Finding Shelter

by Ryan Westfield

  "Nothing," said the man, his voice cracking a little. He sounded hoarse, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time, or as if he'd gone through some kind of extreme stress.

  Sadie was stumped. She was silent. Thinking.

  "I'm not going to hurt you," shouted the man.

  "That doesn't mean anything," said Sadie.

  She took a few slow steps forward. Her idea was to get closer to the man. Better chance at a good shot, if she had to shoot him. And a better chance of seeing if he was up to something.

  "Look," said the man. "I'm just trying to get home to my family. I don't want any trouble."

  "Why did you immediately surrender?" called out Sadie. She was still walking forward. She could see the man's face more clearly. He looked weary and thin. Not to mention unhealthy. Especially compared to Max and John and the other adults at her camp. "And why didn't you just stay hidden?"

  The whole situation was weird to Sadie. She'd been involved in countless confrontations with strangers. But none of them had gone like this. It seemed that no one in their right mind would immediately surrender. And especially not to a child.

  She was keenly aware that she was still a child. Even at a distance, the man towered above her. As she aimed her gun, she had to hold her arms up at an angle, so that she was aiming up, rather than straight across, as an adult would.

  "I don't know," said the man. "I'm too tired and weak. I'm just..." His words trailed off into nothing.

  "You're what?"

  "I'm just trying to get back to my family," he said. It sounded as if he was on the verge of tears, almost choking on his words.

  "Why don't you answer the question?"

  "I didn't think I was strong enough to fight. You would have come across me eventually. I'm weak. I've been giving all my food to my family. I thought I'd find something on this trip, but I didn't..."

  Sadie was close enough to the man to really study his face. He did look weak and weary.

  Maybe he was telling the truth.

  And maybe he wasn't.

  Sadie didn't know what to do. If Max were there, he would have known what to do. And her mother would have too.

  Sadie tried to think back to other situations. How would Max or her mother have handled them?

  Well, she couldn't remember them coming across a situation quite like this.

  "Who are you with?" said the man.

  "Who am I with?"

  "Yeah. You're obviously from around here. Living around here, I mean. With a group. There's no way you're on your own. For one thing, you don't have enough gear with you for a long journey."

  "I'm not telling you shit," said Sadie. "Answer the questions yourself."

  "OK," said the man. "Like I said, I have a family. A wife and a daughter. We live not far from here. A little house. A regular house. But it's kind of out of the way. We've had a lot of trouble. But we've managed to survive somehow. Just barely."

  "You have a daughter?" said Sadie, her ears perking up at the mention of it.

  Was it possible that this was the family she was looking for? The family with the daughter about her age?

  Maybe she didn't need to fear this man after all.

  "Yeah. And you know what? She's about your age."

  What were the chances that this was really the family she was looking for? They seemed to be getting greater.

  Sadie didn't want to give away too much information about herself. But she wanted to confirm the story somehow.

  "There was a guy who came by our camp a while ago," said Sadie. "And he told us about a family that lived nearby... He said that there was a little girl about my age. He must have spent some time with you, if you're from the same family. Do you know his name?"

  There was a smile on the man's face. "It was a weird name," he said. "He went by Holstead."

  Sadie felt relief pouring through her body.

  She let her arms lower, the muzzle of her gun pointing now harmlessly at the ground.

  Sadie was walking towards him. She didn't feel scared anymore. And not only that, she felt relief.

  She'd accidentally stumbled on the girl's father. How lucky was that?

  "So your daughter's about my age?" said Sadie.

  The man nodded. "I'd guess so," said the man. "I bet you don't get to play with a lot of girls your age, right?"

  Sadie shook her head. "Not since the EMP."

  "My daughter's always saying the same thing," he said. "She misses her friends. It's been really hard for her, not having anyone but her parents around. I'm afraid we're just not always great company. And there are always all these problems. All these things that we have to deal with."

  Sadie nodded vigorously. The smile on her face was growing by the minute. "I don't even know what happened to my friends," she said. "And my brother, well, he's a little bit older, but he doesn't want to play any games with me."

  "And I bet talking to him isn't the same as talking to your friends back at school, right?"

  "Not at all," said Sadie. She was feeling understood. Really understood. For the first time in a while.

  She was getting really close to the man.

  He still had his hands in the air. Almost as if he'd forgotten all about them.

  Sadie studied his face again, now that she was closer.

  He did look worn out. Weary.

  There was a smile on his face. Almost a grin, really.

  The smile made him seem even more trustworthy.

  It seemed like he was a good guy after all. A dad. A dad who smiled when thinking about his daughter.

  He was just a good guy on hard times. That's what had put the marks of weariness and weakness on his face.

  "Do you want to meet her, my daughter, I mean?" said the man.

  Sadie was just about two feet from him now. "Of course," she said, not knowing if she should mention that she'd been looking for this man's daughter.

  No, better not mention it. It sounded too improbable. Too strange.

  She wanted to seem normal. As if this was just a happy accident.

  And it was, really.

  "Great," said the man. "I'm Terry, by the way."

  "Nice to meet you. I'm Sadie."

  Terry nodded.

  Sadie suddenly started giggling.

  "What is it?"

  "You can put your hands down," she said, a smirk on her face. It seemed really funny that he still had his hands in the air. Maybe the funniest thing she'd seen in a long time. Maybe the only funny thing she'd seen, come to think of it.

  After all, in a normal situation, before the EMP, she would have shaken the hand of a friend's father. Not pointed a gun at him, his hands up in the air.

  And it also seemed funny that an adult man would surrender immediately to a child.

  A child with a gun, though.

  Terry finally put his hands down and grinned sheepishly. "That's funny," he said. "Really funny."

  And he started to laugh.

  His mouth hung open as he laughed.

  It was a big laugh. One that seemed to echo.

  It was a little strange, and Sadie looked up at him, waiting for him to stop.

  Finally, he did, after what seemed like a long time.

  "Well," he said. "Come on. Let's go. My daughter will be really excited to meet you."

  Sadie grinned. She was excited. This, after all, was what she'd been after.

  "The only thing is, though," said Terry, "won't your parents wonder where you've gone?"

  "Not for a little while," said Sadie. "My mom's asleep. She won't wake up until the afternoon. She had a night shift."

  "Ah," said Terry. There was a look on his face as if he was considering something carefully. "Why don't you tell me more about your mom, and the others, while we walk?"

  "OK," said Sadie, eagerly.

  It was nice to talk to someone new. Someone she hadn't talked to before. Someone who was eager and interested in her life. Someone who seemed to understand her.

  She and Terr
y set off, walking side by side, towards Terry's home, the home that he shared with his wife and daughter.

  7

  Georgia

  Georgia had fallen asleep in the back of a pickup truck, with a sleeping bag draped over her.

  Normally she slept in a lean-to structure. But sometimes lately she'd been wanting to sleep outdoors more. Not that the lean-to really felt like "indoors."

  She didn't know why she'd felt like this, like she always wanted to be outside, no matter what. Maybe it had something to do with a feeling she'd been experiencing over the last few months.

  It was the feeling of being trapped. Of not having any options. Of having to stay in the same place all the time.

  Georgia had never been the type of woman to be content staying at home, cooking and doing the housework. That's why she'd always had to take those hunting trips. That's why she'd often had a gig of driving around, delivering one thing or another, either as a main job or just a side gig.

  She'd always liked the feeling of being on the move. Of being out and about.

  And since the EMP, she'd been constantly on the move. She'd often wished they'd had a safe haven, rather than running from one spot to the next.

  And now that they had their safe haven? Now that the hordes had been killed off? Well, she was happy for the safety. For the security.

  But she couldn't shake the feeling that they were stuck. That they were sitting ducks. That sooner or later something would come along and get them.

  When she slept in the night, she'd bolt awake at least once an hour, drenched in sweat, her heart pounding, reaching for her gun.

  The first thing she thought of was: who's there? What's the threat?

  The second thing she always thought of was: where are Sadie and James? Are they safe?

  Waking up after a full night's sleep was a little different. She'd managed to calm herself down each time she'd woken up in a cold sweat. By the time she woke up after about seven hours of sleep, she was tired, rather than well rested. But at least she was no longer sweating.

  Georgia pushed the sleeping bag off her. It was still damp from the sweat from earlier that "night."

  The night, of course, had really been the daytime.

  She was exhausted as she hauled herself out of the truck bed. Her muscles ached. Her joints ached. It seemed like her bones even ached, although she didn't know if that was even possible.

  Night was starting to settle. Dusk was falling.

  Had she slept longer than she'd meant to?

  There was movement around the camp. People coming and going from the various structures.

  She glanced at her wrist, expecting to see the time on a watch.

  Almost to her surprise, there was a watch, one that Max had found for her a week ago on a dead man's wrist. (The man had apparently starved to death, out on the nearby highway, wasting away to almost literal skin and bone.) She'd gotten used to not having a watch that worked. She'd trashed her own watch right after the EMP, still keeping the habit of looking at her wrist.

  Most watches from the pre-EMP world were quartz watches, which meant that they kept time by way of a vibrating quartz crystal. They were commonly known as "digital" watches, but even watches with an analog face were usually powered by quartz crystals.

  It turned out that all the quartz watches had been destroyed from the EMP. Or at least all the quartz watches that they'd managed to find so far. Max had said that he'd expected to find some that had been shielded, either by their accidental placement somewhere, or intentionally, by their own case design.

  But so far mechanical watches were the only timekeeping devices that seemed to still work. Georgia remembered seeing the inside of one when she was a kid. It had been her father's watch, which had become too inaccurate, and he was cursing at it as he tried to adjust it himself. All he'd ended up doing was mangling the miniature gears inside of it, and it had never worked properly again.

  Unfortunately, most mechanical watches, unless they were expensive, were not that accurate. The few that Max and the others had come across on dead men and women (mostly men) didn't keep very good time.

  It seemed that the one Georgia wore now had gone from keeping time very badly (at least a few minutes slow each day) to not working at all. The watch had stopped right at three o'clock, all three hands frozen.

  She shook her wrist, thinking that the power reserve of the watch was weak, and that it needed to be moved around a little, to start it back up.

  Unfortunately, nothing happened. The second hand remained motionless no matter how much she shook it.

  Annoyed, Georgia took off the watch and tossed it aside, not caring where it fell.

  It was just a piece of junk. Worthless.

  Then she realized that someone might be able to get it working again. After all, John seemed to possess some strange knack for getting things going again, when no one else could. It was strange, because Max and Georgia were both much more mechanically minded than John was.

  Better save the watch. It was a lesson they'd all had to learn at one point or another. Throw nothing away. Who knew when you'd get anything like it ever again?

  She had to hunt for it, getting annoyed with herself for discarding it.

  It was a huge, garish watch. Not to her taste at all. Neon colors all around it. Strange shapes for the hands. An astoundingly cluttered dial. Simply distasteful in all respects.

  It had looked ridiculous on her wrist.

  She'd hoped that it'd be at least easier to find among the dead leaves and weeds, due to its large size.

  Georgia was getting madder by the minute now.

  Where was that watch?

  Her stomach was rumbling, and she remembered that she hadn't eaten any dinner.

  She'd been too exhausted at the end of her watch shift and had just hit the sack right away.

  Suddenly, a cry of pain pierced the air. A female sound. Higher pitched than a sound a man would make. Probably, at least. No way to know for sure.

  Georgia's heart started to beat rapidly. Her head snapped around, towards the direction of the sound.

  Her hand went to her handgun. Fingers wrapped around the grip. Flicked the safety off.

  Sometimes, safety meant shooting the enemy dead as quickly as possible.

  Her legs were already moving, and she sprinted her way towards the other end of camp, weaving through the scattered trees.

  A noise to her right. Heavy footsteps. Panting.

  Georgia's head turned. Eyes shifting to the right, her gun reflexively followed her eyes.

  "Georgia! It's me!"

  It was John. Running alongside her. Running for the same reason she was. Headed towards the source of the noise.

  Georgia didn't answer. Her gun went away from him.

  They kept running.

  "I think it's Mandy," John managed to say, breathless.

  Georgia's mind went right to the baby.

  She could tell that John was already thinking along those lines.

  Out of nowhere, Cynthia appeared. "Was it Mandy?" she said.

  They'd almost reached her.

  Max and Mandy shared a little hut that could almost be called cute. They'd worked hard on it together.

  Now Mandy lived there alone, waiting for Max to return, getting ready for the birth of their baby.

  Of course, no one had any idea what the sex of the baby would be. Those days were gone. And, more disconcertingly, no one knew if the baby would be healthy.

  All they'd been able to do was to make sure that Mandy got as much food as she wanted. And that she got a good variety of food. That way she hopefully got the vitamins, minerals, not to mention calories that were so crucial for the development of another human.

  Georgia could see the little hut up ahead. Mandy was nowhere to be seen. But her voice had definitely come from this direction. She was inside. That was the most likely scenario.

  As Mandy had gotten farther along in her pregnancy, Georgia and the others had
requested that she stop doing her normal duties. They'd wanted her to stop doing her watch shift, gathering firewood, and going on expeditions.

  Mandy had been a tough sell, to say the least. It had been almost impossible to get her to give up even the watch shifts. And no one really liked taking a shift. Especially not the ones in the middle of the night.

  But Mandy was tough. And she wanted to remain useful for as long as possible during the pregnancy. The way she told it; she was only trying to help the group. And helping the group was really selfish, because it wasn't like her kid was going to live very long without the support of everyone else.

  Another scream came. Definitely Mandy's. And it definitely came from the little hut ahead.

  Georgia's long legs gave her a good advantage when running. She may have been older than John, but not by much. And she could still outrun him. Especially now that she'd recovered so well from her injuries.

  She pulled ahead of John and reached the hut first.

  There wasn't really a door, so much as a blanket that had been hung up like a curtain.

  Georgia didn't bother to knock as she normally would. She just dove right in, crouching down so that she didn't knock her head on the ceiling or the doorframe.

  "Mandy!" she cried out.

  There was no one else inside the hut.

  Just Mandy.

  Just Mandy with her back against the wall, sitting. Her knees were pulled up around her large belly.

  There was an expression of pain on her face. Intense pain. Her mouth was puckered. It looked like she was breathing heavy.

  Georgia tucked her gun away. There was no need for that which was good. She was glad someone wasn't there, threatening pregnant Mandy.

  But Mandy had screamed. Now that the other option was eliminated, what else was there?

  Evidently the pregnancy itself. And it'd be an early one, if that were the case. Which meant that, without a hospital, the baby wasn't likely to survive.

  The other option was that it was some other complication of pregnancy.

  It wasn't a subject that Georgia knew much about. Or anything about at all. For her own pregnancies, she'd gone to the hospital, just like every other woman she'd known. There hadn't been any complications, but the doctors and nurses had been there around the clock. They'd given her an epidural, and they'd been there to soothe her and tell her that everything was OK.