by Anna Oney
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part I:
The Clerys
Chapter 1 Emma
Chapter 2 Tom & Cooper
Chapter 3 Emma
Chapter 4 Tom & Cooper
Chapter 5 Emma
Chapter 6 Tom & Cooper
Chapter 7 Griffin
Chapter 8 Tom & Cooper
Chapter 9 Emma
Chapter 10 Doolie
Chapter 11 Emma
Chapter 12 Pete
Chapter 13 Emma
Chapter 14 Tom
Chapter 15 Emma
Chapter 16 Emma
Chapter 17 Tom
Chapter 18 Griffin
Chapter 19 Emma
Chapter 20 Tom
Chapter 21 Emma
Chapter 22 Emma
Chapter 23 Emma
Chapter 24 Emma
Part II:
Innocence Lost
Chapter 25 Emma
Chapter 26 Tom
Chapter 27 Emma
Chapter 28 Emma
Chapter 29 Stella
Chapter 30 Emma
Chapter 31 Emma
Chapter 32 Emma
Chapter 33 Emma
Chapter 34 Emma
Chapter 35 Emma
PART III:
Daddy's Girl
Chapter 36 Emma
Chapter 37 Cooper
Chapter 38 Emma
Chapter 39 Emma
Chapter 40 Emma
Chapter 41 Emma
Chapter 42 Emma
Chapter 43 Emma
Chapter 44 Emma
Chapter 45 Emma
Chapter 46 Emma
PART IV:
Sixteen Years Later. . .
Chapter 47 Emma
Chapter 48 Samuel
Chapter 49 Emma
Epilogue
About the Author
The Leftovers of a Life
Anna Oney
www.PalmettoPublishingGroup.com
Palmetto Publishing Group, LLC
Charleston, SC
Copyright © 2017 by Anna Oney
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means–electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or other–except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without prior permission of the publisher.
For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Palmetto Publishing Group at [email protected].
For Gran
Prologue
The few of them who survived had prepared for the worst for years. Most likely the people who hadn't known how to live off the land before the solar flare hit were counted among those who had perished within the first couple of months.
Back before the flare had shut down the human species's advances in technology—and before she became a force to be reckoned with—Emma Clery was a Goody Two-shoes banker. At the age of eighteen, she was hired on as a teller. For eight years she worked for the same establishment, and this had propelled her to become a prestigious loan officer.
Because of the population's growing desire to avoid conversing with people face-to-face, Emma wasn't surprised when she'd learned the CEOs were in the process of wiping out the personal experience of banking. Emma wasn't against the movement because she necessarily enjoyed interacting with people. It was because she knew that eventually everyone employed within the bank would be replaced by machines.
Emma had heard that these machines enabled people to complete every aspect of their banking transactions themselves, rendering Emma's and her coworkers' statuses obsolete. The bigwigs at the main bank hadn't bothered to provide this information, but Emma wasn't blind.
The year was 2023, and the most frequently asked question was: Without technology, where would we be? Without it, Emma believed most of the earth's inhabitants wouldn't even consider rising from their beds to meet the day.
***
If Emma could have asked one question of the political authority, it would have been: What is going to be our demise? But she was aware that the government was incapable of providing an honest answer. Besides, Emma felt she already knew the answer. Every time she'd witnessed someone paying more attention to the screens blinking before them than they were the person sitting across the table from them, Emma believed that people were weakening their abilities to interact with others, and turning their minds into the calculating machines they couldn't seem to live without. This belief had brought Emma to the question: When all that distracts us from our own diverse and harsh realities is taken away, how will we react? Humans, by nature, were the most brutal of creatures, but Emma didn't believe that meant everyone was destined to put aside their consciences and react in the harshest of ways. They had all been created by the same God, so she knew they had that much in common.
***
The flare hit September 27, 2023. That day had marked the eleventh blackout they'd suffered. It was the same story with both towns closest to Emma's East Texas town and with the larger cities that were hundreds of miles away, so she knew the blackouts were a widespread problem. At first the power outages had lasted no more than fifteen minutes, but gradually they'd come to last for days.
Everyone talked about the blackouts on the news, but no one had an explanation as to why they were happening. Even the White House was baffled by it, so Emma had taken it upon herself to do a little investigating. During her research she'd come across an article written by Christopher Klein that was published March 14, 2012. It was titled "A Perfect Solar Storm: The 1859 Carrington Event," and the article intrigued her because it specifically stated that if the earth ever again experienced a flare of that magnitude, it would be devastating for all modern and technology-dependent societies.
The day the solar flare hit, Emma had been stalled at the median, waiting for the evening train to pass. It had been a long day filled with loan denials and evil stares, and all she could think about was throwing on her PJs and watching reruns of her favorite HBO show, Game of Thrones. She'd had no idea that day would be her last normal day.
By the time the train finally passed, Emma had drifted off to sleep at the wheel, but was jolted awake by an obnoxious honking coming from the Mercedes behind her. As Emma grasped the steering wheel, she noticed Bob Seger's Greatest Hits had stopped playing, and the numbers displayed on the radio's screen began pulsating. Only a few seconds passed before the engine shut down completely.
The sky looked ablaze, and her surroundings had turned to chaos as she realized her green Taurus wasn't the only one with a faulty engine. Vehicles crashed into one another on both sides of her car, and it seemed by some unknown force the power lines on either side of the highway were being snatched from the hardened soil and thrown to the side like twigs. Pipes burst beneath the ground, shooting water into the air that suddenly splattered Emma's windshield, making it look as though it were raining.
People everywhere had been flung out of their car windows, while some had busted through the windshields. Afterward, when it was all over, their mangled forms had been left motionless on the pavement.
***
At the time, Emma couldn't believe it. In shock, she'd stayed planted in the driver's seat for what had seemed like hours. It wasn't until the driver of the Mercedes had come knocking on her window that Emma snapped out of her traumatized trance, and she opened the door to join the woman. Connie was her name, and her gorgeous Mercedes had been sideswiped by another vehicle. Miraculously, Emma's was the only one in the vicinity that had been left untouched.
They'd soon discovered their phones
were dead, so they hadn't been able to call 911. Everything with a battery had been destroyed, and all was silent. Together, Emma and Connie had gathered their belongings so they could begin closing the distance between where they stood and the tracks.
As they had walked away, Emma couldn't bring herself to look back. She had seen enough blood for one day. Burdened with a heavy heart and a racing mind, Emma dreaded laying eyes on the devastation waiting for her on the other side of the tracks. Emma believed that what she had witnessed wasn't an act of nature, but an act of God—and they were being punished.
Part I:
The Clerys
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Chapter 1:
Emma
The first bell rang around 3:30 a.m. It was immediately followed by a second. When the third bell rang, Emma had a sudden dread that went straight to her stomach. Her reaction wasn't because the bells had woken her from a much-needed sleep, but because three consecutive rings meant intrusion. It was her turn to stand witness to what had happened and report back to her neighbors to inform them of the situation.
As Emma pulled her boots on, Claire, the seven-year-old of the three girls Emma had been left in charge of, walked into the living room.
"Where are you going, Miss Emma?" she asked, rubbing the sleep from her puffy eyes.
"They're calling me." Emma paused, standing up. "Baby, I've got to go. Go on back to sleep, and I'll be back as soon as I can. Okay?"
Immediately, Claire's eyes began to swell with tears. Claire strode toward her caregiver, and then threw her arms around Emma, clinging to Emma's midsection as tightly as she possibly could. The girls' parents never made it home after the flare had hit, and when their parents had been present, they'd scarcely shown any interest in the kids. Being their babysitter when their parents had been around had made Emma and the girls close, but now she was solely responsible for them.
"Claire, honey, let go," Emma commanded, losing patience. "They're waiting on me."
"Promise me you'll come back." Claire sobbed uncontrollably, and Emma, being one those types who couldn't let someone cry alone, began tearing up.
"Please," Claire cried. "Please."
"I will come back. The barrier's just down the road. Go back to sleep." Emma paused, brushing Claire's blond hair behind her shoulders. "I'll be back before you wake up."
Luckily this seemed enough to convince the young girl. As she ushered Claire toward Emma's old bedroom, where Claire's older sisters, Jane and Lizzie, slept, Emma was relieved she wouldn't have to convince them as well.
After tucking Claire in, Emma tiptoed from the room and quietly exited through the back door. Clearing the porch steps, Emma headed toward her bike and spotted Stella, her loyal pit bull companion, running up the hill from Emma's parents' house.
With the dog by her side, Emma grasped the bike handles, and rested her feet upon the pedals. Unlike Emma, Stella was prepared for anything that was thrown at her. There were spots of fresh blood that stained Stella's white coat. Being covered with blood wasn't anything new for the dog, so Emma assumed an inferior animal had made the mistake of crossing her ferocious path.
Locking eyes with Stella, Emma shook her head and thought, I don't even want to know.
"You ready to go?" she asked excitedly. "You ready?"
In response, Stella perked her ears and gave her usual bark and growl, and together they set out down the long and bumpy driveway.
Clearing the path, they merged with the road where Emma was verbally ambushed by her neighbors, who stood on their porches sporting looks of panic and concern.
"What's going on?!" they shouted. "What's happened?!"
It had been six months since the flare, and there'd been nowhere else that was safe to go, so Emma's annoyance with the others on the street had worsened considerably. If they'd listened at the last road meeting, they would have known what the third bell meant.
"It means 'intrusion,' Andy!" she yelled as she turned the corner. "Good grief!" Andy didn't realize it, but if they made it out of this alive, Emma was going to require at least twenty-four hours of separation from his face.
Andy was a short, stocky fellow. After his wife had left him, he seemed to have been stripped of all confidence, and he was transformed into a more sensitive human being. He was the type who would start crying for no reason at all. Andy possessed the ability to annoy the hell out of someone just by breathing.
As Emma approached the driveway of her childhood home, she noticed her mother Shirley waving in her direction.
"Be careful!" her petite mother shouted, folding her arms across the front of her black bathrobe. "Please be careful!"
"I will, Momma!" Emma shouted back.
Before the flare had hit, Shirley was employed as a sixth-grade school teacher. She loved to mold children's minds, and was thankful Back Wood Road had thirteen youngters for her to teach. The kids varied in age, but none of them were older than fifteen.
Pedaling faster to escape Andy's ignorance meant more cold air stung Emma's cheeks and hands. The bitterness wouldn't have affected her so intensely if she hadn't helped her father plow the field the day before. The frigid air had cracked the skin around her knuckles, and her cheeks were raw from the harshness of the wind.
She picked up speed, knowing Stella was likely pissed because she could no longer keep up. Rounding another corner, Emma obsessed about the troubles that awaited her at the barrier, and she began to feel overwhelmed. The three rings meant that whoever had rung the bell must have gotten the intruders under control. Or at least she hoped that was the case. The pistol Emma's father had bought her on her eighteenth birthday was in her jacket pocket, but the thought of having to use it scared her.
Could I really kill someone if the situation arose?
Emma climbed the hill toward the red fence that had once enclosed an abundance of cows; the barrier was just a few more pedals away. Gliding over the hill, Emma's eyes focused on the faint light emitted by a kerosene lantern, and four tall silhouettes appeared: those of her father Doolie and her three cousins Winston, Maddox, and Lyle. One of the dark figures—Emma wasn't sure who—aimed a shotgun at the intruders.
Emma skidded to a stop when she reached the bottom of the hill, causing dust to fly up and surround her and Stella. As Emma waved the dirt from her face, she dismounted and was greeted by her father.
"Damn it, Emma!" he exclaimed. "How long does it take to get down here?"
No matter how old the twenty-six-year-old got, her father would always scold her like a ten-year-old child who hadn't done as they were told. Emma knew that in his eyes she would remain his baby girl forever.
"Daddy." She sighed, annoyed. "I take care of three girls! Claire got up and was begging me to stay. I'm here now, ain't I? So let's get this over with."
"All right then," he grumbled. "Come see what we're dealing with."
There were two of them. Lyle, the youngest out of his two brothers, was the one aiming the shotgun, and Winston, the oldest, and Maddox, who was the same age as Emma, was huddled around the intruders' backs to make sure they didn't try to escape. Their packs lay to the side, and Doolie held what Emma assumed to be their only pistol. One of them, a man who looked to be Emma's age, reminded her of a professional athlete, or someone who was in the military. Emma found him handsome—not just handsome, but leading-man, heartthrob handsome. Despite the filth, his dirty-blond hair, full lips, and devilish dimples would easily make any woman grow weak at the knees. The man was almost as tall as Doolie, who stood at a towering six-feet-six inches. Emma assumed the other man, who stood beside the first one, couldn't have been older than Jane, who was only fourteen. He was a scrawny fellow, with worried eyes, that darted continuously from Doolie to his traveling companion.
&nb
sp; To Emma, it was obvious they were scared, and she almost felt sorry for them until Doolie raised the lantern and leaned forward toward the mountainous cutie-pie's face. Emma didn't know why she hadn't recognized him before. I know this fool! she thought. Suddenly, all of her insecurities from nine years ago came flooding back.
Tom was his name, and back in the day he'd been cast as the lead in what Emma had titled "The Nightmare of My High School Career." The sudden feeling of happiness from another's misfortune brought Emma a wave of guilt. Even though she knew she was completely in the wrong, Emma couldn't help but get a little satisfaction from the evidence of his hardships.
"Where'd you two come from?" Doolie asked, glaring at them. "Huh?"
Neither of them answered, so Emma assumed they hadn't heard of Doolie Clery's wrath.
"Now, boys. I'll ask again, but there ain't gonna be a third time. If you don't start talking, Lyle here is gonna start shooting."
By the looks of them, they had traveled a long way without food or the slightest comfort. Their clothes and shoes were ragged and weathered. There were dark circles staining their sunken eyes, and the bone structure of their faces was more defined than Emma believed it should have been. Looking at Tom now, Emma didn't see the boy who had peaked in high school, but a man who was mad at the world, and who couldn't take much more of his newest predicament.
She could sense her father's patience wearing thin, but Emma knew he wouldn't have them killed. Her father might spout the cruelest of words, but he couldn't harm someone who hadn't done him wrong. The man—whom his daughter had grown to admire—couldn't help but cry whenever Adele's song "Someone Like You" came on the radio. Doolie was a big softy at heart, and Emma loved him for it.
For crying out loud, she thought. Just say something!
