The men pawing at Kate hadn’t yet noticed that their comrades were dead, but it didn’t take long for them to realize that something was terribly wrong—soon enough, an arrow slammed through one of their throats.
The man fell forward onto Kate, gasping and jerking in his death throes, and the hot blood pouring from his skewered throat gushed over her chest. The other men scrambled for their firearms, but another two fell to the whizzing arrows from the darkness before any of them could even pick up their guns. And before any of them had the chance to squeeze off a shot at the unknown assassin, a burst of automatic rifle fire thundered through the workshop from the back. Three men dropped to the floor, bleeding and shuddering as they died. Another crackle of automatic fire hammered a spray of bullets through the torsos of the final three as they desperately scrambled for cover.
Jack stared at the dying men in disbelief, wondering whether the unknown shooter was a friend or an even more dangerous foe. The men gasped and writhed, slipping in pools of their own blood as they died, and Kate, screaming with both shock and horror, managed to shove the corpse of one of her assailants off of her. She jumped off the table and scrambled to get her clothes together, then ran over to Susan to shield her from the killer in the shadows.
Over the sounds of men dying, gasping and choking on their own blood, came the sounds of heavy boots clopping calmly across the concrete floor. Then, when the mysterious stranger finally stepped into the dim light drizzling in through the high windows, Jack, Kate, and Susan all almost jumped out of their skins with surprise and disbelief.
“Hello, little brother,” Arthur, smiling, said to Jack, popping the empty clip out of the AK-47 in his hands before slapping a fresh one into the rifle. “Looks like I got here just in time. Let’s get you all out of this hellhole.”
35
Nick opened his eyes, and for the first few seconds he was awake, complete shock and utter terror gripped him. He had no idea where he was or how he had gotten here. He was in some sort of mountain cabin, it seemed, with crude but solid log walls, in a warm bed with a fire burning softly in the little fireplace in the corner. He sat up, feeling weak and drained, but better than he could remember feeling for a long while. The last things he could remember seemed like images out of a nightmare. Being tied up, beaten up by thuggish men, tortured in an abandoned workshop…
The door creaked open, and Nick’s heart shot into his mouth. Fear flooded through him as a strange man stepped into the room. He had never seen the tall, bearded man before, but there was something familiar about him. He had Jack’s deep-set eyes and tall, proud nose, and in those eyes burned the same keen intelligence he had seen in Jack’s.
“Ahh, you’re awake,” the man said, beaming a friendly smile at Nick. “For a while there, I wasn’t sure if you were ever going to open your eyes again, but you’ve pulled through. You’ve got a strong heart, kid, and one hell of a will to live; I’ll give you that. Here, you need to take this, though,” he said, handing him a pill and a glass of water.
“Wh–what is this?” Nick asked. “And who are you? Wh–where am I? What is this place?”
“The name’s Arthur, and I’m Jack’s older brother,” Arthur said, extending a hand to Nick. Nick took Arthur’s hand and immediately sensed the immense strength in the guy’s rough, calloused fingers. “This is an antibiotic you need to take. As for where we are, this is my house; my brother, his wife, and Susan are all here, too, but they’re busy preparing dinner right now.”
“I guess I’ve been out the whole day,” Nick groaned.
Arthur chuckled, and playful mirth sparkled in his eyes. “You’ve been out a little longer than that, kid,” he said. “Like I said, it’s a miracle you pulled through. Even with these,” he said, turning the antibiotic pill over in his fingers, “I wasn’t sure you’d make it. You’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness for the last two weeks. But most of that time, you’ve been out of it, rather than in.”
“Two … weeks?” Nick gasped, sitting up straight in the bed. “Are you serious?”
Arthur nodded. “Yep. Most people wouldn’t have been able to fight off the infection you had, even with the aid of these pills, which are some of the most effective on the market … well, that were on the market, seeing as no such thing exists any longer. But anyway, point is, you’re lucky to be alive.”
When Arthur mentioned the infection, Nick remembered that he’d lost half of his ear. He reached up with a trembling hand to feel the damage—unable to see himself due to the absence of any mirrors nearby—and expected the usual jolt of intense pain to zap through his head as soon as his fingers made contact with it. To his surprise, though, when his finger touched his mutilated cartilage—which was now unbandaged—there was no pain. He could feel that scar tissue had formed where a large chunk of his ear had been bitten off and it seemed to have healed well. That, and the fact that he was no longer suffering from raging fevers and crazed delirium, prompted a sense of calm relief to wash through him.
“Thanks,” Nick said to Arthur, still feeling a little confused, despite the relief. “I mean, thanks for all the help. Thank you for saving my life. I’m truly grateful for everything you’ve done for me.”
“Just trying to spread a little good in this crazy world,” Arthur said. “Are you able to get up? You could do with a good hot meal, I bet. We’ve been feeding you small amounts of food, mostly pureed stuff and soup, which was mostly all you could keep down since you got here. You’ve lost a lot of weight.”
Nick peeled back the blankets and saw that he had indeed dropped a lot of weight. “Sure, I’d like to get up and try to get a meal down.”
“Let me help you.” Arthur gave him a hand to get him out of bed.
Leaning on Arthur, Nick was able to hobble out of the room. Arthur led him through the cabin to the main room, which was large enough to be both a living room and a dining room. The whole place was lit up by candles, which gave it a pleasant, welcoming, and homely ambiance. Jack, Kate, and Susan were already sitting around the table, on which a simple but hearty meal was steaming. In the fireplace, a big fire was roaring, spreading heat and light through the room. They all smiled when Nick came hobbling in, and Susan had an especially broad grin on her face.
“Welcome back to the world of the living!” Jack exclaimed.
Nick noticed that Jack’s face was bruised and cut, although the wounds seemed older and mostly healed. It prompted a vaguely recalled memory of taking a beating himself, and he shuddered at the unpleasant and disturbing recollection.
“It’s good to be back,” Nick said, grinning as he took in the somewhat surreal sight before his eyes, which looked almost like something off of an old-time Christmas card, minus the decorations and tree, of course. “What’s for dinner?” he asked, limping over to the table. “Smells great, whatever it is.”
“Venison, harvested by yours truly,” Arthur said, “with roast potatoes and pumpkin on the side from my woodfired oven, along with some home-brewed cider. Kate made some apple pie for dessert, too.”
“I thought there wasn’t any electricity anymore,” Nick said, with a puzzled look on his face. “How did you guys get this stuff and make it?”
“I’ve got a big cellar full of food stored for winter,” Arthur said, “all harvested from my land over summer and fall—just like our pioneer ancestors used to do in the days before electricity. And it hasn’t just been since the EMP turned the world upside down; I’ve been living without electricity—aside from a few small things, which I neither miss nor need—for the best part of twenty years now.”
Nick’s jaw dropped with surprise. “You’ve been living like this for … twenty years?”
Arthur grinned and chuckled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is how we were supposed to live. Human beings, I mean. I haven’t used any plastic for twenty years, haven’t contributed to the pollution that’s been destroying our natural environment for decades. I live in harmony with the land, like the wild
critters around here. Well, I guess even living like this, I’ve made more of an impact on the environment than your average deer or mountain lion, but it’s nothing compared to the kind of impact the average city-dweller makes, no offense intended.”
“None taken,” Nick said, his mouth watering at the delectable scent of the roast dinner. “I’m well aware of how much of an environmental impact city life has on nature and stuff. Just … I can’t get my head around how you’ve been able to live without electricity, computers, phones, a car, a fridge, all that stuff. I honestly can’t imagine life without it.”
“You aren’t going to have to do too much imagining, Nick,” Jack said darkly. “Because that’s how life is now. Those things, they’re part of history. Life’s been given a hard reset, and we’ve rebooted in the year 1800, pretty much. Obviously, with some technology left over that still works, but not much. Arthur’s got an old truck here—that’s how he got us out of town when he rescued us—and some fuel, but it won’t last forever, and neither will whatever oil is left out there. We’ve got horses, though, and as long as we keep raising ‘em, we’ll have a fairly efficient means of transport.”
“Um, can I just back up a second quick?” Nick asked. “I don’t remember much of what happened after the whole town hall thing, and even that’s mostly a blur in my memory. I also seem to remember something to do with a red snowmobile and racing through the dark on it and getting shot at and stuff … but that mostly feels like it might have been part of one of those crazy fever dreams I was having.”
Susan and Kate shifted uncomfortably in their chairs, and the smiles faded from their faces at the recollection of that dark and terrible night and the horrific morning that had followed it. Jack scowled and gritted his jaw but realized that Nick had a right to know what had happened, as much as he hated thinking about it and recalling those terrible events.
Arthur noticed his brother’s tense attitude and decided that he should speak. “I knew Jack and his family would be coming here to my cabin after the EMP went off,” he said to Nick. “And I also knew that they would have to come through the town down the road to get here. So the day after the EMP strike, I took my truck down to the hills around town and set up camp to watch the main road in. I didn’t want to go into town because I knew that there would be trouble. In situations like this, the thin veneer of civilization crumbles pretty quickly, and people start acting like barbarians at best, or monsters at worst, within days. It happened here a lot faster than I could have imagined. The day after the EMP, shortly after I set up my camp—which was, by the way, very well-camouflaged—I was horrified to see a gang of marauders descend on the town and go on the rampage. The first thing they did was ambush and kill the local sheriff and the other two cops, and then they shot anyone who came out of their houses with guns or any sorts of weapons in their hands. They drove most folks out of town, including my parents, who are here, but out in the hot tub right now—”
“You have a hot tub?” Nick gasped, grinning with delight as he interrupted Arthur. “But with the whole no electricity thing, how does that work?”
“Geothermal energy,” Arthur said, smiling. “We’ve got natural hot springs near here, about a mile away. I just diverted some of the hot water into a rock pool I made with some concrete, and voila, a hot tub that’s piping hot all year round, powered by Mother Nature herself. You can have a soak in it, too, if you want, after dinner, under the stars. I bet you’ve never seen a starry sky like what you’re able to see out here with no light pollution. You’ll love it, kid, you’ll love it! Anyway, let me get back to the story…”
“Oh yeah, sure, go on, please,” Nick said.
“Anyway, those punks forced everyone they didn’t shoot out of the town. Folks were made to march into the blizzard on foot, carrying only what they could. The scumbags shot a bunch of ‘em for fun, too, and did worse things to the young women, it seems, from the evidence I found…”
“Evil, disgusting monsters,” Kate hissed, her fists clenched, her hands trembling at the memory of what the men had almost done to her. Jack reached over and took one of her hands in his, holding it tightly and whispering soothing words into her ear.
“I couldn’t risk taking them on initially,” Arthur said. “There were just too many of ‘em, and if I’d started taking them out one by one, they would have put together a hunting party to flush me out of my hiding spots and killed me. I rescued my parents first, who were among the refugees who’d been forced to march out into the wilderness, and then came back to wait for Jack and his family. I got back to town at night, after the gang had ambushed you guys with that burning truck by the river and couldn’t find y’all. For a while, I thought you’d drowned in the river, trapped in the Humvee. Something told me y’all were still alive, though, some instinct, so I stuck around. And when I saw the bell tower light up in the early with one of those goons tied to the bell, I knew it had to be Jack’s doing. I heard snowmobiles and gunshots, but I was on the opposite side of town, and by the time I got to you, y’all were already tied up in the workshop. I managed to sneak in and waited for the perfect opportunity to strike.”
“And when he struck, he hit the bastards hard,” Jack growled.
Arthur chuckled. “When I was a much younger man, before I decided to ditch civilization and live in the wilderness the way humans are supposed to live, I was a Green Beret for a few years. My experience taught me some … useful things. I managed to catch the punks off-guard, and … unleashed hell on them. One escaped, though.”
“Mark, their leader,” Jack muttered, spitting out the man’s name like a half-chewed morsel of rotten food.
“I could have hunted him down and finished him off,” Arthur said with a shrug, “but with the time that would have taken, I don’t think our young friend here would have survived. I only just gave him the medical attention he needed in the nick of time, and even so, I didn’t think he was going to make it. It’s a miracle you’re still here with us, Nick. You had to have had one hell of a strong heart to have fought off an infection that virulent.”
“I wouldn’t have survived without your help,” Nick said. “And for that, I’ll forever be grateful.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Arthur said. “I was just doing what was right, and that’s what I always do. I’ve never compromised on my morals and ethics and never will. Don’t worry about owing me anything. But if you want to stay here, you are gonna have to pull your own weight. There’s plenty of work to be done, especially with winter mostly over, and spring on the way. Lots of soil preparation to be done and crops to be planted.”
“I’m willing to work as hard as I need to,” Nick said. “As soon as I’ve got my strength back, of course.”
“Well, let’s get right onto that,” Jack said, smiling now. “Getting your strength back, I mean. This food is piping hot, so let’s dig in before it gets cold.”
He said grace, and then everyone dug in. As they ate, Jack looked around him, and the smile on his face broadened. Just two weeks ago, it had seemed as if everything was ending, as if there was no hope and that all the suffering they had endured had been for nothing. Yet now, here in this place, hope had been born anew. Spring was coming, and as difficult as the future might prove to be in this strange new world, Jack had hope—a precious commodity in this upside-down world.
He tucked in and spoke a silent prayer of thanks in his head as he ate, grateful for everything.
36
Nick slammed his shovel into the soil and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. In the month that had passed since he had overcome his infection, he had regained almost all of his pre-injury strength and had been working hard for the last few weeks, under the supervision of Arthur and Jack. Nick had never done anything like this before, but he found that he enjoyed the slow pace of homestead life and the quiet serenity of living deep in the wilderness, at one with nature and the natural world.
He left the shovel embedded in the soil a
nd walked over to the edge of the small field, where he’d left his bottle filled with crystal-clear water from the nearby mountain stream. He sat down, soaking up the early spring sunshine and staring up at the clear, blue sky and rested. It had been a long day of tough labor, but he had made some excellent progress.
After a few minutes, he heard footsteps approaching, and he turned around and saw Jack walking through the forest of pine trees on the edge of the field toward him.
“Working hard or hardly working?” Jack joked with a quick grin.
“Just taking a break,” Nick said, sipping on his cool water.
“I know, I was just kidding,” Jack said. “You’ve made great progress here, Nick. Well done. I’m surprised—in a good way, of course—how well you’ve taken to homestead life. Looking at you now, and what you’re capable of and what you’ve achieved, not even the most hardened pioneer or survivalist would have guessed that a month or two ago, you were a complete city slicker who’d barely ventured out in the wilderness for anything more than the occasional school field trip. You’ve come a long way in a short time.”
“Thanks, Jack. I really like it out here. There’s a kind of … deep peace, yeah, that’s it, and a really great feeling of satisfaction that comes from working like this. I didn’t think I’d love it out here the way I do. In fact, when you and Kate first told me about this place, I thought it would be like a prison sentence I’d have to get through. But now, after all this, I couldn’t imagine going back to ‘civilization,’ if such a thing even existed anymore.”
Jack smiled and sat down next to Nick. “Yeah, I hear you on that. I always knew my brother was right, even twenty years ago, when he first said goodbye to civilization and moved out here to live like this. I wanted to do it myself, really, but I was engaged to Kate at that time, and she’d always been a city girl, even though she and I came from a small mountain town. And to tell the truth, even though I knew Arthur was right, I was itching to get away from the mountains and give city life a go. I had career ambitions, ambitions that could never be fulfilled living in a small mountain town, much less so living out here in the wilderness. So I always told Arthur that I’d join him out here one day, but I wasn’t sure that day would ever come.”
Survive the Day Boxset: EMP Survival in a Powerless World Page 71