The Zero Hour: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survivor Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  “I have my weapons,” I say. I can’t think of anything else to say because what I want to say, what I can’t say, is that I am a good person and I don’t think I have to become something cold and monstrous to survive them.

  “One day your weapons won’t be enough.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask. “Because if you’re right about people—especially deviants, as you call them—and you’re grabbing all the little details of my life, including my name, then what’s to say you’re not going to do to me what you’re claiming others are doing out there?”

  “Because I’m not.”

  “But you’re helping me anyway,” I say.

  “I saw what you did to those three men back on Lincoln Street. I was impressed. I followed you to see what you were about and I have to say, you seem very resourceful. You should have finished them though, right there in the street. You didn’t because you’re still a bit naïve.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I ask, the gun feeling extra heavy at this point, and my arm extra shaky inside. I switch hands, knowing I’m a lousy shot with my left. He doesn’t know that. And honestly, the way he’s not looking at my gun, it’s like he could care less. Like the threat was never there in the first place.

  “No, Indigo, not everyone is as naïve. Most people see the sword bearing down upon them, so they panic and in this panic they freeze, which easily affords the swordsman his fatal cut. You see the sword, however, and you move, and in moving, you counterstrike. That’s impressive for someone so young. It also leaves you overconfident. Makes you think you are enough for these new times and I’m here to tell you that you are not. Not yet.”

  “I’m not that young,” I say.

  “Show me a gray hair then tell me again that you’re not that young.” When I say nothing, he says, “If you can develop that skill—the art of moving silently in shadows while being uncompromisingly lethal—then you might stand a chance of surviving this world. But you have to change, Indigo. You have to let go of the you that existed before this.”

  “All this destruction, and this looting…it has to end,” I tell him. “In all of history, wars happen like books. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. People always return to reasonable. You’re talking to me like history means nothing.”

  “By the time opposing forces climb out of their grievances and their wars—and you’re right, history proves they always do—one force is the winner and one is the loser, and the losing faction always returns to a ravaged population and worlds of sorrow. If you take a moment to look around, the machines are winning.” Spreading his hands wide, he says, “This is the ravaged population. These are our worlds of sorrow.”

  Making my eyes as dead as his, I say, “So I ask again, what do you want from me?”

  He drops his hands to his side, fixes me with a look. “Only to deliver that message,” he replies. “I’m just passing through.”

  “So then you won’t be upset if I thank you for your advice and head back home?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’d ask you your name, but honestly, what would be the point?”

  “It’s Rider,” he says.

  I laugh out loud, not even meaning to. He doesn’t even flinch, much less blink. “Rider is short for what?” I ask.

  “It’s short for Rider.”

  “No last name?”

  “Last names no longer matter.”

  “What does it say on your birth certificate?” I ask, pressing the point, even though I know I should be shutting my mouth right now.

  “It says Rider,” he replies, deadpan.

  I give him a contemplative nod, narrowing my eyes. I’m trying to get a read on him while at the same time knowing that it’s time to go, that there’s nothing left for us to say to each other. He tilts his head, shows me another one of those empty smiles.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Indigo,” he says.

  “I’m sure it has, Rider.”

  9

  They say in a modern society, if civilization falls, it’s only a matter of days before everyone reverts to their more primal instincts. Inside of a year, ninety percent of the population dies. That’s what they say. Who could imagine such a probability exists?

  Not me, that’s who.

  In these last several days I’ve broken into my neighbors’ homes, stolen their private possessions, and I’ve shot three scumbags. By society’s standards, someone like me would barely even qualify as human.

  Maybe that’s making me less likable, but then again, perhaps my chances of survival are skyrocketing, too.

  Moving on the streets in a car is dangerous, but I’ve found that spending time at the archery range is therapeutic and relatively safe. Who would dare hunt the hunters? The journey to the range—short as it is—is starting to feel like an unnecessary risk. That’s why I decide to steal a bale of hay and all the paper targets I can find.

  The Golden Gate Archery Range is now located on Dirt Alley right behind my house until otherwise notified.

  Naturally, with my dad’s car gone, there’s plenty of room in my garage for the hay so that’s where it’s stored. In the early mornings, I shoot both quivers of arrows three times through just to stay on my game. Twice I’ve split an arrow, but none of the good ones. I got done being amazed with myself inside of seconds.

  By now I realize my big dramatic feats aren’t archery accolades as much as they’re proof that I might actually be able to hit the things I’m aiming at.

  That in itself holds value.

  To be honest, I’ve stopped thinking of the targets as things and now I envision them as people, or machines. It helps that in the distance, fires are raging and the sky has basically become a thick pall of smoke. And the noise of war? This is a reminder that people are dying on the other side of the city while I sleep and play war and hide from fleets of drones and a pack of would be robbers.

  After three runs through both quivers of arrows, my draw arm is basically a rubber hose. And my thumb and forefinger? Raw meat. I tell myself it’s not enough, but there’s no use ruining my fingers for practice when I might need them for battle at any given moment.

  When I’m done shooting, I collect my arrows, drag the bale back into the garage then head to bed. I’m all about the cat naps. When I wake up, I arm myself for anything before taking a walk around the neighborhood. I want to see who’s home. I want to see which houses are truly abandoned.

  At the first four homes I ring the doorbell several times each. No one answers. I make mental notes, commit the addresses to memory. On the fifth residence, an old woman pulls back her curtains only to realize I’m not worth the effort of answering the door. I try not to get all butt hurt about being slighted because the woman genuinely looks scared. I knock again. Nothing. Using my outside voice, I tell her I mean no her harm and that us neighbors have to stick together. This old lady isn’t buying it. Then I tell her how the neighborhood hooligans look nothing like me. But the problem is, I’m armed to the teeth and I’ve got that dead look in my eyes, the look I’ve been practicing. Through the door, she finally speaks to me, but in a foreign tongue with the clunky accent to boot.

  “All you hippie kids and junkies look alike. Now leave my porch young man before I have you arrested.”

  Young man? Oh, my God.

  Irritated—no pissed off—I slap the flat of my hand on her front door, even though I don’t blame her for the choice she’s made. In response to my outburst, she opens the curtains just enough to frown and shoo me off.

  Whatever lady.

  I’m suddenly not in the mood for stupid, scared people. The next block over, at the house across Dirt Alley from mine, I give a less than patient knock, and then I wait.

  The girl in the window, the one the five douchebags casing the neighborhood were spying on, she lives here but she’s not answering. I knock and knock and knock until she finally decides I’m not going away.

  There’s a commotion behind the door, then it cracks open
ever so slightly.

  “You’re a persistent one,” she says. Only half her face is visible, but that’s all I need to see to know that she’s much prettier than me, but nowhere near as brave. This one is timid for sure. A real home sitter.

  “I saw you the other night,” I tell her.

  “So?”

  “Did you happen to see a group of men wandering down the alley scoping out homes to rob? Because they saw you. We all did.”

  Her brow furrows. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Don’t turn on your lights after dark. You become the only glowing thing on this block, and you’re a girl.”

  “Yes, I’m a girl.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is be careful.”

  She starts to shut the door, saying, “I appreciate the advice.”

  When it’s all the way shut, I lean into it and say, “Then make sure you take it!”

  * * *

  Over the next few days I find my groove. I go shopping in the morning (that’s what I call my string of robberies so I don’t have to feel bad about becoming a regular thief), shoot three rounds at the hay bale in Dirt Alley, then sleep the afternoon away. After that, I eat dinner, gather my weapons, then head out after nightfall to collect my loot.

  At this point, my house is just about full of other people’s things.

  I’ve even started packing stuff into the garage as well. My dad’s bedroom is full of food, batteries, water filters, clothes, books; I have guns and knives and more ammo than I know what to do with; I have a corner of the living room filled with cases of bottled water and soda. There’s also wine and whiskey and half a dozen baggies of pot, which I got just in case someone’s got a medical condition and it might help. In the garage, there is outdoor cooking gear, a camp stove, propane, sleeping bags and tents. Plus I’ve collected blankets and umbrellas and tons of nice shoes. In the bathrooms are shampoos and lots of different soaps and an absolute crap ton of toilet paper.

  Anyone coming into my house is going to accuse me of being a hoarder, and at this point, I’d say hell yes, I’m a hoarder! In this day and age you have to be if you want to survive.

  The thing I’m worried about more than my own survival is the survival of those whom I love. I haven’t heard a thing from either of my parents, or even Terrible Tad. He knows where we live. How to reach me. The problem is, if I don’t hear from any of them soon, I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall back into that deep, sorrowful place where the world is collapsing all around me and I’m out here, all alone.

  A few times I’ve thought about going across the street to see the girl I talked to. Twice I’ve even gone knocking but she won’t answer the door. Maybe it’s because the relentless bombing and the constant, acrid smell of smoke hanging in the air. Or is it because the drones have been flying down her street, blowing up three and four houses at a time?

  Perhaps this is why the gang bangers-turned-looters haven’t come through here in a minute. This area’s hot. They’ve been around, though. I’ve seen them. I confiscated a brand new rifle with two boxes of .22 rounds and a big ass Bushnell scope and this has me thinking of them. It has me wondering if I can shoot them with it. Part of me wants to tell my shy, blonde neighbor what I’m doing, what I have—if anything, to put her at ease—but Rider would tell me I’m a moron for telling anyone what I’m up to.

  Because of him, my mindset is quickly shifting. Because of Rider, because of Tad and my father and my mother, because of me feeling terribly alone and seeing thugs on the block and a city being leveled day after day, I’ve made my long slide down the evolutionary scale.

  I am regressing, working my way toward savage.

  There’s been nothing specific to make me feel like I’m no longer myself; it’s what I’ve allowed myself to become that lets me know how far I’ve fallen. It’s the absolution of guilt. I am a thief. I am a murderer. I am a watcher, a hoarder, an island of one.

  At night I pray for guidance, for forgiveness, but I also tell God that I am only reacting to the times, that I am obeying my father by surviving at all costs, and that I will do what I can to help people if there are people in need of help.

  So far, He’s sent me no one. All I’ve done is help myself. Perhaps I am slated to serve sometime in the future. Perhaps I will be a useful servant. Then again, I could be the Devil and I might not know it. All my good intentions might just be a ruse, even to me, a way of justifying my more disreputable behaviors.

  In the mean time, when I’m not preparing myself for war, or famine, or the end of the world, I grab a book or watch a DVD, or I sleep. Basically I do whatever I can to keep this harsh reality from sinking in too deep. As long as I have my mind, I’ve got everything I need. If that goes, I know I’m toast. So to keep my mind, I remain preoccupied. Or distracted at the very least.

  * * *

  When the water went off, I was asleep. I didn’t hear anything. It just wasn’t there anymore. I panicked. All my pretend bravado, all my pseudo-preparedness, all my self-determination to outlast my enemies, to survive, it just sort of crumbled, like something dead and disintegrating, like something that was once alive but has now been reduced to a dry powder with no future but to flitter away on winter’s first wind.

  Am I being dramatic? I am. I don’t care. This is no place for calmer minds to prevail. There is no climate for calm minds to even exist. All day long the safe men, the sane men, the cautious men, die on the streets. In their cars. In their homes.

  Now the freaking water’s out…

  Naturally, I spend two days being depressed. After that I get up and go to my mom’s house. I have to talk to Tad, see if he knows anything. See if he’s done anything. When I get to their street, I see the block and my heart sinks. Half the houses have been bombed. More than a few of them have fallen to fire or from collapse. Some are better than others. Then there are those still standing untouched by anything other than heavy smoke and a soft, smoldering heat.

  Tad’s and my mom’s home is standing in near ruin. I can’t help the tears and I can’t stop them. What’s left of Tad’s car is in the same place I left it. I only recognize it because of how the trunk looks smashed in. It’s a charred frame sitting on bare rims sitting in a quilt of its own toxic ash.

  I get out of the Cutlass, make my way inside the home. Half the roof has caved in. I want to cry out my mother’s name, but it’s so deathly still inside I can’t bring myself to disturb the silence.

  Looking around, wiping my eyes constantly, I see things I recognize, but it’s when I get into the kitchen that I see the most recognizable thing: Tad.

  A large part of the ceiling has caved in on him. He’s an upper torso. A statistic. I turn away, stifling the cry. It smells like fire and soot in here, and even though the ashy smell sits heavy in my nose, there is a deeper, more distinct smell at work here. It’s something truly foul. Death. Backtracking to the stairs, I carefully make my way to the second floor in search of my mother. She’s no where to be found. Part of me is relieved. The other part of me feels nothing of the sort.

  She’s already dead, I tell myself. She’s been dead since the beginning.

  Sitting on the floor upstairs, the collapsed roof open to the sky, the sounds of things being bombed in the distance, I do what I’ve been doing and that’s open myself up to the flood.

  I never really mourned for my parents. It kills me to know they may still be out there, but it stings even worse knowing chances are good they’re not really here anymore. They’re not really alive. A flash of my father dead in some building in L.A. tears through my mind, forcing me to close my eyes. I see my mother, dead in her car, blown up by one of those drones and my eyes squeeze out more tears.

  It seems the more I surrender to the pain, the more I feel parts of me walling themselves off, shutting down. The warmth in me, the love I used to carry behind my breast, the little girl who wanted friends and a boyfriend and for God’s sake some kind of a future, it’s all slipping away. All becoming something th
at was and will never be.

  Sitting in this house of death, in this city that’s systematically being destroyed, razed to the bone, I contemplate my own mortality, my own reasons for living. I don’t want to live. Not like this. Not with all this loss, all this fear, all this solitude.

  The scream that boils up from inside me, the scream that feels explosive the way a nuclear bomb feels explosive, it starts with infinite sorrow and a mighty inhalation of breath, and when the flood of emotion roars forth I can’t stop it, and I can’t help it. I scream my throat ragged. I scream until I’m left breathless and hunched over with no fight left in me and barely a will to survive. Then I lie down in the ash. I just lay here with my eyes running and my heart this thunderous force in my chest. Then, as the tears dry and my pulse returns to normal, I feel that last bit of humanity inside me hardening to stone.

  By the time I dredge up the will to pick my body up off this floor, I realize something’s changed. No. I realize everything’s changed. The light inside me is now gone. Behind my eyes there is nothing, no one, two lightless holes. The way Rider said I should make myself feel nothing, well that’s exactly what I feel.

  Dead.

  10

  My house is a tomb. I get home and know I should grab my bow and arrows and head outside, but I don’t want to. Instead, I grab an empty five gallon gas can I “procured” about a week back and a small plastic siphoning hose, then I head out looking for cars.

  The thing about people abandoning their cars is there’s always plenty of gas around. If the power goes out like the city’s water pump went out, I’m going to need that gas to power a generator. I need to keep the fridge running. If I can’t find a generator right now, I’ll at least have the gas for when I do find one.