Scott Williams - The Pulse

They worked their way around the twists and turns as fast as possible, but by the time the bayou emerged from the forest and rejoined one of the main branches of the Pearl River, it was late afternoon, with little time left before sunset. Grant was at a loss as to what to do next, but he had to assume that if Casey was indeed alone in the canoe, she would head downstream, as there was simply no way she could retrace her route back upriver against the current. He and Jessica paddled into the middle of the river and had only gone the distance of one big, sweeping bend, when she stopped mid-stroke and pointed at something in the distance ahead.

“Look! Is that a canoe?”

It was indeed a canoe, its bow pulled up halfway onto a small sandbar! And it was the common aluminum model, like the one the man who had taken Casey had been paddling when they saw him that first day of this ordeal. It had to be the same canoe, and if so, she surely must have paddled it there. But why was there was another boat pulled up alongside it? Grant could see that the other vessel was not another canoe, but rather a small johnboat, the type of watercraft most favored by the local fishermen in these parts. He could also see that it had an outboard motor hanging off the stern. Such a rig was too heavy to paddle far, so he assumed the motor must still be operable for the boat to be here in such a remote place. But who could it belong to? Could the owner have been the one who did that to Casey’s abductor? And if Casey had been in the canoe next to it, where was she now, and was she in danger yet again from these new strangers? Grant whispered to Jessica that the situation merited a cautious approach, though he could barely contain his anticipation to find out whether or not Casey was indeed finally within reach. With slow, deliberate strokes of the paddle, he maneuvered the canoe over to one side of the river, careful not to make a splash or any excessive movement that would attract attention from a distance.

“Don’t use your paddle, and keep quiet,” he whispered. “I just want to let the current carry us slowly, close in to the bank where they can’t see us. I want to get a good look at whoever it is in that other boat before we show ourselves.”

Using the paddle blade as a rudder, Grant steered the canoe as it slowly drifted downstream in the sluggish current. A thick stand of cattail marsh grew on the bank just ahead, between them and the two boats they were approaching. Grant aimed for the edge of it, and when the bow knifed into the tall grasses, he grabbed a handful to hold them in position, where they could observe the scene while staying hidden. For several minutes there was no movement or sound at all, and he wondered if whoever it was in that boat had taken Casey into the woods away from the river. He was about to paddle on ahead to find out when two men stepped out of the trees and walked over to the johnboat, one of them stooping down to get something out of it. Grant was glad they were well hidden by the tall grass when the other one turned and looked upriver, straight in their direction.

“Oh my God!” Jessica cried out loud. “I can’t believe it! How could this even be possible?”

EVERY DAY SINCE THEY had arrived at Derek’s hidden camp, time had slowed to an excruciating pace for Casey, the hours dragging endlessly by as she felt the confinement of the deep forest closing in around her. The nights were even worse, as she was only able to sleep for those brief periods when she was too exhausted to lay awake in fear or worry any longer. She had no way of marking time other than by the cycles of dark and light, and sometimes the position of the sun on the days it wasn’t cloudy or raining. Derek had no watch, nor did he care what time it was or even what day, week, or month, for that matter. He said that time was a stupid invention of civilization designed to imprison people who had to work for others. From now on, they would live free of time and free of all the other conventions and restrictions of society. But regardless of whether or not she could track the hours, Casey had some idea of the number of days she’d been there, and she thought it was at least nine or ten.

After spending this much time in such an inaccessible pocket of the swamp, among a forgotten remnant of old growth trees that were somehow spared the logger’s saw a century or more ago, she knew that it was highly improbable anyone would ever find her. The camp was essentially on an island, a slightly higher area of mostly dry ground surrounded by miles of sloughs, bayous, dead lakes, and, farther away, the two forks of the Pearl River that bounded each side of the basin. Practically all of the basin seemed to be unbroken forest, with trees growing on both the dry ground and in any water that wasn’t moving. There was no way in or out of it except by boat, and there was no boat that could negotiate the tiny bayou that led to the camp other than a narrow canoe or pirogue. Casey doubted anyone other than Derek had stumbled across it in decades, even before the supposed solar storm, when fishermen from nearby towns frequented the more accessible parts of the swamp in their bass boats year round. Derek had chosen his hideout well, and he had hidden the rough-built tree house platform far enough back in the forest that even if someone did by chance find the tiny creek, they would pass right by, unaware a camp was there.

One thing she discovered he was not exaggerating about was the amount of preparation he had done in his expectation that civilization would eventually collapse and he would someday be living in a place like this, surviving off the land. His skill as a hunter became readily apparent once they stopped traveling, and every morning he was gone before dawn, usually returning within a couple of hours with several squirrels, or sometimes a rabbit, and once, a wild turkey. When they’d arrived there and he had unpacked the big duffel bags and backpacks he had been carrying in the canoe, she discovered that among his gear were several firearms for different hunting and defensive purposes, each of which he showed to her and bragged about with great enthusiasm. First of all, there was a scoped, bolt-action Marlin .22 caliber rifle, which he said he would use for most of his hunting because it was relatively quiet and the ammunition was small and lightweight, allowing him to store enough to last for years. For larger game such as deer and wild hogs, which he said were plentiful in the swamp, he had a short lever-action Winchester carbine that looked to Casey like the typical cowboy rifle seen in old Western movies. Derek said it was chambered for the .357 Magnum, a cartridge that would kill anything that lived in these parts with one well-placed shot. Finally, he had an all-black gun that looked like a machine gun to Casey. He said it was a Saiga semiautomatic AK-47, and that its only purpose in his arsenal was to kill intruders—or anyone else that might present a threat in any way. He told Casey that one day, when he knew he could trust her, after she finally acknowledged that his bringing her here was the best thing that had ever happened to her, he would teach her how to use the guns and how to be a hunter too.

Despite his near-daily wanderings away from the camp to find game, Casey had no opportunities to escape. Although he gave her a bit of freedom around camp during the day, when he was there to watch her, he still bound her hands and feet each night before he went to sleep and left her that way until he returned from the hunt each morning. Casey knew that it wouldn’t have made much difference even if he hadn’t taken this precaution. Each time he left to hunt, he took the canoe and paddled it to other nearby islands of dry ground in the swamp, leaving her effectively cut off from the outside world, as it would have been impossible to walk out in any direction. She wondered if, left free, she would even be able to wade and swim, given a long enough opportunity to get a head start, but the number of large alligators they had seen on both the lower Bogue Chitto and in the waters of the Pearl on the way here made her push that idea to the background as an ultimate last resort. Besides, even if the alligators didn’t bother her and she didn’t get bitten by a snake, she had no idea how far she would have to go to get to solid land, and if what Derek had said was true, the swamp basin they were in was bounded on both sides by the two major branches of the Pearl River. Casey knew that in order to escape and find her way to help, she was going to need the canoe. And to get the canoe, she was somehow going to have to take Derek out of the picture. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, as he was much bigger and obviously quite agile and fit as well, judging by the way he moved. From what she had learned of his life, he had spent most of his adulthood hunting and practically living in the woods between odd jobs, and she had no doubt that he was plenty tough.