She was so cold that it took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to expel all the air from her lungs—an instinctual reaction to the extreme cold—and simply hold the breath in, all while trying to curl her fingers around the handles of the bag.
The water rose higher, covering her eyes, and now she could neither see nor breathe. Sheer terror almost caused her to lose consciousness, but thoughts of her daughter and her husband and the grief they would feel at her passing boosted a fresh surge of determination through her veins.
Through the icy, all-consuming murkiness of brownish-green, she lunged forward so hard that it felt as if her ribs were cracking against the seatbelt, but the pain was worth it. Her fingers curled around the handles of her handbag. She yanked it through the water toward her, feeling her lungs beginning to burn and tighten, hungry for fresh air. Fighting through the almost paralyzing panic that was doing its best to suffocate her, she fumbled blindly in the bag, her hands seeking out the one object that could save her. Seconds ticked by, each of them feeling like minutes, until finally, she found the knife.
Her lungs now felt like they’d been filled with some sort of searing, noxious gas, and every cell in her body was screaming out for a breath of fresh air, but there was nothing around her but icy, murky water. The car was submerged and slowly sinking into the depths of the river, and if it got too deep, Kate knew that even if she made it out of the vehicle, she might drown before reaching the surface.
She flipped the knife open and sawed frantically at the seatbelt. It felt as if she were making no progress, and every passing second, she grew more light-headed. Her lungs and throat were about to implode, but finally, the blade cut through the seatbelt. She dropped the knife into her bag, hooked the straps around her arm, and pushed with her feet against the driver’s door, gaining a little momentum so that she could begin swimming. She could barely see anything in the terrible, icy darkness, but managed to feel her way through the interior of the vehicle until she found the open passenger-side window.
Using the last of her failing strength, she pushed herself through and swam upward, toward what seemed to be light through the silty, murky water. Her lungs couldn’t hold out any longer; it felt as if someone were strangling her from inside her chest, and instinct was screaming at her to open her mouth and suck in air—air that did not exist here.
“Susan! Jack!” she screamed in her mind. “I won’t die like this; I won’t leave you like this. I won’t!”
And then, just as she couldn’t hold her breath for even a split-second longer, her head broke through the surface. She had never tasted anything as sweet as that first breath of air she sucked into her lungs the instant her mouth broke through the surface. For a few moments, she simply bobbed there, breathing in deep, life-giving gulps of air … but she soon realized that she was far from safe. The frigid water had numbed her body almost to the point at which she could barely move, and it was slowly paralyzing her. She had crashed right into the middle of the river, and either shore was a good fifty-yard swim away. Right now, she could barely keep treading water, let alone swim to safety.
Nonetheless, she knew she had to try. She couldn’t give up now, not after nearly dying a few seconds ago. She started moving in the direction of the riverbank toward which she’d been heading. She could barely feel her limbs, and the cold seemed to be seeping into the marrow of her bones and slowly shutting down her internal organs, but she kept going, stroke by stroke.
Progress was painfully slow; it seemed to require immense effort to cover even a single yard, and the river’s current, although sluggish, was persistent, and made the tortuous swim even more difficult.
After a few yards, a terrible realization hit Kate: she wasn’t going to make it. The cold was too intense, and she was rapidly losing control of her limbs. She could barely keep herself afloat, let alone complete the few hundred strokes that would be needed to get to the far shore.
A single tear rolled down her cheek as she realized that she would die here, like this, so close to escaping, yet so terribly far.
But then, just as all hope seemed lost, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a boat coming toward her.
6
Susan hadn’t ever walked through this neighborhood. She had only seen it through the window of a car, and the only section she was really familiar with was the little area immediately around the dance studio. As soon as she was two blocks away from the school, she started to feel a lot more threatened, and any illusion of safety the familiarity of the dance school had provided quickly fell away.
However, this was no ordinary day in the neighborhood. The city was under attack by an unknown enemy. While Susan was aware of the terrible danger the rockets streaking through the sky presented, part of her felt strangely safer during this time than she would have on a regular day when traveling through this neighborhood. Thus far, the missiles seemed to have been directed at the far side of the city, and she hadn’t heard any gunfire breaking out … yet. Also, with the spate of car accidents, the thousands of dead cars jamming up the streets, the fact that everything electronic had spontaneously died, and the terrifying explosions rocking the city, everyone was panicking and far more concerned with survival than focusing on a middle-class white teenager running through their neighborhood.
People were racing around in a panic or stumbling around in a confused daze, and very few of them paid any attention at all to Susan as she navigated the streets. She noticed a large group of dangerous-looking people who had wrapped bandannas and T-shirts around their faces. Some of them had makeshift weapons like baseball bats and crowbars in their hands, who were gathering with predatory intent outside a large electronics store, their hungry eyes on the big-screen TVs in the display windows. Two nervous-looking security guards were blocking the door and yelling at the growing crowd, but Susan could see that the group intended looting. The two security guards wouldn’t be able to hold them for long. Susan didn’t want to be around when they charged the doors and the guards started shooting.
She gave the mob a wide berth, increasing her speed to get past them as fast as she could. Her focus was on getting to her mother as quickly as possible. She was trying to pay attention to her surroundings and identify any potential threats or dangers. She focused primarily on scanning the endless rows of dead cars, searching for the familiar sight of her mother’s red SUV.
More crowds were gathering, and people came out of their apartment buildings, all looking around in worry and confusion. One or two of them turned their heads and stared with either suspicion or surprise at Susan, who stuck out like a sore thumb in this part of town. However, most were far too worried about the distant explosions and the streets’ chaos to care about her.
As she ran, she grew increasingly anxious. Susan still hadn’t spotted the SUV, and she was almost at the bridge that spanned the broad river. She jogged across the street, keeping her eyes peeled for the vehicle, but she still couldn’t see any sign of it. What she did see, though, was a large crowd of agitated people up ahead, blocking off the road. They stood outside a building that looked like it might have been some sort of government office, and like the group she’d seen outside the electronics store, these people seemed primed for a riot. She didn’t want to go through the mass of people. She could almost taste their aggression in the chilly air, so she took one last look toward them, scanning the row of dead cars for her mother’s SUV before taking off on a shortcut down a side alley.
Susan thought she heard footsteps running down the alley behind her, and her heart began to beat a little faster. She didn’t want to slow down to look over her shoulder, so instead, she simply sped up, feeling a rush of relief as she approached the end of the gloomy alley. However, just as she was about to speed out of it, she was forced to skid to a halt. A large, muscular young man stepped out in front of her, blocking her way. The leering, gold-toothed grin he flashed at her told her that this was no accident, and cold dread flooded her system when she heard the te
lltale sound of running footsteps slowing down behind her.
“Well, well, well, look what we got here,” the young man in front of her said, stepping slowly, deliberately toward her, flexing his muscles. “A little dancer who lost her way.”
Susan didn’t know if the men had noticed the pepper spray in her hand, but she subtly flipped the switch into the ready position, suspecting that she may well have to use it. “I’m in a hurry,” she said, trying to sound calm and confident, but sounding anything but. “Just let me pass, please.”
“Shake that tight little ass for us, baby, then we’ll let you go,” the man behind her said.
Both men stepped closer to her, and the leering smile faded rapidly from the first man’s face. “I ain’t playin’ around, girl,” he growled. “Lemme see that ass, shake that ass for us. You ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘til you shake that ass fo’ us. Come on, take off that hoodie, let us see them tight clothes you be wearin’ in the dance class.”
“Get away from me!” Susan snapped, whipping up her right hand and aiming the pepper spray at the first man’s face. She heard the second man stepping toward her, so she swung around and pointed it at his face for a few seconds, too, trying her best to come across as intimidating.
The second man grinned evilly, baring a mouth full of crooked teeth, with a couple missing. “What you gon’ wid’ dat, lil’ girl? Gimme some a’ dat hot sauce?” he mocked. “I like it hot. I do, I do, I do, c’mon, hit me wid’ it.”
The first man reached into the pocket of his baggy jeans, which were hanging so low they were almost falling off and whipped out a butterfly knife, which he twirled in his fingers. “Don’t fuckin’ make me angry, girl,” he growled. “You try sprayin’ that shit in my face, you gon’ bleed, I promise you that. Now take off that hoodie, let me see what you got under it. Do it, bitch. I’m losin’ my patience wid’ you.”
The two men were closing in on Susan, and she knew that she had to make a move before they were on her and it was too late. “Okay, okay,” she said, feigning compliance. “I’ll take off my hoodie, just relax, I’m taking it off now.”
“Drop the hot sauce,” the second man demanded. “Drop that shit on the ground first.”
Unbeknown to her two assailants, Susan was not only a dancer. For a few years, she’d been taking a weekly Krav Maga self-defense class—again, like carrying pepper spray, at her father’s insistence—and now that she’d pushed through her initial period of panic, the things she’d learned were coming back to her. The first thing she’d learned was to identify an escape route. The second was, if a fight were inevitable, to search her surroundings for anything she could use as an improvised weapon to do as much damage as savagely and quickly as possible. Then, strike hard and strike viciously.
She had identified a weapon, and now she knew the only way she’d be getting out of this situation would be to use it. “Okay, I’m putting the pepper spray down now,” she said. “Just chill, let me set it down.”
“You be tryin’ my patience, lil’ bitch, you tryin’ my patience,” the first man said, stepping closer to Susan.
She slowly bent half over, as if lowering herself to put the pepper spray on the ground, but then, as she was half-crouched, she whipped it up and unleashed a torrent of the fiery liquid right into the man’s face. He screamed with pain and staggered back, and the second man lunged forward. Susan, who’d been anticipating his attack with tensed muscles and slightly bent knees, was already perfectly poised to react. She ducked under his grabbing hands and blasted his eyes with a jet of pepper spray, too, while swooping acrobatically away from him.
That was only the beginning of her counterattack, though. On the ground was a broken chunk of concrete the size of a bread loaf. Susan, still trapped between the two men, grabbed the concrete and slammed it as hard as she could against the first man’s hand. He yelped with pain, and his knife went flying, but she wasn’t finished. She followed up with a smashing hit against his jaw. Then, as the man reeled like a drunkard on his legs, stunned from the blow, she swung around and deftly dodged a wild haymaker of a punch launched by the second man, who growled in pain, coughing and choking on the pepper spray. She booted him between his legs and then smashed the concrete over the top of his head, causing him to sink to his knees. She hit him again, then spun around and belted the first man again across the jaw with the concrete with such force that it shattered.
The man dropped limply to the floor, knocked out cold, and before the second man could even think of attempting to recover and counterattack, she spun around and planted a heavy roundhouse kick against the side of his jaw, knocking him out cold, too. Breathing hard both from the intensity of the fight and the adrenalin racing through her veins, Susan jumped over the first man’s body and sprinted out of the alley.
For the first few seconds, she just ran blindly at top speed, almost crashing into three people on the sidewalk. She’d almost forgotten about trying to locate her mother’s car and was almost unaware even of which direction she was supposed to be going. She raced along the street, caring only about getting as far as she could from her assailants, as fast as she could, until she finally started to slow down and regain some control over her instincts. When she stopped, her heart was pounding madly in her chest, and she looked down at her hands and saw they were shaking violently. Susan could hardly believe that she’d just done what she’d done, but the important thing was that she had escaped from a dangerous situation unharmed.
“You okay, young lady?” a voice asked. It sounded as if it belonged to an elderly man.
Susan looked up and saw that an old man had come shuffling out of a nearby store and was staring at her with a look of concern on his face.
“I’m okay, sir,” she said.
“The rest of the world ain’t,” he said, looking around him and shaking his head sadly. “I don’t know what’s happened, but in all my years, I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this. Say, you sure you okay? You look a lil’ … spooked. You gotta be real careful round here. There are some bad folk on these here streets. Real pity, this used to be such a nice neighborhood when I was a younger man.”
“I know,” she said, looking at him with his suspenders, cane, and thick glasses, and feeling a sudden and intense welling of pity within her. How would this kindly old man survive the horrors of what was no doubt coming? She wished there was something she could do for him, but Susan realized that there was almost nothing she could do, really. “Sir, you better go home and be with your family. Things are getting crazy out here, and they’re only gonna get crazier.”
He nodded. “You’d best take that advice yourself, young lady. I heard a terrible sound like bombs or somethin’, like there’s a war startin’ or somethin’… And on top o’ that, there’s supposed to be some crazy storm goin’ be hittin’ us tomorrow, worst one in a generation, they say. It’s like the end times are here… Yeah, you’d best be on your way home.”
“That’s where I’m going,” she said, feeling like she was about to burst into tears out of sheer sadness and pity for whatever tragic fate no doubt awaited this man. “Home. Goodbye, sir, and good luck to you.”
“Glad to see there are still some polite young people in these streets,” he said, giving her a grandfatherly smile. “Good luck to you, too, young lady. Hurry, you’d best be on your way.”
As he said this, the sound of another explosion going off boomed through the streets, as if some unseen force was urging Susan to keep moving. She bolted down the sidewalk, turned the corner, and caught sight of the river, and one of the many bridges that spanned it—that bridge was the one her mother always took.
She dashed toward the bridge and saw a few abandoned vehicles on it, but because of the curve, she couldn’t see all of it. Was her mother stuck in her dead car on the bridge? If she weren’t, Susan had no idea where she could be.
As she got closer to the river, she saw that there was someone in the middle of the icy water, someone who looked as if they m
ight be drowning … someone who looked horrifyingly familiar.
“Mom?” Susan gasped incredulously.
And then, as Susan stared, frozen with horror and disbelief, her mother’s head went under the water and disappeared.
7
“The other stairs, hurry!” Jack said, staring at the wall of flame that blocked their way out. The air was thick, black, choking smoke, and he and Carrie could barely see where they were going. They staggered through the smoke and the heat to the maintenance stairwell, hidden around a corner around the back of the elevator landing.
However, when Jack opened the door, another wall of flames confronted him—that way was blocked, too.
“Oh my God,” Carrie gasped, coughing and spluttering. “What are we gonna do?”
“Climb,” he said grimly. “It’s the only way.”
“You’ve gotta be joking,” she said. “Climb … where? We’re twenty floors up!”
“I know,” he said, “but there’s no other way.”
“I can’t climb! Not with a broken arm!” she protested, on the verge of tears.
“I’ll lower you down. I’ve got a rope in this bag.”
“You’ll lower … are you crazy? There’s no way you’ve got enough rope to do that!”
“I’ve got enough to get you to a balcony three floors down,” Jack said, running over to the window and looking out of it. “From there, we should be able to take the stairs; the fire may not have spread that far.”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m gonna let you do this,” Carrie whimpered.
Jack, however, had already taken off his belt. He hooked it under her shoulders and fastened it tight between her shoulder blades.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 22 | The Coldest Night Page 3
