Wipeout | Book 4 | Overdrawn

by Richards, E. S.

  “You keep a hold of my hand, okay little man?” Dante gave the firm instruction to Bowie as they stepped out of the car, gripping his hand like his life depended on it. Bowie couldn’t have let go if he wanted to, but the young boy managed a steady nod in response as he looked wide-eyed around the city.

  “Okay,” Dante forced a determined smile onto his face, not wanting to show his son his true feelings. “Let’s go.”

  Austin led the group once more, his family behind him and then Samuel bringing up the rear. It felt weird being back on the streets of New York, after fighting so hard to get away from the place not that long ago. Remembering what they had been through was like recounting another lifetime. It had all begun in the Trident building, Austin and Samuel working almost alongside each other for years and yet never even learning each other’s names before that fateful day. Austin could still remember the fear he had felt as he climbed his way down the elevator shaft in that building and away from the encroaching fire. Somehow, he had been leading their small group and so he remembered trying to act fearless when inside he was petrified of being trapped and burned alive. His memory flickered back to Sandy, the woman that had been left behind and he wondered what had happened to her.

  You would’ve thought that escaping a burning building would be the worst thing to happen in any given day, but the madness didn’t stop there for Austin and Samuel. After Samuel was blamed for the whole ordeal due to his news broadcast, they were chased through the streets of the city until they finally made it back to his apartment. That was the first time Austin had truly feared another human being, quite literally running for his life with no idea what the mob would’ve done to them had they been caught.

  From that moment on though, he and Samuel had become a tightly knit team. They had fought their way out of the city through riots and shootings, the worst of one of them happening at a hospital during the midst of rolling citywide blackouts. Austin would never forget the people he had helped during that time, children fighting for their lives and parents wailing as they lost the ones they loved so dearly.

  The people they had both met along their journey would undoubtedly stay with Austin for the rest of his life. Small acts of kindness, such as the elderly woman whose apartment they had broken into allowing them to stay the night would never be forgotten. That reminded Austin that through everything, their humanity was the most precious resource and nothing that happened to the economy or the world around them could take that away from them if they continued to fight for what was right and what they believed in.

  All of those memories with Samuel were crammed into just a few short days before they’d even left the city and as they flooded back to Austin, he realized how quickly things between he and his friend were about to change. They’d walked through the city for almost an hour now, gradually weaving their path toward Queens and the point when they would have to part ways. It just didn’t seem right carrying on without Samuel, but Austin knew it had to be done. Everything had been leading up to this point. Austin had his family back now and it was his duty to protect them. Samuel had his own path to follow.

  “This is it,” Austin breathed some time later, the rest of their walk continuing in silence as everyone got lost in their thoughts or distracted by the city around them. “We’re not far from here.”

  Samuel knew what this meant and as their group stopped on a street corner, Dante, Bowie and Meghan stepped to one side to allow Samuel to approach Austin. Standing in front of his friend, he didn’t really know what to say. In the grand scheme of things, they hadn’t spent that much time together, but what they had experienced could fill several lifetimes. It felt wrong to not continue and end their journey together but they had reached a fork in the road and they needed to say goodbye.

  “Will you be staying at your apartment long?” Samuel asked, trying to keep the conversation light.

  “At least for a few days,” Austin replied. “You know where it is, right?”

  Samuel nodded, having received the address from Austin earlier that day. Neither of the men knew how long they would be able to stay in one place, or what their homes would be like when they reached them, but the exchange of details had made them feel more at ease about things nonetheless.

  “Alright then,” Austin pursed his lips. “I guess I’ll see you around, Samuel.”

  “I guess so,” Samuel replied, awkwardness oozing from him as he spoke. He wanted to wrap his arms around the man and hug him goodbye, he wanted to know for sure when he would be able to see his friend again, he wanted to thank him for everything he’d done for him while they’d been together and wish him luck for the future. There was so much he wanted to do and say but instead he just stood there uncomfortably, very aware that Austin’s family watched on and New York City crumbled around them.

  That was why, when Austin let out a heavy sigh and lurched forward, flinging his arms around Samuel’s shoulders, that the previously uptight and proper business man felt himself slumping in his friend’s arms. The two men held each other tightly and let the embrace speak for them both, each knowing that the other felt the same way and that they had been bonded beyond words from their time together.

  Eventually Austin let go and Samuel was forced to step back, looking at his friend with tears threatening to fall from his eyes. “Good luck,” Samuel whispered, barely loud enough for Austin to hear, a part of him breaking inside as he was forced to walk away. “May we meet again.”

  “We will,” Austin’s voice carried through the air after Samuel as he turned and continued walking, the tears now falling freely down his face as he made his departure. He desperately hoped Austin was right, but Samuel knew neither of them could say for sure. New York City was a different world to the one they used to know and there was no telling what might happen in the coming days. For now, Samuel was on his own and his time with Austin was a thing of the past.

  Chapter 22

  All that Samuel wanted to do now that he was by himself again was get to his parents’ house in Long Island and see their faces again. It was still a couple of hours’ walk to get to their house if he continued non-stop, he should make it before darkness fell. Samuel decided that that was his goal. The thought of being on the streets in New York alone and at night, even if it was in one of the nicer areas, didn’t appeal to him one bit. He wanted to be safely inside his parents’ house.

  Without anyone else to look out for, Samuel was able to take in his surroundings a lot more and consider what had happened to the city in the time he’d been away. As he walked through the eastside of Queens, he saw how stark life had become in the streets and how the collapse had affected different areas.

  The scenery from one street to the next could change dramatically. Some lay in ruins, the buildings brought to the ground and nothing more than a pile of rubble and dirt, others were vandalized and looted beyond belief with graffiti on every wall and not a single window still intact. Then, there were some which were untouched, for no clear or obvious reason. These were the streets where Samuel spotted people hiding in the doorways or living inside the houses, trying their best to retain some resemblance of normal life in a city which had changed so much.

  Approaching a corner, Samuel saw a number of people gathering in the entrance to what looked like an old gas station. He faltered for a moment as he tried to decide whether to avoid the scene or go up and investigate as more and more people appeared from nearby houses and started flocking toward it.

  “Move man!” Someone exclaimed at Samuel as they rushed past him. “I don’t want to miss out.”

  Samuel opened his mouth to ask what the man was talking about, but his experiences over the last few weeks stopped him. The old Samuel wouldn’t have been able to resist going up to the group in the gas station to find out what was happening – it looked like people were lining up around a stall to collect something, though he couldn’t make out what. The new Samuel however, thought differently. Taking a step away from the scene, he grab
bed ahold of the straps of his backpack and continued walking. He’d spent far too long away from his family already, whatever was happening in the gas station couldn’t be more important than seeing his parents again.

  For a couple more blocks, Samuel passed people who were heading in the direction of the gas station. He kept his head down and avoided looking at them, allowing them to pass by without calling any attention to himself. He was almost out of Queens and approaching JFK Airport, memories of the time he had spent there previously flooding back to him.

  Spending all the time he had with Austin however had changed Samuel’s outlook on those events and he knew he couldn’t blame himself for what had happened. It was all part of the fight to survive and Samuel was no longer afraid of what that meant or of what he needed to do to keep breathing.

  Samuel felt like his outlook on life and what it had to offer him had been transformed through the time he’d spent with Austin. Seeing how much a man could be empowered by his family was eye opening to him and it made Samuel realize what he had been missing out on his whole life. He wanted someone he could share his every moment with, he wanted a partner that he could grow old alongside and always have to keep him company. His previous relationships had always fizzled out because Samuel had never put the proper effort in. Now that he had changed, Samuel wanted to find someone he could start a family with, he wanted to experience the love that Austin carried for his son and feel it for himself.

  He saw a child’s stroller discarded on the side of the road as he walked past the airport and thought of Mason and Noah. He wondered how the two young boys were getting along in Poughkeepsie. He worried about them still being there with Jeff slowly spiraling into madness. It wasn’t hard to see that the man was on the wrong path and would gradually start making more and more of the wrong decisions. The logic behind shutting down Poughkeepsie in the first place was sound and Samuel couldn’t fault the people who lived there for that, but the way they were dealing with things now was just wrong. Yes, people needed to do what they could to survive, but there always had to be a limit.

  “Hello, hello, hello.” A voice which came from behind some trees on the edge of the airfield stopped Samuel in his tracks. He turned and looked in its direction, seeing two men emerge through a broken fence that surrounded JFK Airport, one of them carrying a baseball bat and swinging it by his side. It was this man with the bat that had spoken.

  “Big bag you’ve got there, pal. Heading somewhere special?”

  Samuel reacted carefully. Like everything else, the way he dealt with confrontation had changed as a result of the collapse, too. He still laughed at how petrified he had been when he ran into a couple of men in the Trident building the day the news broke, since then he and Austin had been through so much that while his heartrate did still increase and his palms grew a little sweaty, Samuel felt more confident than ever. He had to handle this situation carefully, not wanting to part ways with all his supplies in case his parents needed help, but aware that some sort of balance might have to be struck.

  “Afternoon fellas,” Samuel greeted them politely. “Nowhere special, just making my way back home.”

  “And what’s in the bag?” The other man grunted, pointing to the backpack and revealing to Samuel that he almost certainly had a broken arm, the bend of it looked unnatural as he waved it in the air.

  “Some camping gear,” Samuel replied, weighing up his options and seeing no point in lying to the two men. As far as he could tell they didn’t have any other friends lying in wait nearby and with one of them already incapacitated by a broken arm he doubted whether they were that keen for a physical fight. Although Austin had taught him never to rule that out, if people were hungry or needy enough then they would do anything – it was never a good idea to doubt a desperate person.

  “A bit of food and water too,” Samuel continued, “but nothing overly exciting.”

  “Looks to me like you’ve got enough to share to me,” the man with the bat decided, taking a step forward and continuing to swing the baseball bat around in circles. “Why don’t you take it off and we could have a look?”

  “You know I’m not going to do that,” Samuel replied firmly. He figured he could take one of them, if he somehow managed to get the bat out of the man’s hands, but if both of them jumped on him then he didn’t stand much of a chance. He thought of running, but he figured if he went for that option, it would just be a battle of who would tire first. While he favored his odds there, he didn’t want to put it down to chance.

  The option that left him with was negotiation and reason. He could see these men were willing to threaten him in order to get what he had in his backpack, but he took a gamble that they would take what they were offered if it avoided a fight. With that in mind, Samuel made his offer.

  “There is probably enough to share,” he continued. “Why don’t you put the bat down and I can give you some of the food I’ve got, then be on my way. Or we can fight to see who gets it all,” he added assertively, calling the men’s bluff. “It’s up to you.”

  The two men paused and looked at one another, both taken aback by Samuel’s reaction. The one with the broken arm looked more up for the fight than the other, though he wasn’t about to go for it himself. Samuel watched them carefully as they shrugged and whispered a few choice words to one another, quickly trying to decide what to do.

  “Alright,” the one with the bat replied eventually. “Show us what you’ve got then.” He spoke with a grin, hurling the bat off to the side of him so it clattered into the fence they had appeared through. Samuel smiled and nodded, pleased that his negotiations had worked and steadily shrugged the backpack from his shoulders, more than willing to trade off a few meals in return for his wellbeing.

  As he walked away from the airport a few minutes later, Samuel felt proud of what he had achieved. If someone rewound the clock a few months and put him in that situation, he would’ve likely handed over everything without even trying to get out of it. Not only had Samuel managed to avoid a physical altercation, but he had also flipped the coin of command and put himself in control of what was happening. He was down a few scraps of food but Samuel regarded it as a win for himself and continued his journey with a smile on his face.

  The rest of the walk passed with relative ease. He didn’t run into anyone else and before long he was on the outskirts of the little village where his parents lived. It was only when he began recognizing places around him that the reality of what was about to happen dawned on him and Samuel suddenly worried about what he might find.

  Each house that he passed on his parents’ street was the same: dark, shutters down and silent. It didn’t look like anyone had been there for several days, though it also didn’t look like anything disastrous had happened. The houses weren’t vandalized or broken into, no one bothering to venture this far out of the city to loot. It just looked like the neighborhood had emptied out, the residents all pulling up stakes and moving away.

  With each step that Samuel took, he grew more and more apprehensive about what he would find at his parents’ home. There was no car in the driveway, though Samuel had taken his father’s the last time he’d been there, the others were likely stored in the garage. As with everywhere else, the house was dark – the city hadn’t had power for many weeks now, the blackouts beginning when Samuel and Austin were last there – but if someone were inside Samuel would’ve expected candlelight or something leaking through the shutters.

  Pausing on the doorstep, Samuel faltered and tried to decide what to do. The street was silent and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up as he waited in the cool, evening air as moonlight shone down above him. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he raised his fist and knocked on the front door, waiting to see if either of his parents would answer.

  There was no reply.

  In the stillness of the night, Samuel was reluctant to shout out and make his presence known,
but he had to try. Walking around the side of the house he peered through the hallway window, cupping his hands around his eyes to try and help him see.

  “Mom?” He sort of whisper-shouted into the house. “Dad? Are you guys in there? It’s me. It’s Samuel.”

  Once again there was no reply, so Samuel started to move further around the house, opening the back gate and letting himself into the garden.

  “Hello?” He called as he rapped on the kitchen window. “Anyone home? It’s Samuel. Hello?”

  “Samuel?”

  Looking around, Samuel’s breath hitched in his throat as he heard a voice speaking back to him. He craned his neck and tried to find the source of it, certain that it had come from the house.

  “Is that really you? Is that really my boy?”

  Locating the source of the voice finally, Samuel looked upwards at one of the windows above his head and there, in the darkness, saw his father’s face peering down at him. He felt his heart somersault in his chest as he looked up at his father, overjoyed to see the man standing there alive and well.

  “Dad! Jeez. Dad. It’s me,” his voice started to break as he spoke. “It’s Samuel.”

  Charles Westchester disappeared from the window above him and Samuel walked over to the back door, waiting for his father to appear. Seconds later when the old man pulled the door open, there was no hesitation from either one of the men. Samuel flung his arms around his father and openly started to weep on his shoulder, raw emotion flooding out of him as he was reunited with his father. It felt incredible. Samuel hadn’t felt happiness like this in so long and he never wanted to stop feeling it. It was only with great strength that he let his father go for a second and looked into his eyes, asking a question through the tears that fell down his face.