If there’d been two, maybe they’d both gone running after Jessica. Yes, that was probably it. After all, two sets of running footsteps would sound like just one.
It was too bad for Jessica. She was probably dead now, after all. Killed by those monstrous bikers.
But it was her own fault. She’d been too arrogant. Too petty. Too headstrong. Too independent. She should have listened to Maddy. After all, Maddy was educated. Maddy knew what she was doing.
A heavy footstep outside shattered the silence. Unmistakable. Creaking and heavy. Sounded like a leather boot. Amazing what you could hear in complete silence.
Then nothing.
Nothing but silence.
A gunshot far away broke the silence.
Then a scream. A horrible, blood-curdling scream that came from a good distance away. It must have been incredibly loud to travel so far through the night.
The scream made her heart pump even faster.
There was only one person who could have screamed. Jessica.
The footstep nearby came again, cold dead leaves on the ground crunching under a heavy boot.
What had happened to Jessica?
Would her own fate follow Jessica’s?
Whatever had happened to Jessica, it wasn’t good. Anything that produced a scream like that wasn’t good.
Her heart was thumping intensely.
The world was once again silent.
She needed to do something. She needed to act.
She was smart after all. She had a good brain. She just needed to use it. Then she could get herself out of this situation.
She’d done well so far since the EMP. She’d survived. There was no reason why she shouldn’t keep surviving. She just had to not give in to fear.
She still had her flashlight on, casting its light into the basement.
She knew that the light wasn’t going to help her. If anything, it’d just act as a beacon, drawing attention to her. It was more like she was shining a spotlight on herself, alerting predators that she was here, ready to be attacked.
From the outside of the basement, the light would have been obviously visible. The little windows would have been lit up with the pale white light. Without any other light for possibly miles around, it was really like a beacon, a lighthouse.
Sure, the light wouldn’t have traveled far, which is how she’d justified the flashlight’s use to Jessica. And it was true. From more than a house away, it wouldn’t have been seen.
But that footstep wasn’t more than a house away. She’d heard it close by. Mere feet away. Someone was out there. About to pounce.
And the flashlight was only going to make it easier for whoever it was. When they inevitably came into the basement, she’d have the room completely lit up for them. She wouldn’t be hidden in the darkness. They wouldn’t have to search.
She needed to turn it off.
Her finger was right on the flashlight’s power switch. She knew what she had to do.
Another footstep. Loud.
But she couldn’t get her finger to actually hit the switch. She was paralyzed with fear.
She was smart. Brilliant, even. Academically successful. She would have gone far in life.
It wasn’t her fault.
If it hadn’t been for the EMP, who knew how far she would have gotten in life.
Nothing was her fault.
She’d done everything right.
She’d made all the right decisions.
She couldn’t blame herself.
The metal bulkhead door began to creak. Someone was opening it.
She was frozen. She couldn’t move. She had a knife. She knew how to fight, with or without it. She was “academically” proficient in hand-to-hand combat. She knew all the moves by the book. She’d won tournaments and she’d given demonstrations in front of her class.
But in the real world?
Nothing worked 100 percent.
She was frozen. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. The flashlight was still on.
There were a hundred things she could have done in that moment to at least increase her chances of survival, but instead she did nothing.
She just thought about how it was all so unfair. She thought about how great she’d been, and how great people had told her she’d been, and about how they’d all been right all along.
She also stared more or less straight ahead, right at the corner of the basement where the water boiler was situated. There were cobwebs everywhere, which were eerily illuminated by the flashlight’s wide-angled diffuse beam. She didn’t see any spiders, and for some reason her mind seemed to decide that not seeing the spiders was somehow relevant and important, even though she knew it wasn’t.
Footsteps on the concrete stairs leading down the basement. Very heavy ones.
The metal doors slammed closed, their rattling echoing throughout the basement.
She was still just staring straight ahead at the boiler. She couldn’t even bring herself to look at her attacker. Not even to turn her head the slightest bit. It was as if she was completely unprepared for reality. It was as if she’d been so overly confident in herself and her abilities, after being told so thousands of times by awards and report cards and her parents and friends, that she’d never really put herself to the test in the real world. Sure, she’d gotten out of some tough spots already, but surviving was about statistics, about staying alive no matter what happened, not about catching a few lucky breaks.
Although she couldn’t make herself turn off the flashlight or move her head, to make any movement to prepare for an attack, her mind was still active, and in the periphery of her vision, she saw him approaching.
He was disgusting. That was the only word that came to her head. Before the EMP, if she’d seen him on the street, she would have crossed to the other side. If he’d entered a restaurant, she would have asked the management to call the police.
His hair looked like it had been attacked randomly with scissors. It wasn’t anything resembling a haircut, but it wasn’t simply overgrown either. It was all tangled together.
His lips were thin and pale, and looked somehow absolutely disgusting in the pale cold white light of the flashlight. His nose was angular and seemed even more so with the intense shadows that cut across his face. He looked like a villain in some old black-and-white movie.
His sideburns were long and thick and full, formed from hairs that seemed as thick as coiled wires.
His skin was a pale, disgusting white, with a hint of jaundiced yellow.
His lips curled back in some kind of smile, revealing a mouth full of missing and chipped teeth, all crooked and arranged in a ramshackle, chaotic way.
In the darkness, and with the fear, his mouth seemed somehow otherworldly, even though this was very much reality. It seemed like the mouth of a monster from her earliest nightmares, rather than a human mouth.
He looked completely grotesque, and her body recoiled reflexively, finally breaking her free from her frozen state.
Her body wanted to fight or flee.
She didn’t think about it. She just reacted.
She decided to flee.
She darted towards the door. But that meant she had to run right past him.
He moved swiftly to block her path, dipping his shoulder down like he was a football player and colliding with her.
The sharp point formed by his shoulder dug into her painfully and she was knocked backwards.
She fell backwards in the air towards the hard concrete basement floor.
She hit the floor hard. The air was knocked from her lungs. She gasped for breath.
The flashlight fell from her hand, clattering onto the floor, its beam of light now illuminating only an arbitrary and small section of the wall.
The rest of the basement fell once again into complete darkness.
Suddenly, she received a hard kick in the stomach. She doubled over in pain, crying out.
She couldn’t flee. And she was unfrozen. Stil
l full of fear. But ready to act on it. Her education and culture had fallen away from her, and she was once again a human animal, ready to do anything to survive.
She couldn’t see him, but she could smell him. Her nostrils were full of the stench. A horrible stench, like something organic that had rotted long ago, but mixed with the stench of burning plastic.
She heard him sniffing hard in the darkness, as if he were inhaling something.
She knew more or less where he’d be. To her right side. She could get him.
It was a technique she’d practiced too many times to count in class. The idea was that when you were down, you could position your arms in such a way against the floor, allowing you to swing your legs around. Doing this allowed you to knock your opponent off-balance, and, hopefully, as they collapsed to the floor, you could stage your next attack.
She got her arms in position, pressing hard against the floor.
Then she swung her legs around.
She did it just the way she was supposed to. Just the way she’d been taught, and just the way she’d done hundreds of time in class.
Her technique was good. And she got pleasure, despite the circumstances, in knowing that she’d executed the move just the right way.
Her Krav Maga teachers would have been proud. She performed the technique flawlessly.
She felt the kick hit his legs. In just the right spot. It was a good kick, good and hard.
He did just what he was supposed to do. He fell. Heavy. With a grunt of pain as he hit the cement floor.
She was already moving towards him, ready to attack. Her hand was formed into a fist. Since she couldn’t see, she’d strike him anywhere she could. Then, if she found his neck, she’d go for that with both hands. Strangle him to death. It was a quick way to end the situation. Or, if she only had one hand free, she’d punch him hard in the neck. It was a good way to disable him for the moment while she worked on other options.
In the dark, amid the horrible stench from the man, her mind was racing. It was working again. It wasn’t stuck in fear. It was doing what it was supposed to do. And she was taking advantage of her most powerful asset, which was her well-trained, well-educated, sharp-as-a-tack mind.
“You’re going to regret that,” he hissed, his heavy hot disgusting breath reaching her like a furnace blast.
She knew where he was now. She lashed out, her arm whipping around towards the source of his voice, her hips turning expertly in a snapping motion, throwing her weight behind the punch as much as she could from her position.
Her fist collided with his face. Hit a protrusion. Probably his nose. Something warm covered her hand instantly. Blood.
Good. She’d hit his face.
He growled. No words. Just a guttural noise. And not a noise of pain. More like a primal expression of anger.
Maddy had a plan. She wasn’t scared now. She felt once again confident. Once again ready. Once again in control. Once again smart.
She was scrambling, trying to get into a different position, trying to get her body around so that she could attack. Go for the throat. Put this piece of trash out of his misery. She’d relish it. There was no saving someone like this.
She was turning a corner, mentally. She was learning something about herself. She was a badass, basically. She could do just about anything.
She was almost in position, the cold concrete beneath her, when she heard the unmistakable sound of a gun. Metal on metal. A slick sound. Something she’d heard before in the movies. It sounded different in real life, but it was still very much recognizable.
“Now die,” was all the man said, his words barely intelligible, his mouth thick with the blood pouring from his nose.
And those were the last words she heard. The last thing she smelled was the man’s horrible stench. The last thing she felt was the disgusting and dirty rag of a shirt he wore brushing up against her skin.
Maddy never had time to hear the gunshot.
18
Jessica
Jessica knew that the guy was just playing games with her, just trying to get her scared. She may not have known a lot of what there was to know in the world, but at least she knew what she did know. And at least she was streetwise enough to know when someone was messing with her head.
He couldn’t see her in the inky darkness, or else he would have attacked her already. Shot her. Or run at her. Tackled her. Whatever. He would have done something.
If she moved suddenly, he’d probably spot her. The eyes and brain were good at detecting movement.
She’d mentally called his bluff, just remaining still, and apparently it’d been too much for him to take.
Now he was falling into his own trap.
She heard him running, his footsteps heavy.
He was coming towards her, but not directly. She could see his silhouette as he lumbered along. There was something strange about his gait. His arms were shuffling along rapidly at his sides. It seemed as if he should have been running faster than he really was. In reality, he was moving somewhat clumsily, somewhat slowly.
There was something wrong with him. Something strange. She didn’t know what it was. But she just had a gut feeling about it.
It was OK with her, though. It was better to have an enemy that wasn’t all there, rather than one that was really with it.
“There’s no chance now!” he yelled out. At first glance, he wanted to make himself more of a target than he already was, not satisfied with the noises he was making by crashing through the quiet night.
If he kept running the way he was going, he’d pass her by, with over fifteen feet of distance between them. He was headed off at an angle away from her.
She could let him just keep running. Off into the night. Maybe she’d never see him again.
Or maybe he’d boomerang back around.
She couldn’t risk it.
She had her gun out in front of her. Steady hands. She wasn’t scared. Not any longer. Her belly and legs were pressed into the cold ground. A good position. Stable.
Her one eye wasn’t working. But that didn’t matter. She only really needed one. She knew how to adjust her aim.
She lined up the shot. Easy. He was moving at a steady pace. More or less.
She squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked. The man fell heavily to the ground.
Her ears rang with the gunshot. Nothing else happened. Nothing moved.
She knew that if she could have heard it, the world was nothing but silent.
She lay there for a full five minutes before getting up. She wanted to make sure that she was alone.
Jessica approached the corpse slowly, keeping her gun trained on it, and keeping her one functioning eye moving constantly, making sure to track it back to the corpse.
There wasn’t much chance that he wasn’t dead, but it didn’t hurt to check. She knelt down, grabbed the man’s arm, and pressed her index and ring finger forcibly against the corpse’s wrist. She pressed hard because if there was a pulse, it was still possible to miss it. She knew that people sometimes forget that it’s hard enough to find their own pulse, let alone an injured person who appears dead, lying on the ground.
But there wasn’t a pulse. He was dead.
She grabbed his gun, checked it. She didn’t recognize the brand name. Appeared to be some kind of off-brand. She couldn’t see it that clearly in the light, but the gun felt cheap in her hand. Things that should have been smooth had a rough feel to them, and things that should have been a little rougher, like the grip on the handle, felt slick enough to slip right out of her hand.
The cheapness of the gun surprised her. She’d thought that most of those outlaw biker guys knew their guns. She’d seen plenty of them at the range back in Rochester. Well, maybe this guy knew his guns but was too cheap to buy the real deal. Or maybe this was just some gun he’d found somewhere else, or taken off a dead guy. These were crazy times, after all, and the man may very well have been without his own gun.
Why w
as she bothering to think about this at all?
Probably because minds wandered when they were fatigued. Well, some of them did. Others shut down completely.
In the man’s pockets, there were a couple clips of spare ammunition. Jessica pocketed these.
There were some little baggies of white powder, and a couple of empty vials. Some kind of illicit narcotic. Jessica tossed these to the ground and left them there. She didn’t want to have anything to do with that stuff. It hadn’t done this dead guy much good, anyway.
There was all manner of junk in the pockets. Little reminders of the world that the EMP had destroyed. There were big balls of dryer lint. It’s not like there were going to be any working mechanical dryers ever again, not that they’d had an opportunity to wash their clothes since the EMP. There were stubs to porno movies. Were there even porno theaters anymore? She thought they’d died out with disco. Maybe in some of the big cities. There were gum wrappers and plenty of orange plastic prescription pill bottle vials. Some of them had a couple pill fragments left in them. Jessica tossed these on the ground as well.
Finally, after sorting through the junk, she found something useful. It was a big stick of beef jerky. Nice and thick, almost an inch in diameter. She’d never seen one like this before. It didn’t even have a brand name on it. Maybe it was one of those homemade kinds, that you might find on the roadside in a very rural area. The plastic wrapper had been peeled back and a couple big bites had already been taken out of the jerky. Normally, she wouldn’t have wanted to share germs with a creep like this dead guy, but under the circumstances, she didn’t care at all. She didn’t even think it over. She just bit into it. A couple huge bites. She couldn’t help herself. She quickly pocketed the rest of it, knowing that if she didn’t, she’d eat the whole thing, get sick, and possibly vomit it all back up, wasting all the calories that she desperately needed.
Within just a few minutes of taking a couple bites, Jessica felt warmth starting to creep back into parts of her body that had been so cold for so long she’d almost forgotten that they could be warm. Her toes start to heat up, and the tips of her fingers became more nimble and warm. It was the chronically high adrenaline starting to ease up just a little, her metabolism finally having some fuel to burn.
Final Dread: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 3) Page 12