Lincoln keeps to the center of the dirt street, staying well clear of the broken string of buildings that line it, as though they hold sickness. Several appear to be abandoned, including a gutted old Baptist church of brittle wood. The brick church I remember stands across the road from the wooden wreck, and it perfectly matches the image in my mind. I can even see the cannonball in the moonlight, set high in its face. Out front a Confederate battle flag flies from a short pole, and a sign on the pole reads these colors never run.

“Time to get off the main drag,” Lincoln whispers, grabbing my arm and pulling me under some trees where a tiny gravel road runs behind a large, dark house.

As soon as I feel grass beneath my feet, he drops down and begins belly-crawling through it. Slinging the rifle over my left shoulder to avoid aggravating my bruise, I do the same. The pale soil feels sandy beneath the grass, and even here it smells to me of the river.

“There,” Lincoln whispers.

Fifty yards ahead, two windows in a small frame house glow yellow with what looks like lantern light.

“No electricity?” I ask, pausing to adjust the strap of the .308 across my back.

“Listen,” Lincoln says, stopping beside me. “Isn’t that a generator?”

He’s right. A hollow, rattletrap rumble like a car engine from the 1920s fills the bass spectrum of the wild hum of night insects in these deep woods. All I see beside the house is an ancient pickup truck parked near a big poplar tree.

“The generator must be in its own shack or something,” I think aloud. “Not to be any louder than that.”

“Good cover for us.”

“How far behind that house is the river?” I whisper.

“Couple of miles. Straight shot through the swamp on a dirt road.”

The little house before us appears to be a dependency of the larger house nearer the road. We saw no lights in it as we slipped past, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty.

“What are you planning to do?” I whisper.

“Wait a little, see if they’re moving at all.”

I grunt but say nothing. I’m not a hunter. Never have been—at least not since I shot my first deer at eleven, on a trip with a friend. My dad never liked it, either. I have hunted men, by necessity, with Daniel Kelly. But this doesn’t feel like that. Lying in the humid dark with gnats buzzing my face and mosquitoes draining my arms of blood feels like hunching in a hide waiting for a deer to walk by, one preoccupied enough or oblivious enough to let me shoot it from thirty feet away. But it’s not deer sitting in the yellow light beyond the windows of that little house, I remind myself. It’s people. Armed people. And we don’t even know how many.