Wipeout | Book 3 | Empty Vault Read online

  “Hey,” Samuel greeted him. “How did it go?”

  Austin grimaced. “Alright I guess. It’s hard work, though. It’ll be a little while longer before we’ve got enough for a full tank.”

  “What if we don’t need a full tank?” Samuel suggested, hinting at his idea. Though he and Austin had spoken about taking a car instead, Samuel envisaged them returning to Camp Placid on the quads and they wouldn’t require as much gasoline as a car would.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Samuel started, capturing Austin’s attention. “What if we don’t drive back down to the next bridge? What if we find a way to cross the river around here?”

  Austin furrowed his brow. “We already tried that,” he shook his head.

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking about Camp Placid. There was tons of gear there. What if we headed back to the camp and used their boats to get across the Hudson? Then we don’t have to backtrack anywhere near as much and we’ll be able to approach the city from the other side of the river.”

  “That might actually work,” Austin replied slowly, mulling over the idea in his head. “You think they’ve got enough equipment?”

  “Yeah,” Samuel nodded, “they had a whole stack of canoes among other things. Plus, we only looked through maybe half of the buildings, there could be even more there that we didn’t come across.”

  “Okay,” Austin nodded, the idea taking form in his mind and becoming more and more realistic as he thought about it. “Then we can track back up through the tree line on the other side. We’d be entirely hidden from sight.”

  “Exactly. I think it gives us a better chance of getting into the city in the next couple of days than driving south does. Who knows what else could’ve happened closer to New York while we’ve been away.”

  “True,” Austin agreed. New York itself had deteriorated horribly while they had been there. It was almost certainly much worse now. Avoiding it – and other major roads and cities – did seem like the best idea. “Alright then,” Austin clapped his hands together, “I think I’ve already got enough gas to fill up the quads again. They’ll be easier to get us back to the camp than a car would be.”

  “Excellent,” Samuel grinned. “Back to Camp Placid!”

  “Yes,” Austin replied enthusiastically. “Hey boys? How about a trip to summer camp?”

  “Yes, please!” Mason and Noah replied in unison, the conversation between the two men waking them both up and keeping them enthralled.

  “Grab your stuff then,” Austin smiled. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 11

  Zooming back along the main road with Noah seated in front of him and his rucksack on his back, Austin couldn’t keep the grin off his face. Samuel’s idea to return to Camp Placid was genius. If they could get across the river and safely onto the bank on the other side, their journey back to Poughkeepsie would be much shorter than he had originally imagined.

  Noah squealed in front of him with delight as they veered around the corner, once again reminding Austin of his own son. He was loving being with the two young boys. There was just something that being with Mason and Noah made him feel again. It was like he was whole again, like he could finally see the bigger picture once more.

  Austin wondered whether Bowie would have coped as well as both Mason and Noah were, if he were forced into the situation. It was a parents’ worst nightmare to lose their children, the mere thought of it sending a shiver down Austin’s spine as he drove. But saying that, Mason and Noah seemed to have dealt with it brilliantly. If you simply heard the story, it would be hard to believe that they were such young boys. Austin was as proud of them, as he imagined their own parents would be, a feeling that only made him more determined to reunite their family as well.

  As the scenery swept past them, Austin recognized that they were getting closer to the turning, it felt weird to be returning to Camp Placid in a way, remembering how desperate he had been to leave the first time. The circumstances had certainly changed. Previously when Austin and Samuel wound up at the camp, it had been following almost being attacked by a bear. Austin had been so utterly wiped out by that encounter, he remembered how lost and alone and petrified he had felt walking through the forest afterwards, trying to reunite with Samuel again.

  From when they first met on the nineteenth floor of the Trident building to now, driving to a children’s summer camp with two little boys whom they had known for no longer than a day. Everything that the two of them had gone through together was almost impossible to comprehend. They’d fought their way out of a burning building, encountered gang activity in a hospital during citywide rolling blackouts, been chased through the Bronx and spent a night hidden away in an old woman’s apartment. And that was all before even leaving the city. They then reunited a little girl with her parents, abandoned their vehicle by the side of the road and narrowly avoided being killed by a wild bear.

  After all they had been through, when they finally reached the city of Poughkeepsie, Austin was certain that his luck was about to change. In fact, things were equally as difficult now as they had been the day before and even the day before that. What had changed however was his mindset. Austin refused to be knocked down by the difficult things that stepped into his path. Meeting Mason and Noah had made it clear to him how important it was to keep going. Bowie had always been in his mind, but through everything it was easy for weakness to become the overpowering emotion. That was gone now; the encounter at the bridge had made Austin see clearly once again. He was lucky and he was going to keep fighting no matter what.

  “Turn left… Right?”

  “What?” Austin shouted back at Samuel as they both slowed down to try and communicate, Samuel driving alongside Austin for a second. His friend tried to talk again, but over the sound of the engines and the wind it was impossible to make out what Samuel was saying. Austin shook his head and tapped his ear, trying to indicate that he couldn’t understand.

  Giving up, Samuel simply pointed to the turning ahead, Mason joining in and holding out both his arms in that direction. Austin looked up and nodded, they were approaching the route into the forest and the dirt lane that led to the entrance of Camp Placid. Slowing down, they took the turn one after another, the boys getting more excited as they began to meander through the trees in the direction of the hidden campsite.

  “Wow!” Mason exclaimed as Samuel and Austin slowed to a halt and turned off their engines, returning the forest to its blissful tranquility. “This is so cool.”

  “You guys want to go and explore a bit?” Austin asked, helping Noah off his quad and removing the helmet from the little boy’s head.

  “Yeah!”

  “Okay, don’t go too far though,” Austin remarked, aware that the boys wouldn’t be able to resist exploring the camp a bit but also conscious of the potential dangers that lurked in the trees. “Stay where we can see or at least hear you, and keep coming back to check in.”

  “We will,” Mason replied with a nod. “Come on Noah,” he encouraged his brother, “let’s go and check it out.”

  “We’ll be down by the lake, okay?” Austin shouted after them as they ran off, unable to hide the smile from his face as he watched the two boys heading off on their little adventure. There was nothing quite like childlike enthusiasm; it was infectious and both Austin and Samuel could feel it.

  “Good to be back?” Samuel asked with a grin, looking around the camp and exhaling slowly.

  Austin laughed. “In a way, though I don’t think we should make a habit of ending up here.”

  “I agree,” Samuel smiled in reply. “Shall we head down to the lake and see what we can find?”

  Austin allowed Samuel to lead the way down to the lake which boarded Camp Placid on one side. Seeing Mason and Noah running around and discovering the camp kept a smile fixed on his face, imagining how much fun this place must’ve been for children in the height of summer. He had fond memories of camp when
he was younger.

  Samuel led the way straight to the boathouse he had inspected on their last visit. He knew nothing would’ve changed but there had been plenty of stuff in there they could possibly use. Previously he had only been focused on finding him and Austin a way out of the camp and so the water sports equipment hadn’t been of much value to him. Now that was different and Samuel was excited to see what they might uncover.

  Unlike camping and hiking and pretty much all other outdoor activities that had been thrust upon him while traveling with Austin, Samuel wasn’t massively averse to water. He was a strong swimmer and used it as a way to keep fit while working in New York. There was something about swimming that calmed Samuel. The feeling of the water folding over his body as he carved a path through it. He didn’t partake in any other water sports, but because of his comfort swimming, he wasn’t as worried about trying to cross the river in a canoe as he was sure Austin might think he was.

  “What do you think?” Samuel asked as he pulled open the doors to the boathouse. “There’s got to be something in here we can use, surely.”

  Austin let out a low whistle under his breath as he took in the gear, turning his head and surveying what was inside. It was just as Samuel had left it. Floatation devices and life jackets hung from the rafters above their heads while canoes, paddles and other boating equipment lined the walls and sat in neat little piles.

  The canoes caught Austin’s attention immediately as he walked toward them and ran his fingers along one, feeling the groves in the design. He’d been on a few fishing vacations with his buddies from college where they’d taken canoes out in order to fish the deeper waters and had fond memories of paddling around with the sun on his face and a beer nestled between his legs.

  “We should be able to use these,” Austin spoke up. “They’re all two-man, so we can take one of the boys each, just like on the quads.”

  “Works for me,” Samuel nodded. “Will we be able to fit all of our gear in as well?”

  “Should do,” Austin calculated the size of the canoes in his head compared to what they had to carry. “Might be a bit of a squeeze, but I reckon it’ll be fine.”

  “Oh cool!” Mason’s voice echoed through the boathouse from behind them, neither Samuel nor Austin realizing the two kids had arrived. “Are we going to take these out on the lake?”

  “For a test run, yeah,” Austin confirmed. “Then, if everything goes according to plan, we’ll use them to cross the river.”

  “Wow really? That’s awesome.”

  “Has either of you ever been in one of these before?” Samuel asked, encouraging Noah forward as the younger of the two hung back slightly by the entrance to the boathouse, more apprehensive than his older brother who was running his hand up and down the canoe in a similar fashion to Austin.

  “I have,” Mason replied, “Uncle Jeff once took me out when we went camping in the mountains. It was freezing.”

  “Yeah, the water isn’t warm around here,” Austin shook his head, remembering Mason mention his Uncle Jeff before as well. “Is that the same uncle who you think had the idea to blow up the bridge?”

  “Yeah,” Mason replied, “he’s not always like that. He can be fun too.”

  “I bet,” Samuel answered, worried about hurting the boy’s feelings. “Grown ups can be strange, can’t they?”

  Mason giggled to himself, too captivated by the canoe to respond any further. Noah on the other hand was still waiting by the door, holding onto it nervously as he showed his reluctance to get involved. Looking at him, Samuel reached up and grabbed a life vest that hung above his head and brushed off some of the dirt that had accumulated on it. While it wasn’t a very state of the art design, he could feel its padding and the buoyancy it carried with it, offering it to Noah to try and make him feel more at ease.

  “Do you want to put this on, little guy? It’ll help to keep you safe.”

  Noah looked at Samuel curiously, assessing what he was being offered before slowly walking forward and taking it in his hands. He held the life vest and looked at it for a few seconds, not quite sure what to do with the device.

  “Put your arms through the holes,” Samuel explained, reaching up and grabbing another one from the rafters and showing Noah what to do by putting it on himself. “Like this, see?”

  Following Samuel’s instructions, Noah got himself into the life vest and zipped it up at the front, smiling when he was all padded out by the orange material.

  “There you go!” Samuel grinned in approval. “We look great, don’t we? Hey Austin, Mason; you guys should get dressed up too!”

  For a few minutes, there was nothing but playful laughter and childishness amongst the four of them in the boathouse. They poked fun at how they each looked in the life vests and joked around, Mason and Noah bumping into one another like bumper cars and bouncing off of the walls. It was nice to have moments like these amongst everything else that was happening, reminders for the two boys that they were children and for Samuel and Austin that everything didn’t always have to be so serious.

  In their high-spirited moods, the two adults maneuvered a couple of canoes out of the boathouse and dragged them down to the water, allowing the four of them a bit of a test-drive on the flat surface of the lake before they took on the real deal. Just like with the quads, Samuel took Mason in his canoe, leaving Austin – who was undoubtedly more experienced – to deal with the younger and more unpredictable boy.

  Samuel sat at the back of the canoe, the little boat sitting a lot lower in the water at his end while Mason seemed to almost hover above it. There wasn’t much of a choice though, the two boys couldn’t handle a canoe by themselves and so they needed to deal with the uneven weight distribution. Once they were moving across the lake, the balance seemed to matter less, both Samuel and Mason paddling alongside Austin and Noah as the four of them did a few laps of the lake.

  It was almost effortless. Paddling around in circles, it was difficult to imagine what it would be like when they took on the Hudson. The river was fast and dangerous and nothing like the calm waters they currently sat on. Samuel and Austin were both very aware of the task that faced them next, but there was nothing they could do to avoid it. Their tactics were gradually starting to work and with the river as the next hurdle, they just had to face that as they had everything else and try to reach the other side.

  Chapter 12

  “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”

  “You better believe it,” Austin confirmed as they stood on the bank of the Hudson river, two canoes and all their gear at their feet. Mason and Noah were having one last emergency toilet break in the bushes before they attempted the crossing, the thought of it likely frightening both the kids now they had actually seen how different the river was to the lake at Camp Placid.

  Using the quads, Austin and Samuel had driven north up beyond the city of Poughkeepsie in order to find the safest place for their group to cross. Having changed their plan slightly to approach the city from the north, they had finally settled on a point where there were no sharp bends or jagged rocks jutting out above the surface, however they were both still aware how fast the water rushed by them and that there may be any number of hidden dangers lurking beneath the icy blue blanket.

  The temperature of the water was yet another concern for them. It was practically freezing and being submerged in it for any real amount of time could cause serious damage. Out in the wilderness they had no way of drying their clothes quickly or fighting off the effects of hypothermia, it was of utmost importance that the four of them stay dry during this crossing, perhaps their biggest challenge.

  “You feeling okay?”

  “Yeah,” Samuel swallowed and nodded. “I just want to get it over with.”

  “Remember to take slow and steady strokes,” Austin prompted, continuing the brief lesson in canoeing he was giving Samuel. He wasn’t an expert himself, but he did have a few useful tips. “The current is going to try and push us down
stream, but that’s okay. We don’t need to fight against it directly, just move steadily across. Get your paddle deep under the water and stroke hard, it’ll be slow but it’ll work. Trust me.”

  Samuel looked up at Austin and smiled. “I do,” he replied confidently. Austin was probably the single factor in the equation that he did trust after everything they’d experienced together. He knew crossing the river would be a challenge but he believed that they had the strength to do it.

  “You guys ready?”

  Mason and Noah nodded as they returned from the bushes, holding each other’s hands with apprehension. They kept glancing nervously at the river as it roared past them. They may be at its stillest point, but crossing it was still a mammoth task for two boys of their age.

  “It’ll be okay,” Austin tried to reassure them, reading their expressions. “We’ll be across before you know it. Noah, you’re sticking with me, right?” As the youngest boy nodded, Austin patted the side of his canoe and beckoned him over. “Come on then, let’s get you strapped in.”

  “You ready for this?”

  “Yep,” Mason replied to Samuel after a brief pause, watching his younger brother stride off toward Austin and puffing out his chest with confidence. Samuel admired Mason a great deal. He noticed how he looked after Noah and did everything he could to make him feel more at ease, despite only being young himself. He guessed it came as a result of their time alone just after the bridge to Poughkeepsie was blown. The two boys were forced to adapt to life on their own very quickly. Mason had taken on the role of protector and despite the arrival of Samuel and Austin, it was clear that he still felt his brother was his responsibility.

  “It’ll be a piece of cake,” Samuel murmured as he helped Mason into their canoe and dragged it closer to the water’s edge. “Hang on now, I’m going to push you out onto the water and then I need you to grip the bank and hold her steady.”