“You’re dead, you fucking assholes!” the man outside the door roared. “You’re fucking dead!”
Neither Phil nor Wyatt said anything in response. While their hearts were pounding in their chests and adrenalin was coursing through their veins, they were both utterly focused on dealing with and eliminating the threat the attackers presented.
Phil was coldly thankful that the attackers hadn’t thought about the fact that their headlamps made them perfect targets in the dark. When one of the men with shotguns popped up from behind a shelf to fire at Wyatt, Phil got a perfectly clear shot at his head and took it. Before the man could even squeeze his trigger, his head snapped back, half his skull blown out by the .45 bullet.
The other biker, realizing his headlamp made him an easy target, pulled it off, flung it across the store, and started crawling across the floor. “Take your headlamp off, Jackson!” he yelled. “These assholes can see us like that!”
Phil saw the shadowy silhouette of the man with the AK-47—the one called Jackson—slip into the store sans headlamp. Another man, this one armed with a pistol, crept in after him. Phil got a good shot at him, though, and dropped him with a single shot to the torso. Jackson responded by popping up over a shelf and spraying a burst of AK fire in Phil’s direction.
“Suck on that, motherfucker!” Jackson roared. The bullets peppered the counter and blew holes through the cash register, but Phil was safe.
Suddenly, something clicked in Phil’s mind and realized where he’d heard Jackson’s voice before. He had been one of the men who tried to break into Alice’s apartment, and who had then tried to trap Phil and his group in the burning building. A burst of fresh anger ripped through Phil; this evil criminal had tried to kill him once before, and now he was trying again. This time though, Phil decided, this psycho wouldn’t escape.
He knew that Jackson and the other bikers who were in the drugstore knew he was behind the counter, and they would keep on sending fire his way. He took out his headlamp and grabbed a nearby broom from the floor. He hung the headlamp on the end of the broom, then raised it above the counter, moving it as if it were a man trying to run.
A blast of shotgun fire came from the floor nearby, and Phil knew it was one of the bikers shooting at the headlamp. Before he could fire at the man, though, Wyatt, who’d also seen the shotgun blast in the dark, took out the man with a burst of AR-15 fire.
“Fuck this!” one of the bikers yelled from near the door. “You’re on your own now, Jackson. This ain’t worth it!” The man fled, running out of the rear door, and Phil heard him yelling in a panicked voice to his comrades.
“Sons of bitches!” Jackson howled. “Cowardly motherfuckin’ sons of bitches!”
From outside came the sounds of motorcycle starting up and then riding away as the gang rode off to find an easier target. A burst of triumph ripped through Phil’s veins, but he knew the battle wasn’t won just yet—there were at least two bikers still in the store, and Jackson, at least, seemed prepared to fight to the bitter end.
“To the bitter end then, asshole,” Phil whispered, popping the empty clip out of his .45 and loading a fresh one.
“Rraahh!” one of the bikers screamed wordlessly, jumping up from behind a shelf and blindly firing into the dark, overcome by panic.
Wyatt popped up from behind cover, unloading a couple of rounds into the man’s chest and face, but this was what Jackson had been waiting for—he too popped up and unleashed a burst of AK fire in Wyatt’s direction. The bullets slammed into Wyatt’s chest, and he dropped to the ground with a grunt.
“No! Wyatt!” Phil roared, jumping up on top of the counter, his heart racing.
“Fuck you!” Jackson snarled, coming up to blast another burst of AK-47 fire, his rifle aimed squarely at Phil’s silhouette…but when he squeezed the trigger, there was nothing but an empty click—he was out of ammo. Phil fired a couple of rounds in quick succession, and all of them slammed home into Jackson’s torso. He dropped his AK and crashed through a flimsy shelf.
That was it, the battle was over, but the only thing Phil cared about was Wyatt. He grabbed his headlamp from the ground, put it , and raced over to Wyatt. He found him lying on his back, wheezing and gasping for breath.
“I’m…okay,” Wyatt managed to gasp. “Vest…saved me…but…wind knocked outta me…gimme…a minute.”
The front of Wyatt’s bulletproof vest was all torn up, but the plate inside, while badly dented, was intact. Phil whispered a prayer of thanks, then hurried over to check on the bikers to make sure none of them were alive. Every one of them that Phil came across was dead, but when he got to Jackson, his enemy looked up at him with life still burning with a bright and hateful vigor in his eyes. Phil saw that Jackson was also wearing a bulletproof vest, which had saved his life. One of Phil’s bullets had done some damage, though. It had hit Jackson in his left shoulder, and the wound was oozing blood. Phil recognized Jackson’s powerful build, his tattooed arms and neck, and his ugly, coarse-featured face from Alice’s apartment building.
Now that there was some light in the dark store, Jackson was also able to recognize Phil. “Ahh, it’s you, cowboy. I thought you and your bitch wife burned to death in that building yesterday,” he growled, smiling evilly. “Guess I was wrong.” His AK was empty, and he didn’t have any other guns on him.
Phil pointed his pistol at Jackson’s forehead, and cold rage was flowing through his veins.
“Go on, do it,” Jackson taunted, grinning. “Put me outta my fuckin’ misery. Do it, go on cowboy, do it!”
As much as Phil hated this man, he couldn’t bring himself to execute an unarmed man. The battle was won, and pulling the trigger now would be murder, not self-defense.
“What’re you waitin’ for, cowboy?” Jackson growled. “Come on, put a bullet in my head. Do it! Fuckin’ pussy, do it! You piece of shit, son of a.”
Jackson’s taunting was cut short by a heavy thud; Wyatt had gotten up and had just punted Jackson in his jaw with a heavy boot, knocking him out cold.
“Come on, Phil,” Wyatt muttered, staring down with contempt at the man he’d just knocked out. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Phil slowly lowered his pistol and then holstered it. He took one last look at Jackson’s ugly face, and then picked up his backpack and followed Wyatt out of the store into the pitch-black alley. It was time to go home.
29
“It’s been a month now since E-Day, Dad,” David said to Phil. “Do you think things are ever going to go back to being the way they were?”
E-Day was what Phil and everyone else on the ranch had started calling the day of the EMP attack. “I don’t know, son,” Phil replied. “I mean, I know everyone hopes things will eventually return to normal, but don’t get too attached to hope like that. It can be a dangerous thing.”
David sighed, and Phil felt a sharp pang of empathy. He knew how much David missed school and his friends, and the old electronic things he’d loved so much before E-Day: video games, TV, phones, computers. Phil was sure that none of that sort of stuff would be coming back any time soon, though, not in this strange and uncertain new world they had found themselves in. He put down his shovel, stepped over to David, and gave him a hug.
“I know you’re missing the old days, son. Believe me; I am too. And it’s perfectly okay to be sad about those times and to want ‘em back. But we have to live in the present, and prepare for a new future, one that’s very different from how the old future was gonna be.”
“I know, Dad, I know,” David said sadly. “I just…it’s hard sometimes.”
“I know that, son. But come on, let’s get back to work. These seed potatoes aren’t gonna plant themselves, and we’re running out of daylight. There’s nothing like a bit of good old hard work to take your mind off sadness, trust me on that.”
“Okay, Dad.” The two of them got back to digging and planting potato seed.
They did this for around twenty minutes, working
in silence until the sound of approaching hoofbeats caught their attention. They looked up and saw Wyatt approaching on his dun mare. On his usually stony face was an expression of concern, which worried Phil. He put down his shovel as Wyatt trotted his horse over to him and David.
“What’s up, buddy?” Phil asked. “Did you finally pick up a non-military signal on the ham radio?”
“Nope, still the same old military garbage on the ham radios,” Wyatt said. “Nothing new there. But you better come over to the farmhouse. The workers have called a meeting, and they wanna speak to you.”
“All right, right now?”
Wyatt nodded. “Right now, yeah.”
Phil and David’s horses were tethered nearby. “Come on, Davey,” Phil said, “let’s saddle up and go see what’s going on. Leave the shovels here. There’s still plenty of daylight left. We can come back and finish up the tater planting later.”
Phil and David mounted their horses, and they and Wyatt rode the mile or so from the potato planting area to the farmhouse at a brisk pace. Outside the farmhouse, Phil saw a group of ten or eleven people gathered. This was about half his workforce. In the first few days after E-Day, all of his workers and their families had come to the ranch, driven out of their homes either by the danger of looters and raiders or because of running out of food and water. Phil had welcomed them all, had given them shelter in the many outbuildings on the ranch, and had divided the food up equally for them. He had assured them that as long as they all worked hard on the ranch and pulled their weight, they could stay on as long as they liked. He needed the labor to keep the ranch running optimally, and they needed the food and water the fertile, well-managed homestead provided. It was a positive arrangement for everyone, and Phil wondered why there was discontent. Everyone had seemed happy enough with the status quo over the past month, and everybody got their fair share for the work they put in.
Anthony and Debbie seemed to be the leaders of this group of workers. Debbie had recovered well from her surgery after the E-Day shooting, and thanks to the insulin Phil and Wyatt had taken from the drugstore, she was healthy and energetic. Anthony had recovered well from the trauma of seeing her shot too. Phil wondered why these two, of all people, seemed to be agitated about something. He walked up onto the porch steps to speak to the group. “Good afternoon, my friends,” he said, smiling amicably. “What can I do for y’all? Is there anything I can help with?”
Anthony, looking a little nervous, got up onto the porch to speak to Phil on the group’s behalf. “Phil, first up, we wanna say that we appreciate everything you and your family have done for us in these difficult times. Especially with what happened to my wife right after E-Day.”
Debbie nodded, wordlessly expressing her gratitude.
“We aren’t unhappy with anything about you or your family or the arrangement we’ve got going here on the ranch.”
“Okay,” Phil said, feeling a little confused. “So…what exactly is the problem here, if everyone’s happy with how things are working?”
“We just…we think there has to be some sort of government station set up,” Anthony said, looking a little guilty, “some sort of place we can go where they’ll evacuate us and take us to a part of the country where, where things still work like they used to.”
Phil sighed. “Anthony, we’ve been over this. Have you seen a single aircraft in the sky since E-Day? Any sort of aircraft at all? Besides the truck and dirt bikes here on the ranch, have you heard any kind of vehicles moving around?”
“Well, we couldn’t even if there was any,” one of the workers from the group said. “You guys dynamited the road leading to the ranch, so nobody could get here.”
“And we destroyed the road to keep this place safe,” Phil said calmly. “You all know about those biker gangs; some of you almost killed by ‘em.”
Debbie looked guiltily down at her feet when Phil said this.
“We had to cut ourselves off, people. We’ve been over this. We keep this place secret and remote, we keep it inaccessible from the outside world, and we stay safe. Look, I understand that some of you might be feeling a little stir-crazy. None of us has left the ranch, as big and expansive as it is, for almost a month. But we’ve got food and water and shelter here, people. This place is self-sustaining. We can live here indefinitely, independently. And we’ve been monitoring the ham radio every day, non-stop. Throughout the whole month, there’s been not one broadcast from any sort of government. It’s all military stuff, and from what I can hear, they don’t know what’s going on or have any sort of plan either.”
“We realize that, Phil,” Anthony said, unable to make eye contact with Phil. “And I’ll say it again. We are super, super grateful for everything you’ve done for us. But some of us, we just can’t live like this. This place is starting to feel like a prison—and that’s got nothing to do with you or your family, Phil. I’ll just say that as plainly as I can. You guys have been nothing but generous and loving to us…but we can’t help the way we feel. We feel very strongly that the government of the United States still exists, and that they’re doing their best to help survivors. We think that there’s no way the EMP could have destroyed all technology across the whole nation, and we’re sure there are town, cities, hell, maybe even whole states, where life has continued as normal.”
Phil breathed in a long, deep breath and held it in for a while before releasing it in a slow sigh. “So what you’re trying to tell me, Anthony, is that you’re leaving?”
Anthony nodded. “We want to head out and find government help. We know it’s out there. We just want to have normal lives again. I mean, what you’ve got going on the ranch is amazing, Phil, and we think it’s wonderful that you’ve made this self-sustaining place…but we can’t live like this forever. Maybe you can, but we can’t. We have to try to get back to normal lives. And we’re prepared to take whatever risks we have to to find that.”
“Well, you’re all free folk,” Phil said. “And I can’t stop you if you want to leave. For the record, I don’t think you’re making a wise decision at all, but if this is truly what you want to do, I won’t stand in your way. Where are you going to go, anyway? Back to the city? You know it’ll take you days of walking to get there because of the roads we destroyed.”
“Yeah, back to the city,” Anthony said. “We figure the violence has died down there now and the raiders have moved on or been driven out by the military. We’ll walk through the woods, the long way round. We don’t mind that.”
“Very well, then. I’ll give you all a few days’ worth of supplies and some spare tents we’ve got,” Phil said. “I’m just going to ask you all for one thing, though.”
“Sure, Phil,” Anthony said.
“Don’t tell anybody about this place, please. Not civilians you meet, not military, not government people, if there are any of those. That’s all I ask: please, please keep this place a secret.”
“Don’t worry,” Anthony said. “We won’t tell a soul.”
Phil extended a hand, and Anthony shook it. “Thanks for all the work you’ve done on the ranch, guys,” Phil said. “I really appreciate it, and we’ll miss you all when you’re gone.”
“We’ll miss you, too, Phil,” Anthony said. “But we have to do this. I hope you understand.”
After the meeting, Phil, his family, and the workers who were staying on at the ranch said their farewells to the group that was leaving. They wished them luck, and Phil assured them that if they changed their minds, they were welcome to come back. After the group had departed, Phil had a meeting with those who were staying behind to reorganize shifts and duties. Now that a bunch of people had left, everyone would have to work harder, and their hours would be longer. Nonetheless, Phil still had everything under control, and the workload was by no means unmanageable. As long as another group didn’t decide to leave as well, Phil was confident that the ranch could keep running as normal.
After the second meeting, Wyatt took Phil aside. “B
rother,” he said, “can we have a word in private?”
“Sure,” Phil said.
They walked down to the stables to talk. “I’m worried about the safety of this place now,” Wyatt said when they got there.
“You think someone in the group who left is gonna spill the beans about this place?” Phil asked.
“Not necessarily,” Wyatt answered. “But I think there are gangs of real bad people out there, prowling the wastelands of the dead cities and towns. Think about it. It’s been a month, and most people out there in the rest of the county probably ran out of food and water weeks ago. Shit, most of ‘em probably ran out in the first few days after E-Day. Most people out there—those who survived, anyway—are gonna be looking dirty, disheveled, starving, ragged. Our people who just left, they’re all well-fed and healthy. What do you think’s gonna happen when these bandits and marauders see a group of well-fed, clean, healthy people?”
“I did warn them about the dangers of being attacked and robbed out there,” Phil said.
Wyatt shook his head, and a dark look came across his craggy face. “It’s not just about ‘em getting robbed, Phil. The kind of people who are gonna be robbing people and marauding—like those bikers we fought off on two occasions—are not just gonna rob our people. They’re gonna want to know where they came from, how they ended up being so well-fed and healthy in a time like this.”
The color drained from Phil’s face. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about it like that,” he murmured. “But there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t hold ‘em here against their will.”
“I know that. You had no choice. The people who left are good people,” Wyatt said. “They wouldn’t willingly divulge any information about this place…but these are dark times. In the Gulf War, I saw men who’d been tortured. The things that were done to ‘em would have made them confess anything. And the bandits out there like those bikers, you think they wouldn’t stoop to torture to get information? To starving people, this ranch is a goldmine. We need to be extra vigilant from this point on.”
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 19 | EMP Ranch Page 16
