The Recovery - Solar Crash Book 4: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Series)

by E S Richards

  None of that had been Nina’s fault, he knew that, but Harrison couldn’t deny the emotions that crushed him every time he thought of Sophia. As a result, it simply became easier to stop trying to see Nina. It was selfish and cruel, far from anything a good father should have done. But he hadn’t been a good father; ever since the first day Sophia had come home and told him what the doctors had said, his world had shrunk down to only him and her. It was something he would never be able to make up to Nina, but he had to at least try.

  He had Len to thank for all of this really, and that was why Harrison understood why his friend refused to entertain the possibility of his family’s deaths. Len had made him see what it was like to be a father again and had made him realize what he had been missing out on all those years down in his bunker alone. Len was awe-inspiring to Harrison and while he knew Len thought he was learning from him, Harrison saw it the other way around.

  Day by day, Harrison was learning how to care for someone else again, how to put someone else’s needs above his own and think about how actions would affect other people rather than just himself. He was rediscovering what it meant to be a parent, and he couldn’t thank Len enough for bringing that feeling back into his life. He knew the feeling would only intensify too, the closer he got to where he hoped Nina was. Harrison could see that very thing happening in Len now as they moved closer to Grand Haven, the promise of his family almost at his fingertips. It would take a truly cruel man to bring up reality and take that promise away, and so Harrison remained quiet as they walked. He waited for Len to speak first and when he did, he made sure that his friend was still filled with the confidence that his family was just around the corner.

  “I could do with something to eat,” Len spoke as a bead of sweat dripped down his forehead, the sun continuously beating down on the two men with an unrelenting fervor despite the late hour.

  “Great idea,” Harrison nodded. “If we eat now we can keep going a bit farther before nightfall. I think there’s a town coming up but it might be better to just camp if we find somewhere secluded enough.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Len replied and veered off their path slightly to sit underneath some large trees, immediately thankful for the shade. “Do you know how much farther it is?”

  “I’d guess another day of walking,” Harrison replied, trying to visualize the map in his head rather than digging it out of his rucksack. He regarded Len carefully as the two men fished items from their rucksacks to make food, Len in charge of the fire-starters while Harrison had topped up his food supply from what they’d found in Amy’s bag. Len’s melancholy state seemed to have passed and it was almost like he was back to his old self. Harrison didn’t want to ask any questions about Amy or his family and so simply selected a few cans of food and waited for Len to get a fire started.

  It was somewhat soothing for Len to be back in the old routine of digging a fire. It had been some time since he’d done it, thinking back to when Harrison had shot that deer and they’d eaten by the side of a road several days ago. Since then they hadn’t really had a need for cooking in the wild. They’d lived a life of relative luxury finding a working vehicle and then spending the night in a real home. A part of Len was glad to be back on the road again, though he had never thought he’d become an outdoorsman. But as his feet had pounded against the ground that afternoon he’d felt a familiar burst of adrenaline coursing through him. Amy and James had been on his mind for a little while but now Len had decided not to think of them in that way. He had a destination and they would be there waiting once he arrived; that was all the reassurance that he needed.

  “Curry in a can,” Len mumbled to himself as he took the cans from Harrison and poured them into the small pot he had set up on top of the fire. “This should be an interesting meal.”

  Harrison laughed, “I know, right? How people ate this before everything happened is beyond me. It’s enough of a struggle getting it down now.”

  “I don’t know,” Len mused, “there was a man I worked with who used to eat spam and ketchup sandwiches every day for lunch. Now that was truly disgusting. I could maybe stomach one of them, but every day? It was madness.”

  “Okay, okay,” Harrison held his hands up in front of him. “That takes the cake. Spam and ketchup? You must have worked with some weird people, Len.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Len chuckled, thinking back to his time working in an office and how alien that memory felt now. The thought of getting up and putting on a suit and tie every morning just didn’t make sense anymore, let alone having to spend all day sitting inside an air conditioned office, not once leaving your desk except to get another cup of horrible, filtered coffee. “Feels like a lifetime ago now.”

  “Now that is a feeling I can understand,” Harrison replied, reaching forward to stir the contents of the pot while thinking briefly of his wife and daughter again. “I reckon this is nearly up to temperature; want to get the little bowls out?”

  Len nodded and rummaged around in his rucksack again for a second, his fingers brushing up against Amy’s wooden box a couple of times before they closed around the collapsible bowls he and Harrison ate from. Pulling them out, he pushed on the inside of them, expanding the metal and making them deep enough to eat from. Harrison generously poured the canned curry into each of them, placing the empty cooking pot on the ground beside him to cool before they had to pack away.

  “Bottoms up,” Harrison grinned as he took a spoonful from the bowl and raised it to his mouth, closing his eyes before he tasted and swallowed the mouthful. “Ah,” he said in a surprised tone, “it’s not actually that bad.”

  Len laughed and joined Harrison in the meal, also pleasantly surprised by both the taste and texture of the canned curry. They had eaten some awful instant meals since the day they left Chicago, so it was always a nice surprise when wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be. Packing up about half an hour later, both men could see the sun was starting to set fast. They had spent longer than they should’ve at the country club that morning and now Harrison was keen to find somewhere safe for them to spend the night so they could have a full day of walking tomorrow.

  “What about in here?” The prepper spoke up after they’d been walking in silence for almost another hour, the sun now a distant memory and the moon providing little light to guide them. He hadn’t noticed anywhere that was decent enough for them to camp, but the small sign in the distance seemed to point off toward a secluded area and Harrison figured it would be as good a bet as any.

  “Looks good to me,” Len replied in a tired voice. “Let’s check it out.”

  Agreeing with one another, the two men changed their direction slightly, moving up a set of man-made steps that led around the back of a thick collection of trees. Harrison was skeptical and was going to ensure he checked out the area carefully first before either of them closed an eye or thought about setting up camp. But at first glance it looked safe. Several lodges dotted the horizon and each of them looked empty, warm, and promising. They hadn’t encountered a single person since leaving South Haven and so—perhaps against his better judgement—Harrison was more relaxed with the perimeter sweep he took Len on.

  “All right, this’ll do,” Harrison spoke after they’d both completed a walkthrough of the area. “Plenty of places for us to spend the night here.”

  “Yeah, it looks decent,” Len replied while trying to stifle a yawn. “What’s this place called anyway?”

  “Dunes Resort or something,” Harrison shrugged in response. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Let’s just pick a lodge and get some rest. I am exhausted.”

  Chapter 14

  Giles couldn’t deny how lonely he felt now that he was walking by himself. He knew it was strange because he’d hardly even known Amy and James for more than a couple of days, but after everything they had been though together he already thought of the two of them as family. In fact, if it weren’t for his actual family—his parents—waiting for him in
the city of Grand Rapids, Giles was certain he would’ve continued on Amy and James’s journey with them.

  Thinking back through everything that had happened made Giles’s stomach form a knot, twisting and turning inside of him in sheer agony. Of course, that wasn’t the only pain that plagued Giles; he was almost certain now that he had contracted some sort of illness from drinking the lake water a couple of days ago. He’d been sick countless times, everything he ate coming back up no more than an hour later. Sweat fell from every pore on his body and even the smallest steps felt like climbing mountains to him. His body was shutting down and Giles knew he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  While he’d been in Dunes Resort with Amy and James it had almost been easy to forget about how terrible he felt, the matter of helping to save James from the errant bullet that hit his shoulder taking top priority. Because of that, Giles was uncertain if Amy had even noticed how bad he was getting. He was glad of that in some ways; she had to look after her son and he didn’t want to be another worry on her plate. It was his own fault he was sick. He should’ve known not to drink the water and now it was too late.

  But Giles refused to give up. He had hope that once he made it to Grand Rapids, his mother would have the necessary medicines to save him. He could only guess, but Giles figured it was some sort of bacterial infection that he’d contracted from the water. His mother could treat that easily and so, in a day or two, he’d be back to his normal self.

  It was this hope that kept Giles strong as he cut across the large, flat, abandoned fields that separated him from Grand Rapids. The views were almost idyllic and had Giles not felt so weak he would’ve stopped to appreciate them. For now, all he could focus on was getting home.

  Memories of living in Grand Rapids as a child floated through his mind, putting a lazy smile on his face as he stumbled through the overgrown grass, his feet sometimes dragging behind him as his body begged him to slow down and stop. He remembered walking to school with his mom in the mornings when he was a little boy, her job at the hospital allowing them to take the same route. He’d always enjoyed that walk, never much of a fan of cars or the deafening silence of the newly built subway trains. They moved so quietly and stealthily now, whenever Giles was on one he felt like he could hear his own blood circling around his body.

  That was why Giles had chosen life at the country club. It had been quiet, it had been calm, and it had been away from the madness that threatened to destroy almost all of the big cities. He knew Grand Rapids had a bit of a reputation for gang activity and he just hoped that had been wiped out along with all the power. In reality he hadn’t experienced anything much at all since whatever had caused everything—but Giles knew the big cities would be in a lot more danger than what had happened at his country club or at the resort. His parents were resourceful and resilient people, but Giles knew even they would be in trouble if the gangs threatened to take control of the city.

  Stumbling through the grass, Giles blinked heavily as sweat continued to cloud his vision. There was no shade on the path he had chosen and the heat of the sun made it feel like he was trapped in an oven. Reaching around into his bag, Giles pulled out a bottle of clean water, taken from the stores at Dunes Resort. He forced himself to drink slowly, it taking great self-control not to down the entire contents of the bottle there and then. He was a clever man though, and Giles knew if he was going to make it to his parents he needed to pace himself.

  Looking around, the empty fields gave no indication of how far he’d come or how much farther there still was to go. He knew the direction though, a battered compass hanging from a string around his neck offering him the only guidance he now had. What he wouldn’t give for Amy by his side to talk to, or the company of Lisa from the country club. He felt like he had lost so many people already this year, those after the power outages realistically only a small proportion of them.

  Pictures of his friends and past lovers swam though Giles’s sick head for the next several hours until the tops of buildings slowly started to appear in the distance. The hottest part of the day had come and gone already now, but still sweat drenched Giles like he had just taken a shower in all his clothes. He was losing energy fast; those buildings in the distance couldn’t come into focus soon enough.

  After another hour, Giles was finally walking through more built-up areas, the outskirts of Grand Rapids putting a smile on his face, as he knew it meant his family wasn’t much farther away. Nightfall wasn’t either and despite the increasing feeling of dizziness and lack of concentration, Giles knew he had to focus on getting through the city unseen. Thus far he hadn’t encountered anyone else on his journey, but something told Giles that was about to change.

  It took all his strength just to focus on where his next footstep would be. He was entering the city just west of the downtown area and it didn’t take a genius to know that wasn’t the wisest idea. Giles didn’t have a choice though: this was the quickest route to his parents, and both for his sake and their own, he couldn’t waste any more time.

  The path he chose to walk was a familiar one to him. With his parents living just below the Mercy Health Hospital, the route Giles mapped out in his head would take him all the way from John Ball Zoo to their home. The only problem was it swerved terrifyingly close to the center of the city and also meant Giles would have to use one of the very few bridges to cross the river. The chances of him completing the journey without seeing another human being were becoming slimmer and slimmer with every step he took.

  Quicker than Giles remembered, he had passed the zoo and could see the expanse of the river up ahead of him. He picked each road he turned down carefully, heading for the southwest bridge, which would leave him with the easiest route to his parents’ house.

  Nothing was as he remembered it. The city didn’t appear to have crumbled like his country club had, but there was evidence of break-ins and violence almost everywhere Giles turned. There wasn’t a single store window he passed that hadn’t been smashed or broken in some way. All the buildings now looked like empty shells, their contents stolen and taken away to somewhere else. In their place there was only dirt and dust, paired with a repetitive graffiti gang symbol on almost every surface: evidence that they really had taken over the city.

  In perfect timing with Giles’s observations, the echoing sound of gunfire from somewhere deep within the city filled his ears, causing the few remaining birds which rested throughout the city to scatter and take flight into the sky. Instinctively Giles ducked down, raising his hands to cover his head as he cowered in the doorway of an abandoned store. Looking at it, he couldn’t even guess at what had been sold there before everything happened. Everything down to the last nail in the wall had been taken by the gangs who now freely roamed the city.

  Slowly removing his hands from his head, Giles grimaced to try and stop the relentless headache that had tormented him for the past couple of hours. He was dehydrated now and running out of time, his vision blurring and his legs shaking under his weight. With the rudimentary medical training Giles had he knew he wouldn’t make it much longer without treatment.

  Grinding his teeth together to give himself something to focus on other than the throbbing of his headache and the way every object seemed to flutter in and out of focus in his vision, Giles started to stagger forward. It wasn’t much farther to the southwest bridge, and once he had crossed that it was less than a fifteen-minute walk at most to his parents’ house. He would be in his mother’s arms in under an hour, she would find him the right medicine and nurse him back to full health, and then he could concentrate on getting his parents out of the city and to somewhere safe.

  Leaning against the side of a vandalized building, Giles saw the open expanse of the bridge ahead of him. A car had clearly crashed into the right-hand wall of it sometime shortly after the power failures, the brick crumbling and giving way to the water below. A couple of other vehicles lay abandoned across it, but as far as Giles could see there was no one alive
waiting there. No one was manning the bridge and no one was going to stop him from crossing it. Carefully, he pushed away from the wall and started creeping across it, moving as quickly as his tired legs would allow him until he made it safely to the other side.

  “Hey!”

  Giles froze. Were his ears deceiving him, or had he heard a voice? He lethargically took a step backwards to steady himself before turning in a slow semi-circle to look back in the direction of where he’d thought the voice had been.

  “Hey!” The voice came again, bouncing off the brick walls that surrounded Giles and sounding to his delirious state like it was coming from every direction all at once. “What are you doing out here?”

  Giles raised a hand to his head and pressed on his temple, trying to ease the pounding of his headache just long enough for him to figure out what was going on. He squinted into the distance, darkness now surrounding him in every direction until he almost lost the sense of where he was stood. Then, in the distance a flickering light appeared, dancing around gracefully like a ballerina on ice.