by James Hunt
Dennis turned to Mulls on his right. “That’s the man you sent?”
Mulls nodded.
Dennis pinched the bridge of his nose, nodding, that bug burrowing through his mind. It tunneled quickly, scrambling reason and control, and Dennis felt his grip on restraint slip. “They escaped?”
“They ran like fucking rabbits,” Jake answered, triggering a laugh from a few of the men.
Dennis joined in the laughter then slowly stepped around the huddled mass of the shivering cattle and grabbed hold of Jake’s shoulder. “Like rabbits, huh?” He kept hold of Jake and turned to the group, his laughter growing more hysterical, that bug in his head burrowing faster and faster. Tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes, and he let go of Jake’s shoulder to wipe them away. “Like rabbits!” Another burst of high-pitched squeals escaped his lips, and the laughter of the men faded until it was only Dennis.
Jake shifted uneasily, and Dennis’s delirium ended.
“Oh, that’s funny.” Dennis smiled and gave three quick pats on his shoulder. “That’s too bad.”
One swift motion of the hand, and Dennis aimed his pistol at Jake’s forehead then squeezed.
Gasps and screams erupted with the gunshot, and Jake’s head jolted backward, blood and bone spraying in a trail due to the bullet’s exit from the back of the skull, and Jake collapsed to the floor.
Smoke drifted from the end of the pistol’s barrel, and Dennis lowered it to his side. He turned an angry glare to the rest of his men. “We are fucking wolves!” He stomped his foot, his knuckles flashing white against the pistol’s black grip.
Dennis paced the room, turning his gaze to each and every one of his men until their eyes dropped to the tips of their boots. “If you cannot hunt, then you cannot kill, and if you cannot kill, then you will be killed!” Spittle dripped from Dennis’s mouth and landed on the brown, matted beard that covered his chin and cheeks. He looked back down to the woman with the two children, and the little boy who was staring up at him, wide-eyed, his cheeks white as snow. “Remember that, boy.”
Dennis ran his hand through his hair, the bug in his head finally resting. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath then exhaled slowly. “Okay.” He opened his eyes, his stature more relaxed. He examined the cowering prisoners and then gestured to his men. “Make it quick.”
The inmates broke into a frenzy as Dennis stepped over Jake’s body on his exit. Screams and pleas of mercy erupted behind him as the men fought over the prettiest women in the group. Outside, the frigid mountain air cooled the rage. He closed his eyes and lifted his head toward the sky, basking in the howls from his pack and the screams from their victims. He reached for his map. Only three towns left.
2
The fresh powder from the blizzard had covered the landscape with a sheet of white that sparkled beneath the sunlight, which made the forest look alive.
Kate held the shovel but remained motionless as she stared at the mountains on the horizon that climbed high until it looked as though they touched the sky itself. It was one of the most beautiful sights she’d ever seen. But the view had come at a cost.
She lowered her gaze and saw the two rifles leaning up against a tree trunk, snapping her back to reality. The past three days had been an education for Kate and her family in the harsh realities of their new lives. They had no power, no phones, no transportation. The EMP stole every modern convenience, leaving millions ill prepared to survive the aftermath.
“Hey!” Rodney shoveled a scoop of snow and added it to the growing pile beside the hole. “C’mon, this is the last one. And we still need to do our water run.” The snow crunched as he scooped another shovelful and tossed it aside.
Kate wiped the sweat from her brow and then started digging. “Why the hell did you bury all of this stuff?”
“If something is easy to find, then it’s easy to steal.”
Kate conceded the point. Rodney had been one of the few who were ready. Up until the EMP, she didn’t even know that Rodney Klatt existed. But over the past few days, he had become the little brother she’d never had. And while he was barely older than her nineteen-year-old son, he carried himself like a man in his forties.
Twenty minutes later, Kate’s shovel vibrated from a heavy clunk in the ground. “Finally.” Both dropped their shovels and cleared off the frozen soil. When the box was finally unearthed, they stood on either side, each gripping a handle.
“On three,” Rodney said. “One, two, three!”
Kate’s muscles drew taut, and her back strained as she lifted the heavy stash. The metal box scraped the side of the hole, and it hit the ground with a thud as Kate and Rodney dropped it. She rotated her shoulder, wincing. “Did you bury rocks?”
The inside was lined with plastic, and when Rodney peeled away the layers of clear sheets, she saw three letters stamped in large bold letters on matching bags: MRE.
Kate plucked one from the box and read the back. “Steak and garlic mashed potatoes.” She arched her eyebrows, flashing the pack to Rodney. “Just add water.” She tossed it back with the others as Rodney pulled a piece of paper and a pen from the container’s side.
“Let’s get an inventory, and then we’ll bring it back to the cabin.”
With this being the fourth box of supplies they’d dug up, Kate and Rodney fell into their practiced rhythm easily.
Once finished, Kate and Rodney slung their rifles over their shoulders then picked up the box. None of them went outside without a gun, per Rodney’s request. But Kate didn’t object. She understood the need for weapons now. They had supplies that people would kill to take. And she didn’t plan on leaving her family with nothing.
The pair kicked their way through the tall drifts of snow, Kate dragging the shovel behind her, the pointed tip cutting a fine line through the soft powder. She lifted her knees high, the pair of snowshoes feeling more like a hindrance than a help.
“How long will the snow be this deep?” Kate asked.
“Until spring,” Rodney answered. “The roads are near impassible now unless you’ve got the right gear.” He gestured to their feet. “I know they’re a pain, but it’d be a lot worse without them. Trust me.”
Kate lifted her foot, and snow smacked her face. “I can’t imagine.”
The view of the back of the cabin brought with it the harsh whack of wood that echoed from the front and formed a methodical rhythm as Kate rounded the corner and saw Mark near the front porch, his back to the high walls of snow that boxed him into a rectangle-shaped crater.
Mark stood just over six feet, and the white walls behind him stretched four feet taller. The blizzard had buried the cabin, and they reclaimed it from the snowy earth one shovelful at a time.
Mark rested the head of the axe on the chopping block, his chest heaving up and down beneath his bulky coat. “I’ve already got two piles done. You said we want at least three per day, right?”
“Yeah,” Rodney answered. “Three per day for the next four months.”
Kate bumped Mark’s arm on the way past. “Just don’t chop your hand off.”
Mark removed his left arm from behind his back. He’d worked his coat sleeve over his hand to make it look like it was amputated. “Too late.”
Kate snorted and dropped the container of goods they’d carried from their cache. She kicked the snow from the large contraptions around her feet then peeled them off, chucking them in the corner with Rodney’s.
“We’ll need to match up what we found with my master list,” Rodney said. “It’s in the kitchen pantry. C’mon.” He removed his gloves as he stepped inside, but before Kate followed, she turned back to Mark.
“Luke come out?” she asked.
“No,” Mark answered, the playfulness gone as he pulled back his sleeve and picked up the axe. “I’ll go and check on him in a minute. You finish up with Rodney. I know you still have the water run.” He heaved the axe high again and split a log in two.
“Thanks,” Kate said then mouth
ed, “I love you,” and Mark did the same.
Rodney was already at the pantry, a binder in his hands that was three inches thick. “All we have left to do is make sure the numbers from the caches match up with the ones here.”
Kate uncrumpled the list she’d balled into her pocket. The redundancies that Rodney had in place reminded her of the preflight checklists for the airlines—something she wasn’t sure if she’d ever get the chance to do again.
“Mom?”
Kate turned, finding Holly in the entrance of the galley-style kitchen. “Hey, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”
“Can I go outside?”
It was a request that had been repeated numerous times over the past few days, and Kate was reluctant to grant it. She knew that they were in the middle of nowhere, and she had rationalized their situation repeatedly. Still, she couldn’t shake the danger of this new world.
There were no more police, no more ambulances, no justice system. The country’s technological clock and been wound back one hundred years. Holly had nearly died from infection a few days ago, and the bruising around her ribs hadn’t fully healed. But she knew that she couldn’t keep her daughter locked inside the cabin as if it were an ivory tower.
“It’s pretty cold out there,” Kate answered, wrinkling her nose. “You might freeze.”
“I can put on an extra coat,” Holly said, stepping forward as she clasped her hands together, her movements still slow and restricted from the bandages around her ribs. “Please, Mom? Please, please, pleeeeease?”
With Holly batting those long eyelashes and puffing her lip, Kate caved. “All right, but put your gloves on, okay?”
“Yes!” Holly hugged Kate’s legs. “Thanks, Mom!”
Kate smiled and smoothed the unruly hairs that broke free from Holly’s ponytail. “You’re welcome.” She watched Holly grab her coat and sprint out the door. She stepped forward, extending her hand as if she could reach her daughter from twenty feet away. “And stay where your father can see you!”
Giggles answered back, and Holly squealed as she burst outside.
Kate smiled. It was good to be on speaking terms with her daughter again. In fact, it was the only good thing that she had been able to salvage from the situation. Her life as a pilot had given her wonderful opportunities, but it had also kept her away from home. Gone days at a time, she had missed a lot of Holly growing up, and that had strained their relationship. But it was slowly starting to turn around. But she had traded one child’s indifference for another.
“All right,” Rodney said. “We’re all set here. Let’s go to the lake.”
Rodney stepped out first, and Kate lingered behind, staring at the closed door to Luke’s room. It had stayed like that upon arrival. Her son had refused to come out, refused to talk to anyone, and wouldn’t even look Kate in the eyes.
Luke’s bitterness was Kate’s own doing. She had fed him a lie to spare him pain, and from that lie was borne an inevitable anger. But she knew the truth would hurt him worse. All that mattered now was that he was alive. And even though her family was finally all together, it still didn’t feel whole.
Outside, Kate found Mark and Holly engaged in a snowball fight. She smiled, donning her snowshoes, as small clusters of white exploded on their jackets. Holly ducked behind the piles of wood for cover then resurfaced, flinging a snowball that missed her father and smacked Rodney in the face.
Holly covered her mouth, freezing in place like a child who knew she’d done something wrong. But when Kate burst into laughter, Holly squealed with excitement.
Rodney spit out bits of snow and wiped his face, trying to hide his smile. “How about a little warning next time?”
“Sorry,” Holly answered, giggling.
“I’ll get her back for you, Rodney,” Mark said, packing another snowball that sent Holly running.
Kate helped Rodney carry the pump and turned back as Mark chased after their daughter. “Don’t go easy on him, Holl!”
“I won’t!” Holly answered, laughing as Mark chased her around the side of the cabin.
The lake’s close proximity to the cabin made water retrieval slightly easier, but it was far from convenient. Most of it was frozen, and every day, they were forced to chop away at the six inches of ice before they struck water.
The embankment to the lake’s edge was steep, and Kate’s knees groaned about the harsh decline, but she didn’t stop until she felt the hard surface of ice. They set the pump down, and Rodney lifted the sledgehammer high then slammed it down hard.
Ice splintered, spreading spiderweb cracks from the point of contact. Rodney whacked again, the cracks multiplying, sending bits of ice shavings against the front of his pants. Six heavy hits later, and water bubbled up. Breathless, Rodney squeezed his hands, the cold wearing on his joints.
Kate slid the tube into the hole and then siphoned water until the twelve-gallon tank was full. It was enough for them to drink, cook, and bathe for one day. Though “bathe” was a loose term. With the freezing temperatures, they had done little more than just splash water under their arms and over their faces.
“All right,” Rodney said, pulling the pump’s tube from the lake. “We should be good.”
“Weather’s been holding up pretty well,” Kate said, dismantling the pump to make it easier to carry.
Rodney glanced up toward the sky and nodded. “That blizzard probably took a lot of the bad weather with it.” He wiped the snot dripping from his nose, and Kate mimed the motion.
“I think we should take advantage of it,” Kate said. “Before things turn bad again.”
Rodney paused. With one arm propped against a bent knee, he turned toward her. “Kate, I told you that we need to keep our heads down.” He stood and grabbed the pump from her hands.
“But we don’t know what’s out there,” Kate said. “What if we need help? What if we need—”
“Why would we need help?” Rodney spread his arms wide and turned in a circle. “We have everything we need right here. Food, water, shelter.”
Kate glanced around at the frozen tundra, the dead and barren trees covered in snow. “Yeah, it’s a real paradise.”
“It’s better if we stay put,” Rodney said, grabbing the left handle of their water tank, as if that meant the discussion was over. But Kate pressed on.
“Luke has a bullet lodged in his chest,” Kate said. “He needs a doctor.”
“Mark and I told you what happened to the hospital,” Rodney said. “I’ll have to fish the bullet out myself.”
Kate knocked the pump’s tubing from Rodney’s hand and stepped closer. “And you think you can get close without striking an artery near his heart? Well, I don’t. You’re skilled, Rodney, but you’re not a surgeon.”
“Kate, we don’t—”
“And what if those people you saw at the hospital come back?” Kate felt herself tremble beneath the bulky winter clothes. “What if they find us? From the numbers you saw, they could—”
Footfalls echoed to the east, and Rodney and Kate both reached for their rifles. Rodney aimed with his finger on the trigger before Kate could even get into position.
Rodney placed a finger to his lips and then slowly crested the slope, his feet soundless with each step, while their intruders stumbled loudly.
Kate followed, staying to Rodney’s right. The sights of her rifle wavered, her muscles twitching with a mixture of adrenaline and fear. She couldn’t rid herself of the thoughts of finding Dennis at the top of that slope, those dark eyes smiling at her.
After another minute, breathless voices were paired with the crunch of feet in snow. And while Kate couldn’t hear what they were saying, she recognized the tone. It was a tone of panic.
“Don’t move!” Rodney barked the order at the top of the embankment, rifle aimed, his composure still and calm. “Hands up where I can see them. Nice and slow.”
Kate crested the top next. She saw their hands first and then their reddened cheeks and shivering bod
ies. But what caught her eyes the most was the shimmer of blood.
There were five of them, all underdressed for the freezing temperatures. It hadn’t gotten above twelve degrees all morning, but they were in nothing more than flannel pajamas, with boots on their feet. They wore no gloves, no hats, and from what Kate saw, they carried no weapons.
An older man stood in the center. He was flanked by two older women on his left and a middle-aged woman around Kate’s age on his right, who cradled a boy in her arms. The mother stepped forward, sobbing.
“Please,” she said, her voice hysterical. “My son.” She glanced at the boy in her arms. “He’s hurt.” She stepped forward quickly.
“Stay where you are,” Rodney said, his tone stern, but remaining calm.
“Please,” the old man said, his glasses halfway down his nose, and shivering. “I’m a physician.” He gestured to the mother and son. “He was shot as we were trying to escape. If you have shelter, I can—”
“He’s dying!” The woman shrieked, unable to control her heaving sobs, adjusting the boy in her arms, separating herself from the others until she stood halfway between her group and Rodney with his rifle. “Help us!”
Kate lowered her rifle. “Rodney. They’re not here to hurt us. Look at what they’re wearing, for Christ’s sake.”
The seven of them stood like frozen statues, and the mother in no man’s land dropped to her knees. Tears had frozen to her cheeks, shimmering like the blood that covered her body. Her son’s blood. Kate reached for Rodney’s arm and for a moment felt his muscles stiffen beneath her grip.
But the moment passed, and Rodney finally lowered the rifle, and the torn and tattered survivors lowered their arms.
“Follow me,” Rodney said.
3
Holly had collapsed into the snow, her arms and legs thrust out in straight, rigid lines for her third attempt at a snow angel. Mark watched from the chopping block, smiling as he split another log.
“Okay! I’m done!”
Mark wedged the axe’s head into the stump and walked over, yanking Holly from the snow. He spun her around so she could see. “Looks like third time is the charm.”