Fighting Rough

by Ryan Westfield

  That was where he was wrong.

  Max took careful aim. He ignored the chaos and the commotion. He ignored Josh’s grunts and the scream that had come from Mandy.

  He wasn’t ignoring the possibility of hitting Mandy.

  But he knew that he was capable of hitting Josh and Josh alone. He’d spent enough time at the target range to know his limits and his abilities.

  Max squeezed the trigger.

  The noise stopped all at once.

  Both Josh and Mandy lay still.

  But Max knew he hadn’t hit Mandy. It wasn’t possible.

  “Mandy?”

  “Help me get this asshole off me,” came Mandy’s muffled voice.

  Max leaned down and grabbed the dead man’s weight, pulling hard at the shoulders. He got the corpse off Mandy, shoving it off into the snow.

  Mandy sat up, breathing heavily.

  “You OK?”

  Mandy nodded.

  Max offered Mandy his hand, pulling her to her feet. She tried dusting the snow off her, but it had gotten in everywhere.

  Max bent down and examined the corpse. He’d shot from the side, making sure that the bullet’s trajectory would leave Mandy safe.

  He took the warmest clothing off the corpse, and handed it to Mandy. There was blood on some of it.

  “Here,” said Max. “You’d better wear this.”

  Mandy hesitated before taking the heavy jacket from Max.

  “You should wear it, Max. You just have that light jacket on.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Max.

  He knew Mandy tended to get cold more easily than he did.

  Mandy nodded.

  “Come on,” said Max. “We’ve got to get a move on. We’ll warm up as we walk.”

  They kept up a good pace at first, even though the snow was thick on the ground. But soon the constant slogging, having to really lift their boots, tired their legs out.

  “We’re going to have to slow down,” said Mandy. “I can’t keep this up.”

  Max nodded.

  The wind blew fiercely and they had to shout to be heard by each other.

  “Storm’s only getting stronger,” shouted Max.

  “What’s that?”

  “Storm’s getting stronger.”

  Mandy nodded vigorously.

  The going only got harder. Soon they were too exhausted to talk, to raise their voices above the noise of the wind.

  They had to walk close together, so as not to get lost.

  Max couldn’t see the sun, and his sense of direction was getting confused. He kept consulting his compass to make sure he was heading in the right direction.

  Max’s toes and fingers were starting to feel numb, despite the vigorous walking. They’d need to get back soon if they wanted to avoid frostbite. They didn’t have the right winter gear to be out in a situation like this.

  If there’d been such a thing as a weather report, this whole mess could have been avoided. But Max knew nothing of predicting the weather. His whole life he’d relied on the weather reports from the TV, radio, and computer. Obviously he couldn’t rely on them anymore.

  In city or suburban life, a blizzard was often met with a sense of annoyance or mild panic. And while there usually had been the occasional car crash or brief power outage, the overall result was usually that everything was fine. A day or so later, things were back to normal. The city plows would come in and make the roads passable again, and soon everyone would be back at work.

  But now, after the EMP, everything was different. Who knew how long the snow would remain on the roads, let alone here on the ground. Max didn’t know, but it might become harder to find food. They’d have to deal with the potential of plummeting temperatures, and all the physical maladies that came with that. They weren’t going to be sitting out the blizzard in the relative comfort of their centrally-heated homes. No, they’d be totally immersed in it. The tent and the van provided minimal protection.

  Max checked his watch. It felt like hours had passed. But it’d only been twenty minutes since he’d last checked his watch.

  The hands of his analog watch gave a comforting glow in the dim light of the blizzard. It was a tough mechanical watch, Russian made, originally designed for the Russian military.

  Before the age of the quartz watch, the Rolex Submariner had reigned supreme for divers. It was the only watch tough enough to hack the great depths and constant abuse of the navy divers. But the Rolex manufacturing required extremely tight tolerances that the Russians couldn’t replicate in their own factories. So in typical Russian fashion, the engineers had come up with a way to achieve the same depth ratings and overall toughness of the Submariner, but for a fraction of the cost.

  A wider seal, along with a domed acrylic “crystal,” not to mention a robust gearing system, gave the Vostok Amphibia what it needed to compete with any other tough dive watch on the planet.

  Max had always favored the watch over other, less robust modern pieces. Sure, it wasn’t stylish, but it did the job. And it wasn’t expensive. Max liked that about the watch.

  The watch was entirely non-electronic. But Max didn’t know if the standard quartz movement watches, powered by batteries, had lasted through the EMP or not. Watches weren’t as popular as they had been, and no one else in his party wore one.

  “You OK, Max?” said Mandy, giving his arm a tap with her fist.

  “Huh?” said Max.

  “You’ve got a glazed look on your face. I was worried I was losing you. You still with me?”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Max. “Just thinking about watches.”

  “The cold is getting to you,” said Mandy. “This isn’t the time for daydreaming. We’ve got to keep with it.”

  “You’re right,” said Max, trying to snap himself out of the little reverie he’d gotten lost in.

  “Check the compass,” said Mandy, pointedly.

  “Right,” said Max, using his numb fingers to get the compass out of his pocket again.

  He didn’t feel quite right, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  “I think the cold’s affecting my brain,” said Max.

  “Me too,” said Mandy. “And I can’t feel my fingers. I hope we’ll be back soon enough.”

  Max looked at his watch. Two hours had somehow passed. Was he losing track of time?

  Max looked out into the swirling snow. He looked down at his boots, which were sunk down into the snow that reached well above the top laces. He could feel it around his socks, which were soaking wet.

  “Are we headed in the right direction?”

  Max checked the compass again. He felt like he was doing everything over and over. He felt like his memory was going somewhat.

  He reminded himself it was just his mind playing tricks on him.

  “I think we’re lost, Max,” said Mandy.

  “No,” said Max. “We can’t be lost. We’ve been heading the right direction.”

  “We must have gone right past the camp,” said Mandy. “We can’t see anything.”

  A particularly strong gust of wind came, and snow blew in around them. Max braced himself against the wind, his boots planted firmly in the snow. Mandy lost her balance, and her body fell into Max’s. He caught her in his arms, and held her to keep her from falling into the snow.

  9

  James

  Lying on his back in the snow, James took aim and squeezed the trigger. He got off two shots.

  Another man fell.

  But there was more shouting. More men. James didn’t know how many, but there were a lot.

  James scrambled to his feet, sprinting off again.

  He didn’t know in which direction he was headed in. All he knew was that he had to get out of there. He was outmanned and outgunned. Severely.

  In the back of his mind, James knew he shouldn’t get too far away from the camp. In this snow, it was likely he’d freeze to death before he found his way back again.

  But that was only his
second priority. His first was not getting shot.

  So he ran, heading in a straight line. The visibility was so bad that trying to zig-zag didn’t matter. He needed to put as much distance between himself and the enemy as possible.

  It was hard to run in the snow, and he couldn’t see where he was doing.

  But he ran and ran. He was already out of breath. His heart was pounding. He clutched his gun in his hand. It seemed it was the only thing standing between him and death.

  Who were these people? Were they from the compound?

  More shouting.

  It seemed as if two people appeared in front of him suddenly. Of course, it was just because of the bad visibility.

  They shouted at him.

  James’s pulse was racing. Adrenaline coursed through him.

  He raised his gun and pointed it at one of them.

  How had they gotten in front of him? Had he accidentally run in a circle? Had he totally lost track of where he was?

  The two figures in front of him had guns. But they didn’t raise them.

  They looked familiar. Somehow.

  James’s brain was a mess of chaos.

  The two people were shouting at him. But he didn’t seem to register the words.

  Something held him back from shooting, from pulling the trigger. A small part of his brain seemed to be telling him to hold off.

  But why?

  He’d die if he didn’t kill them first. He needed to shoot.

  “James!” one of them was shouting.

  The words of the two figures suddenly seemed to congeal. They suddenly started to make sense.

  “James! It’s me, John. Max’s brother!”

  “James! Come with us. What happened?”

  James took a step closer, his gun still raised, his finger still on the trigger.

  As he got closer, their faces came into better view.

  Sure enough, it was John and Cynthia. The two newest members of the group.

  There was no time to apologize for almost shooting them, though.

  “Men with guns!” said James, not even able to catch his breath. He panted as he spoke the words.

  “Where?”

  “How many?”

  “A lot. I shot one of them. No, two… Come on…”

  “Camp’s this way,” said John, grabbing hold of James and pointing in a direction.

  James peered in that direction, but he couldn’t see anything except snow.

  “He’s badly shaken,” Cynthia was saying to John. Her voice sounded distant and strange to James.

  “James, can you make it back with us?”

  James managed to nod.

  Snow must have gotten inside his clothes and shoes when he’d tripped and fallen. He was really freezing now, his body trying to warm itself up by shaking violently.

  Cynthia grabbed James’s free hand, and started pulling him along.

  “You two go first,” shouted John, above the noise of the wind. “I’ll follow.”

  “I can make it on my own,” said James, pulling his hand away from Cynthia’s grasp. “You might need to use your gun.”

  Cynthia nodded at him.

  Cynthia led the way through the snow, her gun out and ready.

  The three of them were weaving their way through the trees now. Mostly pines, completely covered in snow.

  “You sure you know the way?” shouted James.

  “John cut marks in the trees,” shouted Cynthia.

  Sure enough, there were gashes in the trees, creating a path that led back to camp. The gashes were large and once James spotted one of them, he couldn’t stop seeing them.

  “They’ll lead the enemies right back to camp!”

  “They’re coming!” shouted John, from behind.

  Cynthia and James spun around.

  Sure enough, there was someone there. A tall figure, just his outline visible. Some sort of rifle in his hands. Just the outline of the rifle was visible.

  James suspected it was a semi-automatic.

  His mind seemed to be moving rapidly in a blur. Pure instinct took over.

  James acted fast, before Cynthia did. He threw himself to the left, body-checking Cynthia with all his weight. They both fell to the ground.

  John threw himself to the ground just in time.

  The figure was firing. Bullets rained down around them, burying themselves into the snow.

  John fired with his shotgun, from the ground.

  The figure fell into the snow.

  “Move!” shouted John, springing up from the ground.

  Half of James’s mind wanted to go retrieve the gun. But there would be more of them.

  James got up, and dragged Cynthia up along with him.

  John was already there, urging them forward. “Move!” he shouted again.

  The snow was still blowing in powerful gusts that almost knocked them down.

  The three of them dashed forward, away from the corpse in the snow, sprinting towards camp.

  But camp wasn’t going to be a safe haven. They’d been followed this far. There were more men out there. Heavily armed men. The slashes in the trees would lead them all right back to camp, right where James’s mother and sister were.

  They’d have to fight. Like they never had before.

  10

  Georgia

  Georgia’s back was stiff and painful. The cold weather was only making her injury worse. Still, she was getting stronger. She was much better off than she’d been a week ago.

  She’d tried not to let it show, but she was worried about James. Very worried.

  Despite the tough exterior she’d put on, Sadie saw right through it.

  “He’s going to be fine, Mom,” said Sadie.

  “I know,” said Georgia.

  She winced in pain as she stood there, the snow blowing around her.

  “We’ve got to worry about ourselves right now,” said Georgia. “We’ve got to be prepared for anything.”

  Georgia’s mind was racing. At the camp, it was only herself, her daughter, and the two new members of the group, Jake and Rose.

  It wasn’t exactly the fighting force that Georgia would have liked it to be.

  Sadie was getting more competent with her rifle.

  But Jake and Rose were a completely different story. They’d never touched a gun in their lives. It boggled Georgia’s mind that they’d been willing, before the EMP, to travel around the country in their van, without so much as a single handgun stashed safely away for self-defense.

  Hopefully they’d change their tune soon. After all, while it may have been foolish to travel as they had without weapons in a pre-EMP world, it was downright suicidal to do so after the EMP. The world was different now, and Georgia doubted whether it would ever go back to how it had been before.

  But so far, they hadn’t shown much interest in learning about guns, even when Georgia had offered to show them when she’d been feeling energetic a few days ago.

  Georgia wasn’t feeling energetic now. She felt terrible. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her.

  “Get Jake and Rose,” she said to Sadie, who nodded and dashed off through the snow.

  Georgia stood there with her rifle, peering into the blank whiteness of nothing that swirled around her.

  Suddenly, she heard something. Or thought she did.

  But she couldn’t see anything.

  Then she heard it again.

  Georgia got her rifle ready. Her finger was on the trigger. She positioned herself in the direction she thought the noise was coming from.

  Nothing now. No noise.

  Georgia glanced over her shoulder to see if Sadie had reappeared yet with Jake and Rose. No, she still wasn’t there. What was taking so long?

  Suddenly, figures burst out of the snow, coming into view.

  Georgia recognized James immediately, despite the snow.

  “James!” shouted Georgia.

  She kept her gun up, though. She didn’t immediately recogni
ze the others. For all she knew, James was still in trouble. Just because he was back at camp didn’t mean he was safe.

  She pointed her rifle at them until she realized they were just John and Cynthia.

  “Are you OK? What happened?”

  Neither of the three of them looked injured, but it was hard to tell.

  “They’re following us,” said James, completely out of breath, struggling to get the words out.

  There wasn’t any time to ask “who?”

  “How many?” said Georgia, instinctively gripping her rifle tighter.

  “We don’t know,” said John.

  “Could be a lot,” said James. “I shot two of them, I think. Can’t remember. It happened so fast. And John. He got one.”

  “What were they armed with?”

  “Semi-automatics.”

  “Do you think they can follow you back here?” said Georgia.

  “Definitely,” said Cynthia.

  James and John nodded their agreement.

  “Someone had the brilliant idea of making marks in the trees,” said Cynthia. “Creating a trail that leads right back to our camp.”

  Georgia shot a glance at Cynthia. It seemed there was no end to her sarcastic witticisms, no matter how serious the situation.

  At that moment, Sadie appeared through the snow, trailed by Jake and Rose.

  “Oh no, are you all OK?” said Rose, shivering in the cold.

  The wind was battering them all. They stood in at least a foot of snow. They couldn’t even see the van or the tent. The camp was completely invisible to them, even though they were standing in the middle of it.

  Jake and Rose weren’t even carrying guns, even though there were plenty available for everyone now. The pot farmers had had plenty of guns. And there were enough bullets too. For the moment. They’d have to worry about their ammunition in the future. For now, it was survival. Immediate survival.

  Max still wasn’t back. Neither was Mandy. But she couldn’t worry about them right now. They were on their own. There was nothing Georgia could do for them, or anything they could do for her. And no way to communicate.

  Too bad those radios weren’t really portable. It would have been invaluable to have an easily portable means of communication.