Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything nearly as exciting as a melted candy bar left in the food stores. Most of it was stuff left over from the professors. Things like granola cereal, pemmican, and odd stuff like kale chips that only a professor could really like.
“This isn’t even really food,” Rob said, examining the pack of kale chips with added fish oil. “We can’t bring this.”
“If it has calories, then it doesn’t matter,” said Aly. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than whether you like it or whether it tastes any good.”
She didn’t snap at him. She was just being practical. She was back to being her old self.
It was remarkable to Rob that people could go through so much. Aly had recently had to abandon her husband. She’d tried to strangle a man to death with her bare hands. She’d almost been killed herself. And then she’d seen Rob demolish the man’s skull. And now, after a candy bar, she was more or less back to normal. Well, maybe not normal. But getting there. Humans were resilient. He needed to remember that the next time things seemed to be too hard.
If his buddy Jim was still alive, then Rob figured he’d be doing OK. No matter what he’d been through.
There wasn’t any point in wondering whether Jim was alive or not. He either was or he wasn’t.
What they did have to wonder about, however, was how long it would take them to walk back to the pharmacy. And about whether Jim would stick around there.
“There’s always the chance we can find another vehicle along the way,” said Rob. “After all, there are plenty of abandoned cars. Motorcycles. All sorts of things.”
“You’re being way too optimistic,” said Aly. “Think about how many vehicles there are that stopped working when the EMP hit. And the ones that are left? They’re commodities.”
“Yeah,” said Rob. “But people are dying off. We’ve seen it ourselves. Less people. That means less drivers.”
“Think it through, though,” said Aly. “You need the keys... neither of us know how to hotwire anything. Anyway, none of this matters. If we find a vehicle, then that’s great. But we need to count on not finding one. So how far do you think we are from the pharmacy?”
“Beats me,” said Rob. “I was passed out for most of the trip, remember?”
“Shit,” muttered Aly, biting her lip, her eyes looking up as she did some serious mental calculations.
“What is it?”
“I just hope we can get there before sunrise.”
“Why sunrise?”
“I don’t think Jim will hang around much longer than that. He’ll think that we left.”
“You really think so?”
“He’s my husband.”
“I guess you’d know him better than anyone.”
Aly nodded. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got a long walk ahead of us. Let’s grab the rest of this stuff and get a move on it.”
They were already tired, exhausted, and injured in various ways. A whole night of walking in the darkness didn’t sound pleasant. But what did sound pleasant these days? Lying down and resting? That was as good as waiting around to die. Not much point in that. Living was moving, continuing, fighting. Every inch of the way.
14
Maddy
Maddy and her new friend, Jessica, were in the basement of one of the houses. They’d made their way from one house to the other until Maddy was sure that they’d lost the trail of the bikers.
Darkness had fallen. The small windows that led outside showed nothing but blackness.
Maddy had a little flashlight that she held. From its light, she could see the face of her new friend. More than a friend. More like a rescue. A project. Someone to help.
Their brief conversation had fallen into silence, and Maddy was left with her own thoughts. She found herself staring off into the darkness, contemplating and reflecting. Wondering about her new situation. Her new life. And her past one
Her new friend seemed to be struggling with something. Physical pain, maybe. Her face was contorted. Her breathing was a little too fast. A little too heavy. Her eye didn’t look good.
When the EMP had struck, Maddy had been almost finished with her junior year of college. She went to a private university, one that cost her parents, or more accurately her grandparents, quite a bit of money in tuition and expenses.
She’d known what people thought of her in town, that she was just another spoiled, stuck-up rich kid who didn’t understand how the world worked. She could see their eyes following her when she went into the downtown area, on those rare occasions when she had a spare moment that let her steal away from campus, from the long hours in the basement of the library studying for her exams, trying to commit just a couple more facts to memory.
Maddy didn’t think that she was like her classmates. Unlike them, she had an understanding of her place in the world. She understood that she came from a family with a lot more money than most. And she also understood that her family, her grandparents mainly, had worked very, very hard for that money.
During her childhood, her grandparents had taken her on various trips, often to far-flung places. They weren’t quite vacations, although many would consider them such. Her grandparents had been big travelers, now that they were retired and had sold the business that they’d started themselves for a handsome profit. But her grandparents had brought Maddy along for a specific purpose, which was to educate her, rather than just to sit on the beach and relax.
So Maddy had learned how the rest of the world lived. She’d learned that not everyone had food or even water every day. She’d learned that outside of the US, life could be a lot different. And that even in the US, there were many who lived much, much differently than she did.
So she understood the looks of jealousy and resentment when she walked down the busted-up streets, where over half of the stores had been shuttered up years ago due to the terrible economy in the area.
In truth, the city had been going through very hard times. When the big companies that had dominated the 1980s had closed up many of their factories as a result of the increasing digital technology that had made their products less relevant, the universities and the hospitals had become the biggest employers in the area. And as far as Maddy understood it, that wasn’t a good sign.
Maddy had been a good student. Too good, maybe. She’d avoided parties and, for the most part, men, preferring to dedicate most of her time to her studies. She hoped one day to be the kind of person who could work on changing a place for the better. She had trouble being realistic, and she was one of those people who was unrealistically optimistic about the future and her role in it.
When the EMP had hit, she’d been in the library, reading an economics textbook that was as dry as the cracking paint on the wall in front of her.
She’d been one of the only students who’d realized that something serious was going on. Most of the kids had just taken the opportunity to party, to crack open some beers, or to tap a keg. Most of those who did realize that there was a problem had assumed that the campus security or the police would take care of the problem.
But Maddy was different. When the power hadn’t come back on in the first forty-eight hours, and there’d been no communication from the outside world, she realized that she’d have to leave on her own if she wanted to survive. She’d been to enough places in the world with her grandparents that she understood that the world wasn’t the perfectly ordered place that most of her fellow students imagined it to be. The police, surely, had their own families to worry about, as well as plenty of more serious problems in the city to handle. Maddy had correctly assumed that they wouldn’t have time to go out to the campus and rescue what amounted to a bunch of spoiled rich kids who’d been getting drunk for two days straight rather than gathering supplies.
Maddy had left before anything terrible had happened, but after she’d left, she’d heard rumors about awful things happening to the students. Some of the locals had been starting to starve and
had correctly assumed that there’d be plenty of completely unguarded food over at the rich private university. Hell had ensued, and from what Maddy had heard, she wouldn’t have lived through it if she’d been there.
Maddy fully realized that she’d be dead if she’d stayed at the university. She’d be dead if she’d listened to what everyone else had had to say. She’d be dead if she’d believed what the authorities at the campus had told everyone, that everything would be fine and that there was nothing to worry about. The campus security was a joke, and the residential advisers had known nothing at all. Not to mention her friends, the few professors who’d hung around, or the administration.
She also realized fully well that maybe those very same authority figures might have been competently right when they’d told her time and time again throughout her years at college. They’d always been telling her that she was too altruistic, that she was going to end up trying to help others too much rather than trying to help herself. They said it was going to get her into big trouble. Her parents, too, had told her the same thing, and even her grandparents, the same ones who’d taken her on all those trips.
She’d just chuckled at them when they’d told her that.
Everyone who gave her advice had done so with good intentions. She realized that. And when she’d been in college, she’d realized that there really were some real dangers with some of her plans. For instance, after college, she fully intended to join the Peace Corps in a far-flung part of the world, some area where the safety of a young American woman wasn’t the first concern of the local police.
So she’d taken extensive lessons in Krav Maga, slowly, semester by semester, climbing through the various ranks of belts, starting from just a plain white belt and ending up at a very confident brown belt level, preparing to test for her black belt the following semester.
So she’d taken some precautions.
But she knew that it wasn’t about not being prepared. Not really. It was about her mindset. She didn’t know why she was like that. She just always tended to see that every stranger had the potential to be good.
When she’d met Jessica, for instance, she shouldn’t have acted the way she had. Jessica had pointed a gun at her, and very well could have shot her. But Maddy had somehow had the gut feeling that Jessica was good, and not only that she needed help.
Even Maddy realized that she was perhaps taking things a little too far in helping Jessica. But she just couldn’t help herself. It was part of her character.
But Maddy was young, and they always said that young people were overconfident in themselves and their abilities, even if they were intelligent and capable in other ways, and even if they considered themselves fair judges of their own character.
Maddy may have taken a risk helping Jessica. But she also had a foolproof way to avoid these bikers.
By going from house to house, she’d completely fooled them in the past. She’d go into one house, and then simply exit through a window or something. Then she’d find her way into the next house. And the next. And the next.
The real trick to it was to remain indoors as much as possible. And to not simply go from one neighboring house to the next, but to mix it up. Heading across the street, for instance, was more useful than going to the neighboring house. Going catty-corner was even better. Maddy also tried to wait for varying amounts of time within different houses, which introduced more randomness to the pattern, making it harder to track. That was something she’d picked up from a class on cybercrime, a course she’d been told would be useful in a career as a pro bono lawyer, something she’d been considering for further down the road.
Of course, all those dreams were dead now. Maddy was smart enough to know that civilization wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Not unless something miraculous happened. And from what she’d seen so far, people were getting more savage and violent by the day, rather than more civilized.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t help people.
Maybe she was delirious from the lack of regular food, or the drinking water that may or may not have been OK to drink. But maybe she could eventually start something up. Some kind of reorganization. Something similar to a nonprofit of the pre-EMP days. Maybe she could, in her own small way, start to help rebuild civilization. Maybe she wouldn’t see the results in her own lifetime, however long it managed to be. But maybe there’d be something for future generations.
Or maybe she was just completely delusional. And maybe narcissistic on top of it.
Or maybe not.
After all, here she was, already helping a complete stranger. She was the first person that Maddy was helping. And she wouldn’t be the last.
Maddy was smart. Smart enough to avoid the thugs. Smart enough to avoid the dangers of the post-EMP world. Her parents had been right. She was unusually intelligent. Special, even. After all, her childhood bedroom had been filled with trophies, certifications, and awards.
“What do we do now?” said Jessica, a look of intense anxiety written all over her face.
Maddy had always considered herself, perhaps above all else, a sensitive individual. Very sensitive. Sensitive to the pain of others. Sensitive to the pains of the world. Sensitive to injustice and sadness. When people had told her that the world was full of hardship, and that’s just the way it was, she’d argue back vehemently that it didn’t have to be like that.
Even in these crazy times, it pained Maddy to see her new friend so worried, in so much emotional pain.
“Don’t worry,” said Maddy, putting her arm around Jessica’s thin back and shoulder. “It’s going to be OK. We outsmarted them. They have no idea we’re in here.”
Jessica shrugged off Maddy’s arm. Somewhat violently too. And she turned to Maddy, glaring at her. “Are you serious?” she said. She sounded annoyed. Even angry.
Maddy wasn’t used to having people be angry with her. Already, she felt somewhat hurt by it. After all, wasn’t she doing everything she could to help and comfort her new friend?
“Of course I’m serious,” said Maddy, speaking in a serious but comforting voice. “Everything’s going to be OK.”
“You think you fooled them with that trick, don’t you? You think we’re OK here.”
Jessica was clutching her gun tightly, her eyes darting around the room. She seemed paranoid. Highly anxious. Textbook case of... something or other. It was something from Maddy’s psych class, but she must have been organizing her sit-in protest of the cafeteria lunch food the day that they’d covered whatever syndrome Maddy’s new friend undoubtedly had.
“Yeah, of course we fooled them. I’ve done this before.”
“I know that. A couple of times, right?”
“Yeah, and it worked each time. Why wouldn’t it work now?”
“Did you ever consider the possibility that they might have eventually caught onto your trick?”
Maddy chuckled. “Come on. They’re just bikers. They’re not exactly the smartest. They just ride around on bikes all day, right? I doubt they even went to college.” Maddy suddenly realized her error when she saw the look on Jessica’s face. “Oh...” she added, awkwardly. “I mean... of course, not everyone has to go to college.”
Jessica shot her a look but ignored the comment. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “Come on.”
“That’s really not a good idea. It’s dark out there now. We’re much better off just staying in here.”
“Staying in here until they come for us? Are you nuts? If I wasn’t in so much pain, I would have realized how dumb this plan was earlier. But now I can feel my brain starting to work again. The pain has subsided. And you know what I’m realizing now that I can think again?”
“What’s that?”
“That this is some dumb shit, that’s what.”
Maddy gasped. “I can’t believe you’d say that about my plan!” Her feelings were really hurt now.
“I’m not the type to mince words,” said Jessica. “I appreciate your help up
until now. But this plan of yours is going to get us both killed. I’m feeling and thinking a little more clearly now. So you helped me. Now it’s my turn to help you.”
“You’re going to help me?” said Maddy, her voice rising. She was incredulous. This beat-up, bedraggled woman here in front of her really thought she was going to help Maddy? This woman who hadn’t even attended college? This woman who seemed to be overwhelmed with an unrealistic sense of fear?
“That’s right,” said Jessica, her voice calm and level. There was a steeliness in her eyes that unnerved Maddy.
Maddy swung the little flashlight around to get a better look at Jessica’s face.
It looked weary. Dirty. The eye was worse than she’d thought.
That was enough information for Maddy. That was all the information she needed.
“I’m OK, thank you very much,” said Maddy. “But I think I’ll be fine right here. I guess if you want to risk your life leaving at this time of night, then that’s your business, but I strongly advise against it.” Maddy was speaking in her most “advanced” and “educated” tones, as part of a last-ditch effort to show this poor delusional woman that she really did know what she was talking about. Maybe once Jessica realized that, she’d come to her senses and finally listen to Maddy.
“You’re an idiot if you don’t come with me,” said Jessica, starting to stand up, somewhat unsteadily.
Maddy let out a sound halfway between a scoff and a sigh. She wasn’t used to being talked to so abruptly.
Maddy watched as Jessica started walking across the basement, off into the center where the darkness started to envelop her.
As Jessica’s body disappeared from view, Maddy felt fear bubbling up from her stomach. She didn’t want to admit that it was there, not even to herself. But it was. It was definitely there.
But that didn’t mean she was wrong in staying there.
No, it didn’t mean she was wrong.
She just needed to keep telling herself that.
Surviving: The Complete Series [Books 1-3] Page 41
