Surviving: The Complete Series [Books 1-3]

by Westfield, Ryan

  “Oh, they’ve chased me before. Never got me yet! So don’t worry.” She said it casually, as if she’d been running from them all her life and at this point, was completely used to it.

  But Maddy was still a stranger. Just because she said it was going to be OK, that didn’t make Jessica feel any better.

  Jessica glanced over her shoulder again. The two bikers had dismounted, and they were starting to walk slowly towards the edge of the road. One of them had a rifle that was clearly visible, slung over his shoulder. The other had something in his hand, but she couldn’t make out what it was.

  “You’d better have a good hiding place! They’re gaining on us.”

  It wasn’t completely true. After all, the space between Jessica and the bikers was growing, rather than shrinking. But Jessica wasn’t feeling good. She was gasping for breath. And her whole body hurt. Once those bikers started to run, she figured she’d have a hell of a time outrunning them or fighting them off.

  Maddy seemed like she could outrun them if she had to. After all, she’d done it before.

  But she didn’t necessarily seem like a fighter. Sure, she’d gotten Jessica disarmed and onto the ground. But Jessica had been weak and mostly blind, with dried blood obscuring her vision and some kind of unspecified head injury that made her all foggy and confused.

  Maddy seemed too sweet and young to be a fighter. Completely different from Jessica. Jessica thought of herself as hardened, streetwise, and able to fend for herself.

  There was no reason to believe that Maddy would wait behind anyway. What would happen if the bikers caught up with them was that Maddy would scamper off to safety, and Jessica would remain behind to fight.

  Now normally, she might have been able to stop them. Pick them off from a distance.

  But she was weak. It was hard for her to run now.

  And one of the bikers had a rifle. That meant long-range accuracy. Much more than Jessica’s little handgun.

  “There’s a house up ahead,” said Maddy, turning her head a little around, so that Jessica could hear her. “I’ve hidden in there before. Come on, you can make it. I’m not going to leave you behind.”

  The words, “I’m not going to leave you behind,” were strange to hear from such a new acquaintance. They were words she’d now expect to hear from one of her friends, from Aly, Rob, or Jim.

  Not that she knew where they were now.

  So she had to put her trust in this stranger.

  The house wasn’t far away. It’d just be a couple more minutes to get there at their current pace.

  But Jessica didn’t know if she could keep up the current pace. Her body had been pushed past its limits.

  Suddenly, her foot caught on something. A branch or a log. She didn’t see it.

  She lost her balance and fell forward. Hard and fast.

  She knew that she shouldn’t let her gun hit the ground hard. It could possibly lead to an accidentally discharge. So, with this in mind as she fell, she tried to break her fall with only her free hand.

  And that didn’t work so well.

  Her left hand hit the ground hard, and only broke the fall ever so slightly.

  Her head was the next thing to hit the ground.

  The impact seemed to shake her brain.

  Her mind was all funny again.

  Her vision went all fuzzy for a moment. Had she blacked out?

  Pain ran through her. Blood on her mouth again.

  It all seemed too familiar.

  She had to get her mind together again.

  Something important was happening. Oh yeah, she was being chased. By murderous bikers who’d probably torture her to death. And who knew what else.

  Only seconds had passed, hopefully.

  Her heart started to pound as the blurry image of those bikers came flashing through her jumbled mind. Now that she’d fallen, they’d likely overtake her.

  Jessica was almost too scared to look up. She was sure that her new friend, Maddy, would be long gone.

  But when she opened her eyes, Maddy was there, standing over her, leaning down, again offering her hand.

  “Come on,” said Maddy, somehow smiling, despite the situation. “We’ve got to hurry. They’re really catching up to us.”

  Why was Maddy being like this? Why was she so kind to strangers? Why was she literally risking her own life to help Jessica?

  It just didn’t add up.

  But Jessica had no choice.

  Again, she took Maddy’s offered hand.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a house to hide in.”

  “Won’t they just see us enter?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a trick that always outsmarts them.”

  11

  Rod

  Rod and Bill had left their bikes behind on the road. Now they were stomping across a large undeveloped lot that separated the road from an area of suburban streets and cul-de-sacs.

  Up ahead, two young women were rushing away from them. One had a long blonde ponytail. Both of them had good bodies. Muscular legs. Good curves. Youthful shapes. Of course, they were both a little on the thin side, probably from the lack of food. Rod liked his women with a little more meat on the bone, but given how hard up he was, he’d have to settle for less than his ideal.

  Rod had seen the blonde one before. She was always around these parts, scampering off seductively with that backpack. She looked like she belonged at some university, or maybe taking a semester off to travel Europe or hike the Appalachian Trail. She was the type of woman that, before the EMP, had been off-limits to a man like Rod. Just step near a woman like that and she’d be screaming for help or dialing 911 on her cell phone.

  But now, after the EMP? Well, there were no rules. Rod could do what he wanted.

  Just that thought alone excited him.

  At the pharmacy, Rod and Bill had hung back while the others had rushed headfirst into the building to their death. Since the EMP, everyone in the gang had been bingeing so hard on meth that they just weren’t thinking straight. The drug had made them want to fight and to kill. It had made them completely fearless. Which was good in some situations. And of course, it was bad in others.

  Rod and Bill had heard their buddies die in there, fighting some maniac loner to the death. And over what? Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Rod and Bill were smarter than the rest. It wasn’t as if they were completely different. They still understood the benefits of meth, for instance, but they knew not to go whole hog on it.

  Rod and Bill knew how to maintain a nice steady buzz, where your teeth were still grinding, and you were still pumped full of that shaky energy, but you weren’t yet hallucinating ghosts and cops around every corner.

  They knew how to take it easy.

  And they knew how to have fun.

  After seeing those guys die pointlessly at the pharmacy, they’d agreed that they wanted to pursue simply the finer things in life. Namely: women.

  They needed to get some women. After all, women made life worth living. What was the point without them? What was the point of life without pleasure?

  So Rod and Bill had split off from the rest of the gang as they all fled the pharmacy and that crazy maniac in the stairwell.

  They’d agreed that the first thing they’d do was capture themselves some women. They knew from experience that there wasn’t much point in trying to seduce women with their looks or charm. No, neither of them had had much luck in that department. But they also understood that women wanted a show of strength and power. And they understood very well that the land really and truly now was competently lawless. If Rod and Bill could capture some women, then they’d be theirs, until someone stronger came along and took them.

  “I call the blonde one,” said Bill, who was trailing Rod, a little back and to the left.

  “The blonde one?” said Rod. “Are you nuts? I already called her.”

  Rod turned as he spoke. And as he did, he saw that Bill had his rifle rai
sed, as if he was getting ready to use it.

  “What the hell are you doing with that thing?” said Rod, stopping in his tracks and wrapping one of his giant hands around Bill’s rifle.

  “Dude, get off my gun. What gives?”

  “Remember what we talked about?”

  “About getting some women? Yeah, of course. What do you think I’m trying to do?”

  “Not about that. About thinking things through.”

  “Not really,” said Bill.

  “Well, I’ll give you a little refresher course. Before you go and shoot those women, let’s stop and take a moment to think this thing through.”

  “Here you go again with this anger management crap. I don’t need this.”

  It was true. Rod had gotten his “stop and think things through” line from an anger management course that he’d been legally obligated to take several years ago after he’d headbutted a rude bartender unconscious.

  But if Rod had one good quality, aside from his raw strength and power, it was that he was able to see the good in things that were otherwise horrible. The anger management program had been horrible, all about trying to bottle up what Rod considered good and healthy impulses. But he’d been able to see the good in stepping back and coming up with a plan before acting. At times, it had saved his life.

  “Look, you moron,” said Rod. “Think this thing through. If you shoot them, you think they’re going to be a lot of fun? If they’re dead, they’ll be no fun at all. And if you injure them, you think they’re going to be able to cook us breakfast and shit like that?”

  “Uh...” said Bill. “I didn’t think about it quite like that.”

  “I didn’t think so. The way I see it, we capture them alive and kicking. They’ll struggle at first. Maybe for a few days. And then, gradually, they start to like us.”

  “Like us? But they’re going to be our prisoners, I thought.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome?”

  “What Syndrome? Is that some foreign shit?”

  “Stockholm Syndrome, idiot. It’s when the kidnapee starts to identify with the captors and sympathize with them.”

  “So? What does that have to do with us?”

  Bill was a good guy, but he wasn’t the smartest.

  Rod sighed. “Come on, man. Can’t you see it? After we grab ’em, just give it like a week, and they’ll be begging to stay with us. They’ll be as good as like real wives. They’ll do whatever we ask. Get me? Now do you want to go shooting your future wife? I didn’t think so. Now, come on. We’ve got to catch ’em before they get away. Remember how fast that blonde one is.”

  “Yeah, let’s go.”

  They gave each other stiff nods and increased their pace to a light jog. They were both big guys, and they weren’t about to do any all-out sprints. Then again, they didn’t need to. All they needed to do was follow the women to their hiding place. Or outlast them. Rod and Bill might not be the fastest, but they had a lot of stamina. That’s something that a nice even steady dose of meth helped with.

  Rod glanced over at Bill’s face, which was, as normal, covered with what looked like little cuts. Bill called them his “bug bites,” but in reality they were from the times when Bill took a little too much and thought that bugs were crawling all over his face, thus trying to scratch them all off him as fast as he could.

  Now there was a new expression on Bill’s face. And that was pure gleaming excitement. Excitement at having a woman. At having a wife. At having some fun, finally.

  Enough of this end of the world shit, enough trying to dominate the area like the rest of the gang was trying to do. No. This was going to be Rod’s and Bill’s time. Time to shine. Time to lie back and let the women do the work. In a couple weeks’ time, the women wouldn’t know what to do without them. That was the beauty of Stockholm Syndrome.

  And if it didn’t work? Well, they’d still have their fun. And they’d kill the women and move on, finding some more. There were always more out there.

  But these two were special. Rod knew he wanted the blonde one. She was something else.

  After a few minutes of brisk walking, Bill elbowed Rod, saying, “Hey, look, they’re going into that house there. See it? The one with the blue shutters.”

  The women had entered what looked like the rear end of a typical suburban cul-de-sac. They were in what amounted to a continuous backyard that curved around with the houses that surrounded the little circle of pavement.

  The houses were all neat little cookie-cutter deals. It wasn’t the sort of place that Rod and Bill had ever spent much time. Their kind hadn’t been welcomed around places like this. Well, no one was around to say anything about it now. The inhabitants of the houses had either fled, died, or were hunkered down in their basements for the long haul, terrified and starving slowly to death.

  Rod stopped in his tracks.

  The house that the women had entered was just three houses down.

  “What are you waiting for?” said Bill, looking back at him. “Come on, let’s go. They might run out the front door.”

  “Remember that this happened to us before, Bill?”

  “What?”

  “The blonde one ran into a house and we followed her. And then she was nowhere to be found.”

  “Uh, I guess, yeah. But this is different.”

  “Why?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.”

  “I’ll tell you why it’s different. Because this time we’re on to her tricks.”

  “What tricks?”

  “Stand here next to me and watch carefully.”

  Rod was pleased with himself. He and Bill stood there, side by side, in some suburban backyard where the grass was getting overgrown and would never be mowed again.

  The sun was going down soon, but for a moment, the constant cover of clouds seemed to disappear, and a ray of weak northern sun shone down on them. It seemed like a sign. A sign that Rod was only getting smarter and more clever.

  After only a few minutes, he observed exactly what he expected to observe.

  The women emerged from the very door that they had entered. They ducked down quickly into some hedges that led out to the front yard.

  “Come on, Bill. Follow me.”

  Rod led Bill to the deck of the house whose backyard they were in. Rod quickly broke the window by smashing the butt of his handgun into it. He reached through the broken glass, grabbed the handle, and swung the door open.

  The house was abandoned, with stuff scattered all over, as if people had tried to pack up at the last minute, which was probably exactly what had happened.

  Rod led Bill through the house, up the stairs, and to a bedroom with a window that faced the front of the house. From there, peering out the window together, they could look out onto the cul-de-sac itself.

  “Now watch this,” said Rod.

  A smug smile formed on his face as he looked down and watched the women emerge from the row of hedges, cross the cul-de-sac, and enter another house.

  “What are they doing?” said Bill. “Going from one house to the other?”

  “Exactly,” said Rod. “Going from one house to another. That’s how that blonde one has been evading us. But now we’ve got her. You just wait.”

  “But how? They’re going to just go from one house to the other. We’ll never catch them.”

  “You disappoint me sometimes, Bill. But don’t worry, the master has a few tricks up his own sleeve. We’ll get them. Don’t worry.”

  Despite his grin, with the corners of his mouth upturned, Rod was noticing that feeling in his bones. That jumpy sluggish feeling that meant he needed to re-up on his meth pretty soon. Easy enough. Now that there was no law, he could do it anywhere he liked. In a pharmacy. In a stranger’s abandoned house. It wasn’t like anyone was around to see. And if they had been? So what? If they had a problem with it, he’d shoot them in the face.

  Rod licked his lips as he thought about his new future. He was really starting
to like this new world. He’d trade electricity for anarchy any day of the week.

  12

  Jim

  With each minute that had passed, Jim had expected to hear someone coming up those steps. He’d expected to hear shouting, cursing. He’d expected to see a pair of legs coming at him from where he crouched half-hidden under the simple metal desk.

  But nothing happened.

  No one had come for him.

  Instead, he’d heard the bike engines start up and slowly fade out into the distance.

  It had sounded like the bikers had left him there. But he didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t believe it. Instead of thinking logically, he got stuck in some kind of panic fear-based state in which his grip on reality was slipping.

  There had been so many of the bikers. They could have taken him out. They were armed. They knew, to a large extent at least, what they were doing.

  Maybe he’d killed enough of them that they’d managed to misjudge him. Maybe they’d thought there must have been more than a single man there, fighting them off.

  Or maybe it was just a trap. Maybe the bikers had decided to take the easy way out and just hang back, waiting until he eventually emerged.

  Or maybe they just didn’t care. Didn’t care about doing anything with the bodies of their dead and fallen members. Didn’t care about honor enough to kill Jim, the man who’d killed their own members.

  Maybe the bikers were nothing more than a ruthless gang without any honor whatsoever. Maybe they’d done the smart thing and simply retreated with their tails between their legs. After all, they must have known that it didn’t matter. Statistically, it wasn’t likely that Jim would live much longer anyway. It wasn’t like he was going to be out there spreading the word on how the bikers had let him live. He didn’t even know the name of their gang. To him, they were simply “the bikers” and nothing more.

  Jim just didn’t know what had happened to them.

  What he did know was that he’d stayed there, bloodied and shivering under the desk, until the sun had set.