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by Kyle Danvers

  “And what if it isn’t? We’re not going to find a faster way back to Los Angeles than this. And if it is a trap, we’re already in it anyway, so we might as well see it through,” Joel said.

  They had no other choice. Ashley and Joel couldn’t go back into the woods, and face however many people might be there waiting for them, who might’ve heard the commotion and come running toward it. They still didn’t know whether or not Mark was alone, even though it seemed that way. For all they knew, he could’ve had a gang of friends, like the ones back on the bridge who’d shot down the cops, and that was the last thing Ashley wanted to run into now.

  “There’s nowhere safer than the open sea right now,” Joel said. “Think about it; we could bypass the cities entirely, run along the coast for as far as we can get, and then try our luck from there. It’ll be much safer than walking, and it’ll damn sure be safer than driving, given what we saw back in San Rafael,” he continued.

  His words washed over her in a wave, but they didn’t sink in. She wasn’t paying attention. All Ashley could think about was what she’d left behind in the woods.

  She’d done the very thing she’d witnessed overseas on the frontlines so often and sworn she’d never do—and done it without so much as a moment of hesitation. Ashley's job was to help people, not take their lives.

  Mark was innocent, just a man trying to survive, trying to give his daughter a better chance and Ashley had killed him.

  “Ashley,” Joel hissed. “Don’t shut down on me. Not now. I need you to keep going.”

  “What if I can’t?” Ashley asked. Joel placed his hands on her shoulders, looked her straight in the eye, and squeezed her.

  “You can. You’re a survivor, I know you are, that’s why you didn’t hesitate,” Joel said, and Ashley choked. Was that why? The answer wasn’t clear to her. At the moment, with Mark reaching for the gun, she’d lost control of herself. She’d become something dark, someone she didn’t recognize.

  How could Ashley be sure that wasn’t who she was? What if she lost control again?

  “Joel, what I did—” Ashley started.

  “Was necessary. Now come on,” Joel said and, crouching down, he made a beeline for the marina. It was an awful idea, but Ashley followed him because she had no other choice. If she stopped now, she would never be able to start again.

  They reached the marina quickly, and Joel crouched up against the dock by the waterfront. He held a finger to his lips and pointed over his shoulder, Mark’s gun held tightly in his good hand. Ashley hadn’t realized Joel had picked it up, but she was glad he did.

  In a situation like this, boats were sure to be valuable, and there were sure to be people there to guard them. They would need to be able to defend themselves, and there wouldn’t be a better way to do that than with a gun, something they now had.

  Ashley strained her ears, trying to figure out what Joel was pointing at when the purr of a motor reached her. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized what it meant. Not only were there boats in the marina, at least one of them worked—and they weren’t as alone as they’d thought.

  Through the darkness, Ashley spotted a figure pacing back and forth further along on the docks. She couldn’t be sure if he was alone, but it was safe to bet he wasn’t.

  “We have to take that boat,” Joel whispered.

  “How?” Ashley asked. “You’re injured, and we don’t know what we’re up against.”

  “It doesn’t matter how. We just have to do it,” Joel said, and Ashley shivered. Was he asking her to do that again?

  “Joel, I can’t—” Ashley said, but Joel shushed her. Footsteps echoed across the wooden planks, bouncing along the glassy, still surface of the ocean. Whoever it was, however many of them there were, they weren’t far away.

  Ashley gritted her teeth. With her heart hammering, her pulse so loud in her ears she could barely hear the lapping of the water, she waited, hoping against hope they hadn’t been heard or seen.

  Eventually, the footsteps receded, heading in the opposite direction. Ashley let out the breath she’d been holding, grateful she hadn’t had to confront this person, whoever they were, that she hadn’t had to fight with them.

  But she and Joel weren’t in the clear just yet. If they were going to take the boat, there would almost certainly be a fight, a struggle for the craft, and Ashley wasn’t sure she had it in her. Not now, not after what’d already happened.

  Carefully, Joel peeked his head over the dock, looking left and right, the gun aimed in line with his sight.

  “There’s two of them,” he whispered. “One’s patrolling the dock with a gun, and the other one is loading the boat—I don’t think he’s armed. It’s not very big, but it’s big enough for the two of us, and it looks like it’ll move pretty quickly.”

  “Joel, please, we can’t do this,” Ashley said.

  “Yes, we can, and we will. I want you to take the guy patrolling. Push him into the water if you have to, and I’ll cover you,” Joel said.

  “Cover me? And then what?” Ashley hissed. “This is insane. You’re going to get us killed.”

  “No, I’m keeping us alive,” Joel said. “On my mark. One, two, three—”

  With her entire body on fire, Ashley whirled around the dock and ran down its length, keeping her body as low to the wood as possible. Just as she reached the armed man, she braced her shoulder and rammed it into his chest, sending him careening off the dock into the water below, though he didn’t go quietly. Gunshots rang out in the darkness as he fell.

  The man inside the boat whirled, reaching for something on his hip.

  Taking advantage of her adrenaline rush and the element of surprise, Ashley took a hard left and ran down the remainder of the dock toward the running engine of the boat. The other guy loading it, realizing what was happening, looked at her in horror, but it was too late. Ashley ran straight at him and leaped off the dock onto the boat.

  He tried to cock his gun, but Ashley’s right fist collided with his jaw before he had the chance. He crumpled to the ground, and Ashley whirled to find Joel right behind her. He jumped onto the boat, took the pistol from the squirming, moaning man Ashley had almost knocked out and smiled at her.

  “Now what?” Ashley asked.

  “We get the hell out of here before his friend gets back on dry ground,” Joel said and went straight to the controls. “Untie us,” he said, and Ashley went to each side of the boat. She struggled with the knots, careful not to let them pull her overboard, and eventually, the craft came free. Unfortunately, the owner of the boat had gotten to his hands and knees.

  Ashley ran to him as he reached for Joel at the controls, wrapped her hands around his waist and, using the momentum, twisted her entire body to hurl him over the side where he splashed into the water.

  “Punch it!” Ashley heaved, and Joel slammed the thrust forward, sending them tearing out of the marina and toward the open ocean. Gunshots rang out, and Ashley instinctively hit the floor, Joel along with her.

  From over the lip of the back of the boat, Ashley saw the patrol guy shouting and firing his gun at the vessel from the dock, but none of them connected.

  As they tore out of the bay, Ashley realized how lucky they’d been.

  But she also realized what they were heading toward, and just how ugly things were sure to get.

  16

  Joel was alive.

  He had no idea how they’d pulled off the heist of the boat, but they’d done it. Still, Joel was concerned about Ashley, who seemed to have shut down since the incident in the woods.

  Joel couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t sure he would’ve felt or behaved any differently if he'd been in her shoes.

  But those were the stakes. That was the world they now lived in, the kind of environment they had to learn to expect going forward. He tried not to think about it as the boat roared across the open ocean, the wind in his hair, the waves parting beneath the craft as they hauled at a good clip.

 
; Joel had never been behind the controls of a boat before, but he assumed it couldn’t be all that different from piloting an airplane. As difficult as it may have been, he took comfort in knowing they would be better off in the boat than on foot trying to get back to Los Angeles.

  Their fight with Mark in the woods and the shooting on the bridge convinced Joel they might not stand a chance. Even if he didn’t have one injured arm, he didn’t know whether or not he’d be able to survive, to pull his weight in a city environment where there would be far more people—people who’d now been without power and necessities for days.

  He turned to look at Ashley. She sat on the back seat of the boat, staring off out at the open water. There were tears in her eyes, and Joel couldn’t blame her for that either. She’d done the right thing, she was just protecting him, protecting herself, from an attacker, but he understood why she couldn’t easily see it that way.

  After all, Mark was a father. Joel’s heart lurched at the thought of the young girl who’d dashed away from them after Ashley had ended Mark’s life. What would become of her? He felt sorry for the girl, but he knew they’d done the right thing. If Ashley hadn’t killed him, it could’ve just as easily been she or Joel who’d ended up dead.

  In this new world, which had come apart at the seams faster than anyone could’ve predicted, they would have to kill to survive. Joel thought he was equipped for that, but seeing Ashley fall apart made him feel otherwise.

  No amount of the books and websites about disaster survival Joel had pored over for months could’ve prepared him for this new reality. As horrendous as the books made it seem, living it was much worse. What kind of life could he have in a world like this? Would he and Ashley and everyone else ever be able to stop looking over their shoulders? Would they ever be able to trust anyone again?

  And as supplies dwindled, as people grew desperate, would they be able to hold it together? That was to say nothing of Joel’s family in Los Angeles, assuming they were still alive and okay. Joel had to believe they were; it was the only thing keeping him going.

  He’d taught both Cass and Nate how to hold and shoot a gun, though Cass had taken to it more than Nate ever had. Shelby also had training with a weapon, had a license to carry, so he had every reason to believe they would be able to defend themselves, especially given everything in the house that would set them up for it.

  Still, as they crashed across the glassy surface of the water, Joel wondered if there’d been something else he could’ve done.

  He could’ve been home, for starters.

  Joel wished he hadn’t picked up that trip, the same trip that’d almost killed him. If he hadn’t, he could be there with his family now, protecting them from all this.

  But that wasn’t the case, and maybe it was that way for a reason. Maybe he needed to meet Ashley, to be tested this way, to find how strong he could be. Maybe Ashley needed to meet him too. As little as he knew about her, Joel couldn’t imagine going through this with anyone else. He couldn’t think of any other person he knew who would’ve done what she’d done to survive.

  And they had to survive.

  He was on a boat in the ocean, still hundreds of miles away from his family. There was a long way to go, but he wasn’t giving up. He couldn’t give up. Whether or not they knew it, his family depended on him, and he couldn’t afford to do let them down again.

  When they were far enough away from the shore, Joel killed the engine. He had no idea how much fuel was on board, if any was, and he didn’t want to burn more than was necessary. Ashley still stared off at the moon, though her tears had dried.

  “Are you okay?” Joel asked, and she chuckled.

  “Is that a joke question?” she asked.

  “No, I meant it. Look, what happened back there—” Joel started, but Ashley raised a hand to cut him off.

  “I know. I did what I had to do, but it isn’t easy to swallow,” Ashley said. “For fuck’s sake, Joel, I’m going to have to go to sleep with that image in my brain every night for the rest of my life.”

  “It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been me, it could’ve been you,” Joel said.

  “Maybe it would’ve been better that way,” Ashley said, and her face dampened again with a fresh set of tears.

  “Don’t say that. Look, I know what happened was terrible, but it couldn’t have gone any other way. You couldn’t have negotiated with him, couldn’t talk him down from what he was determined to do,” Joel said. He knew his words were useless, that nothing he could say could soothe what was going on inside Ashley, but he had to try.

  Because, for better or worse, Joel needed her to pull through. He was still injured, and though his arm was on the mend, he couldn’t do it alone. He needed her extra set of eyes, her strength, to help them see this journey through. She couldn’t fold on him, especially not now, while they were out at sea with no real direction.

  Joel reached around her, flipped up the back of the boat’s seat, and found an anchor inside just where he figured it would be. He reached for it, untangled the rope, and tossed it overboard.

  “What are you doing?” Ashley asked.

  “We haven’t gotten any real sleep in I don’t even know how long, we need to rest. We’ll be safer sleeping out here than anywhere else,” Joel said, though he didn’t know how true that was. Still, he couldn’t go much further, not now that the adrenaline that’d kept him moving had passed.

  They needed to be sharp when they eventually came back ashore, needed their wits about them.

  “You should eat something,” Joel said.

  “I’m not hungry,” Ashley snapped.

  “I know you aren’t, and that’s exactly why you should eat something. You haven’t eaten for a while, and you just got sick. You need the nourishment,” Joel said.

  He rummaged around in the backpack, produced several of the energy bars, and forced them on her along with one of the bottles of water. He only had two bottles left after that, but he hoped it would be enough.

  “Please eat. You’re going to need your strength when we get ashore, whenever that might be,” Joel said. Judging from the stars and the California coastline to their east, Joel figured they were heading south, the right direction.

  It might take them an entire day to get there, but God and gas willing, they would get there eventually.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Ashley asked as she tore into one of the energy bars and ate half of it in one bite. She was hungrier than she wanted him to know. Joel pulled out more of the energy bars and another of the bananas, which had gotten smashed in their scuffles and running, and peeled the banana.

  “I have a rough idea,” Joel said. “It’s pretty hard to get a pilot turned around direction wise.”

  “Good. We should try to find a map or something though; I bet there’s one on here somewhere,” Ashley said and stood. She seemed unable to relax, but Joel understood why.

  “We should also check the boat for supplies. We still don’t know what those guys were putting onboard,” Ashley said and started searching the storage cabinet on the passenger side of the boat, underneath the dash. She found a map, unsurprisingly, and held it up at Joel with a smile.

  “That’s a good start I guess,” she said with a shrug. She sat down in the passenger seat next to Joel and unfolded the map, which rippled and crackled in the wind. After a few moments, when she’d gotten her bearings and figured out roughly where they were, she looked over at him.

  “What is it?” Joel asked, keeping an eye on the horizon. The last thing he wanted was to run into somebody else out on the ocean, where they would have no way to defend themselves and where a collision—either with another boat or with a piece of debris—would spell the end of both of them.

  “It’s a longer journey than I thought,” Ashley said, her dreadlocks trailing behind her in the wind. Blood covered her face and shirt, giving her a crazed look.

  “If there’s not extra gas on this thing, there’s no way we�
�re going to make it all the way to Los Angeles.” Joel had assumed that was the case, but it didn’t make him feel any better to hear it. They were lucky enough to find a boat in the first place, much less one with enough fuel to power them all the way down the California coast to Los Angeles.

  “So how far can we get then?” Joel asked. Ashley peeked over at the fuel gauge, looked back down at the map, and shrugged.

  “We might make it to San Luis Obispo, maybe even Santa Barbara if we’re lucky,” Ashley said.

  “And if we aren’t lucky?” Joel asked.

  “I don’t need to answer that, do I?” Ashley asked. She didn’t, but Joel wished she would’ve anyway. There was nothing he could say or do to make himself feel any better. They were out at sea, for better or worse, and heading toward what was sure to be a disaster zone. As awful as things had been thus far, Joel couldn’t even fathom how dangerous they might be once they got into the cities, where thousands of people were hungry and desperate.

  No matter how Joel sliced it in his mind, he and Ashley would have to go ashore sooner than he would’ve liked. He had no idea what waited for them once they arrived, how bad things might be, but it didn’t matter. No matter how bad they were, no matter how much adversity they faced, Joel wouldn’t let anything stop him. He had to get to his family, had to make sure they were safe.

  He understood why Ashley was shaken by what she’d done, but he decided that if it came to it, he would’ve done the same thing. He wouldn’t have hesitated had she not been there; he would’ve pulled the trigger and ended Mark’s life without ever thinking twice about it.

  And it would only be a matter of time until Joel had to make a similar decision. He wouldn’t waffle, wouldn’t back away from what he had to do.

  There was a time when Joel might’ve thought otherwise, might’ve tried to bargain with people like Ashley had, but that time had long since passed. The EMP had changed all that, had changed everything.

  If Joel had to kill to survive, he would.

  17