If it’d been more than the mild seventy degrees that it currently was, Megan wasn’t sure she could’ve walked as far as she did. As it was, she was sweating and the growing fatigue was partly dehydration. Her daughter’s feverish body was like carrying a giant lava rock. In addition to finding shelter and medicine, they needed water. The little water she had wouldn’t last long; especially if Caitlin woke and needed it.
She’d eaten the last of the food she’d managed to scrounge up at an abandoned home earlier that morning. Megan was now running on empty and knew her collapse would mean her daughter’s life. Push, Megan. Push.
When she got within three hundred feet of the cabin, she stopped to survey the property, staying partially hidden in the surrounding trees. If someone was here, it could go either way. Unfortunately, the new world was not kind. You didn’t simply knock on a stranger’s door to beg for food and water.
Not now.
Not after the EMP had plunged the world into the biggest blackout, humankind had ever experienced.
At least those who’d grown up with electricity. Pioneers would do okay in this world, but for those who’d never learned how to work with their hands or hunt for food, this was a form of population control that no one wanted to face. Those who didn’t know how to perform some of the most basic skills were suffering.
Megan had seen more dead in the past few weeks than the living. After the first dozen or so, she thought she’d grow immune to the horror of death and could simply move quickly past but the smell reminded her of what it meant to be alive as her gag reflex kicked in.
This new world meant that only the fittest, strongest and most prepared would survive.
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After the Shift: The Complete Series Page 77
