Pilgrimage_A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story

by Tom Abrahams

  “So you think this attack,” Leigh interjected, “wasn’t the Chinese? That’s all we kept hearing on our way south. Everybody thinks it’s the Chinese.”

  “That quickly?” Felix laughed. “How could anybody know it was the Chinese so quickly? That’s almost as ludicrous as the FBI or CIA identifying the 9/11 hijackers within hours of the attacks, despite their inability to piece together what they were doing for months?”

  “That’s enough, honey.” Felix’s wife, Denise, put her hand on his arm. “We don’t need to do this.”

  “I’m just saying”—Felix was undeterred—“this ‘event’ is just the beginning. And I’m thankful to be here in this doomsday compound you were smart enough to build.” Felix dug into a piece of chicken with his fork and shoveled it into his mouth.

  “That’s a roundabout way to get to ‘Thank you!’” said Mike under his breath but loud enough for Felix to hear him.

  “Look.” Steve put down his fork and knife. “It’s good that we have these debates. It’s healthy. We’re all conservatives here. We all believe in the Bill of Rights. We all know there are times when those rights seem perilously endangered—”

  “That’s all I’m saying,” quipped Felix.

  “Now is probably not the time to be throwing darts at our own government,” said Steve. “Where are you hearing these rumors, anyhow?”

  “That shortwave radio you had buried in the barn,” answered Felix. “I got it working. There’s occasional chatter. Most of it seems to be Canadian.”

  “So the Canadians are speculating our government did this to us?” Mike almost stood from his seat.

  “Maybe we should stay off the radio for a couple of days,” suggested Steve.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Felix’s wife, Denise, agreed.

  “Okay.” Felix shook his head and moved the quinoa around on the plate. “I was just trying to make conversation. I didn’t mean to upset anyone.”

  “More chicken anyone?” Kosia exhaled and pushed back her chair. “Refills on the tea?”

  CHAPTER 30

  EVENT +80:17 Hours

  Sweet Valley, Pennsylvania

  “So how are you gonna do it?” Gooz was belly down in the grass, perched on his elbows. “You gonna hop the fence?”

  “No,” said Vincent, “the fence is electrified.”

  The two were running reconnaissance, hidden in a ditch across Route 4024, in front of a wide wrought-iron metal gate. Vincent’s SUV was parked several blocks away.

  Dunk and Bruno were at Bruno’s house, looking for flashlight batteries and trash bags.

  “So then what?” asked Gooz, shifting on his elbows. The wet grass was making them itch.

  “There’s a control box right by the key panel.” Vincent handed his binoculars to Gooz. “Look to the left of the gate. See it? It looks like a junction box.”

  “I see it.” Gooz nodded, his eyes pressed to the lenses. “It’s beneath the camera.”

  “Yeah,” Vincent said. “That’s it. I can run a bypass wire in that box. The system will think it’s still powered, but it’s not. That’ll turn off the electrical supply to the fence.”

  “Then what?” Gooz lowered the binoculars and looked at Vincent.

  “I’ll be at the box,” said Vincent. “You, Dunk, and Bruno will be on the other side of the property. There’s open land behind it. It’s close to the barn. I’ll signal you when the fence is off and you three jump it.”

  “How are you going to signal us?”

  “We’ll have walkie-talkies.” Vincent looked back across the road at the gate. Atop the gate was a large arch decorated with the name Camp Driggers. “I have four of them. At least three still have a charge.”

  “And we go to the barn,” assumed Gooz. “We break in, grab what we can, and get out.”

  “Almost,” said Vincent. “There’s an alarm.”

  Gooz looked through the binoculars again. “What if an alarm goes off?”

  “I’ll take care of that,” said Vincent. “Each of the buildings is powered separately when the grid fails. They’ve got gas generators running independently at the houses and the barn.”

  “What does that mean?” Gooz rubbed his chin.

  “I’ll jump the fence in the front.” Vincent rolled onto his side to face Gooz. “Then I’ll bolt to the generator at the barn. I’ll shut it off and the security to the barn will shut down for about thirty seconds before a battery backup resets the alarm. We don’t have to worry about an immediate cellular backup, because cell service is dead.”

  “So we’ve got thirty seconds to get in and out?” Gooz shook his head. “We can’t do that.”

  “No.” Vincent shook his head. “You’ve got thirty seconds to get in. The system reboots, but you’re already inside, past the alarms. Then I’ll restart the generator and turn it off again. That’ll give you another thirty seconds to get out.”

  “Won’t the cameras see us?” Gooz challenged. “And won’t the generator make a lot of noise?”

  “The cameras are irrelevant.” Vincent shook his head. “Even if they get any decent images, the police aren’t going to be interested. They’ve got too much other stuff going on.”

  “Good point.” Gooz pushed himself back onto his knees. “So what time we gonna do this?”

  “I’m thinking four o’clock in the morning,” Vincent said. “Everyone should be asleep. By the time they wake up, if they do, we’ll be long gone.”

  “With bags full of food!” Gooz smiled.

  “Yep!” said Vincent. “Bags full of food.”

  CHAPTER 31

  EVENT +81:01 Hours

  Nanticoke, Pennsylvania

  Lana rolled off of her lover and reached for a cigarette. There was only one left in the pack.

  “You got a lighter?” she asked, trailing her finger down his bare chest. “I think my stupid-ass boyfriend took the matches.”

  “When’s Vincent gonna be back?” asked the lover, his breathing accelerated from the six minutes of fun he’d just enjoyed with another man’s woman. “I don’t want to have to beat him for taking your matches.”

  Lana grabbed his thick bicep, squeezing it with a throaty giggle. “I wouldn’t mind if you did.”

  “Why are you with him?” he asked. “You could leave him.”

  “Right,” she said. “Where am I gonna go? You won’t leave your wife. I don’t have a job since the club closed down. He’s all I got. You got a lighter?”

  “Yeah,” he grunted, sitting up in Vincent’s bed. “Sorry. Let me get it.”

  “Thank you.” She slapped his bare backside as he moved from the bed to his pile of clothing on the floor. The cigarette was hanging from her lip.

  “You got any food?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”

  “No.” The cigarette bounced as she spoke. “Some bologna maybe. That’s it.”

  He rummaged through his pockets and found a silver-plated lighter with his name etched in it. “Here you go.” He tossed it to Lana, who was sitting up in the bed. “Guess I’ll have to feed myself later.”

  “Reggie,” she said, thumbing her fingers across the calligraphy on the lighter. “So cute that you have a personalized lighter.” She giggled and cupped the lighter to the cigarette, flicking it alight. She took a deep drag and then blew out the smoke.

  “You’re so sexy,” Reggie said, jumping back into the bed, dragging her body to his by her legs. “Have I told you that?”

  “Stop!” She giggled. “I’m gonna set something on fire with this smoke.” She pushed him away. “How long are you in town?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head, feigning rejection. “I’ve got some stuff working in Wilkes-Barre. This whole ‘apocalypse’ deal is good for business.”

  “How so?” She sucked on the cigarette and flicked the ashes into a tray by the bed before offering it to Reggie.

  “I know people,” he said coyly, taking the cigarette. “They need things. And in an uncertain environmen
t, such as it is, I provide things to people I know.”

  “Black market stuff?” she asked, reaching for the smoke.

  “Maybe.” He laughed. “I like to refer to it as a gray market, or maybe underground market.”

  “What kind of stuff?” she pressed, pulling the sheet up over her bare torso.

  “You ask too many questions,” he said, his tone less playful.

  “Ooooooh, sorry!!” She waved her hands, her eyes wide with false fright. “Don’t want to ask too many questions.”

  “Not funny, Lana.” He rolled away from her. “Business is business. It’s better if I don’t talk too much.”

  Lana looked at the tattoo on his upper right shoulder. It was an odd design, somewhat like a lowercase ‘h’ or an upside down ‘4’ and was poorly inked. She’d noticed it before but never thought to ask about it.

  “Tell me about your ink,” she said, running her black fingernails down his spine. She was trying to change the subject before he got angry.

  “Got it when I was doing five in Albion for agg assault,” he said without turning around. “It’s a Chinese symbol. Means strength.”

  “How do you get a tattoo in prison?” She tapped out the cigarette in the tray and slid over closer to Reggie. He still had his back to her.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “There’s a tattoo man. You pay him with whatever and he gives you what you want.”

  “What’s the ink made from?” Lana pulled the sheet from her body and pushed herself onto her knees. She inched her way to Reggie and pressed her chest against his back before moving her lips to the tattoo.

  “It’s like boot polish and baby oil,” he explained. “The tattoo man mixes it up, scrapes it, heats it, and then inks you up.”

  “You can get anything you want in prison?” she asked, her mouth paused above the ink.

  “Just about,” he answered. “Ink, meth, pot, cell phones, chalk. Anything you can’t get at the A&P you can find on the gray market.” He chuckled.

  “Everything but a woman,” she purred.

  “True.” He reached his hand around to the back of Lana’s head, grabbing a handful of hair. “Enough talk.”

  “I agree.” She spun around on his lap to face him on the edge of the bed. “Vincent will be home soon.”

  “Let’s do this, then,” he growled. “I got people to see.”

  CHAPTER 32

  EVENT +82:00 Hours

  Sweet Valley, Pennsylvania

  “I heard the lunch conversation was interesting.” James was baiting his host, Steve. The vet was checking James’s vitals, assuring the medicine was doing what it was supposed to do.

  “Take a deep breath.” Steve swam past the hook and pressed his stethoscope against James’s back. “Another.”

  James sucked in as much as he could before he coughed. A stabbing pain accompanied each hack. James winced.

  “That’s better,” Steve said. “You’ve still got fluid in there, which isn’t surprising, but I can tell your airways are opening up a bit.”

  “How long until I’m back to normal?” James asked.

  “It depends,” Steve answered. “Pneumonia after a near drowning isn’t common, but it can happen under the right circumstances. Given the type of water you ingested, fouled with oil and gas and junk from the island, you’re more susceptible. It’s good the water was cold, however. That retards bacterial growth.”

  “Okay.” James nodded, lying back against the pillow-cushioned headboard. “I’ll take it easy for now. Not that I’m upset about the break from near-death experiences.”

  “Your wife told us about your adventures during lunch.” Steve laughed. “It’s amazing you’re all here in one piece.”

  “So speaking of lunch…” James was dangling the line again.

  “Yes.” Steve sighed. “We had our moments at lunch today. Felix, well-intentioned as he may be, ruffled some feathers with his talk of false flags.”

  “You think that’s possible?” James asked.

  “No.” Steve shook his head. “It wouldn’t make sense for our own government to drop a nuclear weapon off of our own coastline.”

  “I don’t think it was nuclear,” said James.

  “Really?” Steve sat up, cocking his head like one of his Labrador patients. “Why do you say that?”

  “I thought for a while it was nuclear,” explained James. “I saw the blast from Peaks Island. It certainly appeared nuclear.”

  “Which would explain the loss of power, cell phones, Internet, and other infrastructure,” said Steve.

  “Yes.” James pushed himself up against the pillow. His back was sore. His thigh was sweating underneath the wrap protecting his stitches. “That’s the electromagnetic pulse effect, which is not dissimilar from a massive solar storm.”

  “Like George Clooney’s crew in Ocean’s Eleven,” Steve added, “when they shut down the power grid in Vegas.”

  “Exactly.” James’s face lit up from the pop culture reference. “Or when Keanu Reeves used one in The Matrix to fend off a robotic squid.”

  “Didn’t see that one.” Steve shook his head. “But I get the point.”

  “Well”—James nodded—“if it was the result of a nuclear blast, there would be other resulting issues. We headed west and south after the explosion, toward the blast. There was no rain until the next day. Typically, as was the case in Hiroshima, the heat and airborne debris from the explosion causes rain.”

  “Rain?” Steve cocked his head again.

  “It’s called black rain,” James explained, “because of its oily appearance.”

  “Oh.”

  “That didn’t happen in this case,” James repeated. “Also, the dynamic pressure from the blast wasn’t as violent as a nuclear blast might have caused. And lastly, the altitude of the detonation was too low.”

  “Why is that?” Steve questioned. “I thought nuclear bombs were detonated in the air.”

  “They are,” James confirmed. “But there is an ideal height for maximum damage. That height is the cubed root of the yield in kilotons multiplied by the ideal height.”

  “You lost me.” Steve shook his head, laughing at the complexity of it.

  “The formula doesn’t really matter,” said James. “I was really just thinking aloud. But the most telling aspect to me is that the blast occurred over water.”

  “How so?”

  “If you wanted to detonate a nuclear bomb, wouldn’t you do it over land?” James shrugged. “An EMP, theoretically, could be off the coast and still do an immense amount of damage. The blast from an EMP is tangential. Detonate more than one…”

  “You know there’s chatter there was more than one explosion,” Steve revealed.

  “I didn’t,” James admitted. “But it makes sense. A single blast south of Maine wouldn’t kill the power throughout New England and into Pennsylvania.”

  “I guess that bolsters your theory,” Steve said. “Which is good, right? I mean, no radiation and no fallout.”

  “True,” James admitted. “But an EMP, whoever detonated it, would throw us back to the Stone Age. It could take years, if not decades to repair the damage to our power grid alone.”

  “Not to mention cellular towers,” added Steve.

  “Computers”—James nodded—“transistorized telephone equipment, the list goes on and on.”

  “How do you know all of this?” Steve stood from the bed and stretched.

  “I’m a physics teacher.” James coughed.

  “That makes sense, then.” Steve laughed. “I guess none of this is funny, really.”

  “It’s pretty bad, actually,” James confirmed, but he was still thinking about the blast, the outages, and the tsunami. As he’d just verbalized his theory to Steve, something wasn’t adding up. There was an element he was missing. Could a high-altitude EMP cause a tsunami?

  “Well”—Steve sighed—“you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. Especially since it could be a while before th
ings get back to normal.”

  “I do appreciate it,” said James. “But if it’s just the same, I’d like to get home. As soon as you give me the discharge papers, we’re outta here.”

  “I understand.” Steve walked toward the door. “Just remember, this is as safe a place as you’ll find anywhere.”

  CHAPTER 33

  EVENT +84:35 Hours

  Nanticoke, Pennsylvania

  “The bologna’s gone?” Vincent yelled from the refrigerator. “You ate the last of it?” He thought he knew the answer without asking, but he had to press his point. “How selfish are you?”

  Lana was sitting on the leather sofa in the living room, picking at a tear in the seat cushion next to her. She was out of cigarettes. Vincent stomped into the room, his fists clenched as tight as his jaw.

  Lana looked up at him and rolled her eyes. “Yes. I ate it. I was hungry. Shoot me.” She turned her attention to the rip, twirling her nail down into the foam.

  “Don’t tempt me,” he said. “I don’t know why I keep you around, Lana. You’re miserable.”

  “I don’t know why I stay,” she countered. “Oh, yeah, it’s ’cause you’re the least worst guy I know.”

  “That makes no sense!” he yelled. “You make no sense!”

  “Whatever, Vincent,” she sniped.

  Vincent huffed off to the bedroom to change. He shoved his way through the door, pulling the Glock from his waistband to toss it on the bed, when he did a double take.

  She made the bed?!

  The duvet was pulled up and tucked in at the sides. The three pillows were sitting neatly against the brass headboard. Even the Home Sweet Home cross-stitch pillow was in its place.

  When was the last time she made the bed?

  Vincent thought it odd, but then wondered if he’d been too hard on her just now. They were both hungry. She was just as entitled to the food as he was. He spun on his heel and trudged back to the living room.