“Keep it here for now,” said Jim. “It’s a little cooler than outside. We’ll think of something. We’ll probably have to start eating the perishables first, saving everything else for later.”
“What about the lake?” said Aly.
“The lake?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cold. Couldn’t we use the temperature somehow to keep the food cool?”
“I don’t know,” said Jim. “You mean submerging the food in water somehow?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“I don’t know,” said Jim. “We’d have to have a waterproof container.”
“Like a trash bag?”
“Yeah, but… I don’t know. Let’s think about it. It seems risky to me. We’re going to be pretty low on food as it is. I don’t know if we can risk it. What we’ll do is spread it all out and count everything up and make an estimate on how long it would take us to eat what. The frozen stuff will last a little longer than what was in the fridge.”
Jim headed back out to the Subaru. With everyone else, he made a couple more runs into the house, dropping gear in the little clear space there was on the living room floor. “We’re going to have to clear away these bottles if we want to get organized,” he said, to no one in particular.
But it didn’t matter. He was already the de facto leader.
He knew the most, in some ways.
But he didn’t know everything.
He didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t know what the future held.
In the best case scenario, society wouldn’t erupt into complete and violent chaos.
But he wasn’t holding out a lot of hope.
He knew that the power grid and communication networks weren’t going to come back online anytime soon. It would take a Herculean effort to do so. And plenty of time.
And that was time that society didn’t have.
When the Subaru was fully unloaded, they all stood for a moment in the living room, looking at the intense mess.
“All right,” said Jim. “Aly and Rob, you two clear away those bottles. Jessica, you start sorting out the gear.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” said Rob, pushing some bottles off of an armchair and settling down into it. The bottles clattered to the floor, one of them shattering. Rob put his feet up on a nearby stool, sending another bottle rolling to the floor. “I thought we were all set once we got here.”
Jessica sighed.
That was good.
At least she understood.
“Get this in your heads right now, all of you. The worst is yet to come.”
“Come on,” said Rob. “You’re just being dramatic.”
“Dramatic? Didn’t you see us fighting for our lives?”
“Yeah,” said Rob. “I did, and that was terrifying. But we lived through it. And now we’re out of the city, just where you said we had to get. Now we’re safe and we just wait it out.”
“Get this through your head right now,” said Jim. “The entire population of the Rochester area isn’t just going to suddenly keel over and die. They’re going to fight each other for food, water, and medical supplies. That’s assuming the systems don’t come back on, and I don’t think they will…”
“And then they’re going to leave the city,” said Aly, cutting Jim off and finishing his thought for him.
“Exactly,” said Jim, glad that his wife was getting it. “It’s not like all the cars don’t work. And, plus, people can walk and ride bikes. Even horses, like the cop we saw. We’re a little far back from the road and lake, but we’re not invisible. We’re going to have visitors, violent ones. It’s just a matter of how long it takes them to get here, and how many of them there are.”
“So what do we do?” said Rob, fear coming into his voice. Despite his huge frame, he could be like a little kid inside sometimes. “We’re screwed then, right? We’ve already got to worry about having to eat, and now we’ve got to worry about attacks or something?”
“We prepare,” said Jim. “It’s that simple. Now get to work.”
“And what are you going to do?” said Aly.
“I’m going for a walk,” said Jim.
“A walk?” said Rob, almost spitting out his words. “What about all this preparing? You really think this is a good time to take a little stroll?”
“I’m not just going for a walk,” said Jim. “I’m going to scout out the surroundings. We’d be foolish to bunker down in here without knowing what’s immediately around us. Aly, do you remember who any of the neighbors are? Or if they’re vacation homes or full-timers?”
“Uh, I don’t know. I think most of the houses are part-timers. Or they’re rented out. The only full-timers other than my uncle are the Carpenters.”
“The Carpenters?”
“It’s their last name. Two or three kids, I think. They’re kind of a weird family. Tight knit and secretive. I don’t really remember them well. But I think they got in a fight with my uncle once.”
Jim nodded, and turned to head towards the door.
“Jim,” said Aly.
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
Jim nodded.
“If I’m not back,” he said. “Don’t come looking for me. And Jessica, as of now you’re the only one who knows how to shoot. So you’re in charge of safety while I’m gone.”
She gave him a nod.
“You two will have to learn soon enough,” he added, before heading out the door, patting his Ruger in its holster just to make sure it was there. He hoped he wouldn’t need it.
18
Jessica
It was strange, after so much confusion, activity, and violence, to be sitting fairly calmly in a living room.
It was almost as if, in a way, nothing had happened. That was mainly because there was no way to know what was happening in the city.
Obviously, the TV and radio didn’t work. And neither did any of their cell phones.
“It feels like we’ve gone back in time,” said Aly, making a passing remark. “Before there was internet and TV.”
“Don’t forget electricity and all that,” said Rob. “We’re going to live like the Amish.”
“With one key difference,” said Jessica.
“What’s that?”
“We’ve got guns.”
“The Amish have guns,” said Aly.
“They do?”
“Yeah. Hunting rifles, I think.”
“Huh,” said Jessica. “Didn’t know that.”
The time passed fairly slowly. It wasn’t particularly exciting work, but that in of itself was a nice change. Jessica would definitely have rather been sitting on the floor here than battling for her life out on the highway.
The three of them had already made fast work of the bottles. Aly had gotten a broom and simply started sweeping them away. Many of them were broken, and the floor smelled like dried alcohol.
“I guess he drinks a lot?” said Rob, apparently trying to make a joke.
Aly didn’t even respond to that.
The sky outside remained cloudy, and now that it was later in the afternoon, not much light filtered in through the windows at all. But it was enough to see by, and to arrange their gear and supplies by type.
They’d gotten a good haul from Aly’s mother’s house in Pittsford. When they had it all laid out on the floor, and sorted into rough piles, it was easier to see what was there.
Rob had gotten a lot of tools from the basement. There were the typical things, like screwdrivers and wrenches, and Jessica wasn’t sure how much good they would really do them. But at the very least, they could serve as improvised weapons.
There was the food from the kitchen. About enough for a month or so, if they didn’t eat very much. Roughly fifteen hundred calories a day, more or less. They wouldn’t maintain their weight on that much food, but they wouldn’t starve either, or waste away.
There was plenty of medicine, but Jessica noticed that there weren’t any antibiotics.
“My mother didn’t believe in them,” remarked Aly. “She thought you’d get resistant to them and they’d stop working.”
“But if you never take them, what’s the difference?” said Rob.
“I’m pretty sure antibiotic resistance happens across populations,” said Jessica. “Then again, I’m not sure. And I’m not a doctor. I wish we had some, though. If we get injured, we’re going to have to be very careful about infections.”
“Speaking of which,” said Aly. “What about those cuts on your leg?”
“They’re nothing,” said Jessica, brushing off the comment.
“Even so, I think I should check them out later. Get them cleaned up.”
“All right.”
For the most part, Aly was a little quieter than Jessica and Rob. And they weren’t talking that much, either. So it was like a strange silent little party, where they examined what materials and food they had to survive with.
Among the gear, there were a couple cheap plastic flashlights, the kind that are sold at the grocery store. To everyone’s surprise, they worked.
“I thought all electronics were knocked out?”
“Me too.”
“I guess not the flashlights.”
“Yeah, I remember Rob’s worked.”
“Huh.”
Jessica saw Rob taking out his cell phone, to see if it still worked.
Of course, it didn’t.
“It’s weird not being able to look this stuff up on the internet.”
There were mumbles of agreement.
Among the piles of gear, there was also duct tape, plumbers tape, bottles of detergent, bottles of soap, bars of soap, bleach, a couple drops of which could be used for purifying water, saws, axes, kitchen knives and utensils, an array of vitamins, a couple industrial dyes in small bottles, and a collection of glass jars.
And there was plenty more than that. Categorizing it all would take even more time. And Jessica wasn’t sure how much good most of it would do them.
There wasn’t much in the way of useful stuff in the lake house. Aly’s Uncle Jordan definitely hadn’t been someone who thought about preparing for disasters. By the looks of it, he hadn’t even thought about the following day, or the following hours. It didn’t seem that he’d even bothered taking out the trash most of the time.
No matter how many trips they took outside, loaded down with trash, there was still more trash in the house. And it smelled like trash, too. Jessica hadn’t noticed it when they’d first entered. Maybe she’d been preoccupied. But now after spending a few hours in the house, it seemed to be intensifying.
An hour or so went by, and the three of them went to work on the rest of the house. There was too much mess to really make headway that day, though they did uncover, under mounds of old clothes and trash, three perfectly functional beds. Plenty of room for them to sleep on.
The light was getting lower in the sky, and Jim still hadn’t come back.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do if I lose him too,” muttered Aly, more to herself than anyone else.
Jessica didn’t know what to say, but she gave her an awkward kind of pat on the back, before pointing out some more old clothes that could be moved from part of the room.
There weren’t any functional clocks, but it was probably about six or seven when Jim finally got back.
He was sweating from his brow, despite the relatively cool temperature.
“You OK?” said Aly, rushing to his side.
Jim nodded. “I’m fine,” he said, shutting the door behind him. He threw the deadbolt, and locked the knob.
He had his pistol in his hand, and he didn’t put it away.
Jessica noticed that his finger was outside the trigger guard. Good gun safety technique. She practiced it herself.
“What happened?”
“Had a little run in with the neighbors,” said Jim, moving over to one of the windows and peering out it.
With his hand, he motioned for everyone else to get back away from the window and the door.
“Is everything OK? What happened?” Aly’s voice was getting frantic.
Jessica reached for her own gun, and when she glanced over at Rob, he had his out too. But he was holding it all wrong. She’d have to show him the proper technique later on.
“Probably everything’s fine,” said Jim, speaking in a low voice, still staring out the window. “But let’s just say that our neighbors…”
“The Carpenters?”
“Yeah, the Carpenters. They aren’t exactly too friendly. They pointed a gun at me,” said Jim. “And told me to get the hell away from their house. Unlike a lot of people, they seemed to have a clue of what’s going on.”
“Did you get any more information from them?” said Jessica. “Like how many are there?”
“I just saw the father and the mother. But I got the sense there were more in the house.”
“They definitely have some kids,” said Aly.
“And more people staying with them, for all we know,” said Jim.
“So why are you so worried? Did they start to follow you back or something?” said Jessica.
“Not quite,” said Jim. “I made it look like I was leaving, but I ducked behind a tree when I saw still in earshot. To them, it looked like I’d just rounded the corner of their driveway around a pine tree. I could still hear some of what they were saying.”
“And that was?” said Rob.
“They were talking about taking our food from us,” said Jim. “By force.”
The little group fell silent.
Jessica’s mind started racing, running through the possibilities. Would they have to defend the little house?
She looked around at the windows, which could easily be broken. And there was only one door. A flimsy one at that. And no basement. Or attic. It wasn’t the spot she’d chosen if she’d known she might be fighting for her life.
Well, fighting for her food. But food would soon become life. It was all the same.
“Wait,” said Rob. “What do they know about us? You told them who you were?”
“I felt like I had to,” said Jim. “I didn’t tell them who was here. Just said it was me and Aly, visiting her uncle. But they must have known we were fleeing the city.”
“That was dumb,” said Rob.
“Dumb?”
“Yeah. So they think it’s just the two of you? Rather than the four of us? They’re going to think that their odds of coming in here and taking our food are much better than they are.”
“Maybe that’s good,” said Jessica. “They don’t have all the information. And that means we have the element of surprise.”
“If they’re going to come for food,” said Jim, “they’d do it no matter how many of us there are. Starvation makes people desperate. So far, all we know is that they’re armed and potentially desperate. Or will be in a few days. Now go check the other windows.”
Jessica, Rob, and Aly fanned out through the interior of the little house, each moving to a different window, while Rob stayed by the front door. He didn’t take his eye off of it, or his hand off his revolver.
19
Aly
They watched the windows for hours, until night fell and they couldn’t see anything. Even so, Jim stayed by the door, and once or twice went out to walk around the perimeter of the house, looking for any sign of the Carpenters. Or anyone else.
But the Carpenters didn’t show up. Maybe they’d decided it was too risky. Maybe they’d decided it wasn’t ethical. Who knew. It wasn’t like Aly knew the family at all or what they were like. She’d heard her uncle bad mouth them more than a few times, but he did that to practically everyone. So it didn’t mean much.
It was even possible that Jim had misunderstood or misheard them. He had been, after all, hiding behind a tree, fairly far away from them.
It had been an exhausting day. More tiring than any day she could remember. And more emotionally draining, as well. Somehow
, she’d managed to push the thoughts of her mother’s very recent death to the back of her mind and soldier on with the tasks that needed to be done.
But when the night came and she was lying alone in bed in an unfamiliar room, the memories of earlier that day came flooding back to her.
Jim was staying up, doing the first watch. He was supposed to wake up Rob somewhere around 3:00 AM, and she hoped he did, rather than try to do the whole shift himself. That was one of the things they’d argued about, Jim trying to do everything himself and taking on too much.
Rob was asleep on the couch in the living room, and Aly slept next door.
Aly had taken the room with the double bed, which had been her uncle’s. The bed smelled faintly of urine and alcohol, and there weren’t even any sheets on it. Although it wasn’t like she cared.
It took her hours to fall asleep. Her mind was filled not just with thoughts of her mother, but of everyone else she knew. What would happen to them all? Would they starve? Would they die violent deaths?
Or would everything just somehow work itself out?
She didn’t think so.
But she could hope.
Although she knew somewhere deep down that it was safer not to hope. It was safer just to keep going.
Finally, she fell asleep.
She woke early the next morning, with Jim sleeping next to her in bed. It was the first time in weeks they’d slept in the same bed. Even before the separation, Jim had spent plenty of nights downstairs on the couch rather than in bed with her.
The day was a strange one. Rob and Jim were both exhausted from staying up for their watch, and they took shifts taking brief naps.
The neighbors didn’t show up that day, nor did anyone else. There was no sign at all of the outside world. No sound of passing vehicles. No voices anywhere. The battery powered radio continued to not work. Nor did their cell phones.
Everyone in the house was anxious. The atmosphere was tense. It felt as if any moment something might happen, as if someone might show up with a gun, demanding their food.
And that was what made doing the housework so strange. Because in a way, it was almost as if they’d moved into an old house with some roommates, and had to clean it up to make it habitable.
Final Chaos_A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller Page 11