by Ryan Casey
The Last Fight
Surviving the EMP, Book Three
Ryan Casey
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
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Chapter One
Benny looked at the farm in the distance and he knew it was time.
The night was dark. Sounded obvious, but that’s how it always was these days. No light pollution, no matter where you were. It was hard to get used to at first. In the first couple of days, it was really quite beautiful, seeing the stars as they were meant to be seen for the very first time.
But now, it was suffocating. Harrowing.
But it also offered protection.
Protection was what he needed in what he knew was ahead.
The wind was cool. The cool air was refreshing, especially after the heat in the days recently. It hadn’t been a normal spring by any stretch of the imagination. Since the power went out, it felt like the temperature had risen another ten, twenty Celsius at least.
But in spite of the coolness of night, Benny still felt grubby. There were no refreshing showers anymore. He remembered the days before, when no matter how hard a day he’d had at the building site, no matter how much of a mess he was in, he could always rely on a shower to wash away the sins of the day.
Now that was gone. Sure, they could use a little cold water. Washing was important, after all. Hygiene was something they had to take seriously. Couldn’t go risking spreading disease in a world where there was no help for the diseased.
But he longed for the luxury of a shower.
But more important than hygiene or anything like that right now were the cows he was staring at.
The farm was filled with life. Cows. Chickens. Sheep. All kinds of invaluable sources of meat and dairy.
And the value those things would have, too. Livestock was worth a lot in this world. The kind of supplies Benny could buy with them; the things he could reinvest them in.
Money was irrelevant now. It might only be a month since the power went out, since the blackout stretched across the country, but it was amusing to believe that people used to have such faith in something as flimsy as a plastic card. Or imaginary digits on their mobile phone screens.
Value itself had real meaning once again.
It wasn’t just an abstraction anymore.
Benny looked over his shoulder at the darkness behind him. His camp was out there. His people. Eight of them, a small group, but a good working unit. Methodical. All of them had lost someone. All of them were stranded, and had only got to know each other since the collapse.
But they were a good team.
It was just a shame their team was falling apart.
Their hunting operations had been a mixed bag. Benny had tried trapping squirrels and rabbits a few times, to varying degrees of success.
But for every adrenaline rush of a small victory, there was the realisation that they needed more. A squirrel didn’t go a long way to satisfy eight people when it was split between them.
They needed something more substantial. Something bigger.
They needed what Benny was staring at right in front of him.
Livestock.
He looked around. Saw the trees to his left. The farmhouse to his right, quiet and still. He could hear the animals inside the barns stirring, but not enough that it would disturb the owners of this place.
At least he’d hoped.
He’d tried to watch from a distance a few times. He’d seen a man inside the grounds, holding a shotgun. Sometimes, Benny wondered if this man had actually seen him, and was just waiting for the right moment for Benny to walk right into his trap.
But he was here alone. He was here under cover of darkness.
He had to use that darkness and solitude to his advantage.
He climbed over the fence and walked towards the farm.
The cows stirred a little more the closer he got. He had to slow down; to avoid getting ahead of himself. He only needed three. Well, two, in a sense. A male and a female. From that point on, they could work towards building something of their own. Breeding.
But they needed food, too. They needed something they could eat immediately, And as much as he would like to steal loads of cows right now, he knew he couldn’t risk things too much. Just one would suffice.
Three were all he needed.
And then they just had to wait.
Or at least, hope.
If the breeding failed… at least they had something of value to trade with.
At least they had something to cook.
More than they had right now.
He walked closer towards that barn. Got right in front of it.
And when he reached it, he smiled.
Three of the cows were right up to the gate.
Looking right at him, curious.
Benny reached out and stroked the first cow on the nose. It moved itself away initially, then inched towards him, licking his hand with its sandpaper-like tongue.
Benny smiled. It reminded him of when he was younger. Walks in the countryside with his grandfather. All those days where his grandfather would try to get him used to the cows, to stop him being afraid of them.
It all worked well until they were surrounded by the cows one day.
But even then, even through all his fear, all the cows had done was lick his face with those rough tongues.
And all he could do was sit and wait until they eventually got bored and walked away.
He smiled even more at the memory of simpler times.
Then he reached for the gate.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go find you a new home.”
He went to unlatch the gate when he became intensely aware of a presence close by.
He looked to the left.
The hairs on his arms stood on end.
There was a man standing there in the darkness. Benn
y couldn’t see his face.
Just that he was holding a shotgun.
The man didn’t say anything. He just stood there.
Benny knew who he was right away.
He almost wanted the man to say something. To give Benny an opportunity to argue his case. To explain why he was doing what he was doing. Because this man had a lot of livestock, and Benny had seven other people to look after.
He could explain. He could—
The man lifted his shotgun.
Benny’s entire body tensed.
“I—”
The man didn’t even hesitate.
He didn’t ask any questions.
He pulled that trigger.
Benny felt a shredding pain tear through his stomach.
His hands darted down to his waist immediately, instinctively.
When he looked down at his hands, he realised they were covered in blood and what looked like uncooked meat.
Fear and nausea built inside him. His knees shook. He tried to stay on his feet, but he tumbled to the ground below. Tears poured down his cheeks.
Footsteps approached him.
He looked up, shakily. The taste of blood in his mouth. The inevitability of his fate sinking in, even if he was still in shock.
The man with the shotgun was standing right over him.
He was pointing that shotgun at Benny’s head.
Benny’s fear grew. The tears flowed. “P—please,” he said. “I just wanted… for my friends… for my—”
“You’re on my land,” the man said. “You’re stealing from me.”
“I can expl—”
“No,” the man said. “You can’t.”
He lifted the shotgun.
Benny closed his eyes tight.
And then he heard another blast.
Then, nothing.
Jack stood over the man on the ground, shotgun in hand.
The animals were stirring. Footsteps echoed around the farmhouse. A clang radiated from the tractor nearby, which a shell had bounced off.
He looked at the bloodied remains of the man’s face and tried to forget that look of pure fear in his eyes.
He lowered the shotgun.
Turned around to the farmhouse.
He’d done the right thing.
He’d defended his home.
And he’d keep on defending his home. No matter what it took.
Chapter Two
Jack looked out over the open fields and felt a smile cross his face.
It was another beautiful day. He was growing used to them at this point. It had got to the stage where he was praying for a downpour of rain to water the crops.
But for the most part, he couldn’t complain, as he looked out at the cows in the field; as he listened to the chickens clucking in their pen after Jack and the others had enjoyed another breakfast of their fresh, delicious eggs. Life wasn’t far from how he’d envisaged it before the power went out, strangely enough.
It’d only taken an EMP-sparked disaster to send things this way.
He took a deep breath of the fresh morning air. A month had passed since the power had gone out; since communications were fried, transport destroyed, order toppled. The first few days were difficult. He’d headed back up to his hand-built home on the edge of the woods, only to see it fall in wildfire within hours. It was then that he’d made a difficult decision to go in search of his long-estranged son, Wayne, and his wife, Hazel.
He’d found Hazel. He’d taken to the road in order to try and find Wayne.
Only he hadn’t exactly found his son. He’d inherited a farm, and spent the last month or so trying to run it and its many intricacies. They had a few working tractors, which obviously hadn’t fallen victim to the electromagnetic pulse. They had livestock. They had acres of land. They had everything they needed to live a self-sufficient life.
Only then something had happened. Three weeks ago, in fact.
Wayne had arrived at his doorstep.
Alongside him, a girl called Bella, and a cat called Mrs Fuzzles.
Yeah. Mrs-frigging-Fuzzles.
“Jack?”
Jack turned around.
Wayne was looking at him.
Jack had mixed feelings about the way his son addressed him. He hadn’t called him “Dad” once. And he always looked at him with disdain in his eyes. Every time Jack tried to broach the subject of the past, Wayne disappeared. He didn’t want to speak with him. He wanted as little to do with him as possible.
And Jack couldn’t exactly force things.
“We need to talk,” Wayne said, a deepness to his voice that Jack was still getting used to. He remembered Wayne with a little high voice. His son wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man. That was hard to adjust to.
He pushed open the door to the farmhouse and gestured for Jack to join him inside.
Jack nodded.
And then he walked inside the farmhouse with Wayne.
The farmhouse was nice. They hadn’t really had much of a chance to put their own stamp on it, and there wasn’t really much reason to, either. It was bright and airy. They had a portable stove set up outside, which they could cook and heat water over. There were working tractors, greenhouses, tons of crops. There was access to manure and chemicals. And they’d even discovered Farmer Stan was self-sufficient when it came to gathering rainwater. He had a series of steel water tanks installed. There was a good rainwater collection system set up: the roof directed water to the gutters, and then moved on to the steel water tanks. The water there was suitable for drinking, cooking, anything.
Really, this place was good. Farmer Stan knew what he was doing when it came to self-sufficiency. They had everything they needed here, and it would be foolish to try and change much.
But when Jack saw Hazel and Bella sitting at the table, Villain wagging his tail by their side, that look of scepticism on their faces… he knew questions were coming.
A chair was pulled out.
Wayne held a hand out. “Sit.”
Jack sat down, pulled himself under the table. “Something the matter?”
“One of the tractors is screwed,” Wayne said.
Jack narrowed his eyes. “I’m sure we can sort it—”
“The engine took a hit. A bullet. Or a shell.”
It took Jack a few seconds to realise where Wayne was going with this. “It must’ve… must’ve taken a hit in the crossfire.”
“Crossfire that was unnecessary,” Wayne said.
Jack sighed. “Wayne, I’ve spoken to you about this already. This place is precious. It needs defending. No matter what it takes.”
“You have spoken about this already,” Wayne said. “Only the more time goes on, the less it makes sense. The more reckless you get, the more unforgiving you get, the more it costs us all.”
“I was protecting us.”
“Protecting us? A guy sneaked in at night because he saw the lunatic running this place in the day and decided he didn’t want to take his chances at doing a deal.”
“You don’t know that’s true.”
“I know what I saw,” Wayne said. “You gunned a man down in cold blood. He was fearful. Begging for his life. You shot him down and you’ve compromised our own position in the process. It’s about time you looked your recklessness in the eyes and faced up to it.”
Jack looked at Wayne, into those spiteful eyes, and he wondered whether things would’ve been different if he hadn’t abandoned him. “I did what I thought was right.”
“You did what you thought was right for you,” Wayne said. “Because you don’t trust anyone. You won’t let anyone in. But that has to change. For all our sakes.”
Jack glanced up, over at Hazel. She wasn’t exactly a friend of Jack’s or an ally or anything like that, but she sometimes spoke in his favour where logic was concerned. Their relationship was a relic; something of the past. It was hardly fixed. But they were amicable, for the sake of each other and the sake of everyone. It was the best Jack could
hope for.
“I agree with Wayne,” she said.
Jack sighed. “We can’t let anyone else on board.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t know who to trust.”
“We can’t keep living like this,” Hazel said. “My husband’s gone. There’s no finding him. As much as I don’t want to give up on him… Pete’s a long way away. The country’s a big place, and there’s no way of knowing where he is. I’ve had to learn to give up. I’ve had to learn to trust, Jack. I’ve had to learn to trust you.
“My son here, he hadn’t seen you for years before he arrived here. So you think it’s easy for him too?
“And what about Bella? She had no one. Now she has to rely on all of us. What about her trust?”
Jack looked around the table at all these eyes staring back at him and he wanted to tell them to get lost. Because they were wrong. Trusting people was dangerous. It was a mistake. Even if it did work out in the short term, eventually power structures and new hierarchies would form and people would want to deal differently with things to one another. Before they knew it, everything would collapse, just like it had already, all over again.
He stood up. Took a deep breath.
“No more people,” he said.
Wayne’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Because I make the decisions here, and I frigging said so.”
He heard the venom to his own words. Saw Bella flinch, just slightly, when he spoke them.