The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3)

by Scott B. Williams

  * * *

  After they left the property through the gate on the east side, Mitch led the way as he and Benny rode two of the horses and led the other four that had all been tied up to the porch rail out front. Mitch had never had much interest in horses, but he had ridden a few times before the collapse with friends that kept them on their farms. The thick woods around these parts, not to mention all the fences in most rural areas of the state made horseback travel less than ideal. But once they were in the national forest beyond the fence, it was at least possible, especially since Mitch knew the area well and knew the best route to take to avoid the worst thickets and cutover.

  Following the creek all the way would be out of the question, due to the vegetation, but he knew the pine ridges well enough to figure out a path to the upper reaches of the small branch where he’d asked Lisa to take the others in the canoes. He and Benny rode until they intercepted it, and then it was a simple matter of following it’s course downstream until they neared Black Creek.

  Not wanting to get shot because they were approaching on horseback and might be mistaken for the cattle rustlers, Mitch left Benny with the horses and covered the last quarter mile on foot, finding Lisa and all the others right where he’d hoped he would. But his gaze was locked on April and Kimberly. When Stacy noticed him and pointed his way April turned to face him and once again, Mitch knew she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. She passed Kimberly over to David and leapt to her feet, practically taking him down when she ran and launched herself into his arms. Mitch felt her tears against his cheeks as he closed his eyes and squeezed her tight, neither of them speaking a word, as time seemed to stop and all that mattered for that moment was that they were together.

  But when Mitch opened his eyes and looked over April’s shoulder, the first sight that greeted him was poor Samantha, who had obviously fallen apart again at the sight of April’s happy reunion. Lisa and Stacy were hugging her close from either side, but Mitch knew there was nothing that they, or he, or anyone else could say that would make things better for her, not now, and maybe not ever. And Benny, who had lost his beloved son, was still sitting alone back there on a horse in the woods, beaten and bruised and in need of rest and recuperation. Mitch went to get him, with April walking at his side, refusing to let him out of her sight.

  * * *

  Despite her protests later though, after everyone had told their stories and tried to piece together as much information as they could about the attackers, Mitch said he was going back to the house. He agreed to take one other person with him, and Lisa insisted she was the logical choice. Mitch was okay with that, as the only other he would consider was Jason. He wasn’t about to leave those who stayed behind shorthanded. The chances of anyone finding them here were slim to none, but Mitch was done with discounting possibilities after all that had happened. He wanted to go back there while there was still some daylight, and if there was no sign of more of the bandits then he intended to watch the house with Lisa from the cover of the woods and see if anyone returned there after dark. It was the only way to know if they were still around, and Mitch feared they were after hearing what Benny said about the leader. Benny also confirmed what David said he’d overheard. The men they’d encountered so far were part of a larger group, and judging by what the one called Drake said when he threatened Benny, they were already on their way to the farm and not so far behind. Mitch couldn’t let that happen, but he had to do more recon before he could come up with a plan.

  He tore himself away from April with difficulty and he and Lisa left. Since they had the horses, Mitch figured they might as well use a couple of them, so the two of them rode quietly back along the route he’d taken with Benny earlier. They were almost to the property line when they smelled the smoke. It was heavy, and far more acrid and irritating than ordinary wood smoke from a cooking fire.

  “I don’t like this, Lisa. Let’s leave the horses here and go the rest of the way on foot.”

  Mitch already had a bad feeling before they crossed the fence and entered a thick, slate gray haze of the heavy, choking smoke. It was dense enough to greatly limit their visibility, but he could find his way to the house from here by feel if he had too, and he knew Lisa could too. They finally came within sight of the house and Mitch’s fears were confirmed. The bastards had set it afire, along with the barn!

  Mitch looked for any sign of those who’d done this in his limited field of vision through the smoke, but there was no movement and nothing he could hear over the popping and hissing of the two big fires. Dark spirals of almost black smoke were spewing through several openings in the roof of the house, and under all the smoke were the raging flames that were consuming the structure and everything inside. The barn was nearly gone already, the dry hay stacked in the loft having provided more than enough fuel to create an inferno.

  “Oh my God, Mitch! What are we going to do?”

  “There’s nothing we can do, Lisa. It’s too late! Even if there were such things anymore, a fire truck and its crew couldn’t save the house now.”

  The fire was so hot they could barely approach the edge of the yard. Mitch and Lisa just stood there side-by-side watching, their arms around each other’s shoulders, as their childhood home and place of refuge in this time of great strife was swallowed up in flames. There were so many things they needed still inside, and so many memories lost. As he stood there watching, Mitch realized that the only photo he had left of his mom and dad was the small, water-damaged and bent print he carried in a pouch in his hunting pack, having long since abandoned his wallet. It had been so long now he had mostly given up on his hopes of them returning. The two of them were likely dead and now the family home, his strongest connection to them other than his sister, was about to be no more. Everything had changed once again, and life was about to get even harder for him and those he had left.

  Mitch and Lisa stayed there until nearly dark, and on the way back Lisa found the few items they had taken out the night before and later abandoned in their rush to escape. With heavy hearts the two of them mounted the horses and rode back to tell the others the bad news.

  Twenty-nine

  “I DON’T THINK THEY’LL be back,” Mitch said, as they sat around the campfire that night, huddled on a narrow sandbar beside the clear-running waters of the branch. “They wouldn’t have burned everything like that if they were planning to stay.”

  “It sounds to me like that Drake guy, if he’s the one who did it, was really upset about losing all his men,” Jason said. “Maybe he just set the fires in reaction to that, without thinking?”

  “He was upset all right,” Benny said, “but still, I think Mitch has a point. They didn’t even get a chance to get much, if anything out of the house and barn. I figure that Drake decided to cut his losses and he won’t be back. He probably went back to head off the rest of the bunch that was on their way. I wonder if he was the only one left?”

  “I intend to spend some time studying tracks tomorrow,” Mitch said. “I should be able to piece more of the story together. Regardless of what we think, we’ll need to keep a sharp lookout. But we’ve got to go back there tomorrow sometime.”

  Mitch didn’t have to say why. Everyone knew they had two graves to dig. Then, they would sort through rubble that was left and see if there was anything that could be salvaged. It was not a day he looked forward to, but if those men were truly gone and not coming back, that was almost as good as knowing he had killed every single one of them.

  * * *

  They buried Tommy and Corey in the side yard under the winter-bare branches of a big white oak that provided nice shade in the hot, Mississippi summers. David and Jason fashioned crosses for their grave markers from some cypress planks from the garden that had escaped the flames. Benny did his best to quote a few appropriate verses of scripture and then he said a prayer before they filled in the graves. Mitch was worried whether Samantha was going to survive this at all, but April assured him she would. Sh
e and Lisa and Stacy would give her all the attention they could and do everything in their power to help her get through. Benny was taking it hard too, but Mitch knew he wanted to live, if nothing else for those two girls who called him their “Uncle Benny.” David had lost his best friend and didn’t seem to know what to do with himself, but had gone to Benny and apologized for leaving Tommy when he did. Benny had admitted to Mitch that he’d been extremely bitter about that when he first figured out it happened, but when he realized David’s actions probably saved the lives of all the girls; he understood it was for the best. Tommy’s chances of surviving that bullet wound were slim to none anyway. He’d known that even as he sent Lisa and Stacy back to get the travois.

  Sadly, that same travois had come in handy today to move Tommy’s body to his final resting place, followed by Corey. When they were through with the informal funeral, Mitch and Jason used it again for the unpleasant task of moving the slain bandits off the property. There were far too many of them to bury so they took them west a good piece along the road, in the direction from which they’d come, and spent the rest of the day and that evening searching for enough dry firewood and fat lighter knot with which to burn them. The grisly sight was close enough to the road that anyone coming from that direction couldn’t fail to see it. Mitch hoped such a grim warning wouldn’t be needed, but he’d sent everyone else back to the place they camped the night before as a precaution. They would stay well clear of the house for the most part, until they figured out what they were going to do next.

  Mitch couldn’t sleep that night even long after he and Jason had returned to the campsite to rejoin the others. He was sitting by the waters edge away from the rest, staring at the current in the dark when April came and sat down beside him, asking in a low whisper if he wanted to talk.

  “I was too careless, April. Way too overconfident. I thought I was some kind of expert at this survival stuff and that I had everything figured out; everything under control.”

  “You are an expert at it Mitch. Without you, none of us would even be here now. Nobody has everything figured out, much less under control. You can’t blame yourself for this Mitch. You know this has been going on everywhere ever since the lights went out. Those men were predators, taking advantage of the weak. They made their last mistake coming here though. You stopped them, Mitch. You drove them away.”

  “But at what cost? Look at us now, April. That farm with the house and the barn was the center of our universe. It was our refuge and our means of survival. And now we’ve lost it.”

  “You always said it was the land that provided what we needed, Mitch. You said it was the forest, and the creek and all the life inhabiting them. The house was shelter, but we can build shelter again. We can even build another house. What else have we got to do?”

  “But it’s more than just the house, April. It’s all the stuff in it. My tools and other gear… the stuff I need to make more bows and arrows and everything else we need… so much of that stuff defines me, April! I can’t imagine my life without it. Especially some of the special things Mom and Dad gave me.”

  “I understand how you feel Mitch, but we are not our stuff. It doesn’t make us who we are. I know it’s sad to lose those special things, but even though you lost the physical part of them, no one can take away your memories of them.”

  “Unless you’re David,” Mitch smiled for the first time since he’d sat there. “He lost you and the memory of ever having you!”

  April pulled Mitch close and kissed him passionately. “And that’s a good thing, because now I’m yours. We are going to get through this, Mitch. I’m going to help you. We’ll do what we have to and we will survive.”

  “I know we will April, but everybody has got to understand it’s not going to be easy. The house and barn are gone now, and I don’t think we need to try and build anything back there. It was good while we had it, but like I always worried, it was also our vulnerability. Being fixed in one obvious location like that made us a target. I think going forward that we need to be more flexible, and try to stay hidden… blend into the forest… We can build shelter nearby so we still have access to what’s left on the land, and keep an eye on the cattle and the horses we’ve just acquired, but we don’t have to live on the property itself. Property lines mean nothing now anyway, and here we are, surrounded by all this national forest. I’d like to set up somewhere closer to the creek. We’re going to have to redouble our hunting and gathering efforts and think about other resources we haven’t been using. Benny was talking about building fish weirs and traps a while back before this happened. We can plant gardens in the spring, dispersed in several places along the creek, so they won’t be easy to find. It’s all going to be hard work, April, but what choice do we have?”

  “I’m with you, Mitch. I never would have dreamed a year ago that I’d be living out in the country without power like a pioneer woman, but I did it. Now it looks like we’re going a step further, living in the woods like wild Indians! But I can do this. I totally can with what you’ve shown me already, and I can’t wait to learn more!”

  “Then we get started tomorrow! We’ll talk to the others about it and discuss some possible spots for our winter camp. We need to get to work on getting at least one small shelter built immediately. There will be a lot more rain coming the rest of December and probably January too. There always is. And some of the nights will be cold.”

  “Speaking of December, Benny and the girls never got their Christmas tree before the shooting started out there. Do you think we can still have one for them Mitch? Even if we don’t have a house to put it in?”

  “Of course we can! Lisa told me about the one Stacy found that Benny wouldn’t cut because it was too big to get through the door. Well now it’s not, because we no longer have a door!”

  * * *

  Thanks for reading The Forge of Darkness.

  I hope you enjoyed it.

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  The Darkness After

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  If you enjoyed The Forge of Darkness, you may enjoy reading The Pulse Series, set in the same grid-down world. Turn the page to read a sample excerpt from: Voyage After the Collapse

  Book III of The Pulse Series

  Voyage After the Collapse Excerpt

  COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY Scott B. Williams

  Chapter One

  Tara Hancock made her decision and she intended to stick to it. Sure, it was risky, but everything she did in this new reality entailed risk and danger. By now she’d come to realize that she had to take chances almost daily if she and Rebecca were to survive. Today the risk was different though, because it was not about the two of them and she could have just as well chosen to mind her business and stay put. She and her daughter were relatively safe for now and she could keep it that way, leaving her less fortunate neighbors to fend for themselves. She had tried to help them after all, even if she had failed. But the Owens reminded her too much of her parents for her to leave them stranded. Like her mom and dad, they were too old and frail to hold their own in the midst of the violence they had escaped for now by coming here. Tara couldn’t do anything for her parents now, as they were impossibly far away, but there was one more thing she could try that might help Mike and Lillian Owens, and she was determined to do it.

  She knew that she and her daughter were lucky to have the means to be where they were, anchored safely off the north side of Cat Island. Several miles of water separating the chain of barrier islands from the co
ast provided a safety buffer between them and the madness ashore, but it would not do to stay here long-term. The distance from the mainland simply wasn’t enough, especially if the situation everywhere didn’t improve fast. At this point there was no reason to believe it would, so Tara knew that if she expected to keep her daughter safe, they had to keep moving.

  As long as they had the Sarah J., her parents’ restored Tartan 37 sailboat, they could do that. The small yacht was well stocked and meticulously maintained, and could take them almost anywhere while providing a comfortable place to live at the same time. The Owens were aboard a somewhat larger sailing vessel, and with their deeper draft and inadequate ground tackle, they had found themselves hard aground on the shoals near the island after a line of thunderstorms blew through the night before.

  Tara had tried to help them get off the submerged sandbar into which their keel was firmly buried, but the Sarah J. was only equipped with a small auxiliary diesel, and her attempts to pull the heavier yacht back to deep water were futile. It was going to take more horsepower to do the job, but in the wake of the collapse, there was no marine towing service to call, even if they still had a means to do so. They spent the morning trying various angles with anchors and the onboard winches to pull the heavy Catalina 42 off, but every attempt failed. Tara was completely out of ideas aside from attempting to contact the people aboard the other two boats that she knew were anchored around the point on the south side of the island.