Max spun around.
A dozen or so had broken through.
Everyone was shooting. Even Sadie, who was fighting with determination, not breaking into panic.
Mandy was at Max’s side. Close. Her elbow knocked into him occasionally. Her hair had come undone. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. But she’d never looked more beautiful.
This might be the last time he saw her alive. The thought ran through Max’s mind like an icepick, piercing him, causing him pain.
James was on the ground on his belly, his rifle positioned perfectly, just like his mother had taught him. He remained calm and worked like a flawless machine. He took aim, pulled the trigger, did it again. He reloaded like it was second nature, like the gun was part of him.
They were all doing their best. They’d learned a lot. All of them. Max included.
But it wasn’t enough.
John was firing in the opposite direction. Mandy was pointed that way too.
Max had taken three of the breakthrough group out. Their bodies lay forgotten on the campground. But the rest were closing in fast.
They were close. Too close.
One wielded an axe. Another, a saw.
One had a metal baseball bat.
Another, nothing more than a piece of dead wood, probably picked up from the forest floor.
But it didn’t matter. If they got close enough, if they broke through, they could cause enough damage with whatever blunt or sharp instrument they had.
The mob didn’t care about dying. They were too filled with rage and desperation to think about their own mortality. It simply didn’t matter to them. They were like insects, protecting their hive, ready to die. Except that the mob had no hive and nothing to protect. In that way, they were more dangerous.
Max’s group was barely holding it off as it was. If Max got hit in the head with a baseball bat, the group’s effectiveness would plummet. Even if he could shake it off, that one brief moment would be enough to start their downfall snowballing.
It’d be those little moments, those small injuries, that would bring them down.
As he was firing, Max’s thoughts drifted to the members of his group. He couldn’t help himself. It felt as if he was looking at them for the last time. Their faces seemed frozen in time. Maybe that’d be the last time they’d be seen by anyone before they became dismembered corpses. Probably eaten raw later on by men and women who had become barely human, or maybe all too human, depending on how you looked at it.
Max wanted to do something. He’d sacrifice himself if it would do any good.
He’d be willing to run head-first into the mob, guns blazing, if it would have made the slightest difference.
But there was nothing he could do. There was no grand gesture. No last minute play.
And they were surrounded. Max couldn’t have broken free if he’d wanted to. Not that sneaking around the side would have done any good.
No strategy would save them.
Through the gunshots, Max heard another noise. It came through the roaring of the mob, somehow cutting through.
It was a machine. An engine.
His brain struggled to attach meaning to the noise. He felt scrambled. Like he couldn’t think.
His finger had been pumping the trigger. The gun was hot.
The smell of death was in the air.
Blood was everywhere.
Some of the men and women had made it all the way there.
Max shot one of them in the chest at close range. Nearly point blank.
Someone behind him turned around and fired. Georgia or John. He wasn’t sure.
It was happening so fast, despite the adrenaline-fueled slow motion.
Something slammed into his head. Something hard. His vision shook for a second, the world seemingly tilting on its axis.
The gun was pulled from Max’s hands. No matter how hard he gripped, it wasn’t enough. There were four or five or six hands on the gun.
Something slammed into Max’s shoulder.
A fist slammed into his stomach, knocking the breath out of him.
He gasped for air. His head felt like it was on fire.
They were all around him.
Max’s hand went for his knife. Somehow, he found it.
He gripped it tightly and brought his hand up swiftly, swinging with his arm viciously.
He caught someone in the neck. A long, slicing cut. But deep.
Hot blood was all over. Max tasted it in his mouth. He felt it on his face.
That strange sound of the engine was coming back, rising above the din of the battle at hand.
Yes, it was an engine. Max’s mind focused in on it, like a camera lens.
The engine roared. It was close now.
Max looked up. He was on his knees, with a body lying on the ground in front of him.
Somehow, those who’d broken through had been killed.
But those were just the first.
More were coming. At least another dozen.
The roar of the engine was closer. Coming from the south side, where Max faced.
Max saw the flash of a chrome bumper first.
It was a car. His exhausted brain registered on it and categorized it.
A car that was speeding through the rushing mob. It was something like an old Chrysler, decades out of date. It jumped and careened over the uneven terrain, mowing down countless mob members as it did.
The car left a tangle of bodies in its wake. It bounced over some of them. One careened off the bumper and landed on the windshield, cracking it.
Some of the mob had jumped out of the way successfully. Max didn’t waste any time. He seized his gun from where it lay in the dirt. He caught them in his sights and pulled the trigger in rapid succession.
The car kept coming. Someone, alive or dead, lay on the windshield.
It went right over the shallow ditch, the car barely buckling as it did so. So much for that plan with the ditch. It hadn’t stopped more than a couple of the mob members. It might have turned an ankle or two, and some of the spikes might have torn someone’s skin, but that was about it.
Could the driver even see out?
The car slammed to a stop mere feet from Max.
The door flew open.
A large man stepped out, holding what looked like an AR-15.
“Max?” he said, flashing a lopsided grin that looked more like a grimace than anything else.
Max didn’t know who the man was, or how he knew his name. But there wasn’t time to get into it. As far as he could tell, the man was on his side.
Max just nodded.
Inside the car, there was a woman and a teenage boy.
The kid, holding a handgun, was already halfway out the back door.
The mob was still coming. The car hadn’t stopped nearly enough of them.
But it had made an impact.
All around them, the fighting continued.
“More coming from the north,” shouted Georgia, over the gunshots that never seemed to stop.
But before Max could even turn, there was another rush from the mob coming from the south.
They screamed as they ran. Max tried to keep it together as much as he could, knowing that his aim would be better. He focused on his breathing, and taking the time to aim properly.
Shooting at random wouldn’t accomplish anything. And at this point, every bullet needed to count.
The car would serve as a sort of barrier. The big man with the AR-15 was already crouching down behind the hood, shooting over it.
The kid with the handgun was unloading it into the crowd.
“Help!” shouted someone.
“Help!”
Max couldn’t turn. If he looked away for a moment, they’d be overrun. They’d just have to hold out as best they could on the other side.
26
John
They were coming in from all sides. At each moment, it seemed like they’d be overrun.
John expe
cted he’d die at any moment. He was OK with that. It was what it was. He knew that Max felt the same way.
But he wasn’t going to let his life go in vain.
If there was just the slimmest chance that he could help save his friends, or some of them, he’d do anything.
But that was where the frustration came in.
There wasn’t anything to do. There wasn’t any way, as far as he could see, to sacrifice himself for the benefit of his friends.
Cynthia was next to him. Close by. She’d ceased making sarcastic remarks. That was one barometer for how serious the situation was.
“I’m out of ammo!” shouted Cynthia, above the roar of the mob, the screams of pain and the shouts of anger.
With one hand, John fished into his pocket and grabbed a clip. He couldn’t take his eyes off the mob. He held his hand out and felt Cynthia grab it.
Something had happened behind him. Some kind of vehicle. It didn’t seem to be a threat, so John didn’t bother shifting his attention.
Suddenly, something slammed into his shoulder.
It took him a moment to realize what had happened.
It was a bullet.
Not far away, a woman in her fifties held a handgun in an outstretched arm.
A moment later, bullets ripped into her chest, and she collapsed face-first into the dirt.
Everything was collapsing. The mob was gaining ground.
From the east, someone had broken through, reaching the van where the group was.
John saw the flurry of movement more than he saw the person. It was a man. Someone big. That was all he registered.
John needed to keep shooting to keep the mob at bay.
But someone needed to deal with this man who’d broken through.
The man brandished a tire iron. He was headed right for James, who hadn’t even taken his eyes off his scope.
John would have to be the one to act. The others could keep shooting.
The tire iron man was caught up in the midst of John’s friends. John couldn’t get a good clean shot. It’d have to be hand-to-hand. Or something like it.
John moved as fast as he could. His body was in pain, sore and exhausted. But he was also pumped full of adrenaline.
The man with the tire iron saw him moving, seemed to sense the threat. He stopped where he was, the tire iron raised.
This wasn’t the time for subtlety.
John rushed him, swinging the gun in his right hand in a wide arc.
The tire iron collided with it, knocked it out of John’s hand. It clattered to the dirt.
John went for his knife in its holster.
But it was too late.
The tire iron collided with his shoulder, sending pain shooting through him. His arm felt immobilized. It hung limply at his side.
The tire iron was swinging again.
John raised his left hand swiftly. He caught the iron. It slammed into his palm but he ignored the pain and wrapped his fingers around it.
He pulled the tire iron toward himself swiftly and with as much force as he could.
This pulled the man towards him.
John brought up his knee. He caught the man in the stomach. Hard.
He heard the breath escape him.
John tugged on the tire iron. But the other man’s grip was strong. He couldn’t get it free.
John brought his knee up again. He still couldn’t move his right arm much, but he was starting to feel twinges of feeling in his hand where it had gone numb.
Someone else was near him. A flash of movement. A long coat swirling with movement. John only got impressions of what was happening.
John’s mind tried to move his right arm up to defend himself. Desperately. But the arm didn’t move.
John’s knee slammed again into the man’s stomach. He was still pulling on the tire iron as hard as he could.
Something slammed into his head from the right. Felt like a rock. Maybe it was just a fist.
Gunshots all around him.
Someone else had broken past the line, gotten into the little huddle of desperate survivors by the van.
John was out of options.
He threw his head forward as hard as he could, going for a head-butt. Just like he used to do in soccer when he was a kid.
His forehead slammed into the man’s face. Blood was everywhere. On John’s face, too.
Something slammed into his head again. His vision went blurry.
A gun sounded right next to his ear.
He went almost deaf. Nothing but ringing in his ears.
Pain in his right arm now. Something was grabbing it.
The man in the coat to his right had fallen. His head had broken open like a watermelon. The upper portion of his skull had exploded into fragments. Almost like a busted watermelon lying on the ground. His brain was exposed, the wrinkled substance looking strange there on the ground.
The brain was some of the most advanced biology in the world, and it was lying there useless on the ground. Destroyed. And what had it accomplished before its end? Nothing. It hadn’t been able to keep up. It hadn’t been able to adapt.
The long coat lay spread out on the ground like an angel’s wings.
John’s brain was going to weird places. It was exhausted. It was stressed. It was losing track of what was happening.
Everything seemed to be happening both slowly and quickly.
John felt something crash into his face. The man with the tire iron had head-butted him. John tasted his own blood now. His nose was probably broken.
Another rapid burst of gunfire. Close enough that John could hear it over the intense ringing in his ears.
The neck and head of the man in front of him were suddenly ripped to shreds. Blood covered John.
The man’s face fell apart. Exposed bone. Cartilage. Huge chunks of flesh just hanging there. A bullet lodged into his eye.
Even in death, he gripped the tire iron tightly.
John finally let go.
He reached for his handgun with his good left hand, but it wasn’t in its holster.
He couldn’t remember what had happened to it.
The fog had entered his mind.
He was confused. Deaf. Disoriented.
His head turned rapidly as he took in the landscape.
All he saw, out past the van, were bodies. Bodies rushing at them. Bodies screaming, in pain and anger and violence. Bodies falling. Bodies lying dead on the ground. Bodies with various injuries.
This was what the world had come to.
27
Rob
Rob didn’t know who he was fighting with. But he knew what he was fighting for.
Survival.
And he knew who he was fighting. He was fighting violence and evil. He was fighting the worst of humanity. When there was nothing left, when there was nothing left to hem it all in, the violence and anger exploded out of the individuals. They’d become something else entirely.
What was he doing here?
It didn’t seem like they’d make it.
It wasn’t the safe haven he’d thought it’d be.
He’d seen the signs coming in. He’d seen the people walking like stragglers, lumbering along with that blank look in their eyes.
He must have known, somewhere deep inside himself, that he wasn’t going to find safety.
He could have turned around.
Hell, he could have left the kid and Olivia there on their own. He’d already helped them once. He didn’t owe them anything.
Maybe it’d been the memory of his own family that’d pushed him to do it. He’d wanted to get the kid to a safe place, even if he’d never admit that out loud.
The memories of his wife and son and daughter were still fresh in his mind. He could laugh all he want. He could chuckle and act like nothing was a big deal. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t see their faces each time he closed his eyes. It didn’t mean that he didn’t feel the terrible pain in his heart when he thought of them and
their deaths.
The sound of the battle raged around him.
Rob was taking them out. He was shooting methodically. He was working like a machine. He was barely pausing to breathe.
His heart was pounding. He was covered in sweat.
There was a young girl running around handing out ammunition to everyone. She carried it in huge duffel bags. She had to sort through it to find what was needed.
She was there now, handing the kid Dan a couple clips for his handgun.
“You got any for me?” shouted Rob.
She glanced into her bag. She wore two rifles strapped to her back. They looked far too big for her.
But she knew how to use them. He’d seen her shoot a woman in the head without flinching. Without batting an eyelash.
“Here,” she said, shoving some clips into the pocket of his light jacket.
Rob nodded at her and she scurried off behind him out of view.
Rob slammed the clips into his AR-15.
Three men were coming for them at an angle. They were young. Somewhere in their twenties.
It was a shame.
They could have been something. They could have done something with their lives.
But the EMP had changed everything.
Rob pulled the trigger. He caught one in the chest. He fell. Didn’t scream. Didn’t cry out. Just fell face-down into the dirt.
His companions did nothing. They didn’t even seem to notice.
They were too far gone for that.
Olivia, who was stuck in the car, was shooting out the window with a handgun. It seemed that she barely knew how to use it. But she was trying. Once in a while, she’d hit someone.
Rob wondered if he should tell the girl, next time she came around, if she should give Olivia any more ammunition or not. He didn’t know how much ammo was left. And he didn’t know if Olivia was using it wisely or not.
But there probably wouldn’t be any choice either way.
The mob couldn’t be held off much longer.
Twenty of them were rushing.
And it didn’t seem to be the last of them.
Gunshots sang out around him.
Rob’s ears were ringing intensely.
He took aim. Pulled the trigger. Got one in the arm. Pulled the trigger again. Hit the chest this time.
Getting Home: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (The EMP Book 7) Page 15
