Our Survival: A Collection of Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thrillers

by Williams, Ron

  Zeke looked over his shoulder. “Right here?” he asked, pointing at the doorway with one of his fingers.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. At the moment, he knew he had the advantage. They appeared to be a good distance from any potential pursuit, and he had the weapon. Sam also knew that the more advantage he had, the more risk he had. Overconfidence would get him killed, and as Zeke got more desperate, he was going to get more unpredictable.

  So he decided to seize the moment and really push the odds in his favor. Once he and Zeke were fully inside the building, Sam fired the rifle. He hit Zeke in the right shoulder blade. The impact of the bullet sent the gang member sprawling face-forward onto the floor.

  “Fuck!” Zeke shouted. “What?”

  “Roll over,” Sam said.

  Zeke gingerly got onto his back. “What’s that all about?”

  “I decided it’s finally time for us to talk,” Sam said. He fired a second round into Zeke’s shoulder, this time into the front. Zeke doubled over, a look of unspeakable agony on his face. While his prisoner struggled to beat down his pain, Sam set the rifle down behind him, and checked that the pistol in the back of his waistband was positioned for a quick draw if he needed.

  When Zeke looked like he was vaguely composed, Sam took his multitool from his belt pouch and crouched down. He slowly and deliberately pulled out the corkscrew, still bloody from where he’d sunk it into another Sundog’s neck just the day before.

  Zeke’s eyes widened.

  “Remember how I said that Ricky gave you up?” Sam knew it wasn’t the corkscrew that did it, but no reason for him to share that information. He grabbed Zeke’s left arm with his free hand and knelt on it, then grabbed the right and pinned it to the ground.

  “Yeah, well Ricky wasn’t all that.”

  “I don’t think you’re all that,” Sam said. He leaned forward and put the tip of the corkscrew right next to the entrance wound at the front of Zeke’s shoulder. The man struggled, but it looked like any attempt to get enough leverage to throw Sam off caused blinding pain.

  “So, the fifth man that was in my house that night. He seemed to have scared Ricky quite a bit. You scared of him, too?”

  “I ain’t scared, but I ain’t giving my man up, either.” The words were defiant, but Sam saw that his eyes were riveted to the multitool.

  “I think you’re real scared,” Sam said. “But you should be more scared of me.”

  “Why?” Zeke asked.

  “You killed my family, stole everything I had collected over the years to survive this. I’ve got nothing left to live for but revenge.”

  “You won’t survive an attempt on the boss.”

  “I’ve taken three of you guys out already, and I have a fourth right where I want him. I’d say I’m doing alright.”

  “You said it yourself. The other three were dumbasses.”

  “And you’re smart. Smart enough to know you’re not going to survive this, so the least unpleasant line between you and a bullet in your head is by giving up the boss.”

  “I’m not done yet,” Zeke said.

  “And I haven’t even started.” Sam plunged the corkscrew into the wound in Zeke’s shoulder. For a couple of seconds, the man was stoic, gritting his teeth against the pain and giving Sam a hard, defiant stare. It didn’t last long, though, and soon he started to grunt, then fight. Sam ground the multitool, putting more of his weight onto it, and Zeke started bucking, trying to kick Sam off despite the pain.

  Just before Zeke got his feet under himself enough to make a serious attempt at escaping, Sam let go of the multitool, and wound up. Zeke managed to dodge the worst of the first punch Sam launched at his face, but the second connected. Sam landed two more, then let go of Zeke’s right arm so he could go for a two-handed choke. Zeke fought like a beast unleashed, trying to swat Sam’s hands away at the same time as his legs scrabbled to get some footing to roll or kick himself out. But the fact was, he only hand effective use of one hand, because of the amount of damage two bullets had done to his shoulder. Eventually, Sam got both hands around Zeke’s neck. He clamped on tight so he could lift Zeke’s head up and slam it into the floor.

  Zeke stopped trying to escape the hold, and started trying to inflict as much damage as he could. His first couple of punches were pretty much ineffective, when inspiration must have struck. He snatched the multitool from his shoulder and slashed out wildly with it.

  The point of the corkscrew dragged hard across Sam’s throat. If it had been the knife blade, the fight might have gone in a radically different direction, but the corkscrew wasn’t sharp enough to cut deep. Still, the impact of it was intensely painful. And Sam knew that it would be plenty lethal of Zeke got it into position to stab at his neck. He abandoned his choke hold, and devoted his full attention to immobilizing Zeke’s left arm.

  Zeke took advantage of this and redoubled the struggles with his legs, trying to land a knee anywhere he could. In the tangle, he got his mouth close enough to Sam’s shoulder to bite down, hard.

  Sam’s police training kicked in. He kept a tight hold on Zeke’s left hand, and rolled, trying to get himself into a position to shove his shoulder into Zeke. He knew that trying to pull out of the bite would only cause more tissue damage, he needed to immobilize the assailant and smother him enough to get him to unclamp on his own.

  All the while, he was acutely aware that he’d popped a few more stitches in his own bullet wounds, and the blood was starting to flow freely again. He had to get control of the situation back. As he pulled his left knee up he felt, then heard, the pistol at the small of his back clatter to the floor.

  Chapter 13

  The sound of the loose pistol did more to get Zeke to let go of Sam’s shoulder than anything Sam was doing. He unclamped his teeth and scrabbled for the gun with his nearly useless right arm.

  Sam abandoned his struggles to get the multitool away from Zeke and went for the gun himself. Zeke didn’t miss a beat, and as soon as his left hand was free, he gouged the corkscrew into Sam’s side. Fortunately for Sam, his own bullet wound was on the other side of his body.

  He had to admit that Zeke was one hell of a scrapper. The kid was tenacious, a flurry of limbs, jumping into any opening Sam left him. Unfortunately for Zeke, Sam was heavier and bulkier than his thin and undernourished opponent. He was also on top, and had plenty of training in keeping somebody down. Sam rode out the pain of Zeke’s repeated punches with the corkscrew into his abdomen, and put all of his concentration into keeping Zeke under him, and keeping the gun out of Zeke’s hand.

  Even with the advantages he had, it was a struggle, but Sam finally got just enough contact with the gun to slide it several feet away. That let him focus fully on subduing Zeke. When he managed to pry the multitool out of Zeke’s hand he knew he couldn’t give himself even the slightest pause for breath. He plunged the multitool into the bullet wound in Zeke’s shoulder again, this time giving it a harsh twist, while he shoved the forearm of his other hand into his foe’s throat and projected as much of his weight into it as he could.

  That combination seemed to do the trick. The agony of having a fresh wound violently insulted plus the choking pressure on his throat finally drained the fight out of Zeke.

  “How do I get to your boss?”

  “No!” Zeke gasped.

  Sam ground the corkscrew in deeper and started rocking on the arm across Zeke’s throat, watching his face carefully. He didn’t want Zeke to lose consciousness.

  Zeke never lost the defiant look on his face, though. He was a fighter. Sam remembered some little fact he’d picked up somewhere. The panic someone feels when suffocating or choking isn’t about the lack of oxygen in the system, but the buildup of carbon dioxide. It’s why chokeholds that cut off blood to the brain have a very different effect on someone than cutting off their ability to breathe.

  Sam decided to go with that. He chucked the multitool away, well out of Zeke’s reach, and went for the throat again, clamping his hands
tight around the windpipe. Zeke started to hack and gurgle, and Sam gripped even harder. Zeke’s struggles became less focused and effective and more random as his face went red, then purple. Just before seeing the lights go out in Zeke’s eyes, Sam let up, just long enough to let him get a quick breath in before shutting down his airway again. A few rounds of this, and Sam eased up quite a bit.

  “Your boss. I want him.”

  “Suck my -,” Zeke choked out.

  Sam didn’t let him finish. He put the choke back on, relieving it every so often to let Zeke get a quick breath in just before fading off.

  “Your boss, punk. Give him up.”

  “Suck…” Zeke gasped.

  Back to the choke for another couple of rounds. Sam’s next two attempts to get Zeke to give up the information got him nowhere. The third time, though.

  “You’re getting weaker and weaker, asshole, while I’ve got a ton of fight left in me. We can keep this up all day, or you can give up your boss,” Sam sad, before releasing Zeke’s throat.

  “Q,” Zeke coughed. “It’s Q.”

  “Why do you call him Q?”

  Zeke swallowed hard and took in a pained, raspy breath. “He did time at San Quentin. Quentin. Q.”

  “Alright. How do I find him? How do I get at him?”

  “You let me live if I tell you?”

  Sam shut his hands hard around Zeke’s throat again, and held until the moment before he lost consciousness again. “No. But I stop doing that.”

  “Shit, man,” Zeke said.

  Sam clamped around his throat again.

  “Yeah,” Zeke said, when Sam finally let him breathe again. “Q. Doesn’t sleep well. Wakes up and walks. Playground, two blocks from the bar. Goes there.”

  “Thank you,” Sam said, standing up. He looked around. The pistol was just a couple yards away, the multitool with its sharp knife blade not far from it. Neither of those seemed right, though.

  The night the Sundogs came into his house and killed Linda and Jeremy, Zeke had smashed Sam’s head with a crowbar. Sam saw he M16 where he’d stood it up in a corner. It wasn’t a crowbar, but it would have the same effect on a skull. Slowly, while Zeke weakly tried to roll over and get up, he walked over and retrieved it.

  Chapter 14

  Sam sat in the bay window of one of the upstairs offices. It was after the noon to four free movement period, so the military curfew was in effect again.

  He watched out the window as sporadic patrols moved through the streets. In the past day, their presence had increased markedly. All of them were in Army uniforms, but he could tell by the way they moved and interacted that the soldiers had commandeered others to bolster their ranks. Some were obviously police officers – the “cop walk” was obvious. Some, Sam couldn’t guess. Whether they were Reserve or Guard from non-combat units or what, he didn’t know, but they were definitely not experienced military or law enforcement. A couple of the men had the same kind of cocky strut Sam had seen the Sundogs affect. It made him think back on the food distribution, how the only ones that came to meet the military vehicle were four men from the gang, and everybody else in the surrounding buildings had stayed buttoned up, the offer to trade some booze and drugs for rations. Had the Sundogs really been able to terrorize the neighborhood so quickly after the EMP, and were they now corrupting the military forces in the city?

  Sam set that question aside and went back to watching how the patrols conducted themselves. One of the patrols saw somebody out on the street and they went straight to warning shots, followed by shots to kill if the person didn’t immediately stop and drop. Without being able to pick out a pattern or schedule, Sam decided it was best to not be out during daylight hours, especially if he wanted to carry the M16.

  The enforced pause gave him time look at his wounds again. He didn’t have his supply of makeshift bandages or sanitizer, but he had put the first aid kit into a pocket before going out to confront Zeke and the Sundogs originally. That gave him a little bit of antibiotic ointment, and the needle and thread he’d taken from Linda’s sewing kit at least. Rifling through the offices in the building he was in, he found bottled water and soda, some instant noodles and other quick lunches, more candy bars, and hidden in the back of one desk drawer, a bottle of rather good bourbon.

  There were enough sweaters and light jackets left behind in the building that he was able to assemble a few more makeshift dressings for his bullet wounds, but they weren’t as nice as what he was able to make from the hotel sheets. Sam wasn’t too worried, though. They shouldn’t need to hold for more than a few hours.

  While he ate a dry, cold dinner, he set Linda’s necklace and Jeremy’s baseball card on the window sill. Ken Griffey Jr. was barely recognizable anymore, his card creased and crushed, stained with blood and sweat. Linda’s necklace had fared much better in his pocket, being made of much more durable stuff.

  He lingered over his memories of his wife and child for quite some time.

  After getting some food into himself, Sam decided to pack up for his final confrontation. He found another backpack and a few large laptop bags, and started loading the pack up with more food and water, and some clothing in case he needed to redress his wounds. As he went through the little kitchenettes and break rooms, he was hit with a sudden inspiration. Each of the kitchenettes, one per floor, had one of those coffee pod machines, connected by a long flexible hose to the building’s plumbing system. Somebody in the building had a taste for sparkling water, and between the stash in their office and the recycling bin, Sam found nearly two dozen glass bottles. And there were disabled cars all over out on the streets… The bottles and a hose went into one of the laptop bags.

  With all that ready to go, he decided to settle in for a bit more sleep. In lieu of setting an alarm, he went ahead and slammed a couple bottles of water knowing that it would hit his bladder in a few hours. As he drifted off, he went over his mental map of the city. The Helios Tavern had always been outside of his precinct, but he did think he knew which playground Zeke had mentioned. There was one not far from the bar that he was vaguely familiar with, because he’d see it on his way to the interstate if he was heading out of town from home.

  As he’d hoped, it was an urgent need to hit the head that woke him up a little bit after full dark. Sam felt his way through the unlit office building, counting doorways and turns, to a rest room where he relieved himself. He retraced his steps back to the office he’d spent the evening in and collected his supplies.

  There was a quarter moon in the sky, which lit the city with a weak, pale blue light. Sam held still for a while to let his eyes adjust, then went to the nearest parking lot with an older car in mind, the kind that wouldn’t have a locking gas cap. Fifteen minutes later, he had ten Molotov cocktails.

  Sam moved through the nighttime streets as quietly as he could, thankful he’d thought to pack the laptop bag with paper towels to keep the glass bottles from clanking together. In the darkness, the streets were more lively than he’d expected them to be. Perhaps everybody was banking on nobody having functioning night vision devices, so they figured it was the best time to try and move about undetected and unmolested.

  Whenever Sam caught sight of a single person or pair, there seemed to be an unspoken agreement to give each other a wide berth – kind of don’t look for trouble, won’t find any. He did have to take cover for two larger groups, one of soldiers on a foot patrol, one a much less disciplined gaggle that he was pretty sure were with the Sundogs. The entire time, sporadic gunshots broke up the otherwise quiet night. Once, the gunfire came from the block he was on, but from inside a building. Sam immediately ducked into cover, watched the other lone person on the block do the same, and stayed put for a long time. He’d expected somebody to show up, gang or military, but they never came. Sam wondered if there were enough shots being fired at night that the patrols couldn’t respond to all of them.

  Eventually, he reached the playground. His watch told him it was almost 3:30. />
  In the thin moonlight, Sam could see somebody pacing near the swingset. As soon as he saw the shape, he knew it was the one he wanted. There was something about the rhythm of his pacing, a little hitch in the step. It was undeniably the same as the mysterious fifth person in his house that night, the person he’d never gotten a good look at.

  Sam peered into the darkness for a good ten minutes, trying to see if there was anybody else with the person he assumed was Q. He saw nobody else, and there wasn’t anything in Q’s pacing that would suggest there was another person out there. He wasn’t talking to anybody, didn’t seem to be looking too much in any particular direction. Sam felt like he had his chance. He picked out a route that would give him cover for as much of the approach as possible, and grounded the backpack and his bag of Molotovs.

  A part of Sam knew the smartest thing he could possibly do was set himself up for a clean shot with the M16. That part tried to sway him, but the drive for proper vengeance was much stronger. Sam wasn’t going to just snipe the person ultimately responsible for the deaths of his wife and child. Sam was going to get up close and make it personal. He slung the M16 across his body, opened the knife on the multitool, and with a thin strip of cloth he’d cut, tied the pistol to one of the belt loops at the back of his pants. He wanted it secure enough that it wouldn’t pop out again like it did in his fight with Zeke, and he hoped if it came to it, he’d be able to give the piece enough of a good yank to either tear the cloth or the belt loop.

  Without a proper holster, he felt it was the best he could do.

  Chapter 15

  “Q! Big problem. Quick!” Sam said.

  “Huh?” Q turned towards the shadow Sam crouched in.

  “Soldiers at the bar, come on, this way and we can get behind them.”

  The ruse seemed to work. Q shifted his stance, body language saying he was ready to go take care of some business, and came right towards Sam. “Shit. They not supposed to go there,” Q said. It seemed like things were going much better than Sam ever could have hoped for, right up until Q reached around to the small of his back and drew a pistol.