After the EMP (Book 8): Hope Stumbles

by Tate, Harley

Jenny volunteered. “He says he’s here to take Walt.”

  “Like hell he is.” Ben’s grip twisted in Dani’s hair and the girl lashed out, pelting his shin with kicks.

  “Let me go, you overgrown troll!”

  The man laughed. “For someone who tried to burn down my farm, you’re not much of a fighter.”

  “We didn’t try to burn it down. We created a distraction.” Colt took a step forward. “Let her go.”

  “Or what?”

  Colt frowned at the children. All seven of them huddled together, the oldest clutching the arm of the littlest as she cried. He didn’t want to shoot anyone. He didn’t want to harm the kids or leave them orphans.

  “I don’t want to hurt your family.”

  “You won’t.” Ben turned and shouted into the dark. “Harris, Killian, get in here!”

  In moments, two more men appeared, each one armed.

  “Daddy!” One of the little girls, no older than five or six, hopped off the bench, but the closest man stuck out his arm.

  “Not now, baby.”

  The girl stopped, a sob bubbling up her throat.

  Colt’s frown deepened. He could make it out of there, but only if he shot the place to hell.

  This wasn’t like Eugene where he didn’t care if Jarvis or his men survived. He wasn’t a child-killer. He wasn’t a widow-maker.

  He swallowed and set his handgun on the table before holding up his hands.

  Ben nodded. “Rifle, too.”

  Colt unslung the rifle before setting it next to the Sig. “I’ve got a Glock in my belt.”

  “Then get rid of it.”

  Colt pulled the gun from the holster and added it to the pile.

  “What are you doing? Why aren’t you fighting back?” Dani twisted in her captor’s grip, but Colt merely exhaled.

  “We’re outnumbered.”

  “So what!” She tried to kick Ben again and he cursed beneath his breath. The other two men approached and he let them take Dani. She fought the whole time until they pinned her arms behind her back.

  Unencumbered, Ben rolled his neck. “You all right, Walter?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Do you know these people?”

  “I do.” Walter glanced at Colt with an unreadable expression. “But I didn’t ask them to come.”

  “Is this how your group acts? They rush in, ready to take what isn’t theirs?”

  “They thought I was in trouble. They’re here to rescue me.”

  Ben turned to Colt. “Is that true?”

  “It is.”

  “You’ve done a piss-poor job of it if you ask me.”

  The oldest kid on the bench snickered and Ben pinned him with a look. “Help everyone go back to bed, will you, Sam? The emergency is over.”

  “Oh, Uncle Ben, come on. It’s early.”

  “It’s past your bedtime, Taylor, and you know it.”

  Colt watched as the woman walked up to Ben and whispered in his ear. He glanced at Colt and nodded.

  One by one the kids filed out of the barn and Jenny followed. Her voice carried back inside. “Hurry up everyone. It’s cold and you aren’t properly dressed.”

  As the last sounds of the kids faded, Ben’s face hardened. He turned to the other two men. “Take them all to the stables. They can sleep there tonight.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  TRACY

  Mountain Valley Hospital

  Truckee, CA

  10:00 p.m.

  A gray concrete building loomed ahead, white and red emergency signs broken and dark. Brianna killed the headlights at the first sign and eased over to the side of the road.

  She turned to Tracy. “How do we want to do this?”

  “Let’s stash the vehicle and come at it on foot.”

  Brianna nodded and navigated behind an abandoned strip mall that used to house a sporting goods store and a karate school. “I don’t have a clue where a vaccine might be.”

  Tracy frowned. “Neither do I. Most likely spots are the pharmacy and the ER.”

  “Both of which are going to be trashed.”

  “Then we do the best we can. If we’re lucky, no one took the vaccines.” Tracy tightened her bag on her back and checked the second rifle magazine. She knew what a long shot the hospital would be, but they didn’t have a choice. Madison had to have the vaccine. Tracy refused to think about the alternative.

  They shut and locked the SUV and together headed toward the hospital. Keeping to the shadows, it didn’t take long. Tracy’s nose wrinkled as they entered the parking lot.

  “Ugh. What’s that smell?”

  “Do you really want to know?” Visions of an overflowing morgue filled Tracy’s mind. “How long could the place keep running on backup generators?”

  “A few days.”

  “After that, everyone in intensive care died.”

  “And a whole host of other people, too.” Brianna pointed at the front doors to the ER. Even in the moonlight, Tracy could make out the giant circle with a slash mark through it. As they neared, a scrawled out CLOSED came into view.

  “Didn’t seem to stop people.”

  Every window on the first floor that didn’t have plywood nailed to it was broken.

  Brianna shuddered against a gust of wind. “How long do you think it’s been like this?”

  “Months.” Tracy picked her way through frozen bits of trash in the parking lot. Thanks to the sheer number of abandoned cars, the snow hadn’t piled up more than an inch or two.

  Together, the women snaked their way up to the front. With temperatures falling into the teens, no one was foolish enough to be outside, but that didn’t mean the hospital would be empty.

  Tracy reached for Brianna’s arm as they got to the broken windows of the emergency room. “There’s liable to be all sorts of people living inside. We need to be careful.”

  Brianna nodded. “Let’s search the ER first. Then we’ll find the pharmacy.”

  Tracy stepped over the broken glass and into the hospital. Snowdrifts piled in the corners. Wadded-up paper and plastic and crushed bottles littered the floor. She clicked on her flashlight and Brianna did the same.

  “Whoa.” Brianna panned the lobby with a slow arc of light. “It’s straight out of a disaster movie.”

  She was right. They had been inside ransacked stores and survived the chaos of Chico State, but Tracy had never seen anything like the Truckee hospital. If it wasn’t nailed down, it was smashed, ripped, or mangled.

  Holes gaped like hungry mouths in the walls. Springs stuck through the torn fabric of a sagging couch. Soot tracked across the ceiling. A trash can sat in the corner, nestled among scorched and broken bits of wood. Squatters, keeping themselves warm.

  Tracy slung the rifle across her body and reached for the Glock. She needed freedom of movement. “Let’s head to the nurses’ station. There has to be a directory.”

  Brianna hopped the counter. “Watch your step. It’s a mess.” She eased forward and Tracy followed a few paces behind.

  She found a map on the wall beside a pair of double doors. “Here.”

  According to the map, a central dispensary for the ER was in the southwestern corner. Tracy took off, half running down the hall. She knew before she reached the counter that it would be hopeless.

  Every step brought more destruction. Graffiti on the walls, doors off their hinges. Dried blood pooled on the floor.

  Tracy shuddered.

  “Don’t give up. We’ll find it.” Brianna squeezed Tracy’s arm as she eased past to take the lead. She stopped in front of the counter and grimaced. Where sliding glass windows used to be, only broken shards remained. She tried to smile. “At least it’s easier to get inside.”

  Both women scrambled over the counter and found themselves in a war zone. Boxes and bottles and used syringes littered the floor. Shelves were broken and leaning against each other. Cabinet doors lay in front of empty shelves.

  “There’s nothing left.”
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  Brianna shrugged off the doom. “Let’s check to make sure.”

  An hour later, even Brianna’s optimism faded. She slumped against the only standing shelving unit and wiped at the sweat dripping off her nose. “We need to find a map. The main hospital pharmacy should be on this floor.”

  Tracy stripped off her sweater and tied it around her waist before tugging her hair up into a haphazard bun. “If the ER didn’t have a single usable Band-Aid, the pharmacy won’t have a vaccine.”

  Brianna pushed herself upright. “We won’t know unless we look for ourselves.”

  Tracy knew Brianna was right, but she couldn’t help but voice the despair threatening to drag her under. It swelled inside her belly, a thick black sludge of horror. Her daughter was going to die—not after living a long and happy life, with a husband and kids and a house of her own, but in the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter.

  Alone.

  It wasn’t the dream Tracy had for her daughter’s future. She forced down a wave of nausea. Tracy had spent the last nine months focused on their current predicament, surviving every day as it came. She hadn’t stopped to think about the long-term ramifications of their situation.

  Gone were spring weddings with bouquets of peonies, lush grass beneath chubby baby feet, front porches where friends stopped to share a pitcher of tea. Somehow, Tracy had held onto a kernel of hope that they could find it all again.

  In quiet moments, she’d think, maybe the government would get itself together. Maybe other countries would come in and lend much-needed aid.

  She braced herself with an outstretched hand against the wall. No one was coming to push the reset button. They could eke out an existence with Brianna’s family, but unless they found another community to join, their little band of ten might as well be the last people left on earth.

  Tracy closed her eyes. Eight if Madison and Walter died. She shook her head. Enough wallowing. “Let’s find the pharmacy.”

  Brianna brightened. “I knew you’d come around.” She scampered over and wrapped Tracy up in an unexpected hug. The young woman’s dirty curls tickled her nose. “We’re going to save Madison. You have to have faith.”

  As Brianna pulled away, Tracy forced her lips to curve into a smile. “You’re right.”

  Think positive thoughts. She repeated the mantra over and over as they climbed over the wreckage and back into the hospital hallway.

  Exhaustion tugged at her legs and Tracy checked her watch. Two in the morning already. She smacked her cheeks to focus before picking a direction. “I vote this way. The pharmacy is probably across the hospital and away from the ER.”

  The two women picked their way through trash and broken glass until they reached a set of double doors. A sign overhead read Orthopedics, Geriatrics, and Pharmacy. Tracy buzzed with hope.

  Brianna pushed the doors open and they walked into a calmer side of the hospital. With every step, Tracy’s excitement grew. It was almost normal. No trash, no broken glass, no graffiti. It didn’t make sense, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Maybe this side wasn’t hit.”

  She lit up a map at the corner of a four-way intersection of halls. “The pharmacy is this way.” Tracy turned down the western hall and practically broke into a run. She slammed into another pair of double doors, expecting them to swing open. They didn’t budge. She hit them again.

  “Are they stuck?” Brianna hurried to join in, pushing against the right-side door while Tracy pushed on the left. Not a chance.

  Tracy backed up and shone her flashlight all around. No locks, no automatic buttons. It didn’t make sense. She stood on her tiptoes and looked through the plexiglass window. The hallway beyond sat empty and deserted.

  She lowered back to the ground, confused. “The pharmacy should be twenty feet down the hall. This doesn’t make sense.”

  Brianna crouched in front of the doors and wedged a hunting knife blade between them. The fuzzy felt trim gave way and Brianna’s knife slid in an inch. She frowned and pushed harder. “There’s something on the other side. It’s hard.” She jabbed the knife in again. “I can’t pierce it.”

  “Like a cross bar?”

  Brianna ran the knife up and down the seam, testing the theory. After a moment, she nodded. “It’s about four inches tall and right in the middle of the doors.”

  Tracy swallowed. “Hospitals don’t have security gates in the middle of their hallways.”

  “Especially not when the pharmacy is on the other side.”

  “Someone else did this.” Tracy turned around. “And they don’t want uninvited guests.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Find another way in. With it barricaded off, the pharmacy might be untouched.” Tracy tamped down her excitement as her brain struggled to keep up with her runaway heart. “Let’s backtrack. There’s got to be another way in.”

  The women hurried to the map on the wall. The hallway was the only interior access to that portion of the hospital. Brianna cursed. “We can’t break it down without a battering ram.”

  Tracy thought it over. If they couldn’t come at it from this floor, they had three choices: up, down, or all the way around. She turned to Brianna with an idea taking shape in her mind. “What’s the number one place no one wants to go in a hospital when the power goes out?”

  Brianna shrugged.

  “The basement.”

  “Why?”

  Tracy swallowed. “It’s the morgue.”

  Day 282

  Chapter Twenty

  TRACY

  Location Unknown

  Near Truckee, CA

  4:00 a.m.

  “I thought the smell at the vet was bad.” Brianna tied her sweater around her face and leaned into the stink like a head wind. “We’re going to have to burn these clothes when we get home.”

  Tracy followed three steps behind, her flashlight beam bouncing off gurneys piled with bones and desiccated bits of flesh. A skull with hair still attached lay on the floor. A shirt covered a bag of bones slumped in a wheelchair. She swallowed down the horror and kept walking.

  Imagining the first frantic days in the hospital after the EMP brought the whole grisly scene to life. Critical-care patients dying. Doctors and nurses fleeing to protect their families. Looters and thieves coming to pillage before the dead were even cold.

  Brianna stopped at a door marked Emergency Exit. “Is this it?”

  “Must be.” Tracy pushed the door open and shined her light inside. The stairs only led up. “Let’s go.”

  The women proceeded with caution up to the first-floor landing. Tracy clicked off her light and plunged the stairwell into darkness. “We should be inside the barricade. Close to the pharmacy. Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.” Brianna pushed the door open and waited.

  No noise. No light. She stepped out into the hall and Tracy followed, closing the door as quietly as she could.

  It was too dark to see anything. She waved her hand in front of her face. Nothing. They couldn’t stand there for an hour and hope their eyes adjusted. Ripping off her sweater, she fashioned a cover for the flashlight with several layers of wool and clicked it on.

  Low, diffuse light illuminated a circle of about four feet. It would have to do.

  Tracy took the lead and kept the light trained low. Twenty feet ahead the wall gave way to a door and she lifted the flashlight. PHARMACY stood out in large block letters above a frosted window.

  With a deep breath, she tugged the door open. A waiting area sat untouched and orderly on the other side.

  “Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep this safe.” Brianna pulled out her own flashlight and clicked it on, flooding the room with light.

  Neat, tidy shelves full of medicine beckoned them from behind a counter. Tracy pulled the sweater off her flashlight and hurried forward. It didn’t seem real.

  “We need to be fast. This place has to be watched, even in the winter. If the guards are on rounds
, we don’t have long.”

  With a hop of excitement, Tracy scaled the counter and landed on two feet in front of at least twenty rows of shelves. There had to be enough medicine to treat hundreds of people. Hope filled her heart as she rushed toward the closest shelving unit.

  The labels read like a library shelf and Tracy almost giggled. She knew how to find her way around an alphabetized storeroom. Vaccines would either be on the end or in a fridge. She called out to Brianna as she ran down the length of the pharmacy. “Find a fridge! The vaccines might be there.”

  Tracy turned the corner and used the flashlight to read the labels on the final row of shelves. Tagamet, Tenivac, Thyro-Tabs. She ran a few feet and kept reading. Ultiva, Udavex, Varenicline. No vaccine section.

  Damn it. She circled back to the Rs one row over, hoping for more luck, when Brianna called out. “I found the fridge! It’s got tons of shots in it.”

  Tracy rushed toward Brianna’s voice. She found her hunched over a short fridge near the phone bank at the front of the pharmacy. As the younger woman rooted through the vials, a bright light lit them up from behind.

  Oh, no. Tracy spun around and held her hand up to ward off the glare. She couldn’t see anything.

  “Identify yourselves.” The deep male voice boomed in the quiet space.

  Tracy stood her ground. “Who are you?”

  “People you don’t want to mess with.”

  The light slid toward the ground and Tracy squinted past it. Two men stood at the pharmacy entrance. One held a floodlight. The other a rifle aimed straight at Brianna’s chest. Tracy reached for the girl’s hand and squeezed as she whispered. “I’ll distract them. First chance you get, run.”

  Brianna shook her head. “I’m not leaving you or the vaccine.”

  Tracy stepped forward.

  The man with the gun shifted to point at her. “Stop where you are.”

  “Please, we don’t mean any harm.” She held up one hand. “We only need a vaccine.”

  “What for?”

  “To cure my daughter.”