After the EMP- The Darkness Trilogy

by Harley Tate

  “I think you guys sell people short.” Peyton scratched at his short hair. “Not everyone’s a coward.”

  “It’s not cowardice. It’s self-preservation.” Brianna pushed off the table, brown eyes bright with passion. “Besides, all those idiots we’ve elected lately, you really think they care about the little guy? You really think they’re going to stick their necks out, risk their lives, to keep peace and order?”

  She shook her head. “They only cared about one thing: power.”

  Peyton still wasn’t ready to give in. “But don’t they still have it? Aren’t they still in charge?”

  “In name only. All the power local, state, and federal officials have only exists because we allow it to exist. What do you think will happen when the prisons fail? When the wardens don’t show up to work? There’s plenty of people out there who will jump into the void.”

  Brianna took a step closer. “All those bad guys out there won’t stand around a wood-paneled room and spout a bunch of words about how we need to do something. They’ll be out there taking control. By force.” She swallowed. “By the time anyone in the government pulls up their big-boy pants and tries to help, it’ll be too late.”

  Madison didn’t know if Brianna was right, but she made some good points. Sitting back and waiting for help wouldn’t do anything but waste time. She held up two plates stacked high with grilled veggies and meat. “I hope all that debating worked up your appetites.”

  Tucker grabbed a plate and set it on the table. “Just watching the two of them and I’m starving.”

  They all sat around the patio table, the mood lightening as they focused on dinner and not the uncertain future. Tucker loaded up his plate with a pile of zucchini and enough grilled chicken to feed a small football team.

  Brianna chugged half a Gatorade and made a crack about burning off the calories with a late-night run. Even Peyton relaxed, eating and laughing until the crinkle of worry between his eyes smoothed away.

  After they’d eaten every last scrap of food, the four of them leaned back, stuffed and satisfied. Living without electricity wasn’t so bad if you got to do it with friends.

  Madison hated to break the moment. She turned to Brianna. “Please tell me you all are staying the night. I don’t think you should be out on the roads when it’s dark.”

  Brianna glanced at Tucker. “If it’s all right, we’d love to. The Jeep’s still got three-quarters of a tank, but I don’t want to waste it. It’ll take almost that much just to get to the cabin.”

  “That’s with no detours.”

  Brianna nodded. “We’ll need to keep an eye out for a way to get more.”

  Madison stood up and began collecting plates and her friends pitched in. “There’s a bed in the guest room and a sleeper sofa in the living room.” She paused. “And my parents’ room, but…”

  “If anyone sleeps there, it should be you.”

  Madison nodded, shoving her worry back down. “Thanks.”

  She took an armful of plates inside with Peyton and the others came along behind. As she set the dishes on the counter, a noise made her jump.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Madison glanced up at Peyton in alarm. “What was that?”

  He pointed toward the front door. “We’ve got a visitor.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  TRACY

  Sacramento, CA

  6:00 p.m.

  The case of Slim Fast wobbled on her hip. Tracy scanned the parking lot, checking for any sign of her Suburban. With every empty parking spot, panic rose inside her, growing from a tiny seed of fear and doubt to a full-fledged, heavy breathing, sweaty-palm catastrophe.

  This can’t be happening.

  She turned to Wanda. “Did you see anyone? Hear anything?”

  Wanda shook her head, the ashen pallor of her cheeks reminding Tracy of the remains of a campfire.

  Barren.

  Empty.

  She swallowed down a wave of bile and tried to think. They had spent all day clearing out Wanda’s apartment. The Suburban could be hundreds of miles away by now.

  “I can’t believe… Why would anyone…” Wanda’s thoughts trailed off, each one unfinished as if the refusal to utter the truth out loud would somehow make it less real.

  Wanda took a hesitant step, arm outstretched to the parking spot where the Suburban sat an hour before. Tracy loved that SUV. It held a million people and twice as much gear. The transmission still worked with a hundred and five thousand miles. It even had a full tank of gas.

  I risked getting shot for that gas.

  A smell hung in the parking lot air, the pungent, thick combination of motor oil and rot. The more Tracy breathed in, the more it suffocated her, swallowing her up like a cloud of despair, pushing her closer to the brink of a breakdown. A crow cawed overhead, fat black body perched on the telephone line twenty feet away.

  It would survive this apocalypse.

  Carrion birds and cockroaches. They would make it. But what about a middle-aged librarian and her boss? Two women alone, without a car, fifteen miles from a house filled with supplies.

  Wanda dropped her hand and closed her eyes, giving in to the fear that threatened to pull them both under. Tracy couldn’t let it. She wasn’t going to go down that road. She wasn’t going to fail already.

  She forced the truth between chapped lips. “Someone stole it.” There. I said it. Tracy inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth, focusing on the act of breathing and ignoring the smell. She could control her breath. She could determine her own fate.

  “But why?” Wanda’s plaintive question did nothing to quell the anger rising inside of Tracy. Screw helplessness. She’d skipped through denial in record time. Anger was stage two and Tracy would be happy to spend the rest of the day mired in it.

  All those self-help seminars, all the directing patrons to the grief section of the library. It only served to hone her focus now. This is reality. This is the only thing that’s real. Right here. This moment.

  Tracy inhaled and exhaled again, channeling her mind. “Because they needed to.” She turned back toward Wanda’s apartment. “We need to rest. Get a good night’s sleep and start fresh in the morning.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Tracy closed her eyes. She couldn’t do this now. “Let’s just get back inside. We can figure it out in the morning.”

  Wanda opened her mouth to protest, but closed it just as fast. Her shoulders slumped as she trudged past Tracy and back toward her apartment.

  Tracy didn’t have the strength to tell Wanda her plan. Come morning, the woman would either be with her or be on her own. But first, she needed to tell her which car to steal.

  Sacramento, CA

  8:00 a.m.

  Tracy couldn’t wait anymore. She barely slept the night before, tossing and turning on Wanda’s couch as she thought and prayed about her daughter. If Madison made it home already and she wasn’t there…

  If she hadn’t made it home and was trapped somewhere between Davis and the house or stuck on campus without power… Tracy could have driven herself mad thinking about all the what-ifs. Instead of thinking, she needed to be moving. Preferably on four wheels.

  She slammed a cabinet in the kitchen. Waited. Slammed it again. At last, Wanda stumbled out of her bedroom, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  “What’s going on?”

  Tracy threw the verbal grenade. “We need a car.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have one. That’s why I was waiting for the bus.” Wanda pushed her hair off her face and entered the kitchen, reaching for the coffee pot before she remembered the lack of power. She grabbed a bottle of water instead.

  Tracy turned to face her, a grim determination setting her jaw. She had to make Wanda understand. “Who had the best vehicle here?”

  Wanda blinked in slow-motion, pale eyelashes fanning up and down like the shutter on a vintage camera. At last she figured it out. “We can’t steal a car!”<
br />
  “Of course we can.” Tracy walked over to the window, raising her hand to her brow to shield her sight from the early-morning sun, and scanned the parking lot. Most of the cars were tiny little things with gas tanks the size of her watering can back home. “We need something that runs well and has plenty of gas. An older model with pull up door locks and an accessible steering column. That or one where we can get the keys.”

  Wanda took a step back, bumping into the counter and sloshing her water. “We can’t steal a car. Someone could need it. These people are my neighbors.”

  Tracy eyed her, expression unchanged. “Then pick a dead one. Dead people don’t need transportation.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “How else do you think we’re going to get home?” She pointed at the supplies they’d hauled back inside the night before. “We can’t walk fifteen miles carrying this stuff under our arms. It’ll take us days.”

  Wanda’s brow knitted as she thought it over. “So we’ll be slow. That’s okay. We can take a while.”

  Tracy raised an eyebrow. “And what will we do at night?”

  Wanda hesitated. “It’s bright at night. We can find somewhere to rest, sleep in shifts.”

  “We’ll be robbed before we make it two miles. Maybe worse.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Tracy pointed at first herself and then Wanda. “Look at us. We’re a pair of middle-aged women with nothing more than a World War II pistol between us. It probably won’t even fire. What would we do if someone accosted us?”

  Wanda glanced over at the bags she’d packed. “We don’t really need any of this stuff. We could do without.”

  “What if they want more than food?”

  “That wouldn’t happen.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Wanda didn’t answer. Instead, she turned to look out at the management building. She walked over to the sliding glass door and yanked it open. After standing and listening for a moment, she glanced back at Tracy. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “It’s too quiet. I think the generators shut off last night.” She shut the door and came back into the kitchen. Her hands trembled as she spoke. “Without the generators, there’s no way to keep the residents on oxygen alive. Or keep any food cold. Or run the HVAC to the main building.” She glanced down at the linoleum, teeth sneaking out to nibble her lower lip. “You really think we’ll be robbed if we walk?”

  Tracy nodded.

  Wanda stood in the kitchen staring at the floor for so long, Tracy thought she’d fallen asleep standing up. At last, she nodded. “Okay.” She looked up, fear and determination warring on her face. “I have an idea.”

  After eating a quick breakfast and getting dressed, Wanda led Tracy out of the front door and around the edge of her building. They headed down a set of stairs running alongside the faded yellow stucco and emerged in a smaller parking lot tucked between the back gate of the community and Wanda’s building.

  She slowed to a stop and leaned close to Tracy, her voice dropping to a whisper. “See that little gray car across the lot?”

  Tracy squinted. “The Nissan Leaf?”

  Wanda nodded. “The man who lives below me owns it, but he can’t drive. He was one of the residents on 24/7 oxygen. His daughter bought the car so that she’d have something to get around in when she flew down from Seattle to visit.”

  “Do you think it has gas?”

  Wanda bobbed her head again. “Always. He keeps it filled up. And it’s part electric, so the mileage is great.”

  Tracy hesitated. Would it even work now? Did the CME do anything to hybrid cars? She didn’t really know. “Are there any other options? Something older and not electric?”

  Wanda chewed on her lip. “I’ve got an upstairs neighbor that drives an old Impala, but that thing’s always in the shop.”

  Tracy exhaled. She didn’t want to break down on the road. “All right. Nissan Leaf it is. Can we get the keys?”

  Wanda nodded. “Should be able to. George always leaves his screen door open.”

  “Just like some other people I know.”

  A blush crept up Wanda’s neck. “He’s the one who gave me the idea. But we’ll need to be careful. He has a cat.”

  Great. All they had to do was break into a stranger’s apartment, hope they weren’t attacked by a house cat, and pray the car turned on when they got inside. She adjusted the butt of Wanda’s revolver that she’d tucked into the back of her jeans.

  It might not fire, but it was better than nothing. She nodded at the apartment. “Let’s go.”

  Wanda took the lead, creeping toward the man’s patio as she scanned the lot for any movement. Tracy hoped the management guy from earlier didn’t catch them, or anyone else for that matter. If the police didn’t care enough to come save the people dying in the complex, then they probably wouldn’t care about a car theft, but she didn’t know for sure.

  Getting trapped in jail when the world was falling apart wasn’t part of her plan.

  Wanda motioned at a little patio with a bistro set and a dead plant. “It’s this one.” She eased over the half-height wall, her short, stocky legs barely clearing the top.

  Tracy followed behind. “Are you sure he’s not home?”

  Wanda shrugged. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.” She gave the screen door a yank and it slid open. The glass door yielded just as easy. As soon as it cracked an inch, the smell hit them, followed by a plaintive yowling.

  Oh, no. Tracy braced herself, pulling her sleeve down over her hand and smothering her nose with the fabric to cut down on the putrid odor.

  They eased inside, stopping a foot into the room as their eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  George hadn’t left home. His dead body lay just as he’d lived, sitting in his recliner, facing the TV, one hand dangling off the side with a remote beneath it on the floor.

  His face had turned gray and ashen, his eyes clouded and milky blue.

  Tracy took another step when a little orange fluff ball darted out from the hall, howling and yowling at her feet.

  Wanda bent down to pet it. “Hey Fireball, how are you?” She scooped up the scrap of a cat and it nuzzled her cheek before licking her nose. She smiled at Tracy. “Whenever George had a hospital stay, I’d watch this little guy.” She glanced at George’s decomposing body. “Guess I won’t be doing that anymore.”

  Tracy turned away from the recliner. “How long has he been gone, do you think?”

  “Looks like a few days.” Wanda rubbed the scruff behind Fireball’s neck. “This guy’s been on his own too long. I’m surprised he didn’t start nibbling.”

  Tracy fought back a wave of nausea. Fireball wouldn’t be the only animal trapped in a house and starving. If they hadn’t come inside, it wouldn’t have been long before he turned to his master to keep himself alive. In a way, humans weren’t any different. She was a scavenger now, too.

  She motioned toward the kitchen. “Can you grab the cat food? We’ll take Fireball with us. No sense in leaving him here to starve. Where are the keys?”

  “They should be in the hall.”

  Tracy took a step that way when a voice stopped her still.

  “Hey, I found an open one. Come on!”

  Shit. She turned to Wanda. “Run!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  TRACY

  Sacramento, CA

  9:30 a.m.

  “Christ, man, you smell that? This one’s ripe.”

  “Don’t be a little bitch. Just tell me if there’s anything worth stealing. And hurry up. That asshole from maintenance will be making his rounds any minute.”

  No no no. Tracy ran down the hall with Wanda scurrying to catch up behind her. They had to hide, and fast. Whoever was breaking in didn’t sound like anyone they wanted to know. If they got caught inside this apartment, who knows what would happen.

  The sound of the sliding glass door opening shot a bolt of panic down he
r spine. She’d never make it to the front door in time. Tracy scanned the hall, tugging open the first door she could reach. A coat closet. It would have to do.

  She rushed into it, shoving old coats and a vacuum out of the way as Wanda rushed in behind her. Tracy tugged the door shut just as a flashlight beam lit up the hall. Had they been spotted? Did the guy breaking in see them?

  She held her breath as the light bounced around before receding.

  “Man, this guy went out the right way, sittin’ in front of the boob tube, empty can of PBR on the side table. We should all be this lucky.”

  “Come on Hank, let’s just get what we need and get out. The smell’s makin’ me sick.”

  “Oh, is little Ricky squeamish?”

  “Shut up, asshole.”

  “What you want to bet this guy didn’t even know what hit him? Look at that oxygen tube. It probably shut off and he croaked, just like that.”

  “Who cares? His loss is our gain. You search the kitchen. I’m hitting up the bathroom. Bet this guy had all sort of meds.”

  Tracy managed to suck in a breath of air. They hadn’t been spotted. If they could just stay still and quiet…

  A brush of fur tickled her nose. Oh, no. She turned to see Fireball climbing up Wanda’s shoulder and into her hair. She practically hissed. “You brought the cat?”

  “Of course!” Wanda whispered back. “You think I’m going to let those guys hurt him?”

  Tracy steeled herself. There was no way they’d make it out of there without being found now. Wanda might as well have put a giant flashing beacon in the hall. She could see it now, a big banner with Hollywood lights: “Hey bad guys, two crazy ladies and a cat are hiding right here!”

  She whispered again. “Do you know them?”

  Wanda shook her head as Fireball climbed down her other shoulder and batted at the fringe of a scarf hanging on a hook.