The Ruin - Solar Crash Book 3: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Series)

by E S Richards

  Every one of Andy’s crew members was playing a valuable part in starting The Mako on its journey back home, whether fisherman, scientist, or diver—they had all come together thanks to a single overpowering purpose. It was almost without breathing that Andy kept his eyes on Cory as the boy straddled the wooden splitter, moving along the pole towards the end where the tip of the sail flapped aggressively in the wind.

  Cory kept his head as close to the splitter as he could, leaning forward and reaching out with his arms before dragging his torso and legs forward using his upper body strength. It was a slow process, but it was obviously the best technique in the unrelenting wind, the weather choosing the worst possible day of their expedition to start fighting them with some unknown vengeance. Eventually, however, Cory reached the end of the wooden pole and hugged it closely with his arms, taking a moment to breathe before the next part of his task began. Sparing a quick glance over to Pablo, Andy saw the budding engineer in a similar position, both trainees preparing to catch the sail that Brett and Lucas struggled to hold in place.

  This was the dangerous part. Andy saw Brett and Lucas strain their muscles as they gave the sail the final hoist it needed to be within arms’ reach of the boys on the mast. The metal clips that rattled on the ends of the splitters were heavy and hard to use; threading them through the open ring on each corner of the sail would not be an easy task. Brett and Lucas maintained utter focus as they battled to keep the sail still, trying as hard as they could to make the task easier for Cory and Pablo.

  Andy focused his attention on Cory. He was the boy’s lifeline in all of this and he had to be ready for anything. He watched carefully as Cory straightened himself up slightly, his left hand still underneath the splitter and gripping the metal clip tightly. As a fresh gust of wind tore across the deck Cory tensed his leg muscles and prayed that they would keep him steady on the mast as he reached out for the flailing fabric of the unused sail that he needed to attach.

  Grinding his teeth Andy winced as he watched Cory’s hand enclose into a fist around thin air, the sail blowing just out of his reach as he made his first attempt to snatch the fabric.

  “Come on, Cory.” Andy muttered under his breath, checking for the millionth time that he still had a firm grip on the boy’s safety line. From Cory’s position on the mast Andy could tell he was going to make another attempt to grab the sail, the wind only picking up and making their time up there more dangerous with each passing minute. Twenty minutes had already flown by, and Andy was eager to have all his crew standing firmly on deck once more.

  A cheer escaped Andy’s throat as he saw Cory grab onto the corner of the sail, pulling the fabric closer to the mast with his right arm and fiddling with the metal clip in his left hand. All he had to do now was thread the clip through the designated hole in the sail and then Cory could start making his way back down. He was so close; the six of them would certainly be sailing home before nightfall.

  “Pablo!”

  Bryan’s scream rang out beside Andy and he tore his eyes away from Cory for a second, immediately regretting the action. Pablo hung from his safety line, one strong arm holding him slightly in place on the wooden splitter. But he was slipping. Bryan was struggling with Pablo’s weight, and the young boy on the mast looked to be seconds away from letting go.

  Chapter 7

  “Put yer hands in the air.”

  Len and Harrison froze. The echoing sounds of three more shotguns being cocked filled the silent air and chilled both of them to their very bones.

  “Did ya not hear me? Hands in the air. Now.”

  Len glanced out of the corner of his eye over at Harrison and could see the grimace set firmly on the man’s face. Harrison hated to be put in situations like this and believed he should have anticipated what was about to happen. Nonetheless, they were trapped, and left without any other options. So, as slowly as he dared, Harrison started to raise his hands above his head, Len copying his actions to the side of him.

  The two men remained stationary with their backs to their assailants for several seconds, all the while a plan quickly tearing through Harrison’s head. He had been carefully mapping the area as they walked through and it hadn’t gone amiss to him the dishevelled faces that hid behind curtains or peeked through doorways. He wasn’t sure if Len had noticed any of them, but Harrison certainly had and was already starting to build up a picture of the people who remained here in his mind.

  That’s why, when a callused hand went to grab Harrison’s left wrist to trap his arms behind his back, he was ready.

  In a flash Harrison spun round and landed a punch to the man’s face, knocking him out stone-cold as his body dropped to the floor. Without wasting a second Harrison picked up the sawed-off shotgun the man had been carrying and pointed it at the man closest to Len, while simultaneously drawing his 9mm Glock and aiming that at a second man. Len stared at Harrison with a stunned expression on his face before eventually snapping into action and pointing his own 9mm Beretta at the third. Once Harrison was comfortable they had the upper hand, he cleared his throat and started to speak.

  “How do we get out of here? How did you make this roadblock?”

  A silence dragged out between the five men for a long minute, before a rasping, haggard laugh tumbled from one of the locals’ mouths. The man started spluttering and coughing seconds into his laugh, his chest heaving and his lungs gasping for breath as he clearly struggled to breathe. Harrison waited, knowing someone would answer him eventually.

  “You don’t get out,” the laughing man sputtered, coughing violently now between words until he spat dark, viscous liquid onto the ground. “No one gets out of here,” he spoke with a clearer voice now, arching his back and looking confidently down the barrel of Harrison’s 9mm, which remained pointed at him. “Not alive, at least.”

  With the laughing man’s final words something snapped in the man closest to Len and he lunged forward, knocking Len backwards off his feet. He pinned Len down and started gnashing his teeth together like a wild dog, spitting down at Len while the Chicago-man did everything he could to try and push his attacker off of him.

  Harrison lurched forward, kicking the attacker’s body off Len and allowing his friend to scramble backwards, away from the rabid man. Without a second thought Harrison pulled the trigger on the already cocked shotgun and fired a bullet into the man’s chest, stilling his writhing body where it lay. The whole ordeal happened in a matter of seconds and before either of the other men could move Harrison had both his weapons pointed back at them, sparing only a glance over his shoulder to where Len was pushing himself to his feet and brushing dirt off his clothing.

  “Care to try again?” Harrison spoke loudly, addressing the laughing man who had previously spoken and taking a step towards him as he moved. “How do we get around this roadblock?”

  The laughing man and his one remaining companion stared at the man Harrison had just shot; their mouths hanging slightly open. In the silence Harrison took a longer second to observe the two remaining men and the state in which they stood. Their clothes were dirty and torn, hanging off their bodies like they’d just been chased through a jungle by wolves. They were thin too—much thinner than they should have been after just a week without any power. Food was more difficult to obtain and cook, but they should have still been able to eat. There was something about them. Something about them that made the men appear sickly and somewhat deranged. Like when their town lost its power they lost their minds too, becoming completely different men from whomever they had been before.

  “Well?” Harrison spoke loudly again, taking a few more steps closer to the men while they remained still, only the laughing man’s eyes darting quickly from side to side as Harrison perceived he was trying to decide whether to break into a run or not.

  “Tell me how we get out of here,” Harrison was slowly starting to lose his patience. “Or you’ll end up just like your friend over there.” He pointed to the man with the bullet hole in hi
s chest and then tightened his grip both on his Glock and the borrowed sawed-off shotgun, making it clear his threat was not a half-hearted one. “I’m not kidding arou—”

  “W-wait!” The second man stuttered, his arms flying up above his head while the laughing man remained still except for his darting eyes. “I-I can show you h-how to get out. I c-can show you.”

  Harrison raised his eyebrows slightly, lowering his Glock which he’d pointed at the stuttering man but keeping the shotgun trained on his laughing companion. “How?”

  “N-need water first,” the man continued to stutter, “and f-f-food.”

  Taking in the men from his closer vantage point, Harrison started to realize they were both painfully ill. Their frail and weakened bodies weren’t just a result of lack of food, but some sort of disease that had claimed them. He couldn’t tell whether it was a direct result of the EMP, but something told Harrison that these men had been much healthier before it happened.

  “Show us how to get out first,” Harrison replied adamantly, certain he couldn’t trust either of the two men and reluctant to let them have any of their supplies. “Then we can talk.”

  Silence greeted his statement once more and Harrison held his weapons firm in his hands, ready for the slightest bit of movement that would cause him to squeeze a trigger. He was all too aware in the back of his head that there were several more people alive in Union Pier and if they all decided to come out and face him with weapons of their own then he wouldn’t be able to stop them. The element of surprise had aided him with disarming the first man, but no longer would anyone underestimate what he was capable of.

  The second man eventually stuttered and nodded his head, unable to resist the temptation of what he had asked for. “I-I’ll s-s-s-show you.”

  Harrison locked eyes with the stutterer and nodded back as the man started walking towards the roadblock, which was now behind Harrison. The prepper turned with him, keeping both the stutterer and the laughing man in his field of vision, untrusting of either of them. Len popped into his field of vision for a moment then and Harrison was relieved to see his companion pointing his Beretta pistol at the stuttering man who walked towards him. It appeared that Len had hung back by the roadblock, trying to figure out if there was a way through. Hopefully the second man was telling the truth and this wasn’t another ruse that Harrison and Len had fallen for.

  “Come on,” Harrison spoke through gritted teeth, flicking the end of his 9mm in the face of the first man. “You can help too.”

  After a few seconds the man let out another raspy cough and spat on the floor by Harrison’s feet before glaring up at him. “You won’t make it very far,” he spluttered through forced and painful laughter. “You’ve been exposed now. You’ll be dead soon enough.”

  Suddenly he spun around on his heel and starting running off in the opposite direction of the roadblock, back into center of Union Pier where Harrison had seen other people hiding within the houses. He weighed the risk quickly in his head and then aimed his 9mm at the frail man trying to escape around the corner of the road. With utmost precision and skill Harrison fired, watching as his bullet brought the man to the ground, his laughter silenced forever.

  Staring blankly in the direction of the man’s now dead body, the last words he said rang out in Harrison’s head. “You’ve been exposed now. You’ll be dead soon enough.” They filled him with a fear Harrison hadn’t felt in a very long time, not since his wife started to get sick and he realized he was going to lose her.

  What the laughing man had said made sense though. Everyone he had seen within Union Pier seemed weakened and sickly in some way; perhaps there was something they had all been exposed to. Jogging over to where the stuttering man was showing Len how to escape from the roadblock, Harrison prayed that whatever it was that had made all these people sick wasn’t still around. Or, if it was, that he and Len hadn’t been exposed for long enough.

  “Did you shoot him?” Len hissed as Harrison drew close enough to hear him, standing a few feet away from the other man who was pulling bits of metal and rubble out of the manmade wall.

  “Had to,” Harrison nodded as he drew to a halt beside Len, pleased to see his companion still had his Beretta trained on the stuttering man. “Didn’t give me a choice.”

  Harrison thought about mentioning to Len what the man he had just killed had said to him in his final moments but quickly thought better of it. He had no idea of knowing whether what had been said was true and he didn’t want to worry Len or cause them to stay around Union Pier any longer searching for answers. Harrison desperately wanted to get out of the small town; it was really starting to freak him out.

  “What’s he doing?”

  Harrison asked Len after a second, the one remaining member of their attacking party now climbing slightly up the roadblock and throwing more pieces of scrap metal down to the ground. While the blockage had been made predominantly out of cars piled on top of one another—how they had been stacked so high was still a mystery to Harrison and Len—the gaps between the vehicles appeared to have been filled with whatever they found lying around. Trashcans and metal chairs slipped to the ground as the stutterer moved, alongside television screens, computers, and other electronic devices which were obviously of no use anymore.

  “Hey!” Harrison called up to the man after Len merely shrugged in response. “What are you doing?”

  The man tugged at a few more pieces of metal before he eventually stopped and looked down. “W-way out,” he nodded, “t-t-this the way out.”

  Furrowing his brow Harrison placed the shotgun he was still holding down on the ground and holstered his Glock, giving Len a nod which told him to keep his pistol in his hand and his mind sharp. Then he walked closer to the roadblock and started pulling himself up, picking his way through the broken metal until he reached where the stutterer was waiting.

  Immediately why pieces of metal had been thrown to the floor made sense to Harrison, his gaze followed through a hole that led towards a particular vehicle that was wedged within the roadblock. Both the passenger and the drivers’ side doors were open, providing a sheltered tunnel through to the other side of the roadblock.

  The stuttering man had been clearing the path to the passenger door, allowing the two of them access through to the other side. Harrison turned to look at the man and was shocked even further by how weak and fragile he looked. The other man’s words echoed once more though his head—you’ve been exposed now—you’ll be dead soon enough—and Harrison quickly climbed back down from the roadblock to stand firmly next to Len, a slightly sheen of sweat forming on his brow.

  “Water?”

  When the frail man’s feet hit the ground beside Harrison and Len, the word was already on his lips. Harrison grimaced. He had promised the man water if he helped them find a way past the roadblock, but after seeing how ill he already was Harrison wondered if water would be able to help at all, or if he was merely wasting resources.

  “Here,” Len spoke out beside Harrison before the old prepper could make a decision based on his most recent thought. “Thank you.”

  Len handed the other man his own canteen and both he and Harrison watched as the sick man quickly drained the contents, a few droplets of water running down his chin and dampening the torn shirt he wore.

  “Keep it,” Harrison quickly intervened as the stutterer went to hand the canteen back to Len, uncertain if whatever disease the man carried could be passed back to Len through that sort of contact. “It’s yours now. And here.” He reached into his own backpack and pulled out a single ration pack, handing it over to the sickly man. “Food.”

  “T-t-t-thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Harrison replied quickly again, eager to get away from Union Pier. “Thank you for your help. Goodbye.”

  Len looked at Harrison with a slightly bewildered expression, least of all because Harrison had just allowed a stranger to keep his water canteen. His partner was suddenly acting very strange
and that alone made Len feel uncomfortable. Harrison was always so calm and collected and if he wanted to make a quick get away from Union Pier, Len was sure he had a reason. Without a second look back at the sickly, stuttering man, Len started climbing up the roadblock after Harrison and squeezed through the gap that had been made.

  “Easy,” Harrison’s voice came from the ground on the other side of the roadblock, “it’s quite a way down.”

  Watching his companion scramble down the other side of the roadblock, Harrison wondered whether he was being too cautious. Try as he might he just couldn’t get the dead man’s final words out of his head and he was uncomfortably afraid that somehow they would come true. Harrison had never been a superstitious man, but there was something about Union Pier that didn’t sit right with him. He wanted to put the town behind them as quickly as possible and never have to think about it again.

  Chapter 8

  A painful stitch started to form in Len’s side as he jogged next to Harrison. The two of them had been running for almost an hour after climbing down from the roadblock in Union Pier, Harrison not once letting them stop to catch a breath or talk about what had just happened. But darkness was well and truly setting in now and Len needed to stop to rest, just for a little bit. His rucksack felt heavy on his shoulders and the quiver of arrows bounced painfully on his tailbone with every step he took. He knew he wasn’t as fit as Harrison and that ultimately he was the burden on their journey, but if he ever wanted to reach his family in South Haven he also knew he had to maintain his strength.