Sandra decided it was a risk she was willing to take. Not to mention there wasn’t much in the way of valuables in plain view in the house. She gave the truck gas and turned it toward town. She told herself she would be quick—find out when the power would be coming back on and she would tell the police about the break in at the Stevenson’s before heading home.
Chapter Sixteen
Nick dropped his pack on the porch and leaned against the wall of the cabin while he waited for Mike to unlock the door. Carrying back the smoked elk meat had take them a couple of days and Nick couldn’t think about anything other than how good it was going to feel when he got to sit on the loveseat and put up his feet.
Mike opened the door, put his pack on the floor next to supply shelf and grabbed his bottle of water. Nick picked up his pack, followed Mike inside, and set it down next to the loveseat. He plopped down, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. It was everything he had been dreaming of while sleeping on the hard ground as they waited for the elk meat to smoke.
“What are you doing?”
Nick opened his eyes and looked at Mike, who was standing next to the door and checking his Glock.
“What?”
“What are you doing?” Mike said, repeating the question.
“Nothing…just trying to chill out a little. Why?”
“We have work to do.”
Nick took a deep breath. He knew this was the life he chose when he left with Mike, he just felt like Mike was pushing him harder with each passing day. Nick was already feeling exhausted, but he didn’t question Mike and instead got up and followed him outside.
“What do we need to do?”
“We need to get started on the pitfall,” Mike said.
Nick sighed and walked over to the pile of sharpened branches. He still couldn’t believe Mike made him carve them and then carry them all the way back. Nick had to just keep telling himself there was a reason for everything Mike did and he just needed to trust him. It wasn’t easy for Nick… he had never had so much faith in a person… he never felt like his entire life depended on a single person the way it did on Mike.
Mike grabbed the pickaxe that was leaning against the cabin and walked toward where his truck was parked. He took the sharp end of the axe and drew a large square into the ground just a few feet from the truck. Nick guessed it was about eight feet on each side.
“Is that how big we have to make it?” Nick said, instantly regretting that he had asked such a redundant sounding question.
“The idea is that it’s a trap… so it needs to be large enough to be able to actually trap something.”
“What exactly are we trying to catch?” Nick said.
Mike lifted the pickaxe over his head and slammed it into the rocky soil. The force of his swing buried it a few inches into the ground and he pulled it free before answering Nick.
“A person.”
“Wait… we are going to dig a big hole… fill it with spikes… and hope a person falls into it?”
Nick was a little mortified by the idea. He was having a hard enough time accepting the fact they would have to continue to kill animals so they wouldn’t starve. Nick suddenly felt sick. He dropped the sharpened branches and leaned against the closest tree.
“Well,” Mike said, “I don’t want to catch a person. This is more of a defensive measure. Like I told you before, we have to be ready to protect ourselves and what we have by any means necessary.”
“And the pitfall will help with that?” Nick said, taking a deep breath as he finished.
“Yes. The hope is that if someone tries to come here and harm us or steal the truck… well, they will step on the top of the pitfall and fall inside. It’s not pretty, but if that’s what it takes to keep us alive….”
Nick knew Mike was right. He wondered how long he would have survived without his former neighbors’ help. Nick decided not to even think about it, and instead tried to focus on the pitfall instead. Mike swung the pickaxe again and loosened some more of the dirt.
“Grab the shovel from over there,” Mike said.
Nick walked back to where Mike got the pickaxe from. He wrapped his hands around the weathered handle of the shovel and looked down. You need to forget who you were… you need to be strong now or you’ll never survive what’s still to come, he thought. Nick took a deep breath and turned back to Mike, who was starting to get into a furious rhythm with the pickaxe.
“What can I do to help?” Nick said.
Mike stopped and swept his hand over his brow to mop up the perspiration that had formed after only a few minutes.
“Every time I loosen up some dirt… you come in and just get as much as you can with the shovel.”
“Where do you want the dirt?”
“Just behind you… wherever. We’re going to need it, so try to keep it in a relatively neat pile.”
Nick nodded as he pushed the shovel into the rocky soil and lifted out as much as he could. He turned and dumped it on the ground as Mike swung the pickaxe again. It was going to take them a long time to finish the hole, but Nick took solace in the fact he was going to soon be in the best shape of his life. He knew it was silly, it didn’t really matter that much to him, but it was something he might be able to use to motivate himself.
~~~
Nick collapsed onto the loveseat and closed his eyes. He didn’t care what chore or job Mike might have for him… there was no way he was getting up again without sleeping at least six or seven hours.
The two men had dug the pit for three hours until the last of the light faded from the sky and a chill filled the air. They hadn’t gotten as much of it dug as Nick had hoped and he felt like it was going to take the better part of a week because of the hard rocky soil.
“Is everything alright?” Mike said.
Nick opened his eyes, but didn’t lift his head to look at Mike.
“Yeah… I guess. I’m just tired.”
Mike didn’t answer. Nick heard him opening the door of the wood stove and striking a match. He turned his head enough to watch as the small flare caught the wood shavings and began to grow.
“What’s your plan for when all this ends?” Nick said.
Mike stood up and turned toward Nick. He ran his hand through his hair, walked over to his bed and sat down.
“What do you mean?”
Nick put his hands on the cushions of the loveseat and pushed himself into a sitting position. He was tired, but still interested in what Mike had to say because he was still feeling so lost in the new world that was now his home.
“I mean like… what are you going to do once everything settles down and people start to rebuild?”
Mike kicked off his shoes and methodically took his socks off as he thought about his answer. It kind of surprised Nick actually… Mike seemed so prepared for every situation that he assumed he would know what he would do next.
“I’m not sure. I have some family in Lincoln, Nebraska, but they aren’t exactly survivalist types. I guess I could head that way just to see what happened to them.”
“That makes sense,” Nick said.
It made Nick think about his parents. He wondered what happened to them and he was still trying to come to terms with the fact that he would probably never find out. Florida was a long way without airplanes… and driving was kind of out. Nick took a deep breath and tried to not think about what had happened to them.
“But,” Mike said, “I don’t want to get ahead of myself. At any moment this whole delicate reality we live in could come crashing down around us… and then… well, then it won’t matter what my plans are.”
It was a scary thought… one Nick didn’t want to hear, but he knew Mike was right.
Chapter Seventeen
Sandra drove the shovel into the ground and turned the chocolate brown soil. The days were beginning to blend together, in her mind, and she was starting to wonder if the power was going to ever come back on. She pushed the shovel into the dirt again and pa
used. A noise reached her ears and she turned. It sounded like someone talking and it was coming from around the side of the house. She had no idea who could be approaching.
She climbed the back steps, taking them two at a time, and grabbed her shotgun that she had left leaning against the wall on the back porch. Sandra had already made it a habit to keep her only protection close by in a time of uncertainty. She opened the back door, closed it, and made her way through the house.
As she neared the front door, the voices grew louder. She froze as a hand rapped on the front door. Sandra lifted the shotgun to her shoulder and pointed it at the door. The buckshot she had loaded in it wouldn’t kill a man, most likely, but if the door opened she was ready to shoot whoever stepped through it.
“Sandra? You in there?”
Her mind raced as she tried to recognize the voice. There was a familiarity to it, a man’s voice that she felt she had heard many times before, yet she couldn’t quite place it. The floor of the porch creaked as whoever called out moved to the right… toward the window that Sandra had forgotten to close the curtains of. She swung the barrel of the shotgun to the right and waited for the man to show himself.
The footsteps on the wooden deck halted. The deck creaked as the man made his way back to the door and knocked again. Sandra let out a sigh of relief. She was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a killer and didn’t want to test the limits of the human condition.
“Sandra, if you’re in there, it’s me, Nathan.”
A smile crossed her face as her brain put the name and voice together. Nathan had been a summer farm hand when she was growing up. Her mind drifted back to when she was a teenager and Nathan was a strong, strapping man and she was sure he was the most beautiful creature that had ever walked the earth.
She rested the shotgun against the wall and reached for the doorknob. As she turned the worn brass, she remembered what her father used to tell her. He would say "Be cautious and don't trust just anyone," but she quickly pushed the thought from her mind and pulled the door open.
Nathan, who was standing with his back to the door, spun around and flashed a smile at Sandra. She smiled back as he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. For the first time since the power went out Sandra felt safe.
Sandra peered over Nathan’s shoulder. He moved so that she could get a better view of his companion. She looked the man up and down and turned back to Nathan. She had never seen the other man before. He looked old and worn out, Sandra thought, but when she looked into his eyes she could tell that he was much younger than his body led her to believe.
“This is Manuel.”
Sandra nodded at him and he returned the gesture.
“We’ve been working together for the last six months as roughnecks on the rigs out east. He’s real quiet to be around too, seeing as how he’s mute and I don’t know sign language,” Nathan said.
“Well, any friend of Nathan’s… they are a friend of mine, too,” she said.
Manuel smiled at her and nodded. She stepped back inside the house and held the door open.
“Well, come on in… you both look like you could use some water.”
Sandra closed the door behind them and they followed her into the kitchen. She retrieved three glasses from the cabinet next to the sink and filled them with her water pitcher.
“Still using the hand pump well I see,” Nathan said.
"Yeah, and thank god for that."
Sandra handed the glasses to the men, which they promptly finished.
Nathan had stopped by a few years earlier, the last time they had seen each other, and he had bugged her to upgrade to a more modern well. Sandra smiled because she knew he was thinking about the same thing.
"You never did like listening to me."
She smiled. He was right, she was stubborn and tried to desperately grasp onto the things on the farm that reminded her of her parents.
“And I’m glad that I didn’t listen to you, for once… otherwise we wouldn’t have water.”
“Speaking of,” Nathan said, looking down at the empty glass.
Sandra shook her head and got the pitcher. She was glad to see Nathan again and she knew things were looking up. She refilled their glasses and sat down across from Nathan.
“So,” she said, “have you heard anything about when the power is coming back on?”
Nathan took a long drink of water and looked down at the table. Sandra could tell he was avoiding the question… she just didn’t know why.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Nathan finally looked up at her. The joy that had been in his eyes moments earlier was gone and replaced by sorrow. It worried Sandra… she knew something was terribly wrong.
“The thing is… I… I only know what I heard from others, so I don’t know if it’s true….”
Sandra held her breath. She could tell by the tone of his voice that he believed what he had been told, but was feeling bad about telling her.
“Nathan… just tell me. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
He nodded and Sandra could see his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed.
“I know you’re not. Things… things out there are bad, Sandra. In the last couple of days I’ve seen things I never thought I would. The world is going to shit and people are acting like it’s the end of days.”
Sandra wasn’t even sure how to react to that. She knew something had happened which was obvious from when she went to Loveland… but that hadn’t revealed much other than people seemed to be on edge and the power was out.
“What did you hear?”
“We… we caught a ride from a guy just outside of Greeley. He said there was an attack… that someone dropped a nuclear device on the United States.”
Sandra wrinkled her forehead. She didn’t think it made any sense. The United States had been a different place the last few years, but the people are strong and the military was still one of the largest in the world.
“It… it doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“It does, though. Think about it… he said that it would cause some kind of electric magnetic thing, which is what wiped out all the electronic devices.”
Sandra thought back to the large flash in the sky. She had convinced herself it had been in her mind, but now that Nathan explained it… it started to make sense.
“Holy shit,” Sandra said.
“Yeah….”
“My god… what… what should we do?”
Nathan shrugged. Sandra suddenly felt lost. It was the first time since her parents died that she was so unsure of what she was supposed to do.
“I don’t have any answers,” Nathan. “We came here because you were the only person around here I could think of that I wanted to see.”
Sandra smiled even though her heart wasn’t in it. She was glad to see Nathan, but she felt like she just wanted to curl up in bed and sleep forever. She stood up from the table and walked to the kitchen window. Sandra did nothing more than look out the window, lost in her thoughts, for the better part of an hour. Manuel and Nathan, realizing she was in shock, sat at the table and waited for her.
She eventually turned back to the men. The color had returned to her face, which Nathan was glad to see, and she walked over to the table. Sandra put her hands on the curved back of the chair and took a deep breath.
“Well… if what you say is true… then we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
“How so?” he said.
“I guess we need to get ready for whatever is coming,” Sandra said.
“Yeah? What did you have in mind?”
“Well… I guess we should expand the garden… that should be the first thing. Right now it can grow plenty of stuff for the three of us, but I have a feeling there might be more mouths to feed very soon.”
Nathan nodded. Sandra didn’t even consider what she would do if more refugees came to her farm… she already knew she would take them in just like Nathan and Manuel. She also knew that if what
Nathan had told her was true, they all stood a better chance if they stuck together.
Sandra sighed and smiled at Nathan. She had a feeling deep in her gut that times were going to get a lot tougher and they could use all the help they could get.
“You’re right,” Nathan said. “What we have to work with right now?”
Sandra wracked her brain while she tried to figure out what they needed. She had some seed, enough to grow her normal supply of vegetables, but that wasn’t going to be enough—they were going to have to go to town and try and find more. Sandra wasn’t eager to head back to town, but she really didn’t see any other option.
“We need some seed,” Sandra said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty scarce here in not too much longer.”
“Is Rick’s Farm Supply still around?” Nathan said.
She nodded in response. It wasn’t the first place Sandra would want to look, but she had a feeling it would be much safer… a thought reinforced by the image of what had happened to the Stevenson’s house. She realized it wasn’t some random robbery… it was probably someone who knew what had happened.
“Yeah… I think maybe we should check there. I’ll go get my keys.”
Nathan stood up from the table, shaking his head.
“I think we should walk… Manuel and I will go get the seed while you stay here.”
“That’s like… like a six mile walk… each way.”
Nathan nodded.
“Why?” Sandra said. “It’s just a few minute drive.”
“Twelve miles is still twelve miles… whatever gas is in your truck right now is all you’ll have for the foreseeable future.”
“I’ve got about half a tank.”
“Yeah… it’s not worth it. Just let us walk… we’ll be back as soon as we can.”
“Are you sure?” Sandra said.
“Yeah… I’m sure. I want to be able to contribute. You’re allowing us to stay with you… you didn’t have to.”
EMP (The Districts Book 1) Page 8