“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 surgical 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.
“Sure,” Nick said. “Just let me know what to do and I’ll do it.”
“This way,” she said, leading him back to the main bedroom. She opened the end closet, but this one didn’t contain any clothes. Instead, inside the closet was a large gun safe.
She opened it, and Nick gasped with surprise. “Damn, you guys like guns, huh? There are enough guns and ammo in there for a small country!”
Kate chuckled. “Jack and I grew up in a tiny town in the mountains, where guns are just part of everyday life. And as you’ve probably guessed, we’re big fans of the second amendment.”
“Are those M-16s in there?” he asked, pointing at three identical rifles.
“AR-15s,” she answered. “And we’ve got plenty of ammo for ‘em.”
“Can you put some of it in the rifle you took from that crazy soldier guy?” he asked. “I remember you saying there were only three or four rounds left in it.”
Kate shook her head. “The ammo is very similar but not perfectly identical, so not exactly interchangeable. It could be done in a pinch, but I’d rather not.”
“Can I take the M-16
then?” he asked. He still had the pistol he’d swiped from the soldier tucked into his pants but had had his eye on the rifle for a while.
“It won’t do you much good with only three rounds left in it,” she answered. “I just took it because it was better than having nothing. But we’ve got more guns than we can carry here anyway. Jack, Susan, and I will carry an AR-15 each and a sidearm. You can take a hunting rifle or a pump-action shotgun. How familiar are you with guns? Be honest now, don’t exaggerate, because lying now could result in disaster in a life or death situation.”
“I’ve shot a gun, uh, maybe a handful of times in my whole life,” Nick admitted.
“That’s okay. There’s no shame in that. Then you should take the shotgun. It’s better for beginners.” Kate showed him how to use the pump-action shotgun, but her worry about Jack’s whereabouts was growing more intense at the back of her mind. Simply keeping busy was no longer enough to keep the thoughts out of her head. Again she found her eyes wandering over to the window, and outside she saw that the weather was getting steadily worse.
“Whoa, are these … grenades?” Nick exclaimed, catching sight of a handful of items that looked rather similar to military-spec hand grenades.
Kate nodded. “They are. Jack made them; he’s very smart and talented when it comes to making things—complex items, I’m talking about—from scratch. These uh, well, they’re not technically legal, and we would have gotten into a bit of legal trouble owning these things in normal times … but these aren’t normal times we’re in now, are they? The old laws have all gone out the window, and now a much more simple and ancient law is in place … survival of the strongest, best prepared, and fittest. And as crazy as it might seem to be, I think that’s going to be the primary law that governs all our lives now for a long while to come.”
“So I guess we’d better take those ‘illegal’ grenades with us, huh?” Nick asked.
“Absolutely.”
He shook his head, smiling with both awe and disbelief. “You guys really were prepared for this, weren’t you? I wouldn’t have thought of half this stuff. Hell, I didn’t even know something like an EMP existed, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have known the first thing about how to prepare for one.”
“Count yourself lucky that you ran into us,” Kate said. “But as well prepared as we are, I don’t feel ready to face the storm without my husband by my side…” She sighed, and tears burned at the corners of her eyes.
Before Nick could say anything in response, Susan walked into the room. “I’m all packed and ready to go, Mom,” she said. “How long are we gonna wait?” she asked warily.
Kate stared out of the window for a while. The snow continued to grow steadily heavier, and each gust of wind seemed stronger than its predecessor. “Things are getting bad out there,” she said. She felt as if she was about to have a panic attack or a heart attack or pass out—or all three at once—but she knew she had to keep herself together and stay in control for the sake of her daughter. And putting her daughter’s survival above everything else would mean making some difficult decisions. “This storm is blowing in faster than anyone thought it would,” she eventually said. “We can’t linger here.”
“But what does that mean, Mom? How long?” Susan demanded. There were tears in her eyes because she already knew what her mother was going to say.
“We have to go … soon,” Kate murmured, her voice cracking. “We’ve already been here an hour, and he hasn’t shown up. We can’t wait much longer. We just … we can’t, honey, we can’t.”
Nick was silent throughout this exchange; he knew it wasn’t his place to comment or say anything. He was also watching the storm come in, though, and knew that things would be getting a lot more intense a lot faster than anyone had thought they could.
Tears rolled down Susan’s cheeks, and her lower lip began to quiver. She couldn’t hold back the flood of tears and an outpouring of emotion any longer. She dropped her bags, turned, ran to her room, and shut the door. Nick and Kate could hear her weeping, and neither one of them knew what to say to the other.
Eventually, though, Nick spoke up. “I’m sorry about your husband, Kate,” he said softly. “I mean, I don’t know, maybe he’s okay, I just…” he trailed off awkwardly, not knowing how to express what he was trying to convey.
“Thank you, Nick,” Kate said, teary-eyed. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” She walked out of the room, and Nick stayed behind, sensing that Kate wanted some space. She sat down in the living room, took out her little waterproof photo album, and looked through her wedding photos and other special moments she’d shared with Jack. Soon enough, tears were splashing onto the album’s plastic sleeves.
Kate breathed in deeply and put the album back into the bag. The sounds of Susan’s weeping had died down, and outside, the wind was starting to howl. The air was thick with snow, and when Kate opened the living room balcony doors, a rush of icy air came barging in. The temperature had plummeted, and she knew it would drop further.
She also knew that they couldn’t waste any more time. If Jack hadn’t come by now, it was unlikely that he would be coming back at all; her heart didn’t want to acknowledge this, but her rational mind understood with crystal clarity that this was the case. Even so, she decided to wait another twenty minutes, just enough time to make a quick meal, which was a valid reason to delay leaving, since they would all benefit from hot, nutritious food, and all the groceries in the fridge would be going to waste anyway.
Kate went to Susan’s room, comforted her for a while, and then asked if she could help whip up a quick meal on some camping stoves. She didn’t tell Susan that they would be leaving after they ate; nonetheless, her daughter understood that this would be the case.
They put together a quick but healthy meal, sat down, and ate it with Nick, who was grateful for the food. The whole time Susan and Kate kept casting glances toward the door, praying they would hear the familiar sound of Jack’s keys in the lock, but it simply never came.
After they finished with the meal, Kate desperately tried to buy just a little more time by insisting on changing the dressing on Nick’s ear, but when had been done and there was still no sign of Jack, she knew that she couldn’t wait a moment longer. It was time to do what had to be done, as heartbreaking and painful as it may be.
Jack had prepared for such an eventuality, and now that the terrible moment had come, Kate opened the bottom drawer of their bedside table, where he’d left a sealed envelope, to be opened only in the event of circumstances like this.
Inside the envelope were handwritten letters—one for Susan and one for Kate—but there was also a set of keys, a roadmap with the route from the city to Arthur’s cabin highlighted, and directions to a nearby storage unit. On the directions to the storage unit, written in Jack’s distinctive handwriting, were instructions to go straight to the unit before doing anything else. It was strange; Jack had never mentioned the fact that he had rented a storage unit.
Kate realized that this made perfect sense, though; he would often disappear for a few hours every few weekends, with only vague excuses about where he was going. Now she understood; all those years he’d been making preparations for a day like this.
“All right, everyone,” Kate said, her voice cracking with emotion again, “it’s time to go.”
She and Susan took one last sad look at the place they’d called home for most of their lives, and then they walked out into the hallway, shut and locked the door, and melted into the shadowy gloom.
17
“I said drop the gun,” the voice growled as the stranger pressed the muzzle of his rifle more forcefully into the back of Jack’s head. Two more men, dressed in US Army combat gear, rose from behind the shelves, pointing their rifles at Jack’s chest.
“Do it, you son of a bitch!” one of them snapped. “Drop the pistol!”
He noticed that they were wearing black armbands with a red emblem on them on their left arms. Were these men
part of the group responsible for the EMP and rocket attacks?
Jack had no choice but to obey. He dropped the pistol and raised his hands. “I don’t know who you think I am,” he said calmly to them, “but I have no interest in who you are or what you’re doing. All I’m trying to do is get home to my wife and daughter.”
“Shut the fuck up and get inside the store,” the man behind him growled. He pulled Jack’s backpack off his shoulders and then slammed the butt of his rifle into his back.
The blow was a hard one, and Jack grunted with pain and staggered forward. The other two soldiers strode over to him and grabbed his arms, yanking them up behind his back before binding his wrists together with a zip-tie. Then one of them hit him with the butt of an M-16 in his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.
With Jack doubled over with pain and gasping for breath, they dragged him through the store and into the stock room at the back, where he saw a group of other people who had been captured. They had all been forced to sit, and their wrists were also zip-tied behind their backs, with duct tape over their mouths. Bernie was among them, and he had a swollen, red eye; one of the soldiers had obviously hit him in the face with a rifle butt. He shot Jack a guiltily apologetic look.
One of the soldiers slapped a piece of duct tape over Jack’s mouth, and then they shoved him over to where the others were seated and forced him to sit down with them.
“Don’t try anything stupid,” one soldier growled at him, sticking the barrel of his M-16 right into Jack’s face. “Don’t try anything at all. Just sit there, nice and quiet, like the rest of the hostages, and maybe, just maybe we’ll let you live.”
Two soldiers left, with one staying behind to stand guard over Jack and the others, who were evidently captives. Jack’s mind was a mess of desperate questions: who were these troops with black armbands? Was this some sort of mass mutiny, or a military coup? Were they foreign terrorists who, over many years, had gradually infiltrated the US Army and were now acting on behalf of a hostile foreign government?
Survive the Day Boxset: EMP Survival in a Powerless World Page 61