Final Dread: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 3)

by Ryan Westfield

  Having crossed the open space quickly, he reached the back door, which was at the end of a small concrete staircase with a thick metal railing.

  Jim took the stairs two at a time, gun in hand, finger on the trigger.

  The door was red, made of thick steel.

  To his surprise, it was unlocked.

  It creaked on its hinges as it opened.

  Jim paused, listening.

  He heard nothing, and without a second thought, he stepped across the threshold into the darkness.

  2

  Aly

  Aly, Rob, and Jessica were crowding the windshield area, watching the spot where Jim had disappeared.

  “There’s no way we’re going to leave him, right?” said Jessica.

  Aly breathed a sigh of relief. She already knew that she would never leave her husband behind. And she knew that Rob, who’d known Jim the longest, wouldn’t either. Jessica was the only one she hadn’t been sure of. Jessica, after all, was sometimes hard to read. It was as if her exterior was a hardened shell, making her seem almost cold and emotionless.

  “Of course not,” scoffed Rob. “He’s off his rocker if he thinks we would.”

  Aly said nothing. She imagined that her position was already apparent.

  “It might take him ten minutes just to find the beef jerky,” joked Jessica. “Sometimes those stores don’t have the best layouts.”

  “And imagine what it’s like after it’s been looted,” said Rob. “Stuff all over the floor.”

  Jessica chuckled politely. No one was really in the mood to actually laugh. Not now.

  Silence fell over the group, and Aly found that her eyes were flickering over to the small digital clock on the RV’s dashboard.

  She didn’t know why the clock still worked, but she wasn’t going to spend too much time on that. Not right now.

  Somehow, eight minutes had already passed.

  Not that it mattered.

  They weren’t going to leave him. They’d all agreed on it.

  “You hear that?” said Jessica, who seemed to have the best hearing of all of them.

  Aly shook her head. But as she did, she heard it.

  It was the unmistakable sound of an engine. Truck or car, she didn’t know.

  But she did know that it was getting louder.

  Much louder.

  The vehicle was getting closer. And the closer it got, the stranger it sounded.

  “Is that a motorcycle?” whispered Jessica.

  Rob shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s multiple motorcycles.”

  As soon as she heard the words, Aly heard it.

  The intense rumbling wasn’t the sound of a single engine. It was the cacophony produced by dozens of engines mixing together.

  Aly spun her head. And, as if on cue, she saw a dozen motorcycles streaming down the road. They were coming from the direction opposite where the roadblock had been.

  They weren’t casual motorcycle riders. They weren’t hobbyists. That was immediately apparent.

  They were getting close. Aly could almost see the whites of their eyes.

  It was a motorcycle gang. They were dressed in the classic style, with torn up, oil-stained jeans, filthy t-shirts, and leather jackets and vests that looked like they’d survived more than a few crashes and turns taken too sharply.

  There was one rider in the front of the pack leading the way. He had a huge red beard that was at least a foot long. His face was darkly tanned. Neither he nor the others that followed him wore helmets. The stub of a cigar was clamped between his teeth. She couldn’t see his teeth clearly, but somehow, she was sure they were gray and discolored. She just had the sense about the man. Everything about him seemed filthy, disgusting, and dishonorable. She didn’t even have the words to describe the feeling in her gut that started to come up.

  “Come on, Jim,” she muttered under her breath.

  The leader of the pack was moving slowly now. His engine was rumbling and emitting loud bangs.

  The leader turned into the parking lot. He was about fifty feet away from the RV, over on the other side of the lot.

  Aly gasped.

  “This isn’t good,” said Rob.

  “They turned in...” said Jessica, her voice low as she stated the obvious.

  The rest of the gang followed their leader, turning into the parking lot.

  The noise was overwhelming, even with the windows rolled up, even from inside the shelter of the RV.

  “Come on, Jim,” muttered Aly again, her eyes shifting between where she’d last seen Jim and the motorcycle gang.

  “What do you think they’re doing here?” said Rob.

  “Looking for drugs,” said Jessica, matter-of-factly.

  “How do you know?”

  “A lot of gangs deal drugs to keep themselves financially solvent,” said Jessica. “And consequently, a lot of them get hooked on the stuff themselves. I’m guessing their supply has dried up with the EMP. They’re going to be jonesing hard. That’s all just a guess, though.”

  The thought of a motorcycle gang going into serious opiate withdrawal wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  Aly may not have known much about motorcycle gangs. But she did know that there were “gangs” and there were “gangs,” as the expression went. There were the gangs that were more like social clubs, the kind where the members all had regular jobs or were retired. Those types of people just happened to like motorcycles and enjoyed the social aspect of sharing their hobby with others.

  Then there were the real gangs, where, sure, some had regular jobs, but the gang itself was always the main job, the real job, the primary focus of all their lives. It wasn’t a mere social club, but a family closer than many real families.

  Aly knew that the gang of bikers she saw streaming across the parking lot was of the second type. She knew they were dangerous, whether or not they were in desperate search of opiates.

  “Come on, Jim,” she muttered again.

  “He’ll make it, Aly,” said Rob, but there wasn’t much confidence in his voice.

  “Maybe they’ll just drive right through the parking lot,” said Aly, but she heard the falseness in her voice as she said it. She knew there wasn’t any chance of that. She knew that the bikers were here for a reason.

  Aly watched as the bikers drove right up to the pharmacy wall, killed their engines, and started to swing their dirty legs over their bikes.

  Aly’s heart was pounding. She felt a lump in her throat.

  She was terrified for Jim.

  Not so much for herself or Rob or Jessica.

  So far, the bikers hadn’t seemed to notice them at all. They hadn’t even so much as glanced in their direction. Weird. Definitely weird. But she’d take it. It meant that they didn’t need to flee. It meant that they didn’t need to abandon Jim for dead.

  There was no way Jim could fight off all those bikers. There were twelve of them. They had guns. She could see handguns stuck into waistbands. She could see knife sheaths strapped to ankles. It was clear these bikers were ready for violence.

  Jim stood no chance. No chance of escaping. Not from all those men.

  She could see their physiques more clearly now that they were off their bikes. Except for one or two of them, they were all huge men, with wide shoulders and massive backs, as if they’d fed themselves nothing but huge steaks and beer for years. Lot of protein. Lots of heavy weight lifting. And the bodies that developed from that.

  And except for the outliers, it almost seemed as if there had been a height requirement. Unless Aly’s ever-intensifying fear was distorting her perceptions, most of the bikers seemed to be over six feet tall.

  The bikers stood there, slightly bow-legged, almost like sailors or cowboys from another era.

  Fear was flowing through Aly. She was acutely aware of how shaky she felt; how cold she had suddenly become.

  A thousand worries and terrors seemed to rush through her mind. She could barely keep track of them all. They were
like a tornado that was ripping through her.

  The only thought she would later remember was that it seemed as if these bikers had been, in a way, preparing for the EMP for their entire lives. They had already lived and existed outside of the law, outside of the system of society. Sure, they had relied on society. They had been like parasites, taking just enough of the blood of society to do what they wanted. They’d relied on gas stations and the money of others. Not to mention the shipping systems, and countless other things that, until recently, had just been taken for granted for by everyone.

  Without realizing it, the EMP was what the bikers had always craved and desired. Here, for them, was a new world, a world that was spinning out of orbit and into chaos. A world for the taking. A world to create an empire in. A world in which they could exert that power when they had been held back before.

  The bikers were nodding to themselves. They were taking guns from holsters and waistbands. They were patting their pockets and knife sheaths, checking for their auxiliary weapons. They were casting their eyes around the corners of the pharmacy.

  And then Aly saw it. One of them cast his eyes right towards their RV. She saw him open his mouth, saying something. She couldn’t hear what he said. But it didn’t matter. The meaning was clear. He was alerting the others.

  Aly knew that none of them wanted to leave Jim there. She also knew that she had to be the one to give the order to leave. Jim was her husband, so that meant she was the only one really with the authority to say that they should leave him behind.

  “Go!” hissed Aly.

  Jessica had seen the biker’s eyes move as well. She’d seen the words being spoken. Jessica didn’t need to be told twice. She already had the engine started, the RV in gear.

  Jessica swung the wheel. The RV sped backwards, wheeling around.

  Now it was just a question of whether the bikers would follow them.

  Aly didn’t think they would. They were after something in the pharmacy, and they’d only be interested in others if they stood in their way, or had something to offer. Some random RV didn’t pose much of a threat as it drove away, and it likely didn’t offer much in the way of pharmaceutical products.

  “What about Jim?” said Rob, as Jessica slammed on the brakes, spinning the wheel back around, trying to get the RV pointed in the right direction.

  “We’re not going to do him any good if we’re dead,” said Aly.

  She could barely get the words out. Her heart was pounding. Her anxiety had never been this bad.

  Jim was resourceful. He was strong. And he had a strong mind.

  But he’d be in a situation that not many could get out of.

  Maybe there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d live. Or maybe the odds were even worse.

  There wasn’t any point in trying to calculate them.

  “We’re no match for those bikers,” said Jessica, her own voice tense and terse. “We’ll drive down, and then head back once the bikers are gone.”

  To say Aly had an unsettled feeling in her stomach was putting it much too mildly. Driving away from her husband felt like she was just leaving him to die. But there was no point in staying to try to fight off the bikers.

  3

  Jim

  Jim’s eyes were slowly adjusting somewhat to the darkness. As they did, he moved blindly through the store, making sure to pause frequently, listening for any noises that would hopefully alert him to the presence of anyone else there.

  But he heard nothing. Just silence.

  So he had gone about doing what he’d set out to do, which was gathering supplies.

  In the darkness, he felt around on the floor, slowly identifying things just by feeling their size, shape, and weight. Products were scattered everywhere. There was apparently no order to anything at all.

  Obviously the pharmacy had been ransacked and looted. Probably a mob had rushed it in the first days after the EMP.

  But, as Jim discovered, they hadn’t done a good job in their looting. He’d heard about as much. Frantic people don’t make good decisions. Even during disaster survival situations, the mobs often go for items that simply won’t help them survive. Televisions and computers being the worst examples.

  Jim could see a little more now.

  The shelves were all overturned, as if a mass of people had simply collided with them all, knocking them all over.

  It would take a long time to properly sort through this all. Too long. It was better to get back on the road before someone else showed up. Jim figured that a pharmacy would be a hot spot for people like themselves, people looking for food, for medicine. For anything that would help them survive.

  Jim didn’t hear the sounds of the motorcycles until he had half-filled a plastic bag with beef jerky that he was pulling from underneath a knocked-over shelf. To do so, he had to actually use all his strength to pull the heavy shelf up just an inch or so, so that he could slide the beef jerky out from underneath it.

  Jim pulled his hand out and let the shelf fall back down.

  In the darkness, he listened to the sound of the motorcycle engines.

  It was that unmistakable throaty, choppy guttural sound. A sound that bikers actually strove to achieve in their bikes. They liked them to sound rough and intense like that, rather than like suave, well-tuned racing machines. It went with the whole personality. Rough and tough. Ready for a fight.

  The sounds were getting closer.

  Jim didn’t know how many there were. But there were a lot.

  Jim’s heart was pounding. His feet and hands were cold and clammy.

  His body was already on edge.

  He knew danger when he heard it.

  His body knew danger.

  It was a primordial feeling. Something from the cavemen times that hadn’t yet been lost, but had been carried from generation to generation as humanity grew and changed, still never losing the very fundamentals of life and death dangers.

  It was getting ready. It was either a fight. Or fleeing.

  Fleeing was better. Less risk. Maybe not as heroic. But who cared about heroics when it was a real life-or-death situation? This wasn’t some movie. This was his life.

  Jim only needed a couple things to be in place for him to be able to flee. He needed an exit. He could probably find one.

  He needed the bikers, who he knew in his bones were about to enter the pharmacy, to all come in from the same entrance. He needed them to not post up guards on the other exits.

  He needed Aly, Jessica, and Rob to leave in the RV. If they stayed there, it’d only cause problems. Like a fight.

  Jim listened as carefully as he could, hoping to hear the sound of the RV engine starting up among the sounds of the motorcycle engines.

  But he heard nothing.

  Except for the engines cutting off. One by one.

  Jim tried to count them all. It was hard. He was just counting minuscule space between the sound. Slight changes in tone, nothing more. Mere seconds between the changes.

  His guess was ten or twenty bikes.

  A lot.

  Way too many to fight himself.

  If he was lucky, he might take a couple of them out. Not many, though. And not enough. He’d be dead soon enough. He doubted he’d last more than a full minute.

  A minute was a long time during a gunfight.

  Jim didn’t have long before they came in.

  His hand was wrapping around the handle of his gun.

  Normally, the weight felt reassuring.

  But now it didn’t.

  Jim took it as a sign that he needed to flee.

  His eyes were already scanning his surroundings, searching desperately for an exit.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of those older buildings with large windows, through which the sun streamed. Windows that he could escape through.

  No. It was one of those new buildings. Basically nothing more than a large box. Like a shipping container plopped down on a foundation. No windows. Not even up towards the ceili
ng. Or there would have been more light.

  The thought flashed through Jim: in a fight, the one advantage he’d have would be that his eyes would be adjusted. More adjusted, at least.

  But he needed to avoid a fight at all costs.

  He needed another exit.

  He’d come in through the back.

  He heard that same back door open. He heard the first heavy footstep. He heard the grunt and the sharp intake of breath.

  They were here.

  Not far away.

  He had thirty seconds. Maybe. If he was lucky.

  Jim dashed to the automatic front doors that stood in the front corner of the pharmacy. The glass had been covered up with thick pieces of cardboard.

  Obviously, the electrical motors that opened the doors weren’t running.

  Jim threw himself against the doors. He aimed for the middle, where the doors met with rubber bumpers. He didn’t have time for finesse. He hoped that the force of his body would open the doors at least a little.

  No luck.

  His shoulder slammed hard into the metal of the door.

  Pain flared through him.

  And the doors didn’t budge.

  There wasn’t much time left.

  Jim brought his free hand around, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, and tried to jam it between the doors. Maybe he could pry them open.

  But no luck. The doors weren’t moving.

  Jim had mere seconds left before they came in. Before the bikers saw him. He was out in the open in front of the door. A prime target. With nothing to hide behind.

  He wasn’t going to be able to get out.

  So he had to either hide or find a spot that gave him some type of advantage for a fight.

  His eyes scanned the store. He only had time for one scan.

  There were just the knocked-over shelves. And products, some of them busted open, scattered on the floor. The store was nothing but a large box. And he was inside of it. There weren’t any nooks and crannies.

  Maybe he could hide behind one of the knocked-over shelves. But it wouldn’t cover much of him, even if he lay flat on his belly. And it wouldn’t give him any cover in a firefight.