by Lowry, Chris
“Made it,” she said.
I pulled myself up again and took a deep breath.
“Your turn.”
I did the same with the Boy but didn’t have to lower as far with him. He was heavier, the strain worse, but a shorter duration.
As soon as his feet hit the balcony floor, I scooted to the column and gripped it with the edge of my boots. I couldn’t wrap my arms around it, but scooted down until I hit the rail.
Then I stayed on the outer edge, and we repeated it again. Lowered Bem. She had to drop four feet to the patio.
Lowered the boy.
He dropped too. I got ready to lower myself when a Z crashed through the glass door and ran straight at me.
I dropped the ten feet to the ground below and fell backwards in a roll, trying to tuck, trying to spread out the impact.
The Z hit the rail of the second-floor balcony and pitched over after me. It plopped into the sod beside me and slavered as it crawled my way.
The Boy kicked it in the head and knocked it away from us, long enough for him to swing his rifle around and shoot it.
The noise would tell the gang we were out of the apartment.
“Go,” I gasped as I stood up.
Ankle hurt. Back hurt. Feet hurt.
I grabbed the suitcases and we hustled across the street as the kids carried their bags.
We heard screaming and shouting behind us, random shots firing but they were bad aims or couldn’t lead the target.
Once we put mansions between us they stopped shooting.
But they were coming.
“Drop your gear,” I called to the Boy. “Follow me.”
Bem stayed with the bags without being told.
I pulled a pistol in each hand and set him on one side of a house waiting to see if they ran in the yard between, and I took the other.
They chose mine.
I heard them grunting as they ran into the narrow space, blocked on both sides by brick walls. I leaned around the edge of the house, trying to keep most of my body hidden, aimed and shot.
There were six of them.
The last two shot back and then they died too.
“Anything?”
“Clear Dad.”
I switched guns in my hands.
“Keep watching.”
Then I hopped down and put my back against the wall as I edged up to see if there were any others. The space smelled of blood and piss now that the boys were dead. I reached the end but the road was clear.
A shadow darted across the end of the house racing for the boy, gun extended.
I sprinted back and spun around the edge just as the boy leaped off the porch toward the trail, running at Bem.
The side of his head erupted and the body skidded to a stop.
He had been so intent on his target, he missed the Boy hiding in the alleyway.
We were clear now on all sides.
“Help me,” I told him as he stared at the twitching body lying in the grass next to the trail.
“She warned me.”
“Come here.”
He walked toward me, a numb look on his face, the color gone from his cheeks again.
“I went to school with him,” he muttered. “He knew me.”
“Let’s get these guns.”
I put him to work taking the pistols from the dead bodies, and checking for extra ammunition. He filled his pockets with weapons and passed me the extras then we rejoined his sister.
She stared at the dead body too, tears dripping down her face.
“You knew him too.”
She nodded.
“He stayed at our camp a couple of nights.”
“Was he going to hurt you?”
She shrugged her tiny shoulders, then nodded.
“I think he meant to. He was at the tower too.”
I put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Then it was clean. You saved your sister.”
“I guess so.”
He took two steps to the side of the trail, leaned over and gave up lunch in two great heaves. I patted the small of his back until he was done, then we gathered the bags, our new guns and went hunting for a boat.
CHAPTER THREE
The choices were simple. The pontoon boat or the other pontoon boat. I pointed to the smaller one.
“That one first.”
“There’s more room in that one Dad,” the Boy pointed to the one that was in fact bigger by almost a half. “Did that bullet mess up your eyes?”
The tears were gone, replaced by being silly.
He learned that from me.
“Dad’s got his reasons,” I explained.
It is the teenage prerogative to question every word that comes from a parent’s mouth from the age of thirteen up until around twenty-three or so. That decade should be called the terrible teens and I was glad to see that even a zombie reboot of the world didn’t change some things.
They looked at each other before boarding the boat.
That look that said, just indulge him. That look that reminded me over and over that the two of them were forever bound, by growing up with each other, with their mother and step-dad, with me mostly absent.
I was an outside in my own little family. They knew it. I knew it. And I knew that I could live with that feeling for the rest of my days so long as they were with me and safe.
While they settled on the cushions, and stowed the suitcases with gear, I poached gas from the other boat in the form of two red gas cans next to the outboard motor.
“What if this won’t start?” the Boy asked as I limped them on board.
“Then we get the big boat.”
It’s not easy to hotwire an outboard motor, but after a couple of false starts I got it going.
We cast off and I backed the boat out into the water, pointed the nose south and we scooted along between the channel markers. We coasted under the bridges that linked Little Rock with its sister city across the water, watching the banks for Z and anyone who might take a shot at us.
“Get down on the deck,” I said as that thought crossed my mind.
They did and I ducked lower behind the console.
No point in taking chances.
But nothing bothered us. We saw Z on the shore in the city, and then we were south where trees ran right up to the edge of the water. We passed the last bridge and the port of Little Rock which claimed to be international, even though it was landlocked.
Then it was fields, and woods and us.
Sunshine filtered through the clouds in patches, the wind was cold, but it could have been any normal day and us a normal family out for a winter excursion.
We reached the dam in less than an hour and the lock was closed.
“This is why the smaller boat,” I told the boy.
I beached the pontoon on the shore we climbed out onto the grass covered levee. I did a farmer’s carry with the fuel in each hand, the kids each took one suitcase and we rolled past the dam looking for the next marina or fishing hut.
I knew the Dam was just south of Redfield, leading toward Pine Bluff. The river twisted and turned in a series of loops. If we went searching for wheels, it might be a faster straight shot, but I wanted to take the Arkansas all the way to the Mississippi, then further south and cut across to Alabama.
I figured it was safer than being anywhere near Memphis and a potential ambush.
We had to go three miles before we hit a small marina. When I saw it, I remembered I knew it from my youth, which may explain why I was so confident to stick near the water.
There was another pontoon, a twenty-four-footer that we loaded up. The store next to the marina was untouched.
“Let’s check it out,” I said and pulled a pistol.
Bem pulled hers as well, and the Boy readied the rifle.
But the store was empty of Z. Empty of people, but stocked with supplies one might need for a day of fishing.
I let the kids raid the snack aisle, and I scroung
ed fishing gear. We carried three giant coolers of stuff back to the boat. I was just indulging them because there was another dam three hours south, and one more after that before we hit the big river.
We couldn’t carry the coolers or all the snacks with us, but they could stuff themselves while we rode.
They did, and I ate too. Cheese chips and colas. Peanut candy bars. They ate their fill, and more, all of us with our bellies distended.
I watched Bem instruct the Boy on how to fill the side pockets of the suitcase with more snacks, and then she surprised me by pulling two backpacks out of a bag and filled them too.
We were burdened with food, and fuel and ready for a hike when we hit the next dam.
But the lock was open so we got to stay in that pontoon until we were all the way to the next.
CHAPTER FOUR
I left the gas cans on the beached pontoon when we reached the closed lock on the dam. It was more important to carry our food, and I was confident we could find another marina soon.
We traded a pontoon for a bass boat, and then later a bass boat for a deck boat that ran out of gas after a half hour. The noise of the engine and the roar of the wind made it difficult to talk, and once it was gone, the rush of the water against the hull.
Then we were near the Mississippi and a marina on the edge of the confluence.
I didn't ask about their mother.
The absence of offering information made me think she was gone. I didn't ask about their stepdad for the same reason.
If they were alive they would have been at the house or the school. If they were out hunting, the kids would have asked to wait.
But their silence told me part of the story.
I'd let them come to the rest in their own time.
It was easy to tell when we hit the Mississippi River. There was a sign on the riverbank that told barge pilots where they were.
I think we could have figured it out on our own.
The Arkansas River is a muddy brown color that drifts over into the black spectrum. The mighty Mississippi is the color of red clay and mud and a couple million acres of sediment that washes down in a thousand tributaries in a turbulent rush toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The speed of the water increased and we shifted out into the current heading South. Or mostly south, since the river swings back and forth on itself in long meandering curves.
I saw an article once about a man who was floating the river in a canoe and watched the sunset in the East due to one of those twists. I tried to figure out how that happened, but we didn’t have time to get twisted around.
We weren’t on the water an hour before I sighted a big island with a long sloping beach that was close enough to sunset for us to call it a night.
“We could look for another island,” offered the boy.
Putting distance between us and Arkansas. He wanted away from the memories.
“I don’t want to be on the water after dark,” I told him.
He accepted that. They both did and hopped over the front of the deck as soon as I beached it on the slack water side of the island. Twenty yards away was Mississippi.
We could climb up that twelve-foot bank in the morning and start our way back to Alabama, and then points beyond.
I was sure we would find a town, or something where we could get transport.
But that left too much to chance.
I knew there were two cities we would pass. Natchez and Vicksburg. I just couldn’t remember which one came first, and had no map, no internet to check my faulty memory.
Better to stay on the water and come to the town by noon, grab a ride and work our way back to Fort Jasper.
Besides, I didn’t pick up the fishing gear for nothing.
The boy stringed a pole and cast it, then propped it with a branch buried in the sand. He fixed three more lines and cast them as well, monitoring each with gentle tugs from practiced hands.
He was a hunter and fisherman, his love of the outdoors coming from his stepfather.
I had hated hunting since it was the only way we had meat growing up. Fishing was the same for me, a chore, work, not pleasure.
I was proud of him though.
Bem gathered driftwood from above the water line and built a fire with a lighter from her pocket. She piled enough wood to last the night, and when the Boy cheered his first catch, she built a spit over the flames with a long stick.
My children amazed me as I watched.
I sat by the fire and checked our weapons, getting a count of bullets and pistols, combining magazines, consolidating and putting the empty weapons into a pack. Then I moved to the rifle, double checked the load. We only had four shots left.
I handed Bem her gun back.
“Eyes up,” I told her. “I’m going to do a walk about to make sure we’re safe.”
I moved up a small bluff into the tree lines and stopped to see what I could hear. Just the wind in the trees, the water as it slurped at the banks of the islands and on the shore closest to us.
The island was large, a half mile in length, and three quarters of that wide. At one point, it may even have been connected to the mainland, but erosion and flooding had carved a channel through the land, and ate away the dirt until it was separate.
There were animals though.
Deer, rabbits, birds and pathways that had to have belonged to wild hogs.
No people. Better than that, no Z.
I wished we had a tent, but the suitcase full of blankets would have to do. I made the far end of the island and walked back along the river side of the small brown sand beach.
Nothing out of place, or out of the ordinary.
I stopped where I could see the camp and the kids were smiling, helping each other spit six fish over the small flames.
My heart swelled into my throat and I fought back a sob, but only barely.
I found them.
Lucky to be sure. Maybe even some divine providence.
I had one more to go.
One more night on the river then back to a car or truck and this time we’d move across the south at speed. I knew there were clear roads between here and there. I couldn’t wait weeks to find her.
I didn’t know how long luck would hold out.
The Boy held up the pistol until he saw it was me, then scooted over on a log so I could sit between them facing the water.
“I left the lines out so we can catch breakfast.”
“Good man.”
It may not have been the best fish I’ve ever eaten in my life, but it was one of the most satisfying meals ever.
We nestled together shoulder to shoulder as we ate, and then in silence as we watched the fire. I felt satisfied.
I hoped they did too.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Wake up,” I whispered in Bem’s ear and shook her shoulder.
She shot up into a crouch, ready to run.
I shook the Boy and repeated it.
The fire had burned down to embers, but I could see our mistake now. It was the only light in a river of darkness. Anyone on the shore could see it, anyone on the water too.
Apparently, they had.
I put a finger to my nose to tell the kids to be quiet. We could hear the splashing of paddles rowing.
There was not time for our eyes to adjust though. The sounds meant they were close. I grabbed the rifle in one hand and a sleeve in the other.
“Stay close,” I said softly and hustled up to the bluff.
Bem grabbed her brother and dragged him along with her.
We made it to the tree line and up into the brush. I pulled them behind a tree.
“Move ten yards in and lay down. Don’t let me pass you.”
I didn’t want them out of my sight, but it was so dark I couldn’t see them anyway. But I needed to see who or what was coming to shore.
The kids moved behind me, and then I didn’t hear them as they hid. I turned back to the bluff and sighted down the end of the rifle, waiting for
anything to move between the fire and my position.
The sound of metal on rock cut over the noise of the river as their boat ground ashore. Then they muttered as they jumped out, strong southern accents from the Mississippi side of the water.
“Told you we was making too much noise,” said one. “They done run off.”
I watched shadows move in our camp below, but that’s all I could make out.
“How else we supposed to get here then?” said a second voice. “It ain’t a big place Travis. We could just go hunt them down.”
I zeroed in on that shadow. At least I think it was that one. It was hard to tell who was taking in the dark, and they were bending and scooping up our packs and suitcases.
They left the sheets we tied up as lean-to’s, and the comforter ground cover, but as I watched, they filled their boat with our gear.
“You can hunt if you want to,” said the first one. “We got what we came for.”
He jumped into the boat along with a couple of others.
After a moment, Travis jumped in with them. I heard the scrape of oars as they pushed off and the steady beat in the water as they rowed away. I also heard our boat scrape off the rocks and watched the shadow of it drift after them.
“Pirates,” I thought and began to take aim.
But that might bring them back.
Like the first one said, they got what they came for. I had the kids, we were safe, and we could go ashore to hunt for more supplies.
I pushed off the ground and began walking slowly back toward the kids.
“They’re gone,” I called out.
Silence.
They were good at hiding. I counted out the ten yards, but didn’t see them on the ground.
A twig snapped to the left of me.
“Boy?” I whispered.
Something arced out of the darkness and slammed into the side of my head. It sent me reeling. I bounced off a tree, my feet hit the edge of the bluff and I slipped over the side as it swung back and missed.
Someone was trying to bean me with a piece of driftwood.
I hit the ground and rolled, trying to put space between me and whoever it was that was playing homerun derby with my ear. I jumped up and searched the night.
