It was the fourth day when Harper submitted to her instincts. Driving on the country road had grown tiring, and the ranch home was so inviting. With her trembling hands, Harper dug a large rock from the dirt and slung it through the window. Glass shattered violently, and they were inside. Judging by the old colonial-fashion decor and quaint size, it was owned by two elders, assumedly Christian from the number of biblical quotes and Jesus portraits hanging about. That afternoon, the Murphys had cold beans and cold soup robbed from the owners’ pantry. Eli made the mistake of opening the fridge, and the house stunk of rotten egg and cream cheese. After hiding the Humvee in the wooded backyard and storing the duffels within reach, the three of them rested for two days.
“Harper.” James shook her shoulder. Moonlight glowed on his gaunt face and sunken eyes. “There’s someone out there.”
Wrapped in covers, Harper tiptoed to the window, feeling the cold wood under her feet. Around them, the woods bent to the chilling breeze. Her eyes scanned across the bushes, and then she noticed the dark silhouette standing amidst the trees.
“You see it?” James asked in a whisper.
Harper moved her attention to the covered Humvee tucked next to an unattended shed and then back to the shadowed figure.
“Gun,” she commanded, not turning away.
Dressed in her uniform, Harper quietly moved across the downstairs floor. In the darkness, she paused in front of the sliding glass door facing the backyard, woods, and Humvee. Her grip tightened around the cold metal of the assault rifle. The shiny kitchen knife tucked in the waistband of her pants rubbed its sharp edge on Harper’s hip. She waited, ready to scare whoever or whatever was hiding in the trees. The dark figure didn’t move. James’s breathing and her own were the only sounds Harper heard. After a long moment, the figure took a step back. Harper exchanged a quick glance with James and coiled her fingers around the sliding door’s wooden handle. Hunching slightly, the figure stepped back into the foliage. Bushes brushed its humanoid body until it was no more. James moved to the kitchen window.
Harper heard her heartbeat thumping in her chest as she looked at the ominous woods. She waited. And waited. And waited…
Cloaked in darkness, James shook his head at her. Harper removed her hand from the door handle. “Get Eli.”
They slipped out the sliding door and across the grass. James’s waddle and the heavy duffels slowed them. Thankfully, the Humvee wasn’t far. Without stopping, they yanked away the camouflage net like a tablecloth and shoved it in the backseat. They tossed each duffel they were carrying into it and huddled inside. James moved to the driver’s seat while Harper snaked up into the gunner station. The Hummer rumbled to life. James killed its headlight, and they started across the grass, bumping with every dip in the terrain. Soon they were back out on the road.
On day seven and with empty stomachs, they stuck to the back roads. They moved southwest, clearing Virginia mile by mile. James drove until his injured right leg couldn’t take any more pain. Eli sprawled out in the backseat, downing pain pills to ease the crippling throb of his broken forearm. Harper could feel herself become lighter from starvation as her sight became more and more blurry. They tucked themselves in a tight mountain pass and took inventory.
“Where do you think we are?” James yawned. His stubble had turned into a faint beard that grew on his pale neck.
Harper stretched out her joints before returning to her pill-bottle count. “Edge of the Piedmont. We aren’t that far from the Smokies. See ’em?”
James craned his neck to the massive mountains permanently patched with hazy clouds. “Wow. You think it’s safer?”
“Less people. More wildlife.”
James pointed to the mountaintops. “I bet that I can build us a nice cabin up there.”
“Oh yeah?” Harper smiled.
“Yep. I’ll kill a bear, too. Make it into a nice rug.”
“So romantic,” Harper mocked him with a coy grin.
Hands on his hips, James turned back to her. “I’m serious. You can be my forest wife.”
“Your what?”
“Forest wife.” His eyes sparkled. “You know, leaves in your hair, hairy armpits, cooking a squirrel in an iron pot after I return from a long hunt. The whole nine yards.”
“Sounds horrible.” Harper chuckled.
“Eli can be Dog Boy. Keep us safe while we repopulate the earth.”
“We were hit by an EMP, James. Not some genocidal plague.”
“Hey, I’m just being creative here.”
Unable to hide her smile, Harper just shook her head and returned to her count. It felt refreshing seeing James like this.
After snacking on some jerky procured from the gas station, they started off again. Winding through the farmlands, Harper guided them to the Smokies. They made a few restroom stops that made them very grateful to Eli for suggesting they grab some toilet paper before leaving the ranch house.
The cracked windshield leaked water on her, making the drive troublesome. Harper found shelter in an old barn to avoid a heavy rain. Mud splattered the side of the Humvee when she pulled inside.
“If the EMP only hit the East Coast,” Harper told Eli and James over the downpour, her finger tracing a red road on the state map, “we may be able to find hospice after we pass through the mountains.”
Eli sat up, grunting as he moved his cast-covered forearm. “Whatever gets us off the road works for me. This interior smells like a wet jockstrap, and sleeping in here sucks.”
“Be thankful we have a car,” said James. “Imagine this journey without one. Now, that would suck.”
“I’m not complaining, Dad. I’m…” He brushed a long bang from his eye. “I’m just venting.”
Harper studied the most direct path that wasn’t an interstate through the mountains. “Rest up. Tomorrow we try our luck.”
The morning sun hid behind a wavy sheet of silver clouds. Curling around ancient oaks and over rolling fields, dewy fog lingered in the cool air. Rumbling, the Humvee rolled through the mist like some snarling transdimensional beast. The bulky vehicle weaved around a disabled truck and crunched glass beneath its fat, durable tires. That was when they spotted the blockade. Four cars deep, it appeared as if someone had rolled them into place. A yellow school bus made up the center portion with its large, horizontal sprawl. It hadn’t been moved there. It had crashed. The windows were down, and the tires were flat rubber. Spray-painted in black across its Twinkie-like body were the words Food & Water Here.
James leaned forward and squinted, trying to get a better look through the cracked windshield. “I don’t like this.”
“Me either,” Harper replied honestly. She surveyed the area, taking mental notes of the blind spots: one on either side of the car barricade and others behind multiple aged oak trees with thick branches and thick trunks. “We’ll find another way.”
“Mom.” Eli’s voice quivered.
A handful of long black cylinders peeked out from the bus windows. Rifle barrels. Gulping, Harper slowly slid her hand to the transmission shifter. “Keep your heads down.”
Harper pressed the brake and pushed the gear into reverse as fast as her hand could move. She threw her head down as her foot stomped on the accelerator. The school bus rumbled as rifles exploded into action. A roaring bullet blitz mercilessly pounded the Hummer’s cracked but bulletproof windshield, causing glass to rain into James’s and Harper’s hair. The vehicle took them backward as more gunmen appeared out from behind the trees and filled the vehicle’s side panels with hot lead.
The windshield bowed in as projectiles blew ridged holes through the multilayered glass. A bullet zipped through and bit a chunk off the steering wheel. Wheels screamed across the wet asphalt as the Hummer roared in reverse. Not looking, Harper jolted the steering wheel back and forth, causing the entire vehicle to rock and violently swerve in both directions.
James was yelling out to her, but the boom of the gunfire stole his sound. Crunch! Harpe
r’s face smashed into the steering column as the Hummer came to a brutal halt. The gunfire died down. The world spun. Harper lifted her throbbing neck and peeked back. The back bumper was fused with a disabled truck. Eli and James looked up at her. Blood leaked from her husband’s nose, but no bullets had hit him.
Catching her breath, Harper peeked out of the decimated windshield. The accumulation of buckshot and rifle rounds had punched fist-sized holes all across the dense glass. Only the yellow glow of the school bus was visible through the fog.
Harper switched into drive. Wearing mismatched garb, a half-dozen rough-looking men aiming 12-gauge shotguns and high-powered hunting rifles swarmed in from all directions. One had slicked-back blond hair, aviator sunglasses, and a bandana mouth mask. With every step, the fourteen-inch bowie knife strapped to his belt wobbled.
She got ready to hit the gas, when the people before them started dropping like flies, the sides of their heads exploding into the air. The remainder scrambled for cover, taking shots in the chests and shoulders. The blond vanished into the mist, and the gunfire followed him.
Quiet.
Blood pooled around the warm bodies. Trembling, Harper turned to James and Eli. She opened her mouth to speak, when a figure emerged from the dense fog. Cloaked in a green ghillie suit and moving tactically, the figure swept its black scoped rifle around the area until it landed on Harper.
Chapter Three
Church
A gray canopy of clouds shielded the sun. Thick fog lingered over wet grass and warm, leaking corpses.
The Hummer rumbled in the center of the back road obscured by the school bus barricade. The bodies of five thuggish men were scattered around the bulky vehicle, killed with expert precision in a twenty-second massacre. Their killer stood ten feet from Harper. His gloved hands supported a tactical rifle grounded on his shoulder. With a gentle gust of wind, the false leaves of his ghillie suit rattled, struggling to tear free from the natty fabric. The man concealed within was large, with a wide upper body and a full belly. His gas mask was painted with black and verdant camouflage and almost made him appear alien in nature.
Sweat and blood rolled down Harper’s face. Hunger, pain, and terror were as much her company as James and Eli.
The man aimed without speaking. His motivation was about as clear as the foggy glass of the gas mask. If she hit the gas pedal, she may be able to… The barrel’s black eye watched her and tracked her slightest movement.
“Please.” Harper’s eyes watered.
Muffled and deep, the man’s voice seeped through the metal canister. “You have three choices: you can continue driving down this road and be killed by more of those scum.” He shot a glance at the bleeding bodies and then back to Harper. “I can kill you right now. Or you can let me in your vehicle.”
Fog and fear hung heavy. James turned to her. Silent, his face was bloodless and his eyes white and wide. His mouth slightly opened as nose blood trickled down his lips. Harper glanced in the rearview at Eli, whose dread was palpable. His thick hair was glued to his rosy cheeks.
“Okay,” Harper mumbled.
The man paused for a moment then turned over the bodies, snagging the shotguns and rifles from the people he’d killed. With the guns stuffed under his arm, he pulled the back door open. Eli scooted to the opposite side as the stranger entered and took a seat. He placed the weapons, barrels up, between his legs. He smelled clean and washed, unlike Harper. He shifted his attention to the fog-covered fields from which he’d come.
“That way.”
With trembling fingers, Harper turned the steering wheel and pushed the gas pedal. Leaving the asphalt, she started up the shallow hill. The Humvee rattled as its thick-treaded wheels munched through grass and rock. With no house in sight, she followed the man’s directions.
They drove across the fields, rolling up and down knolls, around ancient trees, and eventually to the main road, with a green road sign pointing to Brighton, VA: Population 144.
The man only spoke in single words, all of which were directions. No one else spoke either. It was the same way when Harper had escaped the capital, sobering silence and the harsh jets of wind ramming her face through the many bullet holes in the windshield.
The army vehicle rumbled into a slow crawl across the wet, cracked asphalt. Away from the rest of the world stood the town of Brighton, surrounded by acres of farmland and rolling hills spotted with distant clusters of green-leafed trees. The Virginia Piedmont ran through the whole state, but judging by the misty Blue Ridge Mountains visible in the distance, Harper believed she was on the western side.
“Quaint, isn’t it?” the man said, almost mechanically, while looking out at the small town up ahead.
Quaint it was. From the road, the village was nothing more than a few newer buildings, a general grocery store, colonial-era buildings, and a white church with a crucifix-topped triangular spire reaching for the overcast heavens. Outside the town’s entrance, a number of colorful specks hammered away at the tall wooden frame arching around the town’s front.
“Pull up,” the man commanded.
The specks grew into people, and the new wooden frame they hammered away at appeared to be the beginnings of a twelve-foot wall created with both freshly cut and old wood. Wiping away sweat, the morning workers stilled their hammers and followed the Hummer’s track down the center of the only road with looks of curiosity, hope, and suspicion. They traded low whispers and smiles with one another like high school gossipers.
A few children chased after the exhaust pipe, but their elders whisked them into their arms. With stubby arms, they giggled and continued reaching. Birds chirped and took flight off the power lines running parallel on each side of the road. An older rural man with a straw hat hugged the top of one power pole, using the metal foot stakes as his ladder. He tinkered with a fuse box while a middle-aged sandy-haired woman yelled up at him. “Ferris. Ain’t nothing you can do about it!”
“Wait and see, woman,” the hatted man yelled back. “Just you wait and see!”
Their argument silenced as the Humvee coasted by them and into the center of town.
The tall shadow of the chapel loomed over Harper. Dirty white paint peeled from its wooden walls. Not far from it was a cute general store with a welcoming wood-carved sign and a number of ornaments and knickknacks lining the inside of its window frame. Across the way was a two-story roadside motel next to a chrome diner straight out of the fifties. There was also an inspirational bookstore, a pub, and an out-of-service Laundromat with a few of its letters burnt out.
“There,” the ghillie-suited man’s brisk voice poured out from the backseat. He lifted his thick finger to an old two-story building with its lipped roof balanced on tall pillars. At the bottom of the steps, a small greeting party waited, consisting of a man with country-boy charm and a no-bullshit woman.
A bun of gray hair clenched the back of the woman’s head. Her skin showed signs of age but still remained tight and clear. Much like her hairstyle, a knot was tied in the back of her faded and paint-stained shirt. She stood with her hands on her hips, wanting the Hummer to stop. The man next to her, looking to be in his late twenties with short brown hair sticking out from beneath a trucker’s cap, wore tight jeans and a tucked button-down with rolled sleeves.
The Hummer’s back door opened, and the sharpshooter hopped out, holding his thumb under his shoulder-resting rifle strap. With a long motion, he removed the mask and let it hang low at his side. His hair was short and graying, and his round chin and neck showed the beginning signs of a beard. He gave the looted guns to the younger man.
The woman eyed him intensely. “You did it?”
The man nodded. “I said I would.” With a hand motion, he gestured to Harper, James, and Eli. “Come out.”
Harper took a deep breath and exited. The Murphys met around the side of the vehicle, facing the sharpshooter and the other two strangers.
“Man,” the young one exclaimed. “You look like you
’ve been through hell.”
“Dustin,” the woman growled at the young man. The younger man shrugged. The woman turned to James. “I’m Trudy.”
Harper stepped up and spoke directly to her. “My name is Harper. This is James, my husband. And my son, Eli.”
The sharpshooter looked them up and down. He had a round face, intense eyes, and a slight jiggle of neck fat that wiggled with every word. “They were being robbed by the gangbangers. I took care of the problem. Now, it looks like they could use some hot food, a shower, and a capable doctor to give them the once-over.”
“I’ll get Dr. Hanson,” Dustin said, not taking his eyes of Harper and her bloodstained jacket as he set off down the sidewalk.
“I don’t mean to be rude.” James moved forward, red with anger. “But can we talk about the guy who just killed five people? Or, you know, just threatened to kill us?”
The sharpshooter deflected, “Those people meant to kill you. I’ve been watching them for the past day. They must’ve hit at least three families. I was nipping the problem in the bud.”
“So you stepped in to save us out of the goodness of your heart?” James scoffed. “Why not fire off a few warning shots? You flat-out murdered them, and then you held us at gunpoint.”
“James.” Harper put her hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it away, fuming.
“You may not realize it, but the old world is dead,” the sharpshooter said. “What we have is our own. We protect our own.”
James snorted. “It probably helps that we have a functional vehicle.”
The sharpshooter frowned. “You’re tired and hungry, but you’ll find that there’s no hospitality like Brighton hospitality. Trudy, get a fire going and some clean clothes for our guests. I’ll have someone prep a room. Any questions or concerns, you talk to me.”
“Thank you,” Harper said, still reeling from the shootout.
“Can we have a moment,” James asked, perturbed.
The sharpshooter took a step back. Trudy started down the sidewalk.
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