Darkness After Series (Book 4): The Savage Darkness

by Scott B. Williams

  “Could be,” Mitch said. “But you’d think all of us would have it by now if it was catching like that. You’re welcome to use the tarp if you want, but I’ll bet you’ll be better in the morning. It feels like the rain is going to let up. Maybe there’s another cold front coming.”

  “If it is, the dry air behind it may help. It’s hard to say. It sure would be nice to have a dose of Nyquil or at least a shot of whiskey to help me sleep though.”

  Benny wasn’t one to dwell on what he didn’t have though. Wishing for things like medicine and drink would accomplish nothing. The truth of the matter was that they had a lot of useful stuff, despite their heavy losses. In addition to the metal and the tools to build their new rustic home, they still had the three canoes, their weapons, and all but two of the cattle. From the dead attackers they had acquired eleven horses, more than a dozen semi-automatic rifles; mostly AK-47s and AR-15s and M4 clones, and lots of additional magazines and ammo for all of them. Most of the men had been carrying side arms as well, so they now had quite the collection of handguns, both revolvers and pistols. These included a scoped stainless-steel Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, a couple of Ruger .357 Magnums, two 9mm Glock 17s and a Glock 19, three 1911-types of various makes chambered for .45ACP and a few other 9mm and .380 semi-autos from Ruger, Sig, Kel-Tec and Taurus. Smaller items taken off the men and out of their saddlebags included several good folding and fixed-blade knives, matches and other fire-starting tools, and miscellaneous bits of camping kit essential for living outdoors. Benny and the others had no doubt that most of the weapons and probably the horses those men had ridden were stolen or taken off victims they’d killed elsewhere. But there was no way of knowing and nothing to do but collect what they could as spoils of war to be utilized as needed. And right now, he needed something to get rid of this cold so bad that he would have traded any one of the nicer rifles or handguns for some medicine or whiskey without a second thought.

  As a matter of fact, trading was something that had been discussed around the campfire more than once since they’d been here. None of them had anything to wear but the clothes on their backs, although there were a few dirty and well-worn items among the dead men that could be used if necessary. Clothing and footwear were at a premium and hard to replace, yet equally needed like shelter and food. It was something that would come up again, but they all knew the dangers that awaited everywhere beyond their woodland refuge.

  Six

  MITCH COULD TELL BENNY was more miserable than he let on and that he needed to rest so he could get over whatever had made him sick. The next day when he and Jason got back to work on the lean-to, he tried to stop Benny before he got started.

  “Why don’t you just take it easy and be the supervisor today? You can watch and tell us if we’re messing up something, but you’ll probably get over that cold quicker if you don’t wear yourself out.”

  “It ain’t much better this morning, that’s for sure. But it ain’t gonna make no difference whether I work or sit here watching. I don’t know about you two fellows, but one thing I always hated was somebody hanging around looking over my shoulder while I was working. If I’m going to watch, I might as well be helping.”

  “It wouldn’t bother me at all,” Jason said. “You’ve already helped us do the hard part. Now all we’ve got to do is get the roof on, and with this change in the weather, we’ve got time to do it right.”

  Mitch agreed. The day had dawned bright and clear, with morning temperatures in the low thirties, by his estimate. Knowing what he did about the weather patterns here, he figured they would have three or four days of this; maybe even a week until it rained again. They had managed to stay dry for the most part by using some of the metal temporarily propped up, but it was going to be so much better having the larger, permanent shelter where they could spread out and be somewhat comfortable.

  “Well, you’re gonna need my help splittin’ them purlins for the roof. They’ve got to all be pretty near the same thickness or those steel panels won’t lay down right. And we’ve got to be careful spacing them out so they work out exactly where all those screw holes in the metal already are. That’s the only way it won’t leak, and besides, we don’t want to have to try and make new holes since we’re gonna be driving them in by hand. Now I know you two boys can both handle an axe, but I can square away those purlins a lot faster than the both of you put together, so that’s what I aim to do today.”

  Mitch knew there was no point in arguing with Benny. He was going to help, sick or not. The three of them would get started soon, and sometime around midday, either he or Jason would make another round of the farm and the road to make sure all was clear. But before they began, Jason excused himself and walked down to the sandbar where Samantha was sitting at the water’s edge, her back to the rest of the group.

  “I’m glad Jason’s taking some time with her,” April said, when Mitch asked her how she was doing this morning.

  “Well, Samantha’s practically family to him. She’d be his cousin if she and Corey had gotten married like they planned to. I know Jason’s pretty upset over Corey too, but he’s keeping it to himself pretty well.”

  “They were close, weren’t they?”

  “I don’t know if they were back before everything changed, but yeah, ever since Corey and Samantha got here they’ve seemed to really hit it off. I hope Jason can help her through it. I can’t imagine what she’s feeling after losing the person she was so in love with.”

  “I can’t either,” April said, looking into his eyes. “If something ever happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “You would keep on taking care of that little girl, that’s what. You’re strong, April. I can’t think of anything that would stop you for long, unless it was losing her.”

  “I don’t even want to think about that. And I don’t want to think about losing you either, Mitch.”

  He wanted to kiss her again right there, but they were not alone and at this point they were trying to keep their feelings for each other low key around the others. Jason knew of course, and Mitch was sure Benny and Lisa and Stacy did too. Samantha though, had not been paying attention to what anyone else was doing since she found out Corey died, and David Green was still off in his own world, as he had been since Mitch found him. It was obvious though that he was much sadder for losing his new buddy, Tommy, and he had spoken little since the day they buried him and Corey.

  The look in her eyes told Mitch that April wanted him as much as he wanted her. They needed time alone together to explore these new feelings, but that simply wasn’t going to happen until all the work that couldn’t wait was done. Mitch couldn’t help feeling anxious with anticipation and not a little worry that somehow she would change her mind, and that the fleeting magic they’d already shared would be all there was to it. He was worried too that David might somehow interfere, suddenly realizing who he was and that April had been his and that her daughter was his child too. It was hard for Mitch to put these thoughts out of his mind, and they had been with him constantly since that first kiss the day he’d defeated the men who destroyed their home and forced them into this primitive existence. Winning April’s love was a dream come true if indeed it really happened. The way she looked at him just now and what she’d said about her fear of losing him convinced him it had, but he didn’t say anything else.

  He heard the sound of Benny’s axe and figured it was time to get to work. Jason soon joined them and they started by cutting the heavier poles that would serve as rafters for the lean-to.

  “These’ll run front to back,” Benny said, spanning the gap between the high front beam and the low back one. They can stay round on all sides, but we need to try and pick out logs that are all the same rough diameter, with about the same taper, so they’ll make an even surface to lay the purlins on.”

  Mitch could tell from the beginning that Benny’s design ideas were sound. Instead of a quick and easy camp-style shelter, this lean-to was built more like
a real log cabin, but with a mix of natural materials and modern fasteners. In addition to the roofing panels, they had spent hours going through the rubble and ashes collecting nails of all sizes, especially the large framing nails they needed. The log rafters were too thick to nail through though, and Mitch and Jason were still unclear as to how they would be attached until Benny began cutting notches in each end to fit over the beams.

  “I’m sure glad we found this old level your dad had,” he said, as he marked off a long stick to measure the distance between the top and bottom notches for an exact fit on the beams.

  The paint had burned off of it and the liquid-filled bubble windows had burst, but the four-foot long steel body of the level had survived. After Benny cleaned it up the engraved ruler markings in inches and fractions were still visible. Mitch knew Benny was happy to have it because he took pride in doing things the right way, and being able to make accurate measurements meant he could make the lean-to symmetrical and square.

  When they lifted the first rafter log into place, the notches on the bottom side fit perfectly, locking it into place on the two main beams. Benny had sized the beams and the rafters so that additional support in the middle was unnecessary. That would open up the interior and give them a more flexible layout. The size of the rafter logs made it possible to space them quite far apart as well—on four-foot centers. But the purlins, which could be a lot smaller, had to be carefully placed on two-foot centers to match the existing screw holes in the roof panels.

  “Once we get all these rafters in place, the notches will keep them from sliding down, but we’ve still got to fasten them in a way that the wind can’t get under there and tear the whole thing off.”

  “We shouldn’t ever get a wind like that way down here in the woods,” Jason said.

  “I hope not, but I ain’t going to all this trouble to do something half-assed. We’ll toenail ’em best we can with some of the biggest nails and then use lashings on top of that if we can scrounge up enough bits of rope. The purlins we can nail. I aim to split them down to flat-sided staves as close to two-by boards as I can get ’em. That way, it’ll be easy to screw down the roofing.”

  Mitch and Jason had already asked him what they were going to do about the fact that most of the rubber sealing washers that came on each roofing screw were old and had crumbled apart when the screws were removed.

  “It would be best if we had new ones, but we can improvise. I reckon we could figure out something using little pieces of wood or leather to make some more washers.”

  “But won’t that take too long? It seems like that would take more time than it’s worth and it still might not work. Why not just use some pine sap or something like that to seal them?” Mitch asked.

  “I’m considering it,” Benny said. “It’ll work if we use enough of it. We’ll probably have to reapply it pretty often, but it’ll serve the same purpose as caulk or tar, which is what people use all the time to fix leaks. Down here in the shade like this where the sun won’t dry it out so fast, it oughta last okay. But hell, even if we have a drip or two here and there, we’re still a lot better off than if we had to try and come up with a roof from scratch.”

  “People did it back in frontier times,” Jason said. “What did they use back then?”

  “It depended on the location mostly,” Mitch said, drawing on his extensive reading about the Native Americans and the early pioneers. You could make a roof with slabs of bark, split wooden shakes, grass or palmetto frond thatching, animal hides…. There’s lot’s of options.”

  “They all sound like to much work to me.”

  “You betcha they were,” Benny said. “We’ve got it easy compared to them folks back then.”

  Mitch knew he was probably right, but the difference was that people back then didn’t know any other life. They lived simply by the work of their hands, close to nature and the elements and constantly exposed to their dangers. But his generation and even older folks like Benny had lived in a world of machines and comforts for most of their lives. Having it suddenly taken away was far more than most could handle, and that’s why so many had died already, either by direct circumstance such as plane crashes or lack of critical medicines, or as victims of violence perpetrated by the desperate.

  The three of them worked together until noon, when Mitch left after a short lunch break to go and make the rounds of the farm again. Although they’d agreed to take turns, most days Mitch insisted on going himself. After all, he was the most competent tracker among them, and besides, he wanted an excuse to revisit the site of his destroyed family home and have some time away to think. When he returned later that afternoon, Jason and Benny had finished preparing all the rafter logs for the roof and had cut many of the saplings from which they would split the purlins.

  “I figure we’ll get most of it framed up by the end of the day tomorrow,” Benny said. “But I’ve about had it today.”

  Mitch could see that he was feeling worse. He hated to see Benny sick like that and not have anything to give him for relief.

  “If you’re not better tomorrow, you’re gonna have to lay off work. You can’t just keep pushing yourself and getting sicker. We need you around, Uncle Benny.”

  “I’ll be better in the morning. I can feel it breaking. You’ll see.”

  But when Benny joined Mitch and Jason at the fire the next morning shortly after dawn, Mitch could tell that he wasn’t better. Benny was shivering more than he should have been, despite the coat he had on, and his face was red and his eyes bloodshot from all the congestion and the sneezing he’d been doing. He looked like he needed to go back to bed, and Mitch told him so. Benny admitted he wasn’t any better, but he didn’t really think he was worse either.

  Before Mitch could argue, he heard April calling him from where she had been sleeping with Kimberly and the other girls under the temporary shelter nearby.

  “I think Kimberly’s getting sick, Mitch. I think she’s got a fever.”

  “She does,” Lisa confirmed. “Feel how hot her forehead is, Mitch.”

  He did and he agreed. April’s little girl had likely caught whatever Benny had. She was crying softly and shaking as April held her close to her body and moved closer to the warmth of the fire. “I don’t know what to do for her, Mitch. We don’t have anything to give her.”

  Seven

  MITCH SUDDENLY FOUND HIMSELF faced with a problem he had given little thought to before. Keeping everyone fed had been challenging enough, but doable. Defending against threats from others had been even more difficult, but so far they had done well enough, considering the odds, but sickness? Mitch was out of his league with that. No one in their group had any kind of medical training or knowledge. Jason and Stacy knew perhaps a little more than the rest simply because their mother was a nurse and they’d picked up tidbits of information from her over the years when someone in the family had gotten sick. But aside from their collective lack of knowledge, there was no medicine of any kind to be had, at least not among the few things they’d saved and salvaged from the fire.

  Mitch didn’t want Benny to feel bad about it, but he was sure Kimberly had caught whatever it was the older man had, and he in turn had probably picked it up from one of his captors when they were holding him in the house.

  “It’s probably just a cold,” Mitch told April, as he sat there beside her as she held Kimberly close. “That’s what Benny’s symptoms are.”

  Benny didn’t think he’d had a fever, but even if he did, Mitch knew he wouldn’t have brought it up. He didn’t want to complain, no matter how bad he felt. But looking at him this morning, Mitch knew he was feeling worse than before. And whatever it was, it had moved into his chest, because he was coughing often and hard this morning.

  “I hope it’s not the flu or something like that,” Stacy said. “Mom would know. I sure wish she was here.”

  “Me too,” April said. “I’d give anything right now to know what I should do. I’m scared for her. I can’t
stand to see her feeling ill.”

  “I know children get sick all the time,” Stacy said. “We did, and we usually didn’t have to go to the doctor for it. But Mom had stuff to give us. I wish we had something for her. Just some Tylenol or Ibuprofen would probably bring her fever down, but she’ll get over it anyway if you just keep her warm. It looks like it’s going to be a warmer day today than it was yesterday.”

  “I need to go find her some then,” Mitch said. “There’s bound to be some Tylenol to be had somewhere. Everybody had that stuff at home before.”

  “But where are you going to look?” April asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to think. Maybe one of the other farm houses out here, if anyone’s still around…or maybe at Stacy and Jason’s house in Brooklyn? Wouldn’t your mom have kept more things like that than most people, Stacy? Since she was a nurse?”

  “Yeah, she had a pretty well-stocked medicine cabinet. But I wonder if anything’s still there. With no one at home, the house has surely been broken into by now.”

  “Probably, but would looters think to grab medicines like that? Maybe not…”

  “It would be too dangerous to go there, Mitch,” April said. “Brooklyn is so close to Highway 49. You know that if those men that burned the house found us all the way out here, they or others like them must have long since attacked little towns like Brooklyn.”

  “That’s possible, even if they did, they’re probably long gone by now. It’s not that far that I couldn’t go see. With one of the horses, it would only take a day to ride there and back, and I could stay out of sight going there if I ride the Black Creek hiking trail instead of the roads. It goes right by Brooklyn.”

  Mitch knew April would worry about him if he went, but she was worried about Kimberly too. Although no one said it, they all knew that a child that young could develop a high enough fever to kill her, and quickly too. Mitch wasn’t going to let that happen if he could help it. A day spent riding there to see was not going to affect the other things that had to be done. If he was delayed for some reason and had to bivouac overnight on the trail, that wouldn’t be a big deal either. The work on the shelter could wait, as the weather was holding and they had time to finish it before it rained again.