The man suddenly fell for no apparent reason, collapsing to the roadway beside her when his knees buckled beneath him. She couldn’t understand what caused him to fall, but after he was down, she saw blood pooling on the pavement beneath his body. The other attacker, who had caught up and stopped to watch as she was grabbed and thrown to the ground, turned to run back in the direction of the car, terrified by something he’d seen. But before he could reach the passenger side door, he too collapsed. It made no sense to April, who hadn’t heard a thing, but then she saw something bright standing out in stark contrast to the black of the second one’s T-shirt where he was thrashing facedown by the car. The strange object was just to one side of his spine, where the kidney would be. Blood was welling up around it and spilling onto the road just as it was around the older man who had fallen. It was then that April recognized the bright object for what it was: the tail end of an arrow, with a fletching of bright yellow feathers.
April scrambled to grab her knife and then quickly got to her feet. Her hands were scraped from the hard fall onto the gravel, but she put the pain out of her mind as she looked around for whoever had taken out her attackers with, of all things, arrows. When she looked back along the highway in the direction toward New Orleans, she saw a lone figure step up to the pavement from the high grass in the ditch, holding what could only be a bow. The figure was dressed from head to toe in hunter’s camouflage, and if not for his movement, it would have been impossible to spot him against the backdrop of bushes.
The archer was walking her way, and April’s first impulse was to turn and run. But she knew if he wanted to shoot her, running wouldn’t do any good. She told herself that if he wanted to kill her, he would have done it before revealing himself. She stood her ground, determined that if he did shoot her, it would not be in the back.
Her four-inch knife was little better than nothing against a weapon that could kill from afar, but the adrenaline from using it on the first attacker still coursed through her body. Had she really cut a man’s throat? She had felt the resistance of flesh against the edge of the blade, and there had been a fountain of blood as he staggered back. But was he really dead? If he was, he was on the ground in front of the car and she couldn’t see him from where she stood. She glanced at the other two and was sure that both of them were dead. The one hit in the back had thrashed for a few seconds but was now still.
As the archer approached, he raised one hand in a friendly wave and removed the floppy camouflaged hat that shadowed his face. She could see that he was smiling in a way that she took to be an attempt to reassure her. He called out to her, saying he would not hurt her. Although an arrow was on the string at the ready, he carried the bow loosely in one hand, down by his side in a non-threatening way. She waved back and tried to return the smile, lowering her knife as she did but still keeping her grip white-knuckle tight as she waited for him to get closer, her next course of action totally dependent upon what happened when he did.
* * *
Thank you for reading Enter the Darkness, I hope you enjoyed it. Please turn the page to learn about all of the books in The Darkness After Series and to read the included sample excerpt of Into the River Lands
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IF YOU ENJOYED ENTER the Darkness: A Darkness After Series Prequel, you can find next four books in the series on Amazon at the following links:
The Darkness After
Into the River Lands
The Forge of Darkness
The Savage Darkness
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Turn the page to read the included excerpt from Into the River Lands: Book II of The Darkness After Series
Into the River Lands Sample
COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY Scott B. Williams
ONE
April Gibbs lifted her paddle out of the water at the end of her stroke and let the canoe drift midstream while she tried to think. Her ex-boyfriend, David Green was in front of her in the bow seat, and it was all she could do to refrain from using the paddle to smack him so he would shut up. He wasn’t helping her paddle, and he sure wasn’t helping her find what she was looking for.
“I think we made a terrible mistake, April. We’re never going to find that farm and now we’re lost out here in the middle of the woods with nothing and no way to get back.”
“We’re not lost, David! I told you, I’m just not sure exactly which bend in the creek it is. I’ll know it when I see it. That’s a lot different than being lost!”
“Not if we don’t find it, it isn’t. What if we’ve already passed it and you just didn’t know it? We’d never be able to paddle back upstream against this current. We’ll end up who knows where if we just keep going.”
“We haven’t passed it, David. I’m certain of that. The path isn’t obvious and it isn’t visible from the creek. Mitch said that was deliberate. His dad didn’t want just anyone floating down the creek to find the way to his land. He said they always had to keep an eye out for poachers and other trespassers. But the trail is there. We have to just keep stopping at every bend that looks like the one I remember, and by looking in the woods just beyond the creek we’ll find the path when we’re at the right one. I’m certain that it’s close. I told you that I remember it being just a few miles past that last bridge we went under.”
“I hope you’re right, because if you’re wrong, we’re all going to die out here.”
“We’re not as likely to die out here as we were back in Hattiesburg. You know that. You saw what was happening. There’s no way they can defend that building indefinitely. The whole city is a death zone. Besides, we’re here now and there’s no going back!”
“Maybe, but I’m still not convinced we’re any better off. You don’t even know if that redneck kid is even going to be there if we find his place. He may be dead by now for all we know.”
“I told you not to call him that again! He may live in the woods, but he’s not ignorant or stupid, and he’s definitely not a kid. He’s more mature than most adults of any age that I’ve met. And yeah, something could have happened to him, but I doubt it. You just have no idea what’s he’s capable of. He wouldn’t do anything foolish because he’s got his little sister and her friends to take care of. He’ll be there, I’m sure of it.”
“And I’m sure you can’t wait to see him. He’s still under age and he’s still too young for you, even if he does act mature!”
“Just shut up and paddle, David. All you’re doing is pissing me off with your dumb comments. What I do, I do for Kimberly. She’s all that matters to me anymore, but she needs us both right now, so let’s just focus on that, okay?”
April was frustrated and angry, mostly with herself, but listening to David’s “I told you so” smart aleck remarks most of the evening and the day before had really pushed her over the edge. She was sick of looking at him and sick of hearing him talk, but that was really nothing new. What was more infuriating was that after coming this far, and getting this close, she still hadn’t found the place she was looking for. April couldn’t believe how much everything out here looked the same, and nothing in particular stood out despite her having traveled this exact route just seven months before. Of course, she remembered there was pretty much nothing but trackless forest on both sides of Black Creek for mile after mile. She remembered that landmarks such as bridge overpasses were few and far between along its course, but she had not imagined it would be so hard to locate the one specific bend in the waterway she was searching for. It stood out in her memory as a bend with a low, shaded sandbar on its inside radius and a dense thicket of bay trees in the understory o
f the forest beyond. The problem was that they had already stopped and investigated at least nine or ten such bends that looked just like the one she remembered, and all led to nothing. There was no hidden path leading through the bay thicket away from the creek bottom, no rusty barbed-wire fence beyond, where the hardwoods transitioned to pines, and no Henley pasturelands past that. All she and David found were trees and more trees in a silent forest devoid of all sounds of human life.
Though she wanted to beat herself up for not remembering, April kept reminding herself that not only had it been seven months since she’d been here, but that it had been her one and only time to canoe any river. Before the events that led her here that first time with Mitch Henley, the woods to April were just a blur of greenery seen from the car window while driving down the highway. She was a city girl in her previous life, all of her nearly nineteen years of it before the world changed completely. Now, life in any city was too dangerous to consider, and living in an artificial environment in such isolation from nature was virtually impossible anyway without the endless supply chain feeding the incessant demands of the population. Reality had changed in the course of just one night when a bombardment of electromagnetic pulses from the sun shut down the power grid, along with most every modern technology from transportation to communication. Now, like everyone else lucky or resourceful enough to still be alive in the nightmare of the aftermath, April was doing what she had to do in order to survive. But above all, she was doing it for Kimberly, the eighteen-month-old daughter who was the light and the purpose of her life. David Greene had fathered their little girl, but whatever she’d felt for him at the time that led to that event was long forgotten. He was here only because she felt that two parents were better than one, especially during such a perilous journey. She knew full well it was dangerous to travel anywhere, alone or not, but this was a journey she deemed necessary. When she’d passed this way all those months before, all that had mattered was getting to Kimberly. Now, with her baby sleeping quietly in a blanket between her feet in the bottom of the canoe, getting back to the Henley farmhouse was a matter of life or death. She was certain that Mitch Henley would be there, and that if anyone could keep her and Kimberly safe long enough to find out if they had a future, it was Mitch. All she had to do was find him—a task so simple and yet so hard out here in this vast river land forest he called home.
TWO
Mitch Henley found the wounded doe collapsed in a pile of bloody leaves at the bottom of a deep ravine. Another half hour and he would have lost hope of finding the animal at all. Dusk was fading rapidly to the darker shadows of night and the sporadic blood trail was hard to follow, even for a tracker with his skills. Without hesitation, he drew his longbow and unleashed the hunting arrow that was already nocked and ready on the string, finishing a job someone else had so badly botched.
Mitch had been scouting rather than hunting that late fall afternoon, though he never left the house anymore without a weapon at the ready for just such chance opportunities as this one. He first jumped the doe while threading his way through a thicket along the creek bank on his way back home to his family land. It had been a long day of exploring and marking trails, and he was anxious to get back to the farmhouse to tell the others about an impressive stand of old-growth cypress he’d found along a hidden slough far from his normal hunting grounds.
The chill in the air had him moving faster than usual that day, and with a little less caution than if he were seriously hunting for food. It was the first real cold of the season; a blustery north wind stirring the treetops above him, rattling branches and sending leaves and pine needles spiraling softly to the forest floor. He was ready to call it a day and get back to the warmth of the fire, and so he was momentarily startled when the small deer burst out of hiding without warning just a few yards in front of him.
Mitch knew immediately from its erratic gate and stiff hind leg that it was hurt, but there was no time for a shot before it disappeared in the undergrowth. The leaf litter where it had been resting was soaked in blood, and scattered drops left as it fled provided just enough sign for an experienced hunter to follow. But Mitch slowed down and took his time doing so, knowing if he pressed it too close the deer might still run for miles. He figured the animal had been hit in the leg or some other non-vital area, and though it would eventually bleed out and die, it might take hours. Mitch hated the thought of wounded game going to waste, and that’s exactly what would happen to this deer if he didn’t track it down before dark. But more than he and the others needed the meat, he needed to know who the sloppy hunter was who’d wounded it and with what kind of weapon. He hadn’t heard a gunshot all day, but from the speed the deer was still able to run when he’d startled it, he doubted it had been very long since it was hit by whatever caused the bleeding.
Now that the doe’s final run was over and he had caught up, he lost no time in ending the animal’s suffering. When his arrow struck home, the shaft buried itself almost to the fletching in the soft neck, and no doubt would have passed all the way through if not stopped by the ground behind it. The deer would be dead or nearly dead by the time he climbed down to reach it, but out of habit, Mitch nocked another arrow, just in case. He’d been careful the whole time he was following the blood trail, stopping often to look and listen for minutes at a time—not only to avoid spooking the terrified animal into running farther—but also to stay alert for any signs of the hunter who’d started this. He hadn’t heard or seen a thing, including any evidence that anyone else had attempted to find the deer, but he was much too cautious to let his guard down now. Mitch did not at all like the idea of a stranger in these woods so close to home.
He carefully made his way down the steep bank of slick red clay, using exposed roots as hand and footholds. When he reached the fallen deer it was still, but just to make sure its suffering was over, he drew his hunting knife and opened the jugular to bleed it out. Then he rolled the carcass over, searching for the source of the blood that led him here. What he found explained why he had heard no report of a rifle or shotgun. Protruding from the animal’s hind quarter was some six inches of broken carbon fiber arrow shaft, the broad head tip no doubt lodged in the pelvic bone. Someone had made a lousy shot or else the deer jumped the string at the last second, not quite fast enough to avoid being hit entirely.
The lightweight composite arrow was typical of the projectiles modern sport bowhunters used with compound bows, if such high-tech machines could even be called bows. Mitch didn’t like them, preferring instead his traditional longbow with its heavy, sixty-pound draw weight and no mechanical advantage to make it easier to pull, hold and aim. The simplicity of a simple stick bow, one of mankind’s oldest and most effective weapons, also meant there was nothing to break but the string or the bow itself, both easy to replace from available materials. High-tech compound bows were far too dependent on complex materials and manufacturing to be viable in this new reality.
Besides, even if the bow itself held up, anyone using such a weapon now would not be doing so indefinitely. With no easy way to procure or make more arrows capable of handling the tremendous asymmetric forces generated, such technology would soon be useless. At least with his simple weapon Mitch could use primitive arrows fabricated from river cane, and there was an endless supply of that growing for the taking along the banks of Black Creek.
Satisfied with his examination as to the cause of the doe’s wound, Mitch set to work with his knife to carefully open the abdominal cavity and remove the entrails, separating the heart, liver and kidneys and wrapping them in some big magnolia leaves before stashing them in his small daypack. The hunting was good in the vicinity of the Henley property and Mitch’s prowess with the bow assured a steady supply of meat. But living on a largely carnivorous diet, he and the others craved the fatty and nutrient-rich organ meats that were far too precious to discard as many did in the days before the collapse. Tonight, they would eat well and he would come back for the rest of the venison t
omorrow. With the cold front moving through the area, the lows would be at or near freezing before dawn, and the meat would be fine until he could pack it home.
Using a length of rope he kept in his pack, he tossed one end over a high branch and hoisted the carcass out of the reach of scavengers. He would be back for it early, but at first light in the morning, he would backtrack the blood trail from where he’d jumped the deer. Mitch intended to find out who shot that arrow and where he or she had gone afterwards. The security of everyone who depended on him to look out for them required nothing less.
THREE
David had been quiet for a good hour since their last argument, but April knew it wouldn’t last long so she wasn’t surprised when he started complaining again as the afternoon light faded.
“We’ll never find anything in the dark, that’s for sure. So what are we gonna do now?”
“Find a place to camp, that’s what? What do you think we’re gonna do? Kimberly is hungry and you’re right, we can’t keep looking in the dark. We can’t take a chance of passing that trail. We’ll stop at the next sandbar and start looking again in the morning.”
Darkness After Series (Prequel): Enter the Darkness Page 11
