by Roger Hayden
Anne pulled herself back after a moment.
“What is it?” Mike asked.
“Mike, something happened on our way to the cabin.”
He noticed that her voice sounded scared.
“What?” Mike asked.
“We stopped halfway here. Freddy needed to go to the bathroom and couldn’t hold it, so your dad pulled over next to a wooded area.”
Mike’s heart pounded through his chest. His mind flashed back to the corpse he saw just beyond the Ohio borderline where they camped a few nights ago.
“She went into the woods and there was someone there,” Anne said.
Mike got out of bed. His adrenaline coursed through his veins.
“Your dad was able to get there before anything happened, but she got beat up a little.”
“Someone tried to rape my daughter?”
“Honey, she’s okay. Your dad got to her in time.”
Mike fell back against the wall. He slid down to the floor across from the bed. He buried his face in his hands. He played the scenario over in his head: the man grabbing her from behind, tossing her to the ground, pulling a knife to her throat, ripping her clothes off.
Anne crawled out of bed and bent down to her husband. She took his hands off his face and held them in hers.
“My baby girl,” Mike said, his eyes watering with tears.
Anne cradled his head in her chest. He let himself go. His shoulders shook as the sobs left his body.
Mike slept well past sunrise into the next day. When he woke he stretched his neck, cracked his knuckles, wincing at the stiffness and pain throughout his body. He looked over and saw that Anne was already out of bed.
The living room and kitchen were buzzing with kids laughing and chasing each other, Ulysses and Ray debating baseball statistics, Fay showing Mary and Kalen her tattoos, Jung and his children still yawning from waking up, Freddy eating a bowl of cereal complaining about the powdered milk with his hair sticking straight up and Anne trying to put it down.
Mike thought of all of the implications of having this group here. The shortage of food, water, medical supplies, the danger of being seen and heard, protecting them from danger, all of these things ran through his mind. He thought of the biker gang in the town a mile away who already murdered several people. As he glanced around the room and looked to each of them individually he wasn’t sure he could keep them alive until his eyes found his wife. She stood straight, her head held back with a smile in her eyes. He saw how strong she was, how she had held everyone together while he was gone. He could make it through this. They could all survive.
When the group noticed him standing quietly in the hallway, they all stopped what they were doing and watched him. They looked to him with the hope that he could keep them alive.
13
Day 8 (Katie)
When Katie turned onto 24th Street her jaw dropped. The cars along the streets were trashed with bullet holes and broken windows. The houses were violated by looters breaking in and stealing whatever they could find. A few trashcans smoldered from the remains of firs started, then left alone to burn out.
Sam walked behind her, his pistol at the ready, on alert for any signs of danger. When they walked past Mike’s house she covered her mouth. It was nothing more than a burnt pile of wreckage.
Katie looked at the two crosses sitting in the Beachums’ yard. The two mounds of dirt rising from the Earth caused her heart to sink in her stomach.
“Your house?” Sam asked.
“No.”
Katie pulled the front door to her own house open. The door creaked, as it swung open. She lingered there in the doorframe, afraid of what she’d find inside. When she finally crossed the threshold, she tiptoed gently.
Most of the house was intact. When Katie walked past the living room she stopped. All of the furniture was rearranged.
Sam stood patiently in the foyer, watching her examine the living room. He could see pictures of her family along the walls leading up the staircase.
The couch legs squeaked against the wooden floorboards when she pushed it aside, allowing herself into the circle of furniture. The empty space in the middle suggested there was something there before, but whatever Nelson and Sean had left her was gone.
Katie sat down on one of the chairs. She looked up at their family portrait hanging above the fireplace. The photo was taken last fall. On their way to the studio that day she remembered the leaves falling from the trees and gathering on the road. The faded browns and oranges of fall decorated the black pavement. She could hear Sean laughing in the back seat from Nelson’s singing, begging for him to stop.
Katie forgot Sam’s presence until he spoke very quietly.
“Mrs. Miller,” Sam said.
Katie continued to look at the family portrait. That day she was thinking of in her mind seemed so far away.
“I’m never going to see them again, Sam,” Katie said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Look at the rest of the neighborhood. They either died when everything collapsed on them, or they ran off. Either way, I won’t be able to find them.”
“Maybe they headed back into the city looking for you.”
“I hope not. I hope they got as far away from this place as they could.”
Katie leaned forward, burying her face in her hands. She didn’t cry and she didn’t feel angry, she was just tired. She was foolish to think she could find them, to think that they were still here. Of course they left, just as she should have left the city the first day the blast hit.
“I’m going to look around, make sure the rest of the house is secure,” Sam said.
Katie nodded her head. She leaned back into the chair, sliding down against the burgundy velvet seat. Her eyes focused lazily on the fireplace. She could feel her eyelids drooping down, the exhaustion from the day of traveling hitting her all at once. She tilted her head down, and that’s when she saw the crumpled up ball under the couch.
Her head perked up. She dropped to her hands and knees and reached under the couch, grasping the ball of paper in her hands. She smoothed the crumpled sheet out on the couch. After reading it, a few tears fell and stained the edges.
Sam came back downstairs and stopped when he saw her crying.
“Mrs. Miller?” he asked.
Katie looked up at him. She was laughing through her sobs.
“I know where they are.”
Broken Ties
1
Day 1 (First Day of Blackout)
The trucks burst through the security gates and peeled out onto the highway. The military MPs were hot on their tails. Gunshots blasted back and forth from both sides. The driver of the lead truck, trying to escape, clicked his radio mic on.
“When do we blow it? Well, how much farther do we have to go? They’ll have air support on our asses in less than two minutes! Roger that.”
The driver clicked his mic off angrily. His passenger next to him, dressed in army fatigues, reloaded his rifle. The name McGuire was pasted on across the uniform.
“What’d he say, Blake?” McGuire asked.
Blake shifted into sixth gear as the speedometer pushed to ninety.
“We can’t blow it until we’re twenty miles out,” Blake said.
“Shit, are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
Blake checked the side rearview mirror and saw an RPG flying into the rear truck. The blast almost shook them off the road, and fire and metal flew through the air.
“We’re not gonna make it!” McGuire screamed.
“Tell Team Two to hop on the fifty-caliber,” Blake said.
“Copy that.”
McGuire flipped on the radio and gave the instructions to the truck behind them. A few minutes later, they could hear the thunderous shots of the gun blasting away at the MPs chasing them.
“You sure they won’t be able to crack the code before we launch?” McGuire asked.
“They won’t be able t
o get through the fire wall.”
“How much further?”
“Fifteen miles.”
“Slow down.”
“What?”
“I’ll have Team Two catch up with us, and then we’ll concentrate fire.”
“Copy that.”
McGuire moved to the backseat of the truck and jumped through the opening in the roof to man the .50-caliber on their armored truck.
He racked the chamber, and when the second truck moved into position, he squeezed the trigger. Between the two guns, they lit up the cars behind them like fireworks.
Blake had the gas pedal almost all the way to the floor. The speedometer was over 100 miles per hour. He did his best to keep the wheel steady, but with the increased speed any sort of adjustments were jerky.
Only twelve more miles.
“How we looking back there?” Blake asked.
“They’re starting to drop back, but we’ve got choppers coming inbound fast,” McGuire replied.
Blake knew that once air support made it their way, they’d be toast. He didn’t have an option.
“McGuire! Come down and take the wheel,” Blake said.
McGuire descended back into the truck, and he grabbed hold of the wheel while Blake kept his foot on the gas. He pulled the laptop from his bag and flipped it open.
His fingers flew across the keyboard, opening files and entering passcodes until a screen finally popped up that read, “Launch Code Sequence.”
“I thought we had to be twenty miles out?” McGuire asked.
“We do.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Keeping us alive.”
Blake finished typing in the last piece of code and hit enter. Behind them, they could hear the blastoff of the missile launching into the atmosphere.
2
Day 13 (The Cabin)
Mike’s hand twitched on the clipboard and the pen dropped to the floor. He winced, forming a fist, fighting through the pain. He paused, letting his will gather to force his hand open again. Once the shaking subsided he bent down to pick up the pen.
The shelves in the basement of the cabin were still lined with rations, but Mike knew it wouldn’t last them much longer. He’d planned for a six-month supply of food, but that was for five people. Now he had seventeen mouths to feed. If they kept consuming at the rate they were going the shelves would be barren in a matter of weeks.
With the inventory done Mike picked up the lantern with one hand and the basket with the morning’s breakfast in the other, and headed upstairs.
Anne was pulling some of the pots and pans out of the cabinet when Mike set the basket on the counter.
“How’s it looking down there?” Anne asked.
Mike handed her the clipboard. She ran her finger down the list, shaking her head as she flipped through the pages.
“How long do we have?” Anne asked.
“Best case six weeks. Worse case three.”
When Mike reached for the clipboard. His hand shook from another tremor.
“Mike,” Anne said.
She grabbed his hand and rubbed gently.
“They’re fine,” Mike said.
“Take some of the medicine downstairs.”
“No, I don’t want to waste it. They don’t hurt that bad yet.”
Mike focused all of his will to keep his hands steady when Anne reached down to kiss them. He didn’t want to tell her that it took him twenty minutes in the morning, working through the pain, to perform the simple task of curling his fingers into a fist.
“I’ll start getting everyone up. We need to have a house meeting,” Mike said.
Mike’s dad, Ulysses, was already up when he stepped into his room. Nelson, his son Sean, and Freddy were still asleep on the floor.
“I tried giving the boys the bed, but they wouldn’t take it,” Ulysses said, stepping in between the bodies lying on the floor.
“Don’t give them a hard time about it. They just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”
“No, they just want to give it to me because I’m old.”
Mike waited to roll his eyes until Ulysses brushed past him. He watched his son for a moment before he woke him. He always enjoyed watching him sleep. Before the EMP blast, everyday before work, Mike would walk into each of his kids’ rooms and kiss them on the forehead before heading to work. It was his ritual, and it helped make the 5 a.m. wake-up time a little easier.
“Hey, bud. Time to get up,” Mike said.
Freddy groaned and rolled onto his back. His Spiderman shirt was pulled up, exposing his belly. Mike tickled him. Freddy squirmed and giggled.
“Dad! Stop!”
“It’s time for breakfast. Get Sean up, will you?”
Nelson woke up, looking groggy, and reached for his glasses.
“Breakfast in ten, Nelson.”
“Right,” Nelson said, yawning.
Mike headed down the hallway to his daughter’s room. Before he reached the handle the door swung open.
“Hey, Dad,” Kalen said.
“Hey, Kay.”
It threw Mike off, her being awake. It wasn’t like her. On the weekends when they had to be somewhere in the morning, he would have to use a crowbar to pry her out of bed, but then again, things had changed since then.
“Breakfast ready?” Kalen asked.
“Your mom’s getting everything ready. You sleep okay?”
“Yeah, it was fine.”
The bruising around her neck had mostly faded with the exception of a few blotches of faint purple on the sides. When Mike arrived at the cabin yesterday, his wife told him what happened while he was gone. She waited to tell him until last night, and it hadn’t left Mike’s mind since. It festered like a disease. His daughter was almost raped, and he was powerless to do anything about it.
Mike watched Kalen head down to the kitchen. He was worried about her. She seemed too put together for what happened. Something didn’t feel right.
“You’ve got quite a girl, Mike,” Fay said, walking up behind him.
Fay pulled her hair back and flipped it through a band, giving herself a ponytail. Mike’s eye went to the pistol strapped to her hip.
“Did you sleep with that thing?” Mike asked.
Fay laughed.
“Mike, who the hell sleeps anymore?”
She slapped his arm and went to join everyone at breakfast.
“Hi, Mr. Grant,” Mary said.
Mike hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. Behind Mary were her two younger sisters starting to wake, both of them dressed in some of Freddy’s and Kalen’s old clothes that were left at the cabin a few years back.
The three girls had been in the town, Carrollton, a mile west of the cabin with their parents on vacation when the EMP blast crippled the country. Then, a few days ago, a biker gang came through and wiped almost everyone out. Mary’s father was part of the body count. Her mother fared much worse.
Ulysses found them hiding in the tall grass fields on the edge of town. The girls hid there for almost two days without any food or water.
“You girls head for the kitchen. Breakfast will be ready soon,” Mike said.
The last door on the hallway was Freddy’s room. Inside were Jung, his wife Jenna, and their two children, Claire and Jung Jr. Mike brought the To family with him on his way from Pittsburgh to the cabin. He found them in an airport, and when Jung found out about the cabin and where Mike was going, he begged to bring his family along.
Mike knew the dangers of bringing the family with him. He wasn’t sure if they’d even make the journey. On their way here, Jenna was shot in the shoulder. It wasn’t a fatal hit, and Mike was able to get the bullet out. But she lost a lot of blood and without professional medical attention there was always the risk of complications.
Jung hadn’t stopped shaking since his wife was hit. Before Mike knocked on the door he could hear whispering on the other side.
“Jung?” Mike asked.
Mik
e pushed the door open. Jung was kneeling on the side of the bed, Jenna lying motionless on top of the sheets. His head was bowed, and his hands clutched a string of beads wrapped around his knuckles.
The youngest, Claire, was cuddled up to Jenna on the bed, while Jung Jr. sat in the corner reading an old picture book that belonged to Freddy when he was a kid.
Jenna looked bad. Her face dripped with sweat. Her skin was pale.
“Jung?” Mike repeated.
The whispering stopped. Jung looked back at Mike. His eyes were red and strained from either crying or a sleepless night.
“Whenever you’re done, everyone’s in the kitchen,” Mike said.
Jung inclined his head and went back to his whispers. Mike shut the door gently behind him. He knew what Jung was going through right now. It’s what Mike went through during his four-day journey trying to get back to his own family.
When Mike’s family escaped the neighborhood after everyone turned on him he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see them again. He knew that he’d give everything he had to find them, but in the back of his mind stood the looming presence of reality. It was a reality he faced with every step of the eighty miles he walked to get here.
Ray, Tom, and Clarence were up after all the commotion and traffic from people passing the living room where they slept.
The cabin was loud with chatter about what was for breakfast. Stomachs growled and Anne started handing out a few cans of pears. People passed them around as Tom came in to help Anne fire up the skillet.
Mike waited until after breakfast to speak with everyone. He thought it best to tell people difficult news on a full stomach rather than an empty one.
“Hey, everyone, listen up,” Mike said.
The kitchen and living room fell silent. Every eye in the cabin was staring at him. It was an odd feeling for Mike, the air of authority he now possessed; it was an unspoken agreement from everyone he’d helped stay alive. They wouldn’t be here without him.
“With the amount of people we have here now, the cabin is beyond its intended capacity. I built this place with the idea that there’d only be five occupants. Now, there’s more than triple that. I stashed enough food rations and water to last five people six months. With the rate we’ve been going through food and the number of mouths we now have to feed, our food rations will be gone much sooner.”
