by Schow, Ryan
Kenley quietly said, “No, Dad. I told you it’s not the storm. Remember the laptop? The cell phone? Your car?”
“Nothing is for certain,” Jacob said, a sharp edge to his voice.
“You were never really that tech-savvy, Jacob,” Will said, “so let me break it down. Our cars don’t start, our cell phones aren’t working, none of our other electronics even function. This isn’t a power outage thing. This is something more.”
“So if it’s like you’re saying, then this was done on purpose?” Jacob asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said. “Kenley, too, I think.”
He looked at her. She nodded in response.
“So who attacked us?” Jacob asked.
“I don’t know,” Will replied. He’d been thinking about it all night. The violence unfolding in the streets was one thing, but setting off a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere? That was a military thing. “Could be China, or maybe Russia.”
“North Korea or Iran, too,” Kenley said.
“Stop!” Ramira said. “Please, just stop. Can’t we just focus on one thing at a time?”
He knew Ramira’s mental bandwidth was low, too low to think about America being under attack.
“Seamus is dead,” Will said.
“William,” Ramira said, a warning, pleading. “He already knows this.”
“Yes, but he needs to be reminded of what’s happening.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Jacob said.
“The twins, too…”
“I know.”
“This is why I don’t feel very comfortable leaving him here with you.”
“Then stay here with us. If you’re worried about looters and marauders, then maybe more eyes and more guns will be safer.”
Will looked at Ramira and said, “Are you okay with that?”
“If you can maybe get some of our food, and my pillow, then I would feel better. I don’t want to be an imposition.”
Jacob gave a short nod, like he was worried about their food stores if this was indeed an EMP attack.
“We’ve got bigger problems than your pillow,” Will said.
“Don’t be a jerk,” Jacob said.
He drew a deep breath. Jacob was right, but maybe Will’s bandwidth was running low, too.
“I’ll head back in a few,” Will said. “Maybe I’ll go when the rain eases up.”
While Ramira and Kenley got Niles settled, Will and Jacob moseyed out to the front porch. The rain remained steady, the winds dying down a bit, the temperatures plummeting.
“The whole world is quiet,” Jacob said, looking out to the houses in the neighborhood. “Only noise is when—”
Down the street, a big engine began to roar, followed by a second and third engine. A parade of old vehicles drove by causing Will to reach for his pistol. The three vehicles roared by them, one guy holding a middle finger out a half-opened window at them.
“Stupid kids,” Jacob muttered.
Will’s heart was racing. If they wanted to stop, would Will be able to defend them? Would Jacob have his back or tuck tail and run? Ramira would have his back. She’d always had his back. Standing out there, trying to wind back down, he couldn’t stop the emotion boiling up inside of him. Ramira had killed to save their lives. She didn’t even hesitate.
“When you gonna go back home?” Jacob asked.
“I think I should leave now.”
Making a cross over his heart, he quietly asked God to wash these Hayseed rejects away with the storm. A few minutes later, the ever-changing weather took a turn for the worse.
“If you’re going to do it,” Jacob said, “best you do it now.”
Jacob was right. Will went inside, said good-bye to Ramira, then took the pistol with him and a dry coat Jacob had lent him and headed back to the house. Head on a swivel, pistol at his side, he walked three blocks with his finger on the trigger guard, and his mind primed for war.
He wasn’t expecting any company when he got home, but that’s exactly what he found when he got there.
Chapter Fifteen
Leighton McDaniel
Leighton scrambled into the forest, not sure why the creep in the road was just standing there, or why he was staring at her like that. She had been afraid before, but now she was shaking with fear.
She could handle a guy like Aaron. But he was a college boy and this was a full-grown man. And a big one at that! Not to mention the freaking crowbar.
She was so scared, she charged into the overgrown thicket of trees and brush hoping to God he wouldn’t track her down and follow her in.
As she shoved her way through the dense brush—the scratchy limbs slashing at her face—she fought to suppress her mounting fears. The more distance she put between her and the highway, however, the more she felt like she was running in the wrong direction to save her life.
Deep inside the hillside trees and vegetation, she burst into a natural opening, a somewhat flat ground where she felt like maybe she could reassess her situation.
She had stopped running long enough to catch her breath. Panicked to the core and standing there with wide eyes and burning lungs, she took a quick inventory of her surroundings. She was soaking wet, acting hysterical, and all but deaf. Was Crowbar Man still following her? Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. Dear God, she would have given anything to have her hearing back!
As she stood there, trying to figure things out, she wondered why was he just standing in the middle of the road. It wasn’t like she was so far in the backwoods that grunting guys who liked to beat people to death were searching for young college victims on desolate highways. But what if that was the case? What if she was the wrong girl in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if this was her horror movie and she didn’t survive?
That sort of thing did happen. She unholstered her Glock, held it at her side. “Pull yourself together, Leighton,” she said. “Stay alert.” It didn’t help that she was saying this into a void, or that she couldn’t even hear her own voice.
She found a dry spot by a large shade tree, a place where she felt she might be safe to shelter in for the evening. Behind this large tree was an impenetrable thicket of brush, a wall of wild foliage so dense that a guy as big as Crowbar Man couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get through.
She shrugged her pack off and set it down against the tree’s trunk. She then slid the paintball gun off of her back and set it against the same tree. Looking back and forth between her weapons, she felt best holding the Glock.
Leighton finally plopped down against the tree, grateful that the overhead branches were protecting her from a direct downpour. A spider dropped a web from the nearest branch and slid down in front of her. It stopped to stare at her for a moment.
“Fancy trick, bug,” she said, thinking she’d pinch the web and set it down to run off. The spider spun more web, dropping onto the forest floor where it disconnected from the webbing and skittered off.
The drip-drip-dripping of rain against her head and face nagged at her as she sat there feeling bad for herself. Instinctively, she started looking around for sticks she could use as kindling or wood she could strip and use in a small fire. All she saw was damp wood. Part of her wondered if she should try to go around Crowbar Man and push through. She didn’t want to stop for the day. But the very idea of being on the move with him out there petrified her.
No, she needed to make camp. She was certain. But could she do that? Did she even know how? It was one thing to make camp in the middle of the forest, and another to do so in the middle of a storm, but to do so with the threat of wild weather looming and some freaking lunatic out there? Dear God, it all seemed incredibly daunting! Making matters worse, she couldn’t hear a thing. That’s when she started to cry.
A few tears skipped down her cheeks, but then she thought of her uncle Walker. Wiping her face, gathering up what strength she could find inside herself, she took another inventory of the contents in her bac
kpack. When she found the Swiss Army knife, she went through its different tools, stopping when she pulled out a small wood saw.
She needed timber for a lean-to and kindling for a fire. Overhead, the dark sky was threatening, and sunset wasn’t so far away. It was time for her to get to work.
With her Glock accessible and her eyes constantly scanning the surrounding forest, she spotted some nearby trees with low enough branches that she could cut them with the multi-tool saw. She went for the deepest, driest brush, specifically that which looked dead or half-covered by thicker branches. She also cut down two six-foot saplings so she could erect a single-point lean-to.
Every few minutes, Leighton stopped working long enough to purposely survey her surroundings. The rain was coming down hard again, yet as soaked as she was, she was working hard enough to break a sweat. Wet on the outside, now wet on the inside, too, she thought. How was she supposed to spend the night like this? That was what the fire was about. Drying off, staying warm.
When she stripped away a lot of the non-essential branches from the two saplings, she leaned them against the shade tree. With her tactical knife, she notched out the tree trunk and seated the lean-to’s main “poles.” She just needed to lash them together to secure the lean-to’s foundation. This was where the paracord on her wrist would come in handy.
Leighton felt the winds were going to be a problem, especially if they took a glancing blow from another tornado. She cut away a few more long branches, stripped them, then set them across the structure as cross-bracing. After that, she cut away some with super-thin branches she could use to lash the cross-bracing to the main poles. When that was done, she tied a few lengths of paracord over the weak points in the structure, then stood back and appraised her work.
Satisfied, she pulled the poncho out of her bag and opened it up. Rather than put it on, she draped it over the lean-to’s frame, using it to create an impenetrable barrier between her and the rain.
Once that was done, it was time to gather up the driest branches and leaves she could find to finish off the structure. She then began cutting away foliage and placing them strategically on the poncho and around the bracing. After that she started scooping up handfuls of heavier brush, covering the leaves with yet another layer of protection from the elements.
When that was done, she crawled inside the structure and started pulling things out of the backpack. She found a small, thin sleeping bag with bug netting, which would hopefully keep her warm, dry, and bug-free. There was also a Mylar emergency blanket she could drape over her to keep her body heat in. Maybe that, too, would keep the bugs out. The idea of insects crawling across her face, around her body, into her clothes—and maybe into her nose, ears, and mouth—sufficiently creeped her out.
She was about to remove her belly-band holster when someone grabbed her arm and ripped her out of the lean-to. She saw the hulking beast with bad skin, an overgrown beard, and unkempt hair, but before she could even scream, he tossed her into the air like a ragdoll. Her body spun in through the air until it didn’t. Mid-air, she smacked a tree trunk with her face, then fell into the dirt and laid there.
After that, nearly every fear she ever had swiftly came to pass.
Chapter Sixteen
Aaron Westbrook
After being pepper-sprayed, kicked in the balls, and death-threated, Aaron followed Leighton, but at more of a distance. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice!
Halfway into the day, he found himself waterlogged, cold, and angry. He knew Leighton was scared, but if her hearing aids didn’t work and she was indeed deaf, then she would never hear him coming. It might have been easier to overtake her if he wasn’t still suffering from her attack.
But then he saw the big man with the crowbar and he got off the road. Leighton did, too. He maintained his distance, staying down and out of sight, waiting her out while keeping an eye out for the crowbar creep.
While Leighton was building her lean-to and preparing to make camp for the night, Aaron was busy managing concerns of his own, namely concerns about the weather. The winds were starting up again, the rain really coming down. He made his own shelter, which wasn’t as nice or as fortified as Leighton’s, but it was sufficient for his needs.
It was going to be cold outside, the night dangerous. He’d found a nearby deadfall. There, he’d gathered what he could in terms of branches he’d used to clean out any bugs or critters, and then he quickly assembled a place to hide.
Would he get bugs on him? Probably. Would he get bitten, maybe even eaten alive? Most definitely. When he used to run away from home, though, when he used to sleep in the woods because he had nowhere else to go and he was angry, he’d been bitten by things before. Things that left little white knobs on his skin, little white knobs that when squeezed produced a gooey, milky pus that was gross but never really caused him much harm besides a skin irritation.
He was inside the near-natural cubby hole he’d made for himself, half-buried in the ground and pulling the branches from trees he’d torn apart for a roof over the hole to the outside world. That’s when he heard feet walking around. He froze. Peeking outside his shelter, he saw Leighton.
What is she doing?
If Leighton saw him before he could get her, she’d be able to identify him, and that would spoil everything. For him to do what he wanted with her, it was imperative that she not see him first. But then, through the branches, he saw she was looking over his own deadfall. She knelt down, starting to take branches from it. He felt a thrill shoot right up through the middle of him. She was so close! As she sawed at the branches with her back halfway to him, he felt his excitement soar. An anxious fear merged with a deep longing for her, especially due to the close proximity. He leaned forward, sniffed the air, thought he could almost smell her.
If he came out of his cubby hole, if he just reached forward the slightest little bit, he could practically touch her leg.
“I’m gonna get you tonight,” he heard himself say out loud, followed by a grin and a fresh surge of adrenaline.
He felt something drop into his hair, but it didn’t matter. Maybe it was a beetle, but maybe it was a spider. Leighton kept sawing away.
“I’m gonna GET YOU!” he said, unable to help himself. He started to snicker at the irony of all of this. Leighton kept on sawing, not even a twitch of awareness, let alone fear.
“YOU DON’T LISTEN SO YOU CAN’T HEAR!” he finally roared at her from inside his hole, his vocal cords straining, his hands made into claws at his side.
The insect crawling in his hair formed a web, dropped down on his eyelash, but he still didn’t blink. He was laughing now, laughing at Leighton who was so close he could touch her but had no idea he was there, laughing at how cold he was, how mad he was, how his skin had that hot, angry tingle from where she’d doused him with pepper spray.
The spider was now on his eyelashes, crawling over them one at a time, each leg walking on a single lash. It was as if he’d found a new home, or a better view of the world.
“You didn’t see me until you did,” he said, his mouth working like something separate from him, a computer program loaded up somewhere else, making his mouth say the things his mind was thinking, but without intent or the conscious arrangement of words.
“You heard me, but now you can’t. That makes you mine, Leighton.”
The leaves she’d cut off, she’d been dropping them behind her, making a pile. When she was done, she stepped back, started to gather them up. He reached out, ran a finger over the back of her sneaker. He cautiously slid his hand around the front, got ahold of the shoelace, and started to pull until the loop dissolved and the string untied itself willingly.
“Whether or not you know it, Leighton,” he said, as if he were talking to her like a normal person, “YOU’RE MINE!”
She started to walk off, but then he started to cry.
“Don’t go,” he finally whispered, the blubbering in his mouth a sound he’d heard before at times o
f extreme emotion.
He felt the shifting weight of the spider on his eyelash. It anchored a web, tip-toed to the edge of his eyelashes, then stepped off the edge and began to rappel down the front of Aaron’s face.
Quickly but gently, he opened his mouth, rolled out his tongue, thrust it out as far as he could, blocking the path of the fat-bodied spider.
When he felt the weight of the insect and its plump, furry belly sitting on his tongue, he suppressed a smile. It was just hanging around, not just treating Aaron’s tongue like an obstacle or an interruption, but as a possible destination-location. The spider began to explore.
Holding his tongue as still as he could (which was no easy task as unsteady as he felt), Aaron waited. Spiders were no strangers to dark spaces, but they were used to being the predator. This spider, however, was way out of its league. Aaron was the predator you didn’t see coming. He knew that, and his father had learned that, but now the spider would learn that, too.
When the insect was safely near the back of his tongue, Aaron closed his mouth, felt the spider stop walking.
Have you realized it yet? he wondered about the spider. You’re the fly in my web now.
He rolled his tongue sideways, trapped the spider onto his molar, slowly crushed its body between his teeth. The spider’s plump belly popped, the goo bursting forth.
Maybe he was talking to the spider, but maybe he was talking to Leighton. Or perhaps he was talking to no one, just making noise for spiders, beetles, God, the devil.
As the rain progressed and a light breeze cut through the nearby foliage, he was once again reminded to pay attention to the weather.
He’d been so focused on Leighton he didn’t bother to think about how far from a real shelter he was should he find himself caught in a tornado.
He tried to tell himself he was ready for this, for he considered himself a junior bushmaster in his own right. Basically, there were four pillars of survival in the wild: fire, water, food, and shelter. He had water in the rain, which felt like the most important pillar. But it wasn’t. He needed fire for heat, and food to store as energy. The shelter would be fine if there wasn’t a tornado possibly hitting somewhere around there, but that was the great unknown.