Maybe there was a chance she could raise a gun and get one last shot.
“Here, grab hold of this,” said Jessica, taking Aly’s hot to the touch fingers and wrapping them around the gun.
Jessica turned on her heel and left the room. There was nothing more, after all, that she could say. Nothing that could help.
In her mind, she counted up the Carpenters. There were the parents. Two of them. And three of the adult children.
Five in total.
Five against two.
Not exactly a fair fight.
But since when had fighting, or anything, been fair?
And Rob, despite his efforts, wasn’t anything close to being an expert shot. Or even a competent shot.
Jessica paused by the door, listening, with her ear against it.
Nothing. No sounds.
Her heart was pounding and her grip on her Glock instinctively tightened.
There was only one door to the house. Two would have been better.
If she were going to invade the lake house, how would she do it?
Probably come in through the door.
She could post up near the door, ready to shoot anyone who came through it.
But Rob was out there.
She couldn’t leave him alone.
Jessica threw the door open, staying back and out of the way.
A gunshot rang out from somewhere outside the house. It sounded close.
Another gunshot.
Jessica flattened herself against the wall.
Now there was nothing but silence.
She had to move. Rob was out there.
She poked her head around the corner, looking out the open doorway.
Nothing. No one was there.
Where was Rob?
If only she’d had some way to communicate with Rob. A radio. Or a cell phone.
Something moved in the trees.
It wasn’t the same color she’d seen out the other window. This was a khaki color, like dirty khaki pants.
Rob wore jeans. No khaki. Jim too. It wasn’t one of them.
Jessica didn’t hesitate.
She raised her Glock and squeezed the trigger, tracking the target as it disappeared again into the thick trees, out of view. She anticipated its movement and trajectory.
Two quick shots, and a shout of pain.
Jessica’s ears were ringing as she threw herself back inside the house, out of view of the open doorway.
She waited, counting the seconds.
It sounded like she’d hit whoever it’d been out there.
But there was no way to know if they were dead or not. They’d fallen out of view, hidden by the evergreens. It’d be best to find them, finish them off. As of now, they were still a potential threat.
But there were four more Carpenters out there. She couldn’t waste any time. Best to get them all as far out of commission as possible.
Jessica weighed her options.
Stay in the house. Go out the door. Or go out the window.
Self-preservation told her to stay.
Her duty told her to get out there. Help Rob.
If Rob fell, she knew she and Aly wouldn’t stand a chance. They’d be outnumbered.
Jessica knew that overestimating her own ability could easily see her dead.
She needed to be cautious. But more importantly, she needed Rob alive.
There were five Carpenters. Down to four now, probably. That meant someone was probably out there. They’d heard the gunshots. They’d expect her to be coming for the door.
Now they’d be in position.
Jessica made a split second decision to go for the window on the other side of the house.
She threw the door closed, threw the deadbolt, and pushed a chair up against it, tilting it so that it rested underneath the doorknob. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
She opened and got herself out of it, but not without checking the surroundings. She saw no one and heard nothing.
As soon as her feet hit the ground, she reached up and closed the window. It wasn’t locked, but it was better than nothing to have it closed.
She broke into a run heading straight for the trees.
The house was the target. But if she stayed close to the house, she’d be out in the open while the Carpenters picked her off from the trees.
The only thing to do was to get into the trees herself, and then pick off the Carpenters as they tried to approach the house.
Easier said than done, though.
She was running as hard as she could. The rifle stock was slapping against her back painfully.
She was tired and exhausted and sleep deprived, but adrenaline was coursing through her. Her body was doing everything it could to give her the strength she needed to survive another minute, another hour, maybe even another day.
She was almost to the trees.
Her sneaker caught on something.
A root.
She tripped and fell forward.
Her left hand dampened the fall. But not enough.
Her face hit a rock. Hard. Pain flared through her. She tasted blood. It was flowing freely from her face.
She got up quickly, ignoring everything, and made it behind a drooping evergreen bough.
Good. She was out of view.
She heard the noise too late.
She saw him too late.
It was one of the Carpenters. One of the sons. She recognized his mean face, plastered with that mean look. The look that said he was going to do whatever he had to do, kill whoever he had to kill, in order to feed his family.
That look would be on faces across the nation now. That look would be the last look that countless saw before they died.
He was already raising his rifle.
She reacted without thinking, pivoting slightly and unloading three quick rounds from her Glock without taking aim, shooting almost from the hip.
Two of the bullets missed.
The third struck Carpenter. Or grazed him. She didn’t know.
It wasn’t a good shot.
The bullet had hit his forearm. Blood was coming out.
He yelped in pain, a high-pitched sound that didn’t seem fitting for the situation.
He got off a shot with his rifle.
It missed. But not by much. She felt a whoosh as it passed her.
Jessica was raising her Glock for a good clean final shot.
But he wasn’t going down without a fight.
He screamed something unintelligible as he rushed her, sprinting forward at her with everything he had.
He got to her before she could get off another shot.
It was all happening so fast.
This wasn’t like at the firing range.
Nothing in her training had prepared her for this.
His tall body, much bigger than hers, crashed into her, knocking the Glock off track.
Her finger pulled the trigger. The Glock kicked. But the bullet went off into the air.
Her back hit the ground hard, knocking the breath from her lungs.
There was blood on her face and blood on his arm, all of it mixing together in the struggle.
His mean face was inches from hers.
They struggled together for position.
But he was bigger. And stronger.
His fist slammed into the side of her face.
Now her shoulder.
She couldn’t overpower him.
Now he was going for the Glock.
Her hand still held it, but the muzzle was pointed harmlessly off to the side.
Both his hands grabbed the gun, and he pulled hard.
She held onto it, but her wrist twisted and she yelled in pain.
She didn’t have many options.
Any second now he’d wrench the Glock free from her hands.
She had to think of something.
She had to outsmart him. Outmaneuver him.
27
Jim
Jim fell into
the corpse. Pain flared through his back.
The corpse broke his fall.
His hand was still around his Ruger, clutching it tightly.
Blood from the corpse was all over him.
There was a grunt behind him. Sounded like a man.
Jim shifted his weight as hard as he could, spinning himself around.
The ground was wet and slippery with blood.
Finally, he saw the face of his attacker.
The man was coming at him with a piece of some kind of tubing. Probably metal, by the way it had felt.
The light was dim. The flashlight had been dropped to the floor, illuminating some useless corner.
Jim pulled the trigger. The gun kicked.
The bullet struck the man in the stomach. He grunted in pain, but didn’t scream.
And he didn’t drop to the ground.
But it gave Jim the time he needed. He rose up, his boots slick on the bloody floor. But he got to his feet. Unsteady from the pain. His vision shaky and slightly blurred.
Jim didn’t have endless rounds for the Ruger.
The man would bleed out like that. He’d die a horrendous death.
The man staggered forward, towards Jim, who took a step to the side. The man swung the pipe again, but it missed wildly. His eyes were wide and he looked startled, fearful, and intensely angry. His eyes seemed to bore into Jim with nothing but hatred.
The man didn’t seem human.
He seemed like an animal. Ready to take someone else down with him, knowing that he was going to die and not caring anymore what the fight was for or what it was about.
Jim stepped to the side again, easily avoiding the next swing of the pipe.
Jim had to put him out of his misery. Otherwise it meant hours of agony. Intense agony.
But he didn’t want to waste another round.
The right thing to do wasn’t easy anymore. Now that society had fallen, the right thing to do meant something different than it had.
Jim reached into his pocket for his knife, took it out and flicked it open in a single, swift motion.
Jim knew he owed this man nothing. If Jim let him, the man would kill him without hesitation.
But there was something human left in the man. Not long ago, he’d been a member of society on some level. He’d been someone with a name, a social security number, probably a credit card or two.
Jim knew that he himself wasn’t that far away from falling into it all himself, letting the animal survival instinct takeover. A few weeks without food and he’d be just as deranged.
Jim needed to hang onto his humanity.
In whatever way he knew how.
And in this case, it meant slitting this man’s throat to put him out of his misery, to give him, if not a painless death, at least a swift one.
Jim holstered his Ruger and moved fast, springing forward despite the pain.
In mere seconds, he was behind the man, his knife arm around the man’s throat in a semi chokehold.
Jim drew the knife across the man’s neck in one swift motion, pulling back hard on the knife.
The cut was good and deep.
Jim expected the man to drop down, to crumple right to ground.
But that didn’t happen.
The man didn’t die instantly.
Hot blood covered Jim’s hands and the knife. Jim withdrew his hands and took a couple quick steps back.
The man was coughing. But the cough sounded like it was coming through water. He was gargling on his own blood.
The man was gasping, sputtering. He sank to his knees. Blood was everywhere.
Thirty seconds later, the gruesome scene was over, and the man collapsed. Dead.
Jim made a mental note that it hadn’t happened like in the movies.
But it still worked.
Jim looked around him, wiped the blood from his hands onto his pants. He checked his pockets for the penicillin, which was still there. He wiped off his knife and closed it. He examined his Ruger. He opened the cylinder and began to reload it with spare rounds from his pocket.
He needed to get out of there. Who knew what might happen next.
He opened the back door cautiously, leading with his revolver.
The sun, even hidden behind the clouds was bright, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.
There seemed to be no one out there.
He went around the other side of the pharmacy, heading towards his Subaru in the parking lot.
He was half expecting the Subaru to be missing, or for it to have been ransacked. Or for someone to be waiting underneath it, or even waiting inside it.
But there was no one.
The parking and the nearby road were both deathly silent.
Inside the vehicle with the doors locked and the windows up, Jim got out a map. He was hoping to find a way back to the lake house without passing that intersection where he’d been ambushed by that van.
But there was no other way back.
He’d have to figure out something.
He cranked the engine, put the Subaru into first, and got back on the main road.
Even though everything was the same, it all looked different to Jim than when he’d come into town.
The stopped cars were still in the street. The houses and businesses were still silent. There was still no one in the street.
Jim had known the dangers when coming in. He’d understood the situation mentally.
But now he had a visceral, intensely real, situation to make it all seem different. More frightening. More unreal.
Jim’s clothes were covered in spots of blood and his back hurt so much he couldn’t sit completely upright in the driver’s seat.
The way back seemed shorter than the way in. Before he knew it, he was quickly approaching the intersection where he’d almost been shot.
Some may have stopped the vehicle and paused for a few moments to think. Some may have hesitated.
But not Jim.
Instead, he sped up, heading right towards where he knew the van would be.
He didn’t have a plan.
There was no point in making a plan when he didn’t know what would happen.
28
Jessica
Jessica was holding her Glock as tightly as she could. The man’s strong hands were trying to wrench it free from her grip.
Her mind was racing a mile a minute, trying to come up with something.
Suddenly, she had it.
She jerked her head sharply, turning it to face the opposite direction.
She let out a fake gasp of surprise. “Rob!” she called out, even though Rob wasn’t anywhere in sight.
It was a classic trick. One that worked in cartoons and movies. And in real life, too.
He turned to look as well, thinking that she’d spotted her friend.
It was all the time Jessica needed.
She leaned her neck forward, opened her mouth wide, and bit down hard on his ear. She tightened her jaws. Hard.
He screamed out in pain.
She tasted hot blood.
His hands let up on the Glock.
Despite her wrist pain, Jessica yanked the Glock hard out of his two hands. Now she had it.
She pushed the Glock’s muzzle right into his torso.
She pulled the trigger.
The gun kicked.
A point blank shot.
He died instantly, his body losing muscle tension, going limp, and now weighing down heavily on her.
She pulled herself out from under him, grabbed his rifle, and dashed off to another tree. She didn’t want to wait around for someone else to shoot her.
She pressed herself against the tree trunk and tried to listen. Her ears were ringing. She heard no other sounds. No gunshots.
She hoped Rob was still alive.
If Rob had killed one of the Carpenters with those gunshots she’d heard, there’d be two Carpenters left. By her count, at least.
If Rob had died from those
gunshots she’d heard, there’d be three Carpenters left.
Jessica tried to put herself in the place of the Carpenters. What would she have done if she were them?
Probably try to get in through the front door. Take what they could and leave. Cut their losses.
Then again, the Carpenters had no way of knowing that their family members had died.
Either way, they’d still probably go for the lake house.
And once they found out about the deaths, they’d go for revenge, if their past behavior was any judge.
She had to get back to the front door.
She started running, staying in the trees, taking the long way around the lake house that would take her towards the water. This was the only way she could stay within the cover of the trees.
She was sweating and panting when she got near the front door again, just a few minutes later.
Jessica stayed back, hidden among the boughs of the evergreen trees, waiting for something to happen, for someone to show their face.
Was it possible they were already inside the house?
Probably not, unless they’d gone in through a window. She might have missed the sound of a window breaking during her skirmish.
If they’d gone in through the door, it would have been busted open.
But she could see it there, closed and intact.
A gunshot rang out, breaking the silence.
It had come from the road.
Now at least she knew where the action was.
Another gunshot followed, and Jessica started moving swiftly in that direction. She tried to stay under the cover of the trees as best she could, not straying far from the trunks.
Finally, she saw Rob. He was maybe a hundred yards in front of her, out on the other side of the road. He’d taken shelter behind a tree.
Another hundred yards or so from Rob, off to the left, were the two oldest Carpenters.
It was a standoff. Each side was under cover.
Jessica watched as Mr. Carpenter moved slightly out from behind the trunk, getting off a single useless shot in Rob’s direction. They still hadn’t seen Jessica.
Jessica unslung one of the two rifles from her shoulder, holstered her Glock, and got the sights lined up with Mr. Carpenter.
It’d have to be a clean shot.
Final Chaos_A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller Page 16