by Bowman, Dave
Up ahead, something caught his eye: a concrete wall that was still standing. Two dark, human-shaped shadows were imprinted on the wall. They were nuclear shadows – the imprints of these people just before they were killed by the bomb.
The shadows on the wall of an adult and a child were the only thing that remained of them.
A sick feeling overcame him. He had to get out of there.
He turned around and began retracing his steps, going back toward the interstate. The farther he got from the city center, the less horrific the destruction.
He walked quickly, wanting to flee the chilling destruction of the downtown area. The sense of loss was overwhelming. His mind flew to his wife and all he cared for. Somehow, Jack had to make it home to Annie.
Still, though, Jack didn't want to go as far as I-10 just yet. He finally came to a concrete building that was still standing. The sign had been torn from the structure and rested on the street.
White Rock Public Library.
Jack mounted the steps and walked through the open entrance covered in shattered glass from the front doors.
He looked around, moving through the small, dark library slowly. Only a bit of moonlight from the broken windows filtered in the building.
He checked behind the front desk, the bathrooms, and looked up and down all the rows of books – he couldn't walk through the stacks, since the books had all tumbled to the floor. Then he walked through the back rooms.
No one was there. And luckily, there weren't even any corpses. They must have all evacuated after the EMP and before the bomb, Jack figured.
When he was satisfied the building was empty, he returned to the front lobby. The glass case of the snack vending machine had been broken. Jack reached in and grabbed an armful of chips and cookies. It wasn't the home-cooked meal he wanted, but it would do.
Beside him, the soda machine had spilled its contents onto the floor. Jack grabbed a few cans.
With the loot in his arms and the rifle over his shoulder, he made his way to the front desk. He sat on the librarian's chair and tore into the food and drink.
With some food in his belly, he leaned back in the chair and looked up at the tall ceiling of the dark, empty building. Then he picked up a stack of printer paper that had fallen on the floor and grabbed a pen from the desk.
He had some planning to do.
34
“Are you sure I'm not going to die?” Charlotte asked again.
“I'm sure,” Annie said. “Your pulse is fine. The bleeding's stopped. And I'm keeping the wounds clean so you won't get an infection.”
“And you're sure there's not a bullet still in there?” Charlotte asked, grimacing.
“Positive,” Annie said. “The exit wound is pretty convincing.”
Annie hadn't looked around for the bullet that had passed through her friend's side. But she knew it had to be in the grass around there somewhere.
Charlotte sighed. “Well, the pain might kill me. This is brutal.”
Annie grabbed the bottle of vodka from its place in the grass and held it up. “Another swig?”
“Please.”
Annie brought the bottle to her friend's mouth and gave her a big drink. Charlotte swallowed and screwed her face up.
“That's the stuff,” Charlotte said.
“Good thing you brought this from your apartment,” Annie said.
Charlotte nodded. She settled down in the passenger side car seat. “And you say I'm impractical.”
Annie grinned. “I take it all back.”
The two women had spent most of the day there in the ditch alongside the highway. Charlotte perked up soon after Annie gave her the hydrocortisone. Annie had been monitoring her wounds and vital signs closely as the day wore on.
The mid-day sun had been intense. Charlotte asked to move into the car. Annie helped her, with considerable effort. The bullet wounds put Charlotte in agony.
Annie ran the Porsche's aftermarket-installed air conditioning a few minutes at a time during the heat of the day to cool off. Now that the sun was lower, they didn't need it.
Harvey still lay in the grass a few feet away. Annie kept checking on him as well. He was still breathing but unconscious. His pockets were empty of any weapons. Annie had made sure of that. And the knots on his bindings were still tight. If he came to, he wouldn't be a threat to them.
“I still say just shoot him,” Charlotte muttered. “He tried to kill me!”
Annie looked at him. She was still considering what to do with him.
“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe he can be of some use to us alive.”
“By shooting me again?” Charlotte scoffed.
“No,” Annie said. “I want to see what he has at this farm of his.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Probably more brothers just like him. Do you want to get shot, too?”
“Just let me think about it some more,” Annie said. She wanted to keep her options open.
Charlotte sighed. “So we're spending the night here again?”
“Yeah,” Annie said. “You need to rest. And we're still stuck, so we're not going anywhere just yet.”
“OK,” Charlotte said. “I just hope no other psychopaths come along while we're asleep.”
“I'm not going to sleep,” Annie said. “No way. Especially not with our friend here.”
She glanced at Harvey, who was drooling into the grass.
“Do you think you could walk tomorrow?” Annie asked.
Charlotte flinched. “It hurts so bad right now. I don't know . . . I guess I could try. But not a hundred miles to Loretta.”
“No, not that far. Maybe we could find something along the way,” Annie said hopefully.
“Always the optimist,” Charlotte said. Her voice was becoming drowsy.
After a few minutes, her eyes closed. She was asleep.
Good, Annie thought. She needs to rest and heal as much as possible.
Annie felt so wired she couldn't sleep if she tried. She sat in the tall grass, leaning against the side of the Porsche. The sun was just beginning to lower itself toward the horizon.
She looked toward the sun. She looked to the west, in the direction of her husband's family home.
Somehow, they would make it there.
She didn't know how, but she knew she and Charlotte would get there one way or another. And she knew Jack would meet them there.
For now, she would keep a vigil through the night. If the man lying in the grass – or anyone else – tried to hurt them, they would be sorry. Annie would no longer hesitate to kill in self-defense. The only reason Harvey was still alive was because Annie thought he might have useful information.
Tomorrow, she would figure something out. If Charlotte would be able to walk, they would set out on foot. If not, Annie would have to find another way.
A subtle change had come over Annie that day. She realized that she had been able to manage every challenge thrown her way. She no longer doubted her ability to survive and get to safety. She was only focused on the how. And almost losing her best friend only made her more determined to make it.
She felt the fear that had plagued her slip away. It was a strange sensation to finally be free of it.
In its place was confidence that she would succeed.
They would survive. They would persevere. Jack would, too.
35
Jack set the pen down and looked out the nearest window.
The sun was visible in the sky now. He had survived the night.
Miraculously, he had found a safe place in the city. The area around the library was totally quiet. Not even Oscar, Dox, and their crew had wanted to be around the devastation of the city center.
He had escaped the hellish prison he had been held in for a day. There had been so many near-misses that he was amazed he was still living. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life.
But his next move would be even more difficult.
He was going back in
there. He was going to rescue Naomi and Brent.
He knew it was incredibly dangerous. Maybe it was the wrong decision. Another man might have fled the state by now, lucky to escape with his own life, and left his friends behind.
But Jack knew he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he did that.
No way. He couldn't leave Naomi and Brent behind. They'd be used as slave labor for some monstrous drug addicts on a power trip. They'd be gobbled up by the machine those monsters had created. Then they'd be spit out, one way or another.
Jack had barely escaped the area controlled by Dox.
And now, he was going to walk back into the lion's den.
He had a plan. It might just be crazy enough to work.
But Jack wasn't foolish. He knew he would be risking his life. But he had to try. How would he ever be able to look Annie in the eye if he didn't?
He imagined his friends in there now. Had they been put to work already? Had their spirits been broken?
Were they holding out hope that Jack would come back for them?
He was most worried about Naomi. How horrifically would these people treat women? And how would they treat a traumatized young woman like Naomi, who had already been through so much that she was almost ready to give up on life?
And Brent could be so trusting. Would he put his faith in the wrong person? Was he getting beaten for running his mouth?
They needed him. And he didn't have much time.
The guards would be looking for him. Kyle, the guard at C Block, was dead, along with a couple other armed soldier types working for Dox. But there were others. To run an organization as massive and powerful as the one that had taken over White Rock, there had to be dozens of people armed and on the patrol.
And now they were all on the lookout for Jack, the prisoner who had escaped.
They'd be wanting to make an example out of him. They'd want to kill Jack to teach the other prisoners a lesson:
This is what happens when you try to escape.
But Jack wouldn't be captured again. He wasn't going back in that blood-soaked motel they had turned into a prison. And he wasn't going to let those monsters take him down.
He looked over the map he had drawn of the area around the interstate, the adobe house, and C Block. Using every detail he could remember, he tried to familiarize himself with the layout of the area he called Hell Central.
There were a lot of gaps in his knowledge. He hadn't seen half of the town. And Brent and Naomi had been dragged off out of his sight, up the hill and away from the interstate. He could only guess where they might be kept based on what he had seen of the rest of the place.
But he knew a few things. He had paid attention as best he could the whole time they had marched him around. He had studied the men at that table yesterday. He thought about how they were running things. And he had made some educated guesses.
He hoped it was enough.
No, it would be enough. It had to be. There was no room for doubt.
Jack stood up and walked to the broken window on the side wall and looked out. The sun was still low, not yet risen to the level of mid-morning. He would keep close track of the sun's path. He would make his move based on where the sun was in the sky. He had to time it just right.
A sudden movement several yards outside the window frame caught his eye. A small songbird – a sparrow, Jack thought – flew across the destroyed parking lot and came to rest on the branch of a toppled cottonwood tree.
Jack watched it, amazed to see a sign of life in the wasteland outside. The brown bird paused for a moment, then took off in flight again toward the east.
The old-timers in Loretta, where Jack had grown up, used to talk about bird sightings as omens. Jack didn't know if the old folks would say a sparrow meant good or bad luck. But to Jack in that moment, it seemed like a good sign. Even in the middle of all the destruction and death surrounding him, there was something living. Something free.
There was still hope.
He watched that bird fly toward the horizon, disappearing out of sight. Soon, he, too, would be leaving this place forever. Soon, he would see Annie's face again. And one day, all this would seem like a bad dream.
But before that, he had to face down his demons.
For the moment, he was safe. He would rest and recoup some strength for a few hours, then head out there again.
Jack knew his plan would work. It had to. There were too many people counting on him.
He'd find Naomi and Brent and get them home. He'd find Annie. No matter what.
Just a few more hours. Then they'd all be home free.
Keep reading for Book 3!
Survive the End
1
White Rock, Arizona - 11:34 a.m.
There were six guards, and Jack was watching all of them.
From the roof of a three-story building, he could see their hiding places.
They were stationed near the interstate, dotted behind buildings and clusters of trees. They shifted restlessly, waiting for a vehicle to appear on I-10.
Since running vehicles were few and far between, they didn't concern themselves much with staying hidden during this downtime. The sound of a distant engine traveling east or west on the interstate would give them plenty of time to position themselves out of sight from a driver’s vantage point.
Then, if a driver stopped to siphon gas from one of the abandoned vehicles clustered in that area, the six guards would ambush them.
And if the driver didn’t stop? Jack suspected the men would start shooting at the passing vehicle, trying to kill or wound the driver.
These guys were serious. They meant to steal every car that passed through the small city.
But stealing cars was the least of their crimes. Jack knew that firsthand.
Most of the men sat, yawning and trying to stay awake. A couple of them paced anxiously back and forth. They wiped the sweat from their brows, hot and red from the late morning Arizona sun.
Must be hard work terrorizing an entire city, he thought to himself as he watched the men with disgust.
Jack squinted through the scope of his rifle. He had spent most of the morning searching for ammo. He kept his search confined to the downtown area, where he knew the gang members wouldn't venture. Even hardened criminals had their limits. They didn't want to spend time in the city center where a nuclear bomb had blown a huge swath of the city to smithereens.
Miraculously, he had found some ammunition for his firearm in the manager's office of a greasy spoon diner. The restaurant had stood just beyond the blast radius, and it had survived the explosion. Jack was discovering all kinds of things people had kept behind closed doors, safe from the world to see.
And now, that restaurant manager’s foresight would mean that Jack could go back into the gang's territory.
Back into hell. Where they had kept Jack prisoner, handcuffed and chained to a bed for two nights as punishment for back-talking their leader.
Well, not just punishment.
They had intended to break Jack, both physically and mentally. That was how they had taken over this small city. They had broken people’s wills, stripped them of any hope of ever escaping and returning to freedom.
But they hadn’t succeeded. Not on Jack.
Through luck and sheer will, he managed to escape that blood-soaked motel they had kept him in.
But Naomi and Brent were still being held in those prisons.
Jack had fought so hard to escape, and now he was going back in. But first, he had to get the gatekeepers out of the way.
The sun rose higher. A few minutes later, two of the men rose to their feet. They said something to the other remaining men. Then the first two guards walked away, heading south toward the gang’s headquarters.
Just as Jack expected.
Two days before, when he, Naomi, and Brent had been ambushed on this very interstate, it had been around high noon. The men who captured them had taken the trio to their headquarter
s. There, Jack, Naomi, and Brent had been assessed, split up, and sent to separate detention centers.
And who had been there at the headquarters, seated at a table and stuffing their faces with food cooked by their prisoners?
The core twelve members of the gang. The ones who called the shots and were in charge of this operation.
Below them were countless lower-ranked members. The trusted ones were armed guards. They were stationed at the entrance points to the gang’s territory. They watched over the workers, the drones – the prisoners. They made sure the prisoners didn’t revolt.
The four men Jack now watched were the mid-level guys. Entrusted with weapons, loyal enough to run the carjacking operation, they were vetted members of the gang. But they weren’t the elite members.
The two men walking south toward the adobe house were part of the elite crew – the core twelve members. And it was lunchtime.
In his short interactions with these guys, Jack had watched them closely. The twelve men at the top were too power-drunk to give up their special privileges like a daily feast with their buddies. Not even after the crisis situation of last night. Not even when their numbers had been reduced by two.
At least Jack thought two of the core members had been killed last night.
Oscar, the leader of the group, had been the one to assess new prisoners. He’d raked his eyes over Jack, Naomi, and Brent as they stood in that big adobe house two days ago and decided which detention center – prison – to send them. He’d been calling the shots.
But then last night, Dox, the second in command, had burst into Jack’s room and announced he was taking things over. Dox had killed the leader.
And then Jack had killed Dox, just before making his escape.
Now, just ten of the leaders were left standing. And they were all meeting in the headquarters right now. In just a few minutes, they’d be stuffed and sleepy, leaning back in their chairs and unbuckling their belts as Jack had seen them do two days ago.
Now, Jack watched the two guards abandon their posts and disappear over the hill, headed toward that big adobe house where they ran their operation.