She kept waiting for something. Some kind of impact.
Rob was still unconscious in the front seat. Well, “unconscious” was looking at the situation with rose-tinted glasses. Most likely, he was dead.
If he’d been alive, surely something by now would have stirred him awake from his unconscious stupor. Surely, the sound of a man being choked to death would have stirred him.
Aly’s hands hurt her terribly. She’d never squeezed anything so hard in her life. Muscles in her hands ached, muscles that she’d never even known that she’d had.
Somehow, the driver wasn’t dead yet.
Maybe soon. Any second now. Maybe.
She kept hoping that it’d be enough. That he’d just die.
The psychological aspect of it was just as hard, if not harder, than the physical torment of trying to strangle a man to death with her own hands.
Crazy thoughts ran through her head constantly. One after the other. At a rapid pace, like race cars zooming around a track, kicking up gravel and spraying dirt into the crowded stands. Thoughts like, “I should just let go. I shouldn’t kill him,” or, “This is wrong. I don’t even know him. I can’t kill him.”
She had to fight against her own thoughts because she knew it was a case of pure survival. She needed to listen to her animal instincts, not her social programming, because that wasn’t doing her any good now.
Suddenly, a tree was right in front of the windshield.
The RV crashed into the tree.
Everything seemed to slow down, as if she were watching a movie of her life in slow motion.
Almost preposterously, she tried to keep her hands on his neck.
But it was no use. The driver went flying forward, part of his body slamming into the steering wheel. His arms stuck out at odd angles for the brief moments that his body seemed to hang in the air.
Aly went crashing into the seat immediately in front of her. There wasn’t far to travel to hit that seat, only an inch or two. But the impact still knocked the wind out of her lungs.
The impact hit her hard.
Time sped up again.
She struggled to breathe.
Her head felt fuzzy. Shaken up. Everything was out of whack.
Her ears rang, as if she’d just heard some incredibly loud sound. But she knew there’d been no sound.
There was nothing but silence. And stillness.
The RV was still. A tree was right out the front windshield. A huge trunk. Branches running up against the glass that was cracked into spiderweb patterns.
One thought rang through her head. She had to get her hands back around that driver’s neck.
Her body was in pain. It felt like someone had punched her hard in the abdomen. Her arm felt funny. She was gasping for air.
She forced herself to move. Her body didn’t want to. It wanted to do anything but move. It wanted to just lie there, waiting, resting. Forever, if possible.
But her mind was strong. Stronger than her body. Strong enough to force her body to move.
She got herself up, and in a single movement, launched herself over the front seat.
Everything was out of order. Things were scattered all over the place. Rob’s body, unmoving, unconscious, mostly lay crumpled in a strange posture in the space in front of the seat he’d been in.
The driver, the stranger, was still alive. He had his hand on the door handle. He was trying to open the door. He was trying to escape.
Should she let him?
Maybe he’d just run away. Maybe he wasn’t a threat anymore.
Her body was pressed up against his.
She felt his bones, his wiry muscles. There was hardly any fat on his frame.
But as she hesitated, his face turned towards her.
His hair was now completely soaked in sweat, completely disarranged.
His pupils were small and contracted. There was hatred in his eyes. And fury too.
“You!” he snarled.
He sounded more like an animal than a human.
His face was nothing but hatred. He bared his teeth, his lips seeming to disappear for a moment, as if he were a wild wolf intent on completing the kill.
His hand released the door handle and started to swing around towards Aly.
Aly already had her hands almost in position.
She seized his neck. Just like before.
Now she had to do it all over again. She’d gotten so close. So close to killing him. And now what had it all been for? That effort? He’d gotten to breathe. He’d gotten another chance.
His hand came swinging around and smacked into her head. Hard. Her vision blacked out for a moment.
She squeezed and squeezed. His face jerked around.
It was all too confusing. Their bodies were tangled together.
It happened before she had time to register that it was happening. He brought his forehead down. Hard. Headbutting her.
She saw stars. Not actual stars. Just bright points of light against the blackness that overwhelmed her field of vision.
Slowly, her vision came back to her. Fuzzy. Not as good as before.
She kept her grip strong. As strong as she could. Her fingers dug into his flesh.
His teeth were against her. A horrible scraping feeling. He chomped down. Hard. His filthy teeth tore into what flesh there was left of her cheek, the meager fatty deposits that hadn’t yet been worn down by the days and weeks of the semi-starvation that they’d all subsisted on.
The pain flared through her. Pain that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
The man was simply an animal.
His face was going very white.
Thick saliva oozed from his mouth, covering her face.
His eyes burned with fury.
Suddenly, Aly knew the truth. She knew that she wouldn’t be able kill him. She wouldn’t be able to strangle him.
He was rocking his whole body. Pushing against her.
It was all so confusing.
Suddenly, something went crashing into the stranger’s head.
Part of his skull imploded.
Bits of brain and skull scattered everywhere.
There was a rock. Smallish. Covered in blood and brains.
There was a hand around the rock.
The hand was Rob’s.
The stranger’s body fell limp against her. His face was pressing up ahead hers now. He was completely dead. But still warm. Rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in. Not for a long while.
Aly tasted something. She felt around in her mouth with her tongue. There were little hard things. She spit, trying to get them out of her mouth. The sputtering ejected them. They were little pieces of skull.
Finally, Aly relaxed her hands from around the stranger’s neck. Her fingers didn’t seem to move properly. Even once free from the man’s neck, each hand was still fixed in the shape of a claw.
Rob’s face appeared. Tired eyes. Blood in his hair.
But very much alive.
He even flashed a smile.
“I thought you were dead,” said Aly.
“I guess I did too.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Neither do I,” said Rob, chuckling tiredly to himself. “Come on. Let me get this jerk out of our vehicle.”
It seemed like such an odd thing to say, calling the guy who she’d been fighting to the death a “jerk,” that Aly laughed. It seemed like the word “jerk” was altogether too casual, that there was no way it could describe the man she’d been trying to kill mere minutes before, the man whose eyes and face she knew she would never forget.
10
Jessica
Jessica’s eyesight was better, but it definitely wasn’t anywhere near perfect. And she still couldn’t see through one eye at all.
In front of her, Maddy ran as fast as her large pack allowed her. Her hiking boots crunched across discarded plastic bottles, leaves, sticks, and young saplings.
They were cutting through a semi-wooded are
a that seemed to separate the large road from a residential area.
Jessica could still hear the sound of the motorcycle engines over the crunching of plastic bottles and the snapping of sticks underfoot.
Two motorcycles had come up and stopped. Their engines seemed to be idling, occasionally revving. The riders were two big men. One had long, tangled hair. The other had a shaved head. Both looked almost too big for their motorcycles.
Jessica was surprised that she could see that far away. But she didn’t have time now to question what was going on with her vision. She was on the run for her life.
“Where are you taking me?” called out Jessica, looking over her shoulder back at the road. “I’m getting the feeling that they’re going to chase us.”
“Of course they’re going to chase us,” called out Maddy. She sounded somewhat cheerful, when she should have sounded, at the very least, terrified. But that seemed to be just the kind of person that Maddy was. Always cheerful. Always upbeat. No matter what.
“How do you know?”
Maddy had quickened her pace now. Her blonde ponytail bounced jauntily behind her. Jessica was panting, just trying to keep up with her. Maddy seemed to be in very good shape.
“Oh, they’ve chased me before. Never got me yet! So don’t worry.” She said it casually, as if she’d been running from them all her life and at this point, was completely used to it.
But Maddy was still a stranger. Just because she said it was going to be OK, that didn’t make Jessica feel any better.
Jessica glanced over her shoulder again. The two bikers had dismounted, and they were starting to walk slowly towards the edge of the road. One of them had a rifle that was clearly visible, slung over his shoulder. The other had something in his hand, but she couldn’t make out what it was.
“You’d better have a good hiding place! They’re gaining on us.”
It wasn’t completely true. After all, the space between Jessica and the bikers was growing, rather than shrinking. But Jessica wasn’t feeling good. She was gasping for breath. And her whole body hurt. Once those bikers started to run, she figured she’d have a hell of a time outrunning them or fighting them off.
Maddy seemed like she could outrun them if she had to. After all, she’d done it before.
But she didn’t necessarily seem like a fighter. Sure, she’d gotten Jessica disarmed and onto the ground. But Jessica had been weak and mostly blind, with dried blood obscuring her vision and some kind of unspecified head injury that made her all foggy and confused.
Maddy seemed too sweet and young to be a fighter. Completely different from Jessica. Jessica thought of herself as hardened, streetwise, and able to fend for herself.
There was no reason to believe that Maddy would wait behind anyway. What would happen if the bikers caught up with them was that Maddy would scamper off to safety, and Jessica would remain behind to fight.
Now normally, she might have been able to stop them. Pick them off from a distance.
But she was weak. It was hard for her to run now.
And one of the bikers had a rifle. That meant long-range accuracy. Much more than Jessica’s little handgun.
“There’s a house up ahead,” said Maddy, turning her head a little around, so that Jessica could hear her. “I’ve hidden in there before. Come on, you can make it. I’m not going to leave you behind.”
The words, “I’m not going to leave you behind,” were strange to hear from such a new acquaintance. They were words she’d now expect to hear from one of her friends, from Aly, Rob, or Jim.
Not that she knew where they were now.
So she had to put her trust in this stranger.
The house wasn’t far away. It’d just be a couple more minutes to get there at their current pace.
But Jessica didn’t know if she could keep up the current pace. Her body had been pushed past its limits.
Suddenly, her foot caught on something. A branch or a log. She didn’t see it.
She lost her balance and fell forward. Hard and fast.
She knew that she shouldn’t let her gun hit the ground hard. It could possibly lead to an accidentally discharge. So, with this in mind as she fell, she tried to break her fall with only her free hand.
And that didn’t work so well.
Her left hand hit the ground hard, and only broke the fall ever so slightly.
Her head was the next thing to hit the ground.
The impact seemed to shake her brain.
Her mind was all funny again.
Her vision went all fuzzy for a moment. Had she blacked out?
Pain ran through her. Blood on her mouth again.
It all seemed too familiar.
She had to get her mind together again.
Something important was happening. Oh yeah, she was being chased. By murderous bikers who’d probably torture her to death. And who knew what else.
Only seconds had passed, hopefully.
Her heart started to pound as the blurry image of those bikers came flashing through her jumbled mind. Now that she’d fallen, they’d likely overtake her.
Jessica was almost too scared to look up. She was sure that her new friend, Maddy, would be long gone.
But when she opened her eyes, Maddy was there, standing over her, leaning down, again offering her hand.
“Come on,” said Maddy, somehow smiling, despite the situation. “We’ve got to hurry. They’re really catching up to us.”
Why was Maddy being like this? Why was she so kind to strangers? Why was she literally risking her own life to help Jessica?
It just didn’t add up.
But Jessica had no choice.
Again, she took Maddy’s offered hand.
“Where are we going?”
“To a house to hide in.”
“Won’t they just see us enter?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got a trick that always outsmarts them.”
11
Rod
Rod and Bill had left their bikes behind on the road. Now they were stomping across a large undeveloped lot that separated the road from an area of suburban streets and cul-de-sacs.
Up ahead, two young women were rushing away from them. One had a long blonde ponytail. Both of them had good bodies. Muscular legs. Good curves. Youthful shapes. Of course, they were both a little on the thin side, probably from the lack of food. Rod liked his women with a little more meat on the bone, but given how hard up he was, he’d have to settle for less than his ideal.
Rod had seen the blonde one before. She was always around these parts, scampering off seductively with that backpack. She looked like she belonged at some university, or maybe taking a semester off to travel Europe or hike the Appalachian Trail. She was the type of woman that, before the EMP, had been off-limits to a man like Rod. Just step near a woman like that and she’d be screaming for help or dialing 911 on her cell phone.
But now, after the EMP? Well, there were no rules. Rod could do what he wanted.
Just that thought alone excited him.
At the pharmacy, Rod and Bill had hung back while the others had rushed headfirst into the building to their death. Since the EMP, everyone in the gang had been bingeing so hard on meth that they just weren’t thinking straight. The drug had made them want to fight and to kill. It had made them completely fearless. Which was good in some situations. And of course, it was bad in others.
Rod and Bill had heard their buddies die in there, fighting some maniac loner to the death. And over what? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Rod and Bill were smarter than the rest. It wasn’t as if they were completely different. They still understood the benefits of meth, for instance, but they knew not to go whole hog on it.
Rod and Bill knew how to maintain a nice steady buzz, where your teeth were still grinding, and you were still pumped full of that shaky energy, but you weren’t yet hallucinating ghosts and cops around every corner.
They knew how to take it easy.
And they knew how to have fun.
After seeing those guys die pointlessly at the pharmacy, they’d agreed that they wanted to pursue simply the finer things in life. Namely: women.
They needed to get some women. After all, women made life worth living. What was the point without them? What was the point of life without pleasure?
So Rod and Bill had split off from the rest of the gang as they all fled the pharmacy and that crazy maniac in the stairwell.
They’d agreed that the first thing they’d do was capture themselves some women. They knew from experience that there wasn’t much point in trying to seduce women with their looks or charm. No, neither of them had had much luck in that department. But they also understood that women wanted a show of strength and power. And they understood very well that the land really and truly now was competently lawless. If Rod and Bill could capture some women, then they’d be theirs, until someone stronger came along and took them.
“I call the blonde one,” said Bill, who was trailing Rod, a little back and to the left.
“The blonde one?” said Rod. “Are you nuts? I already called her.”
Rod turned as he spoke. And as he did, he saw that Bill had his rifle raised, as if he was getting ready to use it.
“What the hell are you doing with that thing?” said Rod, stopping in his tracks and wrapping one of his giant hands around Bill’s rifle.
“Dude, get off my gun. What gives?”
“Remember what we talked about?”
“About getting some women? Yeah, of course. What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“Not about that. About thinking things through.”
“Not really,” said Bill.
“Well, I’ll give you a little refresher course. Before you go and shoot those women, let’s stop and take a moment to think this thing through.”
“Here you go again with this anger management crap. I don’t need this.”
It was true. Rod had gotten his “stop and think things through” line from an anger management course that he’d been legally obligated to take several years ago after he’d headbutted a rude bartender unconscious.
Final Dread: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 3) Page 7