CASEY GLANCED OVER her shoulder one last time at the terrible place on the Interstate where a dead man was sprawled face down on the concrete slab. She shuddered to see that at least a dozen of the big black vultures they had disturbed in their passing had returned to swarm over the body, while more circled downward, gliding in for the feast in lazy, spiraling loops. Casey looked ahead with apprehension for signs of more winged scavengers, as Grant had said it was inevitable that they would pass more dead bodies, but, at least for now, she didn’t see any.
By the time they reached the exit to Causeway Boulevard, where they would get off the expressway to turn north, the mid-afternoon sun was baking the hot concrete beneath their tires. New Orleans’s heat and humidity, even in March, could sap the strength of the fittest athlete. Sweat dripped on her handlebars as she rode, and her quadriceps burned from spinning the cranks. Jessica was struggling even more than she was, while Grant made it look effortless.
“I don’t think I can go much farther without resting,” she said, as they coasted down the ramp at their exit.
“It’s only a little over two miles from here to the start of the Causeway Bridge,” Grant said. “If you can just try to push on that far, we’ll stop there and take a real break before we start the crossing. We need to eat something to keep our energy up, but I’ll feel a lot better if we don’t stop until we’re on the bridge.”
Causeway Boulevard, like every other road they had seen in the city, was packed with stalled cars and trucks, but in the short ride north to the start of the bridge, they had to move out of the way several times to make room for the occasional running vehicle as well. Most of these were pickup trucks, station wagons, or sedans twenty years old or more. Without exception, all were bound north, out of the city, most jam-packed with families and as many of their belongings as they could pile in the back or lash onto the roof. All of them faced a 24-mile-long obstacle course of more stalled vehicles blocking the bridge, but Grant said that by now people had probably pushed enough cars to one side or the other to open a route. Most of those few lucky enough to be riding in motor vehicles were focused on the obstructions ahead of them and hardly gave Casey, Grant, and Jessica a second glance. While a lone traveler without much stuff might have had some chance of hitching a ride, no one was going to stop for three people loaded down with gear. There were other bicyclists riding out of the city too, as well as a few people walking with large backpacks or duffel bags slung over their shoulders. The refugees moving north that first day were the vanguard of what would surely become an exodus from the city when more of the population of the greater New Orleans area figured out that help was not coming. Grant said it would probably be several days before many people accepted that reality and decided that their survival was up to them, and even those who realized the truth would likely hesitate due to indecision until it was too late.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Jessica said, “except in a movie or something. This is just unreal.”
“It’s sort of like a hurricane evacuation, but without the traffic jams. You should have seen what it was like here just before Katrina hit. Every road north was backed up bumper-to-bumper for a hundred miles. It was that way all the way across Louisiana to Mississippi and Alabama. But the big difference was that the cars were running. Everyone who had access to a vehicle and any common sense at all got out and got out early.”
“But they also had someplace to go, right?” Casey asked. “I mean, all they had to do was drive far enough inland from the Gulf to get out of the danger zone. Where will all these people who are leaving go if the power is out everywhere? I don’t imagine most of them have a cabin like yours to go to.”
“No, but a lot of them may have relatives or friends nearby. Maybe they think everything will be normal somewhere else within reach, or at least they can hope. But they’re making the right choice to get out of New Orleans while they can.”
“Don’t you think there will be someone willing to help all these people, like there are when hurricanes hit?” Jessica asked. “Surely there will be some somewhere.”
“It’s possible, but we just don’t know the scale of this. If it’s as bad as the worst-case scenario, I just can’t imagine how anyone could do much, no matter how much they may want to. I think you’ll see small groups of neighbors joining together to help each other, especially in the smaller towns and rural areas to the north of the city. But I don’t see how they can do much to help a bunch of outsiders flooding in with nothing to eat. I’m just glad we have what we need with us and a place to go so we don’t have to depend on anyone’s generosity, because it will probably be in short supply.”
At the edge of Lake Pontchartrain, the broad northbound and southbound lanes of the boulevard disappeared and the roadway transitioned into two separate, parallel bridges, with two lanes going north and two going south. Low concrete retaining walls bordered the edges of the lanes on either side, allowing a good view of the water from the height of a bicycle seat. The three of them pedaled onto the bridge, leaving land behind for an open horizon of empty water for as far ahead as they could see. Driving across the Causeway was about as close as a person could get to being out at sea without a boat, and Casey had found it interesting the few times she’d crossed it, especially in the middle sections of the span where no land other than the bridge itself could be seen in any direction. She had never dreamed of riding across such a bridge on a bicycle, and knowing how long it seemed to take in a car, she felt a good deal of apprehension about pedaling such a distance.
Grant said he thought it was okay to stop once they’d ridden about half a mile onto the bridge. He was visibly more at ease now that they had this small bit of isolation between themselves and the streets of the city. Casey and Jessica followed his lead and leaned their bikes against the rail. They all drank from their water bottles and sat in the shade of an abandoned delivery van to get some relief from the hot concrete. The three shared peanut butter and crackers, some dried fruit and almonds; Casey and Grant ate some of the beef jerky Grant had bought at the store. Grant said they would have a hot meal later that night when he felt they had gone far enough to camp safely. High-energy snacks would get them through the miles until they could rest.
As they sat there eating, an occasional car or pickup motored by headed north, and one young couple on expensive touring bicycles with a covered baby carrier hitched behind the man’s bike made their way by as well. The trailer was occupied not by a child, but rather by a small dog that looked to be some sort of schnauzer.
“They’ll probably be eating him before this is over,” Grant said. Seeing Jessica’s expression of horror, he felt bad about bringing it up. “Well, they eat dogs in a lot of other cultures,” he explained. “It’s weird how we have such a strange attachment to some animals while we slaughter others. What’s the difference really, between a dog and a pig?”
“Dogs are cute!” Casey said. “That’s what.”
“I know. Man’s best friend and all that. But still, they are just another variety of animal that our particular culture has chosen to live with as pets rather than raise as meat-producing livestock like pigs or cows.”
“That’s why I don’t eat meat,” Jessica said. “There’s not really a difference and it’s not our place to decide which species are better. All animals have a right to live, just like we do.”
“Agreed!” Grant said. “Except that it’s not a right. Humans are the only animals able to comprehend such complex concepts. In the animal kingdom it’s all about survival of the fittest. We just happen to be at the top of the food chain—for now. In the overall scheme of things, we haven’t always been, though, and we’re still not in some places, like out there.” He pointed to the empty expanse of sea over his shoulder. “In the sea, it’s all about who’s the biggest and who has the most teeth. Now, I’m afraid a lot of people are going to see that survival of the fittest applies to us, too, once you take away all the technology that has made our lives so easy. I’ll never forget how my first undergrad anthropology professor put it. He said if you compared the entire span of human history to the span of a single twenty-four-hour day on the clock, then the advent of the Industrial Revolution would not occur until about five minutes to midnight.”
“Really? I never would have thought about that,” Jessica said.
“Interesting, isn’t it?”
“I feel like survival of the fittest is already about to apply to us,” Casey said. “I’m not looking forward to riding all the way across this bridge.”
“Me either. It already hurts just to think about getting back on that bicycle seat. I don’t think I can go much farther today.”
“You both are doing just fine. We’ll take it easy and stop as much as we need to.
If we have to keep going after dark, that’s fine too, but I want to get past the main navigation channel under the bridge before we stop. There’s a drawbridge there, and if for some reason the authorities decide to open it, we’ll be screwed. I’ll feel a lot better if we camp on the other side of it, even if we are still on the Causeway.”
“How far is it to the drawbridge?” Casey asked.
“It’s closer to the north shore, really, I think about two-thirds of the way across. So figure maybe 15 or 16 more miles.”
“Ugh! That’s a long way.”
“You can do it. We’ll find a place to camp after we pass it and sleep long enough to be refreshed for tomorrow. We should easily be able to push past Mandeville and Covington in the morning and get out in the country, where I’ll feel a lot safer.”
“I hope you’re right about that,” Jessica said. “Places like that scare me. When I think of rural Louisiana and rural Mississippi, all I can picture is a bunch of rednecks with guns.”
“Well, there are some rednecks there to be sure, and most people out there have guns. But those are the kind of people who generally won’t mess with anybody who is not messing with them. As long as we’re not trying to steal something or trespass on somebody’s land, we’ll be fine. I know you’re from California and all, but it’s not quite like Deliverance down here.”
Grant got them back on the bikes before they had time for their tired muscles to cool down and stiffen. They continued north on the bridge as the late afternoon sun began to sink, casting a glaring reflection on the watery horizon to their left. Casey couldn’t imagine doing something like this on her own, without Jessica’s company and Grant’s encouragement and guidance. She wondered as she rode what she and Jessica would have done if he had not offered to help them, and she still wasn’t quite sure why he wanted to be burdened by them. She guessed that without him, they would have just stayed put like almost everybody else and waited—but for what? If Grant was right about all the things he’d told them, life in New Orleans would be a lot harder than riding a bike 90 miles. She didn’t want to think about the entire distance, but the least she and Jessica could do was make their best effort, considering all he was doing to help them. She gritted her teeth and focused on riding 15 miles; just 15 more miles and then they could stop for the night, eat something, and get some sleep.
Before they reached the drawbridge they crossed three smaller navigation channels where the Causeway rose to elevations ranging from 22 to 50 feet to allow the passage of smaller recreational vessels. At each of these places, the roadway rose in a steep hump that forced Jessica and Casey to get off their bikes and push, while Grant shifted to his lowest gear to spin along at a speed that matched their walking pace. They reached the crest of the second and highest of these elevated spans as the sun was beginning to set over the water in an impressive display of reds and golden yellows.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sunset,” Jessica said.
“Sunsets over the water are the best,” Grant agreed.
“It sure makes me miss my dad,” Casey said. “I just hope he’s okay. I hope they found their way safely to land and that things in the islands are not as bad as they are here.”
Grant was about to reply when they all became aware of a distant roar of engines to the south, in the direction of the city but obviously much closer, as they were now a good 12 miles from the south shore. The sound was growing louder, and it became clear that it was coming their way. From their vantage point on the elevated section of the bridge, they were soon able to see movement, and moments later that movement was distinguishable for what it was—a long line of motorcycles—winding among the stalled cars and trucks and coming their way at a rapid pace.
“Quick! We’ve got to find a place to hide,” Grant said. “I don’t like the looks of this. There must be nearly a hundred of them! I don’t think they can see us yet. Let’s get the bikes down there behind that pileup of cars and get out of sight before they get here.”
The pileup he was pointing to was the scene of a multiple-vehicle accident that must have occurred just as the pulse hit and the drivers lost control. Some were smashed against the guardrail, and an overturned GMC Yukon was halfway on top of a crushed compact car. As they made their way around it and pulled the bicycles out of sight into the jumble of vehicles, Casey saw to her horror that there was a dead woman hanging upside down from her seatbelt in the Yukon. A pool of blood had dried beneath the crushed car under it but Casey turned her eyes away before she saw another body. It was a gruesome place to hide, but they had no other options. The lane to the far right was just clear enough to allow passage of one vehicle at a time, and they could only hope the motorcyclists would go on by.
“Is it a motorcycle gang?” Casey asked in a whisper, as the first few in a seemingly endless line of loud Harleys reached the foot of the elevated section.
“Probably,” Grant said. “Or a motorcycle club, as they would prefer it.”
“What would they do to us?” Jessica whispered.
“Maybe nothing. But I don’t want to find out. Two beautiful girls out here with no law and order and no one but me to try and stop them…it’s not worth taking the risk. Now keep down, and don’t move!”
The first of the motorcyclists crested the rise in the bridge and streamed by the pileup in pairs and groups of threes and fours. They slowed down, gawking at the wreckage, but none of them stopped. Some of the riders had female passengers behind them. All of the bikes were loaded down with saddlebags, duffels, and other luggage strapped to sissy bars, forks, and handlebars, and without exception, all were Harley Davidsons from the 1980s or earlier, running obnoxiously loud straight pipes. Some of the riders were carrying guns in plain sight: pistols in holsters at their sides or shotguns and rifles slung over their backs or strapped to their machines. As they passed by, Casey could see from the patches on the backs of their jackets and vests that they were indeed members of an organized club. She had heard of the name Bandidos somewhere before, probably in a movie or something, but it didn’t mean much to her. Whatever Grant called them, they looked like a gang to her, and she was really glad that they were hiding right now instead of pedaling along in plain sight of these bearded, tattooed, and greasy-looking bikers. When the last of them finally rolled past their hiding spot, she felt a flood of relief. Grant was right, there must have been more than a hundred motorcycles in the roaring procession, but all of them were focused on getting to wherever they were headed to, and soon were far enough away that it was safe to come out.
“Bandidos,” Grant confirmed. “They’re the dominant club in New Orleans and most of the Gulf Coast region.”
“Are they like the Hells Angels or something?” Jessica asked.
“Yep. Definitely an outlaw motorcycle club. They usually don’t mess with regular people unless they get in the way of one of their criminal enterprises, but in this situation, it’s not worth taking a chance.”
“I’ll say. They sure look like they could take on anybody. Where do you think they’re going?” Casey asked.
“Who knows? Probably somewhere to hook up with other chapters in their organization; there are thousands of Bandidos here in the South, and other, rival clubs as well. Riding those old Harleys with their simple engines, they’ve got an advantage now over most people, including law enforcement agencies. There’s no telling what they’re up to.”
“I’m starting to think I’m going to like staying at your cabin in the woods,” Jessica said.
“I’m telling you, any place away from people is the place to be in a situation like this. That river is not on the way to anywhere, and most people with criminal intentions would have no reason to go somewhere they wouldn’t expect to find lots of people to take advantage of. We’ll be so much better off when we get off the highway. The cabin is at the end of a dirt road that is miles from even the nearest crossroads. We’ll be safe there—or I should say at least as safe as anywhere I could imagine, in this country, at least.”
The sound of the motorcycles had completely faded when they remounted their bikes and started moving again. Daylight was fading fast, but Grant insisted on getting past the drawbridge, even though he admitted it was unlikely that it would be opened. They had not seen any sign of ship or barge traffic on the vast lake all afternoon, and there was little reason to think that the authorities would deliberately open the bridge and cut off one of the main evacuation routes out of the city. But still, he didn’t want to take a chance.
“Once we’re past that drawbridge, we’re past the last potential major obstacle between us and the cabin. If I sleep at all tonight, it will be because I know that. But I probably won’t sleep, because there’s no way of knowing who else may come along in the night.”
“I think we should keep a rotating watch, the way Uncle Larry says you have to do on a boat at night when you’re out at sea.”
“That’s a good idea. Yes, let’s do that every night until we are safe at the cabin.”
The last few miles they covered in the twilight took them across the middle reaches of the Causeway, where land on either end was at its most distant. There were other people in this desolate stretch of roadway over the water—refugees from the city who had made their way this far and also stopped for the night to camp, and others who had been here since their cars stopped, still waiting for someone to come and help. Most of those in the latter category were too weak to move by now and had little chance of survival. Riding past them was heartbreaking to Casey, but she understood that she could do nothing for them. They barely had enough water between the three of them to last until the next morning, after exerting so much energy in the afternoon heat. Grant said they would cross some streams shortly after they reached the north shore the next day and that they would have the opportunity to refill their water bottles then.
When they finally pushed their bicycles across the steel grate of the drawbridge, full darkness had descended upon Lake Pontchartrain. Though they were now only eight miles from Mandeville, where there should have been a blanket of city lights covering the shoreline, there was nothing but blackness, making it impossible to see land to the north. Likewise, there was no glow from the direction of New Orleans to the south. Instead, in the absence of man-made light pollution to obscure the heavens, the stars that filled the sky overhead were more brilliant than Casey had ever seen them. Out here in the open with no trees or buildings to block her view, she could see even more of them than she had the night before on Grant’s front porch. It was simply amazing to her how much of the natural world she had missed before while living in the artificial insulation of modern technology. She couldn’t help but marvel at this newfound natural beauty, but she would trade it back for her old familiar world in a heartbeat, and she knew Jessica would too. Grant, she wasn’t so sure about. He seemed almost in his element in this new reality, and she was more impressed with him all the time as she saw how he seemed to have an answer for every problem that arose. She attributed it to his unusual upbringing with his adventurous parents, and of course, to his own chosen field of study that promised a continuing life out of the ordinary, mundane working world that most people had to fit into. He reminded her a lot of her Uncle Larry, who certainly had carved out a lifestyle for himself that most people wouldn’t have dared to dream of. People like Larry and Grant may have been outsiders in some ways in the “normal” world, but she was beginning to see that in this new reality they might have a distinct advantage over those who had chosen more conventional lives. She knew Uncle Larry could take care of himself in just about any kind of crisis. She just hoped he could do the same for her dad as well.
The three of them huddled together behind a stranded tractor-trailer rig where they would be out of sight of anyone passing by in the night, and took turns keeping watch while trying to get some sleep during their off-watch hours. Jessica slept better than Casey or Grant did. She still had not caught up from being awake almost the entire night of the pulse event and she was exhausted from her long day that began with walking to Joey’s house and later being attacked by the would-be bicycle thieves. Casey finally got a couple of hours of deep sleep before dawn, but it seemed to her she had just closed her eyes when Grant gently shook her shoulder and said it was time to get up and get ready to move out. He wanted to get in a full day of travel, and hoped they would be able to cover enough ground so that they would only have to stop one more night and then could reach the cabin the following day.
“You would probably already be there if not for us holding you back,” Casey said as they each drank coffee and ate a bowl of oatmeal with chunks of almonds and dried fruit in it to give it more flavor and substance.
“I might be, but that’s not even a consideration. You’re not holding me back from anything. We’ll get there when we get there.”
“I don’t think I can even sit on that bicycle seat today,” Jessica said. “I can’t believe how sore I am.”
“The pain goes away after the first mile or so when you get warmed up. You’ll be fine. We’ll keep on at about the same easy pace as yesterday and before you know it, we’ll be off this bridge, through all the towns on the North Shore, and out in the countryside.”
Grant was right about the soreness going away. Casey couldn’t believe how much it hurt to sit down on the narrow bicycle saddle when she first got back on it, and her legs felt so stiff she didn’t think she could turn the cranks. But ten minutes into the ride she was starting to feel better, and the cool morning air made it a lot easier to breathe than it had been in the heat and humidity of the previous afternoon. The ride might have been pleasant if not for another gruesome reminder of the new reality they passed before they got off the bridge. This time the victim was a young man who didn’t look unhealthy or out of shape at all, nor had he died in a car accident. His body was lying between an undamaged pickup truck and the concrete retaining wall. A stain of dried blood darkened the bridge deck beneath his head, and when Grant looked more closely he saw what could only have been a bullet hole. The back window of the truck was covered in a large Mossy Oak camouflage clothing logo, and the bed was empty except for some nylon ratchet straps that looked like they had been cut with a knife.
“He had something in the back of this truck somebody wanted,” Grant said. “It looks like he was into hunting; it was probably some kind of four-wheeler ATV with a pull-start engine they were able to get running.”
“Somebody killed him for it?” Casey asked in disbelief.
“It sure looks that way.”
“Those motorcycle guys?” Jessica asked.
“No. They wouldn’t have wanted or needed a four-wheeler, and this guy’s been dead longer than that. It probably happened the first day, when everyone first realized they were going to have to walk if they ever wanted to get back to land. My guess is that it was someone with about the same mentality as those punks that tried to take our bikes. He probably put up a fight and lost.”
It was still early in the morning when they left the Causeway for good and rolled onto the smoother pavement of the four-lane highway that began where the old bridge ended. Like Grant, Casey felt a lot better now that they were off that narrow route. It had felt like a trap, where the only avenue of escape was straight ahead or back the way they’d come. At least now that they were back on a regular road they could turn off in any direction if they had to, or even cut across a parking lot or yard to get away from any potential attackers.
Highway 190 mostly ran through an area of strip malls, gas stations, car dealerships, and fast-food restaurants, all built with automobile access in mind, unlike the older environs of New Orleans such as the Tulane campus area. Because of this, there were far fewer pedestrians and bicyclists out and about. Just as in Metairie and the other suburban areas of New Orleans, all of these businesses were closed. Some were boarded up with plywood as if in anticipation of an approaching hurricane; others were guarded by owners sitting or standing by the entrances with shotguns and rifles. A few stores, especially the convenience stores that sold food items, had obviously been broken into and looted already, their windows shattered and merchandise and packaging strewn out in the surrounding parking lots. But as they pedaled north, they saw more of a police presence on this side of the Causeway than they had to the south, mostly in the form of small groups of well-armed officers patrolling on foot. In addition, a few older vehicles that would still run had apparently been rounded up by the Covington Police Department and the St. Tammany Parish Sherriff’s Department. Some of these were nicely restored antiques that had probably once been proudly displayed at car shows by their owners but were now pressed into utilitarian service as patrol and rescue vehicles. However they were doing it, it was obvious that the authorities in this smaller city on the north shore of the lake were doing a better job of maintaining some semblance of law and order than the overwhelmed law enforcement agencies of the Big Easy to the south. As Casey remarked on this, Grant said it was a good thing they had gotten here when they did, because the citizens of this town might decide to put a stop to an influx of desperate evacuees from New Orleans if the volume started increasing. As he had suggested the evening before, one measure the authorities could take would be to simply open the Causeway drawbridge, using Lake Pontchartrain itself as a moat to protect them from invading hordes of refugees.
Their passing was not unnoticed by these watchful authorities, but since they stayed on Highway 190 and did not stop except to get off their bikes and drink some water and eat from the supplies they were carrying with them, they were not questioned or hassled. Grant said the best thing they could do was to appear focused on where they were going and ride through these patrolled areas as if they had every right to be there. Hesitation and the appearance of confusion or uncertainty might get them unwanted attention.
“The last thing we want to do is end up in some refugee camp,” he said. “It could certainly happen. Right now, there’s no organization or coordination among different levels of authority, but I would expect that they will eventually try to work out some system to control all the displaced people.”
“How would they do it?” Casey asked. “I thought you said that without communication and with the whole country likely shut down, they wouldn’t be able to send in the National Guard or any outside help like they did after Katrina?”
“No, probably not, but who knows? I would be more worried about the local police and county sheriff’s departments taking things into their own hands. They’re going to have to set up some kind of control systems if they expect to keep any power at all and protect their immediate concerns. I just think it could get out of hand and I wouldn’t want to be among those who they might detain because they think they present a threat. That’s why I kept saying we had to get out early. We’re ahead of the curve so far and I want to stay that way.”
“Me too,” Jessica said. “Even if it kills me to keep riding this bike all day, I’ve seen enough now to know I’ve got to.”
They passed the intersection where Highway 21 splits from Highway 190 and runs northeast, and crossed the bridge over the Bogue Falaya River. Two more miles took them through the north end of Covington to where Highway 190 makes an abrupt turn to the west to connect to Hammond and Baton Rouge beyond, but Grant led them north onto Louisiana State Highway 25.This arrow-straight two-lane route would take them away from the large human population centers surrounding Lake Pontchartrain, with only a few small towns and semi-rural neighborhoods separating them from the real boonies Grant assured them they would find when they crossed the Mississippi state line. Shortly after they left the city limits, they came to another bridge over a small, fast-running creek that looked much more inviting than the murky waters of the Bogue Falaya had. Though the water was far from pristine and unpolluted, Grant said it would be safe enough after chemical treatment and that it would also be nice to wash their dishes from last night’s camp.
“How does that work?” Jessica asked as she watched Grant fill each of their water bottles and then add a capful of some liquid he carried in a small glass bottle that looked like a medicine bottle.
“The bottle contains iodine crystals,” he said. “They are kept inside it by a particle trap, so they can be re-used over and over. I filled the bottle with water before we left my apartment, and it mixes with the iodine to form a concentrated solution. A capful in each quart bottle of water will make it safe to drink after about 20 minutes.”
“Are you sure it works?” Casey asked.
“I’ll bet my life on it,” Grant said. “I’ve used this stuff everywhere. Even in the muddy Essequibo River in Guyana, where villagers dump their crap directly into the river and every kind of exotic tropical parasite known to man is likely to thrive. This stuff works for any kind of biological pathogens. And the best thing about it is that when this bottle of solution is empty, like right now after treating our bottles, you just simply refill it with more water and shake it up, and in an hour or so, you’ve got another bottle of solution ready to go. You can’t beat it. This one bottle could last us for months, if need be. But I’ve got two more in my bags too.”
“I’m impressed!” Casey said. She was indeed impressed and growing more so all the time—not with Grant’s water treatment solution in particular, but with Grant the person. She knew it was probably obvious, and it was becoming obvious that Jessica was impressed with him too. She just wondered what he really thought of them and then it occurred to her that he might very well decide he liked Jessica more than her. After all, she turned guys’ heads everywhere she went more than most any girl Casey had ever known. She wanted to think that Grant wasn’t that superficial, but he was, first and foremost, a guy, and guys noticed girls like Jessica. Even though Jessica came across as mostly clueless when it came to dealing with a situation like the one they found themselves in, Casey knew that Grant might overlook that and that Jessica might come around to reality sooner than she had first assumed. The more time Jessica spent around Grant, the more time she would have to learn from him—and the more time he would have to notice how beautiful she was—despite not being able to properly do her makeup and hair or even take a bath every day.
The creek did give them an opportunity to wash their faces and freshen up a bit, though, and with full water bottles and the clean cooking pot and utensils packed away, they set out north again on Highway 25. The pedaling was easy here on a mostly flat highway with smooth pavement. Housing developments began to give way more to empty fields and wooded areas the farther they rode from the city. Interspersed here and there were larger single homes surrounded by expansive lawns, many with horse barns and ponds. They were now in the outlying areas. This was where the commuters with good jobs in the city would drive home each day, to their semi-rural retreats. And each day they would get up and do it again the next—that is, until three days ago, when that entire automobile-dependent lifestyle ceased to be viable for the indeterminate future. Along the roadway, shiny BMWs, Hummers, and other status-symbol rides were left abandoned alongside the well-used utilitarian brands of the less affluent. These now-useless relics proved that the failure of technology made no distinction between marks of manufacture when it came to anything dependent upon modern electronic circuitry. The playing field had been leveled once again as it had been briefly in the aftermath of Katrina, putting wealthy and poor alike at an equal disadvantage. Many of them probably habitually complained about spending hours in traffic to get to and from work, but were now faced with the even more discouraging prospect of walking for hours just to travel a few miles. There was no choice for anyone, no matter how wealthy, but to adapt as best they could from a life of comfort, ease, and security to one of ever-increasing hardship and danger.
For Casey, Grant, and Jessica, this discomfort was multiplied exponentially a half hour later when the clouds that had been building all morning finally opened up in a steady downpour. Grant said it didn’t look like it was the kind of rain that was going to go away in a few minutes or even a few hours, like a typical summer thunderstorm in southern Louisiana. Instead, rain like this in mid-March usually indicated a large storm front moving into the area. Without any access to a weather report of any kind, they had left New Orleans not knowing such a weather system was coming their way. Grant had hoped they could make the entire trip to the cabin in the fair weather they had started out in yesterday. He didn’t have enough rain gear at his apartment for all three of them, though there were ponchos stored with the canoe gear in the cabin. Stuffed in his backpack was a decent waterproof cycling jacket that he frequently wore when commuting around the city, but with the three of them caught out on the open road and the rain already falling, there was little good one jacket could do. He didn’t feel right about riding in dry comfort while his companions got soaked, and there was no practical way for them to share the jacket, as everyone would get wet anyway when it wasn’t their turn, so he didn’t mention it or bother to get it out. Likewise, the tarp he brought for bivouacking along the way would keep them dry if they stopped, but would do little good on the road. Besides, the weather was warm enough that they were in no danger of exposure from getting wet; it was just unpleasant.
“It won’t do any good to try to wait it out,” he said. “This rain may last two or three days. We’d be soaked by the time we found a place to set up camp anyway, and then we’d just be stuck there with nothing to do. We might as well keep riding. I wouldn’t normally want to ride far in the rain, but at least we don’t have to worry about being hit by cars that can’t see us.”
“Oh wow, this really sucks!” Jessica said.
“You can say that again,” Casey agreed. “Everything we have on is going to get drenched!”
“Yeah, but it’ll all dry out again when this is over. The main thing is that our food and the really important stuff is packed away safely in plastic bags. It may be kind of miserable spending the night out in this tonight, but if we keep on pushing today until dark, we should easily reach the cabin by tomorrow,” Grant said. “It may turn a lot cooler after this front moves through, but if we keep going, we’ll be there before that happens. Just tough this out and soon, I promise, you’ll be warm and dry, sitting by the heat of the woodstove and eating a good hot meal that will make you forget all about today.”
He could give all the pep talks he wanted, Casey thought, but there was no way to describe riding in this heavy rain as anything short of misery. She had to squint and keep her head down just to keep from being blinded by the pelting drops that splattered on her forehead. The pavement beneath her tires was two inches deep in standing water that couldn’t drain off the roadway as fast as it came down and made steering and braking treacherous. As if that weren’t enough, the fenderless front wheel threw spray in her face from beneath while the rear wheel kicked up a rooster tail of more spray that soaked her back side from the bottom as thoroughly as the falling rain drenched her from above. In less than twenty minutes, everything she had on was soaked through and through.
The highway took them through the town of Folsom, but in the rain their passing was hardly noticed, a decided advantage of traveling in these conditions. “Not many people are going to be out in this unless they really have to be,” Grant said. Though they continued to pass disabled vehicles on the side of the road, no one was out and about in Folsom except for a handful of people standing around here and there under the shelter of awnings in front of darkened storefronts and gas stations. Some waved as they passed, and one man yelled out to ask where they’d come from and if they had any news about the power outage, but no one harassed them or asked if they needed anything. Once they were north of the city limits, they had the road to themselves again, though in the limited visibility it was hard to be sure there were no potential threats lurking just ahead, out of sight. The terrain had changed from flat to rolling hills, and with every climb Casey and Jessica slowed to a crawl.
“It’s only about nine more miles to the river,” Grant said as they passed a fork where Highway 450 split off to the northwest and 25 curved away to the northeast. “Highway 25 will take us almost parallel to it for a while, and then it crosses over on the bridge at Franklinton. We’ll camp for the night somewhere before we get to the bridge, though. Franklinton is a bigger town than Folsom and I don’t want to be close to it tonight. We can ride through tomorrow morning and then keep going north until we get to the state line. Then it’s only a few miles to the cabin.”
Two more hours of slogging through the rain at a slow pace put them past the side road leading to Bogue Chitto State Park. Grant said it would normally be a good place to camp, but considering the conditions, it would be better to avoid any kind of developed campground and ‘stealth camp’ somewhere just off the highway where no one would see them. They found a spot on a dead-end logging road leading off the highway to the east. The muddy dirt track was too slippery to ride on in the rain, so they dismounted and pushed their bikes a hundred yards to where it ended at the edge of a dense forest of river-bottom hardwoods. Pushing on a short distance into the trees would have made them completely invisible to anyone passing by on the highway even if it had not been raining, but, much to Casey’s disappointment, a steady shower continued to fall. Grant dug the nylon tarp out of his backpack and began unwrapping the cords attached to the grommets in its corners. Then he stretched another piece of rope that was wrapped up in the tarp between two trees that were spaced about 10 feet apart. This line he pulled tight and tied off so that it was parallel to the ground and about four feet high. “This is our ‘ridgepole’,” he said. “Help me pull the tarp over it and we’ll pitch it so that it’s like an A-frame tent.”
Casey and Jessica did as he asked and Grant secured the two corners on one side to the bases of nearby saplings. There was nothing convenient to tie the remaining two corners to, so he took out his machete and quickly cut two stakes from another inch-thick sapling, sharpened the ends with a few deft strokes of his blade, and then pushed them into the soft ground. When he had pulled these last two corners tight, the tarp did resemble an A-frame tent, only one with no walls and no floor.
“Wow, you know what you’re doing, don’t you?” Casey said.
“It’s just basic stuff,” Grant said. “We used plastic tarps similar to this in Guyana. Our Indian guides there were the real experts in setting them up in no time flat. To them, any piece of plastic is a luxury. They can build just as dry a shelter with palm fronds or other foliage, but it takes a little longer.”
“But this is hardly going to be dry,” Jessica said, pointing out the wet leaves and muddy ground under the tarp as they crawled under it to get out of the rain.
“No, it’s not going to be all warm and cozy, but at least it’ll keep the rain off of us while we try to sleep.”
“I don’t know,” Casey said. “It seems pretty cozy to me. Especially with all three of us crowded under here.”
“Just be glad Joey didn’t come too,” Jessica said. “I know I am. He couldn’t have handled this anyway. He would have freaked out so many times already.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Casey said. “I’m glad it worked out this way. He wasn’t good for you anyway. You’re better off without him—we all are.”
“Well, I want you both to know I’m really proud of you,” Grant said. “You two have been real troupers ever since we left the city. I knew you could do it, though.”
“Not without you making us, Grant,” Casey said. “I still can’t believe you wanted to be burdened with us tagging along. You could be sitting by that woodstove right now, in the comfort of your cabin.”
“And then what, sit there with no one to talk to for no telling how long until this gets fixed? No, thanks. I spend enough time alone in everyday life. I wouldn’t have this any other way. I’m just glad you two were insane enough to come along with me, and I hope you don’t go stir-crazy from being stuck there with me.”
“After what we’ve seen since we left yesterday, we’d be crazy to do anything else but go with you, I think.”
“Yesterday…” Jessica said. “I can’t believe it was only yesterday that we left. It seems forever ago…so much has happened. That dead man…the motorcycle gang…crossing the Causeway…. It’s hard to believe that just yesterday morning I was stupid enough to follow Joey back to his house.”
“Time does seem distorted,” Grant agreed. “That happens with this kind of stress.”
“I just have to wonder what tomorrow will bring?” Casey asked. “Besides more rain, that is.”
“The rain is a given, I think. But so is getting to the cabin if our luck holds out. Right now, I think we should try to get a little more comfortable and get some hot food inside us. That does more to make a person feel better in these kind of conditions than anything else.”
Grant unpacked the sleeping bags and Casey and Jessica spread one of them out and temporarily suspended it from the overhead guy line for some semblance of privacy so she and Jessica could get out of their wet clothes on one side while Grant changed his on the other. They all still had some dry items of clothing protected by the garbage bags lining their packs that Grant had given them before they left. With dry clothes and sleeping bags, the night under the tarp would be much more tolerable. The garbage bags and their wet clothes under them provided some insulation from the ground and a relatively clean surface upon which to spread out the sleeping bags. This done, Grant assembled the stove and boiled water to cook a couple of packages of rice pre-mixed with dried cheddar and broccoli, and they ate huddled together under the tarp as night closed in and swallowed their hidden camp in inky blackness. A compact LED headlamp that ran on two AAA batteries provided enough light to eat by when Grant hung it overhead, but beyond the tiny circle of illumination it cast, the darkness in this dense stand of forest was more complete than anything Casey and Jessica had ever experienced.
“This is scary,” Jessica said, her voice barely above a whisper, as if she were afraid something unseen out there in the night forest might hear her and come their way.
“It is creepy,” Casey agreed. “Are there bears or anything like that in these woods?”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Grant said. “The only animals we need to fear are the two-legged kind, and we’re way out of sight of the road here. But to answer your question, there are a few bears around in the river-bottom swamps in Louisiana and Mississippi, but they are so rare you hardly ever see one. And they’re certainly too shy around humans to be a threat. They’re not like the bears in the mountains and places where they are plentiful. Snakes are the biggest wildlife danger in these woods, but unless you’re walking along through here at night without watching where you’re stepping, you don’t have to worry about them either.”
“Who would be stupid enough to walk out here at night?” Jessica asked. “You can’t see anything out here.”
“Just take the light and watch where you step if you have to go out to go to the bathroom tonight. But most likely, even the snakes won’t be moving around in this weather.”
“There’s no way I’m going out there for anything tonight. I’ll hold it ’til morning.”
But when they had finished eating and the cooking pot was empty, Grant scraped it out and washed it in the rain running off the edge of the tarp, then boiled more water for tea. After drinking a couple of cups of hot tea Casey and Jessica did have take a short trip out from the tarp before going to bed, but they went together and stayed close, checking the ground carefully with the beam of the light after what Grant had said. When they were back in their sleeping bags, Casey found it hard to believe they could be so comfortable in such miserable conditions with so little. The night wouldn’t be half as bad as she had imagined, and besides, she was so tired she felt like she could sleep anywhere.
When she awoke the darkness was replaced by the foggy gray of dawn, and the heavy downpour of the night before was now lighter, but a steady, soaking shower was still falling and showed no sign of letting up. Grant already had the coffee ready, and after they all had a cup he made a pot of oatmeal. The hardest part of the day, he said, would be leaving the shelter of the tarp and getting back out on the road. The hot breakfast would help, but after that there was nothing to do but face another day of riding in the wet. When Grant had taken down the tarp and helped repack the bicycles, they pushed them back to the highway along the muddy logging road and set out to the north again. The highway was still deserted, and riding was a bit easier in the gentler rain compared to the afternoon before.
They hadn’t gone a half mile when there was a loud popping sound from Jessica’s bike and then her chain came off the gears, forcing her to stop.
“What happened?” Casey asked.
“Looks like that cheap Chinese derailleur finally broke,” Grant said. “I was afraid of that, as much noise as it’s been making.”
“What am I supposed to do now?” Jessica asked. “Does this mean I won’t be able to ride it?”
“I think I can get you going again,” Grant said. “You just may not be able to shift gears, at least not on the rear cassette. Hold on, let me get my tools.”
Grant dug around in his pack until he found what he was looking for. It was a chain-breaker tool that allowed him to remove enough links from the chain to shorten it so that the rear derailleur could be bypassed altogether. After doing this, he then took the broken derailleur completely off and placed the chain on the middle cog of the eight-speed gear cluster.
“That should do it. I’ve put it in the gear you’ll probably need the most on these roads. If we come to a hill you can’t climb in that speed, you can still use your other shifter to drop down to the smaller chainring up front.”
“Ingenious,” Casey said.
“Bicycles are simple enough. No big deal really. A lot of people prefer single-speed ‘fixies’ anyway. It’s kind of a trend, even.”
Grant’s repair worked fine. With the inferior rear derailleur gone, Jessica’s bike ran much more quietly. The terrain became flatter again anyway, as the highway here ran in the bottomlands of the Bogue Chitto River. When the route finally took a right-angle turn to the east towards the town of Franklinton, Casey and Jessica got their first look at the river that was to play such an integral role in their lives in the near future. Riding across it on the bridge in the rain, they saw its rising waters swirling among fallen trees and stumps, coursing through a jungle-like forest of tall hardwood trees that leaned over its current from walls of greenery along the banks. Both upstream and downstream of the highway crossing, there was nothing but wild, dark woods on both sides of the river.
In the outskirts of Franklinton, the highway turned north once again. They stopped for a few minutes under a large open roof covering gas pumps at a convenience store, when two local policemen who had switched from cruisers to horses waved them over and asked where they had come from and where they were going.
“What do you mean, they won’t let us in?” Grant asked, in disbelief.
“I’m just telling you what we’ve heard,” one of the officers said. “Officials in Mississippi are turning back refugees from Louisiana. They say they can’t take care of their own people, much less hundreds of thousands of people coming up from New Orleans and Baton Rouge. They’re afraid it’s going to be like another Katrina, where they’ll have a flood of people coming in who won’t leave for months—or maybe ever.”
“This situation is a lot worse, and they do have a point,” the other policeman said. “Nobody has power, either here or north of the state line, so what would they do with a bunch of refugees?”
“But we’re not refugees,” Casey said. “We have a place to go. He has his own cabin, on his parent’s land.”
“I understand,” the first officer said. “But they are turning people back. We’ve already seen people coming back here through Franklinton. You’re the first we’ve seen today, out in this weather, but a couple of days ago some people who had running vehicles were reporting they couldn’t get in.”
“The thing is,” the other man said, “you all have to have proof of Mississippi residence or they’ll turn you back. You have to show them your Mississippi driver’s licenses or some other official I.D.”
“We’re screwed,” Jessica said. “All I have is a California license.”
“And mine’s from Louisiana,” Casey said.
“Mine too,” Grant said. “But we own our own land there. It’s right on the Bogue Chitto. My parents bought it more than fifteen years ago.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to bring bad news, but I just felt like we ought to flag you folks down and tell you. I figured you were planning on passing on through when I saw the way y’all were loaded down. I hated to see you ride on up to the state line only to be told you can’t cross it.”
“I appreciate it,” Grant said. “But we’ve got to try. I’ve got to see this for myself. Everything we need is in that cabin. I don’t know what we would do or where we would go if we couldn’t go there.”