I cooked the three biggest perch for my breakfast. The rest of the fish I strung on a stick with an upward facing fork. The fork kept the fish from falling off. When I was done eating, I took my stick-o-fish and went home.
I was careful to avoid other people. Twice I hid in the bushes and let people pass by. Once I saw Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson worked at the hardware store. He was walking down the street carrying a rifle. He looked like shit warmed over and then smashed with a shovel. In the hardware store, he was always nice, nice and neatly dressed. Not now. He didn’t look very happy either.
I made it home undetected, except for being followed by three no-account dogs that I had to keep shooing away. The biggest one, a brown and white mix, kept growling like he wasn’t sure if he meant it. I made a mental note that, if Mom wouldn’t let me come home, I was gonna get myself a good dog for protection. Not like the worthless critters following me though.
The dogs around here didn’t act like they were being fed. Soon they might start looking at me, and others, as potential food. I read about dog packs on the Internet. That was something to avoid, especially here. Around here almost every house had a dog or three. Most of them were little lap rugs, only a danger to themselves. But some were hounds, German shepherds, pit bulls, and the like. Big dogs that could easily kill a man, or a boy, if they went wild.
I got to our house and the bright green front door, the only painted thing on the outside of the entire house, was open. That door was never open. Mom was a lock freak and always kept the doors double- or triple-locked. She even locked Dad out sometimes when he went to check the mail or take out the garbage. They fought about that sometimes, among other things.
I looked closer and saw that the locks were busted right off of the door. The door had been smashed in from the outside. There was a big brown muddy boot print on the front of the door.
I listened and heard nothing. After a while I went inside. The first thing I saw was Mom lying on the floor. She was naked and her head had been bashed in. She was dead.
I heard a noise from the kitchen and froze. The murderer was still here.
Chapter 2
I snuck up to the kitchen door and peeked around the doorframe. Visions of murderers and monsters flashed through my mind. I guess I read too many Stephen King novels that my best friend stole from the drugstore and watched too many horror movies. It was just a fat, gray, brown, and white raccoon rummaging through the empty cabinet where mom used to store groceries. I shooed it away, wondering what it was doing out at mid-day.
I called out for the girls. There was no answer. I became increasingly apprehensive as I searched through the house. The silence in the house was unnatural. The girls were always singing, babbling, and banging things. Quiet they were not.
When I reached the girl’s room, I hesitated. After a while I got enough nerve to look inside. Then I spun and vomited up the fish I’d eaten this morning all over the hall carpet. The girls were naked and dead. Their heads were bashed in just like Mom’s.
I knew what the naked part meant. They were raped before they were killed. Shit, you can’t even watch a TV show nowadays without learning that. God almighty, what kind of monster would rape and kill a fourteen-year-old and a ten-year-old girl?
The bodies were starting to smell. Mom and the girls must have been murdered a couple of days ago, maybe just after Mom told me to leave the second time. Whoever it was must have surprised Mom because there were no bloodstains that indicated she shot anyone and Dad’s shotgun was missing.
I knew I should bury Mom and my sisters but I was scared. The people who did this might come back. If Mom couldn’t fend them off with a shotgun, what chance would a twelve-year-old kid like me have?
I scrabbled to find the stuff I needed. Then, half out of my head with tears soaking the front of my shirt, I got the hell out of there. I ran blindly, not knowing where to go or who to tell. That was a mistake. Two men cornered me a block away.
One I didn’t know. He was tall, thin, with long scraggly brown hair and looked exactly like evil in black Nikes. The other guy I’d seen around but didn’t know well. I think he worked at a store downtown.
“Give us the fish and all your stuff, Kid.”
“Get yer own fish, assholes,” I shouted, still angry and upset at what happened to my mom and sisters. I wondered if these were the guys who killed them, but they didn’t have Dad’s shotgun.
“Nah, we’re gonna take yours.”
“I ain’t gonna give ‘em to you.”
The guy I sort of knew pulled a small pistol from his pocket and held it up for me to see. “I can just kill you and take your stuff, Kid.”
I threw the stick-o-fish at them and dashed past as they both grabbed for it. I ran straight for the woods. No more civilization for me today, that was for sure.
With tears still wetting my face, I went back to the fish trap in the creek. I was hungry again, especially since I’d tossed breakfast. I needed more fish and a place to think about what had happened to my mom and sisters.
There were fish in the trap, but fewer this time and my hands still hurt from being perforated by fish spines. So I made a split fish spear from a sapling that was longer than I was tall. I pounded my knife into the end with a stick until it split. Then I turned the knife ninety degrees and made another split. This left me four prongs.
I tied a strip torn from my tee shirt around the sapling just above the split so the wood wouldn’t split any farther. Then I wedged small sticks into the splits to separate the prongs. Once the prongs were separated, I carved the points of each prong needle sharp, and then carved hook-like serrations on the inside of each prong. I felt like an Indian with my fish spear. Well, until I tried to spear a fish in the trap anyway.
I missed. And I kept missing. Finally, I speared a fish. Then I missed again. Eventually I figured out that I had to aim under the fish. Once I got the hang of it, it worked better than catching the fish with my hands and was less painful. Damn perch have spines almost as bad as catfish.
Spearing the fish wore my ass out. So I gathered some wood, started a fire, and sat and thought about what to do while I cooked and ate fish. At least while Mom was alive, I could hope to have a place to go home to. I could’ve gone looking for my dad, but he wasn’t my real dad either. He'd just married my real mom when I was little and then kept me when she died. He wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t a strong man. I doubted he'd do well out in the world after the lights went out. Besides, I had no idea where he might have gone.
They taught us civics in school, all about our system of government, and shit. But nobody ever said that a week without electricity would destroy life as we knew it.
I wasn’t sure what happened, but it was obvious it was something big. The electricity went out, cars wouldn’t work. They stalled in the streets. And there was no cell phone reception. Something was fucked up big time.
That was no reason for people to go bad. But that was exactly what some of them were doing. People who I never suspected would do bad things were doing bad things. I needed to get away from people, at least until everyone started behaving normally again. I thought about going back and reporting the murders to the police, but yesterday I’d seen a cop in uniform holding an old couple at gunpoint while his partner ransacked their house. The world must have gone mad.
I thought about where to go. The only place I could think of was the Ozark National Forest. I’d been there once on a school field trip. It was a big empty place and there wouldn’t be many tourists there with the electricity out. I remembered how to get there, but it was twenty miles away and I wanted to avoid going through another town. I needed a road map.
There was a gas station on the edge of town. I headed for it, staying out of sight. After nightfall, I broke into the service station, although there wasn’t much breaking to do. Others had beaten me to it. There was no food or drink left, but I found some matches, a pencil stub, and a United States atlas. I tore the Arkansas page out of
it and put it in my backpack.
I reckoned I should be afraid when I left the gas station, and I was, sorta. But my sense of adventure overwhelmed everything but the death of my family. Even if they hadn’t wanted me, I had wanted them.
As the last of the moonlight left the sky, I found a good place to spend the night. I lay under a small blue plastic tarp and watched the stars. There were so many more than I’d ever been able to see before. It was better than TV. I fell asleep trying to figure out which stars were which.
The next morning, I drew a route on the map with the pencil stub. My plan was to stay to side roads and never get too far from a creek so I could fish. I had the fishing pole from the garage now, along with extra hooks, line, bobbers, and sinkers. I felt like a real survivalist. One of those guys who goes into the woods and lives on berries, nuts, and shit. I was sure I’d be just fine. After all, I’d watched hundreds of vids about survival.
I started walking. Most of the time I felt pretty good, excited about my adventure. Then I’d think about my family and I’d get sad. By late afternoon all I felt was hungry. I headed for a nearby creek.
This one was just a small, shallow, rivulet, not really big enough to fish in, but I was hungry. Hell, I’d eat a minnow right now, and there were sure to be some of those. I had a few small hooks. I hoped they were small enough. I walked along the creek until I found a deeper pool. I dug some worms, and baited the hook with just a tidbit of worm. As soon as I dropped the hook into the water, something struck. I snatched the tip of the pole up and flung the little sunfish out of the water. It flopped around on the bank beside me, all sparkly, yellow, and green. I dropped to my knees and grabbed it. Then I removed the hook.
Normally I would have been embarrassed to catch a fish this tiny. Now it seemed like a luxury. I strung it on a forked stick, and fished for more. Soon I had a stringer of two dozen tiny fish, the largest maybe six ounces and the smallest two. I found a good spot and cleaned and scaled them. Then I found another spot over a hundred yards from where I cleaned the fish. The new location was well hidden in a sapling grove that would break up the smoke from a fire.
I was starting to understand that it was best to let no one know where I was. I thought about Mom and my stepsisters and realized for the first time that, if Mom hadn’t kicked me out when she did, I too might be lying dead in our house. That shook me and I vowed to be even more cautious.
I built a small fire from dried hardwood branches. Heck, these little fish didn’t need a big fire. Once the fire was burning well, I placed a griddle-rock over the fire and tossed three fish on it to cook. For the next two hours I cooked and ate fish, picking the meat from the bones with my fingers as the next batch cooked. I ate every one of those fish. My belly felt good.
It was going be dark soon and I needed a place to stay the night. I found it just before dark, a hollow under the root ball of an overturned oak tree. It wasn’t very big, but I fit just fine.
I wrapped up in my tarp and sat in the hole, thinking about what I’d learned. I also thought about what I needed to do to survive in the woods, at least until people came back to their senses and I could go back to town. I thought about going home and burying Mom and my sisters, but it was too dangerous. People had gone ass-over-teakettle nuts.
But for now, there was no one to tell me I had to bathe, or brush my teeth. I had a bar of soap in my pack, but I figured I could make it last a year if necessary. No need to bathe every week.
I thought I knew the night sounds in the woods, after all, I’d watched almost every horror film ever with my friends. But, as I sat in the dark and listened, I heard things I’d never heard before. I tried not to let my imagination take over, but hey, I was a kid. Maybe I didn’t succeed as well as I’d have liked.
Once I saw a pair of small red eyes staring at me from the darkness. At first I was startled. Then I realized it was just a rabbit, it’s eyes glowing red in the star-shine. I wondered if I could kill it and cook it for breakfast? It was amazing how the human mind turns to thoughts of food when food is scarce. I’d never thought so much about food before in my life, and I was still pretty full from my fish supper.
I decided I needed a weapon to hunt with. I thought about finding a gun, but guns were loud and would tell anyone in hearing distance where I was. No, I needed a bow and some arrows. With a bow and arrows I’d be having rabbit for breakfast.
At that thought the rabbit hopped away. Maybe he read my mind.
I slept poorly that night. The nightmares came about Mom and my sisters. I screamed myself awake three times.
I began walking the next morning with no breakfast. The sky looked rainy and I wanted to get farther down the road. Along the way, I looked for something to eat. From time to time I drank boiled, flat-tasting water from my canteen, but it didn’t kill the hunger. I was gonna have to do better than one meal a day. My jeans were already getting loose around the waist.
I found a candy bar in an empty house. By the looks of the place, I wasn’t the first to search there for food. The place was trashed, damn near destroyed. Anything that even looked useful was gone. I thanked whoever hid the candy bar above the kitchen cabinet and wondered what happened to the people who lived there?
Three miles farther along the road, I heard a voice call out. “Help. Help me.”
Staying out of sight, I walked toward the sound. I thought it might be a trap. I was becoming suspicious and distrustful of other people.
I peered out of the bushes at some old lady lying on the ground calling for help. After studying the scene for a while, I noticed a shiny glint in some bushes near her. Soon I could make out a man holding a Rossi pump .22 rifle, the one with the shiny breech. One of the older boys in the neighborhood had one just like it. I'd admired it for years.
I slipped away before they saw me. When I got back to the road, I ran, keeping an eye out for other people as I went.
The clouds were coalescing into a single, dark gray thunderhead. This time of year we sometimes had afternoon thunderstorms. This looked to be one of those days. I looked for a spot to stay dry before the rain started. I never found one so I just kept walking in the rain.
At least I wasn’t so likely to run into other people in the rain, or so I believed until a bullet spanged off of the pavement beside me.
Without thought, I ran into the woods along the road. If I’d frozen, like so many people do, the next shot would have nailed me. As it was, it missed. I heard yelling as I ran into the woods but I didn’t look back. I just kept running.
I heard the slap of branches and the tearing sounds as several people chased after me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw three grown men following me. One was fat and soon ran out of breath and bent over, breathing like a steam train with his hands propped on his knees. The other two kept coming. I guess they thought I might have food. Then the thought crossed my mind that they might think I was food. Damn horror movies.
I made for the densest growth, hoping I could squeeze quickly through spaces that the two grown men couldn’t. It worked. I was gaining on them, until I tripped, anyway.
Chapter 3
I scrabbled to my feet, dropping my fishing pole in the process. The fishing pole gave me an idea. I grabbed it and cast the line into some bushes alongside the trail. Then I threw the entire pole into some bushes on the other side of the narrow trail.
I ran.
Sure enough, the almost invisible monofilament fishing line across the trail tripped one guy and the other one stumbled over him. By the time they untangled themselves, I’d zigged and zagged and hidden in a hole beneath the roots of an overturned tree.
“Where’d the little son of a bitch go?”
“Shit, Jake. How would I know? You tripped me.”
“The little bastard tripped us with this fishing line.”
“Yeah, here’s his rod and reel.”
“Well, at least we got that.”
“Yeah, I doubt he had much anyway.”
“Let’
s go fishing.”
“Damn straight, I’m hungry.”
The men left with my fishing pole. I huddled in the root hole, shaking. Those men were willing to kill me, a kid, just on the chance I had some food. I sat and thought about my situation for a while, listening to the rain on the leaves until I quit shaking. I didn’t want to make any noise because they might be out there waiting and listening. Damn, life was getting to be a bitch, especially for a kid.
When the men were gone, I moved farther away from the road. It had been easier walking on the road, but I figured I was less likely to run into people if I stayed off the road.
As usual of late, my thoughts were as much on my belly as avoiding people. I had some hooks, sinkers, and fishing line in my pack so I wasn’t too worried about losing the fishing pole. But I was hungry. I kept thinking about the rabbit I saw last night. Then I decided. I was gonna make me a bow and arrows. The Indians made their own bows and arrows and hunted with them. So could I.
As I walked, I cut likely-looking straight stems and branches for arrows. None of them were as straight as I wanted, but they'd have to do. Besides I’d watched a bunch of vids on how to make primitive arrows. How hard could it be?
By the time I came to the next road, I had a bundle of twenty potential arrow shafts. Now I needed something to make a bow and something to make a bowstring as well as some feathers to fletch the arrows. I thought a shoelace might work for a bowstring, but it was obvious that I might need to run from time to time. I’d rather my shoes stayed on when I did.
I found a hickory sapling about the right size for a bow and spent an hour cutting it down with the filet knife. I didn’t want to bend the hickory sapling over while I was cutting it because I didn’t want to take a chance on it splitting. Damn, hickory is tough green too. I had to sharpen the knife twice on a piece of shale before I managed to cut it down. Next, I cut the sapling to about the length I thought the bow should be. Now all I had to do was find something to use as a string.
EMP (Book 3): 12 Years Old and Alone Page 2
