EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 21 | The Darkest Day

by Walker, Robert J.

  They came howling like demons out of the trees, firing furiously at anything that moved, led by T-Dawg, who was blasting away with a machine gun in his hands and howling maniacally, laughing like a madman as he sprayed houses and trailers with a vicious torrent of bullets.

  Mary had no time to think, worry or analyze anything, for the attack came on so rapidly, and with such force, that all she could do was shoot back with her AR-15, doing her best to pick off men as they came screaming toward her, spraying bullets with mad abandon.

  She took out one attacker, who was firing an M-16 at the cabin where Ann, James, and the women and children were sheltering, and then swung her rifle around to pump three bullets through the torso of a huge man who was trying to rush her, who was firing a combat shotgun at her, with each shot tearing chunks out of the sandbags around her.

  T-Dawg was zeroing in on one target: Ted. If he achieved nothing else tonight, he wanted to take the old man’s head, and he no longer cared about food or supplies; with the intense bloodlust coursing through him, all he wanted to do was destroy the homestead and slaughter everyone in it.

  Ted was busy dealing with three of T-Dawg’s thugs who, under T-Dawg’s orders, had taken positions of cover behind a wall and were keeping him pinned down until T-Dawg could get right up to him. Ted fired back at the men, taking one out with his sharpshooting prowess when the man popped his head out from behind the wall to fire, but the other two blasted outbursts of M-16 fire that forced Ted to take cover behind the sandbags. When they stopped firing, he swung his AR-15 up to return fire, but at that moment, T-Dawg came leaping over the barricade, howling like a demon from the bowels of hell.

  Ted tried to swing his rifle around to shoot T-Dawg at point-blank range, but the huge man moved incredibly fast, kicking the gun out of Ted’s hands before he could squeeze the trigger. He followed this kick up with a vicious knee to Ted’s stomach, and when the old man doubled over in pain, he threw down his machine gun, grabbed Ted’s lapels and yanked him up so that he could deliver three swift and brutal headbutts to his face in rapid succession.

  The headbutts sent Ted flying to the ground, stunned, his face a crumpled mess of blood, his nose broken, and two teeth knocked out. T-Dawg screamed out an animalistic cry of triumph and then drew his machete. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and now that he finally had Ted where he wanted him, he was going to savor the next few minutes of vicious violence.

  Mary saw what was about to happen and screamed, but as T-Dawg raised his machete above his head, ready to bring it down in a brutal hack, a small but intrepid figure came flying through the air and smashed into the huge man, bowling him over. Mary’s scream turned into a cry of surprise; it was James who had come sprinting out of nowhere and launched himself like a living cannonball at T-Dawg in a valiant attempt to save Ted’s life.

  Mary began climbing over her sandbag barricade to race over to help James and Ted, who were now embroiled in a violent hand-to-hand struggle on the ground with the huge gangster, all while bullets kicked up puffs of dust on the firelit ground and slammed into sandbags and walls and ripped through trailers, as the defenders gave the invaders everything they had.

  Before Mary could get to the three struggling men, however, a big man came barreling out of a dense section of shadow behind a storage hut on her right; he had been waiting there the whole time to ambush her when she emerged from the safety of her cover. Mary sprayed his chest with a quick burst of fire, but he was wearing a heavy bulletproof vest, and while the bullets made him stagger and stumble, they did not break through the vest and only slowed him down rather than stopping him.

  Mary dropped to her knees as he rushed at her, roaring, with a long hunting knife in his hand, and took hasty aim at his face. She squeezed the trigger when he was mere feet from her, but no burst of flame emerged from the muzzle of the rifle—there was only an empty click—she had run out of ammo.

  The man dived and tackled her to the ground, and they both rolled in the dust for a few yards from the momentum of his tackle. Then he was on top of her, growling like a rabid dog, trying to shove his blade into her throat, his eyes bulging out of their sockets like a madman’s as he hissed and spat and snarled like a beast.

  Mary grabbed his wrist, fighting with all her strength to hold his arms back, but he was far stronger than her, and the blade kept coming closer to her throat.

  “I’m ‘a stick that pretty head a’ yours on a spike, bitch, along with wid’ all the other heads a’ your farmers,” he growled, grinning like a devil as he slowly but surely overpowered her. The tip of his blade reached her throat, stinging sharply for a moment before it pierced her skin and began to slide slowly and terribly into her flesh.

  This was it, Mary thought bitterly, this was the end; in a few moments, her life would be over, and there was nothing she could do about it. The man was simply too strong, and even though she was fighting with every ounce of strength she possessed, she could not stop him from skewering her throat. Even with this knowledge in her mind, though, she fought desperately on, refusing to give up.

  “Look into my eyes, bitch,” he snarled as he pressed down with even more force. “I like to see the look in a motherfucker’s eyes when I—”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish this sentence. A shot rang out from a few feet behind him, and blood and brains blew out of the side of his skull. All the pressure he’d been exerting on the knife vanished, and his limp body flopped onto Mary, and the knife fell from her throat and dropped onto the ground.

  Mary gasped and struggled to get out from under the corpse, and when she did, she saw Ann standing a few feet away, holding a smoking pistol in her hands.

  “I got him, Mom,” she murmured. “I got him.”

  “Quick!” Mary yelled, grabbing her rifle and slamming a fresh ammo clip into it. “James and your grandpa! We have to help them! Over there, that—”

  A heavy body slammed into Mary from behind, sending her sprawling and sending the rifle flying out of her hands. She hit the ground hard, with all the wind knocked out of her lungs, and wheezed heavily, trying to get some air back in. In the background, she heard a few gunshots ring out, and then Ann screamed in terror.

  Mary, still half-stunned, rolled over onto her back and saw a terrible sight. T-Dawg—who had just smashed her into the ground—had Ann on her knees, with his left hand gripping a fistful of her hair, and his right holding his machete, which was dripping with blood.

  “Say goodbye to this kid’s head, you fuckin’ whore,” he growled with a maniacal look on his face. “And when I’m done with her, you’ll be dead, too, just like the old man and that nerd I killed!”

  A million thoughts were racing through Mary’s mind, but somehow, through the panic and terror and paralysis of fear that was gripping her at this moment, she saw the glint of steel near her hand: her dead assailant’s hunting knife. She lunged over, grabbed the knife, and flung it with all her might at T-Dawg’s face.

  There were only a few yards between them, and T-Dawg barely even had the time to flinch, let alone attempt to evade or block the flying knife. The hurtling blade spun through the air and slammed into the side of his neck, burying itself deep into his flesh. He gasped and staggered back, reaching for the embedded knife with his free hand. A froth of blood gushed up from his mouth as his strength rapidly began to fail him. Ann jumped up, screaming, and ran before he could grab her again.

  Mary got up, the air now returning to her lungs, and a righteous fire of vengeance burning in her heart. She walked slowly and calmly toward T-Dawg as he lurched and staggered weakly, still trying to bat at the knife stuck in his neck. He snarled something her, but no words came out of his mouth, only another gush of frothy blood. He took a feeble swipe at her with the machete when she got close to him, but she evaded it with ease and then snatched the machete out of his hand.

  He lurched and staggered a few more paces, and then dropped to his knees, gasping as he drowned in his own blood.
He looked up and smiled eerily … for Mary was standing in front of him with the machete raised high above her head. She brought it whistling down, and the blade split T-Dawg’s skull in half.

  When the remaining few attackers saw their leader’s body drop dead at Mary’s feet, what little light remained in them departed. Their numbers had already been decimated by the homesteader’s steadfast defense, in particular Callum’s sharpshooting from a high sniper post in an oak tree, and this was the last straw. They turned and ran, fleeing desperately from the battle.

  Mary dropped to her knees, her head spinning, and passed into unconsciousness.

  Epilogue

  It had been a year to the day since the night of the great battle. The homesteaders had gathered in front of the firepit and had built a huge bonfire to commemorate those who had sacrificed their lives on that fateful night. Four seasons had come and gone, crops had been raised and harvested and replanted, and the world had gone on turning. Even so, the pain from the loss of so many dear lives was not something the surviving homesteaders had fully gotten over.

  The sun was setting in the distance as Mary stood up to address the others. “Friends, family members, and everyone who’s part of this kind, brave, and loving community, I thank you for gathering here tonight. It’s been a year since the night of the battle, and a tough one at that; as well as my father prepared this place and all of you for life in a world without electricity and modern technology, there were many things we struggled with. But we overcame those struggles, and we got through the winter. It’s thanks to all your hard work, perseverance, and dedication that we did it. And we’ll get through the next winter the same way.”

  Everyone cheered and murmured out their agreements.

  “I want to thank each and every one of you for what you’ve done,” she continued. “But there are a few people I want to mention specifically. But before that, Callum wants a word with all of you. Callum?”

  “Thanks, honey,” he said, squeezing Mary’s hand and giving her a peck on the cheek. He and Mary were now engaged to be married.

  She sat down, and he stood up to talk. “Everyone, I know there’s a lot to say about that night and that every single one of you put your hearts and souls into defending this land, but I want to first mention Dr. Krueger. He worked tirelessly without sleep for forty-eight hours straight, saving the lives of so many of us who surely would have died otherwise. And speaking of those patients, I think I hear something…”

  Everyone stopped and listened, and sure enough, they heard the sound of hooves drumming on the ground. Two horses came galloping onto the homestead and mounted on them were Ted and James.

  “Sorry, we’re late!” Ted said. “That lamb that wandered into the woods was tough to find, but we got him back eventually, didn’t we James?”

  “We sure did,” James said proudly.

  Both of them had numerous huge scars from the deep gashes T-Dawg had inflicted on them with his machete that night, and both had come close to dying from blood loss. With blood transfusions from Mary to Ted, and from Callum to James, though, and emergency surgery from Dr. Krueger, both of their lives had been saved. They would carry the battle wounds on their bodies for the rest of their days, but they wore them with pride, like medals of valor.

  Ted joined Callum’s speech, thanking everyone from the bottom of his heart, and by the end of it, there was not a dry eye to be seen among any of the homesteaders.

  The fire burned late into the night, and the whiskey flowed—as did both laughter and tears—and by the end of the night, only Mary and Ted were still awake, sitting by the cooling embers of the fire under a bright, starry sky.

  “I’m glad I came back home when I did, Dad,” she said, reaching over and squeezing his hand.

  “I’m glad you did, too, baby, girl. I’m glad you did, too,” he said.

  THE END

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