“She’s got skills,” Tye said. “Impressive.”
“I have lots of skills you don’t know about,” she said as she winked at him.
She noticed Carsten looking back at her, curious, as though he’d picked up on those words as being flirtatious. She playfully kicked his behind. “I missed you.” He turned to his mom, his face lit up, “I missed you too.”
The group stopped to catch more small animals, so he took the opportunity to spend some time with her. He reached out and hugged her tight. Though she had to pull him down to reach, she kissed her first born babe on the top of his smelly head. “I kept thinking about you and your brothers. I had to get back to you.”
He hugged her again and whispered to her, “Mom, I’m begging you, please don’t leave again. I mean it. Promise me.”
She looked up at him and saw the same face his dad always gave her when he was deeply troubled by something. She had to look away. It was like looking at Lance. “I promise, baby. I promise. That’s what Tye and Caleb are here for now. They’ll go out instead of me.”
He put his arm around her and walked with her. After his dad died, he knew it was up to him to be the man of the family. The weight on his shoulders was already overbearing. Even still, he would do anything to keep her safe. She was his world, and the two of them had been together the longest. With his dad gone so much, it had always been the two of them. He couldn’t imagine being without her.
Not wanting to be left out, Jaxon ran up behind his mom and put his arm around her from the other side. The three of them walked together while she told them of her adventures and mishaps and how Tye and Caleb saved her, carried her, and took care of her on her journey home.
“What is that smell?” Caleb asked as he walked right into a cloud of pungent stench.
“Listen,” Rodney said. The howl grew louder and louder. It was a mishmash that started out low and aggressive like a wolf, but as it progressed it spiraled into a higher pitch ending with a coyote-type yipping.
Chad walked up with the bag of animals they’d killed along the way, and they took them out and tossed them into a pile. “It’s a pack of coywolves. They’re some kind of freakin’ hybrid between a wolf, coyote, and dog. They’re huge, and they’re mean. We're in their territory.”
Junior and Tye looked at each other. “I bet that’s what we saw back by the sinkhole,” Tye said.
“Are they red?” Junior asked.
“Some of them are. They have different colors like all canines. It depends on the breed and color of the parents,” Rodney replied.
Tye stood closer to Rodney. “We saw some red ones, but I wasn’t sure what they were. I’ve never seen a wolf in Louisiana, but if they’re a hybrid, then that answers that. Still, where’d they come from? I’ve been in these woods all my life, but I’ve never seen anything like that until after it all hit the fan.”
“Some people say they come from up north; like they came this way to avoid the ash and flood water. A buddy of ours, Danny, said there ain’t no such thing as a coywolf. He said canines have been breeding like this the whole time, and they’ve always been here, deep in the woods. Who knows? They’re here now though, that’s for sure.”
Carsten cut the skin of some of the small animals to make sure the blood would attract the wolves. “Yeah, they used to stay to themselves and only hunt at night. But now, as cool as it is and with the sun blocked out so much, they’re killing and eating all the time. I guess that’s how they got so big.” He cut the tail off a nutria and said, “Let’s go.”
They walked away from the area as fast as they could. It wasn’t long before they heard the animals growling and fighting over the buffet they’d been gifted with. Once they heard them, the group broke out into a sprint trying to make as much distance between them as possible.
“We’re here,” Rodney announced as he pushed through the final layer of trees and foliage. In front of them was a partial clearing surrounded by a man-made pond in the shape of a boomerang. A red bridge stretched across it with a path of red bricks that led straight to the door of a dilapidated old plantation home. It was a massive display of grandeur situated in an overgrown mess of grass, weeds, wildflowers, and bushes.
Rodney held his hand up. “Alright, everybody in one single file line. Do not, I repeat, do not step out of the single file line. New folks, these grounds are full of booby traps. If you do not step in the footsteps of the person who walked in front of you, we cannot guarantee your safety. Understood?”
They all spoke up stating that they did indeed understand. Rodney continued, “Alright fellas, you know what to do. New folks, one of our people is going to walk in front of each of you to be sure none of the traps are set off. We used deep sea fishing line as trip wires, and they are hard as hell to see if you don’t know where they are. Pay attention to the person in front of you. Trey, take us through.”
“Maybe if y’all cut the grass every once in a while you could find the booby traps,” Caleb joked.
“The better to trip you up with my dear,” Maia teased back.
Trey led them through in a single file line. Trey yelled out "trip wire." As they each approached it, they stepped over it. As a precaution, Jimmy placed a wood contraption across the trip wire. It was made specifically for this purpose. The three pieces of wood made a boxed tent and fit perfectly around the wire giving it enough space so that it wasn’t touched. He stood there, holding it in place, making sure no one bumped it.
When Maia got to it, she showed Sadie how to step over the contraption making sure not to touch it. Should any of them accidentally trip it, a loud horn would blow, and it would have to be reset. Once they made it past the deterrent booby traps, they continued along and followed Trey through the maze. He knew which ones were decoys allowing them safe passage through, and which ones weren’t.
“What’s with all the booby traps?” Caleb asked.
“A couple of reasons. First, this is one of the main places where we come to hunt, and we needed to be sure it’s secure, so one of the guys we hunt with gave us all these ideas for booby traps. He’s a real backwoods kind of dude. Charlie gave us ideas too. Some just make noise and alert us that someone is here and some are to scare people off, but obviously, others will do a lot of harm.” He stepped over another trip wire. “Also, this is our last line of defense on the route home if we’re being followed. We can lead people here and, well, hopefully, we remember where all the traps are, and they’re so eager to catch us that they don’t notice them.”
“People ever try to get in?”
“Two people were dumb enough to keep going after setting off the noise alarms and bypassing the deterrents. The log swing got one of ‘em, and the other one fell on the nail bed in the front of the house. He managed to pull himself off of it only to be taken out by the spear trap. That dude had more holes in him than Swiss cheese” Rodney gave Caleb a stern look then thought it best to warn the group. “The red bridge and red path to the house is all a decoy. Never, ever get on that bridge or path. Some of it’s lined with explosives, and the bridge collapses in the center. Got it?”
They replied yes, and Tye and Caleb made sure to reiterate to the kids that they shouldn’t go anywhere near there. “What’s that shiny stuff on top of the water?” Elex asked.
“Oil. When the explosives go off, it’ll catch fire. Let’s hope we never have to use it,” Rodney replied.
“That’s overkill, don’t you think?” Caleb asked.
“Yep. Danny doesn’t think so though. He’s here the most. He’s the one who thought of it. Wait till you met him. He’s one weird and scary dude. I’m glad he’s on our side.”
Finally, they made it to an open patch of grass behind the house. Carsten backed up and took off running then jumped up onto the bark of a tree. He flung his climbing rope around it then dug his spurs in and climbed. He was headed to the window on the second floor since they kept the doors bolted from the inside. He got halfway up the tree when the door o
pened.
“What the hell ya doin’ in dat der tree, boy? Ya think I can’t open da door? I ain’t dat old, ya know. I can open all umpteen locks all by my lonesome.”
Carsten shook his head and jumped down.
“Charlie…” Maia said as she rushed to hug him. He hugged her back and said, “I’m so glad you’re okay. And lookie here, you got all your people with ya.” He greeted the rest of them then spoke directly to Maia, Caleb, Tye, and Rodney. “Come on. There are some things of utmost importance we need to discuss.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The side door led them through the pantry and into the candlelit kitchen. The home was kept up for the most part, but no one had lived in for ages. Though they repaired, cleaned, and aired it out often, the home still had damaged areas and was contaminated with mold.
They did their best to avoid the rooms that were the worst offenders and attempted to fix it a little at a time. Cabinets, molding, unnecessary interior doors and even some wall panels were used to cover windows, make repairs and feed the fireplace to keep warm. This particular shelter kept them safe and cozy many nights since they first found it.
Maia excused herself to the bathroom so she could clean up, change clothes, and relieve herself of the confines the ace bandages caused. With all the bodies inside the house and the fires to keep warm, she opted to go with double tank tops and wind pants. When she returned, she caught Tye giving her the once over, a few times. Charlie asked the kids to show the guests around while he discussed some things with the grown-ups. The five of them took their seats at the kitchen table.
“What’s going on?” Maia asked.
“A few hours after y’all left I went into Bottleneck to trade a few things. The dog hunters were there recruiting. They said about a dozen of their guys got ambushed.”
Maia, Tye, and Caleb made grimacing faces then glanced at each other. “Oh…y’all know something about that? Is that why you’re a day late getting here?” Charlie asked.
Maia wrinkled her nose. “That was us. Somehow they caught our scent as soon as we left out of the gates. Either we didn’t cover our tracks well enough, or those tactics don’t work the way we think they did. I don’t know. We had to stay the night at Allen’s.” With her elbows on the table, she cupped her head in her hands. She still couldn’t figure out what went wrong.
“Mmm,” he said as he pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it. “They’re tripling their forces, and they put out a map of where they’re pillaging. Number one on that list is the edge of the swamp surrounding Amitola.”
Their jaws dropped. Rodney blurted out. “What?”
“Why?” Maia asked.
“They say a recruit of theirs told them he’s lived in the woods out there since Judgement Day and he’s always seeing people, including women, traveling across there via boat. They’re assuming they can round up some women from around here and across the swamp.” He tossed the piece of paper onto the table towards Maia.
“How’d you get this?” Caleb asked.
“I saw one of the guys who signed up, and I followed him around a bit making friends. He told me all about his new job; what they said to him so far anyway. He even showed me the map. Of course, the paper I handed him back was blank. I kept the real one. He was clueless.”
Maia marveled at Charlie’s abilities as she studied the map. She located all of the spots marked “x” then added them up. “There’s five camps set up all along our route. What do they plan on doing?”
“He said they intend to search by a grid and capture people they see coming out the swamp or whoever’s in this area. And they gonna interrogate ‘em to find out what’s over there and how to get there. He said they been trying to navigate it and can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Good, that means our plan is working,” Rodney said.
“Oh, I know,” Charlie said.
“What do you mean?” Tye asked.
Rodney looked over at Maia, and she gave him a nod. He moved the marble cutting slab off the counter and set it on the table in front of them. He grabbed a couple of cups full of rice from one of the canisters then poured it on top and spread it out thin. He used his finger to draw a bunch of trails in the rice.
“The flood that made the swamp caused natural pathways. A bunch of us mapped out the entire area then we made a maze out of it. Cutting down trees and using debris to block certain paths, making some look open only to lead you right back to the beginning, stuff like that.”
Caleb ran his fingers through the lines in the rice, “So, only you guys know the right way to get through?”
“Exactly, but we change it too because early on we caught some people mapping it out. So far, every couple weeks or so, we change something and redo it. It’s the only way we could figure out to keep these people away from A-town.”
“A-town?” Tye asked.
“It’s supposed to be short for Amitola,” Maia said. “People these days have to shorten everything, and since there was no emoji for Amitola, they went with a nickname.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Rodney said putting away the rice and cutting board.
Caleb looked at him, baffled. “You keep the rice?”
“Yeah, that’s how we plot and plan; what you just saw. We don’t use paper. These people find everything. We ain’t leaving ‘em an invitation and a map.”
An invitation and a map; Maia had said the same thing back at Charlie’s. Caleb thought about the things they’d experienced in only the last few hours or so: animal noises as signals, teenagers in trees and flanking like an organized military, ever-changing swamp mazes, maps and communication in rice, booby traps, dog/coyote/wolf hybrids. No wonder they’d been able to go undetected for so long. And now, the dog hunters set up camp all along their perimeter in an attempt to catch them. They knew that somewhere out there was a community of people but had no luck in their efforts to find them.
Tye asked Maia, “Back at the army trucks you said we couldn’t split up because they’d find us and interrogate us. How’d you know that? What happened?”
Maia considered her words before she spoke. “When I go out, I sleep in the trees because up is usually the last place people look. You tend to witness a lot of things from that vantage point. A few times I’ve seen the dog hunters chasing women and the guys they’re with will always try to send them off running while they stay behind to fight. The problem is, they know that’s what men usually do so they use it to their advantage. They work in a triangle formation so that there are guys ahead of them and on both sides before they even command the dogs to chase. That way they catch everyone.”
Rodney agreed, “Yeah, they take the men alive if they can. They torture ‘em until they squeal about their camps, people they’ve seen on the road, where they get food, anything they can use. Then they kill them anyway unless they’re tough. Those they give an ultimatum; join them or die. The ones that beg and bargain get tortured the worst.”
She took a sip of water from a cold stainless steel cup. “When we ran from them yesterday, I was hoping they had just been at Bottleneck and seen us and maybe didn’t have time to get into formation. If so, we could outrun them. But, when Sadie fell, my eye caught a second group running alongside us. That’s when I knew we’d have to stop at some point to fight so I was just trying to get us to an area where we’d have the advantage.”
“Ahhh, that’s why their second group was there so quick,” Tye replied.
Caleb set his attention on Rodney. “Tell me what we can do to help.”
“Well first—“
All of a sudden their bones felt as though they’d leap out of their bodies as they reacted to the sound of the air horn.
“Hot damn booby traps! What’s wrong with you people?” Jason shouted.
The crew stood on the back porch staring wide-eyed at Jason, Tony, Sean and the rest of their group. After one of them had tripped the air horn, they thought it best to put their hands up in surrender,
except Dirk Garcia. He’d got hit in the man parts by the small rock catapult that was meant to deter. It was safe to say he was deterred.
“How the hell did they find us?” Rodney muttered. “Stay put, so you don’t kill yourself,” he yelled to them then he turned to Charlie and Maia, “What you want to do about them?”
Charlie threw his hands up. “You need to get ‘em in here now. We need to see what they want and make sure they’re gonna keep their mouth shut about this place.”
He looked at Maia for approval. She rolled her eyes. “Bring them in.”
Once they were safely inside the house, Caleb made sure to get right to the point. With Tye and Rodney behind him, backing him up, he put a hand on Jason’s shoulder, “What are y’all doing here? I thought we agreed you’d stay away from her?”
Jason pushed his hand away. “This doesn’t concern you, man.” Stay out of it.”
“If it has anything at all to do with her or any of her crew then it does concern me.”
Tony wasn’t fond of the drama they had going on, so he decided to speak up and get the party started. “When we went put the signs up for Rob, we heard some guys talking about the dog hunters going after people who lived around your swamp. One of our guys signed up with them to get some intel. We figured out they were coming this way, so we decided to follow them. They’re setting up camps all along here to try to flush y’all out.”
“And how did you find this place? Did they lead you here?” Rodney asked.
“No, they stopped a few miles from here. We tracked y’all from the snowball stand by the sinkhole, but don’t worry; we covered your tracks from them.”
“And exactly how did you know we were at the snowball stand and what tracks did we leave?” Maia asked.
Jason grinned. “Because you have a bad habit of rubbing your fingers on things. You rubbed the dirt and stuff plumb off that chair you were sitting in, and you left some of that orange polish in the crevices of the wood. And you eat too much damn popcorn. You left us a trail all the way to the woods. Tracking your footprints after that was easy. Those wolf-dog things are mean as hell though. I ain’t never seen Sean run so fast.”
Amitola: The Making of a Tribe Page 31
