“But, wait...”
Jessica had once, long ago, been in a car that had suddenly quit in the middle of a commute. Her mother had slammed on the brakes, and the car had stopped. Jessica may not have understood how it worked, but in this situation, total knowledge of the mechanics didn’t really matter.
“But...” Rob was still protesting. He was starting to freak out.
“Now!” Jessica screamed right in his ear. There wasn’t any time to try to be calm with him, to try to coax him through this. He just needed to do it.
With both feet, Rob slammed on the brakes.
Jessica seized the emergency brake lever that sat between the seats. She yanked it as hard as she could.
The Subaru jolted. The tires screeched. Jessica was thrown forward, her seatbelt catching her and digging hard into her chest.
Mere seconds later, there was another jolt, and a tremendous noise. The motorcycle behind them had crashed into the Subaru.
Just as Jessica had suspected, the biker hadn’t had enough time to swerve or brake to avoid the Subaru. He’d been too busy trying to get his shotgun into position, and by trying to hold it, he’d lost the crucial ability to maneuver as he’d needed to.
There wasn’t any time to waste.
Jessica’s hand went to her seatbelt button, jamming against the button.
It was stuck.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Rob seemed dazed, and he was mumbling something.
Jessica glanced in the mirror, but she couldn’t see the biker. She knew that it wasn’t likely that he was dead. He was still there. And he still had the shotgun. He was still a threat.
Jessica dug into her pocket, looking for her knife. But it wasn’t there.
Of course it wasn’t there. They’d taken it from her when she’d been kidnapped and tied up.
“Rob, give me your knife. Quick.”
“What’s that?”
Rob sounded dazed. Maybe he’d hit his head.
There wasn’t any time to waste. The seconds were ticking by. Each new second meant that the chance of danger was increasing. All it’d take was for the biker not to be so critically wounded that he couldn’t wield his shotgun.
Jessica reached over and dug her hand into the pocket of Rob’s jeans. She hoped his knife was on her side.
It was. She removed her hand, clutching the knife. With one hand, she flicked it open.
In a single stroke, she sliced through her seatbelt, pulling the blade away from herself.
She was free. She opened the door, stepped out, keeping herself low and behind the Subaru for cover.
The biker was moaning in pain. From somewhere unseen.
Jessica moved quickly, slightly ducking, to the back of the car.
The motorcycle was tangled up with the Subaru’s rear bumper. It lay partially under the Subaru.
There were streaks of bright blood on the pavement that formed a trail that led away from the Subaru.
Jessica followed the trail. The knife was in her hand. It was still opened, and her fingers tightened around the handle. With each step, she stood up straighter, growing less fearful of the man who had kidnapped her and tormented her.
She saw him now. He’d crawled his away off the road. He’d almost reached a tree. The shotgun lay a few feet behind him on the road. Apparently, he’d abandoned it.
There was blood all around him. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from, or what exactly his injuries were.
But it didn’t matter what they were. She knew what she had to do.
With long, purposeful strides, Jessica reached him.
In a single motion, she grabbed his head by the hair, pulled it back, and, with her other hand, ran the knife across his neck.
There was a gurgling noise. Blood came from his mouth.
And that was it. Thirty seconds later, he was dead, his body lying unmoving in blood that was pooling up around him on the dirt.
Jessica gazed down at him, expecting to feel something. But she felt nothing. Nothing except satisfaction that she had lived through another dangerous encounter, that at the end of it, she’d been the one who’d lived.
She leaned down and ran her hands across his pockets and his belt, looking for anything that might be useful. On a carabiner attached to his belt loop, there was a ring of keys. She took it and pocketed it. In another pocket, she found her own knife, plus another, one that she recognized as a Buck 110.
Jessica left him there, and, picking the shotgun up from the ground, she went back to the Subaru to check on Rob.
He was awake, but he still seemed dazed. His hands were vaguely fumbling with his seatbelt.
“It’s a good thing the airbags didn’t go off,” said Jessica, surveying the situation. “You OK, Rob?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Rob, seeming a little more ‘with it’ now that Jessica addressed him directly again.
“Come on,” she said, using her bloody knife to slice through Rob’s seatbelt. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“The car?” said Rob.
“We’re leaving it here.”
“Leaving it here?”
“It doesn’t work. Remember? The power cut off as we were driving.”
“Oh, yeah...”
“Come on. We’ve got to go.”
Jessica had to actually grab Rob under his armpits and pull on him until he started to use his own muscles to actually get out of the seat.
She helped him pull himself upright, and he leaned against the side of the Subaru, swaying slightly. He gazed off towards the dead biker with the blood around him.
“Shit,” said Rob.
“Don’t worry about him. I took care of him. Come on.”
“What are we going to do with the car?”
“Leave it,” said Jessica. “We’re not going to be able to fix it.”
Jessica’s mind was rushing through the possibilities. Rob wasn’t really cognizant enough to discuss it with him. She had to figure it out herself, and simply tell him what they needed to do.
There was the possibility that they could fix the Subaru, even though Jessica didn’t know how to do it herself. And she guessed that repairing it was beyond the capabilities of even Jim, who was the handiest of all them.
It’d be a huge blow to lose the Subaru.
But at least it wasn’t loaded down with their gear, which was safely at the lake house.
They might be able to get another vehicle. After all, people would be dying off like flies in the coming days and weeks, leaving their vehicles behind them to be scavenged by people like Jessica.
Trying to hang onto the Subaru meant hiding it somewhere on the side of the road. Or just leaving it in the road.
Hiding it meant expending a lot of energy and time. Energy that they didn’t have. Rob was in a daze. And she wasn’t doing much better. Her head ached and her muscles were burning from struggling against the cords that had bound her.
It was better to just leave the Subaru there.
“Come on,” said Jessica. “Help me get this bike upright. Maybe there’s a chance we can start it.”
She was surveying the motorcycle, and it didn’t look promising. She doubted it would run.
But it didn’t hurt to try.
“What’s that?” said Rob.
“Did you hit your head or something?”
“I think so. The crash or something.”
“Great, now we’ve both been hit in the head. Let’s hope you snap out of it soon.”
22
Aly
“Jordan! Come on. Wake up!”
She was screaming into his ear. She was shaking him as best she could.
But his eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow. He wasn’t dead, but he was dead to the world. And dead to the flames that had already overtaken the living room.
She couldn’t believe how fast the flames had spread. The room had lit up like a pile of tinder.
She knew she was going to have to m
ake a decision. And she knew that time was running out.
Jordan wasn’t waking up. Not anytime soon.
Aly could feel the intense heat of the flames. If Jordan could sleep through the heat and the growing roar of the flames, he’d sleep through any attempt of hers to wake him from his drunken slumber.
Aly wasn’t about to let herself get burned alive. In just a few seconds, she’d have to decide whether to leave Jordan there to be burned alive, or to try to drag him out through the flames. If she tried to save him, she’d be risking her own life. After all, her own ability to save herself was already severely diminished by her injuries.
Well, she’d test it out first. See how hard it was to drag him.
She seized him under the armpits and started to pull. She pulled as hard as she could.
It wasn’t any good. He moved about an inch, his body sliding just a little against the wall.
The flames were closer. It felt like they were closing in around her.
She needed to get out of there.
It was one of the most difficult decisions she’d ever made, but there were no tears in her eyes when she let go of her uncle and turned her back to his unconscious body, ready to face the flames herself, ready to escape with her own life intact.
The smoke was filling the room now, plumes and clouds of dense gray stuff that she could barely see through.
Aly’s mind didn’t dwell on her uncle. Instead, now that she directly faced the flames, her body kicked into survival mode. Her body was flooded with adrenaline.
She barely remembered that she was injured. She pushed her way through the flames, coughing intensely, trying to ignore the intense heat that her body was desperately telling her to avoid.
She knew that she needed to get out quickly. The smoke was too thick now.
She had to keep pushing. She had to ignore the coughing. Her lungs were burning. The air was intensely hot. She felt like she couldn’t breathe at all.
She couldn’t see. The air was nothing but red and gray. Nothing but smoke and flames. But she kept going.
It felt like an eternity, but finally, her hands found the door.
The door handle was as hot as a burning coal. But she had no choice. She grasped it and turned it, yelling involuntarily in pain as she did so.
She was halfway out the door when she took one last look inside, thinking, hope against hope, that her uncle was somehow behind her.
But he wasn’t. She could see nothing but the smoke and the flames.
That last look only took a second. But it felt like a long time. But he wasn’t. She could see nothing but the smoke and the flames.
She burst into the fresh open air, doubling over as she coughed instinctively.
Aly saw stars as she started to vomit, the entire contents of her stomach coming up and spewing onto the ground. And she kept coughing.
She felt weak, and the burning in her lungs wouldn’t let up.
She was a safe distance from the house now, and she collapsed to the ground. She simply lay there on her side, gasping for breath, too weak to move or stand up.
She was gazing back at the house, which was quickly becoming engulfed in flames.
Those flames were engulfing not just her uncle, but all of their possessions. All that food. All those supplies. Everything that they’d worked so hard to obtain and hang on to.
It wasn’t just terrible. It might mean the line between life and death.
And then she remembered the stolen supplies. If they were recovered, maybe there was still a chance.
Her thoughts turned to her husband. She felt a yearning for him, a longing, an intense hope that he was safe and alive, ready to return soon.
From behind her, she heard a sound. The low rumbling of an engine. But not a car engine. Something bigger.
Struggling, she flopped herself over so that she could face the driveway and the road.
There were just a couple trees in between her and the road. She was basically out in the open.
Her hand instinctively dug into her pocket, trying to find her pocketknife. But it wasn’t there. Maybe it’d been on the bedside table. Or maybe it’d fallen out of her pocket. She didn’t know.
The vehicle was a familiar one. It was a single, large RV. Maybe one of the ones that had driven by earlier. Maybe not. But chances were that it was.
What did they want? Had they seen the smoke rising to the sky from across the lake? Had they come to help or to take advantage of those in distress?
Whatever they wanted, Aly didn’t want to deal with them. On a day like today, at a time like this, strangers didn’t mean good news. Everyone was a potential threat.
The RV pulled partly into the driveway and crawled to a stop.
Aly waited. She wanted to run. She wanted to hide. She wanted to do anything but be there, simply waiting.
But she couldn’t. Getting out of the house had taken everything out of her.
With the house burning behind her, she watched as the door opened, and two people stepped out and onto the driveway. They pointed to the house and then began scanning the surrounding area. It didn’t take them long to spot Aly. They pointed to her, and then began walking towards her.
“Shit,” muttered Aly, clutching the knife tighter.
“Hello there!” called out the man, speaking in a jovial way that somehow seemed completely fake. He stopped near her. A woman about his age stood next to him. “Now what do we have here?” He leaned forward, as if to get a better look at Aly.
“Looks like we’re going to have some fun after all,” said the woman, chuckling to herself.
“I told you not to give up hope. When there’s disaster, there’s hedonism.”
Hedonism? What were they talking about? They seemed like strange people. Very strange. They gave off a weird vibe, and something looked strange about their eyes, as if their pupils were somehow too small.
“Don’t come any closer,” shouted Aly, using all her energy to raise the knife, brandishing it towards them.
“There’s no need for that,” laughed the man. “Come on. We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Not yet, at least,” said the woman, smiling wildly. “But plenty of people find that they enjoy BDSM. I know I do.”
“We practice a variation,” said the man. “It’s more painful.”
“And more dangerous.”
“But a lot more fun.”
“For us, at least.”
They approached her together, taking steps towards her.
Aly was simply too weak. As they got closer, she was overtaken with a coughing fit. Her lungs still burned.
She wasn’t even able to swing the knife before strong arms seized her arm and held it in place. Before she knew it, the knife was wrenched from her hands as the man and woman laughed.
They kept laughing all the way back to the RV. They carried her, and she was too tired to do much more than kick a single time at one of them. But it was a weak blow and it merely glanced off the man’s side, making him laugh all the harder.
“It’s more fun when they fight back a little, isn’t it?” he said.
“That’s right. Now get the rope.”
“I think it’s behind the driver’s seat.”
“No, don’t you remember? It’s hanging up by the bathroom.”
“I’ll get it.”
“Get me my pills, while you’re at it.”
“You’ve had enough.”
“I didn’t know we were rationing now? I thought we were going out in style.”
“Fine, I’ll get them.”
Aly was overtaken again by a coughing fit as the woman held her down on the floor of the RV. The man tied ropes tightly around her.
Her face was pressed against the floor. She heard the RV engine start, and felt the RV back up.
She hoped someone would find her. Though maybe it was too much to hope for.
23
Jim
Jim was more than exhausted, but as he neared
the lake house and saw the plumes of gray smoke in the sky, he quickened his pace.
He didn’t know how long he’d been walking for, or for how long he’d been away for. He still had his watch, but to his tired brain, the hands on the dial didn’t seem to mean anything. What’s more, he had no idea what time he’d left.
He only knew that he’d been away for a long time. Long enough, apparently, for something serious to happen.
His view of the house was, for a good while, obscured by the trees. But as he got closer, he saw more of the smoke. And he could smell it.
Something was burning. Something big.
And that something, whatever it was, was right where the lake house was.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what was burning.
Jim thought of his wife. He quickened his pace, breaking into a run.
His muscles burned as he ran, and he felt like he was gasping for air, but he kept going.
When he finally came around a group of trees, he saw the house. He saw the flames, rising high.
It was immediately clear there was no saving the house. It was an inferno, burning hot and wild. There’d be no entering that house without dying.
Jim’s eyes immediately began scanning the yard and the surrounding area, hoping to see someone, hoping to see Aly.
But there was no one.
Jim didn’t let himself panic. That’d only make him less effective. He focused on his breathing, keeping it as calm and steady as he could in his state.
And there it was. A sound. Beyond the roar of the fire, he heard it. It was an engine. Rumbling and low. But not that far off.
Jim didn’t waste any time. He sprinted as fast as his exhausted body would allow down to the driveway. By the time he reached the road, he was panting and out of breath.
But it was worth it. Down the road, he could see it.
The RV.
It was far enough away that it looked small. He couldn’t make out the markings, but the size and shape of it looked just like the RV he’d seen earlier.
The RV was too far away to get a shot off. He’d miss by a mile.
Final Panic: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 2) Page 12