I sailed a little 25-foot boat all the way down around the Keys and up to Fort Myers. They had a blockade at the mouth of the river there, so we had to ditch the boat. We used Eric’s kayak to sneak around it and go to your dad’s boatyard, and that’s when we found out Shauna and Daniel and Andrew where there. But Shauna hadn’t seen Megan since all the riots and shit started. She said as far as she knew, Megan was still in Colorado at the university. Eric’s going to get her, and when he finds her, he’s planning on sailing away from all this crap. Going anywhere in Florida on the roads is about impossible anyway, and your dad thought Eric ought to come here first. He said he might want to think about hitching a ride upriver part of the way by working security on a fuel barge, because it sure as hell won’t be easy to get to Colorado by road with the way things are.”
Keith was flabbergasted to hear all this. He hadn’t expected Eric to be able to make it back
to the U.S. from Europe even if he wanted to, and until now he wasn’t sure his brother had wanted to. But he’d somehow gotten to Florida and then sailed here from across the Gulf, bringing not only their father, but also his ex-wife and her family. Keith never would have dreamed it.
“So where is he? Why isn’t he here with you if you two came here to find me? Did he take my truck?”
“Yeah, he found the key and said he was going to look for the sheriff’s office and see if they might know where you were. He figured you’d been here some, since we could tell someone was working on the house, but he said you might not be living here anymore. He looked around a bit and shined his light through the windows. He saw the pictures inside and thought something might have happened to your wife.”
“Yes, she died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that man, I really am. And I know Eric was upset about it too. He’s been gone I don’t know, maybe three or four hours? We got here just before midnight and he couldn’t stand just waiting for daylight, so he left. I got bored waiting on him so I walked up the road a bit. I came back when I heard your boat motor. That’s why I was out here in the driveway when you first saw me. I guess I should have yelled first, but I wasn’t sure it was you. Eric said to be careful, because anyone could come along out here. I’m glad you didn’t shoot me, man.”
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