Page 49 of The End of the World As We Know It

“I was out on the water next morning, and I hadn’t gone along far when I heard the growl of a motor, and there was the boat you saw. Gene on the deck. They had found their own ride, and they were trying to find me, or hoping to. I couldn’t believe that idiot Gene, who couldn’t find his ass with both hands, was within an ass hair of having me again.

“I knew he would catch up with me, so I ran the boat aground and made a run for it. From there, you know the rest.”

“I think Gene hasn’t given up,” Ricky said. “I know him well enough to know how petty he can be. Now with power, he’s got nothing else to do. As for his few followers, he has to keep them busy so they don’t have time to figure out how truly stupid he is. They’re just looking for a daddy to tell them what to do. So, they’ll be back.”

But they weren’t right back. Things went fine for a while, and it started to look like they might be okay, surviving in the woods, eating squirrels, and in season nuts and papaws, muscadines, digging certain roots to be cleaned and boiled. Being a Boy Scout gave Ricky a leg up on that, as he had taken his scout learning seriously. He was rusty, but it was all coming back to him. He had his scout book as a backup. If necessary, he could also fold a flag, but that seemed like an unnecessary skill now and forever.

Ricky hadn’t started out to seduce Jett, nor she him, but it happened. And it was a good thing, up there in the deer stand, a coolnight wind blowing through the open windows, their sleeping bags zipped together, finding the moment and the after moments, happy as children discovering Easter eggs.

Contemplating on it afterward, Jett sleeping beside him, his arm thrown over her, he knew it couldn’t last. But where was there to go? What was there to do? A town could be worse. If Gene and his crew came looking for them, they would find them reasonably quick. The deer stand was somewhat hidden, but Ricky had found it easily enough, and so would they over time.

What to do was more than a mild conundrum.

Over the following days, Ricky showed Jett where they could find edible wild plants. The basics. He showed her trails he knew, the spring where he got his water. It was clean and clear and the water wouldn’t need boiling. He showed her, too, that in the cool of the evening, it was a good idea to be in the deer stand to avoid the hogs.

The beasts ran in packs, and sometimes the Big Boy, as he had now decided to call the hog that had killed Greg’s accomplice, roamed free of hoggish alliance. In short time, the hogs, already a menace, would grow fast and become even more comfortable with taking over not only the woods, but entire towns.

Ricky showed Jett certain trees that could be climbed quicky, and suggested they try and stay within a short run of them. He knew that wasn’t an absolute, always being near those trees, but it was a wishful comfort.

They found and piled small rocks near the climbing trees so ammunition for his slingshot would be available.

And then on an afternoon when he was building a fish trap with rocks at the edge of the river, designed so fish could swim in easily, but not quite in the opposite direction, he heard a boat motor grinding over the water.

Jett had left her clothes at the edge of the river and was bathing in the water, trying to rinse off some of the worst of the day’s survivaldirt. When she heard the sound of the motor, she came out of the water and began to hastily dress in what were now little more than rags.

So as not to leave footprints that led directly to the deer stand, they ran across the small patch of shore and into the woods. Then they made their way toward the stand by a roundabout method, walking on piles of pine needles and rotten leaves. A good tracker could still follow them, but Ricky doubted Gene could have tracked his own feet. When it came to the former police chief, smart was a distant cousin twice removed.

Ricky and Jett came to the deer stand, stood at the bottom of the ladder, reluctant to climb up and put themselves into what would serve as an inescapable trap. Even below the stand, the view of the beach was good, so they squatted low, observed, and listened.

It was indeed the same boat as before, and when it beached, Gene got off first, followed by two others. Ricky recognized one of them who’d been with Gene before. The one that had run away from the hog. The second one was a stranger. Gene had found a new acolyte, a fat guy with a nearly bald head. And there was still the same guy who remained on the boat the last time. He was moving slowly, as if injured. He was holding the same rifle and didn’t get off the boat.

Gene was carrying a large club and had a pistol in his belt. The recognizable one from Gene’s band of brothers was armed with a crowbar, and the fat one had a tire tool. At least they weren’t carrying a lot of artillery.

As Gene and his assholes moved into the woods, Ricky and Jett went silently away from the ladder, higher up the hill, taking a small trail that led off of the main one, still climbing. He was hoping Gene and his crew would search and decide it wasn’t worth it, go back home, and end up eating each other.

That was as likely as a helicopter dropping a rope to pull him and Jett up to safety, whisking them away to Shangri-la. They climbed. Jett was in front of him, going fast. She was moving like a rocket-propelled mountain goat.

They were sighted quickly. It had to be partly because the little climbing trail they were on wasn’t entirely sheltered by thick trees and fat leaves. Maybe Gene was a better tracker than Ricky assumed. Whatever the case, they had been spotted because he heard Gene yell, “There they are!”

Jett made a whimpering sound and climbed even faster. Ricky worked to keep up with her, making his own whimpers as he went.

Gene and his mugs weren’t right on top of them, but they were close. Ricky could see them down the hill, now at the base of the trail, all sweat-grimed and limb-scratched, working their way up.

“I’m going to eat your balls, Ricky!” Gene yelled. “Your balls!”

“You’ll choke on ’em!” Ricky yelled back.

This seemed to inflame Gene and his comrades, and they really dug in, coming up the hill, the fat one in the lead, which, considering how much meat he was carrying, was surprising.

Ricky wheeled about, slipped a stone from his ammunition bag into the pouch on the slingshot, drew it back, and let it go. The rock sailed smoothy and quickly and hit the fat guy between the eyes. And like Goliath falling from David’s slingshot, back the man tumbled. Rolling, he knocked the skinny guy’s feet out from under him. Gene barely dodged the rolling bodies, leaping up and over the barrel like a dog in a circus act.

The fat man didn’t get up. He lay still and was now sliding slowly down the hill on his back. He finally came to a stop.

The skinny guy leaned over the fat one, said, “He’s done killed him with a fucking rock!”

Ricky knew the shot had been true. Shit, he was good.

When Ricky got to the top of the hill just behind Jett, the trees broke open and the hill sloped down and there was a marshy stretch below them. A dozen hogs moved through the marsh, four of them piglets. Ricky saw a frog jump in the marsh grass. A blue crane sloped downward and skimmed over the back of one incredibly large hog.