The Zero Hour: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survivor Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  “What have we got here?” one of them asks, lifting himself up on the weak-looking wooden fence dividing her backyard from Dirt Alley. As he’s climbing over, two of the slats break and he falls backwards into the dirt, landing on his backside with an oof! The others break into fits of laughter, calling him names, telling him he’s stupid and athletically challenged.

  Upstairs, my neighbor approaches the curtained window. She pulls the drapes aside, spots the ruckus below, then quickly closes them and ducks down. A second later the light goes off. By now these five idiots are between me and her.

  I sit up, lift my binoculars, get a good look at them. They’re dressed like typical thugs. I know it’s not polite to stereotype people, but the is the apocalypse, so the idea of being politically correct can suck it. These guys are shaved heads or slicked back black hair. They’re wife beaters and tons of ink. They’re gray or black or tan slacks belted in place and pulled a little too high on the waist.

  If I’m going to think of these guys, I’m going to think of them as gang bangers.

  In situations like these—and I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s unfolding here—it appears only the riffraff come outside to play. All the law abiding citizens seem to hide inside their homes (like that cretin, Tad) waiting for the internet to come back up, the news to return and phones to be able to make actual calls to actual people. It’s almost like they’re expecting their loved ones to walk through the front door like it’s no big thing and say something cute and tragic like, “Yeah, I’ve been gone awhile, but I’m okay now.”

  No. Even I’m not that dense. The truth is the good people aren’t okay. In fact, we’re so not okay right now I feel myself pushing through the walls of morality and civility in an attempt to grab hold of that harder, more ferocious edge. The same sharp edge that will protect me from a civilization on the cusp of abandoning those societal norms that keep us from stealing and raping and killing one another.

  But civilization is no longer a norm or a destination. Civility is fast becoming that thing we once had, that thing we’re no longer moving toward. Law and order is swiftly eroding.

  Watching these guys, I can’t help thinking the criminals and machines are unknowingly working in concert to tear holes in the fabric of civility, the same fabric barely holding back the tides of violence. As sad as this is to say, I feel us as a species turning back the evolutionary clock—cascading into something selfish and cold, something deeply sadistic, something profane and viciously territorial—and it scares the absolute crap out of me.

  These are not good times. They’re desperate times.

  Right now I’m thinking that if I don’t make that long slide down the evolutionary scale, I’ll end up dead. To survive in this world, I need to devolve. Stop thinking kind and gentle thoughts. If I want to outlast guys like this, then I’ve got to become something brutal, something unforgiving, something without a conscience or an ounce of remorse. I’m ready for the transition. It needs to happen. Still, I wonder if when it’s all over, if I can last, I wonder if my soul will even survive the journey.

  When the gang bangers are gone, I head back inside thinking about the last thing my father said to me. He said to protect myself at all costs. To me, this could mean so many things. “At all costs” can cover a lot of ground when your life is on the line.

  8

  Thinking about the looming threat to me and the blonde—to our neighborhood—has me forming plans of my own. If these creeps are going to rob the empty homes in our neighborhood taking everything good and valuable in them, then everything is about to go to hell anyway.

  That’s why I decided to hit the houses first.

  Somehow, beyond all logic and reason, I manage to convince myself this is a brilliant plan. Maybe it is. Or maybe I’m slowly becoming one of them.

  It doesn’t matter.

  What matters is I’m now becoming the hunter.

  Crowbar, Glock, big Glad bag, all black clothes, black hoodie. Am I really going to do this? Yes. I have to. I tell myself this isn’t stealing as much as it’s me gathering my nuts for the winter. Funny how desperate times makes liars of us all.

  By the time midnight rolls around, I’m scared out of my mind but determined. I sneak out the front door, quietly make my way through the neighborhood, moving from house to house, scouting out viable properties. My God, my heart is kicking like a million miles an hour!

  “Quit being such a wuss,” I tell myself. I find a house. The perfect house. The right-now house. Here we go...

  The crowbar shimmies in the door jam by the lock. I put my full weight into the curved end of the bar hoping it’s enough leverage. Taking three big breaths, trying not to wet myself (again), I lean into the crowbar and slowly twist it back and forth until the wood breaks with a sharp crack!

  So yeah, I gotta say I stink at this.

  After that parade of unprofessional noise, I scurry back into the darkest corner of the backyard and wait for a barking dog or a neighbor to come running. My gun is out. Finger is on the trigger. Would I really shoot someone again? Probably not. I think if someone came out I’d make a run for it long before I’d decide their life is worth less than whatever crap it is they have in their home. Thirty minutes later—with no barking dogs, no turned-on lights and no nosey neighbors to dissuade me—I tell myself it’s time to move this rookie B&E forward.

  Groovy.

  Mustering up the courage to slink into the house, my life now at risk, I move with a new level of stealth, meaning I hit all the creaky floorboards on the first floor before heading up the stairs and hitting a few more on the second level. Did I tell you I’d make a terrible thief? No? Well let me start now.

  By the time I’ve cleared the house, I’m blowing out an exasperated sigh. No one’s home. In fact, no one’s been here since the first bombs dropped. And to think I spent the last half hour freezing my tits off over an empty home!

  The first thing I do is check for weapons. The closest thing to a gun I find is this lady’s toy drawer. What I find rhymes with smildo and it’s a pleasure toy, not a weapon. Talk about buzz kill! Honestly, at this point, I’m not really sure I want to be going through anyone’s personal stuff anymore. A foot long penis with squishy, lifelike balls is enough to scare a virgin like me into minding her own business.

  Downstairs, there’s some food in the refrigerator: a one pound package of meat, orange juice, peanut butter and jelly, and a bunch of other things here and there that aren’t terribly healthy but will fill an empty belly. I rifle through the freezer, gathering up all the packaged meals.

  My expandable black Glad garbage bag is getting heavy, so I go for the non-perishables, cleaning out all the heavier, canned goods until I can barely lift the bag. After that it’s everything light: sunflower seeds, potato chips, bagged popcorn, packaged spaghetti noodles, a bunch of little snacks I won’t mind eating if I run out of everything else.

  I leave the crowbar behind, shut the door as best I can, then nearly break my back hauling all this stuff home. By the time I unload, it’s close to three a.m. and I’m so tired I can’t stand it. I gather up another bag and return to the crime scene (i.e. the house) for round two.

  In the garage, I find hunting gear, much of which I won’t use. But there’s a tent, a couple of sleeping bags and two big boxes of ammo. Bingo! Inside one of the boxes are a few hundred 9mm rounds. The other box holds .45 caliber rounds. My Glock takes 9’s, so score. But if there’s this much ammo, then logic would have it there are also a couple of guns around here somewhere to go with it.

  I discover the gun safe behind a bunch of clothes in a large walk-in closet. Naturally, it’s locked. So…back to the food and supplies.

  I clean out the rest of the pantry, which isn’t much, then I wrap the box of ammo and the crowbar in one of the sleeping bags so they don’t tear through the plastic. Basically it’s a huge load that won’t be easy to move, but whatever. If I have one night to loot before the thugs from the alley raid our nei
ghborhood and loot it first, I might as well get what I can.

  When I finally get home, I crash on the couch and wake up around one in the afternoon feeling refreshed. Bombs are going off in the distance, and though the continued attacks are disheartening to be sure, at least I dreamt PG-13 dreams, none of which involved sadistic machines, power-tripping gang bangers, or latex love toys.

  I check my cell phone. No missed calls. I check the home phone’s call log. Nothing there either. I try my mom. Nothing. I try my dad.

  Freaking nothing.

  It’s only starting to dawn on me that they may never come home. My insides tunnel, leaving me sad and vulnerable. Is this what a broken heart feels like? My father’s face comes to mind and everything feels like a salted wound. Turning over on the couch, curling into a ball, I close my eyes and try not to cry. But the idea of never seeing him again, of never seeing my absentee mother again, has me melting into tears. How did this happen?

  Why is this happening?

  Outside I hear gunshots and I don’t even move. I can’t. Outside I hear cars smoking their tires and there’s cursing and shouting but I’m too numb to care. People are dying outside, but are the two most important people in my life already dead?

  Am I dead?

  An hour later, I’ve cried myself back to sleep. When I wake up it’s dark outside and my stomach is growling. I listen and it’s deathly quiet, except for my empty tummy. Trying my best to ignore what feels like a fist clenching my heart, I drag myself off the couch and head into the kitchen where I grab a yogurt and a green drink. I do all this with the lights off.

  Who knows who’s out there? Better to be safe than sorry.

  After awhile, I dress for the cold and head outside. With my bow and arrows and my Glock, I walk the neighborhood, sticking to the shadows, working on making no noise at all.

  An hour after that I’m breaking into another house, grabbing all the loot, finding a few weapons and no sex toys and feeling pretty good about it, though the feeling doesn’t last. I’m still thinking of my father. Still trying to imagine only me in this life. Throwing a tube of toothpaste and a two pack of floss into my black bag, I’m thinking about my father’s terrible timing. Why did he have to go to San Diego now?

  On my way back downstairs I pull to a stop because there’s a man standing in the doorway, his body barely silhouetted by the dim light of the moon. My heart thunders in my chest, but my body is frozen still. Paralyzed, my face is looking at his shadowed face looking back at mine.

  “You have to be better than this,” the man finally says.

  I try to swallow but can’t.

  He steps inside and shuts the door and suddenly we’re both in the dark, each listening for the other to move.

  “I have a gun,” I manage to say.

  “Yes, and bows and arrows, too. But you’re also loud and sloppy, and if you’re going to survive…whatever this is we’re all trying to survive…you’re going to have to be better than this. Certainly quieter than this.”

  He’s saying all this in the dark, which I find incredibly unsettling.

  “So what do you suggest?” I ask, everything in me still piano-wire tight, still ready to shoot, still ready to run and hide.

  “I suggest we head into a room without windows, turn on a light and have a conversation like adults. This in-the-dark business isn’t exactly my style.”

  “Are you armed?” I ask.

  “You’d have to be a fool not to be,” he replies with a trace of laughter in his voice.

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  “No, but if these were my intentions, I’d tell you the same thing. Or I’d just shoot you.”

  “Fine,” I concede. “You pick a bedroom, turn on the light and I’ll join you if you don’t look like Mr. Creepy McCreepster.”

  I don’t hear him move, but from the other side of the house, a light turns on and it startles me.

  “Ready when you are,” he says.

  The way he got from here to there has my head spinning. Does this guy float? Because he didn’t even make a sound! I slink down the steps, trying to be quiet like him. After I set down my bag of loot, I knock an end table with my hip, then scorn myself for being so loud.

  God, I’m such a novice right now!

  Moving toward his position (but staying in the shadows), there’s a large bathroom casting out a long light. He’s in there. This guy who can float and not make noise. I take my gun out of the back of my jeans, hold it by my side.

  He’s got his guns out, too. One in each hand. He’s got his arms out and his palms up, and both guns are hanging loose. Basically, he’s showing me he’s armed but not a threat. The way he moves, however, tells me he’s definitely a threat.

  My first thought is that he’s a tall man. Maybe six feet tall. With an athletic build, silver hair and old guy muscles, he’s halfway handsome. The problem is his eyes. You can see how he’s got more than a few miles on his soul. How there’s nothing in life left to surprise or delight him. I wonder how he feels about the apocalypse. I wonder if he feels anything at all.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “To lay a few ground rules. Let you know what’s what so you don’t end up like the other girls I’ve seen.”

  “What other girls?”

  “The dead ones. The raped ones. The enslaved ones.”

  “Can I call you Dr. Buzzkill? Because you’re not doing anything to put me at ease with you. In fact, you’re sort of scaring me right now.”

  “First off,” he says, not really caring that I haven’t stepped into the light, “you did good with the shadows, but you have to do better about the B&E. And being quiet. Also, you need to learn to see in the dark because I can see the lights in your home from the street. You’re going from room to room to room to the point where I can all but tell where you are from the next block over. I don’t think I need to tell you how dangerous that is.”

  I’m starting to think about how stupid I’ve been. How stupid I am. Did I really think I could just break into people’s homes and drag everything back to my place in the dead of night and not get noticed?

  “Here’s a tip,” he says. “A little something from me to you, free of charge. Do your recon and bag your loot during the light of day. Then, after the sun sets, you can take your haul in the dark, making it less likely that you’ll be seen.”

  I move into the light, gun trained on him. It’s a good idea he’s got—being smarter about my nocturnal behaviors—so me stepping into the light is me trying to trust him.

  “That’s right,” he says, eyeing my stance, but not my body parts. “I can tell you’re a shooter. But I can also see in your eyes that you’re not going to shoot me.”

  He slowly holsters his two weapons, relaxes a little.

  “There’s fear and uncertainty in your face. You can hide that by making your eyes go dead. Doing this will literally rid you of emotion. That way when people look at you they won’t be able to tell that you’re really a good person and don’t want to harm people who aren’t harming you.”

  “I killed three men,” I say, embellishing on the facts a bit.

  “Were they bad men?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then it’s a start,” he replies with a smile.

  “They beat a man to death over a card game that took place long before the chaos. It was unnecessary and cruel.”

  “And you found that distasteful?”

  “Reprehensible, actually.”

  After a long moment of us looking at each other, he says, “You are an attractive young woman, competent, and these streets are crawling with men who will like what they see in you.”

  “I can pass for a boy,” I say, thinking of what Tad said.

  “No you can’t,” he says with a grin. “And even if you could, why would you want to?”

  “Not get dead. Raped. Enslaved.”

  He smiles an empty smile, not blinking at all, not taking his dead eyes off me for even a se
cond.

  “I’m glad you brought me back to that,” he says. “A girl like you can’t be lazy in this world. Not for one minute. The second you lower your guard, someone will be there to take advantage of you. Women have it bad in these situations. Girls have it worse.”

  “These situations?” I ask, really absorbing what he’s saying.

  “I’ve been through a few ethnic cleansings. This is different only that the machines aren’t cleansing a population because of racial or religious affiliations. They’re cleansing the population because it’s human. But before they wipe out every last one of us, the lawlessness that’s now been foisted upon us leaves girls like you ripe for the taking. If I raped you now, which I’d never do because I believe sex should be a mutually enjoyable experience, who would hear you scream? Everyone’s screaming. Who would care if they found you dead in the street? There are hundreds of dead bodies in the street, thousands more if you head inside the war zone. Who would lament the loss of your virtue, or even your life? No one. Your parents are gone, it’s just you.”

  “Are you some kind of a shaman or something?” I ask.

  “I am merely observant. You need to be observant, too, Indigo. You need to really turn yourself into a shadow. Squelch the last light from those eyes of yours. At least for now.”

  A cold chill spreads over my skin, tightening everything into goosebumps, but not in a good way. The chill even reaches my neck that’s how freaked out I am that this stranger is here, in this house with me, telling me my life’s history, using my name.

  “You’re a loner, right?” he says.

  “I have friends.”

  “No you don’t. You have weapons, food and your instincts. But you’re showing your hand too much. And not just with me.”

  “What do you suggest?” I finally ask.

  “Think like them. Then be something worse than them.”

  “The machines?”

  “No. The deviants. Those who would do you harm for their pleasure or their gain. If you can think like them, you can begin to understand them, and if you can understand them, then perhaps you have a chance against them. And if you can understand them and if you want to survive them, you will have to become something far worse that them.”