“Thanks, I was worried about that. I’ll check for saddles, too.” With that, she seemed to hesitate, looking around the room. “Austin, I know you don’t want to, but I want you to lie on the couch and elevate that leg for at least twenty minutes. I’ll put the boot on after that,” she said, dropping down in front of him and pulling off his own boot, then removing his sock without asking.
He was used to her tending to him now. The awkwardness was gone, though it still made him uncomfortable when he allowed himself to think about it. At this point, she knew his body about as well as he did after three weeks of taking care of him. Now, he watched as she checked his toes and made a clucking sound.
“What?” he growled.
“Your foot is swollen again. Come on, to the couch,” she ordered, helping him out of the chair.
He hopped over to the couch and collapsed into its cushions, letting her use the throw pillows to elevate his foot.
“Thank you,” he muttered. “Maybe you could grab me some fresh clothes from the RV, too?” he asked.
“Absolutely. I’ll be back,” she said before she walked out the front door, leaving him alone in the house.
It was eerily quiet. He’d been in Bob’s house several times. The old guy had always had a radio on, listening to a game or the news. He wondered what had happened to him, and if Savannah had been around when it happened. Maybe that’s what had scared her off from staying. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her. He closed his eyes, hoping she was already with his brother.
Ennis would be prepared for something like this. If Savannah could get there, she would be safe—of that much, he was sure. The problem was, he didn’t trust the people she had left with. He’d only met the Loveridge family one time, and he’d felt an immediate dislike for them. They were weird—it was that simple. Jim had been way too happy for his liking. The guy reminded Austin of one of those TV pastors, begging for money for a new private jet while making promises of salvation to unsuspecting people.
He hoped Savannah was smart enough not to fall for their charms. He would move heaven and earth to get her away from them. His hand slid into his front pocket, clasping the USB he still carried. If all the computers in the country were truly fried, it seemed silly to hold onto the USB, but something told him not to let go of it—not yet.
“You were right,” Amanda said, coming back into the house.
“About?”
“There were a couple saddles. I’ll get them taken care of and then come in to see about scrounging us up something to eat—oh, I’ll grab clothes from your RV, too. Anything else?”
He shrugged, unable to focus on what he might want from the RV. What he wanted was his daughter, here by his side, safe. “We need to get moving,” he said without conviction.
“There is no way you’re riding anywhere today. You have to let that leg rest.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said through gritted teeth, tired of the same old argument.
“Austin, you won’t be fine. You’re barely able to stay on Raven as it is. You just recovered from a serious infection. You’re weak, and you need the rest. I got you here. Trust me. We’ll leave in a day or two. I want you to rest,” she ordered him.
He glared at her, wanting to argue, but experience told him it was pointless. She’d hide the horses from him if she had to. She’d taken the crutches away back at her place, just to keep him still. The woman was fierce. He knew he should appreciate it, but it was difficult to put up with.
“Fine, I’ll sit here like a giant lump and wait,” he grunted. “For a day. Two, at most, Amanda. That’s it.”
She grinned. “Good. I’ll be back inside in a bit to see what food we have left to eat.”
“Whatever,” he sulked. As she walked away, he wondered whether or not she’d be willing to accompany him to Colorado, or let him take her horse. He wasn’t quite sure what would happen if she didn’t, and could only hope that her wanting to get off of her own farm, and accompany him this far, signaled promise for what he faced now.
15
Ennis Merryman stood in the center of his living room, staring at the window. He couldn’t see through the window because of the steel door that had been engaged when something catastrophic had happened. What, he wasn’t sure. Or maybe nothing had happened. Maybe his multi-million-dollar home had just malfunctioned and now he was trapped inside a steel box with no way out. Steel doors had dropped down, sealing him inside the home he had built to withstand a nuclear war. Some malfunction had happened, for sure, catastrophe or not, because he couldn’t even disengage the supposedly man-operated escape hatch.
“I swear I’m going to sue the guy who installed this system,” he muttered.
It had been weeks since the walls had literally come crashing down around him. He’d been watching TV and enjoying a cold beer when there’d been what he assumed was a power surge. The TV and lights had gone out immediately even though he was connected to solar power, which made no sense to him. And he couldn’t call anyone to get an answer, either—his phone wasn’t working. He couldn’t say for sure what had happened, but something had shorted out the computer in the house that was supposed to have been completely protected from surges, EMPs, and everything else. It was supposed to be impenetrable.
Unfortunately, the only conclusion he could come to was that he’d made a mistake in the contractors he’d hired. He’d been warned not to go with the cheapest options, and he hadn’t done it on all things… but apparently, he’d gone with enough cheap and under-the-table options to kick him in the backside. The house had been so expensive, though, he’d had to cut a few corners. Or, at least, that was what he’d told himself at the time, promising himself he’d get everything double-checked at a later date, once the initial gadget payments were all made.
This house had been his brainchild, after all. He’d used his wealth gained from working as a real estate agent to build the house from scratch. It had taken over a year to create his mountain retreat, and it was supposed to be the safest place on the planet. It was supposed to be better than the bunkers built underground by the wealthiest of the wealthy, and yet, here he was, trapped inside of his dream home. When he’d bought the land nestled on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, he’d had it all in hand—everything he’d ever dreamed of. Access to the big city while living off the grid in his own secluded part of the mountains.
He walked to the touchpad again, entering his private code and hoping something would happen.
The screen lit up. “Hello,” the female voice echoed through the speakers built into the ceiling high above.
“Open the front door,” Ennis said slow and clear, and for what had to be the hundredth time since he’d been trapped inside the house.
“I’m sorry, that function is not available.”
He groaned, fighting the urge to slam his fist into the wall pad. “Open. The. Door,” he said slowly, telling himself not to start yelling at the damn computer again. All that accomplished was a sore throat.
“I’m sorry, that function is not available.”
“Argh!” he shouted, yelling at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Can you please repeat your request?” the droning voice asked.
Ennis took a deep breath before shutting down the system again.
“I swear, if I die in this house because I got a bad system, I will never forgive that punk kid. You’re supposed to be Alexa and Siri on steroids!” he shouted at the wall pad.
The system was on power save, according the little battery on the screen, conserving energy because it was relying on battery life. But that wasn’t supposed to happen because he had solar power, so it shouldn’t be necessary. Solar. What the heck had happened to throw even that off? Already, he regretted not hooking up the wind turbine he’d had installed last year. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to have a back-up, but it had seemed like it could wait, and everything he’d read told him solar was the way to go. So, th
ere the turbine sat, high on the hill behind his house, currently useless.
Giving up, he walked into the huge gourmet kitchen and pulled a glass out of the cupboard, running the tap to get some water. At least that part of the house was still functional. He had a few thousand gallons of water stored in a tank high up on the hill behind the house. The gravity-fed system was enough to give him decent water pressure. There was a pump hooked up that should have worked, but it had stopped when the walls had come down.
“So much for the perfect house,” he grumbled.
The power had failed—it was that simple. And, essentially, the house itself had failed in response. The wall pad was run off a small battery system that seemed to be functional as far as he could tell, but it wasn’t running the house systems like he’d intended. Somewhere, something had shorted. His batteries connected to the solar panels weren’t holding any juice—that much he knew for sure. He wasn’t an electrician or a techy by any means and had no idea why they weren’t working. He’d bought the set-up from some guy who’d claimed it was what was used in some of the super-secret government safe rooms.
Ennis was now convinced that that had been a load of crap. It had worked great when he’d tested it, but the second the main power had been cut, the system had failed. The one single window that wasn’t now covered by a steel door was high up on the wall in the kitchen and dining area, and it now offered the only natural light he had in the house. It was a narrow, rectangular window meant to allow in natural light while being small enough and placed high enough not to be a security concern. It was hurricane glass, which made it impenetrable, as well.
“And that worked out really well, didn’t it?” Ennis said, staring up at the window.
The two-story home was just over three-thousand square feet. It was huge, open and airy. At least, it was supposed to be airy. With the windows all covered with the protective steel sheets, it was a giant tomb. He might as well have been in a prison cell. The air vents high on the walls did little to provide fresh air, which was the point. He didn’t want to be breathing in radiated particles and had had the house built to be completely sealed. The air filters that were supposed to keep him supplied with fresh air, however, had died when the power had gone out—yet another thing that wasn’t supposed to happen. He knew he didn’t have much longer before he ran out of air and ended up breathing in carbon dioxide. He was a dead man walking.
A hungry dead man at the moment. There was no point in dying of hunger, he mused. That was one thing he could take care of.
Ennis opened the pantry, thankful he’d spent a couple thousand dollars on the freeze-dried food he’d researched on one of the many prepper sites he followed. No skimping here. He had food for months—years, technically, if he believed the serving suggestions on the cans. He’d decided after the second day that those servings were for tiny children and not for a full-grown adult man. He was glad he’d gone overboard, too, assuming he lived long enough to get to eat the food.
Now, he grabbed a package that claimed to be biscuits and gravy.
“We’ll see about that,” he said, not all that hopeful that it would look or taste quite as great as the picture on the package would lead one to believe.
He followed the directions and prepared his meal, using a minimal amount of his propane to heat the water on the stove. Propane would eat up the oxygen in the room. He couldn’t spare much oxygen. As he sat down at his large, elegant dining table, he stared up through the window. He saw the rocky mountainside the house was built against and little else. His house was in an idyllic location, way off the beaten path, surrounded by mountains and some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.
It was his dumb luck that he’d happened to be at the house when it had malfunctioned.
He had no idea how he was going to get out, or if he would. His investment in being able to ride out the end of the world with all the creature comforts money could buy was backfiring in a big way. He was alone and trapped. Would anyone come looking for him? It was hard to tell and might depend on whether or not something had really gone wrong in the world, or whether his house had just gone bad.
Assuming it was just his house, there was still no knowing. His brother was gallivanting around the country and would have no idea he was missing. His clients would think he’d skipped town and find a new real estate agent. He had no one else to miss him, really. The isolation hadn’t been intentional. It had just kind of happened, he mused. One day, he’d been a handsome, driven, twenty-five-year-old man with the world at his fingertips, with plenty of time to find a wife and start a family… and then, one day, he’d woken up at forty-one, divorced and alone. Wealthy, yeah, but alone and a little less handsome.
“Don’t do it, Ennis,” he said, knowing he was headed to his own pity party if he kept up with that line of thinking.
He finished his meal, impressed by the flavors even if the texture was a little wonky. It was better than starving. He used minimal water to clean up the single dish he used—refusing to eat out of the bag, as the package suggested—and headed upstairs to take his daily sponge bath and change into clean clothes.
16
Nash Gladstone added a few more branches to his small campfire before propping his metal cup on the makeshift burner he’d created to boil the water he collected from the stream. He had no idea how long he’d been in the forest, but was guessing it had to be a little over two weeks. Before that, he’d been trapped inside a mine for at least a day, or possibly two, he guesstimated.
Someone had to be looking for him. His mother would be worried sick. Where was the forest ranger? Where was the search party? Hell, where was anybody? He’d been trapped in the mine, apparently abandoned once he’d gotten separated from the small group he had come out to explore the abandoned mines with. When he’d finally found his way out, he’d discovered his group had disappeared on him—so much for them being worried sick.
“Great friends, Nash,” he mumbled to himself, already knowing what his mother would say.
He stared at the fire, mesmerized by the flames, his mind drifting back to the moment his world had literally gone black. He’d been deep in an old mine, exploring one of the tunnels on his own when everything had gone dark. The generator that had been running the lights they’d had temporarily installed for their exploration had died. He’d waited for someone to restart it. When that hadn’t happened, he’d known something was off. He’d pulled one of his emergency glowsticks from his tactical vest and cracked it, lighting up the tunnel he’d been in.
He’d called out for the other three people who were part of the geology group he’d joined. No one had answered. They’d ditched him, or they were dead. He wasn’t sure which even now. When he’d finally made it out of the mine, it had been to discover he was all alone on the mountain. He’d gone back to the camp to find it empty, as well. He’d tried using his phone to call for help, but it wouldn’t turn on. The two-way radio was dead, as well. The flashlights that had been left behind were also fried.
And it all added up to one conclusion that Nash couldn’t deny. He was too smart to deny it.
In fact, he was a genius. People hated that about him, but nobody could argue against him being smarter than the average eighteen-year-old. Heck, he was smarter than the average adult with decades of life under their belt. It was his curse and his blessing at the same time to have been born with an IQ that doubled that of most people. That being the case, it had taken him less than five minutes to figure out what had happened.
It had been an EMP. He hadn’t felt an explosion, true, but he’d been underground, and it was possible it had been muted. There were a number of possibilities about the why, he knew, but none of that mattered. It had happened, and he needed to get to safety. For now, though, he’d been left wandering through the forest, trying to find a way back to civilization with the hope that he was wrong, and that everything would be fine once he got back to the city. Without GPS or the benefit of a map, both of whic
h had disappeared with his so-called friends, he’d gotten himself lost in the unfamiliar mountains.
For today, though, he was about done. The fire before him was a small one—all he needed to purify the water he’d collected from the small stream he’d settled down beside tonight. Every day, he walked until it was almost dusk. Then, he would make a fire and settle in for another night of sleeping under the stars. The fire gave him a small measure of comfort and helped scare off the creatures that came out at night to eat. He did not want to find himself on the menu of some hungry bear.
He’d finished off the last of the food he’d collected from the abandoned camp three days before. As a result, hunger was a constant distraction. He had to find food and real shelter. He didn’t want to be alone, either. Community was important in a situation like this, he reasoned. He’d studied primitive cultures and knew they survived because they had each other to lean on. There was strength in numbers. He needed the protection of a group or he wouldn’t survive. No matter how smart he was.
He stared at the small bubbles forming on the bottom of the metal cup and waited. He was thirsty and anxious for a drink, even if it would be warm water, having long since emptied out his canteen while walking that day. As soon as the first large bubble rose to the surface and plopped, he used his shirtsleeve wrapped around his hand to pull the cup from the flames. This would be his first drink—he’d have a few more after it, and then re-fill his canteen. For now, he placed the cup on the ground and waited for it to cool enough that he could drink it down.
Finally, he stuck his finger inside, testing the temperature before bringing the cup to his mouth to take a long drink. Water was his everything at this point. It helped fill his empty belly, at least offering some illusion that he wasn’t as hungry as he was.
Survive the Chaos (Small Town EMP Book 1) Page 12