Surviving: The Complete Series [Books 1-3]

by Westfield, Ryan

  The RV slowed to a complete stop, right in front of Danny and Lonnie’s house.

  There was nothing else wrong with the house. There weren’t vehicles there that shouldn’t have been there. The blinds were drawn as usual.

  But the front door shouldn’t have been like that.

  “What’s the big deal?” said Aly, from the bed. “A house with an open door?”

  “I know them,” said Rob, and he explained briefly how he’d met the older couple on his way to look for Jessica.

  “Should we go in?” said Aly.

  “There’s nothing we can do for them,” said Jessica.

  “What do you think, Jim?” said Rob.

  Jim thought for a moment, and then said, “You’re the one who met them, Rob. It’s got to be your call.”

  It was a big deal for Rob to hear that from Jim. After all, Jim had always been the unofficial leader. And he’d continue to be. But he was passing this decision onto Rob, and it wasn’t like Rob was just deciding on what kind of dessert they were going to have after dinner. This could be a life-and-death matter.

  There wasn’t really any practical reason to enter the house. The way Rob saw it, either Danny and Lonnie were OK or they weren’t. They’d either be dead or alive. Of course, there was a slim chance that if they’d been attacked, they’d be alive, but just barely hanging on. Of course, that would be the worst-case scenario, since it wasn’t like Rob could offer them to come live with him and his friends. They weren’t going to be able to take on stragglers.

  “I’m going in,” said Rob. “The rest of you stay in the RV.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Rob,” said Jessica. “We don’t know who’s in there, or what happened.”

  “If they were attacked, the attackers are probably gone now,” said Rob. “Why else would they leave the door open?”

  “Maybe to invite others in. You know, to trap them.”

  Rob scoffed. “I doubt it,” he said. “But anyway, if you’re right, then I’d better take the risk myself. Our group has one thing to gain from this. It’s kind of selfish of me, in a way.”

  “It’s not selfish. You’re trying to help them.”

  “There might be no one left to help.”

  “What do you think, Jim?” said Jessica. “Should we let him go in alone?”

  Jim shook his head. “I’m going with you, Rob,” he said. “I’ll back you up.”

  They wordlessly got ready.

  “Be careful,” said Aly, as they stepped down out of the RV.

  Neither Rob nor Jim spoke as they approached the house.

  “I’ll go in first,” said Rob, his gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger.

  Jim nodded.

  Rob crossed the threshold. It was dark inside, but there was enough light coming in through the door that Rob could see even with his eyes not yet totally adjusted.

  He could hear Jim’s footsteps behind him as he walked through the house, into the room where he’d sat so recently with Danny and Lonnie.

  Danny and Lonnie were there. But they were dead. Their bodies lay on the floor. Their throats had been slit, and blood was in their mouths and on the floor, pooling out around their bodies.

  Rob and Jim just stood there in silence, looking at the bodies. There were no sounds in the house, and Rob seriously doubted anyone else was there. For one thing, everything that looked remotely valuable had been taken. The room in which the bodies lay had been stripped of almost everything, including pieces of furniture, which seemed strange, since furniture was most definitely not essential to survival.

  Rob should have expected that something like this would happen to them. Their imaginary shotgun hadn’t been enough to protect them, and they were easy targets.

  “People are cruel,” said Rob. “They didn’t have to kill them.”

  “We’ve got to get used to it,” said Jim. “That’s the world we live in now.”

  “They seemed like good people,” said Rob.

  Jim nodded.

  After a quick check of the rest of the house, in case there was anything they might be able to use, they left the house and climbed back in the RV.

  Jim wordlessly started the RV and began driving. Aly and Jessica could tell, without anything being said to them, what had happened.

  So they drove in silence, heading down the tree-lined road on a gray upstate New York day. They were headed into the complete unknown, and they all knew it. More than ever before, they all knew that there was certain danger that awaited them down the road. They knew that for the rest of their lives, there’d be no chance of living in peace and tranquility.

  A completely new life awaited them, one in which they’d have to fight not just to feed and clothe themselves, but to keep themselves from being killed by those who were stronger and more vicious than themselves.

  The odds weren’t in their favor. There was every chance in the world that they’d never live out their full lifespan, but instead meet some untimely end. But wasn’t that how humans had existed before the advent of modern society? For thousands and thousands of years, that’d been the human existence, never knowing which day would be your last.

  Rob knew that they had the stuff to survive. It was deep in their bones. It was an attitude, something ancestral and ingrained in their brains. Humans weren’t meant, after all, to shop for their food in supermarkets and play social games of niceties. They were meant to hunt for their food and know how to defend themselves.

  It was a return to the old way of life. They were losing security and safety, but they were gaining something. Something hard to describe. Something that might be called freedom.

  Note from the author

  At this date, this is the ninth post-apocalyptic novel that I’ve written. For a long time, I’ve thought about the fragility of the various aspects and institutions of modern society. I’ve thought about what could happen, where the weak spots are, and how I and others would respond to social breakdown.

  When I started writing fiction, I was excited about exploring in stories the situations I’d played out in my head for so long. I was eager to share the ideas with others, and to get feedback in a way that wasn’t available to me before.

  To my surprise, I’ve found that writing about post-apocalyptic scenarios has changed the way I think about them in unexpected ways. If there’s one thing I know about writing stories, it’s that it’s the characters, their emotions, and the suspense that comes from them, that makes the stories interesting to read. Descriptions of gear and survival techniques are certainly important, if not crucial, to stories such as these, but they are not the heart and soul of the book.

  So in that sense, I’ve found myself concentrating more on the interactions between the characters, trying to imagine how they would really feel, and the thoughts that would go through their heads as they encounter these incredibly difficult life-and-death situations.

  It was in concentrating more on the characters, what they feel, and their interactions with one another, that my thinking about these events slowly began to change.

  There are plenty of things to fear in a situation like an EMP. Loss of power. Loss of services that we’re used to, like the transportation and availability of food products. But I believe that the most frightening thing, and the most serious threat, is that you will no longer be able to trust other people. In such a situation, your neighbors may turn on you, and strangers will be a serious threat.

  Some people have responded to the idea of social breakdown by forming self-sufficient rural communities, where the members either currently live, or would retreat to should there be some catastrophic threat. There are advantages to this way of thinking: In most situations, communities would be more resilient than individuals.

  The advantage of a community may not be obvious. First, there is the social advantage. Humans are usually happier in groups than on their own. In a post-apocalyptic scenario, happiness may not be achievable, but mental well-being shouldn�
�t be ignored either. When people (and even animals) feel better in general, they are more likely to make the correct decisions, and are even more likely to survive difficult circumstances and extreme situations. They are less likely to give up when things get tough, as proven by the very interesting research done on “learned helplessness.” There are also more tangible benefits, like the division of labor, and the advantage of having people with different skill sets. As people often say, the days where a man could be the master of all knowledge are long gone. Nowadays, there is simply too much to know, and each of us is unlikely to be an expert in auto repair, food foraging, firearms, bushcrafting skills, etc. Even different climates can require vastly different fields of survival knowledge, as the flora and fauna differ greatly across the regions. A group will have more total knowledge than an individual.

  However, the solution of a community as a physical location, is not available to everyone, for a variety of reasons. Of course, there are other ways to go about this. Simply developing a stronger rapport with neighbors, for instance, could lead to unpredictable beneficial outcomes. Really knowing who they are will let you know whether they’d be an ally or an enemy, whether they can be relied upon (based on their strength of character) in hard times, and what sort of skills and supplies they have access to.

  Developing working relationships with all sorts of people could be immensely beneficial. For instance, if there is a farmer nearby, or a neighbor with chickens in their backyard, you might offer to do some chores for them, in exchange for learning a new skill. You’ll come away not just with useful knowledge, but a new social contact, someone who you might be able to trade with or team up with in the future.

  Such informal social arrangements might prove to be invaluable. After all, if there were an event like an EMP, none of the current social-connector tools we rely on would exist.

  Of course, while developing strong social bonds is important, everyone should do everything they can to develop new skills and knowledge. Everyone should have a plan, and everyone should feel that they themselves as an individual know how to act in a variety of worst-case scenarios. After all, communities are only as strong as the individuals that make them up. And what’s more, communities are not always an option.

  The point of this authorial interlude is not to suggest that the formation of a type of community trumps any other method of preparation. In fact, there are certainly countless individuals who would be fine on their own. I am merely trying to point to a place that I know was a weak spot in my own thinking, and perhaps in others’ as well. When it comes to being prepared, it’s always about trying to identify your own weakness and ways you can improve your strategy.

  Final Dread

  1

  Jim

  Jim, Aly, Jessica, and Rob were headed down south in the RV of the demented college professors who had kidnapped Aly. The plan was to leave New York state if they could, entering Pennsylvania. They hoped to find a remote place out in the woods to park the RV. They’d live in it, hunt and scavenge for food, and hope to avoid the intense violence that seemed to be overtaking the country.

  Just the other day, the lake house had burned to the ground. Aly’s uncle had died in the fire. He’d been too drunk to even notice the flames or the smoke, and Aly had been too weak from her injuries to drag him to safety.

  They’d been through a lot. But what was important was that they were alive. And that they had a vehicle, as well as guns, knives, some food, and other basic supplies.

  They’d gotten about an hour south of the lake house when Jessica spotted something from the passenger seat.

  “You see that?” she said.

  “No, what is it?” said Jim. His eyes were getting tired, and it didn’t seem like he could see as well as he normally could. He hoped it wasn’t a permanent change.

  “I can’t tell yet, but there’s something in the road.

  “A car? A vehicle?”

  Jim felt his heart rate increasing. They’d been through a lot during the last few days. The last thing they needed now was some new obstacle. Jim wanted nothing more than to simply park the RV in the woods, as far away from the chaos as they could possibly get, and sit there, doing absolutely nothing. He was tired of feeling constantly on edge, with his mind constantly stimulated.

  But he knew that peace, calm, and quiet weren’t going to come easily. In fact, they’d probably never come again. This was life now. Violence and danger were never going to go away.

  There’d been no sign of any sort of government response to this chaos, to the complete collapse of modern society as they knew it. Of course, Jim imagined that something, somewhere was going on. The government must have been rallying its forces, in whatever way it could, but where it was happening, it was so far away from Jim and his friends that it might as well have been happening on Mars.

  “What should we do?” said Jessica.

  “Everything OK up there?” said Aly, from behind them.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Rob, leaning forward between the driver’s and passenger’s seats.

  Jim said nothing for now. He just kept driving.

  As they got closer, Jessica was the first one to spot what it was in the road.

  “Can you see it?”

  “It’s a car. And a blockade.”

  “A roadblock?”

  “Yeah, like those wooden things when a road is closed.”

  “We can drive through that. Is anyone there?”

  “Someone’s getting out of the car. Looks like an SUV. Oh, wait...”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a cop car.”

  “A cop car?”

  Jim’s mind went immediately to Andy, the guy who’d impersonated a police officer in order to gain their trust. Jim had known there was something off about the guy, but he hadn’t gone with his gut instinct enough, and he’d let Aly’s uncle Jordan say that it was OK that Andy stay in the house. In the end, Andy had stolen their most important gear and their food, and then tried to kill Jim when he’d tracked him down by swimming after him.

  “You think it’s a real cop?”

  “Who knows.”

  “What’s he doing out here?”

  “No idea. You think this means there’s a functioning police station?”

  “Maybe things are better down here,” said Aly. There was hope in her voice. “Maybe everything didn’t collapse. Maybe they weren’t even affected by the EMP.”

  “I doubt it,” said Jim, grimly.

  “But it’s possible, right?” said Aly.

  “Possible, but not likely,” said Jim. “I’m not going to stop.”

  “Good,” said Jessica. “Don’t give anyone else a chance to screw us over.”

  “But what if it’s a real cop?” said Rob. “Maybe he could help us. Or give us some advice.”

  “Real cop or not, it’s too big a risk,” said Jim. “If society hasn’t collapsed down here, then we’ll know about it soon enough. I’d rather spend my days safe and warm in a nice jail cell if that’s the case, rather than...” He didn’t bother finishing the sentence. There were simply so many horrible things, worse than death, that could happen to them if they fell into some trap.

  “If other areas of the country weren’t affected,” said Jessica, “they would have come to help us. They would have sent in the National Guard, the military, the firefighters. Everyone would have been there. But they weren’t.”

  It was a good point.

  They were closer now. Jim could see the cop clearly. Or the fake cop. Or whoever he was. Jim could see his face, and he could see him reaching for his sidearm in its holster.

  The barricades weren’t much at all. Jim was surprised they were still there. After all, it’d been a long time, relatively speaking, since the EMP. Wouldn’t someone have driven through them by now?

  The RV was big, and it was heavy. It had enough power to drive right through those barricades.

  So that’s exactly what Jim did.

>   He pushed the pedal to the floor. The engine roared. Those college professors must have really shelled out for this RV, because it wasn’t lacking at all in horsepower. Of course, aside from driving through barricades, that wasn’t exactly good. It would drive down the gas mileage.

  The cop had his gun in hand. But hopefully it wouldn’t matter. He moved out of the way, just before the RV hit the barricades.

  The RV knocked the barricades out of the way like they were nothing.

  They were roaring down the open road now, and Jim didn’t let off the gas pedal. He glanced in the rearview mirror, but he couldn’t see what the cop was doing.

  Suddenly, gunshots echoed.

  “What’s going on?” someone shouted.

  Jim caught just a flash of a figure, emerging from hiding on the roadside, gun in hand. And then he knew it: it had all been a trap. The fake cop was there just to slow people down, while the assailants waited not far down the road.

  A round slammed into the passenger’s side window, shattering it, creating a fine web of cracks. The round didn’t penetrate the window. There was no hole.

  “Everyone down!” shouted Jim, as he kept the accelerator jammed to the floor. There was no point in ducking himself. He needed to drive, and at this point it was just random chance whether or not he got hit.

  Bullets, probably coming at odd angles, made rain-like sounds as they glanced off the metal outer shell of the RV. Another round made its way through, punching a hole right through metal, and burying itself in Jim’s seat back. He felt the slight vibration of it as it hit.

  But there was nothing to do but drive.

  Now they were on the open road, no one in front of them, and no one in the rearview mirror. The whole incident had taken mere seconds, since the RV had been traveling upwards of eighty miles per hour.

  “Everyone OK?” said Jim. “Anyone hit?” His heart was still pounding in his chest, even though the danger seemed to be gone. For now.

  The answers came back, each of the other three checking in, saying that they hadn’t been hit.