Scott Williams - The Pulse

“No, not to New Orleans,” Grant said as he steadied the canoe while Jessica got in and got situated in the bow seat. “It runs to the Gulf eventually, of course, but first it joins the Pearl River, which is the biggest river in this region this side of the Mississippi. The lower reaches of the Pearl split apart into three rivers and lots of branching bayous that spread out to be more than five miles wide. For about 20 miles it becomes a maze of waterways, and runs through a vast river-bottom forest that is the closest thing I’ve seen in the States to a jungle. The general area is called the Honey Island Swamp, but this forest covers some 250 square miles, most of it protected as a national wildlife refuge. If he is headed there and gets there with Casey before we catch him, it will probably be impossible to find them.”

“How far is it from here?” Jessica asked. They were now afloat, with all their belongings, including Casey’s, stowed in the middle of the canoe between them. The bicycles were left where they’d hidden them, in the dense canebrake.

“By canoe? I’ve only done the trip once, and I think it took us about four days to get to the Pearl River from my parent’s cabin. But we weren’t in a hurry and we were stopping a lot to explore and take pictures. Then we paddled another three days through the swamps and took out almost at the coast. From here, somebody paddling like this guy was doing could be in those swamps in two days, not to mention the help he’ll get with the river up like it is after all this rain.”

“The current will help us too, won’t it?” Jessica asked as she frantically dug into the water with awkward, choppy strokes of her paddle, doing everything she could to help them go faster.

“It will, but we’ve also got to be careful. We don’t want this guy to know we’re following him, but since he saw us going upstream in the canoe, he knows we have a boat and that we could try to follow. But he probably doesn’t think we would be able to figure out that he has Casey, unless we were just guessing.”

“Isn’t the gun still in Casey’s backpack? Maybe when we catch up with the creep he’ll give up when he sees that you have it, like those gang-banger punks in New Orleans did.”

“Are you kidding? Any guy like that who has loaded up a canoe to live out here on the river probably has at least a hunting rifle or shotgun, and likely several firearms and plenty of ammo. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because I don’t have the pistol anymore and he’s likely got it too. It wasn’t in Casey’s pack, and even if she was carrying it when she left her stuff on that log, he must have taken it from her.”

“What are we going to do when we catch up with them then?”

“I don’t know, Jessica. I guess we’re going to have to play it by ear and figure something out. That’s why we need to keep a sharp lookout ahead, down the river. I don’t want to run up on this guy all of a sudden if he’s stopped around a bend or something. And if he suspects we’re following him, it would be easy enough for him to ambush us and we’d never know what hit us.”

“You really think he would just shoot us like that?” Jessica had stopped paddling now while thinking all this over.

“Sure, why not? He obviously doesn’t care about the law or what’s right or wrong. He took Casey by force. Like a lot of other people we’ve run across since those guys tried to grab our bikes, this guy has decided that he can do as he pleases now that society has broken down and the rules cannot be enforced. I doubt he would stop at murder if he’s already gone as far as kidnapping with the likely intention of rape.”

“I’m scared, Grant. I’m scared for us and I’m scared for Casey too. She doesn’t deserve this. We’ve got to try to help her, even if it is dangerous.”

“Of course we will. And of course you’re scared. You have every reason to be. I’m scared of what he will do to her if we don’t find her soon, but more than anything, I just feel like a complete idiot for bringing you two out here and getting you in this situation to begin with.”

“You didn’t know, Grant. You did the best you could, and we saw how things were when we left New Orleans, just as you predicted they would be. I think you were right that we needed to leave. It could have been even worse if we were still there.”

“It would be hard for it to be much worse than it is now, Jessica. We may not even be able to find Casey, especially if he leaves the river somewhere and takes off with her on foot. And besides the problem of trying to help her, we’re almost out of food. Like I said before, I was counting on reaching the cabin by now, and we started out with about all the supplies we could carry on the bikes. Now we’re going to be in survival mode and we’re going to have to find more, but at least that will be easier on the river than it would be if we were still on the road.”

“I don’t really see how, unless we can find blueberries or something like that in the woods.”

“No wild blueberries here, I’m afraid. There are plenty of blackberries, but they won’t be ripe until May. It’s too early for a lot of things like that, but there are always cattails, and this time of year there are other edible greens in these bottomlands. But mainly, there are fish—fish and crawfish. Oh, and frogs, turtles, snakes, alligators, armadillos, beavers, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, turkeys, deer…. Everything that lives in these parts is either in the river or attracted to it because whatever it eats is in or near the river.”

“I know you’ve got the fishing rod, but I hope you’re not serious about eating some of that other stuff. I mean, really, snakes? Alligators?”

“All reptiles are good to eat, and easier to catch than real game like deer. Of course I’d only be interested in a small’gator, and then only if its mama weren’t around.”

“I’ll stick to those cattails you mentioned, whatever they are.”

“You’ll like them. But here, you need to eat something now, we need to keep our energy levels up for paddling.” Grant handed her a Ziploc bag with almonds in it. “Eat a big handful of those. That’s the last of them, but we still have some raisins, three more of the rice dinners, and a little bit of oatmeal. We can make it last at least through tomorrow.”

LYING BOUND AND blindfolded in the bottom of the canoe, jammed among the packs and bags crowding the narrow hull, Casey felt she had lost all sense of equilibrium and time. Only her hearing was unimpaired, and the sound of her abductor’s relentless paddle strokes and the bow of the canoe cutting through water told her that they were moving downriver at a steady pace. She had no idea how much time had passed or how far they might have traveled. It seemed like a long time, and she was sure that Grant and Jessica must have returned to the place where she was supposed to be guarding the bikes by now. She wondered if they had been successful in getting a canoe, but most of all she wondered what they must have thought when they did not find her where she was supposed to be. Would they even be able to guess she had walked upstream? Was there a chance they would find her shoes and other things she had left there? What would they think if they did? It would have to appear to them as if she had simply vanished. They might be able to figure out that she had gone to the secluded sandbar to find privacy for her bath—after all, she did leave her shampoo on the log beside her shoes and backpack, and her underwear was hanging from a nearby branch. But what would they conclude from that? She wondered if they would think she got swept away in the river and perhaps drowned. She felt awful thinking about how upset they would be, and how she had ruined everything by getting herself in this situation. Would they even try to get to Grant’s cabin now, or would they spend who knows how much time looking around for her in vain in the vicinity of the bridge? One thing she was sure of was that they would have no way of guessing what had really happened. And if they didn’t know, there was absolutely no one who would.