Finding Shelter

by Ryan Westfield

  This tangent with Grant had been nothing more than a dangerous delusion.

  But had it been a waste of time?

  Max didn't think so.

  After all, the demagogue was dead. The man that Max had heard so much about had turned out to be worse than a fraud. And Grant had paid the price.

  Who knew what would happen to their organization now?

  Max didn't really care. As long as it didn't threaten his own camp.

  And he didn't think it would.

  23

  Sadie

  The howling of pain was clearly audible. Terry was dying. Probably very soon. A bullet to the gut would do that to a man.

  Lilly stepped back into the doorway. She was almost gone, when Sadie spoke, trying to stop her.

  "Where are you going, Lilly?"

  "I'm going to see my dad. I don't care if he doesn't want me around. I want to be there.... he might..."

  "...die?" Sadie finished the sentence for her.

  "Yeah."

  Sadie didn't want to still be tied up when Terry died. It might, for all she knew, be disastrous. She needed to do all she could to get out of there.

  "Lilly," said Sadie. "Untie me before you go."

  Lilly said nothing. But she also didn't leave.

  "Come on, Lilly. This isn't fair. What if it was you? Would you like to be tied up like this?"

  "No," said Lilly, still not sounding convinced.

  "Then come on. Enough is enough. Get me out of here.

  "OK, fine," said Lilly, finally giving in. She sounded frustrated. "But how do I do it? The knots are too tight."

  "Don't you have a knife in the kitchen?"

  "Yeah."

  "Go get it. Hurry. Then you can go see your dad, OK?"

  "OK."

  In a flash, she was gone.

  Sadie waited, listening to the footsteps, hoping that Lilly would return.

  Finally, she was back.

  "Got it," she said.

  "Now be careful," said Sadie. "Make sure you're pulling the knife away from me, towards yourself. OK?"

  Sadie found it a little strange that she was more component about all these sorts of everyday things, like using knives. But she didn't have much time to reflect on it, because a second later, she felt pain where before she'd felt nothing.

  "Oops, sorry," muttered Lilly. "I think it's bad. You're bleeding a lot. Should I..."

  There was another howl of pain from Lilly's father, Terry. It sounded bad.

  "Just cut the ropes," said Sadie. "Don't worry about the cut. It's fine."

  Lilly kept going, cutting Sadie one more time.

  When the ropes were all off, Sadie still couldn't move. Aside from the pain she felt from the kitchen knife cuts, she couldn't feel her limbs at all.

  Nor could she move them.

  It wasn't just pins and needles, something she was very familiar with. But it was something like that.

  Would it go away?

  Probably.

  Sadie couldn't see how she would lose the ability to move permanently. She'd never heard of anything like that before in her life.

  Then again, she was just a kid. She hadn't had a very long life to hear about such things.

  "Lilly..." Sadie started to say, but Lilly was already gone.

  There was another shout of pain from outside where Terry lay. Presumably he was now surrounded by his wife and his daughter.

  "Get away!" Sadie heard after a few moments. "Get her out of here!" It was Terry's voice, screaming, distorted by the intense pain he was going through. He really bellowed it, the volume extremely loud. It seemed as if Sadie could hear the death coming, just from his voice.

  Sadie vaguely remembered hearing that the way he was dying was one of the most painful ways to die.

  Despite her situation, Sadie cringed. She doubted Lilly would like to hear that. It was a horrible thing to hear from her father.

  Why didn't he want her there?

  Ever so slowly, Sadie was starting to regain feeling.

  It didn't feel good, though.

  It felt very bad. Very strange.

  It was like the worst case of pins and needles she'd ever had. It felt like a burning sensation had run through her entire body.

  It was actually painful. Almost like an itch in a way.

  It was a very strange sensation.

  There was another yell outside. Another scream of pain. Terry's. Who else's?

  It seemed to take forever, but in the end, Sadie would guess that it took over ten minutes for her to regain the use of her limbs.

  She stood up. Finally. Her legs were shaking. It felt like her blood sugar was low.

  There were screams of pain coming from the front of the house.

  Sadie found her way into the kitchen. There was a large kitchen knife lying on the table. Sadie grabbed it. It was about as big as her forearm.

  But she was strong enough to wield it. She was strong enough to swing it, if she had to.

  There was a backdoor by the kitchen.

  Sadie opened it. Turned the knob. She was half expecting that someone would come from behind and stop her.

  But no one did.

  As she was halfway through the doorway, she turned around one last time, and she saw that Lilly had come back in.

  "You're leaving?"

  Lilly's face was just sadness. Sadness at losing her father. Maybe sadness at not having a friend.

  "I'm leaving," said Sadie. "Sorry about your dad."

  Lilly just nodded.

  Sadie felt an intense sadness as she stepped through the doorway.

  But as she got farther and farther away from the house, the knife still in her hand, the sadness disappeared.

  It was sad about Lilly. About her dad.

  But that was the way things were now.

  Sadie wasn't sad that she'd lived. That she'd survived.

  It'd take her a while to get back to camp, but she knew that she'd get back.

  She felt foolish, having left at all. She felt even more foolish, having fallen for Terry's tricks.

  She knew that she wouldn't be fooled again.

  If she ran across anyone that she didn't know on the way back to the camp, she would hack at them with her kitchen knife. She'd give them hell.

  Sadie was already pretty far from the house, maybe a quarter of a mile, when she realized that she had made a huge mistake.

  Would Max or her mother have wanted her to walk all the way back to the camp without a gun?

  No, they wouldn't. They wanted her to have a gun with her at all times.

  A knife was something. But it wasn't a gun.

  She hadn't gone to get her gun because it would have meant confronting Terry. It would have meant confronting death, and the pain and damage that she'd had to cause in order to survive.

  But that was life now. Sadie had learned a lesson. She couldn't survive without a fight. She couldn't survive without killing. Without taking life.

  And she couldn't trust strangers.

  Sadie made her way back to the house. She needed that gun. She was going to get it.

  She made her way around to the part of the yard where she'd shot Terry.

  He was lying there, with his wife kneeling over him. His wife was singing to him in a low voice, and Terry was groaning in pain.

  For some reason, Sadie knew that the sounds he was making meant that he was close to the end. Very close.

  Sadie spotted her gun. It was lying close to Olivia, who had her hands on Terry's stomach. There was Terry's blood all over her hands. They were soaked in it, and Terry's clothes were completely soaked in his blood as well.

  "Sweet little Terry...." Olivia was singing. "Sweet little Terry, my dear.... My darling..."

  It was a strange song. The sort of song that didn't really have a tune.

  And the blood provided a strange backdrop to the sound.

  Sadie held the knife in her hand. She was ready to use it. She scanned the area for Lilly, but she
was nowhere to be found. Probably she was cowering indoors.

  Sadie knew that she'd use the knife if she had to.

  But if she didn't need to, then she wouldn't.

  She walked softly towards the gun, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  There were a couple of tense moments, but Sadie got the gun. Her hand wrapped around the handle and she felt suddenly more confident. More secure.

  "I love you, Terry," Olivia was saying. She'd stopped her song.

  Terry was making choking sounds. The grunts of pain had stopped. It sounded like Terry couldn't breathe.

  Sadie, meanwhile, was walking backwards. The gun was in her hand. She'd left the knife behind.

  The noises Terry was making were fading. Then they stopped.

  Olivia was sobbing now.

  The door opened, and Sadie saw Lilly walk outside, heading towards her mother.

  Lilly spotted Sadie. She turned her head.

  Would Lilly give Sadie up?

  No. Apparently not.

  Lilly said nothing. She clearly saw Sadie, but she said nothing. Instead, she turned her head back towards her mother, and continued to walk towards her silently.

  She was heading towards her dead father. About to pay her respects.

  Sadie turned on her heel and started running away.

  She ran until she was out of breath and her legs ached. It felt good to have her legs ache, after being immobile and unused for so long.

  She would get back to the camp.

  And if someone happened along the way, well, she was ready. She had her gun. It felt good in her hand, and she knew how to use it.

  24

  Georgia

  Georgia had killed the man.

  Somehow she hadn't died. Somehow John hadn't died.

  They'd lain there, the two of them, exhausted, completely spent, after the fight, among the bodies, laughing.

  It had felt strange to laugh. Strangely freeing. It was all over. For the moment. Until the next fight. Until the next random encounter with strangers that turned to violence.

  It wasn't normal laughter. It wasn't exactly nervous laughter. It was instead the type of laughter that happens when you don't know what else to do, when there are no words, sayings, or facial expressions that can begin to sum up the absurdity of the situation.

  Finally, Georgia had picked herself up off the ground.

  John's laughter, meanwhile, had shifted back to grimaces and grunts of pain. His leg was in a bad way.

  "We're going to set it when we get back to camp," said Georgia, examining the injury. "I don't want to wait around here any longer than we have to."

  "You think they're all gone?"

  "Only one way to find out."

  "What's that?"

  "Try to get on out of here. I'm going to make a sled... I'll have to drag you back."

  "I can walk. Don't worry about me."

  Georgia let out a little laugh. "There's no way you're walking out of here. Not on that leg."

  "I'll use a stick... just get me something to walk with. I can do it. It'll be just like when I had crutches back in junior high."

  "Be my guest," said Georgia. "How about this? You try that, and I'll work on my method for when yours fails."

  "It's not going to fail."

  Before Georgia could start getting the sledge prepared, she had to take a tour of the surrounding area. She made her way back to where they'd seen the large truck.

  There was no sign of it.

  The only sign that it'd been there were the dead men that it'd left behind. Georgia wondered whether the driver alone had driven off, or if there'd been other men with him.

  Georgia, as a matter of habit and practicality, went through the pockets and belongings of the dead men.

  There was nothing to identify them by. No wallets. No dog tags. Nothing at all that identified them in any way.

  What had happened to all their stuff from before the EMP? It seemed as if someone had arranged things so that these men would not be tracked to any kind of organization.

  Whatever.

  Georgia didn't care.

  She just wanted to get out of there. She just wanted to stay alive.

  She gathered up their weapons, their knives, their ammunition, their guns. She gathered up what she could carry of their food and she took a couple pieces of clothing to use for the sled.

  Georgia used her knife to cut down some small trees nearby. They were nothing more than saplings, really. She lashed them together in a clever way with the clothes, forming a sort of inverted triangle on which she'd drag John back to the camp.

  It would take a while. And it would be hard. But she'd be able to do it.

  "How's that idea of yours working out, anyway?" called out Georgia, looking up from the sled she was constructing. "Those crutches going to get you back to camp?"

  "Sure," shouted John, as he tried to stand up on the sticks that Georgia had tossed over to him.

  He cried out in pain as he fell down.

  Georgia didn't have it in her to laugh. She was too beaten down, and she was imagining the painful journey that they had back to camp in front of them.

  What’s more, she was thinking of her daughter.

  Now, after this encounter, she felt like she was only that much further away from finding Sadie.

  "Here," said Georgia, walking over to John. "Let's get you onto this thing..."

  It took a little while to get John situated properly, and when he was, Georgia didn't waste any time.

  It was, after all, a long way back to the camp.

  25

  Max (A Few Months Later)

  It had been a relatively calm few months. Especially considering the period that they had all gone through not so long ago, when everything had seemed so intense, as if nothing was going right, as if everything that could go wrong had gone wrong.

  A lot had happened in his absence.

  It had taken Max about a week to get back to the camp. His leg had hurt him as he'd walked back, but he hadn't encountered any trouble.

  He'd returned to find that, in his absence, everything had apparently gone to hell.

  He'd heard about how Sadie had gone missing, how Georgia had gone to look for her, and how Mandy had seemingly had pregnancy complications.

  Max had felt this heart starting to skip a beat as his wife, Mandy, told him about what had happened.

  "But you're OK now?" he had said, trying to hide the anxiety in his voice.

  "Yeah," Mandy had said. "We don't know what it was. But everything seems to be back to normal."

  Max hadn't known what to think. But there was no way to know what had happened to Mandy. Had it just been some fluke? Had it been that the baby was turned the wrong way? Something else entirely?

  Max had spent a lot of his limited free time poring over the midwifery books that they had, as well as the medical encyclopedias that they'd found recently. There were a few different conditions that seemed like they might fit, but nothing was definite.

  So for the months until Mandy's delivery, everyone, including Max, didn't know what to expect. They hoped for a healthy, happy baby, but they had really no way to control what would happen, except to make sure that Mandy got plenty of rest and plenty to eat.

  Now it was the day everyone had been waiting for.

  The day that Mandy was likely to give birth.

  She had gone into labor four hours earlier.

  Now, she was lying on the makeshift mattress, her legs spread apart, breathing along with Georgia's instructions.

  In the little shelter, it was just Mandy, Georgia, and Max. John was limping around outside, keeping watch. He'd had a pretty good recovery from his horrible injury, but it was unlikely that he'd ever walk without a limp again. Now he had joined Max in having leg problems.

  Max had tried to hold her hand, but Mandy had pulled her own hand sharply away from him, shaking her head.

  "But how can I help?" said Max.

  "Jus
t keep quiet," said Mandy.

  Max shot Georgia a look that said, "what am I supposed to do here?"

  "Just do what she wants," said Georgia.

  It seemed like wise advice, advice that Max intended to take.

  Max knew he was out of his element.

  Which was a strange feeling, being out of his element, since he'd been getting into his element since the EMP. In a strange way, the new world of violence and chaos felt more comfortable to him than the sterile, purposeless world of the office.

  Over the last months, it seemed as if Max had gotten more comfortable in a variety of intense situations. They were situations that he'd never imagined that he'd be in. Before the EMP, he'd worked in an office. He'd never been in combat. He'd never been in a war.

  Life since the EMP had been a war. There was no other way to put it.

  The only difference between it and a regular war was that there were more enemies.

  Since the EMP, almost everyone was an enemy. Everyone except those who he could trust those who had become his family.

  He couldn't have done it without Georgia, without Mandy. Without everyone who'd given their lives.

  For a second, he thought of Chad. An image of his face flashed into his head.

  Chad had made mistakes. Big mistakes. He'd been weak in ways that a man shouldn't have been. And those weaknesses had cost him his life.

  But Chad had died in an honorable way. He'd saved James’s life.

  Max wouldn't forget that. He knew that Georgia hadn't forgotten it. Or James. Or any of them.

  "Max?" said Georgia. "You still with us?"

  "Huh? Sorry," said Max, snapping back to reality.

  "The water, Max?"

  "Oh, yeah," said Max, feeling like he was coming out of a daze.

  He got up, crossed the room, and poured a glass of water, bringing it over to Mandy. He held it for Mandy to take.

  Mandy was breathing hard. Very hard. She was red in the face, and she ignored the glass of water and Max.

  "For me, Max," hissed Georgia, sounding annoyed.

  "Oh, sorry," said Max, getting around to the other side of the bed and handing the water to Georgia, who drank it down in a single gulp.