Our Survival: A Collection of Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thrillers

by Williams, Ron

  Sam tried to keep things rolling while he adjusted. “Come on, this way,” he said, turning his back to Q and fast walking. “Seems like new guys that showed. Got nice vehicles, modern ones that are still running.”

  “Wait. Who are you?”

  “Kyle. Zeke’s cousin,” Sam said. He stopped walking and started to turn around. The first thing he did was put eyes on Q’s pistol, catching just a tiny glint of moonlight off the frame. It wasn’t pointed at him. Yet.

  Sam figured he had one chance. The multitool was still in his right hand, knife out “We hadn’t gotten a chance to meet yet,” he said, gesturing wide with his left hand, something to catch Q’s eye. At the first sign Q was tracking it, Sam stepped back with his right foot, pivoting hard on his left. He slashed at Q’s wrist with the knife, and then went for the gun with his free hand.

  Sam managed to get hold of the gun, but didn’t manage to get it out of Q’s hand. Q reflexively clutched the weapon, firing off a wild shot. Sam closed the distance between them, leading with his shoulder. As soon as he impacted Q’s chest, he drove the knife upwards, catching the man in the guts.

  At no point did Sam let himself forget that Q was named for his time in one of the roughest prisons in the country. If he thought Zeke was a scrappy brawler, it was best to assume Q would fight even harder and dirtier.

  The first taste of that came in the form of a knee shooting right up between Sam’s legs, slamming into his groin hard enough that the pain threatened to black him out.

  ‘Gun, knife,’ Sam thought to himself. It was the only coherent thought he was able to form right then. Keep control of the gun and the knife, no matter what.

  Unfortunately, Q had the same thought about the gun, and jerked his arm back, easily popping free of Sam’s off hand grip.

  Sam made a desperate leap at Q, one that he’d done enough in training that he was already moving before he consciously knew what he was doing. His arms were wide, positioned for the tackling bear hug.

  The maneuver was halfway successful. Sam managed to get Q’s right arm pinned, but his left arm was still free. And Sam hadn’t been able to get under his center of balance to knock him to the ground. Still, the gun arm was temporarily held to Q’s side. And Sam still had the knife. With his arms wrapped around Q’s body, he squeezed as tight as he could, digging the point of the knife into the flesh down low on his right flank.

  Q started desperately pounding on Sam with his free arm. The awkward angle made the blows painful, but otherwise ineffective. The M16 slung across his back helped, too, giving Q an obstacle to try and punch around. It wouldn’t take long for Q to figure out how to get the rifle into the fight, Sam figured, so he needed to do something.

  Sam dared loosen the bear hug enough to reposition his right arm and go for the kidney. He landed a solid stab, but Q was a muscular guy, and the multitool blade was only three inches long, and shaped for work, not for fighting. There was no way Sam was going to score a debilitating strike.

  Q, for his part, took full advantage of Sam’s weakened grip and with a twist of his body and a shove with his left arm, busted right out of Sam’s hug. Sam desperately held onto Q’s right arm to make sure the pistol could not be brought back into play.

  While Sam was clinging to Q’s right arm, the gang leader wound up his left and delivered some payback to Sam, landing a crushing punch to his kidney. “Ha!” he shouted, and Sam felt the pistol pop right out of his waistband. Sam knew he had about a second left to live unless he came up with something fast.

  Q swore. Because he didn’t have a proper holster, Sam hadn’t chambered a round. Q probably found that out when he pulled the trigger, and he wasn’t able to work the slide with only one hand. The pistol’s empty chamber was the only reason Sam was still alive.

  Sam looked down and behind him to select his target. He lifted his leg just about to his chest, and stomped backwards, connecting dead on with Q’s kneecap. He felt the snap as bone and connective tissue gave way. Sam put it all on the line, letting go of Q’s right arm as his leg collapsed and he fell to the ground. Sam dropped and put the blade of the knife to Q’s throat while man was temporarily stunned from the blinding pain of having his knee destroyed.

  The blade cut through the flesh Q’s neck easily. Sam followed it up with a thrust at the side of the throat. Even in the darkness, Sam could see Q’s eyes glaze over as he started choking on blood, two pistols held uselessly in hands hanging limply at his sides.

  Sam leaned forward, putting his mouth beside Q’s ear. “Her name was Linda Porter, the little boy was Jeremy Porter. Sam Porter is sending you to Hell for killing them.” He placed the blade of the knife against Q’s throat and gave it one more deep slash.

  Chapter 16

  Sam grabbed his bag of Molotov cocktails and covered the ground to the Helios Tavern as fast as he could, without all-out sprinting down the middle of the street. The one shot Q got off had to have attracted some attention. And if not, sooner rather than later, he was sure somebody would notice Q was hadn’t come back from his walk and go looking for him.

  He had only a short window of time to get things done. Sam found a nice nook across the street from the tavern where he was sheltered behind some trash bins. There were two guys out front, but they were just smoking and joking, not really paying attention to much. Through the windows, he could see a few people sitting around candles or gas camp lanterns, but not much true activity inside. It was nearly four in the morning, after all.

  He set out four of the Molotovs on the ground and put their rag fuses close together, so he could light them all on a single pass.

  The first one he launched right at the ground in front of the two guards, to get them out of commission. The remaining three he hurled through the front windows, then he sprinted off.

  Luck was with him, at least when he looped around and came up to the east side of the bar. Everybody’s attention was focused on putting out fires, whether it was the building or a person that was aflame. Sam threw three more gas bombs at the building, aiming for a back door and the roof, then ran off again.

  He was circling around to come at the building from behind to throw his last three when his luck ran right out. Sam rounded a corner and foun himself looking right at a military patrol about fifty yards away. Rifles immediately came up and bullets started flying. He ducked back the way he came and ran with everything he had. A few seconds later, more rounds came at him from behind. These were no warning shots, and there was no command to freeze. Stopping and throwing himself on the mercy of a military court was not an option.

  Sam threw himself between the next two buildings he saw. As he ran, he unslung the Molotov bag and ditched the backpack. They were weighing him down, and his pursuit was certainly younger than he was. Darting to the left as he came out onto the next street, Sam saw one last desperate chance. The first building had been looted and burned, its doors and windows just empty holes. Sam angled in through the gaping doorway and on tiptoe, brought himself to a halt as quietly as he could. His athletic shoes were nowhere near as loud as the hard soled combat boots of the soldiers pursuing him through the dark streets, which helped him avoid being heard. The soldiers kept going right on past the shop. As soon as they passed Sam crept towards the back of the store and let himself out the back door, just as he heard soldiers coming in the front, backtracking once they realized they’d lost him.

  Sam was much more cautious leaving the neighborhood as he went back to the first office building where he’d holed up, after throwing Ricky out of the Marriot. He had the best cache of supplies there.

  Chapter 17

  Sam used most of the four hour free movement period the next day getting back to his house. It wasn’t that his home was that far away, but that he took his time, observing things, watching what was happening around him, the way people moved.

  The soldiers were a little more on edge, but there were no Sundogs to be seen. A few braver souls from the residential buildings near where S
am had stayed had come out, unlike the day before when they were so afraid of the Sundogs that none of them dared step outside when Zeke and his boys came to commandeer the entire block’s food supply.

  There were two checkpoints set up on his way home, but both had been easy enough for him to avoid. He would have went through them without worry, if it weren’t for the fact that he was carrying two handguns and a military-issue M16 broken down in his backpack. Sam guessed they’d confiscate the sidearms and send him on his way, but the M16 would certainly have opened up a whole world of trouble for him.

  When Sam got to his house, he first stopped by the two graves where his wife and child were buried. Now that their deaths were avenged, he interred Linda’s necklace and Jeremy’s baseball card with them. He sat between the two mounds of earth and found that he was less empty than he’d expected to feel. Over the pat few days, whenever he thought about what would come next after he’d taken his revenge, Sam hadn’t been able to think of anything. He just sort of assumed that would be the end of it, and maybe he’d just sort of fade or wither away or something.

  But as he reflected on the change he’d seen inside the city that he’d put into motion by breaking up the Sundogs, he realized maybe there was something more. He stood up and looked around at the neighboring houses. Most were empty, their residents having fled to somewhere after the EMP. Some of them had probably been killed by Sundogs or other criminals. A few of his neighbors might still be around, though, clinging to their homes and the remnants of the lives they had before.

  Sam went back into the house and took a look around. Some things had been damaged, he’d need to fix the doors, scavenge things to reinforce them and the windows, maybe fortify the bolt hole a little more. But he could keep the place, maybe bring in some of the neighbors to consolidate manpower and resources. If the Johnsons were still around, or the Tuckers too, perhaps.

  "Yeah," Sam said to himself. “There’s more I can do.”

  THE END