"Who is that?" Stacey said.
"I don't know," the older woman said, "but they should stay clear of the beach for now. At least until we know more about the group that's down there."
"They'll be fine. They're probably just going for a swim," the young man said. "A bunch of the kids always do every morning."
The woman watched them as they made their way towards the shoreline, but then they stopped and took notice of the lifeboat further down the beach.
"They see them," Stacey said. "I think they're going to go over and say hi."
"No, they wouldn't do that. They know the rules about staying away from people we don't know. They're old enough not to do anything stupid."
The teens were well out of calling distance now.
"I'm not so sure about that; I think one of them is Jason." The one teenager had pulled off his sweatshirt in preparation to get into the water when they finally took notice of the lifeboat. "If that's Jason, then the other is likely Mark. Those two are inseparable."
"Terrific, those two are always on the edge of trouble," the older woman said. "I don't understand how they got into our group."
"I like them," Stacey said. "They brought me back a whole case of toys and a stuffed unicorn the other day. They always have fun stuff."
"They are indeed quite the scavengers. It's about the only thing that they're good for. I would have voted to kick them out if not for their ability to find things." She looked to the young man. "You should go call them back. I don't want them interacting with those people from the lifeboat. We don't know what their intentions are."
"It's too late for that," the young man said as he nodded back in the direction of the shoreline. The two teens were now sneaking stealthily down the beach towards the lifeboat. The survivors were on the other side of the boat, and some were still working on moving Olaf's body.
"Quickly, run down there and tell them I said to come back," the woman said, urging him towards the beach with a hand on his back.
The two teens moved quickly towards the lifeboat, using it as cover from the survivors, who were focused on moving Olaf.
He shrugged her push away. "There's no way I can get to them before they reach those people. They're too close."
"They never get caught," Stacey said as she climbed up on the railing at the edge of the boardwalk for a better view. "They told me the story about how the police were chasing them when they rescued my unicorn. They ran between some buildings and boosted each other to a fire escape, then jumped from the roof of one building to another. They said the police were too fat to chase after them."
The older woman looked shocked. "I certainly hope that's nothing more than a story told to entertain a little girl. No one needs to be attracting the attention of the authorities these days. Not the way they've been acting."
"Oh no," Stacey corrected her. "It's all totally true. My unicorn told me so."
Their attention was now pulled back to the lifeboat. The teens had made their way unnoticed to the side of the boat and were slowly working their way around it.
"They're gonna get caught," the woman said.
"No they won't," Stacey answered. "They're really good at this. They're sneaky, and they’re fast and they're smart."
"Sounds to me like someone has a crush on some older boys," the young man said.
Stacey looked at him, unfazed by his teasing comment. "I don't even know what that means," she said and returned her gaze to the two teens on the beach.
The boys made their way around the end of the lifeboat that was closest to the shoreline. The waves reached one end of the boat, as the tides were rising. One of the boys, it looked like Jason, was peeking around the edge of the boat just enough to see those on the other side. He was ankle deep in water as he did. He waited till the few people milling around the open hatch moved away, then he inched closer.
"What the hell is he doing?" the older woman said.
Stacey looked at her accusingly. "You swore." The older woman ignored her.
"If I know those two," the young man answered, "I'd say they're in full scavenging mode again. They've probably gotten the notion in their heads that a lifeboat should be full of supplies and provisions. I bet they were shoplifters in a previous lifetime."
The older woman fidgeted nervously as Stacey asked, "What's a shoplifter?"
"Someone who needs to go to jail," he answered.
Stacey glared at him. "I don't believe you." The young man just smiled back at her.
Jason was just about to make a move for the open hatch when Mark pulled him back. He'd found another hatch on their side. They undid several latches and pulled it open. It was small but big enough for a person to squeeze through. Jason stuck his head in, then pulled it back and said something to Mark before he went through into the boat. Seconds ticked by as Mark peered through the hatch at whatever it was that Jason was doing inside.
"This is excruciating," the woman said. "They're going to get caught and then we're all going to get dragged into this."
"Maybe," the young man said, "but probably not. They're pretty good at this sort of thing."
"Far too good from the looks of it. Oh shit ..." Stacey snapped her head to look at the older woman, partially from her use of language and partially from the tone of her voice. Several of the boat people were making their way back to the boat. They were the ones that had moved the corpse and they were now coming back for something from in the boat.
"Get out of there," the older woman hissed. Jason was now handing some cases out of the hatch to Mark, who was too preoccupied with stacking the cases to notice the approaching people.
"It's too late," the young man said. "He can't get out in time." He was right.
Mark was halfway through the hatch, being handed two more cases when the people entered the boat from the opposite side. Mark's body language immediately gave away that they'd been spotted. He jerked back quickly out of the hatch with a case in each hand. One of the cases banged the side of the hatch and flew open, spilling its contents over the beach. Jason followed quickly out of the hatch but seemed to get stuck part-way out.
"Someone's holding him from inside," the young man said excitedly. "They've got him."
Mark had started to sprint down the beach with a case in each hand when he looked back. Jason was calling out to him. Mark dropped the cases he had and ran back to the boat.
"Oh jeez," the woman said. "I thought you said they were good at this. Now they're both going to get caught."
Mark got a firm grip on Jason's arms and pulled. There were now more people entering the lifeboat from the opposite doorway and several others making their way around to where Mark stood, pulling on Jason.
"No, no, no," Stacey said. "What are those people doing to them?" No one answered her.
Mark leaned back with all his weight now, and Jason fell clumsily on top of Mark onto the wet sand. They scrambled to their feet, and Mark headed back to the cases he'd dropped previously.
"Go, go, go," the woman said. "Get out of there."
Jason, however, lunged back towards the boat and the cases still there. A half dozen people had now come around the boat and spotted the boys. Mark looked back at Jason as he picked up the cases, narrowly escaping the reach of the quicker of the boat people. It was like watching a game of tag, where the person that's it keeps missing their intended target by the narrowest of margins. Mark and Jason were clearly quicker but kept taking chances, relying on their agility to evade their pursuers.
Mark stopped momentarily, just long enough to yell something at Jason, who now had a case in each hand and was racing towards Mark. He caught up quickly, and they both tore down the beach as quickly as they could. The cases slowed them down, but they were much quicker than the few boat people that gave chase. Their pursuers were soon out of breath and gave up.
The woman watched the two teens make their way down the beach at full sprint, then slow down as they realized they weren't being chased any longer. They
kept moving at a brisk walk while keeping a watch over their shoulders.
"Those two are going to have some explaining to do when I get my hands on them," she said. "They may think they've gotten away with something, but they're about to learn the meaning of the word consequences."
Chapter 4 ~ Survival Shopping
Holly and Garrett went out on a supply run at first light. The lifeboat had minimal provisions and what they had wouldn't last long. Garrett was hoping to find what they needed for the trip to New York. They found themselves in the shopping district and made their way into a small shopping mall.
The place looked like it was a hundred years old and had been neglected even longer. Windows were smashed, there were puddles of water all over the floor and inventory from the stores was strewn about. If the vandals that had painted the graffiti on the walls had spent as much time cleaning up the place as they did with their artwork, the mall would be pristine. Instead, it was a reflection of how quickly things can go bad when the human caretakers no longer take care.
A large portion of the valuable items had already been taken, but there were still treasures to be found for those willing to dig a little deeper. You had to pay attention though. There were other people wandering the abandoned and tattered halls and stores. People that kept a suspicious eye on each other.
There were no longer security guards patrolling the halls and electronic devices monitoring customers as they left the stores, ensuring that everyone paid for their touristy trinkets. The cheap stuff. T-shirts and mugs with witty sayings about immediate relatives visiting a popular location and only bringing back a cheesy ashtray to be stored in a junk drawer somewhere. But, there were stores that carried the more expensive and prized gifts.
Jewelry, modern artwork, expensive liquors and the like were all on the upper floors. They too hadn't missed the greedy attention of looters and vandals. Not surprising, most of the inventory from those stores had gone missing as opposed to being strewn about the floors. Jewelry cases were smashed and emptied. The liquor bottles were still visible, but their contents had been emptied, and their empty shells smashed and used as projectiles against walls and shattered windows.
The high-fashioned artwork seemed to be the exception. It was still present. Not worth the effort to be carried away. Sculptures were either smashed or defiled, usually by someone with a crude sense of sexual humor. A couple of the paintings were ripped from their frames and lying on the floor, but the majority of them still hung on the walls. The original artists' work was now supplemented by the handiwork of the graffiti artist.
Political statements about the current ruling government, both for and against, found their ways onto the canvases in a myriad of fluorescent colors. They too were not spared sexually charged additions, in the form of enlarged genitalia and breasts, usually. Religion seemed to be a popular target of the vandals as well.
It was an eclectic mashup of angry, thought-provoking and funny. The original artists whose names were associated with the pieces would have been amused by the imagination of the artistic provocateurs, in spite of their loss of income.
Holly and Garrett, however, had other concerns on their minds. While the recent attack at the beach by the teens who stole some of their supplies was troubling, it was the others milling around the ruins of the mall that had them concerned. They didn't realize how difficult it would be to replace their stolen supplies when they first headed out to the shopping district.
Now, they had to be concerned not just with finding the items they needed, but with the other scavengers rummaging through the remains. For the moment, they all kept their distance. The rule of thumb seemed to be that no one ventured into a store that others occupied.
There was one larger group that seemed to stick together. There were six of them in total, and they were always waiting to go into whatever store Holly and Garrett exited. Garrett made eye contact with them as they left the last store, but no words were exchanged across the wide hallway that separated them.
As Holly and Garrett walked past the art store, something caught Holly's eye, and she stopped. Garrett, suddenly noticing that she was no longer at his side, retraced his steps to find her staring into a display window.
Amidst all the destruction and vandalism, there was one painting that was untouched. It hung there as pristine as it had been before all the turmoil. It was a vignette of multiple American landmarks, including the White House, the Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore, the Hollywood sign, the original welcome to Las Vegas sign, the Seattle space needle and of course the Statue of Liberty.
They were all depicted in some sort of apocalyptic disarray. The original artist showed them scarred and broken in a number of incredibly imaginative ways. An oversized arrow through the left breast of the Statue of Liberty. The Golden Gate Bridge straining and sagging so much from the weight of tanks and other military vehicles that its middle dipped into the San Francisco Bay as ocean freighters crashed into it. Mount Rushmore practically melted as volcanoes exploded behind its façade, throwing sparks into the air and sending molten lava down the four presidential faces. The most fascinating thing was how the artist had managed to blend each image into another to form one seamless painting.
Holly was rooted in position as her eyes scanned the painting, and her head tilted only moderately to take in the edges of the art. She stepped back to get a better perspective on the work.
"What do you suppose it means?" she asked Garrett as he joined her. He was dumbfounded as to what it was she was talking about. His gaze flipped back and forth between her and the painting.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"The painting." She pointed. "I don't quite understand."
"Understand what? It's the apocalypse. End of days. The prequel to the Four Horsemen." He shook his head. "Who cares? We've got stuff to do here. Can we get back to it? I don't want to be spending any more time here than absolutely necessary. C'mon, let's go."
"That's not what I meant." Garrett looked again, to try and see what she saw. He gave her a blank stare. "It's untouched, undamaged. Whoever wrecked this place, for some reason they decided that this one thing should be left alone."
"Yeah, it's ironic as hell, but so what? People are strange."
"Yep." Holly smiled. "They sure are."
In their scavenging through the old mall, they'd found some useful items. Food was high on their list, but the hardest to find. Tins of fruit were still on the shelves of the corner market, but all the canned meat and fish were gone. There were still plenty of processed foods like granola bars and chocolates around, so they packed as many as they could collect into the small suitcase they'd found, the kind you could wheel around. They would have preferred backpacks instead, which would have made it easier to navigate around the streets and malls littered with debris.
"I don't understand how things could have gone so bad so fast around here. It's like the Wild West all of a sudden," Garrett said. "I would have thought that civilized behavior would be the norm, even in times like this."
"It doesn't take long for some people to go completely into self-preservation mode," Holly answered. "Especially in a place like this, which isn't really a home. It's a tourist trap. Most of the people here are just visiting. All the tourists would have made a beeline back to wherever it is they called home once things started going south. They'd want to get back and make sure their homes and families were protected."
"Becky will do the same thing. She's got to be trying to make her way back to Asheville." Asheville, North Carolina was their family home. The only home that Garrett, Holly and Becky had ever known. Garrett's thoughts drifted back there for a moment and lingered over his favorite fishing hole in the nearby Blue Ridge mountains.
"It won't be easy to find her between here and New York. That's a lot of ground to cover."
"No, it won't be, but we have to try. We can't just leave her all alone out there. Not if things in New York are anything like the way they are here."
"I don't even want to think about that. The thought of my only child alone in that big city just breaks my heart." Holly wiped her eyes. "I never should have agreed to let her go to school so far away from home. It's just not natural for families to be separated like that."
Garrett thought back to the many arguments they'd had over this very subject. The architectural school in New York had been an opportunity too big for Becky to pass up. He knew that, and ultimately Holly had known that, even if she wouldn't admit it. Agreeing to her going to school there was one thing, but admitting it out loud was a whole other thing. Garrett decided that at this moment rehashing old arguments wasn't the best course of action.
"She's a resourceful kid," he offered up. "An adult actually, and smart. She'll make good choices about where to go and who to trust. We raised a smart kid, Holly." She nodded in agreement.
"We did, and you're right, she'll do the right thing. She'll try to get back home, and she'll find others to help her. She can't be the only one trying to get out of the big city." As she said the words big city, Holly's voice took on a hint of bitterness. "We should do the same."
"What do you mean?" Garrett had a feeling he knew where she was going with this.
"It's not going to be easy making our way there and finding her. The more help we can recruit, the better. The more of us there are, the safer we'll be as well." She looked around the vandalized surroundings they were in.
"Are you suggesting we find people who want to help us get to Becky?" Garrett couldn't help but notice another group of scavengers making their way up the escalators at the other end of the mall. There were five of them in the group. The power to the escalators had stopped functioning some time ago. Everyone in the group had an oversized backpack. The kind you'd want if you were hiking around for an extended period. They weren't full, but they were full enough to suggest their scavenging had been plenty successful. "Everyone will have their own problems to deal with. They'll want to get back to their own homes and families. They can't be bothered with ours."
Destination Ruin: A Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story (EMP Survivors Book 2) Page 3