Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story

by Holden, J. J.

“I’d rather just get out.”

  “Shut up, chicken. I got the gun, so what are you afraid of?”

  Reassured they were in the kitchen, but now more frightened than ever, she crossed past the stairs and entered the guest room at the end of the hallway, with her heartbeat pounding in her ears. The clock was ticking.

  She shook Mary lightly with her left hand, the other poised to clamp over her mouth if she tried to speak. As soon as Mary opened one eye, Christine put her left index finger to her lips. “Shh.”

  Mary nodded, both eyes opening and darting around the room. She looked confused.

  “There are people downstairs looking for food. One has a gun. If they come upstairs, this is the first room they’ll check. Wake up, and we’ll sneak back to my room.” Unlike the guest room, the master bedroom had a tiny little patio that extended over the backyard lawn…

  Mary nodded and slowly, gingerly, climbed out of bed.

  Though Christine was fairly sure the robbers probably wouldn’t have heard bed springs from someone just getting up, the guest room’s memory-foam mattress had turned out to be a smart choice.

  She led the way to the door.

  Just outside, there was only a stained-wood railing and the open stairs between her and the living room. If they could get past that unnoticed, though, the rest was a hallway, with doors on the right to bedrooms over the living room and kitchen, and the master bedroom door at the end, over a small backyard deck.

  They just had to get past that opening and out of view, without bumping anything. Adrenaline brought clumsiness and shaky limbs, though, so Christine had to focus on each movement as she put her head outside just enough to peer into the part of the living room that wasn’t obscured by stairs and hallway.

  Nothing. No movement. But also no noise to tell her where they were. Had they heard her? The thought made Christine’s heart skip a beat. But she had to go, had to get back to her kids—and to get out of the first place bad guys would likely check if they came upstairs…

  She prayed they wouldn’t see her, and took one step outside the room—

  Someone walked into view from the kitchen, a tall and muscular man in a leather jacket and jeans, and if she could see him, then he could see her. She pulled back into the room reflexively, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from squeaking, and her racing heart made it so hard to listen…

  Had he seen her? She focused on taking deep, even breaths and froze. If they’d seen her, she would surely find out very quickly. Seconds ticked by, each seeming like an hour—but no one came up.

  “That was close,” she muttered, forgetting for a moment that Mary was with her. When she looked over her shoulder, Mary stood a foot away with both hands clasped over her mouth, eyes wide.

  Christine let out a heavy breath, letting some of her tension flow out with it. She counted to three and inched her head out again. When she didn’t see anyone, it felt like a little miracle. She grabbed Mary’s hand and tip-toed out of the room. As they passed the stairwell, she glanced back at Mary to see how she was doing, and nearly tripped when she spotted both men. They were in the living room, but both had their backs to her as they dug through her personal property. Bastards.

  Once she reached the “safety” of the hallway and the concealment it provided, only then did Christine feel her heartbeat slowing down at all. Before reaching the doors, she decided that if the robbers were coming upstairs, she’d rather lead them into an empty room than to her own and her kids, so she stopped to listen once again. It was terrifying, when every atom in her body seemed to scream at her to get into the room, get out of view, get away from danger.

  She forced that terror-voice to shut up, though, and only after she was sure they weren’t coming up at that very moment did she lead Mary into the master bedroom.

  There, she saw both kids sitting beside the central air vent, leaning their heads toward it. She almost asked what they were doing, but Hunter put his finger to his lips and then waved her over.

  She crept to the vent, too, and knelt down. Hearing voices coming from it was a surprise, but a very welcome one.

  A voice from the living room—the one who’d said he had a gun—spoke louder than before. “Dude, my ol’ lady is gonna give me good loving when we get back with this haul. It looks like they didn’t eat their allotment, yet.”

  Christine frowned. They hadn’t gotten their allotment, yet. She only had what remained of the little food they’d had before everything went wrong.

  The answering voice replied, “Screw the rations. That mayor’s got to go. Red Devils don’t take damn handouts; we take everyone else’s, too. After we take over that warehouse tomorrow, we won’t got to worry about nothing. We’ll be set like kings. Bitches will come from miles around, too.”

  The gunman snorted. “I got plenty to feed them, if they’re hungry.”

  “Shoot, don’t let your ol’ lady hear that.”

  “She don’t hear me when I’m telling her to get me another beer, so she sure won’t hear that. Man, I hope they got booze at that warehouse. I ain’t had a beer since yesterday.”

  After that, the voices went silent. There were more scuffling sounds for a minute, then the sound of the front door being unlocked and opened.

  The house became dead silent.

  Christine waited another minute. When she still heard nothing, she made everyone else stay behind while she went to take a look, though she felt heartless ignoring her kids’ and Mary’s pleas for her to stay with them. They couldn’t stay hidden forever, though, and someone had to make sure it was clear—someone who wasn’t her child, and Mary was obviously not the right choice for the job. That left only her.

  Heading down the stairs, she hated taking every step with fresh fear of a burly biker with a gun seeing her. Once downstairs, she checked the kitchen and the bathroom, and then the garage.

  The robbers were gone. And so was most of the food.

  The kids and Mary sat in the living room while Christine paced, talking more or less to herself. “I did everything right, dammit. I rationed the food. I stored extra water. The doors and windows were locked. But it didn’t matter.”

  All the robbers had needed to get in and take her kids’ next meal was a cordless drill to core out the flimsier lock in the kitchen door to the backyard. And all they had needed to keep it was to look like they’d fight her, or worse, if she’d tried to stop them.

  Mary sat with her elbows on her knees and stared at her dead cell phone. “And the worst part is, I couldn’t have even called 9-1-1 if the phones did work.”

  Hunter sat curled up on the couch with Darcy, his arms around her. “The radio was saying emergency services, like the cops we needed half an hour ago, are stretched to the breaking point, anyway.”

  Mary frowned. “What’s it matter, if we can’t contact them?”

  Hunter looked from Mary to Christine. “Mom… We need a gun.”

  Those were words she didn’t like hearing. The boy was scared, and she’d been powerless to protect him. He wanted to feel safe, and thought a gun would do that for him.

  But a gun in the hands of an untrained teenage boy was not the answer. She’d had lots of training and practice, though, growing up… But she couldn’t be with them every minute of the day. Even if she got a gun, if anything happened to her, like robbers killing her, then what? Hunter would take it?

  She shuddered and snapped, “No, we don’t. You don’t know how to handle one, for starters.”

  He un-entangled himself from his sister, then stood up, pulling away even when Darcy tried to grab his arm to pull him back down. “You don’t play over one thousand hours of Call of Duty without learning a few things about how to aim. I bet I can shoot as well as you can. And, you could go get our allotment without feeling like you were leaving us undefended.”

  Christine stopped pacing and turned to face him squarely. “Son, what do you think you’d do if someone came through the door while I was gone? Would you shoot someone? Cou
ld you pull the trigger, even if you wanted to? Stop. Think.”

  Hunter’s face flushed, and his hands turned into fists at his sides. “With Dad gone, I’m the man of the house. So yeah—”

  Mary looked from the boy to Christine and back, eyes wide, as Christine interrupted, “Knock that off. Who taught you that ‘man of the house’ garbage? Dad?”

  “Yeah, he said that since you kicked him out, I’d have to step up, be a man.”

  Before he could continue, she replied, “What happened with your dad is between him and me, but I need you to know that I don’t do anything without a damn good reason, especially if it affects you kids. Even if your dad had been here, even if I could have talked him into leaving the room, much less confronting them, one of those men had a gun. Maybe both men. I’m pretty sure they’d shoot before Bryson would. He’s not a violent man, and he’s better with words than fists. That’s usually a good thing.”

  It would have felt great to say more about that useless excuse for a dad, but she bit her tongue for the kids’ sake, as she had for years, even before the divorce.

  She paused to take a deep breath, put her hands on her hips, and swept her gaze across each of them. Maybe they’d pay attention if she got as dramatic as Hunter was being. “Listen up. After this morning’s disaster, it has been made crystal clear to me that Denver is now dangerous, and getting worse. We have no idea when it’ll get better—”

  Darcy looked up from her hands and half-cried, half-shouted, “If it ever does.”

  Her outburst caught Christine by surprise, and the raw emotion Darcy so clearly felt made her flinch. She hated the pain and anger in that voice, but the right words to reassure her scared kid were slow in coming to mind.

  Christine nodded. “As you said. We don’t know…if…it’ll get better, not anytime soon. Here, I cannot protect this family. Even if we all had guns, our neighbors sure won’t risk themselves to save us.”

  Hunter said, “Sure they would. They’re nice.”

  “Oh? We barely know them. That’s city life, it is what it is, but it means that for all intents and purposes, we’re alone here. We can’t afford to be alone anymore, if we want to feel safe.”

  Hunter’s eyebrows furrowed, and he wrinkled his nose. “What are you trying to say, Mom? Because it sounds like you’re going to tell us it’s time to leave home. Our home, Mom. Tell me that’s not it.”

  She chewed her bottom lip as she considered him. Hunter wasn’t a mere child anymore, and if he chose that moment to finally become a rebellious teenager, it would make things a lot more difficult. She had to nip it in the bud, before it became a real problem, so in a far softer tone she replied, “Son, you know I love you, and I’d do anything to keep you and your sister safe. Right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “We aren’t safe here. We may not even be able to get out now, in fact, but if we wait, it’ll only be that much harder after everyone who is going to try to leave has already done it.”

  “But, Mom. They said to ‘shelter in place,’ and that sounds like a smart idea. I think it does. Don’t you think so?”

  “What I think is, there’s a storm coming to Denver, and probably to every city. We can weather that storm best by not being in it. We need to try to get to Fran’s house. Your nana has room, and she’s outside the city, and just as importantly, she’s a farmer. We won’t starve because everyone stronger than us is taking our food every night.”

  Darcy put one hand over her chest, and her eyes widened. “Mom, no. We can’t just leave our home because of other people. It’s not right. Besides, there’s people in Weldona, too, and what if they get mean just like here? We’d be stuck there, just hoping you and Nana can get along until this is over and we can come home again.”

  Hunter’s chest inflated by a full three sizes, and if he hadn’t looked so serious, Christine would have found it amusing to see him puffing up like that. She kept her face neutral and waited for him to share his vast knowledge with her.

  He said, “We don’t have to leave to be safe. They were just lucky I was asleep when they came in and I was, like, too clumsy still to fight. Otherwise, I’d punch them in their stupid heads and throw them through the window. And if we had a gun, then we wouldn’t even have to worry about people at all.”

  He’d said it like he knew what he was talking about, and though Christine usually used gentler methods, she was tired, hungry, scared too, and out of patience. A deep sense of urgency crawled through her guts and chest, a feeling that time was indeed running out for them, there. “Dammit, Hunter. You cannot fire a weapon without training, especially not with some angry biker coming right at you. And having a gun doesn’t make you safe. I am so sick of hearing that. All it does is make you the target for the other guy and his gun.”

  “But, Mom, I—”

  “But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not buying one. And where would I get it? You think the stores are open? And if they were, you think they’re the only ones around with internet to run background checks?”

  Hunter finally looked down, breaking eye contact, and deflated. “Mom, I—”

  “I know you mean well, and you truly want to protect us. That’s admirable, son. It means you’re the great guy I know you are. But unless someone comes up with a better idea, we’re going to Fran’s. I’m the parent, and it’s my job to keep you safe and provide for you. I can’t do either of those things in Denver.”

  Darcy offered a weak smile and said, “Maybe Mom is right. I mean, Nana does have all that food in the basement she thinks we don’t know about, where she stashes all the stuff we put in cans every summer.”

  Hunter grinned. “Stuff? If you didn’t have the attention span of a goldfish, you’d know the names of all that ‘stuff’ like I do.”

  “Ugh, you’re such a jerk! At least I’m thinking about what to do next, like Mom, not just sitting here hoping we don’t starve. Nana has food, she has neighbors she knows, and horses. You can’t forget about the horses.” She smiled wanly.

  Christine smiled at her daughter. Darcy was trying to look at the bright side, even as scared as she must have been. That took a kind of courage all her own. Her rebellious nature helped with that, too. She came by that naturally, Christine mused—she herself hadn’t been much older than her kids, when she left home.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when Mary coughed into her hand, loudly.

  “Yes?”

  Hunter said, “Mom. She’s not part of this family, so why does she get to say something?”

  Christine’s moment of cheer ended abruptly. “Because she’s my friend, and an adult. And because she’s stuck with us for the time being, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t show her how disrespectful you can be. It’s embarrassing.”

  Hunter sat on the couch, landing hard, and crossed his arms, but didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything, but only clenched his jaw tightly.

  Mary said, “Thank you for having me, by the way. I appreciate the sacrifice you and your family are making to keep me here. But are you sure about leaving? I think it’s a bad idea. What if we get caught? This isn’t the best timing to go to jail, I bet. We should just stay here, get by on the allotment, and wait until it gets better out there.”

  Christine closed her eyes and took a deep breath before finally replying, “The problem is that those two biker-looking goons didn’t seem to think things were going to get better anytime soon, when they walked in like they owned the place. They, or people like them, will be back again. We may not get as lucky, next time.”

  “Yeah, but Chrissy, you make it sound like normal people are going to start taking what they want from everyone else. Those two weren’t real people; they were criminals. You can’t judge people by what their kind do. I do not want to leave.”

  Christine took a step back without realizing it. The way she’d said it, Mary made it sound like the robbers had been a different species than her, or something alien. That was ironic, given Mary’s rather colorful history.<
br />
  “Mary,” Christine replied in the gentlest tone she could muster at the moment, “I know you’re a good person, and decent and kind. Our boss knows that, too. But you might want to remember that not everyone out there was so willing to believe that, not so long ago.”

  She hoped Mary would take the hint and rethink her attitude, because if everyone had thought what she just said, when Mary was trying to get a job or rent a place, they’d have written her off without ever looking under the surface.

  And that distinction was an important one, at the moment, because a lot of those nice, normal, non-criminal people Mary had dismissed as a threat were, under the surface, far less decent than their masks led people to believe.

  Ultimately, though, she didn’t need to get Mary to agree with her on that to make sure her friend came with her to a safer place. Mary was afraid, but she wasn’t alone—and Christine felt certain she’d come with them just to keep it that way.

  11

  Outside Denver, a few miles from David’s destination, traffic slammed to a virtual halt, inching forward one car length at a time. Every couple of minutes, a vehicle or two passed going the other direction, but traffic toward Denver-Aurora was virtually non-existent.

  After a couple of minutes sitting in that quagmire, Orien said, “You know what I could really go for? Elk hot dogs from Biker Jim’s. You know the place, on Larimer?”

  “Over by Samaritan House?”

  “Yeah. Man, that place has the best dogs ever. I don’t even like hot dogs.”

  David half-smiled. “Yeah. They were awesome. But they needed daily deliveries, really. Specialty restaurants like theirs were the first to close.”

  Orien sighed. “Someday, they’ll open again. Speaking of openings, the shoulder is clear. They got it coned off, just ahead. Turn on your lights, and let’s just drive the shoulder.”

  As much as David hated taking advantage of his position, he did have a duty station to get to… “Okay. I’m glad I put stealth lights in my P-O-V.” He’d only added the discreet emergency lights to his “privately owned vehicle” a few months before the CME. Timing was everything, it seemed.