But sometimes that wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
He’d be his own worst enemy tonight, and he was already aware of that. Once his stomach was a little fuller, and his strength started to return, he’d try to convince himself that he should set out down the road, looking for Aly and the others. But more than likely, he’d have just enough strength to get far away from the pharmacy, and not enough strength to return there by early morning. It was a perfect recipe for having Aly return to the pharmacy, only to find Jim long gone. Then, she’d have no choice but to assume the worst, that he was dead and gone.
He’d have to stay there, in the dark, resting, eating, and rehydrating, fighting against his own most basic impulses.
13
Rob
Rob had a tremendous headache, and his whole body ached. But other than that, he felt surprisingly good for having been knocked out for who knew how long. He’d just had his mouth hanging open in complete surprise while Aly told him everything that had happened.
Granted, his own experience had been pretty strange on its own. Apparently what had happened was that the second crash had woken Rob up from his passed-out state. It had only taken him a few seconds to realize that something was horribly wrong. And then? He’d done what he had to do. No matter how unpleasant, he wasn’t going to let Aly die, no matter how dazed he was. He’d been aware enough to realize that she was about to die unless he did something. So he’d done it. There wasn’t a point, the way Rob saw it, in overthinking it.
Rob and Aly were standing outside the RV, surveying the damage. They’d just finished dragging the corpse of the man Rob had killed a few meters away from the RV. It seemed frivolous, maybe, but this way they didn’t have to actually look at the corpse. But there was still blood all over the front seat. And bits of bone. Both Rob and Aly had his blood on them. And it was still fresh.
“So there’s no way it’s going to work again?” said Aly, standing there with her hands on her hips, as if she was trying to solve some difficult-but-resolvable problem.
Rob couldn’t help but let out a frustrated chuckle that sounded half like he was exhaling sharply and half like he was laughing at a not-so-great joke. “Seriously, Aly?” he said. “Look at it. The engine’s completely caved in.”
The RV had really done a number on the engine. There was no way they could even get the hood up.
“But don’t you think that...” Aly paused, as if thinking that if she thought just hard enough she’d come up with something that would work. “Maybe just try starting the engine again?”
“We’ve already tried that, Aly. There’s no way it’s going to crank. There’s just no way.”
“I thought some of these RVs had engines in the rear or something.”
“Well, not this one,” said Rob. “Come on, we’re wasting daylight. We’ve got to come up with a plan. And it can’t include the RV. We’ve got to give up on this.”
“But... Come on, isn’t there something?”
It was getting ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. But Rob understood where she was coming from.
After all, they’d left Jim back at the pharmacy. Who knew if he was still alive? All Aly wanted to do, understandably, was to get back to her husband as quickly as possible. And to do that, they’d need a vehicle. And the only vehicle they had was the RV that was clearly never going to start again.
Rob just needed to figure out how to tear her away from this idea that she was getting fixated on. The fixation had something to do with desperation and a lot to do with exhaustion. He’d been there himself, getting stuck in thought loops that seemed to lead nowhere.
Rob suddenly realized that he was going to have to step up. Aly was there, peering at the hood of the RV as if she was really thinking that there was a chance that she could fix it. He wasn’t going to tear her away from this unless he took charge and came up with a plan himself. Normally he relied in a large part on the others, either following their lead or collaborating with them. Rarely did he come up with a plan himself.
Well, now was as good a time as any to start.
His whole body ached. His head was pounding.
But he really didn’t mind. Maybe it was because he’d spent years being overweight and feeling like garbage all the time. He’d slimmed down considerably since the EMP. Not carrying that extra weight was enough to make anyone feel better. His muscles literally had much less to carry, much less work to do. His organs were probably benefiting as well.
That’s what a severely limited diet did to just about anyone. For the others, it had actually been harder to adapt to the diet than it had been for Rob. In a way, his extra padding of fat had been an advantage. It had provided his body with plenty of calories to draw on while he subsisted on the meager rations, day after day.
“OK,” said Rob, clapping his hands together. “Here’s what I need you to do, Aly. I need you to come back inside the RV with me. We’re going to gather everything useful that we can take with us. Well, first we’re going to make sure we have backpacks. OK?” Rob wasn’t totally used to laying out a plan like that, but he figured that it wasn’t half bad for an early attempt.
“Just a second, I think I’m onto something here,” said Aly. “Do you see the way the hood is caved in here? I was thinking that if we hammered that out a bit that it might...”
“You’re great, Aly, but you’re starting to scare me. You’re losing touch with reality.”
“Says who?” snapped Aly, turning her head towards him and making an expression that frankly scared him.
“Says me,” said Rob. “I’m your friend, remember? And I want to find Jim almost as much as you do. Here, have this.”
Rob was surprised that the candy bar he pulled from his pocket still had an intact wrapper. It had been through a lot. He’d kept it there for weeks on end, and it had probably melted and reformed too many times to count. He’d kept it there thinking that he’d need it to get through this “diet,” but somehow he’d ended up feeling better simply never eating it and instead keeping it as a reward for his future self.
Rob held the candy bar up meaningfully so that Aly could clearly see it and ripped open the wrapper.
To most people before the EMP, the candy bar, having gone through its countless cycles of heating and cooling, would have been unappetizing at best and disgusting at worst. But to almost anyone still alive since the EMP, it was food. Good food too. It was packaged, and unlikely to expire.
“You need this more than I do,” said Rob.
Before the EMP, he’d always been aware of his own blood sugar fluctuations. He’d never been quite diabetic, but he’d always been on the border. And each time he’d visited the doctor, which to be fair wasn’t really that often, he’d been advised that if he didn’t change his lifestyle drastically, he was headed for full-blown type 2 diabetes. He’d always just shrugged it all off as alarmist professional speak.
But he had been aware that sometimes he’d get into a seriously grumpy funk, usually after some stress, like getting canned from a new job, and that something with a bit of sugar in it would pick him right up again.
For whatever reason, this had all stopped for him since the EMP. Despite the intense stress he’d been under, his blood sugar had felt stable.
His hope now was that the intense stress Aly had just been through had tanked her blood sugar.
“Don’t try to bribe me with a candy bar,” said Aly. “This is serious stuff we’re talking about.”
“I know it’s serious,” said Rob, in his most reasonable tone. “And that’s why I need you to be functioning one hundred percent. My concern is that you’ve been under a lot of stress. I think a bit of food might help you recover. I need your help, Aly. Won’t you just try it?”
He was trying to be as diplomatic as humanly possible, fully aware that she might bite his head off with one wrong word.
“Fine,” scoffed Aly, seizing the candy bar from his hand in a single motion.
Rob watched with s
ome consternation as she ate the mashed mix of sugar, chocolate, and articulation ingredients in a single bite. She just kind of shoved it all into her mouth.
Rob knew from experience that it took a few minutes for something like that to help, so he sort of just stayed quiet for a little while, until gently suggesting again that she accompany him into the interior of the RV so that they could gather supplies.
“Sure,” she said. Her voice sounded different. Not quite as angry. Not quite as freaked out. Still worried, but reasonably so. Considering the situation, worrying made sense.
Inside the RV, they got to work.
They got the packs ready. Scoured the RV for supplies. Some of the stuff was theirs from earlier, but a lot of it wasn’t. A lot of it was from the creepy professors they’d taken the RV from.
There were decisions to make, regarding the gear. Hard choices, like whether to bring food or rope. There was only so much that the two of them could realistically carry without wearing themselves out too much.
Aly seemed to be feeling a hell of a lot better, so Rob figured that the candy bar had worked.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything nearly as exciting as a melted candy bar left in the food stores. Most of it was stuff left over from the professors. Things like granola cereal, pemmican, and odd stuff like kale chips that only a professor could really like.
“This isn’t even really food,” Rob said, examining the pack of kale chips with added fish oil. “We can’t bring this.”
“If it has calories, then it doesn’t matter,” said Aly. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than whether you like it or whether it tastes any good.”
She didn’t snap at him. She was just being practical. She was back to being her old self.
It was remarkable to Rob that people could go through so much. Aly had recently had to abandon her husband. She’d tried to strangle a man to death with her bare hands. She’d almost been killed herself. And then she’d seen Rob demolish the man’s skull. And now, after a candy bar, she was more or less back to normal. Well, maybe not normal. But getting there. Humans were resilient. He needed to remember that the next time things seemed to be too hard.
If his buddy Jim was still alive, then Rob figured he’d be doing OK. No matter what he’d been through.
There wasn’t any point in wondering whether Jim was alive or not. He either was or he wasn’t.
What they did have to wonder about, however, was how long it would take them to walk back to the pharmacy. And about whether Jim would stick around there.
“There’s always the chance we can find another vehicle along the way,” said Rob. “After all, there are plenty of abandoned cars. Motorcycles. All sorts of things.”
“You’re being way too optimistic,” said Aly. “Think about how many vehicles there are that stopped working when the EMP hit. And the ones that are left? They’re commodities.”
“Yeah,” said Rob. “But people are dying off. We’ve seen it ourselves. Less people. That means less drivers.”
“Think it through, though,” said Aly. “You need the keys... neither of us know how to hotwire anything. Anyway, none of this matters. If we find a vehicle, then that’s great. But we need to count on not finding one. So how far do you think we are from the pharmacy?”
“Beats me,” said Rob. “I was passed out for most of the trip, remember?”
“Shit,” muttered Aly, biting her lip, her eyes looking up as she did some serious mental calculations.
“What is it?”
“I just hope we can get there before sunrise.”
“Why sunrise?”
“I don’t think Jim will hang around much longer than that. He’ll think that we left.”
“You really think so?”
“He’s my husband.”
“I guess you’d know him better than anyone.”
Aly nodded. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got a long walk ahead of us. Let’s grab the rest of this stuff and get a move on it.”
They were already tired, exhausted, and injured in various ways. A whole night of walking in the darkness didn’t sound pleasant. But what did sound pleasant these days? Lying down and resting? That was as good as waiting around to die. Not much point in that. Living was moving, continuing, fighting. Every inch of the way.
14
Maddy
Maddy and her new friend, Jessica, were in the basement of one of the houses. They’d made their way from one house to the other until Maddy was sure that they’d lost the trail of the bikers.
Darkness had fallen. The small windows that led outside showed nothing but blackness.
Maddy had a little flashlight that she held. From its light, she could see the face of her new friend. More than a friend. More like a rescue. A project. Someone to help.
Their brief conversation had fallen into silence, and Maddy was left with her own thoughts. She found herself staring off into the darkness, contemplating and reflecting. Wondering about her new situation. Her new life. And her past one
Her new friend seemed to be struggling with something. Physical pain, maybe. Her face was contorted. Her breathing was a little too fast. A little too heavy. Her eye didn’t look good.
When the EMP had struck, Maddy had been almost finished with her junior year of college. She went to a private university, one that cost her parents, or more accurately her grandparents, quite a bit of money in tuition and expenses.
She’d known what people thought of her in town, that she was just another spoiled, stuck-up rich kid who didn’t understand how the world worked. She could see their eyes following her when she went into the downtown area, on those rare occasions when she had a spare moment that let her steal away from campus, from the long hours in the basement of the library studying for her exams, trying to commit just a couple more facts to memory.
Maddy didn’t think that she was like her classmates. Unlike them, she had an understanding of her place in the world. She understood that she came from a family with a lot more money than most. And she also understood that her family, her grandparents mainly, had worked very, very hard for that money.
During her childhood, her grandparents had taken her on various trips, often to far-flung places. They weren’t quite vacations, although many would consider them such. Her grandparents had been big travelers, now that they were retired and had sold the business that they’d started themselves for a handsome profit. But her grandparents had brought Maddy along for a specific purpose, which was to educate her, rather than just to sit on the beach and relax.
So Maddy had learned how the rest of the world lived. She’d learned that not everyone had food or even water every day. She’d learned that outside of the US, life could be a lot different. And that even in the US, there were many who lived much, much differently than she did.
So she understood the looks of jealousy and resentment when she walked down the busted-up streets, where over half of the stores had been shuttered up years ago due to the terrible economy in the area.
In truth, the city had been going through very hard times. When the big companies that had dominated the 1980s had closed up many of their factories as a result of the increasing digital technology that had made their products less relevant, the universities and the hospitals had become the biggest employers in the area. And as far as Maddy understood it, that wasn’t a good sign.
Maddy had been a good student. Too good, maybe. She’d avoided parties and, for the most part, men, preferring to dedicate most of her time to her studies. She hoped one day to be the kind of person who could work on changing a place for the better. She had trouble being realistic, and she was one of those people who was unrealistically optimistic about the future and her role in it.
When the EMP had hit, she’d been in the library, reading an economics textbook that was as dry as the cracking paint on the wall in front of her.
She’d been one of the only students who’d realized that something serious was going on.
Most of the kids had just taken the opportunity to party, to crack open some beers, or to tap a keg. Most of those who did realize that there was a problem had assumed that the campus security or the police would take care of the problem.
But Maddy was different. When the power hadn’t come back on in the first forty-eight hours, and there’d been no communication from the outside world, she realized that she’d have to leave on her own if she wanted to survive. She’d been to enough places in the world with her grandparents that she understood that the world wasn’t the perfectly ordered place that most of her fellow students imagined it to be. The police, surely, had their own families to worry about, as well as plenty of more serious problems in the city to handle. Maddy had correctly assumed that they wouldn’t have time to go out to the campus and rescue what amounted to a bunch of spoiled rich kids who’d been getting drunk for two days straight rather than gathering supplies.
Maddy had left before anything terrible had happened, but after she’d left, she’d heard rumors about awful things happening to the students. Some of the locals had been starting to starve and had correctly assumed that there’d be plenty of completely unguarded food over at the rich private university. Hell had ensued, and from what Maddy had heard, she wouldn’t have lived through it if she’d been there.
Maddy fully realized that she’d be dead if she’d stayed at the university. She’d be dead if she’d listened to what everyone else had had to say. She’d be dead if she’d believed what the authorities at the campus had told everyone, that everything would be fine and that there was nothing to worry about. The campus security was a joke, and the residential advisers had known nothing at all. Not to mention her friends, the few professors who’d hung around, or the administration.
She also realized fully well that maybe those very same authority figures might have been competently right when they’d told her time and time again throughout her years at college. They’d always been telling her that she was too altruistic, that she was going to end up trying to help others too much rather than trying to help herself. They said it was going to get her into big trouble. Her parents, too, had told her the same thing, and even her grandparents, the same ones who’d taken her on all those trips.
Final Dread: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 3) Page 9