“Dad...”
“You’ve got to listen to me. You really do.”
“Dad...”
She kept trying to interrupt him.
But he had too much more to say. So many things to tell her. He needed to keep talking.
But the pain was getting bad.
And he was starting to forget the words he wanted to use. It was becoming difficult just to hold on. Somehow, he was still stringing sentences together. Somehow, he was still talking, more or less. But had he already made that point? He couldn’t quite remember if he had already said this or that.
He kept going. Kept talking.
She was listening now, not trying to interrupt him.
“You’re going to make it,” he was saying. “It’s going to be a tough winter. A harsh one, if the almanacs know anything, and they usually do.... but it’ll be worth it to be away from it all.... it’ll be tough being alone.... not sure if I said that already...”
She didn’t correct him. She didn’t tell him to shut up, or give him some sarcastic comment the way she normally would have. And that’s how he knew things were really bad. The fact that she was listening to him in rapt silence. He knew it was the end. He knew he didn’t have long.
Memories were flashing before his eyes. Scenes from his life. His childhood. Memories of his parents, who were long gone themselves now. It was true, the cliché about your life flashing before your eyes, apparently. At least for him, anyway.
He fought it, though. He could have closed his eyes and seen the rolling video, as it were. He would have liked to see some of the scenes ... his parents ... friends from his childhood that he hadn’t thought about in years.
But he didn’t give in to it. He kept his eyes open. Forced himself to stay with it. For just a little bit longer.
If there was just one single thing he’d said that helped Meg, then it was all worth it. That was all he cared about. Her future. He wouldn’t be around to see it, though. But he could imagine it. He could imagine her, in the spring, her hair longer, no makeup on, somewhat battered and somewhat skinnier, but stronger and, most importantly, alive.
She might even be happy, in some strange way. Well, at that point, happiness would probably be something different than the modern conception of being constantly content, constantly fulfilled, and constantly in a state of borderline euphoria. Happiness might just become “being alive” or “surviving.” Probably closer to what it had meant in the past.
It wasn’t that he thought his words were so great, or that he was so wise.... Meg was smart. Smarter than him, probably. Hopefully. Hell, he knew she was smarter than he’d ever been.... still, there were a couple things that he could still teach her.
Things weren’t feeling right. His body had never felt like this. Something strange was going on.
Okay. Keep it together.
He didn’t have a lot longer left.
He had to think carefully. Had to choose his words carefully.
What should he tell her?
Too tired to think straight.
Just say anything.... something might help her.... a single word he said might someday help her, might remind her of something useful...
She’d be on her own soon enough.
“Dad?” she said, her voice intensely full of concern. It wasn’t an interruption.
He snapped back to it, opening his mouth and the words came tumbling out, as if they’d been just waiting to exit.
“Find a good house. Raid the others. No time for petty morals.... if you don’t take the food and gear, someone else will.... I’m not talking about outright stealing ... but a lot of these homes are occasional use only ... vacation homes.... I’m sure some of the people will come out there.... now you’re going to have to do some exploring.... quietly.... stealth.... name of the game.... driving without headlights sometimes.... see who’s home.... not a matter of seeing if the lights are on or not...”
“Dad?”
Shit. He wasn’t making any sense, was he?
Come on, there had to be something else. Something practical. Some life-saving tip.
“Don’t trust anyone,” he said. “Remember what I’m always telling you. People are scum. Don’t trust ’em. They’re out to hurt you...”
There was more, but the words wouldn’t come out.
The pain had peaked long ago. Now he barely felt it.
His eyelids were heavy. Too heavy.
They had to close, and he had no choice in the matter.
22.
Meg
“Dad? Dad?”
She hadn’t even pulled over to the side of the road. She’d just stopped the truck, even letting it stall out, which she never did. Never.
“Dad?”
No answer from him.
The answer was as clear as day. He was dead.
And he wasn’t a pretty sight. His body seemed contorted, twisted over on itself almost. He’d been holding his guts. His hands were slick with blood.
She had to do it. She had to touch him. Feel his pulse. Make sure he was dead.
He was still warm. For some strange reason, she expected him to already be cold. It was a ridiculous assumption. But then again, she hadn’t been around death that much. Most people hadn’t. Death was something that was hidden, something that was taken care of by professionals.
When a family member or friend died, it was typically in a sterile, medical setting, like a hospital. Professionals were there to take over, to cart the body away, to take away the more unseemly aspects of death. Most people didn’t know, for instance, that the bowels emptied after death. And many only understood the concept of rigor mortis in the most basic terms, not knowing that rigor mortis was actually a continuum of stiffness that developed in the hours following death.
Shit.
Shit.
Meg couldn’t deal with this. This was totally crazy.
There was no pulse. Nothing at all.
Her dad was gone.
But his body remained.
Just sitting there. In the passenger seat.
Blood was all over the truck’s cabin. The wound must have been worse than she’d thought. She couldn’t believe that he’d done what he’d done, that he’d talked their way out of that situation.
Meg was sobbing, sobbing harder than when her mother had died, sobbing like she’d never sobbed before. It felt like she was completely alone in the world, as if now, finally, there was no one out there for her.
She was alone.
Her dad had emphasized and reemphasized the fact that people would try to hurt her, that even normal people would turn nasty and violent.
And he’d been proven right.
Those were ostensibly her dad’s neighbors who’d killed him. And if her dad was right, they’d tried to kill both Meg and her dad by stealing their gear.
She was closing her eyes as tightly as she could, squeezing them like she’d never squeezed them before. She wanted to shut the whole world out. She wanted it all to disappear. She never wanted to open her eyes again.
She’d forgotten just how bad this felt. When her mother had died, she’d felt like this.
Maybe it was worse now. Both her parents were gone.
And it seemed as if the world were ending.
How would she ever not be alone? How would she ever make it?
Shit.
She took a deep breath.
Opened her eyes.
Okay.
This wasn’t helping. This sadness. Stopping in the middle of the road.
She had to act. She glanced over at her dad. He may be dead, but he wouldn’t have wanted her to break down. He would have wanted her to keep going. To keep fighting against it all. That much was clear from his last words.
He wanted her to live.
The least she could do was try.
Hot tears still streaming down her face, she punched in the clutch and restarted the engine.
She got it into first, hit the gas, and got the truck
going again.
She was still sobbing. Not as hard as before.
She was driving now, her hands on the wheel.
She was doing something.
She was acting.
She was going to keep going.
As she drove, Meg felt the intense grief and sadness begin to transform. She felt herself encouraging the transformation, hoping and wishing that the sadness would become something else, something useful.
Anger.
Anger was brewing somewhere deep within her. Like hot coals, she fanned the flames.
Soon, the anger was overwhelming her.
Revenge. It was all she could think about.
The tears were still there, but the sadness was gone, completely replaced by her desire for vengeance.
So what if her dad wouldn’t have wanted her to turn back, to take revenge on those men, those idiotic, thoughtless men?
They were nothing. Nothing but the worst excuses for men she’d ever encountered. They’d killed her father.
And for what?
For nothing
She slammed on the brakes. This time, she put in the clutch, preventing the truck from stalling out.
She sat there, fuming.
Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Her hands were clutched so tightly around the steering wheel that they hurt. Her knuckles were rapidly turning white.
She’d never been this angry before, had she?
She’d never felt this much desire for revenge. Had she?
She thought of the men so far today who’d wronged her, who deserved what they had coming to them, and much more.
She could do it. Meg could drive right back there. She wouldn’t stop the truck. She’d just plow into them. Maybe she could take out one or two like that. Then she’d hop down out of the cab, gun in hand, finger on the trigger, already shooting.
Meg would die in the process. At least, that was the most likely scenario.
She may be a decent shot, but she had a realistic understanding of her own abilities. Unlike many who’d never even been to the range, Meg understood that it was hard to hit targets, especially while under stress.
Meg knew that life wasn’t a movie. She knew that if she went out there shooting against armed men, she was just as likely to end up dead as they were. More so, if they outnumbered her.
But maybe it’d be worth it.
It was the easy way out.
It was tempting. Tempting to end it all. Tempting to go out with a bang, to feel like she was doing something.
But it was cheating.
It was too easy.
Her dad would have hated it.
What had he died for, anyway? What had he done with his dying breaths? Tried to tell her how to stay alive.
Meg glanced over at him again, and the anger and desire for revenge began to fade, the hot tears streamed down her face once more, the intense sadness returning with a vengeance.
Shit. She hated feeling this way.
Her emotions were tumbling around, shifting wildly. And at least she realized it.
Meg was staring at her dad’s motionless face now, the events of the last hour rushing back through her, replaying like a movie reel over and over in her head.
The anger, the sadness, it was all too much. Too much emotion to be able to act practically.
She needed to get ahold of herself. That was what her dad would have wanted her to do. He would have wanted her to act calmly and rationally. He would have wanted her to get to somewhere safe, then process her grief in a safe way, by herself, alone, in solitude, thinking.
He’d laid out the rough plans for the next few months of her life. Head to the Berkshires. Get enough supplies by raiding nearby houses. Stay warm and alone. Stay alive until the spring.
It sounded good in theory. She hoped it would work in practice. Hell, she hoped she could even get to the Berkshires. The highways would be jam-packed, if the day so far was any indication of what was to come.
Meg no longer had the slightest doubt that this was serious. That this power outage was something much, much more. She’d seen the way people had acted. She’d seen the violence and savagery they were capable of. And this was just the beginning, just the very beginning. Even if the power suddenly came back on, she doubted whether order could even be restored. Once the ball got rolling, once the animalistic nature of man, which was always lurking just below the surface, was released ... there was just no stopping that savageness, that competitive violent spirit that just seemed to force man to tear man to shreds.
She was staring at her dead father, his face impassive.
The emotions were coming up again, swirling.
Shit.
A sudden flash of realization hit Meg. To survive, she needed to think clearly.
More thought, less emotion.
But she couldn’t do that effectively with her dead father in the truck next to her.
She’d have to leave his body behind.
She gulped as the realization flooded her.
It’d be hard to do. Almost impossible.
But she’d do it, she’d drag his body out there, hard as it would be, and then it would be over. Then she could keep driving. She could do what she needed to do.
Her father hadn’t been sentimental. What had his last words been to her? Something about never trusting anyone, about assuming everyone was out to kill you. Not “I love you.” No, definitely not. How very Western Mass of him.
Meg knew the roads well, from time spent driving around here as a teenager. When she’d first gotten her license, she’d done almost nothing but drive, cruising around the back roads in the battered old car she’d saved her pennies for years to buy.
She was coming up on the highway on-ramp. She’d be there in about five minutes.
As of now, there were no other cars around.
It’d be as good a place as any.
She’d stop. Take her father out. Drag him behind a tree.
Meg knew he wouldn’t mind, but she knew she’d really have to force herself to do it. After all, even for a non-sentimental person, being dumped behind a tree wasn’t exactly normal or expected.
If she made it to the Berkshires, there was no way she’d be able to bury him anyway. The ground would be frozen until late in spring. And what would she do with the body until then? Set it outside? The animals would get it before it froze, most likely.
Shit.
She had to do it.
Meg stopped the truck, pulling over to the side of the road. It was a fairly secluded area. She’d left a little neighborhood several streets back. Up ahead, there were a couple of houses, but they were spaced far apart. Each had a large yard.
She supposed this was part of someone’s yard, but it was the edge of a very large property.
If she hurried, no one would see her. She’d killed the lights a minute ago, while driving up.
Meg killed the engine and opened her door without even glancing at her father. The less she looked at him, the easier this would be.
Meg gritted her teeth as she walked around the front of the pickup. The air was somehow even colder than she remembered it. The cold seemed to immediately soak through her clothes, making her feel like she was in an ice bath.
She opened the passenger door. She kept her eyes fixed only on what she was doing, not on her father as a whole, and definitely not on his face.
“Come on,” she muttered to herself. “Just do it. Just get it over with. This is what he would have wanted.”
But it definitely didn’t feel normal, rooting through her recently deceased father’s pockets, taking everything he had on him, hoping that it’d be useful in the future.
It didn’t feel normal or remotely proper when she was hauling, pulling his body with all her might, down out of the high truck cab.
His body slammed into the frozen ground.
Next, Meg took his jacket off. She knew that even though it was soaked in blood, she might very well need that jacket for the ext
ra warmth. There were still many hours before the coldest part of the night, and Meg knew that it was very likely she wouldn’t have any heat source at all. She’d be limited to what her own body could produce and what she could trap in. She wouldn’t have enough fuel to run her truck’s engine forever.
Meg stuffed her father’s jacket back into the truck and shut the passenger side door. Then, a hand under each of her father’s armpits, she started dragging him.
It was tough going.
He wasn’t a light man.
But she appreciated the work. She liked gritting her teeth and feeling her muscles strain with the effort. It helped distract her. It helped keep her mind off the fact that her father was dead, that he was never coming back, and that her own chances of survival seemed more remote by the minute.
She’d made it about ten feet before she had to rest. She had to let go of her dad’s body, letting it fall heavily to the ground.
She leaned down, bracing herself against her knees.
She was panting heavily.
Her dad was surprisingly heavy.
This was not how she’d expected this day to turn out.
A ridiculous thought.
And in the face of the ridiculous and the extreme, she laughed. The laughter rolled out of her. Tears of sadness were still on her face, now frozen. The laughter wouldn’t dissolve them, wouldn’t melt them.
“Hands in the air,” came a deep male voice from somewhere in the darkness.
“What?” she said, not moving.
The hidden voice had shocked her, surprised her. At first, she didn’t know what to make of it.
Then the fear overtook her.
Slowly, she stood up straight, hands very slowly rising into the air.
She had the large handgun her dad had given her. It was stuffed lazily into her waistband, where it hung heavily in her pants.
Should she try to go for the gun?
Or should she be the good girl, the good hostage, and raise her hands right into the air, not fighting back?
What would her dad have wanted her to do?
She thought of the men who’d attacked her today, the men who’d tried to hurt her, the men who’d held guns on her, the men who’d tried to possess her.
Constant Danger (Book 1): Fight The Darkness Page 17