After the EMP- The Chaos Trilogy

by Harley Tate

  Wilkins Residence

  Eugene, Oregon

  10:00 a.m.

  The black thread pinched a lump of skin and Colt tugged it away from the healing wound. He winced, but kept going, checking the entire length of ragged stitches for signs of infection.

  So far, so good.

  His leg still hurt when he lowered into a crouch, the quad muscle tender and not healed. Stab wounds didn’t repair themselves overnight. After dabbing the wound with antibiotic ointment, he applied a fresh bandage and pulled on his pants.

  Thanks to the people who saved them, Colt had clean clothes that weren’t coated in dried blood or soot from the fire he and Dani barely escaped.

  Bruises covered his ribs and back, giant purple and yellow splotches where he slammed into the ground after jumping from Dani’s apartment window. The grass lessened the impact, but three stories still hurt like a Mack truck.

  Palpating the worst of the bruises, Colt checked for broken ribs or internal bleeding. Nothing obvious. He was damn lucky.

  If only the National Guard aimed as poorly as they PT’d. With clenched teeth, Colt lifted his left arm and inspected the bullet wound to his bicep. The round hit fast, exiting out the rear of his muscle and leaving a clean hole. He guessed the guardsman fired from fifteen feet away. At such close range, the yaw of the round was minimal and the bullet sliced right through.

  Colt was lucky. Again. In a few weeks, he would be good as new, plus a few scars.

  A knock at the bedroom door startled him into the present and he grabbed a T-shirt from the bed. “Come in.”

  He slipped the black fabric over his head, gritting his teeth as he eased his wounded arm into the sleeve. As his head popped through the top, Colt caught Melody eyeing his bruises.

  “I can come back later.” A hint of white teeth appeared as she nibbled on her lower lip.

  “No, it’s okay. I’m done.” Colt tugged the shirt down the rest of the way and slid over on the mattress. “Come on in.”

  Melody tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and ducked into the room. She sat on the only chair, an old part of a dining room set now spread around the basement, and smiled. “A stab wound, gunshot, and a million bruises. It’s lucky you survived.”

  Colt hid most of a grin. “Occupational hazard.”

  Her head tilted. “Dani said you were an air marshal.”

  “Before the power went out, I was. Now, I consider myself more of a mercenary.”

  Melody eased back in the chair, her green eyes alive with interest. “Are you for hire?”

  “For the right price.”

  She laughed and Colt raised an eyebrow. Is she mocking me? The more Melody laughed, the more Colt didn’t know what to do. He never had this effect on women. Sometimes they would smile or give him their number, but laugh at him? Never.

  He slid forward on the bed and rested his forearms on his knees. “What’s so funny?”

  After a moment Melody composed herself, pushing back a hunk of black hair and breathing deep. “Three weeks ago I worked as a vet tech for an animal hospital up the road. Now I’m sitting here talking to a guy decked in head-to-toe tactical gear who fought the army and he’s not the bad guy.”

  “You make it sound like an action movie.”

  Melody sighed. “I’m going to miss those.”

  “Me too. Bruce Willis had at least one more in him.”

  “I’m more of a Daniel Craig fan, myself.”

  Colt kept his comment about stuntmen to himself, opting instead to reach for his service pistol. Although the holster didn’t survive the fall from Dani’s apartment, the trusty Sig Sauer didn’t have a scratch. Obtaining a replacement holster was a top priority.

  He caught her eyes tracking his movements and Colt changed the subject. “So you worked for a vet?”

  Melody nodded. “Dr. Benthorn over on Euclid. He’s been in business forty years. Well, he was anyway.” Her face fell. “Now there aren’t any animals to see.”

  Colt glanced at the open door, half expecting the little fur ball she called a dog to scamper in. “What do you mean? You’ve still got a dog.”

  “Only because Doug hid her down here in the basement. The army confiscated all the pets in this area.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I wish I weren’t. But it’s true. Every dog, cat, hamster, gerbil, rabbit. Everything. If anyone had a pet, it got loaded up in to a big camouflage truck and carted off. No one’s seen a single one since. I think Lottie’s the only dog left on the whole street.”

  Colt whistled, short and low. If the army took residents’ pets, it wasn’t to keep them alive or check them for diseases or anything noble. Whatever Colonel Jarvis decided to do with those animals, he pitied the men tasked with carrying it out.

  “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

  Colt lifted his eyes. From the way Melody watched him, body still, one arm wrapped around her middle, she already knew. “That would be my best guess, yeah.” He didn’t tell her what they probably did with the edible ones.

  “It’s senseless and cruel. Why would they do that?”

  “Control. Power. Now there are no dogs to bite them or alert an owner to their presence. One less thing tying people to their homes.”

  “But they’ve let us stay. They haven’t even taken our food yet. Why would they just take the animals and leave us here?”

  “I thought they confiscated weapons, too.”

  Melody nodded. “They did, but most of us didn’t have anything. Doug had a handgun. That’s it.”

  From what Colt managed to learn the evening before, Doug Harper worked as a city of Eugene fireman before the power went out. He tried to keep the firehouse together after the grid failed, but the National Guard ordered him to go home. They would handle any fires.

  “Did the army take it?”

  She nodded.

  Damn it. That left only what Dani and Colt managed to find and carry. Four M-4s and his service pistol. Not nearly enough. He rubbed at his beard, scratching the skin beneath the inch-long strands. “How many people in the neighborhood are like you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Willing to stand up to the army.”

  Melody’s mouth opened, but she shut it again, pressing her pink lips together until they thinned. She glanced at the door. “I don’t know what we can do.”

  Colt blinked. “But you took us in. You patched me up and protected us.”

  “Harvey did the heavy lifting. I just cleaned your wounds.”

  He motioned at his injuries. “You did all this?”

  She nodded.

  “Thank you.” Colt wished he could do more than offer a couple of words. He wished he could stop the madness. Melody’s reluctance to fight didn’t make sense. He reached for his boots and socks. “Harvey called all of you ‘the Resistance.’ Was that a lie?”

  One of Melody’s eyebrows shot up. “Just because we won’t cower in our homes, doesn’t make us soldiers. I don’t know if I can shoot another man. Harvey and Gloria are old. Will is just a kid.”

  Great. I’ve been saved by a bunch of scared, untrained normals. “So tell me what the last three weeks have been like. Where were you when the power went out? When did the army come through?”

  Melody ran through the basics. “We got the emergency alert just before the power went out, but I didn’t know what it meant, and neither did any of the girls in the office. We closed up shop and I went home like usual. Lottie comes to work with me, so when I got home, we were outside playing fetch when it sounded like an explosion out front.”

  She pulled her legs up onto the chair, tucking one beneath the other as she recounted what Colt saw from 37,000 feet in the air. “It was crazy. The transformer a few houses down caught on fire, flames leapt across the power lines. I thought the houses were going to go.”

  “They didn’t?”

  “No. My brother and I share our house and when he got home, he went straight to work,
putting out the fires with extinguishers he always keeps on hand.”

  “Benefits of a firefighter in the family.”

  Melody nodded. “Then we just waited. Doug went to work, tried to do his job. But a day or two later the army swooped in, driving down the streets in those big military vehicles, using megaphones to give people instructions.”

  “What did they say?”

  She peered at the ceiling, thinking. “At first it was just shelter in place, if you need medical attention, come to the University stadium, that sort of thing. A few days later, it changed.”

  Colt’s ears pricked. “How so?”

  “That’s when they started taking inventories. Every house got a couple cases of bottled water and their food supplies checked. If they were low, they got MREs.”

  “Sounds great.”

  She nodded. “It was. But then they started asking about weapons and skill sets. All the guns and ammo they found were confiscated. For our own safety, they said. And anyone who had a connection to the military was placed on a truck and taken to the University campus.” Melody paused. “I don’t think they’ve come back.”

  Whoa. Although the initial efforts seemed friendly and helpful, the National Guard unit occupying Eugene turned quickly. Taking weapons and quarantining anyone with the ability to fight meant they expected trouble.

  “What about the pets? When did that happen?”

  “Last week. They come through once a week to hand out more water and do more inspections. Our street has Friday.”

  It fit with what he heard on the radio the other night. Clearing sector by sector, taking anyone who resisted and plying the rest with essential supplies. It wouldn’t be long until all the remaining residents depended on the rogue unit for survival.

  In a matter of weeks they would all be pawns. Or worse.

  Colt leaned back on the bed, thinking it over. At last, he stood up. “If the army decides they want what you have, will you fight for it?”

  Melody ran her tongue over her lower lip. “I don’t know how.”

  “Hey, Colt?” Dani’s voice carried from the other side of the door before the teenager poked her head into the room. Her gaze darted to Melody before settling on Colt. “Sorry.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Mr. Wilkins asked to speak with you.”

  Colt smiled. “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Dani nodded and disappeared before Colt could say anything else.

  “She’s tough.” Melody stood up and turned off the portable lantern lighting the space.

  The room fell into darkness and Colt ushered her toward the stairs. “Tough doesn’t begin to cover it.”

  Chapter Two

  DANI

  Wilkins Residence

  Eugene, Oregon

  11:30 a.m.

  Colt and Melody emerged from the basement and Dani turned away. She had no right to be jealous. But seeing the pair of them together…

  She tugged her sleeve over her knuckles and strode from the room, eager to get out of there. The Wilkinses’ house sat in the middle of a residential street with a big oak tree in the backyard. A small back room was tucked into the corner of the house. Maybe it used to be an office or a nursery; Dani didn’t know. Now it was the only place she could be alone.

  As she entered the room, she froze. Will sat on the floor, a smart phone, laptop, and tablet spread out in a fan around him.

  Dani stepped back to leave when he tilted his head. “You can come in. I won’t bite.”

  She ran her thumb over a jagged fingernail. “All right.”

  Will’s brown hair hung over his forehead, obscuring his eyes from view. He tinkered with some sort of device, sticking cables from it into each piece of equipment and mumbling.

  Dani eased over to the picture window, focusing on the gnarled trunk of the tree outside. After a few minutes, Will let out a frustrated snort.

  “Something wrong?”

  He pinned Dani with a pointed glare. “Only everything.”

  She turned back to the window.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  She didn’t move. “What?”

  “Not having any electricity! No phones, no internet, no lights for God’s sake. There’s nothing.”

  Dani resisted the urge to scratch a mosquito bite on her arm. “I never had a phone or a computer.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She nodded, still not looking his way.

  “I don’t know what I would have done without them. How do you talk to your friends or do your schoolwork?”

  Dani wasn’t about to tell him friends weren’t part of her life and homework didn’t matter. How could she think about grades and schoolwork when every day she opened the apartment door, she was bracing herself for the inevitable? Her mother’s rants when she was too high to think, her depression when she couldn’t score.

  The lack of food in the house hit Dani harder than any failed history test. She stuffed a hand in a pocket and turned to him with a shrug. “Why’s it so important now? It’s not like anyone else can use one of those things.”

  Will tucked his chin and picked up the phone, mashing his thumb against the home button over and over. “My parents must be worried sick.”

  “I thought you lived with Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins.”

  “They’re my grandparents. I was only supposed to be here a week.”

  Dani scrunched up her nose. “Where are your mom and dad?”

  “In Vail, skiing.” The last word came out as an accusation. “They should have been back two days after the power went out.”

  Oh. Dani thought about how far away Colorado must be from Oregon, trying to remember the maps she had to study in geography. Far was an understatement.

  “I take it you like your parents?”

  He glowered. “I love them. They have to be worried sick. Not knowing if I’m all right, wondering about Gran and Granddad. I know they’ll be coming home, but I want to talk to them. See them.” He tossed the phone on the ground and tore his hands through his hair. “If they don’t come back soon, what’s going to happen to all of us?”

  Dani didn’t know what to say. Her mother only used her when convenient. Her father died before she could remember. Only her own grandmother cared for her like Will’s parents must care for him. But her grandmother was gone.

  She pushed the grief down with a dry swallow. Puffery wasn’t really her thing. “What if they don’t come back? What are you going to do?”

  Will’s head jerked up, his lashes wet. He stared at her, nostrils flaring like a bull about to charge.

  Dani held up her hands. “Just asking.”

  “They’ll come back. They have to.” Will scooped up his useless electronics in a rush and fled the room.

  The second he disappeared, Dani exhaled in relief. After years of living with her mother and now the failure of the power grid, Dani almost forgot normal families existed. Homes where moms and dads hugged their kids and cooked them dinner. Where floors were clean and the heat didn’t shut off in the winter because no one could pay the bill.

  Dani stared out at the oak, following the path of each bent and twisted branch like an arm of a convoluted family tree. Her eyes grew dry and she blinked, but didn’t turn away.

  “Staring out into the abyss won’t do you any good. Come on in here and help me with these peas.”

  Dani spun around. Mrs. Wilkins stood in the doorway, a pleasant smile brightening her face.

  “Me? You want my help?”

  “I don’t see anyone else in here.” Mrs. Wilkins turned around and headed toward the kitchen and Dani followed. She eased into the small space and lingered beside the table.

  Mrs. Wilkins sat down and motioned at the sink. “Use some of that hand sanitizer on the counter and pull up a chair. My arthritis is acting up this morning.”

  Dani did as instructed, pumping a glob of clear gel into her hand and rubbing until it evaporated. She pulled out a wooden chair and sa
t on the worn calico pad. A bowl of things that looked like green beans sat in front of Mrs. Wilkins. “I thought you said peas?”

  “I did.” She plucked one from the bowl and held it up. “Alaska peas from my garden out back.”

  “Those look like funny green beans.”

  Mrs. Wilkins paused, the vegetable frozen in mid-air. “Gracious. Don’t tell me you’ve never shelled a pea.”

  “I didn’t even know they grew like that.”

  Mrs. Wilkins laughed, thick and hearty, and her glasses slid down her nose. “Well, I never. Let me show you how it’s done.” Holding the bean-thing in one hand, she grabbed the free end in a pincher grip.

  “First you take the pea pod and you pinch the end like this. If you squeeze hard enough the whole pod should just pop open.” She demonstrated, pressing her fingers together until the pea pod split. As she spread the outside apart, a row of little peas emerged. “Then you open it, dump the peas in the bowl and put the empty pod in the bag. Make sense?”

  Dani nodded.

  “Now you try.”

  She picked up a pea pod and frowned. “Peas grow like beans?”

  “Yep. If you ever split a green bean open, you’ll see little seeds inside too, just like this. These are Alaska peas, the earliest pea there is. They can grow here year round.”

  Dani didn’t know a thing about gardening, but to see so many peas come out of a tiny plot the size of a pickup truck out back made her head spin. “How long have you been a gardener?”

  Mrs. Wilkins whistled. “All my life. My father ran a farm on the coast. Every year when I was a kid I picked beans for the local farmers. Down one side of the row and up the next.”

  “Did it pay well?”

  “Enough to buy my clothes for the school year and give my mom a bit besides.”

  “How old were you?”

  Mrs. Wilkins talked while she shelled, never once stopping work. “I started when I was ten, did it every summer until the farm got bought out by a corporation and trucked in migrant labor.”

  Dani opened a pod as Mrs. Wilkins showed her and dumped the bright green peas into the bowl. “So all that time, you were making money in the summer? Could you have done it during the year, too?”