by Ryan Casey
It was a scary thought. But it was even more of a reason to make a move towards growing and gathering food as soon as possible—even if this wasn’t a long-term thing as he thought it might be.
But still, the ready availability of foods like this was going to take them that bit further.
He felt his bag weighed down. Thought about zipping it up and getting out of here, tension growing, everything feeling more intense.
But then he saw the next aisle.
He saw some dental floss right along the aisle. He knew how handy that would be. He could use it for all kinds of purposes: fishing gear, starting fires, integrating into his snare traps, as well as stitching and even handcuffing if he needed to.
He should get out of here. Should walk away.
But he found himself drawn towards it.
He grabbed the dental floss. Grabbed plenty of it, knowing damn well it’d be the last thing a lot of people thought of. He stuffed it into his rucksack.
Then he zipped up the rucksack and made his way back towards the end of the aisle.
That’s when he saw him.
He was standing there and he was shaking.
Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
He was holding a rifle.
And he was barely out of his teens.
“Drop it,” he muttered. But he didn’t sound threatening. He sounded afraid.
That’s when the smell hit him.
The smell from the back of the store.
The smell of death.
“Drop—drop it. Please.”
Mike swallowed a lump in his throat. Narrowed his eyes.
He went to descend.
And then he threw himself to his right.
He heard a blast. Heard something ricochet against the metal, confirming his suspicions that the gun was real.
And as he moved, he acted out of reaction more than anything. He acted out of self-preservation.
He kicked the shelves of the aisle the kid was in.
He kicked it hard.
He heard another blast. Heard a shout.
And then he heard a crash as the shelves fell to the floor.
He clambered halfway out of the window.
When he looked back, he saw the shelves had fallen.
An arm sticking out. Twitching. Struggling.
He waited there for a few seconds. Watched the person struggling away, watched the arm waving and slapping at the floor.
He waited until it went still.
Then, he waited a little longer and climbed back inside.
He looked down at the arm, totally still. The body beside it, trapped and suffocated underneath the shelves.
Then he looked at the gun. Out of bullets. Totally out.
One bullet. One sacred bullet, and he’d wasted it.
What a shame.
But still, he reached for it.
Still, he picked it up.
He never knew when he might need it.
He felt a sour taste fill his mouth. Tension invaded his body. Guilt overrode all his senses.
But all he could do, as he held on to his bag, was take a deep breath.
All he could do was climb out of the window, supplies in tow.
This was life in the new world.
This was survival now.
Chapter Three
When Mike reached the camp, he tried to push the memory of what’d happened back at the village store right out of his mind.
The weather had gone overcast. Clouds were hiding the sun from the sky. As Mike looked up and felt a chill from the breeze, a thought came to his mind in one, stark word: winter. Because they’d been fortunate. They’d been fortunate that the EMP had struck in a warm spell. It was one of the few things they could actually be thankful for in all of this sorry mess of affairs.
But winter would come. As nice as it was right now, they couldn’t deny its steady progression forever. The longest day of the year had already passed. From here on, it was a nosedive towards gradually colder weather.
The days would be manageable, as long as the snow and the frost held off. Which was optimistic to say the least. But the nights… the nights were going to be difficult with absolute certainty.
It was crucial that if this EMP outage was going to last, they had somewhere they could call home for winter. Somewhere things were growing. A farm that already had all its reserves in place.
Somewhere they could survive.
He took a deep breath, shook his head. He was getting caught up in something that wasn’t even here yet. Better to think about surviving these early days first before jumping to a hypothetical winter.
There was something else bothering Mike, though, as he made his way through the camp. And it was something that all of them were going to realise in time. There was a chance this wasn’t just a one-year thing. There was a chance it wasn’t just a one winter thing. There was a chance that this was forever.
And that adaptation to a new existence… that wasn’t going to be easy. As people living in the twenty-first century, they’d had it easy, really. They’d had it handed to them on a plate for so many years.
But things had changed. And the vast majority of people weren’t going to be able to adapt to that change, that was for sure.
He thought about the gun in his rucksack, totally free of ammo. They’d been so close to gathering guns after their showdown with the prisoners on the first day. Problem was, once the fire at the log cabin went out, it became immediately clear that the fallen had completely depleted themselves of ammunition.
Mike had taken three of the rifles along with him. Partly to intimidate, but also with hope they might find some ammo at some stage, too.
But on the third day, they’d ended up in a shitty situation with a group of leechy looters and found themselves robbed in the night.
Richard had been the one who’d failed to keep watch properly, and had given up the guns in the hope that they wouldn’t take the rest of their supplies too—which turned out to be the case.
So there were pluses and minuses to every situation.
He reached the first of the tents and he saw Holly in there.
She was lying on her back, staring into space. Richard, who Mike had run into on the road, was by her side. They were both drinking.
Mike scratched the side of his head. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t drink in the day.”
Holly shrugged. “What do you care?”
Mike felt tension inside. After all, he’d given everything to make sure Holly was safe. He’d fought his way through the elements and through the treachery of this new world to find her. He’d almost died for her.
And while initially, there’d been a renewed bond between the two, it hadn’t taken long for old habits and old arguments to creep into their conversations.
“I care a lot,” Mike said. “Drink makes you sluggish. You can’t afford to be sluggish. Especially not first thing in the bloody morning, anyway.”
Holly shrugged and took a swig of the drink. “Morning. Night. What does it even matter anymore?”
It was the defiance of the way Holly took that swig of drink that got to Mike more than anything. He knew there were sensible ways to react. Better allocations of his energy.
But he was caught in the moment right now.
He lunged for the bottle of booze. Grabbed it, smashed it on the ground.
“There,” he said. “That’ll do it.”
Holly glared back at him, cheeks flushed. From some of the other tents they’d set up, Kumal, Harriet, Gina and Alison emerged. Arya, their adopted Siberian Husky, was by Alison’s side.
“You’re a bastard for that,” Holly said.
“Yeah, well, I’m your dad. And whether you like it or not, the new world doesn’t change that.”
“The amount of times I wanted to do that to your drink after Mum died. The amount of times I wanted to smash all of your bottles up because you weren’t there for me…”
Mike felt th
e sting of Holly’s words. He wanted to deny them, to resist them, but he knew she was right. He’d failed in his duty as a father to her after the death of his wife, Caitlin, several months ago. He’d turned to drink. Withdrawn himself from his responsibilities. Neglected his daughter, no doubt about it.
But he’d been trying. Trying to make amends. Trying to be a better guy now this new world was here.
It just so happened that there was only so much a pan of water could bubble up before the lid fell off completely.
“Now’s not the time to talk about the past,” Mike said. He lifted the bag of supplies he’d gathered. “I checked out that shop down the hill this morning.”
Alison stepped forward, frowning. “You what?”
“I went down there,” Mike said. “Couldn’t sleep, so I scouted it out for a while.”
“And?”
Mike remembered the way the kid had stood there holding that gun. The flashback to the scene of conflict he’d been in while in Afghanistan. The way that war had shaped him in so many unsavoury ways.
He remembered the boy’s twitching arm, empty rifle by his side.
Then he pushed the thought out of his mind because there was no point in clinging to it. There was nothing to be gained from ruminating in bad thoughts.
“I got some supplies,” Mike said. He lifted some of the kit out of his rucksack, as well as the rifle. “That’s the main thing, right?”
There was silence around the group then. And Mike sensed it was because they knew. They knew something had gone down. They knew something bad had happened. They knew Mike was hiding something.
But they were all going to have secrets to hide in this new world. That was just the way of things.
“Sneak a bottle of booze in there while you were at it?” Holly asked.
Mike turned around. Narrowed his eyes. “What?”
Richard put a hand on Holly’s arm. “Holly—”
She yanked her arm away. “No,” she said. “No, he deserves to hear it. So come on. What did you do? Did you get up for a nice morning drink?” She stepped up to Mike now. “Did you hurt someone, hmm? Take something, because we’re so different to everyone else? Did you kill some—”
Mike couldn’t stop himself.
He swung a hand at Holly’s face.
The crack punctuated the silence. Some shrieks of shock and disapproval.
But Mike wasn’t messing around. Not anymore.
“You should be grateful,” he said, pointing at Holly. “I saved your bloody life.”
And then he turned away and walked off towards his tent.
He might’ve been reunited with his daughter.
But their relationship was far from salvaged.
Chapter Four
Mike sat and stared into the fading embers of the campfire, almost certain he was headed for another sleepless night.
It was quite beautiful, really. The stars above, they glowed with such intensity. You didn’t even have to look closely to see all the constellations. In the past, you could find patches like this, where the skies were so unpolluted. But there were always gaps where light shone up from somewhere, breaking through the perfect bed of faraway worlds.
Mike found himself looking up from the fire towards them upon occasion. He saw things flying past. Meteors. He swore he even saw the International Space Station up there at one point. He wondered how scared they would be, the astronauts up there, how afraid they would be. They’d been completely cut off from the world below. What would they know? Would they know anything? Or would they still be up there, waiting for some kind of signal?
The thought that they were probably going to die up there filled Mike with fear. After all, they didn’t have a world out there to hunt in. They didn’t have supplies to salvage. They were totally self-contained.
But then what was so different to that and the vast majority of people down here on Earth?
People reliant on carefully packaged food and supermarkets acting as the middlemen, taking the reality out of the hunt, out of everything.
Really, the majority of people were just as lost as the people up there.
Only difference was, down here, everyone was fighting for a limited supply.
“Struggling sleeping?”
Alison’s voice made Mike jump. She had a knack for alarming him like that. She was crouching down by his side, then lying back, staring up at the stars. She didn’t look him in the eyes. In the few days of knowing her, Mike knew this was something she did when she had something on her mind.
Probably something to do with him.
“Always struggling to sleep,” Mike said. “Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to try, though.”
“Was that a dig at me?” Alison said.
“Not at all.”
“It’s just… don’t forget. The second that power comes back on, you’re going right back in those handcuffs.”
Mike smirked. It was strange, how he and Alison had met. He’d been arrested for dangerous driving over the limit. He was an idiot for doing that, no doubt. But he’d been doing it because he was desperate to get to his daughter’s ballet performance.
He’d got there. Late. It was only on the way back that Alison had pulled him over, breathalysed him, and revoked his licence on the spot.
And then, you know. The usual. A plane slamming into the police station, marking the beginning of the EMP outage.
Alison sighed. And that was it. That was the moment where Mike sensed something was coming.
“Go on,” he said. “Get it off your chest.”
She didn’t mince her words. “What happened earlier, with Holly. That wasn’t on, Mike.”
Mike felt his stomach turn. He closed his eyes, turned away from Alison. “She’s my daughter.”
“And I’m not criticising your ability to raise your daughter.”
“It sounds like you are to me.”
“I’m just saying… the girl’s going through a lot. It’s not easy for any of us to adapt to this world. Imagine what it’s like for a sixteen-year-old. She should be going to parties, gossiping with the girls. Instead, she’s stuck in a world where there are no superficial relationships or friendships. A world where survival is a very real thing, now. Where it’s the only thing.”
Mike opened his eyes again. Took a deep breath. Maybe he had been harsh on Holly. He hadn’t intended to slap her, after all. He’d never so much as raised a hand at her before that point in her entire life.
But it was just the way she dug up the past. The way she knocked the head off his scab of guilt that he thought had healed.
He just needed to stop her speaking.
“Whatever happened with your wife,” Alison said. “Whatever… whatever happened in the wake of her death. However it was handled. However things were between you. That takes healing, from a point like that. And if you ask me, it sounds like you haven’t healed yet.”
Mike wanted to argue Alison’s words. He wanted to tell her that things were okay between them. That they were just working their way through the issues at their own pace.
But he’d slapped his daughter. He’d slapped her and how was that ever going to repair things?
“I just want her to appreciate I saved her bloody life,” Mike said.
“She shouldn’t have to appreciate it, Mike. You shouldn’t have to do anything for her to know you care.”
Mike’s mind went still, then. His thoughts were stopped in his tracks. Because he heard something. A truth. A truth in what Alison was saying.
He’d been trying to get Holly to see how much he cared. He’d been trying to get her to see just how important she was to him.
But really, that should just be a natural thing. It shouldn’t be something he had to prove.
“Get some sleep, Mike,” Alison said. “We need to start thinking about… about the next step.”
The next step. Three words Mike didn’t even want to consider.
Because accepting there was a next step i
n any of this was just as difficult to him as it was to everyone.
Accepting a next step meant accepting another day of this abnormality.
This new normality.
“I’ll try,” Mike said.
Alison didn’t respond.
She just got up, walked back towards the tents, and Mike was surrounded by silence once again.
He opened his eyes. Sat up. Looked at the embers, then back up at the stars.
He wanted to fix things. He wanted to make things right with Holly.
But as he stared up there and searched for some trace of Caitlin, he found himself falling short, once again, like he always did.
Adapting to this new world wasn’t going to be easy for any of them.
The difficulty had only just begun.
Chapter Five
Carey Hertfordshire watched the mass of rioters stagger towards her and she knew there was only one thing she could do if things went too far.
It was late afternoon. The power had been out for five whole days. The first day was bizarre—a lot of her co-workers in the armed response unit had gone home to their families, promising to return but never resurfacing. She didn’t have the luxury of a family to go back to, so she’d stayed in work with the rest of the poor souls who were married to their job.
And as soon as the chaos broke out, it became pretty clear that order needed to be restored, and that they were going to have to take matters into their own hands to preserve it.
There were scurries of tension on the first couple of days. A few fights to settle down here and there, but mostly people were clinging on to their sense of dignity; their sense of pride. There was tension. There was conflict. But there was hope, too. A hope that eventually, things would get better. Things would resolve.
But this was the fifth day. And when the power didn’t come on, things changed.
The supermarket shelves were being looted left, right, and centre. Buildings were being burned. Windows were being smashed, and properties were being destroyed.
It didn’t take long for the world to turn upside down, that was something Carey realised now. It was amazing, just how in control you thought things were. All it took was a blackout and a lack of communication for a few days for people to start tearing each other apart.