Final Panic: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 2)

by Ryan Westfield

  The door to the one of the RVs swung open.

  A buxom woman stepped out. “Liam!” she said. “What’s happened?”

  “Just a little misunderstanding,” said Liam, laughing. “I forgot to introduce you to my partner, Julia.”

  “We’ll have to save the introductions for another time,” said Jim. “We’re leaving.”

  “Have it your way,” said Liam, his lip starting to swell up, affecting his voice. “But I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other soon enough.”

  Jim grabbed Jessica’s hand and pulled her away. He was worried she was going to start a fight.

  They walked swiftly away, and Jim kept turning back to make sure that Liam and the others weren’t following them.

  “What the hell was that all about?” said Jessica. “Who is that creep?”

  “Some guy named Liam.”

  “I got that much,” said Jessica.

  “He was a professor somewhere. They’re swingers.”

  “Swingers?”

  “Yeah, you know… they swap partners.”

  “Gross,” said Jessica.

  “Whatever floats his boat,” said Jim. “But my worry is that he’s going to get us all involved. He seems intent on enjoying the apocalypse, rather than trying to survive it.”

  “Well, I’m not interested.”

  “I gathered that much. But now we’re going to have to keep an eye out for them. I don’t like having these creeps here on the lake with us.”

  “Are they following us?”

  Jim glanced back around again. “Doesn’t seem like it,” he said. “But they do outnumber us quite a bit. If they decide to attack…”

  “I didn’t see any weapons.”

  “Doesn’t mean they don’t have any. They managed to survive on the road down from Canada. That means they’ve got something up their sleeves that they didn’t want to show us.”

  7

  Rob

  “Step away from the door,” called out Rob.

  He put his eye to the peephole. The muscular man he’d seen in the driveway stepped back away from the door. He put his hands in the air.

  But he obviously wasn’t going away.

  Rob had to deal with this.

  He was nervous. His hand was sweating, and he tightened his grip on his handgun. He didn’t want it to slip.

  He wiped sweat away from his brow.

  It was an unusually warm day by upstate New York standards.

  Rob threw the door open and stepped back. “Stay where you are,” he said in a loud voice, practically shouting.

  The man grinned at him. A weird reaction, considering the situation.

  Rob noticed for the first time that the man had tattoos running up his neck. He wore a simple t-shirt and jeans.

  “What do you want?” said Rob.

  “I’m a messenger.”

  “A messenger? What the hell are you talking about?”

  The man just grinned at him.

  Rob pointed the gun at the man’s chest. It was a clear message. He wanted to show that he meant business.

  “Let’s try this again,” said Rob. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

  “Because I’m part of something bigger,” said the man. “I’m just one head of the hydra. Just one part of the beast. Cut off one head and the rest comes back, stronger than you could ever imagine.”

  “Speak to me straight,” said Rob.

  “I am. What more do you want?”

  “I want answers. You’re just giving me questions.”

  “There’s a new tide coming. A new wave. A new ocean, even. A new law and order. A new resurgence. Everything will change. Nothing will be the same. The world will be fire and nothing more. And it will all be under our control.”

  Rob had had enough of this nonsense.

  “You’re in a gang, is that it? Is this your idiotic credo or something?”

  The man looked Rob in the eye, pointedly spat on the ground.

  A split second later, the man had turned around and was sprinting in the other direction.

  He’d gotten on Rob’s nerves. And he’d given what seemed like a threat. Maybe not an explicit threat. But a threat nonetheless.

  Rob wasn’t having it.

  He started running after the guy. His feet were slamming into the ground. His arms were pumping.

  But the guy was already putting considerable distance between them. And it had been mere seconds.

  Rob was already out of breath. He still had a lot of extra weight.

  His muscles were already burning.

  He was in better shape since the EMP than he had been in years. But not in good enough shape.

  There was no way Rob was going to catch up to him.

  But he couldn’t let him get away.

  What if that guy came back with his gang?

  For the first time in his life, Rob actually felt responsible for something. He was responsible for the lives of Jim, Aly, and Jessica.

  He was doing his best to live up to his new responsibilities.

  Back before the EMP, he was always losing jobs because he shirked his responsibilities. But that was because the responsibilities weren’t real. They were just things that some boss told him to do. They were just things that he had to do to make someone other than himself some money. All he got out of it was a few measly dollars that he usually had to spend on beers after work just in order to relax.

  Now, the responsibilities were real. Lives were on the line.

  He felt like a new man.

  And this new man wasn’t going to let this guy get away.

  Now he had resolve. He’d never had that before.

  Rob stopped dead in his tracks.

  He planted his feet.

  He brought his arms up. Straight out in front of him. Both hands on his handgun.

  He took careful aim.

  He took a shallow breath, holding it in as he squeezed the trigger.

  The shot was a good one. Excellent, really.

  The bullet struck the running man in the leg. Back of his thigh.

  He screamed, lost his balance as he tried to keep running forward. His limbs went flailing, all lost together in a jumble.

  The man hit the ground hard, his arms folding under him and failing to protect his face from the gravel driveway.

  Rob was over there in a flash. He pushed his knees into the small of the man’s back, putting all his significant weight onto him.

  Rob didn’t waste his breath on talking. First, he frisked the man, going for his pockets, ankles, and under the shirt, in case there was a holster.

  Rob found a knife in a pocket. A cheap gas-station flipper, with flimsy-looking steel and a weird handle that’d been molded in China out of the cheapest materials.

  In the other pocket, Rob found a gun.

  “You should have pulled this on me,” growled Rob, pocketing the gun after checking to make sure that the safety was on.

  The man grunted something.

  “What’s that?” said Rob. “I can’t hear you.”

  Rob got up for a second, grabbed the man’s shoulders roughly and flipped him over so that he lay on his back. Rob got back down, pressing his knees into the man’s stomach and chest.

  “Now you’re going to tell me exactly what you meant by those threats,” growled Rob.

  The man tried to speak, but Rob’s weight was too much for him.

  Rob let up a little, adjusting his knees so that the man could speak.

  “I’m not telling you anything.”

  “You’d better,” said Rob. “Because it doesn’t make any difference to me whether or not I shoot you dead.”

  Rob pushed the muzzle of his gun into the man’s temple. Hard.

  Rob wasn’t really that much of a tough guy. But he knew that his size and shape were intimidating enough. He knew that if he acted a certain way, people would think he was

  Or at least he hoped.

  But it didn’t seem to ha
ve any effect on this guy who was on the ground and bleeding from his thigh that had a bullet lodged in it.

  “I’m not telling you anything.”

  And with that, the man moved his hand rapidly. From somewhere, he produced a long knife. A fixed blade.

  The knife’s steel glinted in the limited sun.

  Rob thought he’d checked everywhere. But apparently not.

  The knife swung up at him.

  Rob swung his arm, trying to deflect the blow by striking the man’s arm below the hand that held the knife.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  The blade caught against Rob’s arm. It was sharp, and dug into the skin.

  Rob had brute force. He had size. But he lacked hand-to-hand combat skills. If he tried to deflect the knife another time, he might get stabbed. And die.

  He had no choice.

  He pulled the trigger before anything else could happen.

  The gun kicked.

  His ears rang with the sound of the shot.

  Blood erupted.

  Part of the man’s skull exploded inwards.

  The man’s body fell still. His arm fell heavily to the ground. He wouldn’t move again.

  Rob looked down at his hand. It was covered in some kind of bloody discharge.

  Rob was in a state of some type of shock. He’d never seen the insides of a human head before.

  And it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Instead of getting up or wiping his hand, Rob just stayed there, as if he was frozen.

  His head seemed to turn by itself. His eyes followed the path he’d taken down the driveway, towards the lake house.

  He could see the door, and it swung open.

  He didn’t immediately recognize the man who stepped outside.

  It wasn’t Jim or Aly or Jessica.

  Who was it?

  His brain seemed to be moving slowly.

  Was it Aly’s uncle? What was his name? Jordan? The drunk.

  No, it wasn’t him.

  The man wore a policeman’s uniform.

  Then it hit him.

  It was the new guy.

  Andy? Was that his name?

  Yeah, it was Andy.

  Rob’s semi-frozen mind registered on the fact that Andy shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing.

  Andy, the stranger, had a huge amount of stuff with him. Stuff that he hadn’t had when he’d arrived at the lake house not that long ago.

  He was loaded down.

  He wore a huge backpack that looked like it was stuffed to the gills.

  He carried a full trash bag in one hand.

  “Hey!” shouted Rob.

  Andy turned, saw Rob, and hurried off towards the lake.

  “Hey! Get back here!”

  Rob stood up, his hand and gun still covered in gunk.

  It sure seemed like Andy was stealing a lot of their gear.

  Shit.

  They really needed to work on the security.

  They couldn’t be taking strangers in like this.

  Rob started running towards the lake, determined to chase down the thief.

  Behind him, the body of another stranger lay on the gravel. Blood leaked slowly out of the head.

  8

  Andy

  Andy hadn’t been there long. But he’d been there long enough to realize that it wasn’t the place he’d been looking for.

  The lake house was about the furthest thing from a secure bunker that you could find.

  Sure, there was gear and some food.

  But that was about it.

  The people seemed like clowns.

  First of all, they’d taken him on. And he didn’t have good intentions.

  But he thought that’d been a simple honest mistake.

  Andy had eaten his fill and then hung back and watched how things worked there at the lake house.

  The woman was in bed and she seemed too weak to work.

  She wouldn’t be of any use to Andy.

  And one of them was obviously a drunk. Or had serious problems.

  The others?

  They were rushing off somewhere.

  No one seemed to have a good grasp on how to survive. Or how to do what was necessary.

  Andy had watched out the window as the big guy had chased after a stranger. He’d been clumsy. He’d barely known what he was doing.

  Andy suspected that it was only a matter of time before the lake house ran up against more serious threats. Gangs and roving groups of starving, desperate people.

  It hadn’t taken him long to realize that the lake house wasn’t the shelter he’d been looking for.

  So the most logical thing to do?

  Well, he had to look out for himself first and foremost.

  So he’d grabbed as much food and gear as he could and he’d hightailed it out of there.

  He got out the door without the drunk noticing much of anything. He was staring at the wall, apparently lost deep in thought.

  The sick woman in the bed yelled out something at him.

  But he just ignored her.

  Andy was heading towards the lake when the big guy noticed him and started chasing him.

  But when Andy turned around to look, the big guy had tripped and fallen face-down onto the ground.

  Andy just laughed.

  He was weighed down with the gear. But he had a head start. He knew they wouldn’t catch him.

  He headed straight towards the lake, and then when he was out of view, hidden among the trees, he took an abrupt turn to the right.

  He didn’t have much of a plan, except that he had to get far away from them.

  Andy was sweating in the warmer weather.

  It was tough carrying all this weight with him. But he knew it would pay off soon enough. He had enough food with him to last weeks. If not more.

  Sure, the people at the lake house might starve. But that wasn’t his problem.

  It was every man for himself now.

  And only the smartest would win.

  The cop’s clothes were uncomfortable. He didn’t have any underwear on. Not that he remembered why.

  The pants were chafing his thighs terribly.

  But fortunately, luck was on his side. It had been ever since he’d decided to take control of his own destiny and kill that cop.

  Up ahead, through the woods, there was another house. And a dock that jutted into the lake.

  There were two boats that had been dragged up onto the shore. A two-person canoe and a rowboat.

  The canoe, being thinner, would probably be faster.

  There was a paddle laying inside the canoe.

  Andy dropped the stolen gear into the canoe before pushing it into the water.

  He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see someone coming for him. But there was no one yet.

  When he got the canoe mostly into the water, he had another thought. If they did end up coming after him, it’d be hard to do it without a boat of their own.

  Unfortunately, the rowboat was made of metal. Andy didn’t think he’d be able to put a hole through the metal, no matter how hard he tried.

  So he decided to do the next best thing. He’d take the rowboat with him.

  With some dirty, frayed rope that was lying near the rowboat, Andy got the two boats tied together.

  Then he got them both in the water.

  He was drenched in sweat by the time he was paddling the canoe away from the shore. The rowboat was in tow, floating behind him like a persistent ghost.

  The paddling was hard work. He only got sweatier.

  But he knew how to paddle.

  He’d learned it when he’d gone on vacation as a kid. His father had taught him how to dip the paddle in the water and tilt it just the right way. His father had taught him how to paddle efficiently, how to steer.

  And he’d taught him a moral code. The same moral code that his own father had taught him.

  Andy was throwing that all out the window now. And he knew that. He was
aware of it.

  And he was OK with that.

  He justified it to himself, saying that the situation was different now. The normal moral code had been the system of rules for one way of living. Now people were living differently. It only made sense that the rules had to change too.

  Andy had big plans for himself. This gear was just the first step. He’d find that group, that place where he could be secure. He’d ingratiate himself there. He’d set something up. It’d take time, but he knew he could do it.

  He’d have a family of his own one day. While the rest of the world burned, while everyone else starved, he’d be there with his family. They’d be well fed. They’d have protection.

  Sure, there were details that still needed to be worked out. But he was a smart guy. He could do it. He knew he could.

  And when his future son started to grow up, Andy wouldn’t teach him the moral code that he’d learned himself. No, he’d teach him the new code. Which was to look out for yourself above all else. Do whatever it takes.

  Andy was getting ahead of himself. He was getting lost in his own thoughts.

  He moved his focus back to paddling.

  He had the food now. He had the gear.

  If he let himself wander off into his thoughts, he might end up getting caught. No point in getting cocky.

  So he kept paddling.

  Harder and harder.

  He was drenched in sweat and exhausted.

  But it felt good.

  The physical work felt good. The burning in his muscles felt good.

  He was doing something with his life. He was making good choices.

  There was purpose to his life now.

  Maybe the EMP had been good for him. He already knew that killing that cop had been good for him.

  More than a few times, Andy glanced behind him, checking to see if anyone was following him.

  But there wasn’t so much as a sign of anyone.

  The lake looked pristine. The clouds were breaking overhead and the light was glinting in just the right way off the ripples.

  The lake was gentle. A gentle force. A beautiful piece of nature that seemed like it was put there just for him.

  Andy was the only one on the lake.

  For that moment, it seemed as if Andy was the only one on the planet.