EMP: Dangerous Decisions

by Mark Mathews

  If they hadn’t had to save Tom, then Sarah would have been with Emily and maybe stopped her from being carted off. Tom was beating himself up about it already. Sarah was furious and it took everything she had not to lay into him when he already was moping. The moping really grated on her nerves, though, because Tom was a grown man, and he was acting like a child. At his best, a moody teenager.

  “It looks like the tracks are heading west.” Wade had been examining the motorcycle tracks they’d found in the soft mud, but to Sarah, it was just a tire print.

  It was a good thing that Wade had been a bit of a hunter and outdoorsman in his off-time before the disaster had hit. He knew a little bit more about this sort of thing than she did. She wanted to feel a little relaxed about having a direction to head in, but to be honest, nothing was going to calm her down until she had Emily back. From their hiding place, they could see the town scrambling to regroup. The barn had gone up in flames quickly after everyone had gotten out because the straw that had been in it was old and dry. Now people were trying to check on their neighbors and look for loved ones who had scattered. A woman was standing over a man who had been laid out with a sheet over him. It must have been one of the men who’d been shot when Sarah and Wade barged in. A slight twinge of regret went through Sarah, but she was doing what she’d had to do to save her friends, and she stuck by it…especially since she intended to do more than that to get Emily back.

  “Look, you two should go ahead and leave. Go find Emily and save her. The townsfolk will be looking only for me since I was stupid enough to sit in on their private cult meeting.”

  Tom was feeling sorry for himself, and it really rubbed Sarah the wrong way. She bit her tongue before she said something she might regret. What she really wanted to do was slap him across the face, then lay into him about all the reasons why this was his fault. Unfortunately, he was moping around like a teenage girl who’d just been dumped, and she couldn’t handle it. Even she didn’t act like this when she’d been a teenage girl and been dumped.

  “Don’t you remember Sarah and I busting in with guns blazing? With all that shooting, and the people who died, they’ll be looking for us, too. We need to stick together.” Wade was trying to be the voice of reason, but Sarah was running out of patience.

  “We need to be going after Emily.” Her voice was firm, and her face was fierce.

  Tom actually took a step back from her. Wade put a hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her, and eventually she looked up at him. Wade was a tough guy, but even he backed away from the look she was giving him. If looks could kill, she would have lit a fire under both of them and had a barbecue.

  “Sarah, you know as well as I do that we won’t be able to catch up to the motorcycle gang on foot. To make matters worse, we probably won’t even be able to outrun the townspeople on foot. Our best bet will be to try circling around the town, hiding out a little more until we can get clear, then trying to find some kind of transportation.” Wade leaned against a tree, and as soon as the bark touched his shoulder, he winced. Sarah noticed and immediately felt guilty. Wade had been shot, and she’d completely forgotten about it in lieu of her panic over Emily’s disappearance. Maybe she could focus on that and give herself a little bit of a distraction.

  “Why don’t you come sit down over here and I’ll look at your shoulder?” She’d gone back into officer mode, and Wade knew better than to try rankling her now.

  He obeyed and sat down on the softest patch of ground he could find. Sarah knelt down next to him and slowly started peeling off his blood-soaked shirt sleeve. Wade gritted his teeth, but otherwise showed no sign that he was in pain. Sarah heaved a great sigh of relief. The bullet hadn’t actually hit him, just grazed him, shaving off a good chunk of skin and a light layer of muscle. She could bandage it and everything would heal on its own, hopefully not causing any difficulties for his arm’s range of motion. Now, if only they had something to clean it and bind it with. She swore loudly.

  “What’s wrong?” Tom had been beyond timid since they’d saved him, but now he spoke up. Maybe he was wondering about the extent of the damage he’d caused. Sarah looked up at the sky and silently counted to ten before she could get herself calm enough to talk to him.

  “He got grazed by a bullet, and he’ll be fine, I just don’t have anything to clean it up with.” She kicked at a rock absentmindedly. Tom rummaged around inside his jacket. He pulled out a little bottle.

  “Would this help?” He offered it to Sarah, and she actually smiled at him. This scared him even more than her angry face, so he didn’t quite know what to do. It was a little bottle of Jack Daniels.

  “Yes! Where did you get this?” Tom gave it to her and shrugged, looking sheepish. He probably didn’t expect her actually to be happy about something that he did.

  “I took it out of the mini-bar when we were in the hotel. I was going to drink it, but since I’ve been with you and Wade, I haven’t really felt the need to forget who I am and what my life has been up to this point.” Sarah didn’t have the time to get emotional with him and pat his shoulder, telling him that everything was going to be okay.

  She wasn’t a therapist, and she damn sure didn’t have the patience for that kind of thing. She was trying to occupy her mind with taking care of Wade until they could find something to get them out of there faster. Taking the bottle, she quickly twisted off the top and handed a stick to Wade. He didn’t even need to ask what it was for, he just put it between his teeth and bit down. Sarah poured a third of the bottle out on his wound and he jumped. She bit at a seam in her T-shirt and pulled, causing a string to burst, then she tore off a long strand of material. Using the smallest piece of the corner, she rubbed the fresh blood off, then poured more of the alcohol on it. Wade tensed again, and she could hear the stick crunching in protest as he bit down harder. More blood gushed out, and Tom turned away, looking more than a little green. Sarah wiped daintily at it, then put a clean chunk of the strip of cloth over the wound, winding it around and around Wade’s upper arm, then tying it tightly. He growled low in his throat as she tightened the knot, but didn’t say a word. He knew that it was necessary.

  “Okay, let’s start circling.” He got to his feet, desperate to take his mind off the pain. Sarah handed him the little bottle, which still had about a third of the alcohol left in it. He drained it in one swallow, tossing it over his shoulder.

  The three fell back even deeper into the woods, then started picking their way through the tangled undergrowth to the other side of the town. If they were lucky, the townspeople only would look for them in the area of forest where they’d disappeared. Sarah fell into a bit of a trance as they worked their way through the maze of thorns and hidden holes, and all she could think about was Emily. They had been accosted by a group of men on the way to the roadside bar, and Wade had shot the front tire of one of their motorcycles. The men had tried to shoot back, and one guy even had thrown a crowbar at them. Could this be the same group of men? If it was, then all she could do was pray that none of them had seen Emily in the car, and connect her to them. If they did, there was no telling what they would do to the poor little girl for revenge on the rest of them.

  Pain lanced through her foot and she bit down on a scream. Looking down, she noticed that she’d stepped on a twisted bit of metal. Sarah had no idea what it was, but she quickly checked her foot to see if the piece of junk had cut through the bottom of her shoe. It hadn’t. She heaved a sigh of relief. Good. Because she couldn’t remember when she’d had her last tetanus shot. Moving some of the leaves out of the way, she saw it was the twisted remains of some kind of small animal trap.

  Maybe that was how the town was feeding itself. Either way, this one had been ruined, so she felt a little better. It was vindictive maybe, but right now it helped her to feel a little better. Wade suddenly threw up an arm, halting their progress. In front of them was a wooden cabin. It looked like someone else thought the town was nuts enough to distance themselves from
it a little. This little cabin was all alone in the trees, almost hidden from view. An old pickup truck stood parked in a little clearing next to it. The truck was an older one, that much was obvious from the way it looked, but how old, they couldn’t tell. Tom and Sarah hung back while Wade snuck closer. He didn’t see any signs of life, so he broke from the cover of the trees and headed for the truck.

  As he drew closer, Wade kept an eye on the cabin to see if anyone was indeed home. It looked empty, but just to be safe, he approached the truck with caution. He reached the door and poked his head up high enough to see through the window. The ignition was empty. Wade cursed. Not everyone was forgetful enough to leave the keys in the ignition like Tom had. Taking a deep breath, Wade loosened the pistol in its holster, then opened the door of the truck. He searched it…no keys. In a last ditch effort, he pulled down the visor. The keys fell into his lap. Smiling at the turn of events, he put the key in the ignition, held his breath, and turned it. His heart thudded painfully in the half a second before the engine turned over. He looked back at the trees, intending to signal Sarah and Tom to come over, but when he looked, they already were running for the passenger door. It was a good thing they were on the same page.

  Even with the noise of the engine, no one came running out the front door of the cabin. Wade considered this the first thing that had gone right since they had laid eyes on this godforsaken town. With the three of them all in the cab, it was a little cramped, but they thought it would be safer not to be in the open truck bed at the moment. The road curved dangerously close to the town’s main road, but it was a necessary evil if they were to get out of the area at all in a vehicle. Wade hadn’t even been sure this truck was old enough to work, he’d been praying that the engine turned over. The silence had been deafening until the engine’s thundering roared through him. Maybe they would make it out of here alive after all.

  Sarah kept a sharp lookout for anyone trying to get in the way of their escape, but no one seemed to be paying much attention to them. It was almost as though they were invisible from the rest of the world as long as they stayed in that truck. They wound their way through the town, then headed north. The map that Wade held showed them a quicker route west if they drove about a mile to the north first. Sarah had tried to argue the case at first, because she wanted to head straight west and catch up to Emily as fast as they could. It took Wade explaining two or three times about the time it would take from their trip before she had reluctantly, and very sulkily, agreed to his plan of going north first.

  Tom, for the most part, had stayed out of it and quietly waited around in the background until a decision had been made because he didn’t want to get between the two warring powerhouses and end up an unfortunate casualty. He only wanted to go with them, and now that he finally had accepted Christina had left him when trouble hit instead of going for help, he didn’t really care much about where they went. Life was boring for him now without her, but he wasn’t going to look for her if she didn’t want him. She’d had enough time to come back, and she hadn’t. That had said it all. And yet, he still couldn’t get her out of his mind. She was the reason he did half the stupid things he did. He just wanted to forget about her, and he couldn’t. His mind was hardwired to think about her unless it was thinking about something else.

  Once Wade turned onto the highway leading west, the three of them sat silently looking for more clues as to where the motorcycle gang had gone. Even though all three of them had their eyes peeled for even the tiniest clue, none of them saw anything that could help point them in the right direction. Sarah was tense, gripping the door handle hard enough to turn her knuckles white, and just praying that Emily was okay. She wished she had a sixth sense that told her when she was getting closer to the little girl. Unfortunately, there was no genie around to grant her wish, so she sat there, praying and hoping, hoping and praying.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EVERY SECOND of the trip grated on Sarah’s nerves. She felt something inside her telling her she was getting farther and farther away from Emily. She would quiet that voice by telling it they had to go north first, but that she was coming to save her baby. She felt sick to her stomach and guilty for not heading directly that way, as the crow flew. Wade drove in silence, Sarah was glum and stared out the window mindlessly, and that left Tom alone, lost in thought. Conversation was nonexistent, and he thought back to how things used to be. He and Christina had been the perfect couple, in his opinion. They had started to play house, then became used to each other, and were on their way to marriage.

  Christina had been his rock, his muse, his everything. He’d bent over backward to spoil her and love her, to buy her the little things he saw that reminded him of her. How could she have left him? If they had been married, then they would have been bound by the phrase, ‘till death do you part.’ As far as he’d been concerned, they already were married, and just were missing the paper that verified it to the rest of the world. He wasn’t going to leave her for anything. Apparently, that wasn’t the case for her. She’d taken her chance and run off the first time their love really was tested. Maybe she’d been hoping that her leaving would lead to his death, then she could gather sympathy. That thought stopped him dead in his tracks…at least it would have if he’d been walking. Could she really be that conniving? A cold chill ran down his spine and he looked over at Wade. That was the benefit of sitting in the back seat. He could look at both Sarah and Wade without being seen.

  There was something in Wade’s past that was tearing him up, too. As a man, Tom could tell the little things he said and did that showed he was hurting, too. He wondered if Wade’s family had left him, or if he’d lost them somehow. That was the number one thing that could tear a man up inside. Tom had wanted to approach Wade and ask, but he hadn’t wanted to embarrass the poor man in front of Sarah. That was just something you didn’t do in front of a woman because it was a chink in the armor. The man code refused to let him ask in front of Sarah, and she was always around. So, while the curiosity was tearing him apart, he respected Wade’s feelings and decided to wait. Sarah, on the other hand, was something else entirely. She didn’t seem to have anything bothering her except the loss of the little girl. That made Tom wonder if she was heartless, or if she just had nothing from her old life that she missed. He found it a little hard to believe she would have nothing that she missed, so he was forced to think she was just a hardass who didn’t let any feelings show. The truck started slowing down, and he looked out the window. They’d stopped by another little town, much smaller than the last, and in much worse shape.

  “Let’s get out and look for clues.” Sarah’s voice floated back into the truck, because she was already out.

  Wade stretched painfully and did his best to get out without falling over. Tom jumped out, too, grabbing a backpack from the seat next to him. This was now the norm for them. Drive around looking for clues and supplies. Wade now was driving on the road that he said would take them after Emily. But they still had no idea where the motorcycle gang had gone. They hit every little town they found, looking for supplies that the group had missed, and looking for any indication as to where they could be going. Sarah left the supplies to the men, because she was more interested in finding Emily. Wade took on the brunt of the work by looking for both, and Tom decided to stick with supplies. It was simpler that way.

  Tom was digging through the pantries of the few empty houses that he’d found, and Wade was looking for stores. Tom didn’t want to see the destruction of the town after riots had broken out. He felt better just taking things from tidy homes. It let him hold on to the thought that maybe one day they would go back to the way things were. Sarah already had tried breaking him of that habit, but he was holding on for dear life.

  This town was so small they could have gone through it on foot. Wade drove the five minutes through it to the gas station that was visible on the far end of the street. He was siphoning gas from a car when he started looking around. There, at the
next gas pump, was a black tire mark. Wade felt a chill go down his spine. It was a single tire mark, so it must have come from a motorcycle, not a car. A car would have had matching prints. He smiled. This was the first clue they’d found since Emily had disappeared. He went back down the main road, swinging his head back and forth until he found Sarah with a broken two-by-four, wailing on a column someone had put on their front porch. She was covered in sweat, her face was scrunched up in anger, and he was pretty sure there were tears on her face, but he couldn’t really distinguish them from the beads of sweat and grime.

  “Sarah! I think I may have found something!” Her head snapped up like a predator smelling blood, and she leaped off the porch, coming up to him at a dead run. He wanted to laugh, because she could have just called out to him, but he knew better than to antagonize her right now.

  “What did you find? Is it Emily?” There was such hope in her eyes that he didn’t want to tell her he hadn’t found the girl.

  “There were tire tracks at the gas station.” Her eyes grew wide with hope. “They’re fresh, so they must have gotten gas a few hours ago.”

  “Where’s Tom? We’ve got to go. We need to get going right now.” Wade smiled at the concern that Sarah showed for the little girl. It was not the first time he thought Sarah would be a good mother to Emily.

  It made him wonder what had happened to Emily’s real parents, but just like he didn’t want his privacy intruded upon, he knew better than to ask. Having pumped as much gas as they had cans for, and collected Tom from one of the houses, they’d piled back in the truck and followed in the direction the tire tracks led. Sarah sat there, eyes peeled for any sign of movement. Wade was driving in a relaxed manner, but at a high speed, and Tom was melancholy, staring out the window and dozing. He didn’t want to get his hopes up until they had something more concrete than a tire track. After about three and a half hours, Sarah’s keen eyes picked up a dust cloud.