“You know how to use it?” said Rob.
“More or less. Point it and pull the trigger.”
“That’ll have to do for now.”
The engines outside continued to rumble. The motorcycles must have been parked a little ways down the driveway, judging just from the sound.
“Come on,” said Rob. “There’s no time to lose.”
His thoughts turned to Jessica.
He was already at the door, with Jordan at his heels, when Aly called out something after them.
But he didn’t hear it, and there was no time to waste, so he threw the door open and rushed outside.
Rob knew he was going in hot. He knew he was just rushing in. He knew that maybe he should have tried to be subtle, try to observe them first, see what he was dealing with.
But his mind was on Jessica.
She was out there.
Somewhere.
He hadn’t heard any gunshots yet. That was good.
When his feet hit the gravel driveway, he saw what was going on.
Way down towards the road, there were three motorcycles. Big ones. Black and chrome, with high handlebars and big exhaust pipes. Old-school styling all around.
But his attention didn’t settle on the motorcycles themselves.
There were three riders. As expected.
One was on his bike.
The other two, big hairy men who wore black leather vests with patches, were a little ways off the driveway.
There was someone with them.
Someone moving.
Someone struggling.
Jessica.
It was Jessica.
He saw her hair seemingly hanging in the wind, in complete disorder. It had come loose from whatever she normally did with it.
It all seemed to be happening in slow motion.
Rob was running towards them, but he was too slow.
Jordan was somewhere behind him.
The only thing Rob could hear was his own heavy breathing and the thud of his feet on the ground. His breathing was so heavy it had become like a dull roar that seemed to drown out the rest of the world. It was as if everything else was silent. As if he was watching a movie.
One of the big hairy motorcycle men was swinging something.
His arm was moving in a high arc. Something was in his hand.
Jessica’s head snapped to the side as the object in his hand collided with her. Her hair swung around.
The two men grabbed her. She was kicking her legs wildly.
Rob was never going to make it. He was too far away. And he was too big. He couldn’t run that fast.
But he was going to try.
He was still too far away to get off a good shot. If he tried, he’d probably hit Jessica instead of the men.
He wasn’t going to let them kill Jessica.
One of the men produced a handgun. But he didn’t seem to be paying attention to Rob and Jordan. He swung the handgun at Jessica. It struck her in the head. Her body fell limp. She stopped kicking.
Now, the man turned towards Rob.
He leveled the gun at Rob, his arm straight. It looked like he knew what he was doing.
Rob threw himself to the ground as the sound of the gunshot cut through the roar of his own breathing.
Gravel dust kicked up as his body slammed belly-down on the driveway. He got his arms stretched out in front of him, his gun in both hands, ready to return fire.
The bullet missed him.
Another shot rang out.
There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t see because of the dust. The best he could do was hope that he didn’t get hit.
He felt useless. Hopeless. But the adrenaline and the intensity of the situation kept him going. Kept his heart pumping.
But by the time the dust had settled, Rob still wasn’t hit, but the men were back on the motorcycles.
Somehow, they’d gotten Jessica’s limp body onto one of the bikes. He didn’t know how they were holding her on there. Maybe they’d strapped her down, right behind the rider where a second passenger might ride.
Jessica’s head hung limply to the side, her hair hanging down loose, almost dragging on the gravel.
The motorcycle engines were rumbling and roaring and revving, spitting noise into the air.
The motorcycles were moving, the fat tires starting to roll.
Rob got himself up as fast as he could. He had his gun trained on them. But he couldn’t take the shot. His finger was on the trigger. He was itching to pull it. But he knew it’d be the worst thing he could do. There was no way to ensure that he didn’t shoot Jessica in the process.
So he watched hopelessly as the motorcycles pulled out of the driveway.
Someone rushed past him from behind. It was Jordan, who he’d completely forgotten about.
Jordan stopped a few paces in front of Rob. He spread his legs out wide, taking a stance. He held his gun in front of him.
Jordan was going to try to save the day. He was going to try to take the shot.
But there was no way he was going to make it.
Rob had to stop him.
This wasn’t the time for words.
Rob rushed forward, and he did what he was good at.
He collided with Jordan, tackling him to the ground.
They fell together, Rob’s heavy body pushing Jordan’s body towards the ground rapidly.
The dust came up again.
The air was knocked from Rob’s lungs.
His body hurt all over.
“Jordan?” he said, as he pushed himself up and off of Jordan’s body.
“What the hell did you do that for?” snarled Jordan, still on the ground.
“You were going to miss. You were going to hit Jessica. That’s why I didn’t shoot.”
Jordan just snarled at him.
Shit.
What was Rob going to do?
The motorcycles were long gone. He could just barely hear their rumbling engines down the road.
“What are we going to do?” said Rob, his mood sinking. He reached down and gave Jordan a hand to help him up off the ground.
“What are we going to do? Are you dense or something?”
“What?”
Jordan held his arm out, his finger outstretched and pointing to the Subaru.
Rob spun around quickly, facing the Subaru wagon that he’d forgotten about.
There wasn’t any time to feel like an idiot.
“You’re staying here,” he shouted at Jordan, as he started running towards the house. He needed to get the keys, which hopefully were still hanging on a peg in the kitchen.
Jordan shouted something back, but Rob didn’t hear him.
“What happened?” said Aly frantically, as Rob threw open the door and raced through the house.
The keys were on the peg, hanging there just as he’d expected.
Rob grabbed them and raced back through the house, past Aly, without answering her.
He was already losing time. Every second he wasted, Jessica was being taken farther and farther away.
And it wasn’t like there’d be any way to track her once she was gone.
There were no police to call. There was no one to investigate.
Before the EMP, if someone was kidnapped, the proper government agencies got involved. They’d send out a network of advertisements, announcements, notifications, and surveillance. The toll gates on the highway captured license plates, and CCTV camera recorded faces and car makes and models. Credit and debit cards were tracked. It was hard for anyone to get away with anything.
But that was now all ancient history.
All those systems were gone.
The motorcycle guys could take her as far as their tanks of gas lasted. And as far as Rob knew, motorcycles got much better gas mileage than cars. Or station wagons for that matter.
The motorcycles could simply outdrive the Subaru in terms of distance.
And on top of them, if you added up all the di
fferent turns and corners, the possible routes were almost limitless.
He had to catch up to them.
Fast.
Rob threw himself into the Subaru’s driver seat. The wagon shook with his weight, the suspension sinking down and rocking.
“You’ve got to take me with you,” shouted Jordan, rushing around to the passenger side door.
Rob turned the key. The engine rumbled to life.
At the same time, Rob hit the automatic lock button.
Jordan grabbed the handle of the passenger door, but he couldn’t get the door open.
Jordan started banging on the window. “You said I needed to decide,” he yelled. “And I’m deciding to help! Let me in. You can’t do this on your own.”
Rob threw the Subaru into reverse.
He wasn’t used to driving stick, and it took him a couple moments to get it into gear.
He slammed the accelerator to the floor, and let out the clutch more jerkily than he’d intended.
The small engine whined and the Subaru leaped backwards with a jerk.
Jordan needed to stay with his niece, Aly, who couldn’t protect herself.
There wasn’t time to tell Jordan that. He’d have to figure it out for himself.
Rob was turned half around, struggling with his big frame and the back of the seat, facing the end of the driveway, and the Subaru’s engine was whining loudly as the tires kicked up dust from the gravel.
He didn’t know what was going to happen.
But he knew that he was going to find Jessica. No matter what.
He’d never done something so altruistic in his life.
But it wasn’t just Jessica’s life that was at stake.
It was his. It was Jim’s. It was all of theirs.
If they lost Jessica, they’d be more vulnerable.
Not that this thought was at the forefront of his mind.
All he was focusing on was driving.
The Subaru rocketed out of the driveway onto the road. Rob slammed on the brakes, shifted into first, and he was off, headed down the road in the direction that the motorcycles had disappeared down.
11
Jim
The water felt colder now than it had.
But Jim swam on.
His pants were dragging too much. He wished that he’d taken them off.
But it was too late.
He had to keep going.
Jim hadn’t even paused to look behind him, to see how far he’d come.
He just swam on.
It had been about thirty minutes, and he was already feeling it in his muscles. A burning sensation. A deep one.
He was using muscles he hadn’t used in years. And he was using them in ways that he hadn’t used them in years.
Ten minutes later, Jim was even more tired.
And he was beginning to think it was pointless.
Why did he think he could outswim a boat?
Why had he thought this was a good idea?
With the missing food, he was just wasting energy now. And it was energy that wasn’t going to be replaced easily.
With the supplies missing, they’d have to get creative in order to eat. And getting creative meant expending more energy.
It was just a tremendous spiral of energy loss. Thoughts of the second law of thermodynamics swirled through Jim’s head. Energy is always lost. The physicists called that entropy. Jim had studied it in school, and knew of it from his work with electronics, not that it had ever proved to be that useful, practically speaking.
But they weren’t useful thoughts.
He needed to concentrate.
So far, he hadn’t yet decided to turn back.
So the only option was to continue. Forward.
Just when he thought he couldn’t continue, just when he thought his burning, exhausted muscles might give out and he’d sink to the bottom of the lake, unable to rescue himself, he saw a flash of metal up ahead.
He paused in the water to get a better look. Treading water felt good compared to propelling himself forward constantly at an impossible pace.
This way, too, he could get his head higher out of the water, getting a better look.
Sure enough, there was a boat up ahead. He saw the sun glinting off its metal where the paint had worn off.
The boat was far off.
But not too far.
He could get there.
He just had to keep pushing.
At least the boat wasn’t lost. At least the fake cop hadn’t yet gotten to the shore.
All wasn’t lost.
Instinctively, Jim reached for his revolver in its holster. He didn’t draw it, but just felt the reassuring hardness of its handle as he wrapped his fingers around it.
The gun was his lifeline.
He didn’t waste much time treading water.
He’d been swimming freestyle, and he switched now to breaststroke. His thinking was that breaststroke wouldn’t create as much of a splash.
The competitive version of breaststroke had the swimmer moving up and down in the water quite a bit. The head bobbed up and dove back down again in an almost vicious way.
But Jim, instead, swam the more casual style.
He didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than he had to.
He couldn’t make out, from where he’d been treading water, what kind of boat it was.
If it was a canoe, the fake cop would be facing forward.
Less chance for him to spot Jim as he approached.
Jim had to assume that he was armed.
If it was a rowboat, then Jim was in trouble. The fake cop would be facing exactly in Jim’s direction.
And it wasn’t like Jim could try to cut him off from the side. It would be too much swimming. Too long a route.
Jim already didn’t know how he’d managed to outpace a boat.
He’d been swimming as hard as he could, sure.
But the fake cop must have been paddling lazily. Either that or he was in terrible shape and had stopped, huffing and puffing, for a few breathers as the boat coasted, unpropelled, as slowly as a turtle for long periods.
It was ten more minutes before Jim was close enough to really see the boat.
It turned out it was two boats, rather than just one.
The fake cop was in a canoe, towing a rowboat.
Maybe that was what had slowed him down somewhat.
Jim’s plan was to get as close as he could, start treading water, and get off a single clean shot. All before the fake cop even spotted him.
It wasn’t exactly an honorable approach. Not like in the old cowboy movies, where the two dueling cowboys always faced each other, even perhaps exchanging pleasantries before the guns were fired.
But the situation was unjust from the start.
There was one way it could be honorable.
As far as Jim was concerned, he was hunting a thief.
Nothing more.
And a thief like that deserved what was coming to him.
Jim swam hard.
And fast.
But not fast enough.
When he was coming up for air, his head rising out of the cold water, he saw Andy in the boat suddenly turn around.
Their eyes met for a split second.
If Jim stopped to tread water now, he didn’t stand a chance in a gunfight.
Not at the distance.
Not without the relatively solid footing of the boat that Andy would have.
And Jim knew that Andy would go right for his gun.
So Jim didn’t wait.
He took a large breath, inhaling deeply and fully.
He dove down, pulling himself through the water.
He went down and down, as if he was trying to reach the bottom of the lake.
Just a few feet below the surface, the water was already getting noticeably colder.
Jim just kept swimming.
The first bullet hit the water.
It was a strange sight.
/>
Jim saw the bullet’s trail, rather than the bullet itself.
The bullet left a wake of bubbles, a line cutting through the water.
Water is denser than air. The bullet slowed down as it drove down. It would reach the bottom of the lake.
And hopefully Jim wouldn’t.
The second bullet cut a path through the water. This time, it was a little closer to Jim.
Jim had two choices. He could resurface and return fire. Or he could dive deeper.
He chose to dive deeper.
A third, fourth, and fifth bullet hit the water.
Jim didn’t know what kind of gun Andy had, or how many rounds it held.
Ideally, he’d wait until Andy emptied his gun, and then resurface.
But that wasn’t likely to happen. Andy was clever. A clever thief.
Jim swam down another two feet.
He was already feeling like he needed to take a breath. He wasn’t used to swimming, let alone holding his breath underwater.
He needed to think fast.
He needed a plan. A better one than just waiting and then resurfacing to get shot.
Jim could see the hull of both boats above him. They weren’t far away.
He didn’t think. He just started swimming. Instead of continuing down, he started cutting across.
If he could make it under the boat, he could resurface on the other side. Maybe take Andy by surprise.
If he was lucky.
He didn’t know how much longer he could last without air. It was getting rough. His head felt light and strange. It wasn’t just another symptom on top of the normal exhaustion. This symptom was impossible to ignore. Impossible to simply push through. This symptom would kill him sooner rather than later.
He swam as fast as he could.
Bullets pounded through the water all around him. There was nothing he could do about them.
He just had to keep going.
Somehow, he got to the other side.
Ideally, he’d have liked to get some distance between himself and the boat.
But he wasn’t going to make it.
His body was screaming for air.
Desperately.
It was all he could do to simply resurface. He didn’t even reach for his Ruger.
His head pierced the surface of the water and he gasped loudly for air, his lungs finally receiving what they’d been screaming for.
He’d barely taken three breaths when the paddle swung through the air towards him.
Final Panic: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 2) Page 6
