After The EMP Box Set [Books 7-9]: The Hope Trilogy

by Tate, Harley

  Alone.

  It wasn’t the dream Tracy had for her daughter’s future. She forced down a wave of nausea. Tracy had spent the last nine months focused on their current predicament, surviving every day as it came. She hadn’t stopped to think about the long-term ramifications of their situation.

  Gone were spring weddings with bouquets of peonies, lush grass beneath chubby baby feet, front porches where friends stopped to share a pitcher of tea. Somehow, Tracy had held onto a kernel of hope that they could find it all again.

  In quiet moments, she’d think, maybe the government would get itself together. Maybe other countries would come in and lend much-needed aid.

  She braced herself with an outstretched hand against the wall. No one was coming to push the reset button. They could eke out an existence with Brianna’s family, but unless they found another community to join, their little band of ten might as well be the last people left on earth.

  Tracy closed her eyes. Eight if Madison and Walter died. She shook her head. Enough wallowing. “Let’s find the pharmacy.”

  Brianna brightened. “I knew you’d come around.” She scampered over and wrapped Tracy up in an unexpected hug. The young woman’s dirty curls tickled her nose. “We’re going to save Madison. You have to have faith.”

  As Brianna pulled away, Tracy forced her lips to curve into a smile. “You’re right.”

  Think positive thoughts. She repeated the mantra over and over as they climbed over the wreckage and back into the hospital hallway.

  Exhaustion tugged at her legs and Tracy checked her watch. Two in the morning already. She smacked her cheeks to focus before picking a direction. “I vote this way. The pharmacy is probably across the hospital and away from the ER.”

  The two women picked their way through trash and broken glass until they reached a set of double doors. A sign overhead read Orthopedics, Geriatrics, and Pharmacy. Tracy buzzed with hope.

  Brianna pushed the doors open and they walked into a calmer side of the hospital. With every step, Tracy’s excitement grew. It was almost normal. No trash, no broken glass, no graffiti. It didn’t make sense, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Maybe this side wasn’t hit.”

  She lit up a map at the corner of a four-way intersection of halls. “The pharmacy is this way.” Tracy turned down the western hall and practically broke into a run. She slammed into another pair of double doors, expecting them to swing open. They didn’t budge. She hit them again.

  “Are they stuck?” Brianna hurried to join in, pushing against the right-side door while Tracy pushed on the left. Not a chance.

  Tracy backed up and shone her flashlight all around. No locks, no automatic buttons. It didn’t make sense. She stood on her tiptoes and looked through the plexiglass window. The hallway beyond sat empty and deserted.

  She lowered back to the ground, confused. “The pharmacy should be twenty feet down the hall. This doesn’t make sense.”

  Brianna crouched in front of the doors and wedged a hunting knife blade between them. The fuzzy felt trim gave way and Brianna’s knife slid in an inch. She frowned and pushed harder. “There’s something on the other side. It’s hard.” She jabbed the knife in again. “I can’t pierce it.”

  “Like a cross bar?”

  Brianna ran the knife up and down the seam, testing the theory. After a moment, she nodded. “It’s about four inches tall and right in the middle of the doors.”

  Tracy swallowed. “Hospitals don’t have security gates in the middle of their hallways.”

  “Especially not when the pharmacy is on the other side.”

  “Someone else did this.” Tracy turned around. “And they don’t want uninvited guests.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Find another way in. With it barricaded off, the pharmacy might be untouched.” Tracy tamped down her excitement as her brain struggled to keep up with her runaway heart. “Let’s backtrack. There’s got to be another way in.”

  The women hurried to the map on the wall. The hallway was the only interior access to that portion of the hospital. Brianna cursed. “We can’t break it down without a battering ram.”

  Tracy thought it over. If they couldn’t come at it from this floor, they had three choices: up, down, or all the way around. She turned to Brianna with an idea taking shape in her mind. “What’s the number one place no one wants to go in a hospital when the power goes out?”

  Brianna shrugged.

  “The basement.”

  “Why?”

  Tracy swallowed. “It’s the morgue.”

  Day 282

  Chapter Twenty

  TRACY

  Location Unknown

  Near Truckee, CA

  4:00 a.m.

  “I thought the smell at the vet was bad.” Brianna tied her sweater around her face and leaned into the stink like a head wind. “We’re going to have to burn these clothes when we get home.”

  Tracy followed three steps behind, her flashlight beam bouncing off gurneys piled with bones and desiccated bits of flesh. A skull with hair still attached lay on the floor. A shirt covered a bag of bones slumped in a wheelchair. She swallowed down the horror and kept walking.

  Imagining the first frantic days in the hospital after the EMP brought the whole grisly scene to life. Critical-care patients dying. Doctors and nurses fleeing to protect their families. Looters and thieves coming to pillage before the dead were even cold.

  Brianna stopped at a door marked Emergency Exit. “Is this it?”

  “Must be.” Tracy pushed the door open and shined her light inside. The stairs only led up. “Let’s go.”

  The women proceeded with caution up to the first-floor landing. Tracy clicked off her light and plunged the stairwell into darkness. “We should be inside the barricade. Close to the pharmacy. Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.” Brianna pushed the door open and waited.

  No noise. No light. She stepped out into the hall and Tracy followed, closing the door as quietly as she could.

  It was too dark to see anything. She waved her hand in front of her face. Nothing. They couldn’t stand there for an hour and hope their eyes adjusted. Ripping off her sweater, she fashioned a cover for the flashlight with several layers of wool and clicked it on.

  Low, diffuse light illuminated a circle of about four feet. It would have to do.

  Tracy took the lead and kept the light trained low. Twenty feet ahead the wall gave way to a door and she lifted the flashlight. PHARMACY stood out in large block letters above a frosted window.

  With a deep breath, she tugged the door open. A waiting area sat untouched and orderly on the other side.

  “Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep this safe.” Brianna pulled out her own flashlight and clicked it on, flooding the room with light.

  Neat, tidy shelves full of medicine beckoned them from behind a counter. Tracy pulled the sweater off her flashlight and hurried forward. It didn’t seem real.

  “We need to be fast. This place has to be watched, even in the winter. If the guards are on rounds, we don’t have long.”

  With a hop of excitement, Tracy scaled the counter and landed on two feet in front of at least twenty rows of shelves. There had to be enough medicine to treat hundreds of people. Hope filled her heart as she rushed toward the closest shelving unit.

  The labels read like a library shelf and Tracy almost giggled. She knew how to find her way around an alphabetized storeroom. Vaccines would either be on the end or in a fridge. She called out to Brianna as she ran down the length of the pharmacy. “Find a fridge! The vaccines might be there.”

  Tracy turned the corner and used the flashlight to read the labels on the final row of shelves. Tagamet, Tenivac, Thyro-Tabs. She ran a few feet and kept reading. Ultiva, Udavex, Varenicline. No vaccine section.

  Damn it. She circled back to the Rs one row over, hoping for more luck, when Brianna called out. “I found the fridge! It’s got tons of shots i
n it.”

  Tracy rushed toward Brianna’s voice. She found her hunched over a short fridge near the phone bank at the front of the pharmacy. As the younger woman rooted through the vials, a bright light lit them up from behind.

  Oh, no. Tracy spun around and held her hand up to ward off the glare. She couldn’t see anything.

  “Identify yourselves.” The deep male voice boomed in the quiet space.

  Tracy stood her ground. “Who are you?”

  “People you don’t want to mess with.”

  The light slid toward the ground and Tracy squinted past it. Two men stood at the pharmacy entrance. One held a floodlight. The other a rifle aimed straight at Brianna’s chest. Tracy reached for the girl’s hand and squeezed as she whispered. “I’ll distract them. First chance you get, run.”

  Brianna shook her head. “I’m not leaving you or the vaccine.”

  Tracy stepped forward.

  The man with the gun shifted to point at her. “Stop where you are.”

  “Please, we don’t mean any harm.” She held up one hand. “We only need a vaccine.”

  “What for?”

  “To cure my daughter.”

  The man with the light lifted it to shine on Brianna. “She looks fine.”

  “Not her. My daughter back home. She was bit by a fox infected with rabies.”

  The flashlight man snorted. “In the middle of winter? Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious. It was caught in a trap. She thought it was dead.”

  The two men shared a few words, voices low and gravelly.

  Tracy turned to Brianna. “Have you found it yet?”

  “No.”

  Damn it. She turned back around as the man with the gun spoke up.

  “You two tweakers?”

  “No.”

  “You smell like tweakers.”

  Tracy bit her tongue to keep from cursing. “We walked through the morgue.”

  The armed man laughed. “Definitely tweakers. No sober person would do that.”

  “We’re not high and we’re not strung out. We’re desperate. We need a rabies vaccine.”

  “And I need a wind farm.” He pointed with his gun. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “No.”

  His shoulders rose and fell in obvious frustration. “I’m not going to ask again.”

  Tracy jerked her head back toward Brianna. “When I shoot, run.” As she twisted back around, she brought up the Glock.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Watch me.” Tracy aimed at the flashlight and fired. The lens shattered and the room plunged into darkness.

  A volley of shots rang out as Tracy dove for the ground. Searing pain lanced her upper arm.

  “Tracy! Are you okay?” Brianna scrambled toward her.

  More shots rang out. A bullet ricocheted off the floor and whizzed by Tracy’s ear.

  “Get behind a shelf! They won’t shoot into the medicine!”

  Tracy crawled into the closest aisle, keeping as low to the ground as she could until she reached the end. She slipped behind the end cap and sucked in a breath. Blood slicked her left arm and dripped off her fingers.

  Brianna found her moments later, a flurry in the dark. “Are you okay?”

  Tracy tried not to groan. “I might have taken a bullet.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “What can I do?”

  Tracy eased her bag off her shoulder. “Find the compression bandage.”

  Brianna rifled through the bag and pulled out a small shrink-wrapped plastic item. She ripped it open. “I’ll need a light to see.”

  Tracy pulled out her flashlight and clicked it on. Blood already soaked her shirt and puddled on the floor. “Do it.”

  As Brianna slid the bandage around Tracy’s arm, she groaned. “Hurry. We’re sitting ducks back here.”

  Wrapping over and over, Brianna covered the absorption pad before twisting the elastic wrap into a cord. She shoved the closure bar under the cord and turned it to tighten the bandage.

  Tracy gritted her teeth as Brianna hooked the bar to the bandage and secured it in place. Only then did she click off the light.

  “Is that too tight?”

  “We’ll see if my arm falls off.” Tracy fought back a wave of nausea and vertigo. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. We’re still trapped.”

  “There has to be another way out.”

  “I’ll look.” Before Tracy could say another word, Brianna rushed off into the dark. It took all of Tracy’s self-control to not close her eyes and slip into unconsciousness.

  She cradled her arm in her lap and focused on Madison. Her daughter needed her to make it out of there alive and with a vaccine.

  A scurry of footsteps sounded and Tracy blinked.

  “There’s no other way.” Brianna slid next to Tracy and took cover behind the shelf. “We’re in a cave.”

  “Then we’ll have to fight our way out.” Tracy readied the Glock. “At least they hit my nondominant arm.”

  Brianna checked the shotgun. “Can you shoot?”

  “We don’t have a choice. You find the vaccine. I’ll give you cover.”

  As Brianna stood up, a metal clang sounded at the front of the pharmacy. Something rolled across the linoleum.

  “What is that?”

  A tremendous boom shook the entire room and a light blasted impossibly bright. Tracy couldn’t hear, couldn’t think, couldn’t see. Everything spun out of control. Am I dying? Is this what it feels like? She tried to stand and ran into something hard. Boxes and bottles rained down from overhead.

  She fell to the floor. Her knee slammed into the ground and she rolled over. It wasn’t death. It was something worse.

  A flashbang.

  Tracy remembered her husband describing the device and wishing they had some for defense. Her ears rang and she couldn’t see. She was blind and deaf.

  “Brianna!” Tracy shouted, unable to hear her own voice.

  A hand wrapped around her wounded arm and she screamed into the void.

  The grip tightened and the searing pain snapped her back into reality. Her vision returned in splotchy, swirling moments.

  A man held her by the arm. He scowled as she blinked.

  She opened her mouth to scream again when the barrel of a gun swam in her face.

  As a sharp pain crashed into her temple, the blurry world went black.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  COLT

  Unidentified Farm

  Near Truckee, CA

  6:00 a.m.

  Dani’s shouts echoed inside the barn and Colt gritted his teeth to keep from reaching for a weapon. Ben still held the shotgun pointed straight at Colt. About Colt’s age, maybe a few years older with the first hints of gray at his temples, the man didn’t come across weak or indecisive.

  If anything, he was too quick to judge. He motioned for Colt to approach. “You’re next.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “You aren’t the one in charge here.” With a frame straight out of center linebacker position, he probably didn’t need to use that line too often, but Colt wasn’t scared.

  He glanced at Walter. “You’re fine with this guy ordering all of us around?”

  Walter’s jaw ticked. It was the first sign Colt had that the man wasn’t one hundred percent on board. “It’s not our property.”

  “Damn straight it isn’t.” Ben motioned again with the gun. “Now let’s move. Walter, you stay here and wait for me to come back.”

  “Just do what he says. It’ll be all right.” Walter nodded at Colt. Was that anger in his eyes?

  Colt eased past his friend and toward Ben. Now was his best chance.

  “Don’t even think it.” Ben prodded him with the barrel of the shotgun and Colt relented. If he reached for the rifle, he’d be dead before he fired a single shot.

  He
would have to wait for another opportunity.

  As Ben pushed him outside, he caught sight of Dani. A lantern sat a yard or so from her feet and as she scrambled and kicked, she cast shadows across the faded red paint of the closest barn.

  One of her escorts fumbled with a door lock while the other tried to hold her. He wasn’t having much luck. Colt cheered her on in silence. They might not be able to escape, but she could at least give them a workout.

  As Colt approached, Dani slammed her foot down on top of the big man’s toes. He yelped and his arms loosened in response to the pain. Dani seized the opportunity. Before Colt could shout to warn her, she lunged for the man’s handgun perched in an open-carry holster on his hip.

  Her fingers wrapped around the grip and Colt held his breath. In a matter of seconds, it was over. Dani stood, panting for breath, three feet away from her captor, gun pointed straight at his face.

  Ben shouted, “Don’t be stupid. We’ve got eyes on you from all over.” Colt tensed. Could that be true? Were there others out in the dark, waiting for an opportunity to take them out?

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Larkin’s voice cut through the standoff as he emerged from the tree line. “From what I can tell, it’s just us.”

  Ben poked Colt in the back with the shotgun. “Let me guess. He’s with you.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Who the hell are you people?”

  “Just a tight-knit group who protects their own.” Colt sucked in a breath. He couldn’t just stand there and do nothing, but a shotgun to the back hampered his efforts. “How about you let us go so we can get out of here?”

  “So I’m supposed to believe you’ll just walk away?”

  “That’s exactly what we’ll do. You let Walter and the rest of us go and you’ll never have to see us again.”