After the EMP- The Darkness Trilogy

by Harley Tate

  “Not for much longer!”

  Peyton’s voice echoed up the stairs and both Madison and Brianna found the strength to laugh.

  Chapter Thirty

  WALTER

  316 Rosemont Avenue, Chico, CA

  11:30 p.m.

  Walter poured a finger’s worth of bourbon into five glasses and Peyton passed them around the table. Once everyone had a glass, he raised his in a toast.

  “The last two weeks have been some of the hardest of my life. But tonight, I’m thankful for those of you sharing this table.” Walter paused and focused on Brianna. “Although some of us are no longer with us, their memory is still fresh in our minds and will forever be in our hearts.”

  He took a breath and glanced at his wife and daughter. “Tonight we drink to not just what we’ve survived, but what the future holds. It’s up to us to make the most of it.”

  Walter raised his glass a little higher before bringing it to his lips. The amber liquid poured down his throat and he drained the glass before setting it on the table. He meant every word of that toast and a million more he didn’t trust his voice to say. Losing Tucker and Drew was the last thing he wanted.

  Watching his wife and daughter take life-threatening risks wasn’t easy. But they survived. The five of them still sucked in the evening air and pumped blood through their veins. They would live another day.

  Peyton took a sip next to him and launched into a coughing fit, gagging and hacking as he set the glass down. “Ugh. That stuff’s foul. How do you drink it?”

  “One sip at a time.” Walter smiled. “You get used to it.”

  Peyton pushed his glass up the table. “No, thanks.”

  Madison set hers down with a grimace. “I don’t know. It’s not that bad. Kind of makes me feel all warm inside.”

  Tracy gave Walter an oh, great look and he shrugged. Madison earned her choice whether to drink or not. She’d grown up so much in such a short time. Or maybe, Walter thought, she’d already been there, he just hadn’t been willing to see it.

  The ambush that night had proven a few things to Walter, most important of all that teamwork meant the difference between life and death. No one tried to be the hero. No one broke protocol and got injured or killed. They all worked together to accomplish the mission.

  They all survived.

  He didn’t know what the future would bring, but as long they could count on each other, they would endure. Survive. Grow.

  Brianna took another sip of the liquor and cleared her throat. “I want to thank all of you for coming here. You didn’t have to fight these men. You could have decided to just pack up and leave, but you didn’t.”

  She glanced up at Walter before turning to Madison. “You stayed out all night and scoured the town to find them. I can’t thank you enough for that. If you hadn’t found them, we wouldn’t be sitting here. I would always be wondering where they were and beating myself up for not finding them myself.”

  Madison started to speak, but Brianna held up her hand as she turned to Walter. “Mr. Sloane, you took a bullet, but kept on fighting. And then you risked opening up your wound or worse to come here and fight again. I couldn’t have done this without you, so thank you.”

  “It’s the least we all could do, Brianna.”

  “No, it’s not.” She shook her head and looked around. “All of us made a choice to come here and end these men’s lives. I know it was hard and ugly and maybe a little bit wrong, but Tucker deserved it. He—” She stuttered a bit on her words and took another sip of bourbon. She grimaced as she finished. “He deserved so much more than a bullet to the chest.”

  Pressure built behind Walter’s eyes, but he willed his emotions back. In the short time he’d spent with Tucker, he had grown to appreciate not only the kid’s intelligence, but his steadfast commitment to Brianna. The two seemed made for each other. To watch her suffer without him was painful and tragic.

  He glanced up at his wife. Tracy’s eyes shimmered with tears and as she turned from the weight of his stare, one spilled down her cheek.

  Walter knew that a disaster of this scale, whether caused by a terrorist attack or the sun, would wreak havoc. But living it was a whole different beast. He poured more bourbon into his glass and downed it.

  So many people would die in the next few weeks. So many were already dead. When winter hit the northern states, people would freeze by the millions. By spring so many who survived would starve. All this little ragtag group could do was ride out this apocalypse.

  No amount of heroics or sacrifice would stop the loss of life on a grand scale. Cities would burn. Governments would fall apart. People they knew would die.

  But in the end, Walter, Tracy, and the three kids sitting beside them would emerge to rebuild and start anew. It wouldn’t be easy. Hell, it would be the hardest thing Walter had ever done. Harder than OCS or TBS, harder than watching his wife give birth to their daughter. Harder than accepting that Madison was all grown up.

  In the coming weeks, this little family would be tested, but they would survive. They didn’t have a choice.

  He set the empty glass on the table and smiled. “How about we pack it up for the night and come back in the morning? We can dig through this place a lot easier in the daylight.”

  DAY FOURTEEN

  Chapter Thirty-One

  MADISON

  316 Rosemont Avenue, Chico, CA

  8:00 a.m.

  “Remind me never to drink bourbon with broken ribs.” Madison hunched over the sink in the trashed house, trying to decide whether her breakfast needed to come back up.

  “Really?” Brianna glanced up from the living room with raised brows. “I would think a few shots of bourbon would take care of the pain.”

  “It did last night. But now I’ve got a headache and I’m nauseous, and every time I bend over to hurl, my midsection hurts like a linebacker hit me full-speed.”

  Brianna started laughing, a little snicker at first, but the longer she looked at Madison in her bent over state, gripping the counter like a lifeline, she lost it. Huge, baying laughs came out of her little mouth and she landed in a heap on the couch as she dissolved in a fit.

  Peyton walked in carrying an armload of fertilizer and froze. “What’s going on?” He stared at Brianna as she convulsed and snorted. “Did she have some sort of psychotic break? Please tell me she’s not delusional.”

  With a cough and mighty wallop on her chest, Brianna righted herself. “Not delusional. Just amused. Our good friend Madison has her first hangover.”

  Peyton glanced Madison’s way. “From the bourbon? Gross. How could you drink enough of that stuff to be hungover?”

  Madison shrugged, then winced when it hurt, sending Brianna into another fit of giggles. “It tasted fine last night.”

  “Well, that seals the deal for me. No liquor, ever.” Peyton set the massive bag of fertilizer on the floor next to the other items they found.

  So far, the house had been a boon of non-perishable food and water and most importantly, ammunition. Thanks to the gun-loving men they disposed of, they now had ten boxes of 5.56 and four of 9mm. No more shotgun shells, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Madison was thankful they found any at all. Add in the guns and knives they confiscated from around the place and they were finally prepared for another ambush.

  She looked over the dining room table piled with everything from cans of tuna and baked beans to boxes of crackers and a case of warm beer. They didn’t know who lived here before the men took over, but thanks to their membership to Costco, Madison found an entire bin full of batteries in all sizes and a massive pack of unopened toilet paper.

  There were even clothes in the closets that fit most everyone, including jeans and T-shirts and some nice new socks. They decided the night before that anything in the house on Dewberry Lane and this one was fair game. But they wouldn’t break into another residence unless they were desperate.

  It was arbitrary and sort of silly, but Madison liked
it. They weren’t just roving and pillaging and stealing with abandon. They took what they could use from houses already compromised. They weren’t adding to the destruction.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to find any goats?”

  Madison glanced at Brianna leaning over the supplies on the table. “Maybe, why?”

  “When I was a kid we had a neighbor with two little Nigerian Dwarf Goats. Combined, they produced a gallon of milk a day.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. They could never drink it all so I had all the fresh goat milk I wanted as a kid. My mom even made yogurt out of it.”

  Peyton scratched at his head. “How did it taste?”

  Brianna laughed. “Kinda like grass, to be honest. But milk is milk and a little seventy-five-pound goat is easier to manage than a two-thousand-pound cow.”

  “Those little guys weigh seventy-five pounds?”

  Brianna nodded. “We had a goat versus kid weight contest when I was nine. The goat won.”

  Madison laughed. She had spent her fair share of time around pigs and cows and sheep for 4-H, but growing up next door to dairy goats had her beat. “Were they loud?”

  “Oh yeah. Whenever it rained and they were stuck outside, the little one would start screaming and the big one would kick at the garage door. They were worse than dogs.”

  Peyton shook his head. “I will never understand how Los Angeles and Sacramento were part of the same state. The closest I ever got to a goat was the San Diego zoo.”

  The thought sobered Madison right up. “Do you ever think about your dad?”

  Peyton exhaled. “Once in a while. But it’s like I said before, there’s nothing I can do. He kicked me out of the family. He doesn’t want to see me and the barricades around LA would keep me out.” He paused for a moment and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “I made my choice when I stayed at college. You all are the only family I’ve got left.”

  Madison smiled. “You’re right. We are family.”

  Her mom busted in the back door, struggling with a giant sack. “I found a twenty-five-pound bag of rice in the freezer out back.”

  Peyton rushed to help her and the two of them managed to set it on the table.

  Her mom exhaled in relief. “The rest of the freezer was hazmat material, but the rice looks fine.”

  “Who puts rice in the freezer?”

  Her mom shrugged. “Bunches of people. It’s not a bad idea to store bulk rice that way. It keeps the bugs out of it.”

  “Eww.”

  Madison nodded in agreement with Brianna. “Bugs are going to be more and more problematic, I bet. Without power, we won’t have any freezers for a while.”

  “Not until we get farther north. It snows in the winter up in Truckee. We should be able to store any meat we kill outside from November to March.”

  Her mom set the sack on the table and wiped her forehead. “Are you sure your parents won’t mind us showing up? I know we’ve been through this before, but I can’t help but ask again.”

  Brianna nodded. “I know, but I mean it when I say they’ll welcome you. After all you’ve done for me, they wouldn’t have it any other way.” She glanced at Madison and smiled. “And Madison’s my roommate; they have to let her family in.”

  “What about me?” Peyton stood by the door, his lips thin with concern.

  “No one with arms like yours gets turned away by the Clifton clan. My dad will take one look at you and calculate all the firewood you can chop in an hour. You won’t be able to leave even if you wanted to.”

  Peyton exhaled in relief. “Chopping wood is one thing I’m good at.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll go see what else I can find in the shed.”

  He disappeared and Madison turned to her mom. “I’ll help you finish in the garage.”

  Brianna clambered off the couch and made her way into the kitchen. “What should I do?”

  Madison’s mom pointed to the shed. “How about you help Peyton? We’ve gone through the house. All that’s left is the outside.”

  Brianna nodded and disappeared out the back door.

  “You really think her family will be as accepting as she says?” Madison leaned against the counter and wrapped an arm around her ribs.

  Her mom thought it over. “I wish I knew, but I’ve never met them. All I can say is, I wouldn’t be so quick to invite a bunch of strangers in. Not if I had the kind of setup Brianna says they do.”

  Madison nodded. She felt the same way. “If they turn us away, what will we do?”

  “Find somewhere else to settle down. There have to be some abandoned places up north of here. If we can’t find a cabin or a house, we can find an RV and set it up somewhere remote. That could tide us over for the winter.”

  “Then what?”

  Her mom turned to her with a smile. “Let’s just take it one day at a time.”

  DAY FIFTEEN

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  TRACY

  University Library, CSU Chico

  9:00 a.m.

  “They have books on everything from hydroelectric to solar to wind power. Even zero footprint living.”

  Madison held up a stack of books and Tracy smiled. “A university as big as this should have everything we need. I just wish they had kept a card catalog instead of converting everything to electronic records.”

  “Tell me about it. This hunt and peck is exhausting.” Peyton pulled out a book and read the cover with a snort. “Stock Market Investing For Dummies. Don’t think anyone will be needing that for a while.”

  “How about 101 Ways to Make Money on the Internet?” Brianna held up another.

  “There’s always this one: Get Rich or Drown Trying: A Guide to Deep-Sea Treasure-Hunting.” Tracy shook her head. There were more books in that library that would never be helpful for anything more than a good laugh or a warm fire than she ever thought possible.

  A few weeks ago, if anyone even mentioned the possibility of using the library as kindling, she would have gasped and called them barbaric. But now all these books would keep someone alive. “Let’s bring a few to use as fire-starters.”

  “Mom!” Madison’s mouth gaped open.

  “She has a good point. Some of the older ones have good paper for burning.”

  Her daughter shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re talking about burning books.”

  Tracy exhaled. She understood the revulsion. It wasn’t something she wanted to consider, but desperate times might call for desperate measures one day. “It would only be in an emergency.”

  Madison frowned at her mother and set the stack of books to take on the table. “If you’re serious, then we’re bringing ones I want to read.” She stomped out of the nonfiction section and made her way across the floor.

  “Where are you going?”

  Madison called out without turning around. “Romance!”

  Even Peyton laughed. “No way! I’m going to the thriller section. I’m not spending the rest of forever with nothing to read but chick books!”

  “Don’t knock them ’til you try them.” Brianna pushed one book back on the shelf before pulling out another. “Some of those romances are pretty good.”

  “You read them too?” Peyton stared at Brianna. “I don’t believe it.”

  She shrugged. “I might have borrowed a few of Madison’s this past year.”

  Tracy smiled so wide her cheeks hurt. Seeing the three of them back to their teasing selves lifted her spirits like nothing else could. “As soon as you all find what you want, we should go. We still need to hit the farm before we head out.”

  Brianna nodded. “We can meet you out at the truck if you like.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Tracy watched each of the kids head off to different directions of the library, all looking for the last of the written fiction to be found in these parts for a while.

  Tracy turned in a circle, staring at the thousands of books lining the shelves. Printing presses and editors and gr
aphic artists. Novelists and biographers and textbook writers. All gone. How long would it take for them to come back?

  When would America be strong enough to rebuild? What would it look like when it did?

  She shook her head and picked up the stack of reference books on the table. Whatever happened next, at least they would be prepared to survive it. She made her way out of the library and over to the truck.

  Walter opened the passenger-side door and Tracy smiled. “Hey there, little mister. How are you today?” She set the books down and reached out to pet Fireball on the head.

  “I see how it is. The furball gets a smile and a scratch behind the ears and I get ignored.”

  Tracy grinned at her husband. “Not entirely.” She leaned forward and kissed him, savoring the brush of his beard against her lips. “But you have to admit, he’s a bit cuter than you.”

  Walter pretended to be offended. “What? You don’t like the lumberjack look?”

  “It’s growing on me.”

  Walter’s leg healed a little bit more each day. In not too long, he would be able to ditch the cane and walk on his own. She hoped he would regain full range of movement, but even if he didn’t, he was still alive. That was what mattered.

  The sound of chattering and laughing pricked Fireball’s ears and he clambered over Walter’s shoulder to look out the back.

  “The kids are coming.” Tracy patted Walter’s good leg. “Scoot on over and give me some room. I’ll let Peyton drive to the farm.”

  “Fine, but he’s not driving all the way to Truckee. That kid can’t miss a pothole to save his life.”

  Twenty minutes later, they all piled out of the truck and the Jeep and stood in the middle of the abandoned farm. The dead body of the man they killed still lay in the dirt, flies buzzing all around.