The journey from this side of the river to their apartment building was mostly uneventful. Just as many scared, confused, and panicking people here and abandoned cars choked up the streets. However, aside from a few scuffles and one or two instances of looting stores, there was nothing like the excessive violence and bloodshed they had witnessed on the other side of the river. Sounds of fighting and battles, along with the deep, earth-shaking booms of a massive explosion, continued to resound across the river, and it seemed that the violence there was only growing worse. Kate had no doubt it would arrive here soon enough, though. The homicidal maniacs—like the man they’d encountered in the gym—would not stop their violent takeover until all of them were dead, or the entire city was in their hands. And once they had taken the core of the town, the residential outskirts would surely follow. She had to ensure that the family was out of the city before that happened.
She had been thinking about Jack ever since the EMP had hit, but for the most part, she’d been too busy trying to survive to really ruminate on his fate. Now that things were a little quieter, though, she started to worry about him. He worked right in the center of where all the madness was happening. She knew that he would have left work and headed straight home at the first whiff of trouble. But everything had happened so fast that she wondered if he’d even had the chance to get out of his office—let alone the enormous skyscraper he worked in—before the rockets came streaking in.
Worry began to throb in cold pulses in her veins, and as darker thoughts brewed in her mind, a gut-churning sensation of nausea started to bubble in her stomach. For a few seconds, she had to fight back a surge of vomit, and it took everything she had to prevent herself from dropping down onto her hands and knees and emptying her stomach all over the cold sidewalk.
What if Jack hadn’t made it out? What if he were trapped under a pile of rubble, or lying in an alley, bleeding out from a gunshot wound? How would she even know? These thoughts made her feel sick, dizzy, and disoriented. How could she do this without her husband by her side? She didn’t want to go on if he hadn’t made it.
But then, with those crippling thoughts bouncing around her head, she glanced over her shoulder at her daughter, and fresh strength and determination came flooding into her. Even if Jack hadn’t made it, Kate knew she had to go on for Susan’s sake. She couldn’t give up, not with her daughter in the picture.
Strangely enough, it seemed almost as if her child could read her thoughts. “What do we do if Dad’s not there?” Susan asked softly.
Kate inhaled a deep breath before answering and held it in her lungs for a while before she spoke. “We’ll wait,” she said. “I know we can’t afford to wait for too long, though. If we get trapped in here by the blizzard, it’ll be the end for all of us.”
“So if he doesn’t show up in a few hours, we have to leave without him?” Susan asked, looking worried.
“We may have no choice, angel,” Kate said, and a sudden, unexpected sob tightened her throat. “Every hour we waste waiting could cost us our lives.”
“But … we are going to wait at least a little while, right?”
Kate forced the sob down and nodded. “We’ll wait a little while. I don’t want to leave without him, either. Of course, I don’t.”
“I hope he’s at home when we get there,” Susan murmured.
“I hope so, too,” Kate said softly. “I hope so, too.”
They walked around one more corner and were greeted by the familiar sight of their apartment building. Just as it was everywhere else in the city, dead cars littered the street outside, and groups of frightened and worried people congregated here and there on the sidewalk. The front entrance of their building was locked up, but Susan had a key in her bag. They steered their way around the groups of people and then entered the building, with Susan hurriedly locking the door behind them as soon as they got inside.
Like everything else electrical, the elevator was dead, as were all the lights inside the entrance hallway. Neither Kate nor Susan had ever seen the building this dark and gloomy, and the shadows were dense and ominous wherever they looked. Their home had taken on an almost nightmarish atmosphere, and when they entered the stairwell, Susan had to get out her Zippo again because of how dark it was.
Their apartment was on the third floor, so they didn’t have a long way to go. Susan unlocked the door and opened it, and she, Kate, and Nick stepped inside filled with worry and trepidation, afraid of what they would find … or not find, inside.
15
Bernie was huffing and puffing, breathing hard as he tried to keep up with Jack. Although he and Jack were of a similar age, Jack was far healthier and fitter than Bernie. “Whoa, hold up there, pal … I just need a … two-minute breather,” he gasped.
Jack stopped and waited, but not for long. “We can’t keep stopping like this,” he said sternly. “I have to get to my family, and the longer we linger this side of the river, the more dangerous it gets for them and us.”
“I’m sorry, man … I just … I haven’t really worked out … since high school,” Bernie panted, his face red. “I could use a … drink, a Coke, or a Red Bull or something.”
Jack wanted to roll his eyes; he had barely broken a sweat at this pace. However, he, too, was feeling a pang of thirst and could use a little boost of sugar and caffeine. He also didn’t want to abandon Bernie. It would be a selfish and cold-hearted action—even if it were the most logical one. Jack knew he would lose a lot of things in the days to come, but he was determined to hold on to his humanity.
“Okay,” he said, his tone a lot more sympathetic. “Look, there’s a convenience store up ahead. Let’s go check it out and see if we can get anything there. I could use a drink, too, to be honest.”
The sounds of gunfire and fighting from the battle a few blocks back were still resounding through the streets here, and a few buildings were on fire. Jack was wary about deviating from his course—which consisted of zigzagging through a number of back alleys and staying off any streets, large or small, completely—but the convenience store was on a smaller road with only a few cars in it and no people that Jack could see. A few vehicles blocked his view, but it looked like the store may have been looted. Half of the storefront window was smashed and cracked, as if something heavy had been thrown against it, while the door was hanging wide open, swaying a bit ominously in the cold breeze.
Jack’s sixth sense was sounding warning bells in his mind, but behind him, Bernie was gasping and wheezing. He knew his companion couldn’t go much farther without an injection of energy, and there was nowhere else around here to obtain it.
“Come on,” he said, heading reluctantly out of the alley. “We’re just gonna go straight in, get a quick drink, and then move on. Can you do that?”
Bernie straightened up, took a deep breath, and then nodded. “Thanks, pal. Yeah, I can manage that.”
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Jack cautioned. “I don’t like being out on the street like this.” He felt as if unfriendly eyes, hidden behind the drapes of nearby windows, were following his every move, experiencing an unsettling sensation of being watched by predatory eyes, almost as if he were a deer being stalked by an unseen mountain lion.
“If anyone tries anything, I’ll take ‘em down,” Bernie said.
Jack smirked, doubting that Bernie could hit a barn door from a dozen yards, but he knew that his companion could at least provide cover fire if it came to it, and in addition, two men with guns were a lot less of an inviting target than a single man.
The snowfall was getting heavier, and a thin layer of white snow now dusted the street and sidewalk. The temperature had dropped noticeably, and since Jack had to abandon his jacket and give his sweater to Carrie, he was feeling the cold and shivering. He wondered if there was any hot coffee left in the convenience store’s coffee pot.
The closer Jack got to the store, the more urgently his sixth-sense warning bells began to ring inside his head. There was somethi
ng he didn’t like at all about the convenience store. Everything around it was locked up tight, and the street was dead quiet, without any sign of another living soul nearby. The convenience store was the only one that looked like it had been looted, despite there being an electronics goods store right next to it and a brand-name clothing boutique on the other side of it.
“Why haven’t those stores been looted?” he murmured, mostly to himself. “Why just this one?”
Bernie hadn’t heard this question. Given a fresh boost of vigor simply by the anticipation of getting some sugar and caffeine into his system, he was steaming on ahead, outstripping Jack with his eager pace, and making a beeline for the store. Jack had his pistol at the ready, and he scanned his surroundings with eagle eyes, looking for any signs of danger or treachery. His keen analytical observation of his surroundings meant that he slowed down the pace of his movement further, while Bernie, conversely, sped up. By the time Jack noticed a number of spent M-16 cartridges littering the street and fresh bloodstains on the sidewalk—yet no bodies—it was too late. Bernie was already entering the darkened store. Jack cursed under his breath and jogged after the security guard. He had been about to yell out to him not to go inside, but now it was too late.
“Maybe I’m being too cautious,” Jack muttered to himself as he jogged over to the entrance to the store. “Maybe all the stress and craziness have gotten to my head, and maybe I’m just seeing things that aren’t there.”
Nonetheless, he raised his pistol as he entered the store, sweeping his view of the shelves and aisles through his sights. Again, alarm bells rang loud and clear in his mind. There were products strewn across the sidewalk and the store entrance, but inside, there seemed to be little evidence that the place had been looted. Most of the products on the shelves were undisturbed, and aside from the fact that the store was a lot darker than it usually would have been, and seemed to have no people inside anywhere, it looked like it was almost as if someone inside was trying to make it look like it had looted.
Also, while half of the storefront window was caved in and shattered, nothing was lying on the sidewalk that could have done that sort of damage to it. This was too much; Jack decided that this wasn’t worth the risk. “Bernie!” he called out into the store, staying in the doorway, reluctant to take a step inside. “I don’t like this, let’s get out of here! Come on, get out, let’s go!”
There was no reply from inside, though. It was as if Bernie had simply walked into the store and then promptly disappeared off the face of the earth. Jack’s sense of disquiet was growing more and more intense with every passing second. He took half a step into the store, his finger on the trigger of his pistol.
“Bernie! Did you hear me?” he called out. “I’m going! If you want to hang around here, that’s fine, but I’m turning around and leaving right now, do you hear me?”
There was still no reply from within.
“Okay, fine,” Jack said, his heart drumming in his chest and his sensory perception elevated with his rising fear and the first stirrings of adrenalin. “I’m leaving, Bernie. Goodbye, and good luck.”
“No, you don’t, asshole,” a voice from behind him growled as the cold steel of a gun barrel was pressed into the back of his head. “Drop the gun and get inside the store. Now.”
16
Kate’s heart sank when she realized the apartment was empty. What was more, there was no sign that Jack had been there—not that he would have come back and then left without them, anyway. She didn’t want to dwell on his absence, though, and was sure that Susan didn’t want to, either. The best way to keep their minds off Jack was to get busy.
“Susan, honey, get your bugout bag and pack your warmest clothes. And light up some gas lamps, please, it’s really gloomy in here.”
“Okay, Mom, I’ll get busy with that,” Susan said.
“Bugout bag?” Nick asked. “What’s that?”
“We’ve each got a bag prepared in the event of some sort of massive disaster, like this one,” Kate explained. “In it is everything we need to survive and keep ourselves safe and healthy for a few days.”
“I wish I’d thought of having something like that,” Nick said ruefully. “I don’t even know if I’ve got enough food back at my pad to see me through to the end of tomorrow. And with the electricity gone and everything, most of the stuff in the fridge will be bad tomorrow. So uh, are you guys preppers or something?”
“Something like that,” Kate said as she walked briskly over to the main bedroom of the apartment. The mere sight of the bed she shared with Jack made her think of him, as did the photographs of their wedding day and various vacation pictures scattered around the room. “Come in here. You can take some cold-weather clothes from Jack’s closet.”
“Uh, well, I really don’t want to impose,” Nick said. “And even though it’s getting colder outside, I think I can get back to my place with the clothes I’ve got on. It’ll be chilly, but I’ll survive.”
“Your jacket and shirt are soaked with blood,” Kate countered. “Just get rid of them. We’re probably never going to be coming back to this apartment again, so most of the clothes in these closets are just going to be abandoned here anyway. They’re all good quality, come on, take some; otherwise, they’re just going to rot in here or be taken by thieves and looters. And speaking of blood, I need to clean up that ear of yours. But pick out some clothes first, then we’ll take care of that.”
“Okay,” Nick said. Nick started looking through Jack’s closet, while Kate got her bugout bag from under the bed and then got another backpack into which she began packing some extra clothes. He still felt somewhat guilty about taking clothes from these relative strangers, but what Kate had said to him made sense. If he didn’t take the stuff now, they would simply go to waste.
While he was picking out some hefty winter gear, Kate busied herself with taking all of her favorite family photos out of their frames and putting them into a small, light, waterproof album that could fit into one of the side pockets of her backpack. She was sad about having to abandon so many things in this apartment, but her precious photographs—a physical record of the many lovely memories she had with her husband and daughter—were one thing she refused to leave behind.
Just as she finished putting the last of the photos into the album, Nick informed her that he was done picking out clothes.
“All right, so are you ready for me to have a look at that ear?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Okay, go through to the bathroom over there and take off your shirt,” she said. “I’ll be with you in a sec.”
While Nick was getting ready, Kate went over to the bedroom window and looked out. The snowfall was getting heavier, and powerful gusts of wind were whipping flurries of snow along the streets and up into the air. The blizzard would strike harder and sooner than anyone expected, she guessed. That only increased her growing sense of worry, since there was still no sign of Jack. How long could they wait, realistically, before it became too late to leave the apartment at all? And what would she do if it came down to that? There was food here and gas to cook with, but it would only last two weeks at the most. They also had water stores—Jack always made sure these were fully replenished and clean—which would also last a few weeks … but then what? The city was already a warzone, and it would only get worse. Staying here would surely result in their deaths; Kate knew this.
She snapped herself out of this trance of thoughts. It would do her no good to ruminate on this at the moment. She went to the bathroom, where Nick was waiting, and got her first aid equipment out of the cabinet. On Jack’s insistence, both she and Susan had completed several advanced first aid courses over the years, and she knew just what to do for a wound of this severity.
What worried her most was not the fact that half of Nick’s ear was missing. Rather, it was the fact that it was a human bite that had inflicted the injury on him. Because she’d lost her bag in the river, she hadn’t had any surgica
l alcohol on her, and thus hadn’t been able to clean the wound right away. Human mouths were havens for all sorts of bad bacteria. If not treated immediately, a human bite wound was very likely to get infected, and quite possibly very badly so. Kate hoped that Nick had a strong immune system. They had plenty of general use antibiotics, but if he got a bad infection from the bite, she wasn’t even sure if these could save him.
She pushed these thoughts from her mind; there was no point in worrying about this stuff now. All she could do was do her best to clean and dress the wound. Once Kate had cleaned the sticky, congealed blood off Nick’s neck, shoulder, back, and chest, and what remained of his ear, she saw that his ear was still bleeding. All she could do at this point was put some pressure on it and dress the wound. After that, she got a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer—which was still mostly cold—and tossed them over to him. “Keep these on your ear; the cold will slow down the bleeding. Hopefully, it’ll stop soon enough. Either way, we’ll have to change that dressing later.”
“Thanks, Kate, I really appreciate what you’ve done for me,” Nick said, pressing the frozen peas against the side of his head. “And thanks again for the clothes.”
“I need to finish packing, and you can give me a hand,” Kate said. “Her mind kept drifting to thoughts of Jack, and she wanted to try to stop thinking about him. Every minute that passed made her more anxious about his fate and the possibility of him returning. And every minute that passed without the door opening and his familiar voice calling out to her made her more worried and depressed.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 22 | The Coldest Night Page 8