Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story

by Holden, J. J.

  As soon as he slid into position and leveled his shotgun, the volume from the crowd rose exponentially, and the tone shifted from outrage to plain rage. Apparently, they were really desperate. He squinted to see them better, and a few details came clear even at that distance: dirty clothes, ragged and hanging from lean frames, and not a clean-shaven face among the men, even though razors were still plentiful—for those who weren’t refugees, at least. And they were almost all men.

  Damn, either they were a roving band that had left its weaker members behind, or they were refugees who had ensconced their families somewhere nearby. Whichever, it didn’t bode well.

  Orien, on the PA system again, said in cop voice, “By the authority granted by the town of Weldona, I order you to disperse. The town is closed to through-traffic. Complaints can be lodged by US Postal mail addressed to the Weldona town hall or the Colorado governor’s office.”

  David clenched his jaw. Damn rookie, antagonizing the mob.

  Sure enough, one person and then another stepped toward the police car. And then, like a dam breaking, the others followed and the crowd surged toward him and Orien like a wave. Rocks arced through the air—a couple struck the vehicle, but most in the mob lacked the strength to throw rocks sixty yards, much less accurately. They were closing the distance, however.

  A lull in the hail of rocks landing in front of the SUV gave David the opportunity to stand, swing his shotgun to his left and up in the air, and fire a round. He slid back into his covered position in one smooth motion, and shouted, “Step back. Now!”

  The mob, for it was no longer merely a crowd, didn’t falter. Worse, one man reached the fore armed with an honest-to-goodness spear. A real spear… And he was burly, not thinner like the others. He cocked his arm back, eyes locked onto David’s.

  Rocks from beyond their effective range were one thing. Deadly weapons were another. David took half a second to aim, and squeezed the trigger. The blast drowned out all other noises for a second, and when the report rolled across the flat farmlands, the crowd’s angry shouting was replaced by panicked screaming, even as the spear-man took the shotgun blast dead-center in his chest. Even at fifty yards, David could see the man’s entire chest sprout crimson as the double-aught buckshot struck at its farthest direct-fire spread. He fell face-first onto the dirt road and skid a foot before coming to a stop, and there was no way he’d survived a hit like that.

  Orien was on the PA again, though David didn’t hear his words. He’d killed a man… Twenty-odd years in law enforcement, and he’d never killed a criminal. Not directly. One died of infection from a bullet in his leg, but that was many years ago, and David had only heard of it much later. It lacked the impact of watching a man’s chest implode.

  Dead. One second, alive; the next, dead. That could have been David, if he’d hesitated to fire before the asshole threw his damn spear. Only his training had kept him from freezing, just like the other time he’d fired his sidearm. It wasn’t his fault—it was the training’s…

  His mind a flurry of conflicting thoughts and feelings, the scene before him shifted radically, and almost instantly. The mob was still running, but they were heading everywhere but at the SUV, scattering to the winds.

  A rattling sound caught David’s attention, oddly, standing out in crystal clarity while everything else was a hazy blur, the noise of metal tapping metal. He realized suddenly that the noise was from him, the shotgun barrel rattling against the door’s window frame. The shaking of his hands… He stared at his hands. They moved with a life of their own, and it was mesmerizing…

  A firm hand on his shoulder broke the spell as Orien grabbed him and half-spun him around. Orien said in a quiet voice, “David, snap out of it. We’re not done here. Get it together, boss. We’ll talk later.”

  David stayed in a haze as Orien mostly handled talking to the farmer, radioing back for someone to deal with the corpse, and other details. He didn’t start to lose the haze until the sound of his car door slamming shut startled him, like a spell breaking.

  He blinked twice, rapidly, and looked at Orien, only to find his partner looking back at him already, concern etched on his face.

  “How you doing, boss?”

  David blinked again. “I’m…shaken up. I’ll be okay, unlike that guy.”

  Orien shook his head faintly. “It was necessary. If my pistol would have reached that far with any accuracy, I’d have shot him myself, but I didn’t even see the spear until you’d already pulled the trigger. It was a clean shoot, sir. Understand? A clean shoot.”

  A couple moments passed before David nodded, though without enthusiasm. Orien was right, by every standard in the book, but that didn’t make it any less difficult. “Yeah. I know. I think I’d better get used to this sort of scene.”

  Orien grinned, suddenly. Then, his smile faded. “You know, this is going on a thousand times more, back in Denver, if you care so much about helping people. But if you decide to stay here to help these people, I’ll follow your lead.”

  Orien’s smile returned, and he added, “But I’d better get one hell of a good recommendation when my field training time ends.”

  David grunted acknowledgment as he turned the wheel to turn around. He’d have to digest Orien’s words later, because at the moment, all he wanted was a beer. “Already done, kid. It’s ready…whenever we get back to Denver.”

  27

  Wednesday, June 3rd

  Wiley brought in a box full of meats from the hog he and Fran had slaughtered and cut up. She’d insisted he learn, and had suggested that he, “out of all people,” would find the butchering job easy.

  That comment had been confusing. What did the kids’ grandmother know, and if she had figured it out, why tease him? Why not just turn him over to David and Orien, Keystone Cops numbers One and Two? She must have meant something else…

  He couldn’t bring himself to ask, so he told himself he was just being paranoid.

  Stepping in from the mudroom off the kitchen, he set the box on the kitchen island. Christine was at one of the other counters, chopping vegetables for that night’s dinner.

  She looked over, met his level gaze, then looked into the box with raised eyebrows, without approaching. “What’s all this?”

  Wiley shrugged, and then pulled off his leather work gloves. “Part of a cut-up pig.”

  “Where’s the rest?”

  “Fran is putting most of it in the smokehouse, or stringing them up in the rafters to age—which sounds horrid, by the way.” Wiley grimaced. The thought of eating pork left out for days was enough to churn his stomach a little.

  Christine grinned at him. “Don’t be silly. People have done it forever. It makes the meat keep longer, though you lose some weight from water evaporating. Think of it as not-quite-jerky pig. The smoked stuff will get dehydrated, or a lot of it will, to make actual jerky. Did she say what she wanted you to do with her cuts, here?”

  Wiley smiled back. “Actually, I cut it up myself. She showed me how, of course. She said I ought to be good at it, whatever that means.”

  Christine’s eyes narrowed, ever so slightly.

  Wiley forced a laugh, but of course, it came out as natural and bright as morning light. He was rewarded to see her tension fade.

  She replied, “Who knows? It’s Fran.”

  He tucked his gloves into his back pocket. “Hunter will be doing this soon, too, I imagine.”

  Christine turned to face him, knife still in hand, held up by her waist. Her hands were covered in bits of carrot and cucumbers.

  Wiley’s vision reeled. Christine was him, the knife no longer a kitchen knife, but a bowie, the veggie bits on her hands were blood. A bit of carrot fell off the blade near the hilt, and he saw it splatter crimson on the floor. Surprised, he looked up. Christine wasn’t herself; she was in a chair, tied to it. Cut up like…like a slaughtered hog…

  He shook his head. She could never come back; he could never bring her back. This one, he could do things d
ifferently. This one could live.

  Christine, again herself holding a kitchen knife with veggie bits on it and on her hands, said, “Are you okay?”

  Wiley nodded. “Yeah, sorry. I just got a little woozy there for a moment.”

  She pursed her lips. “All right, then. Dinner will be soon, so you probably just need to eat something. I could fry up a pork chop for you to tide you over, if you like.”

  The offer was tempting. Since arriving such a very short time ago, his appetite had shot through the roof in lockstep with his activity level, working on the farm to help out. “No, thanks. I’ll be okay.”

  She nodded, then turned back around and resumed cutting carrots. A huge pile of them. She said, without turning back around, “You seem rather fond of my kids.”

  Her tone was sweet like honey, but something about the way she said it set him on edge. His expression betrayed nothing, however, but the smile he put on it. “They’re good kids. I trust kids a lot more than I trust most adults, you know. They’re honest. To a fault, most of the time. And if they’re not being honest, it can be a lot easier to tell when they’re fishing for something other than what they’re actually saying.”

  Christine glanced down at the floor for a split second.

  Gotcha. So, she was hiding something in her comment…

  She inhaled deeply, and shrugged. “You have a point. I like you well enough, and you’re here—which is fine with me, no matter what the cops think of you, because I judge people on what they do, not some mythical cop intuition—so you’re likely to be here for a while. I mean, where else is there for any of us to go? But just don’t go thinking you’re part of their family.”

  “Um, okay. I don’t.”

  “You have to earn my trust more where my kids are involved than for myself alone. I hope you understand.”

  “Sure. Trust no one, until they prove themselves, and maybe not even then. These are your kids you’re talking about. I’d be worried if you were too trusting, not too cautious.”

  She turned around again, and this time, he believed her smile. Apparently, he’d given her the right answer.

  “Right. That’s what I’m saying,” she replied, waving her hands for emphasis, along with the knife she held.

  Moonlight glinting off a bowie knife hilt, as it streamed through a smashed window. Curtains tossed by wind. The knife slid out of the bloody and beaten man’s throat as easily as a cheese cutter through butter. Without the blade to stop it, the man’s blood spurt across the room. Pulse…pulse…each pulse weaker than the one before.

  Wiley bared his teeth, but it was no smile, and he howled in fury at the moon looking down at him from above.

  He smiled at Christine, and nodded. “I get it.” Whistling, he turned and headed for the mudroom door, thoughts flowing thick with memories.

  At the door, he remembered something. Turning back around, he said to Christine, “Oh, the pork. Fran wanted it ‘canned,’ but told me to fetch cases of jars, not cans. She’s going to show me what to do, though.”

  Christine didn’t turn back around, again chopping. “Okay. I’ll get the spices ready. Be prepared to sweat. The cannery is outdoors, but that won’t cool you off, much.”

  He paused, then walked through the door, closing it softly behind him. She’d given him much to think on. Maybe he wouldn’t leave just yet, after all. Something whispered to him in the breeze, foreboding, a premonition of blood yet to be spilled. It was coming, of that, he had no doubt.

  28

  Thursday, June 4th

  David smelled the smoke of burning wood before he even saw the plumes. Thin and gray… Campfires, not a structure fire. With no city water supply beyond a gravity-fed system via the town’s water tower, the outlying areas were on their own to fight one of those. Even the town’s shiny, new firetruck and its huge water storage capacity were useless now, since the CME had fried its systems.

  He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness it’s not a house on fire.”

  Orien, in the passenger seat, grunted. “I see…five smoke geysers.”

  “Plumes.”

  “Five smoke plumes isn’t someone camping, especially not in the middle of a farm field.”

  Shit. David’s relief vanished in an instant. “I suppose we should check it out, considering what happened Tuesday.”

  “You think? I don’t know about you, but my stomach is telling me it’s dinner time.” Orien glanced at his watch. “Yep. Two minutes to five.”

  David shot a glare at Orien before leaving the road to turn onto a dirt road heading toward the plumes. “You’ll make second supper.”

  Orien laughed out loud. “Was that a Lord of the Rings reference? From you? You’re the hobbit, not me.”

  David didn’t join the banter, though, as images of the man he’d shot flashed through his head—his first fatal shooting had been only a couple days prior. For whatever reason, his heart rate sped until its thunderous beating pounded in his ears. It was silly, and of course he was probably worried over nothing, but he couldn’t shake a sense of dread, and despite the cool air of his A/C blowing on him, his shirt felt damp with sweat even as he shivered.

  Ahead, to the left, the smoke’s source came into view as the dirt road curved. He ignored Orien’s muttered curse and took his foot off of the gas pedal to allow the SUV to slow without braking, though he covered the brake pedal with his foot. Kids. They were playing with sticks in the middle of a fallow field. Nearby, multiple campfires burned low and smoky. They must have used green wood.

  The mob of adults around those fires wore attire that was a mix of khakis, jeans, and at least one man wore the slacks and jacket of a businessman. And two of them had rifles blatantly slung over their shoulders as, hearing the car, they arose from sitting in lawn chairs or on the ground or convenient rocks, and edged between the newly-arriving SUV and their children.

  Refugees, then. “Damn. Not again.”

  Orien muttered, but his words were drowned out by the crunch of tires on gravel and dirt.

  David watched the group, at least twenty adults, but he focused most on the rifle-armed men. This time, he pulled up within twenty yards of the group—close enough that Orien could fire effectively if this encounter went downhill—and swerved a bit to the left just before crunching to a halt. This put the engine block between himself and the crowd, rather than Orien, unfortunately. But it was necessary in order to leave the SUV pointing in a direction they could flee in if they came under fire…

  He took a deep breath. Then, he took another one, ignoring Orien’s curious look. He closed his eyes tightly for a second, then let his breath out abruptly and stepped out of the vehicle. Immediately, his thumbs found his duty belt in front, in good position to draw his weapon if needed, but not overtly threatening.

  The crowd looked inward, then parted. A man in blue jeans, leather jacket with flannel shirt, and high-laced combat boots, stepped out from among them, his long black hair bouncing in the soft breeze with each step. He approached David and Orien without ever looking back for support.

  David’s alarm bells went off, and the fight to keep himself from drawing his weapon was a moment-by-moment struggle.

  The man stopped perhaps ten feet away. His voice rumbled, rough like a smoker’s and deep, as he said, “Evening, officers. Kind of far from Denver, aren’t you? Then again, so are we. How can we help you?”

  Most people talking to him in uniform continually glanced at his hands, his duty belt—the dangerous place. Not that guy, though. His eye contact was steady and level, without being aggressive, and he wore the faintest of smiles. He looked…relaxed.

  David was most definitely not relaxed, but a career of built-up habits kept his posture straight, his eyes steady, his voice level. “Good evening, sir. I’ve been relocated to enforce the law in this area, placed under authority of Weldona. I have to ask you to move along, you and your people. This is private property you’re camping on.”

  The man nodded, his
smile broadening a bit. “I see. Received a complaint, have you? The property owner doesn’t want us here?”

  David bristled. It was always frustrating to be challenged, but usually, the perp doing it was aggressive and loud, providing David all the ammo he needed to escalate the situation verbally or physically, whichever he felt would best resolve the scenario.

  Again, not this guy.

  David shook his head. “No, sir. Colorado is under a state of emergency. Pursuant to the governor’s last authenticated lawful instructions, local communities may grant or deny access to governed lands as their individual situations warrant. Weldona has adopted a closed-borders policy, and every able-bodied adult has been armed and deputized to support legitimate law enforcement personnel in—”

  The man interrupted, “I get it; you got a militia. Smart. If we were less law-abiding types, coming out here first alone would have been a pretty dumb move, though.” His smile reached its full extend. “But we’re not that kind, so no worries. Not for you, anyways. My situation is different, though.”

  “How’s that?” David found himself asking. Dammit, never ask questions. A foolish, rookie mistake. Maybe he was more rattled than he’d thought.

  The smile faded a bit, and then the group’s apparent leader shrugged. “I got twenty-two adults and ten kids here, ages six to thirteen. Not one of them has had a bite of food, today. Ran out yesterday. Between you and me, some of them are talking about feeding their kids ‘one way or the other.’ I can’t be sure, but I think they’re open to the idea of stealing other people’s food. That’s a slippery slope, though, right?”