Surviving the Collapse: A Tale Of Survival In A Powerless World- Book 2

by James Hunt

  That bug in Dennis’s head turned its gaze on the boy. The name sparked memories like hot flashes of flint and steel, stoking a blaze that meant to burn and ravage.

  Dennis narrowed his eyes, his vision tunneling on the boy. He slowly lowered the blade from the girl’s throat. It was too surreal, and he started to question whether or not he’d misheard what the girl had said. But the longer he stared at the boy, the more that fire grew, revealing the truth right in front of his eyes.

  “I knew a boy,” Dennis said. “A long time ago. He had your name. But he was just a baby then.” He released the girl, and she hurried to Luke and flung her arms around him. But all Dennis focused on was the boy. The eyes he stared at were just like his own, so dark that they were practically black.

  Dennis grabbed the boy by the throat and slowly lifted him from the chair, the vibrations from the boy’s body thrumming against his hand. “I have one more question before our game is done.” He adjusted his grip to the back of the boy’s neck then raised the blade to the throat. “That woman. The one who went to the patrol station, the one who killed a lot of my men today.” He paused. “Is she your mother?”

  The boy trembled. “Yes.”

  The bug ignited into a fury Dennis had never known, that stretched beyond madness as his eyes widened and his voice dropped to a whisper. “What’s her name?”

  “Kate.”

  The name released the boy from Dennis’s hold, and he stepped back, his breathing labored and painful. And at the slow realization of what he had, Dennis trembled with exaltation. The laughter rolled out from him triumphantly, causing both Luke and his sister to retreat against the wall, holding onto one another.

  Dennis opened the cabinet where he stored the whiskey and dropped the knife, opening the bottle and taking a long swig. The burn of the liquor helped steady him, and he walked over to Luke, a grin still plastered on his face and the hairs on his chin shiny with drips of whiskey. He extended the bottle to Luke, who stared at it with uncertainty. “Go on. Take it.” His smile widened. “I’ve always wanted to have a drink with my son.”

  11

  The bodies had been moved outside. No one could think or plan with them lying on the floor, their eyes still open, the flames from the fire offering the illusion of life behind their expressionless stares.

  There was nothing to be done about the bloodstains. And while the map was sprawled out on the kitchen table, with Rodney, Kate, and the remaining group hovering over it, their eyes continued to fall to the stains where their loved ones once rested.

  “Kate?” Rodney asked, his tone suggesting that it wasn’t the first time he’d called her name.

  “Hmm?” Kate peeled her gaze from the kitchen and the bloodstain where Mark had been. Every face was on her, expressions ranging from empathy to violence.

  “What do you think?” Rodney asked, gesturing down at the map.

  Kate pressed her palms against the table’s edge, her weight causing it to groan. And while her eyes examined their attack on the town, her mind was still very much focused on Mark’s dead body.

  Captain Harley spoke up at Kate’s silence. “Any way we slice it, we’re outnumbered. The only good thing about our plan is the element of surprise. We’ve already experienced the bulk of their forces, and for all they know, we still have more bullets for the fifty cal.” Harley rapped his knuckles against the table and crossed his arms. “If we go in quiet, do some recon, we have a chance at getting everyone back alive.”

  Kate’s eyes returned to the bloodstain where Mark’s body had been. Her thoughts drifted to Luke and Holly, both of them abducted by murderers and rapists. She knew that Luke would try to keep his sister safe, but he was so weak from the surgery. She wasn’t sure if they’d last till dawn.

  “There’s only one way we get them back alive,” Kate said, ending the bickering at the table, as she turned her gaze back to Rodney and Captain Harley. “I give myself over to them.”

  Confusion and a hint of skepticism circled the expressions around the table, but it was Captain Harley that spoke first. “You walk into that camp, and you’re dead.”

  “They won’t kill me,” Kate answered.

  “And how do you know that?” Officer Thomas asked.

  “Because the man in charge will want to meet me,” Kate answered. “I imagine he’s been thinking about our meeting for nineteen years.” Her eyes found the bloodstain again, but they didn’t linger on it for long. “The man in charge of their group is my son’s biological father. He was serving a life sentence at Renniger State Prison.” She nodded. “At the very least, he’ll want to speak to me before he kills me. And I know he’ll have my children there, which means I’ll be able to get in close.” She looked at Rodney. “But once I’m inside, I’ll need a distraction to get out.”

  Heads turned with Kate, glaring at Rodney, who was already shaking his head. “You walk in there, and you’re not walking out.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Stacy said.

  “No,” Kate replied.

  “You’re not the only one with a child that was taken.”

  Kate wasn’t going to argue. And the truth was that if Dennis had discovered who he had, she knew the bastard would want to keep them from the rest of the group. Kate stared at the little town of Duluth, marked on the map, that was Dennis’s base of operations. She looked at Rodney again. “What kind of distraction can you work up?”

  Rodney left the table, and while he was gone, a few of Harley’s deputies whispered in the captain’s ears, all the while his eyes not leaving Kate’s face.

  Rodney returned with a bag and a box that he laid carefully in the center of the table. “C-4 and detonators. I won’t be able to trigger them remotely, but I’ve got enough wire to keep us safely away from the explosions. We’ll place them behind the buildings, funnel everyone into Main Street, and then shoot as many of them as we can before they realize what’s going on.” He looked at Kate and Stacy. “And hopefully give you enough time to get our people out of there.”

  “What we’re dealing with here is a hostage situation,” Harley said then gestured to the explosives. “And what you’re suggesting here dramatically lowers the survival percentage for those hostages—physical confrontation always does.” He looked at every face of the people who had loved ones who were taken, staring at Kate last. “It’s important for all of you to understand those consequences.”

  “Do you really think you can get them out?” Lisa, the doctor’s daughter, asked. “Do you really think that guy will let you get that close?”

  “Yes,” Kate answered, and then turned to Stacy. “But I don’t know what he’ll do with you.”

  “It’s all right,” Stacy replied. “I can handle myself.”

  Heads nodded, and Rodney picked the bag and the box up off the table. “All right. I’ll start wiring these. Everyone else, get plenty of ammo and magazines loaded. The more the merrier. I have a feeling these guys won’t have a weapons shortage.”

  “All right then,” Captain Harley said, a thick reluctance in his voice. “It’ll be best if we can get them right before dawn, which gives us about seven hours to set everything up. Let’s move.”

  The room broke apart, everyone leaving the table save for Rodney and Kate. Rodney had his eyes on Kate, and Kate had her eyes on the bloodstain again.

  “Kate, listen,” Rodney said. “Even with the distraction, there isn’t a guarantee that it’ll do what you want it to. And Captain Harley is right. The use of physical force will drop survival chances dramatically.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Kate—”

  She left, heading out the door before he could finish.

  The cold stunned her senses, and she gasped as if she were emerging from a frozen lake. The clouds above had cleared, and the moon and stars blanketed the black of the night sky. Her legs immediately started walking toward the bodies that they’d stacked on the left side of the cabin.

  Tears fell before Kate even turned the corner. The b
odies were lined in a row, covered with plastic tarps. Mark’s body was covered at the very end. She just stood there for a while, staring at him, her body frozen by apprehension and cold. She hadn’t helped pull the bodies from inside. It was Captain Harley and his men who’d done all of the work.

  It still didn’t feel real. Kate kept expecting to wake up from the nightmare, and that she’d be in bed with her husband back in New York. Holly would be getting ready for school, and Luke would be down at George Mason.

  But this wasn’t a dream. Her dead husband was beneath that tarp, and her children were now under the murderous watch of a madman who happened to be Luke’s father.

  The past had come back to haunt not just her future, but also the future of her children. Her mistakes were now her children’s burden, and she was the only one that could lift it.

  Kate understood what would happen the moment she surrendered herself to the convicts in that town. But if she could get her children out, if she could save what was left of her family, then maybe she could save what was left of her.

  She wasn’t going to let the past define her future, or the future of her family. She wouldn’t allow herself to fail her family now, and no matter what Dennis said, no matter what he had in store for her, she would endure it. She had already made it this far. She could survive a little longer.

  Kate grabbed the shovel leaning up against the cabin’s wall. She would let the others prepare their weapons and their bombs. She needed to put her husband to rest before she left. If she could do that, then she could go without reservations, without fear.

  If Mark were here, she knew what he would tell her, how he would react. But he would do the same thing. He loved their children. He died trying to protect them. And she would give her life if it meant saving them from further harm.

  12

  Outside Duluth, Rodney and the group had determined that most of the inmates were confined to Main Street. They’d set up guards on the east and west ends, the bulk being stationed on the west end by the highway’s entry point.

  Rodney crept along the back side of Main Street, planting charges, his head on a swivel. But it was so dark that even if the goons were looking right at him, he didn’t think they’d see him in the black. He was just another lump of shadows in the forest.

  Officer Thomas accompanied Rodney. He had some explosives training at the academy and in his brief stint in the military.

  The cold and the darkness made the work difficult, not to mention the sheer exhaustion plaguing Rodney. But his adrenaline kept him alert, and for the moment, it was enough to keep him going.

  They positioned the charges close enough to the buildings to cause a rumble but far enough away to not kill anyone. He wanted to make sure the blasts maintained their purpose as a distraction. And with the amount of C-4 they had in their bags, it would be quite the fireworks show.

  Rodney and Thomas finished and slunk back into the darkness. Unlike the previous town they helped liberate, this one was not located in a valley that provided a useful high ground for an attack. But they did manage to find a hilltop with a limited view of the main drag. At the very least, they’d be able to see the building where Kate was taken. If they didn’t kill her on sight.

  When Rodney and Thomas returned, Captain Harley and the rest were nothing but frozen shadows nestled in the snow.

  With Kate near the west entrance, waiting until it was her time to turn herself in, there were thirteen of them to assault a group that probably numbered somewhere in the forties. Their only hope was that they could pick them off from the hill, getting as many as possible until they had to change position.

  “What’s the time?” Captain Harley asked.

  Rodney checked the pocket watch, his eyes taking a minute to adjust to reading in the darkness. “Just under fifteen minutes.” He snapped it shut and then placed it back in his pocket as he made sure to place the detonator in a secure position.

  The wires extended from the silver metal box like veins eager to pump life into the frozen hearts buried in the snow.

  “You think she’ll actually do it?” Thomas asked. “I mean, just walk in there like that and give herself up?”

  “Without hesitation.” And while he had accepted her decision, Rodney didn’t like it any more than he had to. But it wasn’t his place to deny her request, nor anyone else’s. It was her life. It was her children. It was her choice.

  But whether he would ever see Kate Hillman again was another matter. He was suddenly regretful for not saying goodbye. In the heat of things, they had gone their separate ways without even a good luck. But he suspected that she had other things on her mind, and the last thing he wanted to do was distract her from her concentration on getting her children out alive.

  The time passed slowly in the cold snow. And the added anxiety about the fight to come only made it worse. No one spoke, the silence pulled over them like the blanket of snow. But Rodney could sense the humming of thoughts behind the mixture of expressions.

  Each of them with their own worries, their own concerns, their own fears about what would happen when Kate walked into town and set things into motion. They all had something to lose, some more than others. But they were together. And they would fight together. A cluster of strangers who shared nothing in common but survival and the fight against evil.

  If Rodney could pull one good thing from the events triggered by the EMP, it was that the haze of apathy was lifted. All of the little petty things that people clung to in their day-to-day life were gone. There were no more traffic jams filled with motorists brimming with road rage. Gone were the lines at coffee shops filled with people who were on their phones, huffing and puffing about their boss or office gossip, all the while ignoring one another and building a fake life on social media. The like buttons were gone, the emojis no longer mattered, and the plug had been pulled. And it had led to this.

  A group of people fighting for life, uniting against a threat that was born from evil and greed. Of all the ways for his life to end, Rodney suspected it could be worse. He was no longer that guy hiding out in a city of millions, waiting for the world to end. And it had taken the memory of his late father and the righteous cause of a mother and her family, to show him the path of purpose, to see that without real human connections, a life wasn’t truly lived.

  Rodney checked his watch again—less than three minutes remained. He looked at the faces glued to the riflescopes.

  “Do you have family, Captain Harley?” Rodney asked.

  The question turned the captain’s gaze, and everyone else’s, toward him. He nodded curtly. “Two boys out in California. One of them has a wife with my first grandchild on the way.”

  A few smiles cracked along the worried expressions. Gena, one of the middle-aged women who had a sister that was taken, was one of them. “I have an aunt that lives in San Diego.”

  “That’s where my oldest is,” Captain Harley replied.

  A whisper of conversation helped cast out the dark and their fears.

  “Remember them,” Rodney said. “Remember what we’re doing here, because I can promise you that this isn’t the only evil happening in the world. And remember that we’re not the only ones fighting it.”

  The swell of confidence lifted the group, everyone sitting up straighter, hands and bodies steadier as they took up their aim on the town.

  Rodney fished out his pocket watch again, and ran his thumb over the engraving, remembering the words his father told him just before the cancer wasted him away to nothing. A father’s final challenge to a son who hoped he could answer.

  “People want to do the right thing, Rodney. It’s just that most of the time they’re scared to. It’s that fear that’s the hardest thing to get over. It’ll rot you from the inside out until there’s nothing left. Be the person who helps rid people of that fear. Be the person who shows them the way. You’ll get hurt, and you’ll get knocked down and burned, but those wounds will heal, and those failures will fade. But wha
t sticks with you, what others will see in you, is that courage in the face of fear. Be better, Rodney. Always be better.”

  The minute hand finally ticked toward the final sixty seconds until Kate walked into town, and Rodney peered through the scope of his rifle to watch Main Street. Rodney had never been sure about the afterlife, but in that moment, as the final seconds of their preparation came to end, Rodney hoped there was, and he hoped that his dad was up there watching.

  Neither Stacy or Kate spoke to one another. Both mothers were lost in their own minds. Kate figured Stacy had her own fears to deal with. Kate knew she had her hands full with her own.

  Standing motionless in the cold had only made the waiting worse. But for some reason, Kate couldn’t force herself to move. It was almost as if any movement before the time on her watch expired meant failure. And she couldn’t fail, not this mission.

  A million thoughts raced through Kate’s mind as she waited for the hour to end. And of all those thoughts, of all the memories that could have resurfaced, one replayed like a broken record.

  The memory was older than her past with Dennis, or Mark, or even her children. It was of her sixteenth birthday, which was also the day that she had chosen to become a pilot.

  Before the incident with Dennis, and before she had gotten pregnant and her parents disowned her, Kate was the apple of her family’s eye. She had excelled in high school and already had a slew of promising prospects for college and scholarships. She was at the top of her class, and her parents had promised to reward all of her hard work with a very special birthday gift.

  When she woke up that morning, praying that her wish for a car would come true, Kate rushed to the living room and saw her present sitting in the driveway. They had even put a bow on it.

  She drove to school that day and bragged to her friends who were still bumming rides from their parents. By the time she’d gotten out of class that day, the high from her present still hadn’t worn off, and when she received a text from her father to come home quickly, another surge of excitement filled her on the drive home.