Surviving: The Complete Series [Books 1-3]

by Westfield, Ryan

  Jim took a deep breath, trying to calm his panicking mind.

  Panic wasn’t bad in and of itself.

  You just had to know what to do with it.

  Jim knew he couldn’t let it overtake him.

  He couldn’t let himself become mentally defeated.

  He knew he had to go on.

  They desperately needed what Andy had stolen.

  And Jim wasn’t about to give up.

  He could deal with extreme exhaustion. He could deal with a blow to the head.

  He’d figure out a way to deal without his sidearm. He’d improvise. On the shore, there’d be all sorts of things that could become weapons. It was just a matter of using them correctly.

  Now all he had to do was find the shore.

  If he couldn’t see it, he’d have to guess and just start swimming.

  There was always a way forward. Always a path to survival.

  It was just a matter of keeping the mind strong, fortified against self-doubt and weakness of all types.

  14

  Jessica

  Jessica woke up with the worst headache of her life. Her mind and memory felt foggy.

  Her surroundings were swimming around her, refusing to come into focus.

  There were diffuse blobs somewhere in front of her. There was a source of light coming from somewhere.

  It was like she was looking at the world through a dirty piece of thick glass.

  Her eyes closed again. Her eyelids simply felt too heavy. And somehow painful. She couldn’t help herself.

  It was a strange sensation, losing the little visual contact she had just briefly established with the world.

  She must have been hit on the head. She was sure of that much, even though it took her minutes to figure it out.

  She was putting the pieces together slowly. Not of what happened. But of what was going on now.

  Her body seemed to be coming back online. System by system.

  With her eyes closed, sound became more important.

  There were rough male voices nearby. Talking raucously. Laughing.

  Jessica was pretty sure they were speaking English. But she didn’t understand what they were saying. Her brain felt too slow to string the words together.

  Slowly, the memories started coming back.

  She’d been in the driveway of the lake house.

  There’d been the men on the motorcycles.

  Something had happened. Had she fought them?

  What about the others? Jim? Rob?

  Had they been hurt?

  She couldn’t remember.

  Her memory was a fog that she couldn’t break through.

  All she really knew was that she’d been hit on the head. Hard.

  And that she wasn’t at the lake house.

  And that the voices around her weren’t voices she recognized.

  The most likely scenario? She’d been kidnapped. Taken somewhere against her will.

  To what purpose, she could only imagine.

  Her mind felt impossibly tired. Just from being active. From thinking. From being conscious.

  And with that, Jessica faded back into blackness. Back into a sleep that wasn’t restful. A sleep that didn’t restore. A sleep that wasn’t really sleep at all. A sleep punctuated by nightmares of the worst kind.

  When she awoke again, she felt a little better. She didn’t know how much time had passed.

  It was silent around her. The voices had disappeared.

  She was hesitant to open her eyes. She remembered the last time. She remembered how she’d seen nothing but fuzzy shapes and lights.

  What if the blow to her head had damaged her vision permanently?

  What would she do then?

  It wasn’t like there were doctors and surgeons who could potentially fix the issue.

  No, she’d be blind for life. Or seriously sight-impaired.

  And then what chance would she have?

  Well, if she was blind, the sooner she learned the truth, the better chance she’d have.

  She’d have to get out of this situation one way or the other, whether she could see or not.

  It wasn’t any use sitting around feeling sorry for herself.

  She opened her eyes.

  Jessica breathed a sigh of relief.

  She could see.

  Her eyesight was a little blurry still, around the edges of her field of vision. But it wasn’t that bad. And maybe it’d get better.

  She was out in the open, underneath the sky. The sky was gray and she couldn’t see the sun.

  There were trees all around her.

  She was in some sort of small clearing. It might have been a campground. Or something similar.

  There were two motorcycles parked not far from her.

  The men weren’t in sight.

  Good.

  It was the perfect opportunity.

  All she had to do was get away. She’d be able to hide safely among the trees. She’d be able to rest until she was strong enough to start to find her way back to the lake house.

  She reached to her side, expecting to feel the comforting weight of her Glock.

  But it was gone.

  Of course it was gone.

  They’d have to have been idiots to leave her with her weapon.

  But then again, they’d left her unsupervised.

  Her mind was still foggy, and she suddenly realized that all she’d been doing for minutes now was looking around and planning. She hadn’t moved a muscle, except to reach for her Glock.

  She was in a strange position, lying on her side on the ground.

  She went to move, trying to uncurl her legs so that she could stand up.

  Only to find that they were bound together. Tightly.

  She looked down, craning her head down awkwardly.

  Her ankles were bound together, as well as her thighs.

  It wasn’t rope that bound her. Instead, there were jumper cables.

  Great. Just great. They’d be tougher to break. Tougher to saw through.

  But her hands were free.

  She realized it all of a sudden. After all, she’d reached for her absent Glock just now. Her mind was still a mess of fog, the pieces of reality fitting together strangely, as if everything was desynchronized.

  That had been with her right arm.

  Her left arm was trapped underneath her body, and she realized that she couldn’t feel it at all.

  She tried to keep calm.

  Getting worried about her arm would do her no good. It would just make her less effective.

  And if there’d ever been a time when she needed to be effective, it was now.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t think clearly.

  So she’d have to take things slow. Proceed item by item. Take things one at a time. Calm and measured.

  OK. She was doing it.

  She needed that arm. She’d get it to work.

  She knew the clock was ticking. The motorcycle men might come back at any minute. But she still needed to proceed as calmly as she could.

  Her left arm was probably just asleep. It had been stuck underneath her body for who knew how long.

  Jessica tried to shift her weight off her arm.

  But it was hard to move with her legs bound together.

  The best she could do was wriggle her body around until she flopped down on her stomach. Her face pressed uncomfortably into the dirt.

  Her left arm hung uselessly there. But at least it was free.

  It was only a matter of time now before she started to regain feeling in it.

  She knew she’d have to wait. She knew she couldn’t let herself get overcome with anxiety.

  A minute passed.

  Then another.

  It felt like an eternity.

  But, sure enough, she started to feel the painfully intense sensation of pins and needles creeping over her left arm.

  It wasn’t long after that, that she was able to move it.

  Now she h
ad both arms at her disposal.

  She pushed herself up off the dirt and got her legs around to her front so that she could reach down to untie the cables.

  The motorcycle men had tied tight, complicated knots.

  But they were still nothing more than knots.

  What had they been thinking?

  Had they been planning on her simply not waking up?

  Or maybe they hadn’t been expected to be away for so long.

  Jessica worked methodically and carefully.

  In just another couple of minutes, she had the knots undone.

  She stood up shakily, her legs in pain from the tight cords.

  It was then that she heard the laughter.

  Laughter coming from behind her.

  Raucous laughter.

  Cruel laughter.

  She spun around.

  The two motorcycle men were there, emerging from behind the trees where they’d been hiding.

  They walked towards her.

  One held a gun. Pointed right at her.

  There was a vicious smile on his face.

  “I told you that’d be hilarious.”

  “It was even better than I thought it’d be.”

  “Shit, we should do this with everyone we get.”

  “The best part is when they think they’ve gotten away.”

  “Definitely the best.”

  Jessica’s heart was pounding. Her body was telling her to run. She was entering panic again.

  But they’d just shoot her.

  There was no point in running.

  Slowly, she raised her hands into the air. She was frozen in place, her feet firmly planted on the ground.

  15

  Rob

  Rob didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t have the slightest idea.

  The Subaru engine was whining terribly, the tachometer pushing into the red zone.

  He was forgetting to shift. And he knew that wasn’t good. He was wasting gas. Putting unnecessary strain on the small four-cylinder engine.

  But his mind was a nexus of panic and focus. All he could think about was getting to Jessica. Rescuing her. Fighting with everything he had.

  He was aware that he wasn’t approaching this rationally. He wasn’t acting the way Jim would have acted.

  Jim would have taken a mental step back from the situation, evaluated his options, and proceeded calmly and diligently along the best route.

  Instead, Rob felt like he was just plowing on full steam ahead without really considering the consequences.

  After all, what happened when he ran out of gas?

  What happened when he found himself stranded, unsure of how to get back?

  What happened if he crashed? After all, he was driving erratically.

  He was doing everything wrong. There were a thousand errors he could potentially make. And they were all more likely in his current mental state.

  And, still, there was no sign of Jessica.

  There was no sign of anyone.

  All he knew was that he was heading southwest. Well, he didn’t even know that for sure. It was just his best guess.

  Rob hadn’t spent much time outside the greater Rochester area. Aside from a couple of trips to New York City when he was younger, and a few school field trips, he’d barely seen what was beyond his immediate surroundings.

  And before now, he’d never seen a problem with that. He’d figured that everything was pretty much the same everywhere. He’d figured that if he’d been to New York City, where he’d been shocked by the rudeness of the people and the speed with which the organized chaos moved, he’d pretty much seen it all.

  Now he was wishing he’d at least glanced at a few maps. Or spent a little time with one of those web pages that showed you an area’s topographical features.

  Rob was out of his element.

  Pine trees rushed by as he drove along at a brisk eighty-five miles per hour.

  His eyes were constantly moving, scanning the road for any sign of a motorcycle.

  But what was he going to find?

  The riders were long gone. Jessica was long gone.

  It wasn’t as if they’d leave behind a calling card. It wasn’t as if they’d leave behind some item that was immediately recognizable as belonging to them, like a motorcycle helmet or a pair of leather saddle bags.

  For the first time since he’d sped away from the lake house, Rob seriously considered turning around.

  After all, had he even done the responsible thing? He’d left Aly there, protected only by her uncle. And Jordan certainly wasn’t someone you could rely on. Not in a life-or-death situation.

  He’d done what he’d thought was best, and now he was second-guessing himself.

  It had been an impossible call.

  After all, he’d known in that instant, as he’d watched the motorcycles speeding away, that there was no getting Jessica back once she was gone.

  It was a one in a million chance she’d return. And it’d be all up to her. She’d have to escape herself. Then find her way back. Without any gear. Without a map. Without knowing where she was.

  Jessica was capable. More so than Rob. More so than a lot of people. But that didn’t mean she’d be able to escape her captors.

  Especially not with a blow to the head.

  Rob was panicking. His breathing was ragged. His thoughts were going every which way.

  He was sweating, even though the air was cool and the windows were down.

  His vision was going fuzzy around the periphery.

  Rob made a snap decision.

  He jerked the wheel, and the Subaru careened to the side of the road, crunching over some gravel that lay on the shoulder.

  Rob slammed on the brakes.

  The car shuddered to a stop.

  He forgot to hit the clutch, and the engine stalled.

  There he was, sitting on the side of the road, the nose of the Subaru pointing out towards the trees, its rear bumper hanging into the road.

  Without the sound of the engine, silence seemed to ring out. It was an overwhelming silence, one that cut right through him.

  The only thing he could hear was his own heart pounding.

  Rob threw the door open and bolted out into the road.

  He was freaking out.

  He hadn’t felt this bad since... he couldn’t remember when.

  He stood there in the middle of the road, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, breathing like he’d just run a marathon, cold sweat covering his forehead.

  He had to get it together.

  People’s lives depended on the decision he was about to make.

  If he continued on, he was putting Aly at risk. Not to mention himself. Who knew what dangers lay beyond this stretch of road.

  If he turned back, that’d be it for Jessica.

  Rob wasn’t cut out for these types of decisions.

  What would Jim have done?

  Would he have cut their losses and turned around?

  No, Jim would have thought of something much cleverer a long time ago. He would have nipped the situation in the bud. Right from the beginning, he would have acted differently.

  But that was because he was Jim and not Rob.

  Maybe Rob just needed to go with his gut. All this thinking was driving him crazy. He’d never been an intellectual sort of guy. He’d always let his gut and instinct drive him.

  And look where it’d gotten him. Too many lost jobs to count. Too many unpaid bills and long-standing legal problems.

  Well, he had a clean slate now. He didn’t owe anyone any money. There wasn’t even any money.

  Maybe his instincts just hadn’t worked well in the modern world. Maybe the modern pre-EMP world had worked against what came naturally to him.

  Maybe in the post-EMP world, his gut instincts would serve him correctly. Maybe humans were wired for life-and-death survival situations. And those prewired instincts simply didn’t work well when it came to credit scores and reliable employme
nt. Maybe all along, Rob had been fighting against impulses that would now serve him well.

  Or maybe he was completely wrong. After all, he’d been wrong too many times to count.

  His gut was telling him to keep going. To search for Jessica.

  Maybe it wasn’t what Jim would do.

  But Rob wasn’t Jim.

  Rob shook his head like a wet dog, trying to shake away the panic.

  He took stock of his surroundings, trying to resettle himself.

  He was alone on the road. It was just him and the stalled Subaru and the trees. Nothing for miles.

  But that couldn’t have been the case. There must have been someone out there. Somewhere. Probably in hiding.

  After all, it wasn’t like this part of the state was that deserted. Sure, there were fewer people here per square mile than there were in the greater Rochester area.

  But it wasn’t deserted.

  It wasn’t Wyoming.

  Rob may not have known a lot. But he knew that much.

  So, there must have been someone around.

  Maybe there was someone who knew something about some guys on motorcycles.

  After all, it hadn’t been that long since the EMP. The chances that some biker guys had moved in from another area, well—that was certainly a possibility, but not as big of a possibility that they were native to the area.

  Now that Rob had made his decision to press on, he was a little calmer. And now that he was a little calmer, he realized that his best course of action was to simply find someone from around here, ask them about local bikers, and then track Jessica down that way.

  With a clear plan in his head, Rob rushed back to the Subaru.

  He was still nervous, his hands and feet not completely under his control, and he stalled the wagon twice more while trying to start it.

  But he got the engine started, put it in reverse, and got back on the road.

  Now all he had to do was find someone.

  He glanced at the gas tank.

  Was it an eighth of a tank left? A quarter? It was hard to tell. The level always seemed different, depending on what angle he looked at it.

  It didn’t matter much, anyway. All he had to do was get to Jessica. After that, they’d be able to get back with or without the Subaru. They’d figure something out.