The wide part of the paddle hit him in the head.
Pain flared through his skull.
His vision blacked out for a moment.
He sunk back down into the water, too filled with pain to move his arms or his legs.
He was sinking.
12
Liam
“They didn’t seem interested,” said Julia, Liam’s longtime partner.
“No,” said Liam, shaking his head, and sitting down on the edge of the bed in their RV.
Liam and Julia were staring at the same thing. On a small built-in coffee table, there was an ornate wooden box with the lid open.
They’d gotten the box on one of their trips to China, during one of their first summers after graduate school, where they’d met.
Inside the box were the last remains of their opiate stash.
They had the good stuff. Pharmaceutical pills. The real ones, right from the factories.
Liam had never messed around with the street stuff. Julia had. Just once. She’d said it had felt dirty. Totally unclean.
They were high-class people. Professors at a good school. And they considered themselves high-class.
Swinging, or whatever you wanted to call it, was just something that the lower classes didn’t understand. It was common at the universities. At least among the more open-minded professors.
They’d pursued their lifestyle all their lives. It was what they’d wanted. Educating and partying.
Sure, educating often had taken a back seat to partying. To having fun. To finding new partners. New excitement.
Opiates were rolled into their lifestyle.
They wouldn’t have been able to untangle one from the other.
They both knew that they couldn’t stop. They didn’t want to.
Before finding opiates, they’d both been depressed. Depressed with that academic spiritual ennui that was almost like a job requirement. For the humanities departments, at least.
The opiates had rescued them from that depression.
They’d allowed them to live.
To pursue their dreams.
To pursue other partners.
To pursue pleasure.
Together.
There wasn’t any turning back now.
The world was over.
And their lives were over.
“We’ve just got to make the best of it,” said Liam, speaking without looking at his longtime partner. “We’ve got to have as much fun as we can, while it lasts.”
“That’s what we’ve been doing.”
Liam reached forward and grabbed the box. He shuffled through the contents.
“There’s not much left,” he said, taking out a bottle and shaking it. “We’ve got a week at most.”
“There’s got to be some other way to get the stuff,” said Julia.
“Another way? Are you crazy?”
“It’s not that crazy. I mean, there’s always a way, right? That’s what we used to say when we were seducing someone together. That there was always a way. And it was usually right. Almost always.”
“We’ve already stopped at all the pharmacies we could find,” said Liam. “Opiates were the first things that were raided. We were weeks late.”
“But…”
“But what?”
“There’s got to be something natural we could try…”
“I think the slight withdrawal you’re experiencing is making you stupid. You know as well as I do where the poppy plant grows and where it doesn’t grow. And it’s not like we can get anywhere, start a crop, cultivate and process it, within time. And especially not with all the violence… I mean, hell, you taught a two-semester course on the opiate trade and its history…. Here, you really need this.”
Liam opened up the pill bottle, shook out a single pill. He tossed it to Julia, who caught it and swallowed it within a second. And without water.
“Feeling better?”
“Give me a moment.”
“I’d better take one too,” said Liam, shaking out another pill. And he shook out a second one, surreptitiously, so that Julia wouldn’t notice. He swallowed them both, throwing them back from the palm of his hand and opening up his throat the way he’d trained himself to.
Ten minutes later, the pills had started to kick in.
They were both feeling better.
“So what’s the plan?” said Julia.
“We’re going to go out with a bang.”
“A bang?”
“Yeah. We don’t have that much longer left. So we’re going to do what we do best.”
“And what’s that?”
“We’re going to have fun.”
“With who? We’ve already been with everyone else here hundreds of times. It’s lost its luster, you know? And no offense, Liam, but there’s nothing new if it’s just the two of us.”
Liam nodded. “Don’t worry, kid. We’re thinking along exactly the same lines.”
“So who is it then?”
“Who? Who better than that attractive pair that visited us earlier today.”
“They didn’t seem interested.”
“We’re going to have to make them interested. After all, it’s a new world. That means new rules.”
13
Jim
It was almost a full minute before Jim got a grip on himself. The pain was still there. Throbbing. But it wasn’t as all-encompassing and overpowering as it had been.
He was still sinking.
The water was cold and dark.
He fought against the pain and moved his left foot first.
Then his right.
Now his arms.
He kicked with his feet and churned with his arms.
He was rising, rising towards the surface of the lake.
The air had been knocked out of his lungs when the paddle had hit him.
But he was going to make it to the surface before he suffocated.
He knew he could do it.
He didn’t know how or why.
Or why he was continuing. It was if there was some resolve burning deep down inside him that couldn’t be snuffed out no matter what his body went through.
Jim felt the burning in his chest. It was intolerably painful.
He knew he didn’t have much longer.
He had to reach the surface soon. His lungs needed air. His body needed oxygen.
Jim had read about what it felt like to drown. They’d been horrible descriptions that were painful to read. But at the time he’d read them, they’d just been mere words on a page. Black and white text. Nothing more. No reality to them.
What he’d read had said that the body knows not to breathe underwater. The reflexes are so strong that a drowning person won’t automatically take a breath until right before they’re about to fall unconscious.
Knowing this, Jim was watchful for his own reflexes.
He felt it starting. He felt the yearning in his lungs and his throat and his mouth. He felt his body wanting to open his mouth.
But his mind knew that it was just water he’d be taking in, that he’d just die sooner.
The fact that the yearning was coming on now meant he wasn’t far from drowning.
He was kicking with everything he had. Pulling with his arms.
His muscles burned with an intensity he’d never felt before.
Suddenly, it was over.
All over.
His hand punched through the surface of the water. He felt the air on his hand before his mouth reached it.
His head broke through the surface. His mouth was already opening reflexively, water pouring into it.
He gasped and sputtered.
He tasted the air pouring in.
There wasn’t any time to think about whether he was about to be shot. Whether Andy was there in his boat, waiting for him to reappear.
If he was shot, he was shot. And that was it. His body was on the edge of death.
It wasn’t just that he couldn’t think abou
t getting shot. It was that there was simply nothing that he could do about it.
Jim’s muscles continued to burn. The pain wouldn’t leave them as he tread water.
The seconds passed slowly. They turned into minutes.
Time was moving as slow as molasses.
As the minutes passed, Jim slowly started to feel calmer. His mind was no longer ringing like an alarm, sending him every signal it could to tell him he was almost at the point of death.
His heart rate slowed.
His muscles were still exhausted.
He was freezing cold.
But he was alive.
He could breathe. There was oxygen in his blood and his brain.
And he hadn’t been shot.
Jim had to force himself to take stock of his surroundings, to scan the water around him.
The boat was gone.
And he couldn’t see the shore.
His head still throbbed in pain from the blow.
Jim reached for his Ruger instinctively, checking to see if it was there.
It wasn’t.
But it had to be there.
His holster was a good one.
Jim reached again, felt around, mental alarms going wild.
It was definitely gone, probably resting now on the bottom of the lake. Completely irretrievable.
Jim took a deep breath, trying to calm his panicking mind.
Panic wasn’t bad in and of itself.
You just had to know what to do with it.
Jim knew he couldn’t let it overtake him.
He couldn’t let himself become mentally defeated.
He knew he had to go on.
They desperately needed what Andy had stolen.
And Jim wasn’t about to give up.
He could deal with extreme exhaustion. He could deal with a blow to the head.
He’d figure out a way to deal without his sidearm. He’d improvise. On the shore, there’d be all sorts of things that could become weapons. It was just a matter of using them correctly.
Now all he had to do was find the shore.
If he couldn’t see it, he’d have to guess and just start swimming.
There was always a way forward. Always a path to survival.
It was just a matter of keeping the mind strong, fortified against self-doubt and weakness of all types.
14
Jessica
Jessica woke up with the worst headache of her life. Her mind and memory felt foggy.
Her surroundings were swimming around her, refusing to come into focus.
There were diffuse blobs somewhere in front of her. There was a source of light coming from somewhere.
It was like she was looking at the world through a dirty piece of thick glass.
Her eyes closed again. Her eyelids simply felt too heavy. And somehow painful. She couldn’t help herself.
It was a strange sensation, losing the little visual contact she had just briefly established with the world.
She must have been hit on the head. She was sure of that much, even though it took her minutes to figure it out.
She was putting the pieces together slowly. Not of what happened. But of what was going on now.
Her body seemed to be coming back online. System by system.
With her eyes closed, sound became more important.
There were rough male voices nearby. Talking raucously. Laughing.
Jessica was pretty sure they were speaking English. But she didn’t understand what they were saying. Her brain felt too slow to string the words together.
Slowly, the memories started coming back.
She’d been in the driveway of the lake house.
There’d been the men on the motorcycles.
Something had happened. Had she fought them?
What about the others? Jim? Rob?
Had they been hurt?
She couldn’t remember.
Her memory was a fog that she couldn’t break through.
All she really knew was that she’d been hit on the head. Hard.
And that she wasn’t at the lake house.
And that the voices around her weren’t voices she recognized.
The most likely scenario? She’d been kidnapped. Taken somewhere against her will.
To what purpose, she could only imagine.
Her mind felt impossibly tired. Just from being active. From thinking. From being conscious.
And with that, Jessica faded back into blackness. Back into a sleep that wasn’t restful. A sleep that didn’t restore. A sleep that wasn’t really sleep at all. A sleep punctuated by nightmares of the worst kind.
When she awoke again, she felt a little better. She didn’t know how much time had passed.
It was silent around her. The voices had disappeared.
She was hesitant to open her eyes. She remembered the last time. She remembered how she’d seen nothing but fuzzy shapes and lights.
What if the blow to her head had damaged her vision permanently?
What would she do then?
It wasn’t like there were doctors and surgeons who could potentially fix the issue.
No, she’d be blind for life. Or seriously sight-impaired.
And then what chance would she have?
Well, if she was blind, the sooner she learned the truth, the better chance she’d have.
She’d have to get out of this situation one way or the other, whether she could see or not.
It wasn’t any use sitting around feeling sorry for herself.
She opened her eyes.
Jessica breathed a sigh of relief.
She could see.
Her eyesight was a little blurry still, around the edges of her field of vision. But it wasn’t that bad. And maybe it’d get better.
She was out in the open, underneath the sky. The sky was gray and she couldn’t see the sun.
There were trees all around her.
She was in some sort of small clearing. It might have been a campground. Or something similar.
There were two motorcycles parked not far from her.
The men weren’t in sight.
Good.
It was the perfect opportunity.
All she had to do was get away. She’d be able to hide safely among the trees. She’d be able to rest until she was strong enough to start to find her way back to the lake house.
She reached to her side, expecting to feel the comforting weight of her Glock.
But it was gone.
Of course it was gone.
They’d have to have been idiots to leave her with her weapon.
But then again, they’d left her unsupervised.
Her mind was still foggy, and she suddenly realized that all she’d been doing for minutes now was looking around and planning. She hadn’t moved a muscle, except to reach for her Glock.
She was in a strange position, lying on her side on the ground.
She went to move, trying to uncurl her legs so that she could stand up.
Only to find that they were bound together. Tightly.
She looked down, craning her head down awkwardly.
Her ankles were bound together, as well as her thighs.
It wasn’t rope that bound her. Instead, there were jumper cables.
Great. Just great. They’d be tougher to break. Tougher to saw through.
But her hands were free.
She realized it all of a sudden. After all, she’d reached for her absent Glock just now. Her mind was still a mess of fog, the pieces of reality fitting together strangely, as if everything was desynchronized.
That had been with her right arm.
Her left arm was trapped underneath her body, and she realized that she couldn’t feel it at all.
She tried to keep calm.
Getting worried about her arm would do her no good. It would just make her less effective.
And if there’d ever been a time when she needed to be effective, it was now.
&nbs
p; Unfortunately, she couldn’t think clearly.
So she’d have to take things slow. Proceed item by item. Take things one at a time. Calm and measured.
OK. She was doing it.
She needed that arm. She’d get it to work.
She knew the clock was ticking. The motorcycle men might come back at any minute. But she still needed to proceed as calmly as she could.
Her left arm was probably just asleep. It had been stuck underneath her body for who knew how long.
Jessica tried to shift her weight off her arm.
But it was hard to move with her legs bound together.
The best she could do was wriggle her body around until she flopped down on her stomach. Her face pressed uncomfortably into the dirt.
Her left arm hung uselessly there. But at least it was free.
It was only a matter of time now before she started to regain feeling in it.
She knew she’d have to wait. She knew she couldn’t let herself get overcome with anxiety.
A minute passed.
Then another.
It felt like an eternity.
But, sure enough, she started to feel the painfully intense sensation of pins and needles creeping over her left arm.
It wasn’t long after that, that she was able to move it.
Now she had both arms at her disposal.
She pushed herself up off the dirt and got her legs around to her front so that she could reach down to untie the cables.
The motorcycle men had tied tight, complicated knots.
But they were still nothing more than knots.
What had they been thinking?
Had they been planning on her simply not waking up?
Or maybe they hadn’t been expected to be away for so long.
Jessica worked methodically and carefully.
In just another couple of minutes, she had the knots undone.
She stood up shakily, her legs in pain from the tight cords.
It was then that she heard the laughter.
Laughter coming from behind her.
Raucous laughter.
Cruel laughter.
She spun around.
The two motorcycle men were there, emerging from behind the trees where they’d been hiding.
They walked towards her.
Final Panic: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 2) Page 7
