Whatever the case, Adam was sure they were walking into something horrible. It was impossible to picture mainland San Francisco without imagining it the way it had been—full of people, full of cars, full of life. It would be nothing like that now, he knew.
But what would it be?
“Lots of people are dead,” Ella persisted. She seemed to have been thinking along the same lines he had. “They said so on TV, before the power went out. Before the EMP. I guess you probably didn’t have that on the boat—”
“We had a radio,” he told her. “We were getting the news too. I heard the reports.”
“Then you heard how bad it was. An epidemic, they said. Millions of people died. And that was just from the virus. That doesn’t even take into account the other factors. The looting, the violence…”
“A lot of that is probably still going on,” Adam said. “There’s less competition for resources than there used to be, but there are also fewer resources. I’m guessing we’ll see pockets of civilization where survivors have started to group up, probably in places where a lot of resources are available.”
“What kinds of places?” Ella asked.
He wanted to comfort her, to say something reassuring, but the truth was that his vision of what awaited them on the mainland wasn’t reassuring at all. “Maybe places like supermarkets,” he said. “I could imagine a lot of people camping out there, and there’s plenty to eat, right?”
“But wouldn’t that be the first place looters would think to hit?” Ella asked. “If I was trying to survive on the mainland—which I will be, I guess—I’d want to find a place of shelter that had food and supplies, but that wouldn’t be at the top of anyone’s list of places to search.”
“Like what?” Adam asked.
To his surprise, she had an answer ready. “A sporting goods store,” she said. “You don’t think of it as a place for food, but they sell things like water bottles and granola bars in the big ones, so you could keep yourself going for a while, at least. And they’ve got socks and jackets and things like that, so you’d be able to stay warm, and they’ve got tents for shelter—”
“And weapons, probably,” Adam said, following her train of thought.
Ella hesitated for a moment. “Right,” she said quietly.
He knew what she was thinking. Yes, they had hunted together, back on the island. But hunting for animals, for sustenance, was different than the possibility of seeing a person at the other end of your gun. Feeding yourself was different from taking a human life. Adam didn’t the relish the thought that they might have to do that. But he was prepared for the possibility.
“It’s possible we won’t see anyone at all,” he said. “It’s possible so many people are dead that we won’t come across anyone for ages.”
“God,” Ella whispered.
“I know.”
“What if everyone’s gone?” she said. “What if there’s just…nobody left alive at all?
“No,” he said. “That can’t be the case.”
“It could be. We haven’t been on the mainland in months. We have no idea what it’s like.”
“Somebody set off the EMP,” Adam said. “It didn’t go off by itself. And for something that big to happen…that’s not the work of one or two isolated survivors. Which means that, probably, some kind of government still exists, even if it’s just a few guys in a bunker.”
“They’d kill us the moment they saw us.”
“We don’t know that,” Adam said. “If there’s an infrastructure in place, there might be some kind of system for helping the survivors. Maybe everyone’s being gathered together in the same place. Maybe all the fighting and the violence is over, and the people are learning how to live in the new world. Maybe things are finally settling down over there.”
“That’s almost impossibly optimistic,” Ella said wryly.
Adam didn’t say anything. He knew how blindly hopeful his words were. He knew it was very unlikely that the world they were walking into would look anything like what he’d described to Ella. And yet, he had to hope. He had to be positive, because Ella was having such a hard time seeing anything good about their situation. She needed him to keep things together right now.
They finished the bag of jerky and Ella tucked it back into the duffel bag. Adam reached out for her, pulled her close, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. It was so dark that they couldn’t see anything except the stars above them—the moon was obscured by clouds. The only things they had to orient themselves were the rocking of the ship and each other.
Adam felt as if he was falling, falling down an infinite black hole. Ella was the only thing to cling to.
They didn’t speak for a long time. He imagined her thoughts must be running parallel to his own—praying for the sun to rise, for the long night to be over. More than once he imagined he saw a distant pinking on the horizon only to decide he had been wrong, he had dreamed it up because he wanted to see it so badly.
It felt as though the night would never end.
He felt Ella’s breathing become deep and even and knew she had fallen asleep against him. That was good. She would be rested for whatever came next. He began to grow tired himself, but he didn’t dare sleep, nor did he want to wake her. He forced his eyes to remain open.
Time passed.
The boat rocked.
Ella shifted in his arms. Was she awake? He couldn’t be sure.
He felt suddenly, deeply, achingly alone.
Who had he been able to trust, really, since the day he’d left home? He had thought he could rely on Cody, but Cody had been weak. Cody hadn’t been able to cope with the challenges presented by the world they now lived in. He had thought he could rely on his new friendship with Artem, the captain of Cody’s yacht, but Artem was gone now. He had been killed by Cody in a fit of madness.
Now there was Ella. Adam cared for her, and he felt bonded to her as strongly as if they were the only two people left in the world. What would he do if something were to happen to her, too?
In all the time since he’d left home, he had never had to deal with being alone. There had always been someone. Someone he could talk to. Someone he could confer with and share ideas with. Someone to help him figure out how to live and to make plans with for the future.
Now Ella was the only person left. She was a good person to have, but it was frightening to have such a small network. If something happened to her, that would just be it.
He would be alone in this strange and frightening world.
“Adam,” she said softly.
“You’re awake?”
“I’ve been awake for a while. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t say that. I’m glad you slept. You needed to.”
“Maybe.” She stretched and sat up. “Adam, aren’t you afraid?”
“Are you afraid?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “And it worries me that you don’t seem to be.”
He tightened his arm around her. “I was trying to be brave for your sake. I didn’t want you to think I was worried.”
“But I have to know that you understand what we’re facing,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Adam said. “I understand it too well.” He thought of Cody, who had never been able to accept the new reality, and of Artem, who had taught Adam that the only way forward was to understand the world as it was now. “I don’t know what we’re going to find when we hit land, but—what is it?”
Ella had gasped and jerked upright a bit in his arms, and as she sat forward, he realized that he could make out the line of her profile. The sun was rising.
“There,” Ella said, pointing. “Don’t you see it?”
He stared out into the distance, following her finger. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s land,” she said. “I’m sure of it. That dark craggy shape up ahead. See?”
He squinted. There did seem to be a solid mass out ahead of them, something
that might indeed be land. “I think I see what you mean…”
She was already on her feet, untying the oars. “Come on,” she said, handing him one. “Let’s go. We could be off the water by the time the sun is up.”
They rowed together in silence. Adam anticipated a need to restrain himself, to use less of his strength so that he and Ella could row evenly and the boat would move in a straight line, but she surprised him again by keeping up with him. She had been frightened last night, and he couldn’t blame her, but he thought that when push came to shove she would stand her ground well. She was a good person to have at his side, he thought. He was glad she was the one who was here with him now.
He trusted her.
That was an incredibly valuable thing, given what they were facing.
The sun continued to climb in the sky, improving their visibility minute by minute. The sunrise felt to Adam like a long exhale, as if he’d been holding his breath and now could finally release it. The fear and anxiety of the night slipped away, leaving him feeling exhausted, as if he’d just run a very long distance.
As they approached the beach, he jumped out of the boat and hauled it toward the shore. He could barely find the strength to bring it up above the waterline.
“Toss me the rope,” he called up to Ella.
She threw it down.
“Is it still anchored to something?”
“It’s tied around the mast,” she said.
“Okay.” He strode up the beach to a small tree. Hoping it would be enough to keep the boat from washing away, he looped the rope around the trunk and tied it off carefully.
Ella was watching him. “Do you think we’ll need the boat again?” she asked.
“Better to have and not need, right?” he said.
“I don’t want to go back out to sea.”
“Neither do I,” he assured her. “But we don’t know what will happen. Maybe we’ll find something we can use…maybe a time will come when we’ll want this boat. We just can’t know for sure.”
“It’ll probably be stolen,” she said.
She was probably right. They couldn’t rely on anything staying where it was put, not anymore. If Adam came upon an asset here on the mainland that could help him and Ella survive, he knew for a fact that he wouldn’t hesitate to take it. Survival was more important than ethics or morals now.
But he would do what he could to preserve his boat. Maybe it would be here if they needed it later. There was always a chance. After all, he thought darkly, how many people are there even left alive to steal things?
Ella clambered down from the boat. “Where do you think we are?” she asked. “I don’t recognize this beach.”
“Neither do I,” Adam agreed, looking up and down the shoreline. It was completely deserted, with no sign that anybody had ever been here. It clearly hadn’t been a touristy spot—there were no little souvenir shops, no lifeguard chairs, no boardwalk. The beach was narrow, transitioning to a weedy patch just a few yards away from the water.
“Grab the bag,” Adam said, pointing up at the boat. “We’ll have a look around and see what we can see.”
Ella looked uncertain, but she grabbed the duffel bag and followed him up the sand.
Chapter 3
Exhaustion overtook them quickly. They’d only come a short distance when Ella dropped the bag. “Can we rest for a while?” she asked.
Adam looked up at the sky. “What time would you say it is?”
“Early,” she said. “Before six, I’ll bet. Why?”
“I’m just wondering how likely we are to run into other people. Or rather, to be found by them.”
Ella shook her head. “We can’t rely on things like the time of day to predict that,” she said. “We have no idea what time people are active anymore.”
She was right. He had fallen into the old way of thinking. Perhaps it was because, both on the yacht and at the Santa Joaquina, they had kept pretty regular hours, sleeping at night and waking around sunrise each morning. But those had both been very contained, controlled environments. They were on the mainland now. Anything could be going on here.
“We shouldn’t just crash out on the beach,” Adam said. “If we just fall asleep out here in the open, we could easily become targets.”
“Targets for what? What do you think would happen?”
“To be honest with you, I have no idea,” he said, “I’d like to think that if anyone found us their instinct would be to help us, but—”
“But we can’t depend on that,” Ella finished.
“No,” he agreed. “I think at the very least we ought to expect that they’d take the duffel bag. Hell, at this point I would probably take someone’s duffel bag if they were just out sleeping on the beach.”
Ella looked slightly disturbed. “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I think I would too. Are we horrible?”
“The old rules don’t apply,” he told her. “We’re trying to survive. We have to prioritize ourselves, at least until we get the lay of the land. And the fact that we’re having this conversation is another reason I don’t think we should stay out here on the beach. We’re going to need to go inland, to figure out where we are. Hopefully we can find a place to stay that feels safe, or at least less exposed.”
Ella nodded. “All right. Let’s do that, then.”
“How much food do we have in the bag?”
She opened it up and showed him. “I think it’s enough to keep us going for a few days, especially if we’re careful and don’t eat too much at once. What do you think?”
Adam nodded. “It should be all right. You don’t have any weapons in there, do you?”
“We don’t need weapons now, do we?”
“Probably not. Okay. We’ll deal with that after we’ve rested.”
“Where should we go?” she asked.
“I think before we do anything we should try to hide the boat,” he said. “Just in case we need to come back for it.”
She stared at him. “Hide it? How do you want to hide a boat on a beach? There’s nothing here.”
“No, but we can make it look more broken-down than it is.” He hiked up the sand to the weeds and grabbed some branches and a piece of driftwood. Returning to the boat, he leaned them up against the side. “If we do enough of this,” he said, “we might be able to get it to the point where it looks like a pile of garbage from a distance. And if we can do that, people might be discouraged from coming up the beach to check it out.”
Ella nodded. “I see your point.”
“Help me gather some stuff?”
She made her way up the beach and loaded up her arms with branches of her own. The two of them worked in companionable silence for several long minutes, and as they did, Adam managed to forget how utterly exhausted he was. Part of what had made the previous night so tiring was the fact that they had had nothing to do but ponder the situation in which they found themselves. Having a physical task was a relief, and being in the position of knowing what needed to be done was even more of one.
“All right,” he said, when one whole side of the boat had been obscured. “I think that’s pretty good.”
Ella stood back and regarded their handiwork. “I don’t think I’d have known that was a boat even from right here,” she said. “And if I did figure it out, I don’t think I’d want to sail it. It looks like it’s been through a hurricane.”
Adam grinned. “Perfect,” he said.
“It feels funny to be leaving it behind,” Ella said quietly.
“I thought you were tired of being at sea?”
“I am,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. It just feels like…like it’s the last piece of our old life. The life we had at the Santa Joaquina.”
“Things were terrible there.”
“They were, but they were known. I woke up every day with a pretty good idea of what the world was going to look like. Now I have no idea what’s ahead of us. There could be anything on the other side of that hill.
” She pointed up toward the top of the weeds, away from the water. “There could be rivers of lava, or people murdering each other in the streets—”
“I don’t think it’ll be that dramatic.”
“But we don’t know. That’s my point. The island was known, and the boat was part of that. Now everything is…a mystery.”
Adam understood what she was saying, but he couldn’t fully agree. Life with the Birkins and the McTerrells had been a hellish, frightening battle. Now they might be heading into something unknown, but whatever lay ahead, he trusted the person at his side. To his way of thinking, that was an improvement.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what’s up over the hill. Maybe there’s someplace nearby where we can hide out and rest for a little while.”
They made their way up the beach, picking their footing carefully as they crossed through the weeds. When they’d reached the top of the hill, they stopped and looked out at the scene before them.
“It’s just a highway,” Ella said.
Adam nodded.
“I think I was expecting to see a city,” she said.
“We must have drifted north,” he said. “Way beyond the San Francisco city limits. Maybe it’s for the best. We don’t know what the cities look like, but if there’s any violence going on, it’s a safe bet that that’s where it is.”
“So what do we do now?” Ella asked.
“We walk,” he said. He looked back and forth, trying to figure out which way might be best to go, but everything looked the same. “Do you still have that compass?”
“I put it in the duffel.” She pulled it out and held it up for him to see.
He nodded. “Do you have a feeling about north or south?”
“If you’re right about the direction of our drift, south would probably lead us back into the city,” Ella said.
He nodded. “That might be risky.”
“Or it might be good. We don’t know what it’s like.”
“That’s true,” he said. “And approaching from a distance would give us a chance to sort of feel things out. If it started to look bad, we could always turn around and go back the way we came.”
Escape The Dark (Book 3): Into The Ruins Page 2