The Fall

by E S Richards

  “What was that?” Len asked nervously, although he could already guess what the answer would be.

  “Engine trouble,” Harrison snarled, “knew there had to be something wrong with this boat.”

  “Do we still have enough fuel?”

  “Yeah,” Harrison replied, “but if there’s something wrong with the engine it doesn’t matter how much fuel we have. You can’t ride a dead horse.”

  “Can you fix it?” Len asked hopefully, knowing he had no valuable skills to offer to the situation.

  “Afraid not,” Harrison started steering the boat towards a small jetty in the distance. “If it were on dry land and I had a few days, probably. But it’s just not worth it right now.”

  Len didn’t say anything in response; he couldn’t think of any words to say. Every time he thought things were getting better on his journey towards James and Amy, something came up and made things worse again. Instead he simply secured his rucksack, closing it up tightly after he’d opened it for the food and clung onto the side of the boat. The jetty Harrison gradually guided the boat toward wasn’t too far away, and pretty soon his boots would be back on the ground, slowing eating away at the miles they still had to cover.

  “Jump off here,” Harrison called to Len over the sound of the engine five minutes later, his arms firmly grasping the steering wheel as he tried to hold the powerboat steady against the small wooden jetty. “I’ll throw you the rope.”

  Len wobbled with the boat as he pushed himself to his feet, trying to gain his balance before leaping off the side. He made it, but only just, forced to spin his arms in circles in an attempt to stop himself falling back into the lake. Once he was stable Harrison flung the rope over the side of the boat to him, pointing to an iron rung where Len could secure the vehicle.

  He moved quickly, neither of them wanting to draw any attention to their rather loud disembark from the boat. Harrison was much more skillful with his dismount onto the jetty, flinging both rucksacks, the bow, and quiver of arrows over towards Len before gracefully stepping across the small gap. Within minutes Len had the bag on his back once more and the two of them were mournfully walking away from the powerboat. Barely an hour had passed since they’d found it, Len almost rolling his eyes at how short a time they’d enjoyed the luxury of powered travel for.

  “Stop where you are!”

  Len’s mouth fell open as he watched six men jump onto the jetty from beneath it, their shoes and ankles wet with lake water. Each of them carried a Browning B525 shotgun, the sort of gun Len associated with hunting parties, not what he expected he’d be staring down the barrel of ten minutes after eating his lunch. Taking in more details of the men as they stood in front of him, Len noticed they were all dressed exactly the same. Military style cargo pants and black T-shirts, the fabric clinging to their bodies in the hot Michigan sun. The most frightening thing of all though—and in fact what Len noticed first—was that each of their heads were shaved almost bald and now that he was closer to them, he noticed a distinct tattoo inked onto each one of their heads. It was exactly the same fashion as the men he had just killed on the other side of the lake.

  “Don’t move!” One of the tattooed men shouted again, three of them walking forward slowly. “Put your bags on the ground and throw us your weapons.”

  Len didn’t know what to do. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at Harrison and saw the man make the slightest movement towards the 9mm Glock G26 pistol fastened to his waist. Silently Len begged Harrison not to draw it. If he did, he knew they’d instantly be engaged in a shootout and Len didn’t fancy his chances half as much on this battleground.

  “Okay,” Len quickly called back before Harrison could make a move, raising his hands palm forward in front of his chest. “Don’t shoot.”

  He could see the look of disdain Harrison gave him, but Len couldn’t afford to take any chances. He prayed the gang on this side of the lake didn’t know about what they’d just done. He found it impossible they could be connected, but they looked too similar for it to be a coincidence. Their clothing was the same, along with the hairstyle and covering of tattoos; they were exactly the type of people Len would’ve been frightened of before everything happened. Now that sense of fear had only been heightened. He could handle being robbed, but he wasn’t willing to risk his life when the odds were so clearly stacked against him.

  Slowly, he started to remove his rucksack and the bow and arrows from his shoulders, lowering them down to the jetty by his feet.

  “You too!” One of the men shouted towards Harrison while two of them edged even closer, reaching forward to snatch Len’s bag.

  In an instant everything suddenly changed. Harrison leapt forward, his fist connecting with one of the criminal’s temples and knocking him to the ground unconscious. He drew his pistol as he moved, firing rapidly and taking out two more of them, evening the playing field massively in a matter of seconds. But then all hell broke loose.

  Harrison dove over the side of the jetty, dropping to his knees and rolling along the ground. Len was thrown to the wooden planks of the small jetty at the same time, a heavy figure pinning him down and wrestling his own pistol from the holster at his waist.

  “Don’t move or you’re dead.”

  The hissed words instantly froze Len’s body, taking any shred of fight he’d been considering and tossing it to one side. His head was pushed down into the wood, the rough material scratching the side of his face and drawing blood. From where he lay, Len could just make out Harrison’s figure, running off into the distance in a zigzag motion as two men gave pursuit behind, firing their shotguns wildly after the old prepper.

  The three of them disappeared around a bend and then Len heard one loud shot ring out, the sound as deafening as if it was right next to him. He didn’t see if anyone returned around the corner, the hard butt of a shotgun crashing into his skull and shrouding his world in the dark kiss of unconsciousness.

  Chapter 12

  “Mom, I’m scared.”

  James wrapped his arms around his mother, clutching her tightly as Amy blinked rapidly, trying to refocus her vision through the smoke. She could barely see more than a few feet ahead of her, with no way of knowing which way to go. Holding on to her son, Amy scrambled to her feet, knowing they had to move quickly in order to escape. A wet line of sweat dripped down the groove in her back as she stood, the temperature constantly rising from the heat of the fire.

  “It’s okay, James,” Amy tried to reassure her son, “come on, we need to get out of here.”

  Moving off to the right where the smoke looked less thick, Amy slowly began to move around the fallen debris of the country club. She bit her lip to stop from flinching as James held her hand where the pain of moving the metal rod still tore through her body.

  Having James by her side forced Amy to move more slowly than she would like. She considered picking him up and carrying him as she had through the mass of exploding cars in South Haven, but the building had fallen in such a way that she didn’t think he would fit on her back. Instead Amy helped her son as he climbed over broken furniture and splintered wood, pushing him as much as she could in order to put more distance between them and the raging fire. The flames would reach them eventually. Amy knew they desperately needed to escape.

  Amy’s internal compass was spinning madly as she looked around the mess, searching for an escape. If she’d been familiar with the country club she might have had some idea of which direction to go, but instead she was just walking blindly, hoping to find a way out. The only thing guiding her was the gradually thinning smoke and so Amy followed its trail with James close by her side.

  “Mom, it’s lighter over there!”

  James’s voice was raspy and dry, evidence of the smoke he had inhaled. Amy was extremely concerned about her son; she wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious and what the state of his arm was like after being trapped. If anything serious had happened to him she would never forgive herself for l
eaving his side.

  Following the direction of James’s gaze, Amy realized what he was talking about and saw a prick of sunlight in the distance. It had to be their way out, and as a fresh wave of dizziness shook Amy’s body she knew they had to get there quickly.

  “Well done, James,” Amy congratulated her son as she stepped over some shattered glass. “Let’s get out of here quick.”

  Amy could almost taste the fresh air as she moved ever closer to the patch of light in the distance. More and more glass started to crunch underneath her feet and Amy realized they must be near where some windows had been. She couldn’t tell if they were still technically in the same room as earlier, almost the whole building now lying in pieces as the fire continued to bring the structure to the ground.

  “Go on James, get through there.” Amy pushed James forward underneath a large piece of wood that lay at an angle, creating a space Amy couldn’t fit through standing up. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  For once James didn’t need to be told twice and he crouched down into a squat to shuffle through the small gap. Dropping to her hands and knees, Amy cringed as her burnt palms scraped along the floor, crawling after her son and out to safety.

  The air was noticeably clearer as Amy struggled through the gap and back to her feet, only a short distance from the end. James walked in ahead of her, their destination clear as the two of them moved as quickly as possible through the remaining debris and out into the open air. Driving James to keep walking away from the collapsed building, Amy moved them as far as she could manage before the strength completely left her legs and she was forced to sink to the ground.

  Her breath came in fast gasps. Each one was rough and heavy from the smoke in her lungs. As Amy slowly rolled over and looked back at the country club she was blown away by how the structure had changed. Half of the building had collapsed, evidence of fire dotted throughout as it spread in every direction it could find. Amy couldn’t see anyone else outside of the wreckage and she wondered if anyone else had managed to survive. The elderly couple were certainly dead, but she thought of Giles, the young girls, and the mother and her daughter. If Amy had managed to find her son and get out, surely there was hope that someone else had done the same.

  Almost as soon as the thought entered her head Amy heard the faint cry of a voice from inside the wreckage. She strained her ears for a moment to listen before forcing herself back to her feet. There was definitely still someone alive in the building and they were struggling to find their way out.

  “James, did you hear that?”

  Amy looked down at her son, his small frame still sprawled out on the ground as his chest moved frantically up and down. He was too exhausted to even reply and from just a short glance at her son Amy knew she wouldn’t leave him again. Not after everything she had gone through to keep him alive. But she could still call to whoever was stuck in the rubble, guide them with her voice towards the way out.

  “Stay there, James,” Amy spoke as she started to move back towards the ruins of the country club, “I’m not going far.”

  Even moving a few feet away from her son made Amy anxious; she constantly looked back over her shoulder to make sure he hadn’t moved or anything had happened. He was safe now—as much as he could be in this frightening new world—and Amy was determined to keep things that way.

  “Hello?”

  Standing as close to the fallen building as she dared, Amy shouted into the rubble, throwing out her voice to whoever was still trapped inside. She estimated that within the hour the whole building would crumble to the ground, the fire still eating away at the old supports and tumbling different areas of the country club piece by piece.

  “Help!” A woman’s voice shouted back in reply and Amy moved in the direction of it, edging slightly further away from where her son still lay. “Get me out of here!”

  “Head towards my voice,” Amy called out to the woman, her voice catching as she tried to shout and causing her to cough against the remnants of smoke that were still in her lungs. “Over here.”

  As she continued to call to the woman, Amy wondered who it would be. She thought of Alex and Lisa, both of whom had fallen from the window as the country club had started to collapse. Amy was almost certain neither of them would have been able to survive, but as she remembered what she had been through she knew anything could be possible. Amy wondered whether the fire had been caused by Lisa’s cigarette, a memory of the girl smoking beside the window moments before the smoke had started to rise etched into her memory. She couldn’t blame the girl entirely though, there must have been something below the window waiting to fuel the fire, a damaged generator or fuel tank or something.

  All thoughts of Lisa faded quickly from Amy’s head as she saw the figure moving towards the end of the rubble, inching ever closer to the pleasant touch of safety.

  “Come on!” Amy called towards the woman, the darkness and the smoke still distorting whoever it was for the time being. “You’re almost there.”

  As a shaky hand grabbed onto Amy’s wrist through the rubble, Mel’s face finally came into focus. She was covered in dirt and dried blood, her clothes torn and blackened by the smoke. Tears stained her face, the broken woman almost collapsing in Amy’s arms as she finally made it out of the wreckage.

  Amy hadn’t spoken to Mel when she’d first entered the room, but was aware she was visiting South Haven with her daughter. Immediately Amy gripped onto the mother tighter, the absence of her child a harrowing reality.

  “Are you okay?”

  Amy spoke softly as she tried to ease Mel out of their embrace and lead her over towards where James was laying. Thankfully he hadn’t moved and Amy could see him watching her from afar. He looked okay, shaken up and undoubtedly frightened, but okay all the same.

  “Susan…”

  The word tumbled out of Mel’s mouth as Amy sat her down on the ground beside James, looking down at her son and offering him a smile as she sat between the two of them. Amy couldn’t imagine what the woman was thinking. It must have taken something terrible for the mother to find her way out of the wreckage without her daughter; Amy wondered what had happened.

  “Are you okay?” Amy repeated, resting her burnt hand on the woman’s leg as she coughed and rasped in the cleaner air. “Where’s your daughter?”

  In an instant Mel started crying again, her whole body quivering as she sobbed at the mention of her daughter. Amy didn’t want to ask the question again, or the more terrible one that she was thinking, so she waited and let the woman cry. She gave her as much time as she needed before she eventually started to speak.

  “I couldn’t find her,” Mel stuttered between sobs, “I couldn’t see her anywhere. More of the building started falling down around me in the fire and I had to move. I tried to go back to find her, but everything looked the same and I—”

  Mel stopped speaking and burst into a fresh wave of tears, wailing for her daughter who was still trapped in the wreckage of the building. Amy looked from the mother to the pile of burning rubble and knew it was almost impossible that anyone else was still alive in there. A lump formed in her throat as she imagined what Mel was feeling, to know that her child was almost certainly dead. Amy instinctively reached out for James’s hand at the thought, finding a shred of peace having her son sitting beside her.

  For a mother losing a child had to be the worst feeling in the world. Amy loved James more than she ever thought possible. Her whole life revolved around him and the moment when she’d awakened in the wreckage without James by her side it had felt like someone had ripped a hole from her heart. James was a part of who Amy was and he brought joy to her every day, even in the smallest things. A mother carries a baby for nine months and yet even when that baby is born the burden is not put down. The connection between a mother and her child is supposed to be for life and having that taken away from you was the cruelest thing Amy could think of.

  Wrapping her arms around Mel’s body, Amy hugged the w
oman close. It was the only thing she could think of doing to comfort her, no words powerful enough to console her as Mel wept for the loss of her daughter. The thought crossed Amy’s mind that they could go back into the wreckage and look for Susan, but as more of the structure snapped and gave way to the fire she knew that wouldn’t be possible.

  Susan was dead, along with Deborah and Charles, the old couple who had tried to shield her son from danger. Alex and Lisa were dead too, their lives ended before both young girls had truly had a chance to begin them. Giles was likely dead as well, the man who had offered Amy and James kindness as they stumbled in from the beach. Only a few hours had passed and already Amy had another list of names to add to the death she had seen. The death her son had seen.

  Despite all Amy had been through, at least she still had her son by her side. She still had her family and, as she continued to hug the crying woman, Amy realized that things could still get a whole lot worse.