Max went first. He didn’t go for the big seating area with tables. Instead, he went right to the closed bathroom doors. He put his ear against the door to the women’s restroom, then the men’s. He shook his head, letting Mandy know that he didn’t hear anything.
Max pushed open the door, and Mandy waited for a moment before following him.
The strong smell of urine met her as soon as she stepped across the threshold. But it wasn’t as bad as the smell of rotting food. It was just from some urine collected in the urinals that hadn’t been flushed away.
Max checked each stall, leading with his Glock, pushing open the stall doors carefully and slowly.
Why was he bothering to check each stall? It didn’t seem likely that someone would be hiding in there.
But Mandy knew better than to speak. If someone was there, it would give away their presence.
And Mandy trusted Max. He seemed to have an instinct for these sorts of things.
So she followed him into the women’s restroom, where, again, there was no one.
Max led her back out into the main area, and together they checked everywhere they could.
There was no sign of anyone.
Finally, Max spoke.
“Looks like we’re clear,” he said.
“You really wanted to be sure,” said Mandy.
Max just nodded. He was looking off in the direction of the convenience store, which, like the restaurants, had a metal grate closed down over the entrance.
“It looks like they just shut everything down for the day normally,” said Max. “Our best bet is the convenience store there.”
When they got up to the entrance, they could see clearly into the store.
“It’s not fully stocked,” said Mandy.
“No,” said Max, who hadn’t reholstered his Glock. “No, it’s not.”
Some of the refrigerator doors were open. Some were partially open.
The soda section was more than half-empty. There was a collection of empty soda bottles, some of them crumpled, on the floor nearby.
The candy sections were completely depleted, with candy wrappers littering the floor.
“I can’t see the other aisles,” said Mandy. “But there are plenty of wrappers there on the floor. Looks like someone’s already taken everything.”
“Maybe not everything,” said Max. “But what’s strange is that they didn’t just take it. They ate it there.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, considering that the grate here is locked…” Max tugged on the grate to demonstrate that it was locked in place. “I’d guess that someone’s been coming here periodically, unlocking this grate, having a small meal, and then re-locking the grate behind them.”
“So it’d have to be an employee.”
“Or someone with the key.”
“You think they’re here now?”
Max had already turned around, his eyes scanning the big wide open space before them. But there was nothing but the empty tables and chairs, the stinking trash cans, and the large fake potted plants.
“Doesn’t seem like it,” said Max. “No signs of anyone living here. That’s why I wanted to check the bathrooms first.”
Mandy nodded, not wanting to admit that she hadn’t known why Max was checking the bathrooms.
“So what are we going to do? Get going?”
“The food’s right there,” said Max. “All we need is a bag of beef jerky or some chips, a couple sodas, and it should be enough to get us back to the farm, so long as we’re careful with it.”
“But how are we going to open the gate?”
“I’m going to shoot it,” said Max.
“Shoot it? I thought that was just something people did in movies.”
“Supposedly it works,” said Max. “I’ve never tried it, but I saw it on one of those real-or-fake TV shows once. Someone was watching it at work in the breakroom.”
Max hardly ever talked about his pre-EMP life, let alone work, and she was surprised to even hear him mention it.
“You’d better stand back,” said Max.
Mandy got herself a good distance from the lock, as did Max himself. He took careful aim, and with a single shot, shot right through the lock.
The gunshot rang out through the entire interior. Mandy’s ears were ringing.
“We’re in luck,” said Max, yanking on the grate and pulling it up and out of the floor.
Mandy’s stomach was already rumbling, excited about the possibility of beef jerky, soda, and candy. But before Max even had the gate all the way up, Mandy spotted something off at the far end of the room.
It was a man, tall and lean, standing there. His hair was long and a wild-looking beard covered his face, seeming to meld seamlessly with his hair. His clothes were filthy. They were all black. Standard black work pants. His shirt had a collar and some logo printed above the breast pocket. It was an employee’s shirt, a uniform.
The man held no weapon. He just stood there, with a blank look on his face, and a blank look in his eyes.
7
John
It was a new day, but John had been up all night. He’d volunteered for the night shift. Cynthia had stayed up along with him, but they’d been at opposite ends of the camp, and had only reconvened once in a while to chat briefly about the situation.
Now the light was rising and Georgia had just woken up. Her children were still sleeping.
“Nothing last night?” said Georgia, already at work, poking and prodding the fire, trying to get it going again for the morning coffee.
“Nope,” said John. “No sign of whoever it was who stole all our food.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Georgia. “If they’re the kind of people who act like that, like thieves in the night, I doubt they’re ready for any kind of confrontation. They’re probably more scared of us than we are of them.”
“I don’t know,” said John. “Maybe they just saw it as an opportunity. You know, get what they needed with the least risk involved. And if that’s the case, what happens when they get more desperate?”
“More desperate than they are now? How long as it been since the EMP?”
“You’re saying that they’re already as desperate as they can be, I guess,” said John. “But I don’t think so. It’s hard to gauge how low a man can sink when things get bad.”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful,” said Georgia. “We’ve got to be alert and vigilant. But there’s also work to be done. We’ve got to get to it. We’ve got to work on our own survival. Our long-term plans. If we sit around waiting for them, and they never show, we’ll be in a terrible position in a month.”
John nodded. What she was saying made a lot of sense. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I’m off to go hunt. Before the deer go to sleep. I’ll try again this evening.”
“Are you serious?” said Cynthia, who had just walked up. “You’re going to go out alone?”
Georgia nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
“What if something happens? What if you run across them?”
“It’s happened before,” said Georgia. “And it worked out fine in the end.”
“But you’re still recovering, Georgia. You’ve got to remember that you’re not as strong as you were before.”
Georgia gave a little laugh. “Don’t worry about me, Cynthia. I’ll be fine. And anyway, the more people I take with me, the more likely it is it’ll just spook the deer. We’ve got to eat. Unless you have any other suggestions on how we’re going to eat?”
“What about the squirrel and rabbit traps?”
“Nothing’s turned up in them. And we need calories. Deer are bigger. That’s the simple truth. Now while I’m gone, I need everyone to be working on the perimeter ditches.”
“The perimeter ditches?” said John. This was the first mention he’d heard of them.
“Yeah,” said Georgia, who was working on getting the pot balanced just the right
way above the flame. “I must have thought of it while I was sleeping. Let’s see what you think.”
“Right,” said John, nodding for her to go ahead. “And make sure you make enough coffee. I’m going to need a few cups.”
“We don’t have an unlimited supply of it,” said Georgia.
“Trust me, I’m going to need it today if I’m going to be digging ditches after just a couple hours of sleep.”
“Fair enough,” said Georgia. “So here’s the idea. We dig ditches all around the camp. Far enough away that we won’t step in them ourselves. But close enough so that we won’t have an impossible project of digging endlessly.”
“Ditches?” said Cynthia. “But how’s that going to help us? If I were attacking the camp, I’d just step over the ditches.”
“We cover them up,” said Georgia. “It’s simple, really. All we have to do is make a grid out of some sticks. Brittle, thin sticks that’ll break easily under any weight at all. But they’ll be enough to cover with dead leaves.”
“You think that’ll work?” said John.
“If we camouflage it well enough,” said Georgia. “Yeah, I think it will. We just need the ditches wide and deep enough that they’re a serious problem when you fall into one.”
“So it’s basically like a long, extended animal trap,” said John. “We could put sharp sticks in there, just like with the other traps.”
“Yeah,” said Georgia. “First we’ll start with the ditches and see how that goes. My only worry is that one of us may fall into it accidentally.”
“It’d probably be me,” said Cynthia. “I’m usually the first one that that sort of thing happens to.”
“Maybe we’d better hold off on the sharpened sticks for now, then, yeah,” said John. “Well, after coffee I’ll get to it. It’s probably best to let James and Sadie sleep a little longer. They’re pretty exhausted after yesterday.”
“Nonsense,” said Georgia. “They need to get moving. Sadie! James! Time to get up!”
“You really go too easy on them,” said Cynthia, unable to hold back her sarcasm any longer.
Georgia just ignored her.
The coffee was ready and she poured herself a cup.
“Serve yourselves,” she said. “I’m going to take off. Make sure James and Sadie don’t sleep any longer.”
“Will do,” said John, reaching for the coffee.
He watched as Georgia downed her steaming black coffee in two long gulps. She got her rifle from where it leaned against the van, and she was off without even looking back.
“I hope she’s OK,” said John, as Georgia disappeared through the trees.
“I’d be more worried about whoever stumbles across her,” said Cynthia.
James and Sadie were sleepily emerging from the tent and the van, rubbing their eyes, their hair a mess. Like the rest of them, they’d slept in their dirty clothes.
“We’ve got some coffee for you two,” said John. “Your mom said to say good morning, but she’s off hunting.”
James gave a little laugh. “I don’t think she’s ever said good morning,” he said. “It’s more like ‘get to work now, James.’”
“You holding up OK, Sadie?” said Cynthia, putting her arm around Sadie.
Sadie nodded. “I’m fine,” she said.
“But you feel cold. Almost freezing. You’re as cold as ice.”
“Some coffee will warm her up,” said John. “Here, let me get you a cup.”
Coffee was the only thing the four of them had for breakfast. They didn’t want to dip into the little food that they had left.
Cynthia, who’d been awake longer than John had, decided to take a nap for a couple hours. John, on the other hand, knew that he could push through for a day’s worth of work.
They didn’t have shovels, so they had to improvise. They spent some time finding pieces of wood that they could use. They worked on the wood, carving out flat shovel-like areas that would hopefully serve in the cold ground.
“Is this really going to work?” said James. “I mean, do you think it’s going to be enough if the people who stole our food come back?”
“Let’s hope so,” said John. “It was your mom’s idea. And she’s pretty smart about this kind of stuff.”
John had finished the last of the coffee, and he was starting to feel jittery and a little energized. Without any food in his stomach, he felt on edge. But that was OK, as long as he could get the work done.
“Let’s hope your mom shoots a deer,” said John as he walked the perimeter of the camp with James and Sadie, making marks with sticks as to where the ditch would run.
“What if there aren’t any?” said Sadie. “What if they all left? They might have gotten scared away by the mob.”
“That’s crazy, Sadie,” said James. “This is their home. They’re not just going to leave.”
“What do you think, John?” said Sadie, who clearly wasn’t buying what her brother was saying.
“I don’t know, Sadie,” said John, pushing another stick into the ground to serve as a marker. “I could see it going either way, honestly. We won’t know until your mom comes back and tells us. Now let’s get to digging.”
The chatter quickly died away as they started to work. The sun rose slowly over them. The sky was cloudless, and the sun warmed them.
Soon John was sweating, and he took off the wool work shirt that he’d been wearing for days, tying it around his waist.
It was hard to dig with the sticks, but it was better than doing it with their hands. If they’d had shovels, the job would have been a long one, but with the sticks, it seemed almost like an impossible one.
John tried to keep his mind focused on the task at hand rather than worrying about how impossible it seemed to dig a perimeter ditch. When he couldn’t simply think of digging and more digging, he tried to think of other ways that he could speed up the process. But nothing came to him.
What would Max have done if he’d been here? Would he have had some brilliant solution to the problem?
Probably not.
And that was just being realistic, discounting the problems that John and Max had had between them.
As far as John was concerned, that was just normal sibling stuff. Brother stuff.
But he did wish that Max hadn’t taken off.
Who knew if he’d ever see him or Mandy again.
John and Cynthia had traveled so far and taken so many risks just to meet up with Max. And then what had Max done? He’d simply taken off on some new fool’s errand, leaving everyone behind to fend for themselves. He hadn’t been there when things had gotten really bad, when the mob had invaded.
And who knew how much time was left before another mob came through?
John’s main hope, as terrible as it was, was that most everyone had, at this point, died off. That meant fewer threats and dangers for him and the group. Before reaching Max, John had been focused on just surviving from minute to minute.
Now that he was here, now that he had a camp and a group, his thoughts had turned more to the long-term. When he had time to think, that was, and when he wasn’t too exhausted to think a single thought.
The way John saw it, the majority of the population dying off was only the beginning. After that, there’d be completely new challenges. Long-term survival was a completely different game.
Of course, there’d be an upside to that part of journey. They’d be able to conduct supply raids more easily and with less danger. They might be able to get a couple vehicles, a lot of gas, to make the trips easier. They wouldn’t be able to expect to find anything perishable like food. But there’d be many leftovers of civilization that would aid them.
Some shovels from a big box store would be a great start.
“Shit,” muttered John, as his stick broke in the dirt. He’d only managed to get about a foot down, and the hole he’d dug had a minuscule diameter. It wasn’t looking anything like a ditch, let alone a ditch that completely encompassed the c
amp.
It seemed hopeless. The whole project.
By the looks of it, Sadie and James weren’t having any luck either.
James was sweating and working up a storm. He was trying to get as much done as possible, digging frantically and at top speed, not accomplishing much at all.
“Take it easy, James,” said John. “We don’t want to tire ourselves out. We’ve got a long day of work in front of us.”
He knew James was just trying his best, trying to protect his family. It was written all over his face.
John’s eyes fell on Sadie, whose hole seemed somehow to be bigger than either his own or James’s. There was a substantial pile of dirt next to her.
John stood up and walked over to Sadie in order to get a better look at what she was doing.
To John’s surprise, she’d completely abandoned the carved stick. It lay in two pieces, broken, on the ground. Instead, she’d found a large flat rock.
“You might be smarter than all of us, Sadie,” said John. “Looks like that rock’s working really well.”
Sadie just smiled shyly up at him. She seemed to be having a hard time getting over the events of yesterday. But she was working hard, and still thinking clearly. She’d get over it soon enough. They’d all been through horrible things. It was probably harder for her, since she was still a kid and her brain was still forming.
But in the end, maybe she’d grow up to be more prepared and better able to cope than any of the adults. In a few years, provided they were all still alive, Sadie would have essentially grown up in the new world, while the adults would have had to adapt more than she had.
Sadie showed James and John the type of stone that she was using, and she helped find them each one.
The stones worked better than the sticks, and John felt foolish for not thinking of something so simple sooner. But that was the way it was. He was hungry and tired and stressed, making for perfect conditions for less-than-optimal brain function.
The day wore slowly on, and soon John was too tired to think any thoughts at all. His hole got deeper and wider, and gradually he connected it to the holes that James and Sadie had done. The ditch was starting to form, and the task at hand no longer seemed so pointless.
Getting Home_A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller Page 4