“Or maybe not,” said Meg. “I figure we owe the cop, though. Or owe his family.”
“It’s definitely putting us at greater risk,” said James. “But… I think we should do it too. I don’t know why. I mean, the logical part of me says we shouldn’t do it…. but there’s just this feeling in my gut…”
“Me too,” said Meg.
“I’m all for it,” said Barb. “I think either our plan is going to work or it isn’t…. we’ll do all we can to make it work…. personally I don’t think the addition of a new mother and her baby are going to make a difference.”
“We might disagree on that one,” said Meg. “But the way I see it, they’re dead without us.”
“Most likely.”
“We don’t know for sure, but it sure seems like that.”
“But remember,” said Meg. “This is a one-time thing. We can’t go around doing this all the time.”
“Got it,” said James, shifting his weight around on the couch. It seemed to hurt his back and butt to stay in one place for long. To say that he’d tweaked his back in the beating would be an understatement. He briefly wondered whether it’d ever be the same again. Fortunately, there were more important things to worry about. “So I suppose the next step is to go get the truck.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well,” said James. “That cop car’s definitely not going anywhere. We’d need a backhoe or something to pull it out of there.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Meg. “Maybe a tow truck or something.”
“Where are we going to get a tow truck?”
“My thoughts exactly. We’re in agreement.”
“Why do we need to go get your truck?” said Barb.
“Well,” said Meg. “The plan was always to go back and get it. There’s gear in it. We only went on foot because we didn’t want to be seen. What happened was it ended up taking a lot longer than expected. Now that there are three of us, and we’re better armed than we were before, I don’t feel like we’re risking as much.”
“The main thing,” said James, “is that now we’ve been this way and gotten an idea of what’s out there. We have an idea of the terrain. We’ve gotten the lay of the land, so to speak.”
“Yeah,” said Meg. “I must be tired. That’s what I was trying to say.”
“Of course you’re tired,” said Barb. “From the sound of it, you two haven’t gotten any rest for…”
“Too long,” said James, finishing her sentence for her. “But that’s just the way it is.”
“Yeah,” said Meg. “We’ll sleep later on. Once we’re more secure. I’m just going to warm up a little more then I’ll head on out. It should take me about a day. Barb, I’m going to need your help with directions for driving back. You two need to get ready here. Get everything that’ll be useful. Anything at all. We can fit a lot in the truck. Make sure one of you is awake at all times. Others might be coming, looking for the source of that smoke. It’s a real possibility. When I get back, we’ll go for the cop’s family.”
She was speaking quickly, with self-assurance. It sounded as if she was giving orders.
“Hold up,” said James. “You’re going? What are you talking about?”
“It’s my truck.”
“Yeah, but I should go.”
“Why should you go?”
“What? You don’t trust me with your truck? You think I’m going to drive off or something? I’m offering to do the dangerous thing here. It’s a day walking alone.”
“No,” said Meg, her voice raising a little. “I appreciate the offer.”
But it didn’t sound like she appreciated it.
James could feel himself getting mad.
“You think I’m going to steal your truck. Isn’t that it?”
“Come on, kids,” said Barb, who was sitting between them. She raised her hands, palms to each of them, in a peace-making gesture. “Let’s calm down here. I’m sure we can work this out.”
But it didn’t seem as if James or Meg was going to be able to calm down.
James was having flashbacks of their time in the freezing shed. But back then, they’d just been sniping at each other. Now, it seemed as if the anger was more serious. More intense.
And James couldn’t blame himself for being angry. After all, how could she not trust him? Sure, they’d basically just met. But they’d also been through so much together.
13
Meg
Meg was trudging alone through the deep snow.
The sky hung low overhead. It was intensely gray. She’d always hated those clouds, the ones that seemed to be just above you all the time, as if they were waiting for a chance to come down and smother you.
It was one of the things she’d loved about New Mexico, with the sky that certain shade of blue. The sky there always seemed to be so much higher. She’d never looked it up, why the sky seemed higher or lower in one place compared to another.
She’d always assumed it had something to do with the elevation, since many places in New Mexico were over six thousand feet and most of Massachusetts was more or less at sea level. The Berkshires, of course, at a couple thousand feet, were the notable exception.
But if it had been merely an effect of the altitude, wouldn’t the sky have seemed lower in New Mexico at high elevation, rather than the other way around?
She’d never mentioned her observation to anyone else, for fear that it was something so obvious that she’d seem like a fool for asking about it.
And for some reason, she’d never looked it up. Maybe at this point in her life she enjoyed having some things remain little mysteries.
Out in New Mexico, she’d felt free, as if things were possible, as if she could do anything she wanted to. And in Massachusetts? When she’d returned, she’d seen that low sky and she’d felt the sinking feeling of intense and familiar depression, with the possibilities in her life seeming to shrink down to the point where it seemed as if nothing at all would ever be possible ever again.
Of course, in a strange way, when the EMP had hit and life had immediately become intensely difficult, Meg had left many of those familiar feelings of depression behind. She hadn’t had time to worry about whether things were possible or not. She hadn’t had time to focus on her inner feelings, or whether or not she was depressed.
Once the EMP had hit, it had almost immediately become a constant battle to survive, a constant battle between life and death, with her on the frontline, down in the trenches, with the shells exploding around her, shrapnel flying at her from all sides.
And now? Now that she was exhausted, stomping through deep snow, with the wind eating at her bones, there was no time for depression. It didn’t even cross her mind.
Sure, the sky seemed ominous. It was still gray and dark. And still hung down oppressively.
But she almost felt better about it all. After all, she was doing something. She was taking action. She was fighting against that sky, against the world around her.
And she was going to beat it.
Sure, she hadn’t slept in who knew how long. Sure, there was that ever present edge of hunger. Sure, she was freezing, only keeping warm by maintaining her constant ever-fatiguing march.
Sure, things weren’t exactly looking up.
But she was fighting. She was pushing on. She was going for it. That was what was important. The fight. The push. The struggle.
Her will to live was what was keeping her afloat.
That’s what mattered.
That was her major strength.
So in a way, the EMP had been good for her psychologically. Maybe not good physically. And maybe she wouldn’t survive in the end. In fact, the odds seemed stacked against her.
She didn’t see how she could survive.
But she was going to try.
There was nothing around her but snow. A few barren trees far away. Nothing but the snow on the ground and the sky above.
It was probably about three
o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was getting lower. It wouldn’t be up much longer. Maybe an hour and a half if she was lucky. Maybe an hour if she wasn’t.
Meg’s thoughts turned back to Barb and James.
Things had gotten a little tense back there.
Meg had never, though, admitted the truth. And the truth was that no, she didn’t trust James with her truck and all her possessions.
It wasn’t really anything to do with him or his character. He could have been anyone and she wouldn’t have trusted him yet with her truck. After all, her father had spent his dying breath ensuring that she kept that truck, making sure that she had a fighting chance to survive.
Her thoughts took another turn now, heading toward her dad. His face hung heavily in her mind’s eye. She could picture his expression perfectly, as if she were looking at a picture of him. All the lines on his brow were there. All those little lines around his eyes were there. His ears, a little too large for his head, seemed particularly easy to visualise, hyper-realistic.
He’d wanted her to have the gear. And more important, he’d wanted her to understand that people would hurt her. He’d wanted her to understand that she couldn’t trust anyone, that people would turn against her. He’d wanted her to be on her own and to watch her back. He’d truly believed that only that way could she survive.
He’d tried desperately her whole life to teach her about the dark side of people, about their violent nature.
She’d been stubborn. She’d never listened. And then what had happened? He’d been proved right in the most dramatic way. He’d died trying to protect her and in a way, proving to her that neighbors and “good” people would lash out violently when it benefited them.
Meg had learned that she’d needed to listen to him, to pay heed to his advice.
And now? What was she doing? Was she listening to her father?
No, she wasn’t.
She was doing the opposite of what he would have wanted.
Not only was she not keeping to herself and keeping a low profile, but she was teaming up with two complete strangers.
And in a way, it seemed as if she was doing her best to flaunt her refusal of her dad’s wishes, because she was unsatisfied with just two strangers. In fact, she was the one who’d come up with the idea of trying to find more strangers to team up with.
It was all her fault.
She was the one who’d proposed and argued in favor of finding a big house and gathering together up to a dozen individuals.
And not only that, but Meg was the one who’d proposed the even crazier idea of going to rescue people, as if they didn’t have enough problems on their own.
Together, they’d be stronger, Meg had said.
And what if she was wrong?
What if her dad had been right?
After all, so far it sure seemed as if he was right.
Meg, deep in her heart, knew that she didn’t totally trust anyone. That was why she was knee-deep in snow right now, heading to her truck alone.
Maybe joining together with others was a mistake. After all, how long would it be until someone betrayed her?
And she knew in her bones that those closest to her had the capacity for causing the most damage. In time, it’d only be natural that she, James, Barb, and whoever else they deemed worthy of joining their little band, would become extremely close. That was what happened when you put humans together in difficult, trying circumstances. She’d always heard, for instance, that war forged bonds of steel between men.
Well, if she wanted to change her mind, this was the time.
If she wanted to abandon her potentially insane plan to find more strangers to trust her life with, this was the moment in which she needed to make the decision.
She was out here. All alone. No one around.
If all went right, she’d be at her truck by midnight, provided, of course, she could find it in the darkness. Then, if the truck started, all Meg had to do was not drive back to the house where Barb and James waited for her.
She could go anywhere she wanted. Sure, they might come looking for her. Or they might not. But either way, they had no way to contact her.
They had no way to find her. No way to track her.
She could be alone in the world if that was what she wanted. She may have needed others, but that didn’t mean she had to make that decision. It could be Meg and Meg alone if that was what made the most sense to her.
What would her dad have wanted?
The answer was clear.
But was that the best answer?
Alone, she’d be invisible, untraceable. She’d find some house to hunker down in, hide her truck from prying eyes, and hope to survive the winter months.
And then what? What about the spring? If she wanted to make it long-term, what would she do? Plant crops herself? Where would she get the seeds? How would she get the crops planted? How would she protect the crops once planted, and how would she harvest them when the time came, all while doing the other thousand necessities it took to survive in a world that had fallen back into the Stone Age.
That’s why she’d come up with the idea of forming a larger group. She knew it wasn’t what her dad had said, but had he really been thinking about the extreme long-term? Maybe he’d mentioned something about it, but she couldn’t remember. And her own inability to recall it made her upset as if she was already forgetting his memory.
She realized that, aside from what she could remember herself, she might never see an image of him again. After all, it seemed unlikely that she would ever return to her father’s house, where there were already very few pictures of him.
If society could fall due to the EMP, there was no hope for logging onto the internet and seeing the photos of her dad that she’d taken with her cell phone. There was no hope of seeing a picture of her mother either, or anyone else. It was a sad thought. More emotional than practical.
Practically speaking, all the information on the internet would be lost forever. How much of it even had a paper backup? Not much, in the more recent years, when it had seemed as if the internet was the be-all and end-all, as if it could never and would never fail.
These thoughts brought Meg back to another practical thought related to living on her own or with others. The reality of modern life was that one individual simply couldn’t be an expert on many things. Long gone were the days in which a man or woman could dominate all fields, as they used to say. The philosophers of the enlightenment, who had supposedly made inroads in all available fields, would have been just as helpless in the modern world where there were thousands more subjects to learn about, thousands more fields that had their own experts.
Meg knew a decent amount about a lot of things. She was intelligent, practically-minded, and she knew how to learn. But there many, many things she knew nothing at all about. To live in the modern world, one had to forget practical skills, or simply not learn them in the first place, because there were so many other things that required one’s time. For instance, if you wanted to be a nurse, or a concert pianist, it took thousands of hours of learning, training, and practice to become competent. With all those hours spent on those skills, it was unlikely that the average nurse or concert pianist, or even the average office worker, who had to spend time updating resumes and learning computer skills that were now worthless, would know anything about planting crops.
Meg supposed that shared knowledge was one very good reason for existing as part of a tribe, or larger group. The more people there were together, the more likely someone would know a certain skill, or have knowledge of something that others didn’t.
Meg found herself drifting back to the idea of surviving with others rather than on her own.
After all, hadn’t humans always been tribal? Wasn’t that how they’d survived through the ages, relying on not just themselves, but also on others in their tribes?
Wasn’t that how there were still humans today, hidden in the depths of the Brazilian rainforests, w
ho’d survived for who knew how long without contact with the outside modern world? Meg thought of them for a moment, the pictures she’d seen in magazines and on internet sites coming to her mind and she imagined that these remote people wouldn’t have even noticed that anything had happened. After all, they knew nothing of the outside world except the helicopters they’d seen in the sky, which they probably thought of as demonic metal chariots in heaven. And these people, which most modern humans considered primitive, already had the skills and a society that could last without electricity, running water, or any modern convenience whatsoever. They might very well outlast everyone else on the planet.
But Meg didn’t want to go down with the ship. If society was falling, she wasn’t afraid to stand tall and survive.
Which way was better? Alone or with others?
She was getting too lost in her thoughts, too caught up in the constant swirl of doubt and conjecture.
She decided she’d give herself until the moment she reached her truck to decide. In the meantime, she desperately needed to focus on the present. She couldn’t afford to continue to be lost in her own thoughts.
The sun was going down now and it was quickly becoming dark.
The temperature, too, was dropping. And Meg knew that it would only drop further.
Her stomach was grumbling with hunger.
Barb had insisted that Meg eat something before she left and the soup and hot dogs she’d consumed had given her good energy until now, helping to keep her warm.
But now her body had used up those calories, or so it seemed, and it was likely running off muscle and liver glycogen stores, its own fat, and most importantly, was converting its own muscle into glucose and protein to fuel her activities, to keep her metabolic processes running, and to keep her warm.
The wind was blowing harder now.
Meg had a flashlight with her. Fortunately, it seemed to be unaffected by the EMP. But she didn’t want to waste the batteries. She’d only turn it on if it was really necessary.
The landscape was changing a little now as the elevation dropped. The change wasn’t enough to affect the foliage much so Meg supposed it had more to do with the availability of water in relation to streams and rivers. She’d seen how in New Mexico the landscape could change dramatically with the addition of just a thousand feet in elevation.
Constant Danger (Book 2): Defeat The Anarchy Page 10
