EMP Aftermath Series (Book 1): The Journey Home

by John Winchester

  Kenny nodded and left.

  She stuffed the clothes into the backpack and found the dressing rooms, slipping into an unused stall. Luckily the looters were more focused on stealing expensive electronics and not clothing, so there wasn't anyone else trying on outfits. She put on the new clothes on and left her old outfit on a hanger.

  She stepped from the changing rooms and spotted the footwear section. Three pairs of running shoes and they could get out of this madhouse.

  It didn't take her long to find a pair that fit. They weren't as nice as her regular running shoes, but they would do the job they needed to do.

  Now that she was set, Amy crossed over to the other side of the aisle to the young men's footwear section.

  Kenny was already there, putting on a pair of running shoes, and she found a pair that would fit Danny while he laced up his shoes.

  When Kenny was done, she stuffed the shoes for Danny into the backpack and headed towards the snacks section of the store to pick up the last few necessities, anxious to get underway.

  Four energy bars, a sports drink, and a few twenty-ounce bottles of water were more than they needed for the run. Putting everything into the backpack, Amy stopped at one of the empty registers in the front of the store.

  Instinctively reaching for her purse, she looked at the black screen of the checkout computer and laughed. A tug of guilt in her midsection wouldn't let her walk away without paying. It was a worthless gesture, but she took put sixty dollars and set it on the cashier's register. She doubted a checker would ever ring the money up, but she wasn't stealing. Besides, the paper money was probably worthless now anyways.

  They made their way out of the store without incident, and kept walking down the concrete sidewalk. Amy rummaged through her purse and removed everything she needed out of the purse; a house key, drivers license, and a few family photos along with her credit cards and cash. She tossed the heavy purse along with everything she didn't need down a storm drain. It was too heavy to bring with them.

  The credit cards weren't useful, but the idea of tossing them still felt wrong. Getting her bearings, she ate one of the power bars and she mentally mapped a route to the Lamberti's house.

  "I guess we're going to run to the Lamberti's?" Kenny asked.

  "Yes. With all the problems we have driving, it might be just as quick to run," she said.

  "I hope dad doesn't have to run anywhere," he said.

  Amy grimaced. She knew what he was implying, but didn't want to acknowledge that she too was worried about Jack. He had packed on a lot of weight since his college basketball days, and rarely exercised anymore. There was no way he could do the kind of run she and Kenny were about to make.

  Amy picked up her pace, transitioning from a casual walk to a slow jog as she warmed her body up for the run. The shoes weren't all that bad for retail store running shoes. They cost a fifth of the shoes she bought at a runners shoe store, but they still had the same feel on her foot. Plenty of support for her arch, but not too rigid, and the heel was snug but not tight.

  She tightened the strap on the backpack and shifted the weight closer to her body. The weight of the backpack was the only real difference between this run and her daily run around the suburbs. Well, the only difference if she ignored the fires, civil unrest, and looting.

  She increased her speed to a slow run, giving them both another few moments to warm up. After that, she would settle into her marathon pace, which she could keep up for four and a half hours without stopping. Under normal conditions, it was long enough to complete marathon. But these weren't normal conditions.

  "Are you ready Kenny? I'm sorry you have to do this, but we have to get Danny home," she said.

  Kenny ran cross country and shouldn't have any trouble keeping up, even though he wasn't used to running at marathon distance on pavement. He was young and in shape, and physically able to push himself. Surprisingly, he had shown little of his usual attitude towards her. He knew the stakes and was doing his best. It made her proud of him.

  "Let's go get the little turd," Kenny said.

  Losing the truck to the police had been a major blow, and she was still angry at the police for confiscating her vehicle. That was in the past now, like many other things, and she had to let it go.

  She refocused her mind on the run, concentrating on her stride, her breath, and the natural rhythm of her body. She had to get to Danny and get him home. That was all she could let herself focus on.

  Marathons she ran for no greater reward than the achievement itself. Now the stakes were higher. Her younger boy awaited her at the finish line, a couple of hours away. Nothing would stop her from completing this run.

  Chapter 13

  The river's brown water flowed slowly under the narrow one lane country bridge, a red and white plastic bobber floated along with the current. The sun high overhead beat down mercilessly in a cloudless sky, and there wasn't a hint of a breeze to provide relief from the soup thick humidity.

  Jack watched the bobber float downstream, eagerly watching for any sign of a fish nibbling at the hook. His vision blurry and out of focus, it took all his attention just to watch the bobber. His fever was worse today than yesterday,

  When was the last time he'd eaten? Was it three or four days ago? The empty knot that was his stomach said it had been three months, not three days, and commanded his undivided attention. He felt like a walking, talking, empty stomach. A fish was what he needed. Just one fish. A little fish. A minnow even. What would a minnow taste like? He didn't care, as long as he could swallow it.

  The bobber floated past unperturbed by fish for the hundredth time this morning.

  Three weeks and five days, or was it three weeks and seven days? He'd lost exact count, but he knew he'd been on the road for almost four weeks. The hike from Clinton to Kansas City felt like a lifetime ago, and minuscule in comparison to how far he'd walked from Kansas City. The last week of it was a complete blur. This section of back road was indistinguishable from every other section he'd hiked in the last few hundred miles. There were small farms, rural homes, and trees, and occasionally a river or lake. And that was about it.

  Marble Hill Missouri. Yeah, that's where he was at, right? Not even in a different damn state yet. Four weeks of walking, how was he still in the same state? Back east they didn't make states this big. Missouri was obscenely big compared to Maryland. Sometimes he wondered if he was walking in circles, but he knew he wasn't because of the log he kept.

  As long as he was still going east, it didn't matter too much. He had to keep it together enough to cross the Missouri River at Cape Girardeau. The bridge there was the best chance to cross the river without heading into a major city like St. Louis.

  Cape Girardeau. What a weird name.

  Girardeau. Crepes and Giardia. Giardia and crap.

  Jack giggled, delirious from the heat.

  Keep it together man.

  This fever is getting worse.

  Jack picked up his makeshift fishing rod, a stick to which he'd attached the fishing line from the survival kit. He gave it a flick and sent the float and baited hook upstream again.

  He watched it float by in the meandering current and get stuck on a stick in the water. It was time to put the line away. He was just stalling now. If he hadn't had a bite by now, he wouldn't catch anything here. He just didn't want to put his shoes on yet, which sat upside down on the blacktop several feet away, drying in the sun. To him, they didn't even look like shoes anymore. They were instruments of torture. He knew the pain that awaited him when he put them on his feet.

  Jack pulled the fishing line in and removed it from the stick, frustrated at another hour of daylight wasted. It was the last of the hook and lines. He couldn't afford to lose it, as little use as it had been. Two of the other three rigs had been lost, in the lip of a nice fat catfish at the bottom of a river somewhere he liked to imagine. The only thing he'd caught so far were two small catfish that weighed less than a pound each. Hardly w
orth the time he had spent fishing. The time he wasted sitting in the heat on the snake infested riverbanks as he fished was time he could have spent on the road, walking home.

  The small game snares from the emergency kit had been useless as well. They took too long to set up and place, and using even a few crumbs of his dwindling food supplies as bait was food he couldn't eat. All he had to show for his trapping efforts was a deep circular cut on his right thumb, nearly down to the bone. He'd slipped on a wet log while setting up snare wires and trapped his own finger. He was lucky to still have his thumb.

  There wasn't any food left in his pack, so for the fourth day in a row, he filled his stomach with water until the hunger pangs receded a bit. The water would only make him feel full for ten minutes or so, then he'd be right back to where he started, hunger gnawing at him from the inside out.

  He sat on the riverbank, trying to work up the willpower to get up on his feet, his feverish mind struggling against his exhausted body. This was too hard. He was too weak to keep doing this.

  "Up Jack. Get up you lazy bastard," he said to himself.

  Once on his feet, he picked up the narrow strips of cloth hanging from the guardrail he'd left out to dry in the sun. The strips were remnants of a white t-shirt he'd torn apart, though they were now patterned red by the blood of his feet and ankles.

  He took the strips of cloth and wrapped them around his swollen feet, cinching them until each foot was bound up tightly. He unlaced the shoes and gingerly slipped them over his feet. The shoelaces were worn and frayed, but still functional. He pulled the lip of the shoes in as he tightened them onto his feet.

  His mind wandered as he finished lacing the shoes up. Did he hate walking in the heat or the rain more? Walking in the rain was a break from the heat, and he didn't have to worry about finding drinking water, he could fill up his bottles from the rain and not have to worry about boiling it first. His feet paid the price for walking in the rain as they rubbed up against the inside of the shoe. Each step aggravated his raw feet as he sloshed along. Yeah, walking in the rain was worse, he decided.

  Jack shook his head to clear his mind, then strapped on his frame pack. Checking to make sure he had everything, he set out on the highway. Pain greeted him as he felt each blister on his foot, each raw wound registered uniquely as he took his first few steps of the day down the highway.

  He tried to think of something besides the pain, but it was impossible to ignore because with each step a fresh jolt shot through his foot. It took all his concentration not to limp or favor one foot. That would only lead to worse blisters.

  He put one foot in front of the other until his mind tuned out the pain again. Food. What was the last food he'd eaten? The first two weeks hadn't been bad, people were generous, like they had been in Clinton.

  Not so much in the last week and a half. People were getting tight. When they saw him walking down the highway, they disappeared into their houses. Nobody wanted to tell a starving person they wouldn't share what little they had. They weren't bad people. They were just looking out for their own families. It was the same thing he would have done in their shoes.

  Things were getting lean all right.

  Lean. Mean. I've got no green.

  Jack snickered at the nonsensical thoughts that popped into his head. This fever was going to kill him, but it would send him to his grave with a laugh on his lips.

  He was getting lean though, his gut used to hang over his belt. If only Amy could see him now. He hitched his belt buckle five notches tighter than when he'd left home. Aside from the pain, exhaustion, fever, and nearly starving to death, he was in better health than before. It took a steep hill to get his heart thumping now, a far cry from being out of breath from walking through the parking lot and up one flight of steps to work.

  Seven or eight hours of walking a day for weeks would do that.

  His head spinning, he wiped at the sweat dripping down his forehead and into his eyes, blurring his vision. Jack willed his body to continue walking down the highway.

  How far had he gone today? His shirt and pants were soaked with sweat. The sun blazed relentlessly.

  He concentrated on the pain in his feet, picking up one swollen, pained foot after another.

  Left foot and then the right one. Just keep going.

  Finally, he couldn't find an ounce of strength more, and his legs turned to rubber.

  He stumbled, and then toppled over. It didn't even hurt when he hit his head on the pavement. He laid there, cheek against the highway, feeling the steady burn of the sun's heat reflected back up from the asphalt. He was being roasted alive in the Missouri sun.

  Get up Jack.

  I want to sleep in for just a few more minutes. I'll get up later. I don't have to be at work until 9.

  Get up Jack. We have to get up.

  Just one more minute. I'm going to open my eyes in just a minute.

  I'm going to sleep for just a minute.

  Just gotta rest my eyes for a minute.

  His eyes fluttered closed one last time, and darkness enveloped him.

  Chapter 14

  Amy paced back and forth in front of the double doors of the school entrance, peering into the glass panes of the doors, waiting for the security guard to reappear.

  She slapped her hand against the door, still furious at the Lamberti's negligence. What had she been thinking letting Danny stay with his friend overnight? Apparently she didn't know them as well as she had thought. They seemed like decent enough people before the EMP, but now she couldn't hold them in higher contempt.

  She and Kenny had gone through hell and back, only to find that the Lambertis had walked their son and Danny to school as if nothing had happened.

  "How could they take the boys to school? What kind of idiot walks their child to school with the world falling down around their ears? You'd have to be a complete moron not to notice something is really wrong," she said.

  Amy put her foot up onto a metal trashcan and stretched her leg out, easing the cramping tendons and muscles. She slowed her breathing down to calm herself. Switching to stretch the other leg, she kept a watchful eye on the double door's small windows.

  "Calm down mom. They had no idea what is going on in the city. All they knew is that their electricity was off and their phones didn't work," Kenny said.

  Amy turned and pointed at the billowing clouds of smoke hanging above the city, black and ominous.

  "And the city is on fire, and no cars are working, and I could go on and on and on with reasons they should have kept Danny right where he was, Kenny. They should have known something was wrong," she yelled.

  Kenny became quiet and stood with his back to her.

  Amy blew out a stream of air. "I'm sorry Kenny. I didn't mean to snap at you. I just can't believe this happened, they have their heads in the sand."

  "It's all right mom. Everything is going to be OK. Danny is at school, and he's ok," he said.

  Where is this guy? The security guard should have been back here ten minutes ago.

  When they first arrived, she'd banged loudly on the locked double doors at the school entrance for five minutes before a security guard finally appeared at the door. He asked what she wanted at the school, demanded to see her ID, and then the suspicious guard gave her a puzzled look and disappeared down the hall without a word.

  Finally, the security guard's tired face re-appeared. He removed the chains from the door, then opened them, gesturing for her to enter the school.

  "Sorry, I had to walk over and get the principle. I didn't know if I should let you in or not, our radios are down," he said.

  Amy contained her anger. It wouldn't help the situation.

  "Is Danny here?" she asked.

  "Yes, Mrs. Miller. Principle Barton is fetching him from the gym. We have all the kids gathered in the gymnasium," the guard said.

  "You mean there are more kids than just mine and the Lamberti's?"

  "Yes, quite a few actually. Some people
closer to the school walked their kids in this morning after the buses didn't go out," he said.

  Amy stalked off down the hall, leaving the security guard behind. She knew where the gymnasium was and she wasn't going to wait around for the principle to bring her boy to her. She needed to see him right now.

  She hurried down the locker-lined corridors of the school with Kenny in tow, their footsteps echoing in the empty hallways.

  Half way to the gymnasium the principle rounded the corner of the hallway leading to the gym, escorting Danny. There he was, strutting down the hallway, that distinctive gait both boys shared with their father, a kind of lackadaisical stroll. He was a smaller version of his brother and father with his brown hair and blue eyes, the three of them could be clones, with the only real difference being their height, weight, and age. Kenny was a foot taller than Danny. Jack stood a head higher than Kenny, and was much heavier.