The three of them sat cross-legged facing each other, drinking down their soup. Georgia poured the noodles and beef chunks into her mouth, tipping the can up high.
Nothing had ever tasted so good.
After about ten minutes, she felt better. Not a lot better. She still hadn’t slept much. The three of them had fallen asleep in the truck. Georgia had tried to stay awake, and she’d vaguely had the idea of taking shifts to keep guard, but she’d simply been too exhausted, and she’d fallen asleep before she could remember.
“I want another,” said James.
“We’ve got to save it,” said Georgia. “We don’t know how long it is before we get to the cabin.”
“Why can’t you just shoot something here, Mom?” said Sadie.
“I thought you didn’t approve of hunting,” said James.
“I don’t want to draw attention to us,” said Georgia. “The shot would ring out loud and clear all around. Plus, what am I going to do, field dress a deer and then drag it with us?”
Sadie didn’t say anything.
“It’s a good idea, though, Sadie,” said Georgia, her motherly instincts kicking in. “I’ll be teaching you how to hunt soon enough. Once we get to the cabin…”
“So we’re walking there, right?” said James.
Despite the soup, Georgia still didn’t feel like her energetic self. And she knew that Sadie and James were tired. In the light of day, their faces looked weary.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” said Georgia. “You and Sadie are going to stay here. You’re going to stay in the woods, away from the truck…”
“Mom!” said Sadie. “You can’t leave us here.”
“This is one time that I agree with her,” said James.
“Hear me out before you start arguing with me,” said Georgia. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to hike down the road. If I don’t find a house with a car there that I can take, then I’ll come back by the end of the day. You two will stay here, in the woods, with guns and food. If anyone comes near the truck to steal anything, shoot them dead.”
“Mom!” cried out Sadie.
“You’re going to listen to me if you want to survive,” said Georgia. “While you’re waiting, Sadie, let your brother show you how to shoot, but don’t actually fire any shots.”
“Are you sure about this, Mom?” said James.
She looked into his eyes and saw that he had that steely determined look that his father had had many years before, before he’d changed his ways and run off. Georgia felt pride swelling in her chest for her son.
“Yes,” said Georgia. “We can walk there if I don’t find a vehicle, but it’s riskier. Our chances of getting there safely in a car are much better.”
Georgia started to get ready. She took the pistol and a rifle with her, along with a small bag with some food.
She gave James and Sadie a hug each. Sadie had tears in her eyes when Georgia started walking down the road.
“It’s going to be fine, Sadie,” said Georgia.
James just looked at her with that determined look.
“I know you’ll protect her, James,” said Georgia.
James gave her a stiff nod. He understood that this was the best thing, the best course of action. It seemed as if overnight he’d become a man.
Georgia started walking down the road. She tried not to look back, but she couldn’t help it.
They were standing there, watching her walk down the road.
The sun had been shining, but clouds were starting to form, obscuring the light. The trees were thick on the sides of the road, which was filled with potholes.
It was a long road ahead, and Georgia didn’t know where it would lead. Her feet were already tired and her head hurt from lack of sleep. Her rifle was slung over her shoulder, and her handgun was tucked into the waistband of her jeans.
Her boots hitting the pavement made the only sound in the area.
She turned back once more, looking over at her children, the children she was determined to protect.
14
James
“Mom’s been gone a long time,” said Sadie. “Do you think she’s OK?”
They were seated in the woods. Sadie had her back against a tall tree, and James sat cross-legged. A rifle lay in his lap. There was one propped up against the tree against which Sadie leaned.
James nodded. “She’s probably fine,” he said. “You know Mom, she doesn’t take shit from anybody.”
“Except us,” said Sadie.
Maybe she was right.
James didn’t want to admit it to his sister, but he was worried. The day was wearing on. He didn’t know what time it was, but it was at least mid-afternoon.
The sun wasn’t shining brightly. Instead, there were thick clouds that had rolled in slowly throughout the day.
From where they sat, they could see the truck parked on the side of the road. The gear was exposed completely in the bed of the truck. So far, not a single vehicle had driven by. They must have been taking some serious back roads, if not a single car had passed.
James had, throughout the day, turned to his old life. He wondered what had happened to his friends from school, especially his buddy Jimmy, and Mia, the girl he’d been crushing on hard for the last three months… she just had a body that made him go crazy when he looked at her.
He’d spoken to her a few times, but only managed to mutter one or two words, and she’d given him this look like he was an alien or something. But he was getting there… But now he didn’t have any idea what Mia or Jimmy’s fates would be. For all he knew, the whole area had descended into chaos. Then again, James had probably watched too many zombie movies. Maybe they were all just going to starve to death. Or maybe they were going to wander into the country looking for food… Maybe they’d be eating each other. James didn’t know. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.
James knew that he needed to concentrate on the present. If they were going to survive, he needed to be helping his mom. Sadie had saved the day back at the McKinneys’, but now she seemed to be retreating to the role that she was comfortable with, which was mainly whining and complaining.
“I’m hungry,” said Sadie, grabbing another can of soup.
The two of them had brought some of the provisions into the woods with them.
“Speak more quietly,” said James. “And we need to save that food.”
“No one’s here,” said Sadie. “And I’m hungry. I need my energy.”
“You think I’m not hungry?” said James.
“I wish Mom was back,” said Sadie.
“Shh,” hissed James.
“You’re always trying to shut me up,” complained Sadie.
“No, serious. I hear something.”
Sadie fell silent.
Sure enough, there was a sound coming from somewhere down the road.
“It sounds like an engine,” whispered Sadie.
Maybe her hearing was better than James’s. It took another ten seconds before he could identity the sound. Sure enough, it did sound like an engine. Someone was driving up the road.
“What do we do?” whispered Sadie. She sounded terrified, and James knew that he had to protect her. And protect the truck and their gear.
He briefly thought of his mother and hoped that she was OK, whatever she was getting herself into. She hadn’t proven to be too adept at stealing at the McKinneys’, and he hoped she’d learned something from that. What that something was, James had no idea.
It took at least a minute for the vehicle to appear in front of them.
They were seated slightly up above the road, and they both looked down. James was surprised to see that the car was a shiny, new-looking SUV. It was one of those big ones, with darkly tinted windows. He couldn’t see inside, but he had an ominous feeling deep in the pit of his stomach.
The SUV stopped right next to the pickup.
But no one got out.
He and Sadie exchanged a look of concern.
Finally, with the engine of the SUV still running, the door opened and the driver got out.
He was a huge man, muscular and fit. He wore a tight t-shirt that showed off his bulging muscles.
No one else got out of the car, but for all James knew, it could have been full of other passengers.
The man looked around him, apparently looking for the owner of the pickup. He seemed to look right at James as he scanned the woods, but he must not have seen him. After all, the brush and leaves were thick, and the man wore dark sunglasses, which wouldn’t have helped him see well on the cloudy day.
Sadie was mouthing something at James, and he hoped she wouldn’t speak. They were close enough that if she did, the man would certainly hear her. Fortunately, she had enough sense not to. James noticed that she was slowly reaching for her rifle. He had shown her the basics, how to check to make sure it was loaded, how to disengage the safety, how to feel for the catch point on the trigger.
James watched in horror as the muscular man opened the door to his mother’s pickup and stuck his head in, apparently looking for something. Next, he got out and started poking around in the bed.
The muscular man grabbed a couple shopping bags of food, walked calmly towards his SUV, popped the automatic rear door, and started loading the food into it.
“He’s going to steal everything,” whispered Sadie in the quietest voice James had ever heard. But he understood her, and the sound of the shopping bags rustling must have been enough to cover the whisper.
James had to act. And he had to act soon. His job was to protect his family, and that meant protecting their food and their supplies. He couldn’t let some stranger simply rob them.
James clutched his rifle tightly, but he didn’t yet bring it into firing position. His heart rate had skyrocketed. He was breathing heavily. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew what he had to do.
15
Chad
Chad was in a sweaty daze, yet he was also on edge. It had been hours since he’d taken his last Vicodin, and he was not enjoying the withdrawal effects one bit. He’d been through this before, when he’d tried to clean up. It hadn’t gone well. He’d ended up destroying half his apartment in an angry rage, screaming at his landlord, and perhaps throwing a cat somewhere, not that he could really remember much of it.
The pills were in Max’s Jeep. Chad cursed himself for leaving them there, but he was always letting stuff accidentally fall out of his pockets, so he’d stuffed the pills in that seat pocket behind Max’s seat.
Not that he could have gotten the pills anyway.
His hands were bound with something, and he lay on his side on the dirty floor in an uncomfortable position. But he was too far into the withdrawal to care about it.
Some of the men who’d dragged them from the Jeep were seated nearby. They sat in lawn chairs around a dying fire, discussing something in low voices.
They’d grilled him practically all night, asking him repeatedly who he worked for. Chad didn’t know where Max and Mandy were, or what had happened to them.
Chad was scared, worried, and confused. But a lot of that fear didn’t have to do with these men. As the night had worn on, it had become clear that these men were just some regular guys from a small town. They were scared that everything had turned off, that there was no power and no communications. They were in the same situation everyone else was in, except that they were in a small town. And so they feared the worst—some kind of foreign government takeover.
One of them got lazily up from his lawn chair. “I’ll go interrogate him some more,” he said sleepily and halfheartedly.
He walked slowly over to Chad, who watched his dirty boots as they came closer to him.
“So,” said the man. “You say you’re not with the Russians, or the Chinese… So who are you with?”
“Come on, man,” said Chad. “I’m an American, just like you. I’m from Pennsylvania. Born and raised.”
He’d been over this a thousand times. He didn’t have the patience for it anymore, despite his position as a prisoner.
“That so?” said the man lazily, his mouth full of chewing tobacco. He spat onto the ground in front of him, and rubbed the ground with his boot, digging the toe into the soil.
“This is bullshit,” said Chad. “Where’d you take my friends?”
“They’re fine,” said the man.
Chad got the sense that these men didn’t want to hurt them.
“I get it, man,” said Chad. “You’re just scared. We all are. But we’ve got to learn to work together on this.”
“How’s that?”
“The way I see it,” said Chad. “It’d be a lot better for you guys if you just let us all go. You could concentrate on doing shit you actually need to do, like finding food, that sort of thing… You can’t be spending all your time essentially working as prison guards… This is just crazy.”
“You watch your mouth.”
“He giving you any trouble?” called one of the men from the campfire.
“Nah, he’s fine.”
“Listen,” said another man around the campfire. “I got to get going. Sally’s going to be worried sick about me.”
“The old ball and chain,” muttered someone else. “Our country’s been attacked and she won’t even let you stay out all night. Doesn’t she know there are some things worth fighting for?”
“I don’t see us doing a hell of a lot of fighting.”
Chad had had enough of it all.
“Shut up!” he screamed, at the top of his drug-deprived lungs.
The men were all stunned into silence.
“You obviously have no idea what you’re even doing!” shouted Chad. “You don’t even know how to interrogate me properly. Now I say either let me and my friends go, right now. That’s option one, OK?” He wasn’t sure he was completely making sense, but he was too far gone and too frustrated to care. “Option two is you go get me my damn pills right now. OK? Option three is that you just torture me already, because I’ve had enough of this shit.”
The men didn’t know what to do. They were all standing in front of him now, staring at this strange prisoner who’d just screamed at them. They shifted their weight. They spat their tobacco juice.
“You know,” said one of them. “Maybe he’s got a point. We didn’t really torture him.”
“Come on, we’re not like that. Plus, Sally would kill me if she knew I was out here torturing people.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures. If you can’t handle it, then head home.”
“Just kill me,” shouted Chad.
The last thing he remembered was a boot coming towards him, right towards his face. He lost consciousness quickly. If he had been conscious of what was happening, he would have been happy to pass out. It was better than the reality of the withdrawal he was experiencing.
16
Georgia
Georgia had walked for hours. There hadn’t been any houses, or any cars passing by. She was about to give up and turn around. After all, she’d told James and Sadie that she would be back before the end of the day. She was weary and tired and she didn’t feel as if she was completely thinking clearly. But at least she was cognizant of that fact, and would be able to take precautions against making rash decisions. All she needed to do was double check the decisions she was making. She would need to pause and reconsider something that would have otherwise been an obvious decision. That was something she’d learned being out in the woods for days on end in her younger years.
The sky was dense with grey, ominous clouds. But so far there was no rain.
The air was cool out here, whereas in the suburbs it had been swelteringly hot, as spring was growing into a scorching summer.
Georgia sat down on the side of the road to think again about returning. Should she press on farther? She didn’t have a watch, and obviously her cell phone wasn’t working.
For the first time, Georgia heard the sounds of birds around
her. They’d been strangely absent all along this journey. Then again, she’d been concentrating on other things, and hadn’t exactly had time to listen to the birds chirp.
Georgia’s mind turned towards the situation as a whole. Again she wondered whether this was a localized event. She was pretty sure that it was not. For instance, if part of Pennsylvania experienced a complete blackout, or an EMP, then surely the rest of the country would come to their aid. The national guard would be sent in, and there would be volunteers showing up by the truckload. Nothing like that was happening. If it had been the entire United States, then foreigners were about to show up. Georgia didn’t know if they’d be invading soldiers, or peacekeepers coming to help.
Georgia was cynical in a lot of ways. She didn’t expect foreign peacekeepers to show up to help. She expected soldiers, and she expected them quickly.
So the only logical conclusion was that the entire planet had been affected…
That must mean that it was some kind of natural event, like a solar flare, rather than something artificial… Nothing Georgia knew about could have that kind of worldwide range.
Then again, Georgia realize she was tired and she was getting a little ahead of herself. There was no way she could determine what had happened all over the entire world. Not while she was alone on a remote rural road, with no cell phone, no internet, no communications whatsoever.
Georgia decided to give it another ten minutes.
And she was glad she did.
She had to convince her tired feet to move, one step at a time. But at the top of a long, sloping hill, she saw something.
At first, all she saw was a streak of pink against the background of the forest. The house was so far in the distance that she had to keep walking for some time before she could clearly make out that it was a house. It looked so small in the distance.
When she got closer, she saw that there was a small compact car parked in the driveway. Obviously, no lights were on in the house.
Getting Out: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (The EMP Book 1) Page 10
