The Final Homestead: EMP Survival In A Powerless World

by Hunt, James

  “It’s fine,” Mary said, looking to her son, who was still huddled in the corner. “It’s going to be difficult for my husband to find us. Especially in this room.”

  “I didn’t think it was a good idea to move you,” Zi said. “You could have internal injuries.” She cleared her throat, trying to explain. “I’m going to nursing school. Night classes. I saw the prescription in your purse and I wasn’t sure—”

  “It’s okay,” Mary said before the woman revealed too much. “Thank you.”

  Mary had already rifled through the options. With the pain in her body, she knew that she wouldn’t be walking anywhere, not even with assistance. She couldn’t sit up, so a wheelchair wouldn’t work.

  “Jake, do you remember those medical drills we did last spring?” Mary asked.

  “Yes,” Jake answered.

  “I need a stretcher. It’s the only way you’re going to be able to move me.”

  “I can help him look for supplies,” Zi said. “We have a bunch of stuff in the kitchen.”

  “That’s good,” Mary said, nodding quickly. “Jake, take the revolver with you.”

  Jake picked up the weapon and led Zi to the door, disappearing like the light from the room.

  It was quiet after they left, and Mary couldn’t tell if Maya was staring at her in the darkness or not. The pain gripping her body was keeping her busy though. She might slip back into unconsciousness if it kept it up at this pace.

  “Are we going to die?” Maya’s voice was quiet and solemn, and it sounded like it was coming from a little girl as opposed to the grown woman in the room with Mary.

  Mary saw the woman was scared, but she wasn’t sure she had the strength to give the woman a pep talk. “Do you have family in the city, Maya?”

  “Just Stevie,” she answered, maintaining that sheepish tone. “He’s my husband.”

  “How long have—Shit.” A muscle spasm caught in the left side of Mary’s ribs and she palmed the spot where it was originated, breathing quickly and heavy until it passed.

  Mary exhaled in a series of exhausting coughs until she grew so tired that she couldn’t keep her eyelids open anymore, but the aching in her back refused to let her rest.

  “Why is this happening?” Maya asked, silently sobbing through the question, which Mary was unsure was directed at her, or if the woman was just asking it aloud.

  Mary suspected that everyone was asking that question, trying to determine just how this could happen to them, in their city, in their state, in their country. How could everything just stop?

  Mary opened her mouth, almost telling her about the ranch, about their supplies, about how they had enough to take care of her and Stevie, but she stopped herself. She knew that they already had their hands full with the ranch workers and their families. Not to mention the number of people that James had made deals with. They had all worked so hard to prepare for the storm. And while they didn’t wish anyone ill, they couldn’t fit everyone on the ark.

  More light flooded the room and Stevie returned. “I did it.” Panting, he crouched by Mary’s side. “Things are getting worse out there.” He sniffled and wiped his brow. “There’s still a lot of shooting around our building. I think those guys with the guns are fortifying their position.”

  Maya whimpered.

  “Do you think that your husband is really going to be able to get through all of that?” Stevie asked. “It’s like a warzone out there.”

  Mary grinned, cracking her eyes open. “He’ll come. James doesn’t know how to quit.”

  The pair waited in silence until both Zi and Jake returned.

  Jake had found some old drywall that they could reinforce with some of the sturdier legs of chairs they’d been able to detach. It was a crude set-up, but if they reinforced the drywall with enough of the steel pieces, then it should hold Mary. She wasn’t that heavy. Not yet at least.

  While Jake instructed Stevie, Maya, and Zi on how to tie the most secure knots to attach the steel pieces to the back of the drywall so it wouldn’t buckle, Mary busied herself with trying to manage the pain that was becoming increasingly difficult to handle.

  But the pain was a welcome distraction, because it didn’t allow her to obsess over what might be happening to the life inside of her. A life that she hadn’t told her family about, because she had been waiting for the right time. She had to stay alive, not just for herself, but for the child she hoped was still growing inside.

  Voices echoed from the lobby and all eyes drifted to the barricaded door.

  Maya whimpered, and she quickly covered her mouth with both hands as Stevie held her shoulders, pulling him into his chest. Zi retreated to the farthest back corner, crouching low into a ball and brandishing what looked like a knife, the steel blade glowing in the darkness.

  Mary took the revolver from her son and aimed it at the door. She knew that they were grossly unprepared to face the enemy in the streets, and she knew that these men wouldn’t be deterred by the flash of a pistol or the threat of violence. These men were violence. They were killers, murderers, thieves.

  Voices and footfalls grew louder on the enemy’s sweep through the first floor. Mary adjusted her grip on the revolver, hoping that she’d have enough strength to at least prolong the inevitable. To give them one fighting chance before they were gunned down.

  The voices stopped just outside the door. The exchange was quick, the back and forth causing Mary’s stomach to tighten, and the pain in her back worsened.

  The door handle jiggled, the bodies on the other side grunting in frustration. A heavy, angry thud from the person elicited a shudder through the entire room.

  The door started to shake more violently, the shouts and demands on the other side growing considerably tenser and more hurried.

  The door buckled, the table that they used to brace the door nearly rattling out of place.

  Jake dropped to his mother’s side, lying alongside her, and Mary raised the revolver toward the door, a surge of strength providing the necessary grit to perform her last stand.

  But before Mary could make the decision to fire, the pounding ended and the voices faded from the door.

  Everyone exhaled relief, and Mary relaxed, lowering the weapon. She knew that they couldn’t stay any longer, and she wasn’t willing to leave her son’s future to chance.

  “Mom?” Jake asked, sitting up. “You smell that?”

  The rest of the room leaned forward, and when Mary finally noticed the fumes, there was already smoke coming through the cracks of the door.

  10

  Drenched in sweat from the run, the heat, and carrying the boy in his arms, James collapsed to his hands and knees nearly ten blocks from his contact with the enemy.

  The little boy stood off to the side, staring at James with a sense of calm wonder. He hadn’t cried the entire run, and even now, standing in the middle of a warzone with a stranger, the boy showed no signs of fear.

  Once James managed to collect himself, he stood and adjusted the rifle in his hands, glancing around to get his bearings. He had run in the right direction, keeping his wits about him even under the stress of the fight.

  James glanced up at the skyscrapers. The building where he saw the flare was close. But with the windows above, he was exposed for an ambush, and he quickly pulled himself and the boy under the cover of a concrete overhang.

  James spied the blood on the boy’s shirt and shorts, along with some specks on his cheeks, and he examined the boy for any injury. “Are you hurt?” It wasn’t the boy’s blood. “What’s your name?”

  The boy stood there, gazing at James with those blue eyes. With the heat of the day they looked cold as ice, which was a stark contrast to the boy’s fiery red hair that was tangled and messy.

  “Was that your family’s van?” James asked. “Do you live in the city?”

  The longer the boy’s silence dragged on, the more the city deteriorated around them. It wouldn’t be long before the final implosion buried millio
ns under a pile of rubble and dust, leaving anyone that survived to pick through the wreckage of the collapse.

  “My parents died.” The boy spoke softly, speaking such horrible news with such a fragile innocence. “The bad people killed them.”

  James brushed his fingers through the boy’s tangled mane. “I’m sorry.”

  James removed a small wraparound Kevlar vest from his pack. The device was originally designed for a quick means of providing extra cover over any exposed areas of the neck and face, which were prone for targets by sniper fire, but the material was so bulky that it restricted movement of the head and made a soldier more susceptible to ambush, so it was rarely used in the field.

  But the device fit perfectly around the torso of a child, and James knew that the boy wouldn’t need to be mobile, not so long as James carried him.

  “What’s your name?” James asked, securing the device and making sure it wouldn’t slip once they started moving. “I know you have one of those.”

  The little red head stared down at the Kevlar strip that James had nearly finished securing. “Teddy.”

  “Like Roosevelt,” James said, smiling as he finished up with the Kevlar. “You know, he was a very brave man. Led a group of soldiers into battle. He was fearless.”

  Teddy looked up, running his hands over the material that now stretched from his chest down to just below his waist. Aside from putting the boy into a bulletproof box, this was the best way to help keep him safe. But a bullet could still do considerable damage to the boy even without penetrating the Kevlar. Depending on the caliber of the bullet, it could shatter his ribs, bruise his organs, and cause internal bleeding.

  James glanced around, spotting random people jogging through the wreckage of the city. From what he’d seen, most of the big groups had dissipated, leaving behind the few lone wolves in the streets.

  James slung the rifle’s strap over his shoulder before he scooped the boy up with his left arm and grabbed his pistol with his right hand. He flicked the safety off the big .45 ACP. Most folks would have difficulty handling the big pistol with one hand, but James had practiced for just such an occasion.

  James moved forward, paying close attention to the activity in his peripherals as he maneuvered through the streets to the next intersection where he veered right, his head tilted up as he searched for the building where he saw the first flare.

  It was nearly time for another one to pop up, knowing that they would keep to a schedule of continuing to fire a flare every hour until their rescue, or until they couldn’t fire them anymore.

  But James forced those thoughts out of his head. He wasn’t going to allow himself to get sucked into that vortex of doubt and unanswerable questions. Until he found them, he couldn’t guess their condition, so he fought those doubts with hope.

  James watched the sky, which had darkened from the huge columns of smoke, until he saw a streaking flare of red, challenging the dark haze that had engulfed the city, and this time he spotted the rooftop from which it spiraled into the sky.

  The sight of the flare provided a boost of energy, and James sprinted toward the building where it had been fired from. But on his run, he heard a growing roar coming from behind him.

  James turned at the waist to find another flood of people sprinting down the street, pushed forward by the roar of gunfire, sending the horde into a crazed stampede, charging at full speed and ready to trample anyone in their path.

  James faced forward, focusing on the evasion of the coming storm. The building where the flare had been shot was on the corner of an intersection up ahead, and he saw smoke spweing out of the sides from some of the broken windows.

  “No.” The disbelief departed James’s lips in a whisper, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the masked terrorists flee from the bottom of the building, three of them standing back and staring at the building as it caught fire.

  James aimed his path directly at the three men standing near the closest entrance, and he saw that they had their guns aimed at the exit. They were smoking people out.

  Still wild with adrenaline, James forgot that the boy was still in his arms and skidded to a stop, his gaze shifting between the fire raging ahead of him and the wide-eyed boy in his arms.

  James couldn’t take the child into the building with him - the smoke inhalation would kill him. But leaving him out in the open like this was just as dangerous, especially with the stampede of people sprinting toward them, chased by more men with guns.

  James scanned the street and found a truck that hadn’t been torn to shreds with windows too high for fists or crowbars to smash. And it also meant that the windows were too high for anyone to see inside.

  James lifted Teddy into the truck, the boy still sporting that wide-eyed stare, but remaining completely still. The kid was like pond water on a breezeless summer day. “Stay there, and don’t make a sound until I get back.” He slammed the door shut, not bothering to wait for a response, and gripped the pistol with both hands, allowing him better aim and control as he moved to the building.

  Between the roar of the crowd behind James and the growing crackle of the fire ahead of him, the three masked terrorists couldn’t hear James’s heavy footfall or even his screams as he aimed for the back of their heads on the run, the first two shots missing wide left as he adjusted for shooting on the move. But when he planted his foot and readjusted his aim, the first two men were down before the third had a chance to spin around. The first bullet smacked into the gunman’s chest, and the second connected to his left cheek and dropped him permanently to the floor.

  The heat blasted James before he even made it to the door. Black smoke billowed out of any exit it could find, rising into the sky and adding to the orange haze that had engulfed all of San Antonio.

  But James never broke stride as he raised the bandana to cover his nose and mouth and sprinted headfirst into the fire raging through the building.

  The heat was so intense that James thought his skin was melting from his bones, and despite the bandana that he placed over his mouth and nose, he still choked from the smoke and oxygen-starved atmosphere.

  “Jake! Mary!” James kept low to avoid the smoke, then maneuvered around the flames, the ceiling dripping liquid fire. “Mary! Jake!” He screamed, but the roar of the fire drowned out his voice, and it was so hot that all of the moisture in his throat had burned away, making it difficult to breathe, let alone speak.

  James followed the natural pathway from the door deeper into the building and holstered the weapon, knowing that whatever he’d encounter next couldn’t be fixed by bullets. With both hands raised to fend off the encroaching flames, James’s vision blurred, drifting back and forth through the haze of the fire that distorted his vision like the heat coming off the black asphalt during a hot summer day.

  It grew so hot that the fire sucked the moisture from James’s eyes, drying them like raisins as he pushed deeper into the building until he dropped to his knees, collapsing from exhaustion, his lungs clogged with smoke.

  James retched on the floor, thrusting forward with his palms and striking the melting tile with the palms of his gloved hands. The vomit that splashed against the tile was black like tar, and James trembled as much from the sight of it as he did the exhaustion that riddled his body.

  He had come so close, only to burn in the end.

  James collapsed to his side, the fires burning brighter, when through his half-closed eyelids, he saw a door buckle up ahead. At first he thought it was just more of the heat waves playing tricks on him, but he realized there was someone on the other side.

  James rolled to his hands and knees, then forced himself to stand. He remained hunched over, barely able to place one shaky foot in front of the other as he reached for the door and yanked it open at the same time his own son had been reaching for the handle.

  Jake’s face was smeared with soot, his eyes bloodshot red. He was exhausted, his body poisoned from the smoke. Behind him he saw three others, liftin
g Mary on some kind of stretcher and struggling to carry her from the room.

  When James returned his attention to his son, he saw the boy’s eyes roll to the back of his head and his body go limp as he collapsed.

  James lunged forward, catching Jake before he hit the floor, and then waved the others carrying his wife toward the exit, through the building that had transformed into a raging inferno.

  Too tired to speak and barely able to hold his son in his arms, James’s vision tunneled into a tiny circle, the rest turning to black. He knew he would pass out soon. Exhaustion would finally force its hand. But he needed to get them to a safe place to recover before he collapsed.

  The narrow hole that was James’s vision helped guide him and the others trailing him to the front door, which had collapsed from the fire, blocking their exit.

  James turned, his muscles shivering from exhaustion, his mind just as sluggish. To the left, he saw one of the windows blown out and he charged toward it, able to see into the streets through the smoke and through that small pinhole of vision that was left to him. He charged forward with his remaining strength and vigor.

  The moment that James stepped from the building the world went black, but he didn’t pass out. He trudged forward, slamming his knee into a car. He spun around, coughing, his lungs still choking for fresh air, his body and mind ravaged from the fire. He opened his mouth to call out for his wife, but again his throat was so dry and hot that James was convinced that his throat had been charred to a crumbly crisp.

  “—ary!” James coughed, his voice finally breaking through with a crack. “Mary!”

  “She’s here!” It was a man’s voice, close, shouting above the roar of the fire. “She’s passed out, where do we take her?”

  James’s vision had yet to fully return but there was some light, and he just kept blinking, kept breathing, because in those moments, it was all he could do. “Find cover.” He drew in another rattled breath that sounded like his lungs were crunching glass, and then that pinwheel of vision returned, and he was able to see the clogged streets and raging inferno that they’d just escaped. “Anywhere close.”