He would have found it amusing if not for the suffering that it was causing those who had no chance of survival because they were too old or too young or too sick. Practically everyone, rich and poor alike, was stranded and isolated, facing the prospect of running out of food and medications and all the other essentials required to survive. All that was bad enough, without the added problem of having to fight off human predators like these three who saw the situation as a opportunity to take whatever they wanted from those they thought were weaker.
Mitch knew such men didn’t turn this way overnight, and people like that probably would have done the same thing if they had the opportunity before the blackout. But in leaving the city of New Orleans, he had seen enough desperation to make it clear that even people who would never harm anyone in ordinary circumstances would soon be driven to drastic measures in order to survive. It was the inevitable outcome for any place that had a lot of people crammed together and nothing left to sustain them after the shelves of all the grocery stores were stripped.
Mitch didn’t like towns, much less cities. He didn’t like the noise, the traffic, and the houses all packed together in rows with barely any space between them. Growing up as he had, surrounded by almost six hundred acres of private land passed down from his grandfather to his father, living in such a crowded place was incomprehensible to him. There was no freedom to be found where there were so many other people and so many idiotic little rules you had to follow. That lack of free will was the main thing he hated about school, too; it was nothing but one rule after another, and along with structure and confinement, it amounted to the antithesis of everything he loved about the woods.
He endured it because he had to, but when he was in the classroom, he was always daydreaming about hunting or simply being out in nature, walking the trails or sitting under a tree listening to the silence. He knew that even the people in the rural county where he lived and went to school didn’t share the same affinity he had for being outdoors. He had always been different that way. Not that he was alone in his interest for hunting, fishing, archery, and woodcraft—it was just that for him it was everything.
A few of his classmates who grew up on similar tracts of land in the country certainly hunted, but they looked at it as just another sport, something you do when it’s in season, like playing football or baseball. Some of them were even quite good at it, but he didn’t know of any who would be happy about having to hunt for all their food and live without electricity and running water. A lot of them and their families might be able to adapt and survive, though, depending on how long all of this lasted, but he didn’t have much hope for the throngs he’d seen stuck in New Orleans and unable to get out. It would be the same in cities everywhere in the range of this pulse event, and that could be all of North America and even beyond, for all anyone knew.
If what he’d heard people in the city saying was true, and it really took weeks or months to rebuild all the systems that were destroyed, just how bad were things going to get in the meantime? It didn’t bode well that so much violence had started just days after the collapse. After what happened here on this deserted stretch of highway, Mitch felt a renewed sense of urgency to get back to his little sister. He could protect her as long as they were on their own land, buffered from the madness by all those acres of woodlands and pastures.
Chancing upon April was fortunate for both of them—for her because she probably couldn’t have defended herself against the other two enraged thugs after she killed the first one, and for him because she had a vehicle that could get him home a couple days sooner than if he had to walk the rest of the way. There was no time to waste getting it running again so they could start moving, and besides, he wanted to get away from the gruesome scene before someone else came along and started asking questions.
If she was right, and the car was simply out of gas, he was confident they could get more out of one of the nearby abandoned vehicles. He smiled when she asked if he had any suggestions on how to get some out.
“Yeah, I’ve got an idea how. I just need to walk over to that house and see if I can find a Mississippi Credit Card.”
“A credit card? What good will a credit card do out here? Even if there were a gas station, it wouldn’t work with the power out and the phone lines down. Everybody is saying plastic is worthless now.”
“I’m not talking about the plastic kind. I’m talking about the rubber kind.”
“What?”
Mitch just laughed. “Wait right here, I’ll show you.”
“I’m going, too. I don’t want to be alone out here.”
“Okay, but you stay behind me. I want to make sure no one else is watching us from inside that house. They probably would have run out here when everything started, but I’m not taking any chances.”
“Fine by me,” said April.
Mitch made his way across the yard with his bow in front of him, at the ready. He motioned to April to stay back as he approached the nearest window and looked in. He staggered back a step, almost losing his balance, then went around to the open back door to get a better look at what he’d seen from the window.
“DON’T COME ANY CLOSER, APRIL!”
“Is there someone there?”
“Just wait there, I’ll be right back.”
Mitch tried to put the grisly scene in the house out of his mind for a moment so he could turn his attention back to what he was looking for. He walked to the side of the house and motioned for April to follow, but at a wide berth. He pointed to spot near some bushes for her to hide while he continued on around back.
Just as he’d expected, coiled on a wire stand beside an outside water spigot was a garden hose. He whipped out his knife and sliced a four-foot section off the end, then he picked up an empty water bucket that was turned upside down nearby. “This is a Mississippi Credit Card,” he said as he walked back to where she was waiting.
“Well, I knew you could siphon gas with a piece of hose, I just don’t see why you call it a credit card.”
“That’s what my Grandpa used to say. Back in the Depression, when nobody could afford gas, they borrowed a little here and there with a piece of hose: a Mississippi Credit Card! It’ll probably come in real handy now.”
April forced a slight smile, then her face darkened, as if she could see something in his eyes. “What did you see in the house? There was no one there, right? Why did you want me to hide?”
“I can tell you that any remorse I may have felt for killing those two is forever gone now, and I can assure you that you did the right thing in killing the other one, too.”
“What did they do?”
“There are two more bodies inside the house, April, right on the kitchen floor; an old man and an old woman, probably a married couple who lived here alone. Those three murdered them in cold blood.” Mitch didn’t wait for her reaction as he kept walking to her car. “Have you got any tools in the Mustang?”
“Yeah, I grabbed the wrenches and a few things David left at the apartment.”
When she opened the trunk, Mitch searched around for a second and found a big screwdriver. “This will work.” He took it, the hose, and bucket to a nearby GMC Yukon. “If this thing was even half full when the owner left it, it’ll have more than enough gas in the tank to fill us up,” he said.
The flimsy sheet metal fuel door was easy to pry open with the screwdriver, and soon he had the gas cap off and he inserted the hose into the fuel tank. He put his mouth over the open end and sucked on it to get the siphon started, dreading the inevitable mouthful of gas that was sure to follow. When it did, he quickly moved the end of the hose to the bucket, spitting and coughing to get rid of the taste and smell before it made him throw up.
“I hate siphoning gas!” he said. “I wish I had a cordless drill so we could just drill a hole in the bottom of the tank and drain it, but at least this way, if all this mess ever gets straightened out, whoever owns this truck won’t have a ruined fuel tank.”
“How long do you think it’ll be before they get the power back on and fix everything?” April asked.
“I don’t know. Who are they anyway? The power companies and the city and county officials, and the entire government for that matter are just as shut down as everybody else. How are they going to fix anything when nothing is working? Where are they going to come from, if this pulse thing really did affect the whole country?”
“We don’t know that it did, do we?”
“No, but we don’t know that it didn’t, either. I haven’t seen any kind of outside help coming around, have you?”
Mitch took the end of the hose out of the full bucket and handed it to April, instructing her to keep her thumb tightly over the end of it to maintain vacuum so they could get more without having to restart the siphon. He carried the bucket to the Mustang. He cut off the top of a cardboard box that was in the trunk and used it for a makeshift funnel. He stopped to look around for signs of anyone approaching before he went back to get more. The highway was still deserted, much to his relief. The bucket only held two gallons, and he wanted to put at least five or six gallons in the car to be sure they had enough to get to the farm.
The rain had already started, just a light drizzle now, but he knew enough of these early spring weather systems to know that it would probably rain for the next two or three days. Conditions like that wouldn’t make anything easier, but at least they wouldn’t have to walk in it if the car started as he hoped it would. When he had poured two more buckets of fuel into the tank, April slid behind the wheel and turned the key. The starter spun but nothing else happened. She tried it again. Nothing.
April banged her hand on the wheel. “The last thing we want to do is run down the battery.” She opened the hood and removed the breather cover again as she’d done when she checked it before the three men approached. “When I followed the instructions for putting the carburetor back together, there was something about having to prime it before the car would run. I used the starter fluid spray David had bought with the rebuild kit. Dammit! Why didn’t I think to bring it with me?”
“Of course, that makes sense,” Mitch said. “You ran it completely out of gas, and these old carbureted cars sometimes have to be primed to get the fuel flowing again. We don’t need starter fluid; just a spoonful of gas will do the trick, I’ll bet. There’s enough left in the bottom of the bucket. Let’s try that and see what happens.”
They did, and when April got in and tried it again, the 302 V8 roared to life. She revved the engine to make sure it wasn’t going to go dead again. Mitch put the breather cover back on and slammed the hood shut with a grin. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
FOUR
Mitch put his daypack and bow behind the two front seats of the Mustang, keeping the bow strung and ready for use with his quiver of arrows next to it, then slid into the passenger seat beside April. She shifted the car into reverse, backing up just enough to get around the body lying in front of the car, and then worked through the forward gears until she was in third. It wasn’t safe to go faster than fifty miles per hour because she had to dodge so many stalled vehicles and obstacles.
The rain had picked up now, and Mitch was relieved to see that the old car’s windshield wipers still worked. Mitch wouldn’t have guessed she could drive a standard transmission so smoothly, but looking at her, he wouldn’t have guessed she was old enough to have a child, either. If anything, she looked younger than him, but despite her innocent look, she had wielded that knife with skill and decisiveness he could hardly believe, especially in the face of such overwhelming odds. Knowing that she was a mother explained her fearlessness somewhat. She was not going to let anyone or anything stop her from getting back to her baby, even if that meant she had to cut someone’s throat. It was a basic animal instinct that Mitch knew would come back to many people now—at least to those who were going to be survivors.
The man she’d killed deserved what he got. Mitch knew that all three of them did, especially after seeing the bodies of the old man and woman inside the house, apparently beaten to death. But even if those men hadn’t murdered the couple, what they’d attempted to do to April was enough to justify her action and his, too. Any decent human beings would have tried to help a stranded young woman refill her car and get back on her way, but instead, they were clearly planning to take the car and do unspeakable things to her. He had not expected to have to use his hunting weapons against other people, but he could feel no remorse that he had done so in this case. These three wouldn’t harm anyone ever again, but it was inevitable that more low-life predators like them would try to take advantage of the helpless. As long as this situation lasted, he could never again afford to be careless or unprepared.
April interrupted his thoughts when she asked about his journey on foot out of the city: “So, you just walked out of the middle of New Orleans, dressed like a deer hunter and carrying a bow and arrows?”
“Yeah, what else could I do? Right when it happened, I had taken an exit in Metairie to stop and get some breakfast before I got in the traffic heading across the bridge to Slidell. I was just sitting at a red light, waiting for it to turn green, when all of a sudden it just went completely out. At the same time, my dad’s truck went dead. I was shocked—it was almost brand new. Then, I noticed all the cars and trucks around me weren’t moving, either. People were getting out and opening their hoods, so I got out, too. Then, we all were asking each other questions, and we soon figured out that no one had a cell phone that was working. The businesses along the street had lost power, too. People were coming out of the buildings and gathering on the sidewalks.
“Then, I heard a woman screaming and saw her across the intersection, pointing up at the sky. Just seconds after that, there was a huge explosion somewhere to the west, in the direction of the airport. People started panicking and running up and down the streets in every direction. The ones who had seen what happened were saying a big jet had circled several times but was losing altitude rapidly before it just turned hard to one side and pointed nose down and crashed. Some people were yelling something about 9-11 and saying it was another terrorist attack.
“I didn’t know what to think of all that, or what to do really. Like I said, I’m from out in the country and things are crazy enough in the city even in regular times to me. I didn’t have anywhere to go and there was no way I could call and find out if my parents made it to Houston or not, so I just decided to stay right where I was for a while until I could make sense of what happened. I mean, the truck was all I had in New Orleans and the only place I had to go. I don’t know a soul there.
“But then, I got to talking to the man who was in the car behind me at the red light when it all happened. He said he lived in Metairie and commuted to his office in downtown New Orleans every day. He was there after Hurricane Katrina and knew things were going to get bad real fast if the power stayed off. He was prepared this time, though. He had a big generator and plenty of emergency food and other supplies at his house. After I told him about my situation—how I didn’t know if my parents were even alive and that I had to get back home and check on my sister—he insisted that I come by his place to at least get some supplies for my trip. His house was just a couple of miles away, so I got my bow, my hunting knife, my boots, and my camo out of the truck and walked back there with him.
“He was a nice guy and his wife was great, too. They tried to talk me into staying there a few days to wait and see what was going to happen with the power situation, but by the end of the day, we still didn’t know anything. A lot of people were starting to say they had seen strange lights in the sky the night before, though, and, considering the extent of the damage, that it must have been caused by something like a solar flare. There was no way to get any news, and no one was coming into the city by vehicle or any kind of aircraft, so it didn’t seem likely I would be able to get the truck running anyway, so there was no point in waiting any longer.”
“You wer
e lucky to have met some nice folks,” April said, keeping her eyes on the road.
“I sure was. I wanted to start walking immediately, because I knew I had more than a hundred miles ahead of me. I decided to leave at night, figuring there would be fewer people out on the streets after dark and that I could cover ground faster that way. It was still soon enough after the blackout that most people hadn’t figured out what was going on, so it wasn’t as dangerous as it would be in another day or two. Those folks fed me well before I left. They had a big propane cooker and didn’t want to let the fresh shrimp and vegetables they had on hand go to waste, so it was quite a feast. Then they gave me a couple of MREs, a bunch of energy bars, and all the bottles of water I could carry in my pack and stuff in the pockets of my hunting clothes. I’ve still got some of the energy bars left if you’re hungry, by the way.”
“I’m okay,” April said. “I ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast this morning before I left. I grabbed a few cans and the rest of the bread and chips David and I had at the apartment. It’s back there behind my seat if you want any.”
“We’ll have plenty of food at our place,” Mitch said. “You can take some with you to Hattiesburg, too. I know Hattiesburg is no New Orleans, but there are still enough people there that I imagine there will be problems, especially with the food supply. What part of the city do David’s parents live in?”
“Their house is near the university. His dad works there. It’s in a quiet neighborhood back off of Hardy Street. I think it’s pretty safe there.”
“Probably for now,” Mitch said. “But there must be 50,000 or more people in the area. When the groceries run out, if they haven’t already, it will get dangerous there, too. You probably can’t stay there for long.”
“I can’t think that far ahead right now,” April said. “All that matters to me now is getting to my baby. Once I get her in my arms, nothing is going to come between us!”
The Darkness After: A Novel Page 3
