Preppers of the Apocalypse - Part 2: Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival

by Godsby Jim

  “What’ve we lost?” he said, his face white.

  Ash put his hand over his mouth. His throat felt tight.

  “About a weeks’ worth of MRE’s. That’s most of our rations.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. My thoughts exactly.”

  Thirty minutes later, after recounting their supplies, it seemed like they might have enough to make it through the pass, but they were going to lose a hell of a lot of weight. They were already working at a calorie deficit, and they were going to have to try and survive with a further drop of 400 calories. All the while, the physical stress of passing through the mountains was making their bodies use more energy than normal.

  “Some people would kill for this,” said Chad, trying to grin. “A diet like this is hard to get. Maybe I’ll patent it. The Lantern Mountain Weight-loss Regime.”

  “This isn’t funny, “said Ash. “We need to get food. What if something happens to the vehicle? If we have to walk the rest of the way, we’re screwed. We’ll need to take on more calories, but we don’t have the supplies to cover it.”

  “So what are we gonna do?”

  “I’m going to have to go hunt.”

  ***

  This was how Ash found himself stood in the middle of another patch of trees with a crossbow in his hand. The treetops spread wide above him and smothered out the light. He had his weapon cocked, arrow ready. Chad and Ellie were over at the pick-up playing cards on the back seat.

  He stepped over broken twigs and tried to avoid getting his foot hooked on the vines and branches that lay strewn on the ground. He looked out for mushrooms and berries. At this moment in time, he’d take any kind of food that they could get. What they really needed, though, was meat. If he could catch and kill a rabbit or something bigger, it would sustain them for a day or two and ease some of the burden on their remaining MRE’s.

  Branches snapped somewhere to his right. As quickly as he dared, Ash turned around to look. He needed to be quiet, he knew. His father had taken him hunting plenty of times on their trips, and he’d always impressed on him the number one rule of hunting.

  Keep your mouth shut and your steps soft, he used to say. Pretend like you’re dancing on landmines.

  Ash held his breath and span around. He expected to see a rabbit running through the forest, and he hoped his aim would be good enough to hit it. When he saw the source of the noise, he wanted to drop the crossbow and run.

  Across the patch of trees, slinking through the bushes with an agility that seemed almost supernatural, was a mountain lion. Its body was muscled and meaty, and its jaws looked strong enough to snap his arm in a single bite. It prowled across the forest floor with a stealth that Ash could never have hoped to master.

  Ash stayed still. He prayed that it wouldn’t see him. He wasn’t a religious man, but he was finding more and more that he needed something to cling to these days, some kind of hope that would guide him through the tough times.

  For the second time in the trip, his prayers were ignored. The mountain lion snapped its head toward him, and in that moment Ash knew that the animal had spotted him.

  Chapter 4

  As the animal prowled towards him, Ash felt his legs turn to jelly. He wished he was far away from here; anywhere else in the world, it didn’t matter. He’d even take the anger of Kenny and the other Pasture Down townsfolk if it meant he could escape.

  The animal dipped its head toward the ground. It headed toward him in slow, purposeful steps, and it took a zigzagging path as if it was trying to size him up before committing to a battle. Ash tried to think of a course of action. The words were in his head, somewhere, ones that would tell him what to do.

  His dad had taught him hundreds of lessons over the years, but dealing with mountain lions had never been one of them. They had never seen any on their camping trips, and had usually stuck to areas where the biggest animal you would ever see was wild deer.

  Think, Ash. Pretend your life depends on it.

  Suddenly he remembered something. It wasn’t a lesson his dad taught him this time. It was something he’d seen in a documentary on a National Geographic special, a hunter’s story of being faced with a hungry cougar when he’d accidentally wandered near it its cubs.

  As the animal slunk across the vines and the bracken, Ash willed his brain to unfreeze. He held the crossbow tight in his hand. He could picture the hunter on the television. His chubby face, cheeks red from either alcohol or just plain lack of fitness. His eyes glassing over as he told his story.

  Don’t run.

  That was the first rule, and it was painfully obvious. Where sprinting was concerned, Ash would be the clear loser. Besides, Ash had spent most of his life running away from various things; his responsibilities, his morals, facing up to his dad.

  Appear larger.

  He wasn’t a big guy, but he needed to look like one. He needed the lion to lift its head toward him, see how big he was and then think to itself “this isn’t going to be worth the effort”. Ash unzipped his waterproof jacket and let it flap open. He raised his arms above his head, never losing his grip on the crossbow.

  The lion stopped in its tracks. Its paw crunched over a twig, and it looked at Ash quizzically. Had he done enough? Did he look mean enough to deter the animal? He decided that he was going to have to find his voice. Overhead, two birds fluttered away from the treetops and into the air. Ash wished he hadn’t walked so far away from the pick-up.

  “Stop,” he said, but he knew his voice wasn’t strong enough. He took a deep breath and puffed up his chest.

  The animal took two tentative steps forward. Ash felt his pulse fire. He could almost smell the sweat pouring from his armpits, and he felt it run across his forehead.

  “Stop, you bastard,” he said.

  The animal took another few steps. It didn’t look like he was going to be able to scare it away, and there was no way he was going to die in the middle of the forest trying to having a stern conversation with a mountain lion. Ash slowly brought his crossbow to eye level. He sighted the lion, filled his chest with air to steady his aim.

  “Please god, let me hit it,” he said.

  Despite a lifetime as an atheist, this was the third prayer he’d said in less than twenty four hours. He hadn’t converted, though. This was no religious experience. This was just a scared guy trying to find some help in a world steadily tumbling into shit. He envied the people who had found God and who truly believed in him, because he knew that they would deal with the end of the world better than most. Hell, some of them would even welcome it.

  He checked his aim once more, brushed the trigger with his index finger, and then pulled. There was a swishing sound, and then the lion gave a cry of pain that was something between a growl and a squeal. The arrow had pierced its neck, and the animal fell to its side and snapped the branches beneath it. It thrashed on the floor for a few seconds, before becoming still.

  Ash dropped the crossbow to his side. He stood in the forest for a second, his brain struggling to catch up with what had happened. I actually hit it, he thought. I goddamn hit it.

  He walked over to the lion and stood above it. Its eyes were like crystal now, the life in them drained away. Its body was packed with muscle, and it looked like a creature too powerful to have died by Ash’s hand. Suddenly he felt pity well up in his chest. He almost wished he could rewind time and suck the arrow out of its neck and back into the bow. It seemed like such a pointless death for a mighty animal, and the whole thing was unjust. Ash had wandered into its territory. It wasn’t as if Ash had been at home and the lion had broken into his garden.

  Still. It was either him, or me. What would happen to Georgia if I died? What about Ellie and Chad?

  ***

  An hour later, As Ash dragged the mountain lion out of the edge of the forest, Chad got out of the pick-up truck. He stood and stared for a few seconds, wide-eyed as if he couldn’t believe what he saw.

  “Is that what I think it is?�
� he shouted.

  “You just gonna stand there, or are you gonna help?”

  Ellie scooched over the back seat and sat with her legs handing out of the vehicle.

  “Is that a lion?”

  “You goddamn legend,” shouted Chad, and ran over to help.

  Ash and Chad pulled the lion over to the pick-up. Blood dribbled from the arrow wound on its neck, and its coat was covered in mud from the forest floor. By the time they let go of it, both men felt drained. Ash’s pulse finally settled as the adrenaline left his body, and he felt like just flopping down to the floor and closing his eyes for a few hours.

  “Can we cook it?” asked Chad.

  “You have to be careful,” said Ellie, legs swinging over the side of the seat. “My dad was a weekend hunter. He had this rule; always cook what you kill. He shot a mountain lion once, and he showed me how to cook it. Thing is, they carry trinchinella, a parasite that will put you in the grave if you undercook the meat. So you better roast the heck out of this thing before we eat it.”

  Chad stood over the lion and stared at it in wonder.

  “Still,” he said. “There’s a hell of a lot of meat on it.”

  Ellie shook her head.

  “This is a predator. What you’re looking at there is mostly muscle tissue. Might get a day or two of food out of it though.”

  “Looks like our MRE’s can take a rest,” said Ash. “I saw a stream in the clearing too. So we can fill our bottles and use the water filter.”

  ***

  As the sun began to fall from the sky and twilight settled over the sleepy mountain, the three of them roasted the heck out of the meat, as Ellie put it. Chad took over cooking duties under Ellie’s supervision, showing great patience as she bossed him around. Ash guessed that as a recruit, the guy was used to taking orders. They sat in the pick-up truck under a twinkling night sky and ate the meat.

  “It’s sharp as hell, said Chad. “But you know what? Compared to the MRE’s, this is the best meal I ever had.”

  When they finished, Ash climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “We lost a lot of time today,” he said. “So I think we better drive for a couple of hours before we lose the light completely.”

  “It’s getting dark. I’m not sure we should go,” said Ellie.

  “I’ll drive slow and keep the headlamps on. If the terrain looks patchy, we’ll stop. I just don’t want to sit still more than we have to.”

  “You’re the boss,” she said. This time, it didn’t sound sarcastic.

  Ash put the key in the ignition and twisted. The engine coughed, and then died. He tried the ignition again. Nothing.

  “Oh crap,” he said.

  Chapter 5

  A popped car bonnet was always something of a mystery to Ash, but Chad didn’t have the same problem. He stood above it with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and looked at the wires and valves as if he was reading another language, one that only he could understand.

  “Any ideas?” said Ash.

  The darkness of night had fallen on them completely now. Ash couldn’t see anything further than fifty feet away, and it seemed like the blackness around them smothered out all noise except the calls of birds and chirps of nocturnal insects. It struck Ash that this was the real sound of the world. It wasn’t the beeps of horns or hum of traffic. It was the calls of nature around them. When all the people of the world were long gone, these sounds would remain.

  Chad rubbed his forehead with his palm, smearing engine oil across his skin. For the first time, he looked frustrated.

  “It’s like a puzzle,” he said. “And I get OCD about it. Back in the barracks they used to call me in for the tough fix jobs. You know, the real pain-in-the-ass mechanical problems. I’d stay up all night trying to solve them, sometimes. I wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat. It made morning drills horrible. Try running ten miles after getting two hours sleep.”

  “That’s not healthy,” said Ellie.

  “Well then, let’s get this thing running,” said Chad. His voice was tense.

  They ran through a check list of everything that could possibly be causing to car to struggle starting. They checked the battery terminal connections, the spark plugs, and the choke. Chad inspected the distributor cap for any moisture, but there was nothing obvious. Two hours later, he slammed the bonnet down and walked away from the vehicle. By now his hands and face were covered in oil, as though he were trying to camouflage himself into the night.

  Ash walked after him and put a hand on his shoulder. Chad spun around and knocked his hand away.

  “Take it easy,” said Ash. “We can figure this out.”

  “Figure what out? Don’t you get it? The pick-up is screwed. And so are we. This whole damn world is screwed and we’re trying to pretend everything is okay.”

  He took sharp breaths, and Ash could tell that he was gritting his teeth.

  “I’m just sick of it,” he carried on. “Sleeping in the pick-up. The MRE’s. This stupid mountain. And what’s waiting for us at the end of it all, Ash? The city is going to be ten times worse.”

  Ash put his hand on his shoulder. “Just come back to the truck. We’ll figure something out.”

  Back at the truck, Ellie lit their last kerosene lamp. The other two had tumbled over the side of the mountain hours earlier, and Ash was loathe to use the remaining one, but if this wasn’t an emergency, then what was? The glow of the lamp cast an orange flicker on their faces. Chad, with his forehead and cheeks covered in oil and sweat, looked like something from Apocalypse Now.

  “So now we’ve got a problem,” said Ellie. “We’re so far into the pass that walking back would take twice as long as getting here.”

  “Triple if we account your ankle into things,” said Ash.

  “Okay, everyone make fun of the hop-along. Listen, you jerk. What I’m saying is that if the pick-up is screwed-”

  “It really is,” cut in Chad.

  “- then we’re gonna have to walk. But we gotta carry on the way we’ve been going. We need to walk to the end of the pass.”

  Suddenly the night air felt a lot colder and looked a lot darker. The mountain seemed to grow around Ash so large that for the first time in years, he was struck by the size of nature and how small he was compared to it. The EMP had hit the mainland and gouged a cut deep into the skin of society, but the natural world would carry on unaffected. If anything, it would flourish, given time.

  “Seriously then, said Ash. “How long do you think you can walk each day? We need to figure how long this is going to take us and then ration our supplies.”

  Chad slammed his fist down on the bonnet of the car.

  “I’m gonna sleep this one out. Wake me when you have a plan.”

  He walked around the truck, opened the back doors and bundled himself in. He slammed the door after him and then lay down. Ellie fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her tobacco pouch. It was starting to look saggy, and Ash wondered what it was going to do to her nerves when it ran out completely.

  “Why’d you come out here?” he said. “I know it’s not because you’ve got a vested interest in seeing me get home safely.”

  “It’s all part of the sheriff service.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Of course it’s not, Ash. You’ve been a scum bag to me and the town, and a week ago, and I couldn’t have cared less what happened to you.”

  “Then why come along?”

  Ellie finished rolling her cigarette. It was much thinner than the ones she usually rolled, and when she lit it, half the paper burned all at once. She threw it to the ground in frustration.

  “It’s because of Ben. My son. He’s got a condition. He needs regular blood transfusions. I have a supply at home, but with the refrigerators broken, the blood is ruined. So I need to find Ben’s father. They have the same type.”

  “And I take it you don’t?”

  “I wouldn’t be trying to find the asshole if we were. Ben’s father is a prick.�
�

  Ash grinned. “You’re travelling with a prick so that you can find a prick. From one prick to another.”

  “You’re not so bad, I guess,” said Ellie. “But one day you’re going to have to find a way to pay for what you did, Ash. It’s not something people tend to forget, and I know that I never will. I might forgive, but I’ll always remember.”

  Abash thought of Tony Shore, and the kindness that the man had shown him. Tony had told Ash that one day all the bad things he had done were going to spill out of him, and that he was going to need someone there to pick up the pieces when they did. He had shrugged it off at the time, but he was starting to think that Tony was right.