by Jack Hunt
When I climbed back up the steel ladder, Ally was returning from the second storage area that was hidden deeper inside the woods. Dan had said that in the event that we were attacked, he had kept a certain amount of supplies buried in a container close to the river. Sure enough it was there, though it didn’t contain much. A few more weapons, ammo, about ten bags of grain and several gallons of distilled water. There was a saucepan, blankets, rolled tarps, a flint for creating a fire and flashlights. After watching everything else go up in smoke it was a welcome sight. It was strange how small, insignificant things could give us hope. The loss of life was beyond anything we had experienced. A part of me wished that we had stayed underground. At least then we might have seen them coming from the surveillance set up around the perimeter. I couldn’t even determine who had committed such an atrocity as all the equipment had been burned beyond comprehension. All that remained was a melted pile of plastic.
Corey sat off to one side on a partially hollow log covered in green moss. I went over and joined him. Clutching his rifle in one hand, he stared out at the setting sun. It slipped down into the horizon, its final rays giving way to darkness. I could see the anger and pain in his face. I never said anything to him, just sat there hoping that my presence would speak what words could not. The truth was we had all bonded, as much as we had fought one another and argued, we had lived through an event that few others had been through. We had fought alongside one another and all experienced loss in one way or another.
“You think they’re still alive?” Corey asked.
I breathed in deeply and took out a cigarette.
“Can I get one?”
“You don’t smoke.”
“I shouldn’t even be alive. I should be buried beside them.”
Corey was going to hang back the morning we left to track down those who had been taking food from our traps. Encouraged by his mother to go with us, he reluctantly left.
I handed him a cigarette and lit the end. He coughed a bit at first and then wiped his mouth.
“If they aren’t here, then I figure they were taken. I hope they are still alive for Ally’s and Kiera’s sake.” Kiera had been through enough shit as it was, adding this to the mix would have destroyed her. I cast a glance over my shoulder and saw her comforting Ally.
Luke dug through the ashes looking for anything else we could salvage. While the emergency storage container Dan had buried had given us more than enough to survive the next seventy-two hours, if anything remained we needed to find it. It would be dark soon and after this, there was no way we could stay here. I patted Corey on the back and let him know that if he needed anything to give me a shout. As I walked away he turned.
“Sam.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t seem very torn up about Brett.”
I shrugged. “I guess loss affects all of us differently.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t feel anything. I did. Maybe if life had been normal I might have shed a tear, perhaps I would later. I ambled over to Billy and Luke who were bringing up several items that had been encased in metal.
“Can opener, knives and spoons.”
“Luke, can I have a word?” I took a drag on my cigarette and walked off a distance from the others. He ambled over.
“We need to gather up what we can into the truck and find somewhere safe for tonight. Do you still have those matches from earlier?”
He reached into this pocket and brought them out. Dan had a massive collection of them. Even though he had taught us to light fires using a flint, even glass, we weren’t for making life hard.
“I’ll grab some tinder and maybe you can let the others know that we are going to leave soon.”
He nodded. Luke wasn’t always argumentative and I think he knew that right now our best chance of survival was to work together and get out of here before anyone else returned. I collected in a bag some dead grass, pine needles and outer bark and piled it into the back of the truck. I’d remembered Dan telling us to avoid black locust inner bark because it was toxic and poison ivy vines because even though they looked like a great source of tinder they would cause a crazy rash. As I looked around for the other truck, that’s when I realized the K5 Blazer was gone.
“You think there is a chance that Murphy and Shaw weren’t even here?” Billy asked.
“Listen, I’m going to take the truck and check the surrounding area,” Luke said.
“I’ll go with you.”
“This is so messed up,” Billy said, tossing what little was in the storage container into the back of the truck. We had no sleeping bags, just a few bags of grain, gallons of water, tarps and some utensils. That was it. If we thought we were roughing it back when we were at Camp Zero, we were about to discover the true meaning of survival.
CHAPTER 6
At first Luke drove like a maniac, slamming his foot on the accelerator. The tires spun in the waterlogged mud a second before gaining traction. It didn’t take long to burst out onto the main road. He yanked the wheel left and we fishtailed, and threaded around abandoned vehicles.
“Slow down. Whoever did this might still be nearby,” I said.
Roads painted a frantic picture after the attack on the United States. After the blackout, people from all over the country would have tried to get back to family or escape from skinheads. Most wouldn’t have known about the fallout and the few that had been lucky enough to live outside the blast radius would have sought shelter inside homes or bunkers. Idaho had become a retreat for preppers with its high mountains, pristine streams and thick forests. It was perfect for anyone looking to get away from city living and an ideal place to build an underground shelter. It was the reason why Dan had chosen to live here.
As the trees zipped by in our peripheral vision and I saw a green sign for the town of Hayden, I wondered who would have done this? The piece of paper in Dan’s hand suggested military, but that could have meant anything. Was he trying to leave a message on who to contact or who had done this? I was confused and bombarded by the memory of Brett’s bloodied body. It seemed ironic that after all these years of hoping that I would end up in a family that was good, when I finally did, an apocalypse stole it from me. Life was beyond unfair. Numerous times I had thought of ending it. Just taking my life and resetting. But I was a coward. It wasn’t death that I was afraid of but the unknown. What lay beyond life? Where would I go? Who would I see?
Luke bit down on his bottom lip and spoke out the side of a crooked mouth. “It has to be skinheads.”
“Luke, we haven’t seen a skinhead in six months.”
He glanced at me. “You’re telling me.”
I caught my reflection in the window. My hair had grown back. The only trace that I had been one came from the tattoo on my wrist. I had considered using ballpoint ink to get rid of it; instead I just used my sleeve.
We passed by numerous bodies on the way. Some looked fresh, others decayed with nothing more than bones protruding from chewed clothing. How many had tried to flee on foot from towns and starved to death? How many had attacked each other in their attempts to flee? This world had changed overnight. Now only a fortunate few survived.
I felt another wave of rage for those that had killed our family. That’s what they had become over the last six months. As a tight unit, we looked out for each other and every single one of us performed a task. Whether that was cleaning, hunting or keeping an eye out for intruders. We had survived six months because we worked together.
As we fishtailed it around another bend, Luke slammed on the brakes. Further up the road there were military personnel on horses. There had to have been at least ten. Their horses were tied to trees while they smoked, relieved themselves and removed barricades from the back of a truck. We watched them position them in the center of the road.
“What do you think?”
Over the past three months we had given a lot of thought to the fact that military would have started going town to town and checking on
survivors. What their instructions were would be unknown, at least for now. Dan kept droning on about martial law and how there was no way in hell they would let citizens carry weapons after such an event. That would have been at the top of their to-do list. Seize weapons, round up citizens and place them in FEMA camps, and if required, use force where necessary. Was that what had happened? Had they stumbled across our camp? Had Dan kicked up a fuss and refused to hand over his weapon? One thing I had learned in our time bottled up inside that coffin was that Dan had a short fuse. Several times he and Murphy knocked heads. We thought they were going to beat the shit out of each other. They never did but it wasn’t long after that we ventured out.
As four of the men turned and raised their rifles at us, Luke slammed the gear into reverse and did a huey in the road. The tail end of the truck leaned back into the ditch, and the wheels spun frantically as we tried to gain traction. I glanced back to see the soldiers jogging towards us.
“Come on!” Luke smashed his fist against the wheel.
“You better get that moving.”
A round hit the truck and my pulse went into overdrive. In that instant the rear tires gained traction and Luke gunned the engine out of there. I glanced back and saw the soldiers stop running. Within a minute we were back around a corner and Luke pushed the engine to just over ninety. I kept looking back expecting to see the soldiers pursuing but they never came.
Once we returned to camp, my heart was still racing. I think Luke and I were paranoid that the men would return as we kept looking back down the trail even after we were out and had joined the others.
“Did you see them?” Ally was the first to ask.
“No. But there were hostiles near the town, a few miles outside of Hayden. Best guess, they’ve been taken there.”
Tears began to flow. “No, they are dead. They have killed them.”
She curled over as though she was going to vomit. Tears streamed to the ground before she placed her head in her hands and sobbed hard. It was hard to see all of them in so much pain. The strange part was I didn’t cry for Brett. In two years I had never really formed a close bond with him or Jodi. As much as they reached out to me and called me son, I never felt like one. I had grown to respect Brett over the months together inside the shelter but there was always this distance. Perhaps when he looked at me in the weeks after losing Jodi, it only reminded him of those that had killed her. That’s what I figured, as when my hair finally grew out he seemed to warm up to me.
“I think it’s time to leave,” Billy said.
CHAPTER 7
We drove across several fields and exited at a back road that led up into a mountainous region that we had explored a few weeks before with Dan. He’d taken a couple of us up there to take in the view. We were going to miss him. Even though he was a pain in the ass at times he had this humor that kept all of us from losing our minds. With no technology, no power and little to keep us occupied, Dan had become almost like TV to us. He would recount stories of being in the military and act out what he had done. Occasionally Murphy would toss an empty can at him and tell him he was bullshitting.
The road led up to a large outcropping of rock. Glancing at the trail a person might have thought that a truck couldn’t have made it up the steep incline. They would have been wrong. In many ways it gave us a sense of security to know that we were going to be sleeping in an area that Dan would have approved. When the truck finally made it to the top, Luke reversed it into a section of bushes and we all took a few minutes to cover it with as many leaves, branches and brambles we could find. It didn’t need to be completely hidden, as we would be close by.
The old Dakota fire pit we had built several months back was still there. Charred rocks were positioned in a circle with dry, black wood in the center. Dan told us they had to build these in Afghanistan. They were designed to avoid detection by the enemy. Flames were hidden below ground level. The entire fire pit was created a foot inside the earth so that the fire burned hotter and less smoke was produced.
“Seems strange being back here without him,” Billy said.
“Yeah,” I said looking out across the valley.
“He was a good man.”
“The best,” Corey said. Corey and Dan had really got on well. We could tell that Corey looked up to him like a father. Corey’s father had walked out on his mother back when he was only seven years of age. He was a heavy gambler and someone who never really took care of his family. He now lived somewhere in Vegas. Corey told us the story one night about how his father said that he was going out to the bar. He never returned. Police were sent out and they tried to track him down but couldn’t be found. For the longest time he was treated as a missing person by police. Two months later they got a postcard in the mail from Vegas. It was mainly an apology but in no uncertain terms he had said that he wasn’t going to be returning. Even as Corey recounted it, I saw tears well up in his eyes. Dan had taken Corey under his wing. Murphy said it was because Dan’s own father had done something similar to his mother.
We spent the first hour setting up a perimeter. Old cans and string were used further down the trail in the event that a hiker walked through. The cans would jangle, alerting us to their presence before they got any closer. Behind us we had dug a few holes and used old sheets from the truck to cover them with leaves. If anyone fell through they would have a nasty surprise. Deep inside the hole were sharpened pieces of wood. Dan had shown us how to set it up so that even to the well-trained eye, it couldn’t be spotted. We just had to make double sure that everyone knew where the holes were in the event they wandered off in the night to take a piss.
As I made a fire that night and we sat around eating, all of us were quiet and lost in thought. Occasionally we heard the sound of forest critters nearby.
“What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
No one was quick to answer that question. All of us were still chewing over the day’s events. On two occasions we had come close to death and now the thought of trying to find Murphy and Shaw only added to the anxiety.
I glanced at Ally. We all knew what had to be done but I don’t think any of us were ready to face that reality. We weren’t just up against dangerous people. They were trained and there had to have been more than ten, perhaps twenty to have taken out everyone in camp. I thought about the men on the road. Was it them? Were they associated with the ones we had met in the woods? Why would they have killed some but taken Murphy? What if we did manage to get them back? Where would we go? Where could we live? My mind churned over at the endless array of questions.
“I know one thing for sure, we need to be extra careful. Tomorrow we’ll get close to the town of Hayden and see what is going on. Find out who’s taken them and if they are still alive.”
As I finished saying that Ally’s chin dropped.
She knew that there was a good chance they were dead. Why would they have been kept alive? I scooped some of the grain that we had cooked into my mouth and warmed my hands by the fire. From where we sat we could see right over the valley. A few fires burned in the forest. Survivors? Or had they been started by those who attacked the camp?
“Try to get some sleep. We are going to be up early in the morning, before sunup. Those of you who want to stay here tomorrow, let us know tonight. We don’t all have to go down.”
“I say we do,” Luke opposed what I said as if I needed to be challenged. “I’m just saying we are going to need more eyes.”
I was tired, my body still ached from being thrown around in the river that morning and after what we had witnessed I didn’t want to get into an argument. I nodded and watched Ally and Kiera move over to a tarp they had set up on a section of rock. They huddled together and pulled the tarp down to block the wind from freezing them.
CHAPTER 8
As we sat around the fire, listening to the wood pop, Billy tried to change the mood from somber to upbeat by cracking a few jokes. No one laughed. One stare from Corey and he didn’t need to b
e told that he was out of line. I poked the flames with a stick and gazed into it as Billy settled down for the night, choosing to sleep in the truck.
Once Corey had turned in, Luke spoke. “You know what we are going to have to do.”
“We are going to find them, Luke, we are not going to start a war.”
“They’ve already started it.”
I shook my head.
“Frost, what is your problem?”
“You. You are looking for any reason to kill. That’s how you were back in Mount Pleasant and that’s how you are now.”
He leaned towards me while puffing a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you want them to pay?”
“Of course, but I want to live.”
He chuckled. “Live? The odds of surviving what has happened to this country are slim. If they don’t get us, someone else will and if they don’t, you can bet starvation or radiation will.”
“You heard what Dan said. He believed it was safe.”
“Yeah, and he believed in UFO’s. The guy was a loon and you know that.”
“Watch it.”
He flicked his cigarette out into the night. “What?”
I stared back at him unable to believe that he had the nerve to talk shit about someone that had helped us survive the past six months. But it was no mystery, he didn’t like Dan one bit. They had been butting heads ever since the wilderness camp. Both were as stubborn as the other.
“Look around you, Luke. We are all you have now. If you want to talk shit about someone that helped you out, then keep it to yourself. I don’t want to hear it.”
“I’m just saying that if we don’t strike back soon, they will.”
His words cut into me as they brought back a memory from when I was eight years of age. I had been with a foster family living in a trailer back in Georgia for over seven months. They already had four kids of their own and they didn’t like having a fifth. I was a paycheck to the family, nothing more. They fed me the basics, they clothed me with whatever was handed down from their brats and when I wasn’t at school, I spent most of the time cleaning up their shithole of a trailer.
