EMP Catastrophe | Book 2 | Erupting Danger

by Hamilton, Grace

  He promised he would look into what she’d seen. She believed him, even though she harbored a startling worry that he might proclaim her crazy and dismiss her. Exhaustion pulled at her when he finally left to go downstairs. That exhaustion turned into relief when she saw him walk out the front door and head toward the trees.

  She hated how she felt so awkward around Matthew now. In some dark corner of her mind, she knew that she wasn’t the woman he had fallen in love with anymore. If he knew what she had done…he wouldn’t love her anymore. She had lost so much just to get back home; she didn’t think she could survive losing her husband.

  She sat on the bed and then lay down. Her eyes fluttered closed. She would bury these feelings. She would box up the memories of what she had been through and never let them out. When sleep came, it was fitful. When she woke back up again, she realized hardly any time had passed at all.

  Walking back to the window, she watched as Matthew left the house again and headed toward the property line. Allison and Patton stepped off the porch and around to the other side of the house. David and Jade walked slowly by and pointed to various parts of the property as if surveying something. And still the sensation of feeling unsafe lingered inside of Kathleen. The tight knot of anxiety inside her wouldn’t loosen.

  If she stayed in this room any longer, she might explode. The outside world was full of dangers she couldn’t anticipate. Her skin felt too tight. She started to think that there might be something lurking in the closet. When she went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, all she could see was Andrew Lang’s face. With a shudder, she dressed and went downstairs, determined not to isolate herself anymore. Even those few simple tasks felt monumental, like they’d taken most of her energy to accomplish.

  Downstairs, the hotel was quiet. With everyone outside doing chores to keep the hotel safe, the place seemed suspended in time, waiting for the next onslaught of life to happen. She maneuvered down to the kitchen and was relieved to hear soft humming coming from it. The clanking of appliances, glass jars hitting a countertop, and the soft shuffle of feet moving across a tiled floor also filled her ears.

  Taking a deep breath, she walked inside and saw her mother-in-law moving around the kitchen with ease. A fire was lit on the propane stove and a stainless-steel pot was on top of that. She peered inside it and saw four mason jars in a shallow layer of water.

  “Water bath canning,” Ruth said as an explanation. “I’m trying a new method. Who knows if it will work?”

  A pad of paper sat on the counter. Ruth picked up a pencil and ticked something off on it. Kathleen gazed at the cut-up tomatoes and spices. “Are you making salsa?” she asked.

  Ruth looked somewhat bashful. “I wasn’t sure what else to do with the tomatoes,” she said. “They weren’t going to last another day.” Ruth’s face relaxed into a soft smile. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  Kathleen suddenly felt defensive. The question made her seem as though she were ill, or perhaps as if she might fly off the handle at a moment’s notice. “I’m fine,” she said tightly. “Where is everyone?”

  “Matt is out checking the property line,” Ruth said, pulling out more mason jars and trying to find their corresponding lids. “Allison and Patton are inventorying other useful goods that they might find around the hotel. David and Jade are searching for a good spot to set up a composting toilet. I’m making an inventory of our food. Feel like lending me a hand?”

  Kathleen forced herself to give a thin-lipped smile. “Of course. I need to pull my weight.”

  “Eat first,” Ruth said, handing her the last banana on the counter.

  Kathleen studied the fruit for a moment, feeling lost, until her stomach growled. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until then. She peeled it apart to find the fruit sweet, if somewhat mushy. As she ate, she looked at what else Ruth had laid out, but her attention was caught by the drying meat in one corner of the kitchen. She let out a soft noise of surprise and got closer to it. Strips of meat hung from hooks and twine along angled poles of wood. Other strips were draped over the poles so that they could easily be smoked. The meat looked good and surprisingly free of rot.

  “All Patton’s idea,” Ruth said from behind her. “He told me he learned it from a classmate.”

  “And he retained all that information?” Kathleen asked. “He must have a crush.”

  Ruth grinned. “I think so.”

  “How much meat is dehydrating?”

  “About ten pounds,” Ruth said. “Some of it we will lose, but we’re doing our best.”

  “It doesn’t look like ten pounds,” Kathleen said.

  “It shrinks a lot,” Ruth said with a shrug.

  Kathleen moved away from the meat to look at the other stainless-steel canister that Ruth was working with. Pressure canning. She was a bit more familiar with that. She made a sound of approval at seeing more than a dozen jars lined up and ready to be put away. “You did all this?” she asked.

  Ruth nodded. “We had some produce from when we first arrived here. Then I went to the grocery store and took some from a delivery van that had been abandoned down the road.”

  Kathleen stilled as Ruth related to her the story of the delivery van and how she’d run into Samuel West. When Ruth finished, Kathleen shook her head in dismay. “I can’t believe the nerve of some people,” she said. “How could Samuel have done that? And put Patton in such danger? He must have been terrified.”

  “He did very well,” Ruth said as she continued to cut up the last of the vegetables. “I do worry for him, though.”

  “Me too.” Kathleen sighed and clasped her hands. “I’m glad you were here with him. If I was here with all this food, it would have gone to waste. I don’t know the first thing about canning and preserving food.”

  Ruth waved off the compliment. “Thank you. I’m just glad I could help in some way. My mother would be rolling in her grave to see that I’m utilizing her old skills. I believe I once told her they were useless.”

  Kathleen snorted a laugh. “My mother thought we were insane for buying this place to begin with. She wanted to know what a bunch of city folks thought they were doing trying to live out in the country. Sometimes, I wonder if she was right.”

  “Don’t think like that,” Ruth said and handed Kathleen the pad of paper. “Here. Why don’t you help me finish up the inventory? I’ve been putting things into groupings. Things that are perishable and need to be eaten now and things that can last and things that will go stale.”

  Kathleen took the pad of paper. “Of course.” She moved toward the pantry and opened it up, finding a bunch of food that seemed to have been placed inside haphazardly. She pulled out everything and made notes on the paper. Soon enough, she couldn’t help but notice with fond exasperation that many of the goods Ruth had picked up were old family favorites. Comfort food. While she’d gotten some rice and noodles, there was also a ton of Lucky Charms, most likely for Allison. Additionally, there were many cans of baked beans that she knew David enjoyed. As Kathleen put them in their appropriate groupings, she wondered if one day her family would be existing only on cereal and beans and how awful it would be. She could barely stomach all the sugar in Lucky Charms as it was. Gave her heartburn.

  As she emptied out the pantry, she frowned. They had far less food than she’d expected. Clearing her throat, she asked Ruth, “I hate to say it, but I think we will run out of food soon. There is no way this will feed all six of us.”

  “Seven,” Ruth corrected, even though her attention was on the cans in the water bath. “You forgot Jade.”

  “I know how many people are in our family,” Kathleen said archly. “Six. Six mouths to feed.”

  Ruth looked up at her and said in a sugar-sweet tone, “Jade has to eat too.”

  “But she’s not part of our family,” Kathleen reiterated and flushed. Why did she feel as though Ruth was judging her? Just because she didn’t fall for Jade’s wobbling chin and big green eyes? That didn�
��t make Kathleen a bad person. Shooting someone point-blank…that made someone a bad person. “Why did you vote for that woman to stay, anyway? After everything that she had done? She doesn’t even seem like it bothers her much.”

  Ruth’s mouth pinched as if she took offense at Kathleen’s questions. Kathleen wanted to run back upstairs to her room. She hadn’t meant to sound so snappish, but she honestly wanted to know. If Jade had shot Matthew, Kathleen would have run Jade off the property. There would be no forgiveness in her heart.

  Ruth thought for a moment and then sighed. “I don’t quite know,” she said slowly before shaking her head. “Sometimes people just need help. I’ll never understand what drove Jade to kill that man, nor to hurt David, but I understand what it feels like to be cornered. When Samuel was here, there were times I thought about killing him. I worried about my survival and more importantly about Patton. I never brought myself to do it, but if Matthew hadn’t shown up, I might have. I voted for her to stay because that’s what my heart told me to do. I stand by it still. Jade needs support right now. I can only imagine the burden she carries. She feels safe here. There’s no point in chasing her away. She’s trying to do right by us and earn back our respect.”

  “She’ll never have my respect,” Kathleen answered. “All she’s serving to do is eat up our resources faster. If we didn’t have to feed her, our food would last that much longer.”

  As soon as she said it, Kathleen felt ashamed. At the same time, though, it felt as though if she gave an inch, it would make her look weak and make others question her judgement. She couldn’t be seen as weak. Not when she was part of the brickwork making up this family. She would do everything in her power to protect her family. Jade didn’t have that kind of drive. She was shiftless, a wanderer. She had no purpose except to survive on her own. She had no idea what it was like to put yourself behind the needs of your children.

  Kathleen also couldn’t understand how Jade seemed so put together. Kathleen craved that calm, as if killing a man didn’t mean anything at all, or as if her actions to safeguard herself were more important than the life of a cruel man. Kathleen just wanted to be able to look in the mirror again and not see her regrets. It didn’t seem fair that both she and Jade had been in a similar position and yet somehow it was Jade who was outside making the hotel safer, while Kathleen cowered inside and fought off nightmares.

  It wasn’t fair.

  If Jade was gone, Kathleen wouldn’t have to feel so guilty. She wouldn’t have to feel so…replaceable. So weak.

  Ruth didn’t respond to Kathleen and instead tapped her fingers against her cheeks as she evaluated the drying meat. “Do you think I could can the meat?”

  Kathleen shrugged and picked at the tomato seeds that Ruth had excluded from her salsa. “Why not?”

  “I’ve never done it before. It might save some more meat from spoilage than this method. Should I try it?”

  “Knock yourself out,” Kathleen said as she picked up a seed and held it in her hands. “Ruth, what do you think about gardening?”

  Ruth chuckled. “Oh, I have a certified black thumb,” she said. “Once, I tried to start an herb garden. I had rosemary and thyme on the windowsill of my first apartment. The plants all died within the month, of mold. Then I tried my hand at squash and zucchini. One of them got this strange white fungus over it. I only ever grew flowers from my zucchini plants. Never any veggies. Then everything just died on me.”

  Kathleen laughed. “Same with me. I had a fern in college, and one day I came home and found it withered into this brown husk.” She sighed and held up the tomato seed for Ruth to inspect. “Maybe we should try our hand at it again. Maybe both of our black thumbs might equal one green one. We could plant some of these and see if they would grow.”

  Ruth smiled brightly at her. “Kathleen, that’s a wonderful idea. You can water them and put them in soil and then hopefully, they might take root.”

  “It’s a long shot,” Kathleen said, feeling a sudden despair overwhelm her. She put the seed back on the counter. “This whole hotel was kind of a long shot too, wasn’t it? So stupid. I don’t even know why we decided to buy a place in the middle of nowhere. I can’t even keep a fern alive. How do I expect to keep a garden healthy? Sometimes I wish we had never left Chicago.”

  Ruth rubbed her shoulder. “It wasn’t a stupid decision. This was something we all thought long and hard on. It was a dream that became a reality.”

  “This isn’t a dream,” Kathleen said, feeling on the verge of tears. “It’s a nightmare. Not one of us is outdoorsy. Except for maybe David when he was in the Army.”

  “That was twenty years ago,” Ruth said.

  “Exactly.”

  Ruth sighed. “If we were in Chicago, we would be worse off than we are now. At least here, we can all live together comfortably under one roof. We have land that we can learn about. Maybe one of the books in the library can tell us about any edible natural plants around here. We can learn and adapt. We can grow.”

  “Library?” Kathleen asked, momentarily at a loss. “Oh, those bookshelves?”

  She barely recalled those dusty old books with their outdated cover art and yellowing pages.

  “Jade found it,” Ruth said. “She was the one who suggested we make the compostable toilet after reading some of the books.”

  Kathleen gritted her teeth. “What a gem,” she said and turned her back on her mother-in-law to study the rest of the goods.

  Slowly and methodically, she catalogued everything they had in the kitchen while Ruth set up some meat to pressure cook and can. Then she helped inspect and sterilize the glass mason jars, finding their appropriate tops and organizing them by size for Ruth. She got lost in her own thoughts. A terrible ache clawed at her stomach like a trapped creature trying to get out. Tears stung her eyes, and she tried to hold them back as much as possible. Usually, she and Ruth could carry on a good conversation, but now tension filled the air and made her want to scream. She didn’t even notice or hear Matthew’s voice as he came down the stairs until he was standing right in front of her.

  “How’s it going?” he asked and looked at her with those soft eyes that used to make her knees go weak.

  She looked down. Her throat felt tight. “It’s good,” she said. “We have enough supplies for a week, maybe two if we can stretch it. Ruth is canning everything that she can.” She looked over to the remains of fat and bone that sat to one side. “Maybe we can try to make a broth or soup out of that,” she suggested.

  Ruth’s face brightened. “That’s a great idea. I’ll start on that next.”

  Matthew looked at her like she’d just solved world hunger. “You have the best ideas,” he said and leaned in for a kiss.

  She dodged to the side without thinking. He let out a soft hurt sound. She reached out and touched his arm in apology. “Our food stocks aren’t going to last,” she said, desperate to erase the moments before.

  “We’ll need to think about reaching out to others who live around this mountain,” Ruth chimed in. “We need to make connections with others. Like your father suggested.”

  Matthew looked annoyed, and Kathleen watched as he tried to hide his concern for her. “I’d rather wait on that until we get the house better fortified,” he said. “We can talk about it tonight.”

  He reached out and touched Kathleen’s hand. She realized he meant they would talk about much more than food, if he had anything to say about it.

  “I just don’t know who we can trust,” Matthew finished, meeting Kathleen’s gaze.

  She didn’t know either.

  10

  As Max walked through the empty streets of Chicago, he felt like an imposter. Even though he wore civilian clothes, he still felt out of place. He kept looking over his shoulder, convinced that someone on the street would pass him, pause, and recognize him. That they’d point and call out that he was an escaped convict. That he had the look of a dangerous delinquent and needed to be incarcerated. When he
was in prison, he didn’t feel like he belonged, but he never expected that the feeling would follow him out into the real world.

  As he continued to walk, he noticed even more abandoned cars blocking the road, as if they’d suddenly come to a standstill while waiting at a red light. He’d barely seen another living soul since his escape. At one point, he’d passed a young couple digging through a dumpster. He’d hightailed it away from them, and they had seemed just as skittish of him.

  His stomach growled and he grimaced. At least he had clothes, but if he was going to walk all the way from Chicago to Galena, he needed to find supplies. Especially something to eat. A map so he could chart where he was going. Maybe he’d be able to find a bike or even someone who had a working car that he could hitch a ride with. He’d have to lie to them about who he was, but at this point, something as meaningless as that didn’t bother him. He was already an escaped prisoner. He’d be lying to everyone at this point.

  Up ahead, he spotted a corner gas station. He swallowed hard, hating that he would have to shoplift his supplies, but as he got closer he discovered that the shop had already been ransacked. The windows had been smashed in. The door dangled precariously off of one hinge. He eased his way inside, hopeful that something might remain for him. A strange sticky substance coated the floor and stuck to his shoes. The cash register stood open and upon further inspection, he found most of the cash was gone except for a roll of quarters stuck in the far back. He pocketed the money and kept his head down just in case there were cameras watching him. It was an absurd fear, but he still felt grateful for the dark night obscuring his face from anyone who might be watching him.

  A small display of lighters sat next to the cash register. He pocketed one of them and then spotted a rotating wire display near the edge of the front counter. Maps sat askew in the metal holders. He picked one up and stuffed it into his bag. After inspecting the rest of the aisles, he didn’t find any food on the empty shelves, but he did discover a first aid kit stuck under one of the shelves. Bending down, he picked it up and was pleased to find that it was still sealed. It must have been flung off the shelves when the gas station was being ransacked, and had been forgotten. He hadn’t found much, but at least it was a solid starting place.