Mitch had no doubt that the men who did this had been at their game for a while. Wherever they came from, they had likely been emboldened by many successful raids on other farms and rural homesteads, and until they found the Henley farm, they had probably not met with real resistance. But their looting and killing spree came to an end on this lonely gravel road at the edge of Doug Henley’s 600-acre spread. Benny and the girls had done their part before he arrived, but it was the whispering death of Mitch’s arrows that finished the job, taking out most of the horsemen before they even realized they had become the hunted.
Mitch still blamed himself for letting it happen. If he hadn’t been a half-day away deer hunting with Jason and Corey, they might still have a home, and Tommy and Corey might still be alive. But the hunting was a necessity and Mitch was the most competent of them all when it came to keeping everyone fed. It was a dilemma he faced daily, because he couldn’t be everywhere or do everything that needed doing all at once. The others wouldn’t hear of his talk of somehow being at fault, but he couldn’t help feeling that way because he was their unofficial leader and therefore responsible for their safety and survival. In the end they had all done their best, but it was truly an attack the likes of which none of them had foreseen or could have prepared for. He knew that all they could do was go forward from this point and deal with making do with what little was left. It could have been even worse, considering the nature of the attack and numbers involved. If those men had known they would encounter real resistance, they might have been more careful in their planning and the outcome for those at the farm could have been far different.
Mitch followed the edge of the road for a quarter of a mile looking for any sign that intruders had attempted to slip back onto the property. Relieved to find nothing, he cut back through the woods to the place where his family home once stood. The wood-framed ranch-style house had burned to the ground, all but the brick foundation pilings that supported it. Mitch and the others had sorted through the rubble as they found time between taking care of their immediate needs, and had salvaged what they could. There was little left undamaged, but metal tools and other bits that survived the flames were set aside and cleaned. Anything that could be reused would give them an edge, helping in their attempt to rebuild their lives from nothing and survive on what the land and the creek provided.
He paused to stare at the two fence-board crosses planted at the edge of the yard, the mounds of fresh earth in front of them turned muddy by all the recent rain. Corey and Tommy didn’t deserve to die so long before their time, but neither did the countless others who’d fallen victim to the unraveling of civilization in the wake of the blackout. It was hard losing friends, especially among their now close-knit little band of survivors, and it was harder still to see the sorrow that Benny and Samantha were going through. Standing there looking at those two graves, Mitch wanted to hunt down the killers who escaped and find the rest of their party. He had discussed this with his friends and while all of them had the same feelings, in the end they’d decided against it. No one wanted to split the group up for such a dangerous mission, and they couldn’t all go, certainly not April, with little Kimberly to look after. From what Benny had overheard, it was likely that most of the others following behind the raiders were women and children. Mitch didn’t relish the idea of harming women and children, unless they too came here and posed a direct threat. He would remain vigilant, but with each day that passed it seemed less likely that would happen at this point.
Pursuing those people would take time that he didn’t have anyway. There was so much work for all of them to do just to stay fed and sheltered from the winter weather that they couldn’t spare even one of their number for such a hunt. They had worked out a system whereby he and Benny and Jason took turns on patrol duty, checking the site of the burned house and barn as well as the road for signs of the marauders. But otherwise, when not on such duty, everyone was occupied with building their new camp and doing their best to make it as comfortable as possible given what they had to work with.
They had relocated to the area near the sandbar where April and the girls had fled to hide that awful night when the farm was attacked. Two big bends in the creek downstream from the nearest boundary of the Henley farm, it was sufficiently far away that their activity there would not be heard by anyone traveling the road or venturing into the yard. The forest in that area was comprised of tall, mature hardwoods with little underbrush on the ground. The sandbar provided a landing place for their canoes, which they needed to ferry what they had salvaged on the farm to their new woodland home.
The metal roofing from Doug Henley’s boat shed proved to be among the most useful of all the things they brought from there. Detached from the house and far enough from both it and the barn to survive the heat, the galvanized steel panels had survived intact and could be reused. It had taken hours to do it by hand, but they removed the screws that held the panels in place with a multi-bit screwdriver kit stored in the boat’s tool kit. The original shed was 12 feet wide by 20 feet long; a gable roof design supported on steel posts and trusses. Disassembled, the roof yielded 14 three-foot-wide panels that were uniformly eight feet long.
Mitch wanted to move the posts and trusses to the new camp and reassemble the entire structure there. But that proved to be impossible, as the posts were embedded in concrete and there were countless nuts and bolts to unfasten to break down the trusses. It had rained off and on every day for weeks and the December nights were cold. The metal panels were the most important part of the structure, so they set to work to get them to the camp as fast as possible. They would build new framework for a longer-term structure as soon as possible, but meanwhile a few of the panels rigged as a temporary lean-to would keep them somewhat dry. Their lives had changed dramatically once again, now reduced to a truly primitive existence with few possessions and far more exposure to the elements.
Mitch was confident they could make it though. He had been learning the necessary skills for years simply because he was passionate about woodcraft and hunting. Benny, too, was a lifelong hunter and woodsmen who had grown up poor in far simpler times, allowing him to easily make the transition required now. Jason was coming along nicely in his apprenticeship as a hunter, as was his younger sister, Stacy. Mitch’s own little sister, Lisa, had been shooting and following her dad and brother into the woods since she was old enough to keep up, and April, who Mitch met on the way out of New Orleans, was doing better than anyone expected for a city girl who knew nothing of the woods before the lights went out.
There were still many challenges to overcome though. April’s little Kimberly was totally dependent upon all of them to take care of her, and she was of course April’s top priority, limiting what the young mother could do more than any in their party. Samantha was torn apart in mourning for Corey, which was totally understandable, but she would soon have to pull herself together because everyone had to do their part. Benny’s heart was broken over the loss of his only son, but he was doing remarkably well, considering. Lastly there was David Green, questionable because he still had no recollection of his past, not even knowing that he was Kimberly’s father. None of them knew quite what he would do if he somehow got over his amnesia and realized the truth. April had clearly been done with him even before it happened, but how would he react if he saw what was developing between her and Mitch?
Mitch looked at the burned-out rubble that had been home for another long minute and then turned and set out for the creek. He hadn’t been away but a few hours, but already he missed her and couldn’t wait to get back to her side. For all he’d lost, he had found April—and now at last he wasn’t afraid to let her know how he felt. Mitch had been in love with her a lot longer than he realized, but until now he hadn’t dared to dream she might feel the same. There was still a lot of uncertainty as to how far it might go, but he had every reason to believe they were meant to be together.
Five
BENNY EVANS LOOKED UP f
rom the small eddy where he’d been watching a leaf swirl round and round in the current. He’d already given up on fishing, knowing they weren’t biting after the first fifteen minutes of casting. Benny was sitting on the banks of Black Creek just a few hundred feet upstream from the new camp. He still had his fishing tackle because he and Tommy had left that stuff stored in their canoe, along with their paddles. Some fresh creek bass or bream would be a treat, but Benny wasn’t here to fish as much as he was to simply have some time to think. Tommy’s death was on his mind almost constantly, and more so when he was alone, but he wasn’t trying to avoid those thoughts. He just needed some time to work through them without the others feeling sorry for him or trying to help him cope in whatever way they thought would help. He didn’t feel like talking about it that much just yet; besides, it was pitiful enough seeing Samantha’s suffering. The poor girl had lost her high school sweetheart and love of her life, and was understandably inconsolable. Benny hoped she wouldn’t try and take her own life before she got through the worst of it, but all of them were concerned and were keeping a close watch.
This whole situation was just hell on earth for these young folks who should have been looking forward to the best years of their lives as they made their way out in the world. Benny was old enough to already be content with the way his life had unfolded and the bigger picture wouldn’t have mattered as much as long as he had his family. But now Tommy had been taken from him just nine months after he’d lost his dear Betsy. Benny didn’t have anyone or anything else to lose, besides these kids that had been so good to him and Tommy. He knew they could use his help though, so he would stick around as long as he was useful and not a burden to them. He had been a little under the weather though for the second day in a row. What started out as a sore throat had turned into a bad head cold that had him stopped-up and feeling miserable. The headache that accompanied his sinus congestion wouldn’t go away and he had nothing to take to make him feel better. Any over-the-counter remedies, medicine and first aid stuff Mitch’s parents had kept on hand in their house had been lost in the fire. The cold, rainy weather wasn’t helping and it was worse today than it had been the day before. But Benny figured he would get over it. He just hoped the rest of his friends didn’t catch it. Especially little Kimberly.
The sound that had caught his attention and diverted his gaze from the hypnotic leaf in the water was the rhythmic dipping of a paddle. When he looked up he saw the bow of a canoe clear the bend upstream. It was Mitch returning from making his rounds of the farm. Seeing Benny there, he stopped paddling and let the canoe drift closer.
“Any sign of them?” Benny asked, keeping his voice low to avoid hurting his throat worse than it already was.
“No. I didn’t see a thing. I don’t think they’ll be back. If the rest of the bunch were coming, I think they would have done it by now. How are you feeling? Anything biting today?”
“Feel like hell, to tell the truth. And no, not even a nibble. This weather ain’t worth a darn for fishing, but I had to give it a try. Besides, I don’t need to be around the rest of them while I’m sniffling and sneezing like this. I sure don’t want that baby to catch it.”
“Well, you can’t stay out in the weather all the time either. You’ll end up with pneumonia or something. It’s too cold to fish and besides; I think everybody’s happy enough with the change from venison to beef for a while. There’ll be plenty of time for fishing come spring.”
“That’s a fact. We’re set for now, at least if it stays cool long enough to finish drying all that meat. We’ll have quite a stash of jerky on hand.”
Jason had bagged a young buck on the hunt that took him and Mitch and Corey so far from the farm and resulted in them being away the night of the attack. They had arrived on the property with the deer before they discovered what had happened, so they had venison in addition to a huge supply of beef from the two steers that had been shot. All of them had worked hard to save as much of the beef as possible before it spoiled.
In all the months since the blackout, the hunting was good enough that Mitch didn’t have to slaughter any of the animals in his father’s herd. But they were not going to waste what those other men killed. They had hung the fresh beef in the shade over the creek just below their camp, out of the reach of scavengers while they worked to preserve what they couldn’t cook and use right away. With the rainy weather and no prospect of sun to dry it, they had constructed a teepee-like structure of poles and leafy branches to retain the smoke, hanging strips of the meat near the top over a small, smoky fire. This created enough heat to dry it without cooking it, but it was a full time job to gather enough fuel for the fire and to prepare and rotate out the strips. Lisa, Stacy and David were in charge of the operation after Benny showed them how to do it. He said the jerky they made might not last as long as it would if they had a better way to dry it, but at least they could save a lot of the meat that would otherwise go to waste.
Days of having more than sufficient food on hand freed Benny and Mitch and Jason from hunting, giving them time to make their security patrols and work on building their shelter. As a result, they had made considerable progress, especially before Benny started feeling bad. Benny had used an axe for the better part of six decades, since his boyhood on a farm, and most of his adult life was spent working in various construction trades, especially carpentry. With his experience and craftsmanship, and Mitch and Jason providing most of the muscle, they had cut the posts and framing members from nearby small trees and built a sturdy lean-to structure designed to utilize the metal roofing they’d removed from the boat shed.
“I’m glad now we didn’t try to disassemble the metal frame and haul it down here,” Mitch had said, as Benny’s all-wood design took shape. “This should be just as good.”
“More than just as good. It’s going to be better for our purpose. By having one continuous run of roofing on a single pitch we’re getting a little more covered space out of the metal we’ve got, and with the back end low to the ground, it’ll be easier to close in the sides. And that’ll make it easier to keep the cold out at night. With the fire pit at the front, the smoke can escape from under the high end.”
“I agree,” Mitch said. “A lean-to design is hard to beat. I often pitch my tarp that way. That’s how we had it that night after Jason shot the deer and we couldn’t find it until morning.”
“I wouldn’t call that a comfortable night though,” Jason reminded him, recalling the endless rain that kept the three of them huddled under the scant fabric shelter.”
“No, but we survived….” Mitch stopped. Benny knew what he was thinking as his face clouded over. They had survived that night all right, but unbeknownst to them, Tommy was already dead and Corey would die the next morning, ambushed by one of the raiders the three of them had no idea were on the property.
“Well anyway… the thing is,” Benny said, “this lean-to is going to be our home. We’ll be as comfortable as possible considering the circumstances. I’d say we’re mighty fortunate to have that metal.”
“That’s for sure,” Mitch agreed. “I know in theory how the Indians that lived in these parts built their shelters from raw materials, but it wouldn’t be easy to make a roof that wouldn’t leak, especially in all this rain we’re having now.”
“No. Walls are one thing. We can improvise those. But a roof would be tough.”
Benny knew a thing or two about how uncomfortable it could be living in the woods. He and his boy, Tommy had been living out of their canoe for months on end since Betsy was killed. They had ranged all up and down Black Creek, camping in a tent in the woods along the banks while they hunted and fished to stay alive. At the time Benny had figured they would live that way indefinitely, and they probably would have if he hadn’t chanced upon April Gibbs and her little girl and helped them out of a tight spot. It had been nice while it lasted, joining up with the young folk at the Henley farm and living inside the comfortable house they all shared. But now i
t was back to woods living, and Benny didn’t mind the hardships; but he aimed to do his best to help make it as comfortable for these kids as he knew how.
Thankfully, despite all that was lost in the fire, they still had most of the tools they needed. There were axes and splitting wedges that had been out at the woodpile, far from the flames, and they’d picked through the barn rubble for whatever else had survived the heat. Most of the metal tools such as shovels, hoes, hand saws, hammers and things like that could be reused after they made new wooden handles for them. That would all be done as time allowed. Finishing the permanent lean-to was top priority, but they had enough of the roof temporarily rigged into a smaller one to keep everyone dry while they worked.
“I think I’d better sleep under your tarp tonight, away from everybody else,” Benny said, as he got into the canoe with Mitch for a ride back downstream to the camp. “I don’t know if I’m contagious or not, but I can’t figure where I’d have picked up this mess unless it was from one of them fellows when they had me tied up in the house.”
Darkness After Series (Book 4): The Savage Darkness Page 3
