BEYOND THE GRID BOX SET: The Complete Beyond The Grid series (book 1-4)

by Connor Mccoy

  Sheryl shook a little. She waited until she calmed down before continuing.

  “A mob was approaching the hospital. We were scared out of our wits. Doctor Rhodes said he knew what was coming and we had to flee. I almost didn’t. I thought, surely, we could calm everyone down. But my co-worker Missy practically dragged me out the building. A few of us left.” Sheryl swallowed hard. “I heard later on that the place was completely ransacked. Doctor Rhodes was killed. A lot of people I knew in there died.”

  “I’m sorry,” Domino said.

  Sheryl stirred her plate as she spoke. “I made it home. I thought maybe I could hide there until help arrived, but somehow, the lightbulb went on in my head that no help was coming. And if I stayed there, I probably was going to die.” She looked at Jacob with narrowed eyes. “You know that little survival pouch you sent me?”

  “Yeah, the one with the map with my homestead and the instructions for how to survive in a disaster scenario?” Jacob replied.

  “Yeah. Believe it or not, the thing came in handy. If I hadn’t had that map, I wouldn’t have made it here. I grabbed it, grabbed whatever was still good from my fridge and set out to your house.” Sheryl smiled crookedly. “Yeah, I was going to hike all the way to your place on foot.”

  Despite Sheryl’s smile, Jacob knew Sheryl was hiding a lot of pain. It would have taken days to make it to his homestead without a working vehicle. Sheryl had no training in outdoor survival. All Jacob could do was write down everything he knew could sustain her until she made it to his home.

  Sheryl took another bite before proceeding with her tale. “Everything afterward was pure hell. Just getting out of the city was a bitch. I was running, hiding, sticking to the shadows. One time I ducked inside a canal pipe, and I was praying the darn thing didn’t fill up with water while I was in there. There were mobs everywhere, people screaming, and buildings on fire…” She started coughing.

  “Excuse me. It took almost a day to get out of there. Even then I was in the outer suburbs. I still had to watch my back. I slept in a ditch. I was so scared that I didn’t try knocking on anyone’s door to ask for a place to sleep.”

  Sheryl was down to the last bite on her plate. She kept it there as she continued. “So, that was my life until now. It got a little easier once I got away from civilization, but I still would find these bands of people. I ran into the woods. If I hadn’t had Jacob’s instructions to find water and things to eat, I’d be dead by now.”

  The campsite kept silent as Sheryl stabbed the last piece of food with her folk. “When I smelled your cooking, I thought I was going mad. I couldn’t believe I found someone cooking an honest to God meal. I certainly didn’t think it was my little brother!” With a laugh, she ate the last morsel.

  “Thank God we made it out here when we did,” Domino said.

  Jacob scratched the back of his head. “Sheryl, my house is only a couple of hours walk from here. I know you’ve been through a lot, but if you were following my map…”

  “I lost it when I ran into the woods,” Sheryl chimed in.

  “Okay, but you’ve been down Road 215, right? I just thought you would have seen my house if you were coming from the direction of the city,” Jacob said.

  “I did find your house.” Sheryl set the plate down. “Jacob, someone beat me there.”

  “What?” Jacob stood up.

  “I didn’t go to your house because someone else is already there,” Sheryl finished.

  Jacob clenched his teeth. He wanted to close his ears and not listen to what his sister was saying. Yet, all the same, he had to know what was going on with his house.

  “I knew they weren’t you or Domino or the kids.” Sheryl crossed her legs. “I didn’t dare go any farther. I just turned and ran back into the woods before they saw me. I was so terrified that I didn’t check to see if they were friendly or what.”

  “You did the smart thing,” Jacob said. “We’re in the same boat. We had to spend the night locked up in my truck because there were men outside scavenging the stalled cars from the road.”

  Sheryl chuckled. “That sounds just like you, Jacob.” Her smile quickly vanished. “Though, I wish to God you had been wrong all along.” She turned so that Domino was in her field of vision. She sounded both relieved and accusatory at once, as if the world had fallen to pieces precisely because they believed it might.

  Jacob let it pass. His sister had experienced horrors that he couldn’t have imagined. She would have a lot to adjust to.

  “How many people did you see in the house?” Jacob asked.

  Sheryl rubbed her chin. “I know I saw two. One of them was a man. There might have been a woman with him.”

  “Another family?” Domino asked.

  “I didn’t see any kids,” Sheryl said quickly.

  “Maybe, but the kids easily could have been inside and out of view.” Jacob paced in a tight circle. “In any case, I knew we were going to have to scope out the house before we walked up to the front door. Now we know someone else is in there. We’re going to have to recon these guys. If they are just regular people looking for a place to stay and eat, we might work something out with them.”

  Domino’s hand dropped down to her belt, her fingers grazing her gun. “For their sake, I hope they are friendly.”

  Chapter Six

  Jacob, nestled near the oak tree, stayed quiet. He was eager to see how Sheryl was interacting with her niece. She had taken off Jubilee’s bandage and was now examining the wound on Jubilee’s arm.

  She shook her head. “God, I only can imagine how it felt when it hit you. Are you still in any pain? How does it feel now?”

  “It aches, but not a lot. It was really bad a few days ago, but it’s been getting better. I sometimes forget about it,” Jubilee said.

  The wound still was stitched up, but it had healed so much in the past few days that it might be time to remove the stitches. Jacob remembered Doc Sam’s surgery on Jubilee’s arm. The memory of the dark red blood oozing from the wound as he pushed the arrowhead’s stump out of her arm sickened him. The doctor had worked calmly, removing the arrowhead, cleaning the wound, and closing it up with stitches. Jacob wondered how Sheryl would judge the work.

  “Skin’s looking healthy. No green area, no sign of deterioration or infection.” Sheryl’s assessment warmed Jacob. Jubilee’s arm did look a lot better, with only light red and pink surrounding the stitched area.

  Sheryl’s expression quickly darkened. “I can’t believe this happened to you. My God, who would do something like this? I know it was a horrible accident, but I just never have heard of people getting hurt this way.”

  Jubilee’s lips formed a crooked smile. “My dad calls them ‘redneck dumbasses.’”

  “Really?” Sheryl glanced over at Jacob. “You run into those guys a lot?”

  “Not really. We run into Alex Cowell a lot more, before the pulse hit us,” Jubilee replied.

  “That social worker who keeps trying to rope me in for an interview?” Sheryl frowned again. “Has he been bothering you that much?”

  “He did. But he fled to Crossing Point, so we’re done with him.” Crawling a little closer to Sheryl, she added in a whisper, “But don’t talk about him around Mom because she’ll get pissed.”

  Sheryl aimed a look at Domino. Seated on the other side of the campfire, she was checking her spare gun magazines.

  “I hear you,” Sheryl said.

  Jacob, seated near the oak tree, addressed everyone. “I think we’re good to sleep for the night. I don’t want us setting off for home in the dark. It’s only a couple of hours away. So, we could cross that distance easily in the early morning hours and still have time to do some recon before the dawn is over.”

  As Jacob spoke, Brandon was sketching a rough diagram of the house in the dirt with a stick. He had formed small squares to represent each window from front to back.

  Sheryl piped up, a bit nervously, as if she was out of her element. “What is recon
? I mean, that’s basically just checking out the house, right?”

  “Sure,” Jacob said. “It’s nothing complicated. We’re just going to figure out how many people are actually at the house. You said you saw a man and a woman. If that’s all, we probably could confront them and get them to leave without a lot of trouble, but we also have to see if they’re carrying weapons. That changes things. If they’re a couple of armed bandits, they’d probably sooner shoot us than talk with us.”

  Jacob scooted closer to Brandon. “So, one of the first things we’re going to do is get close enough to the house without being seen so we can check inside the windows. A lot of them do have blinds, so if they’re closed, we may have a problem. But my guess is that whoever’s there may want to open the windows to let fresh air through. Remember, we don’t have air conditioning anymore, so sealing up a house is going to be pretty uncomfortable. I’m sure they’re going to have windows open, maybe even the back door.”

  Jacob scrawled a stick figure inside one of the back windows. “And so,” he continued, “we’re going to see who we can see. Unless they’re trying to hide, to keep away from windows, I think we’re going to get a full count of who’s staying there.”

  Jacob next sketched a stick figure outside the house. “We’re also going to get a look at traffic. Who’s going in, and who’s going out. If we can catch them outside, we might be able to go around, get into the house and cut them off. If they see us coming too early, they might barricade themselves inside.”

  Sheryl grimaced. “This sounds like it could get ugly.”

  “That’s why we need to figure out who we’re dealing with,” Jacob said. “If they have children, they might be people we can deal with. They won’t want to put their kids into a firefight any more than we would.”

  It wasn’t long before Jacob wrapped up their planning. He stole away some more time with Sheryl, who seemed eager to talk to him apart from Domino and the kids.

  “I was wondering how things have been,” Jacob said. “We haven’t really talked a lot in about a year.”

  “Two, actually,” Sheryl said.

  “Two?” Jacob’s eyes widened. “You sure?”

  “That’s when I told you that long story about the run-around my apartment landlord was giving me about my plumbing and also about my co-worker…”

  “Right, right.” Jacob shook his head. “I can’t believe it was that long ago. That’s when I told you about Jubilee wanting to be an MMA fighter. Did you ever get your apartment taken care of?”

  “Actually, I moved. I got my first house in the Westgate neighborhood.”

  “Really? Congratulations. I wish I knew. I would have whipped up a housewarming gift. I’m sure Domino would have loved to pitch in.”

  Sheryl grimaced a little. “Yeah. I guess I wasn’t chomping at the bit to give you the latest news of my life.” She sighed. “I even got a pair of birds, Lacie and Carrie. Had them for about a little over a year.”

  “Really? Can I see pictures of them?” Jacob winced. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget that things have changed.”

  “It’s fine. I lost my phone getting here anyway. It doesn’t matter. It’s fried, worthless, all my pictures are gone.”

  Jacob tried to think of what else he knew about Sheryl’s life in the city beyond her profession. “What about that guy, Parker?”

  “Yeah, Parker. Oh, I dumped his ass.” Sheryl threw her head back and giggled. “I was talking to somebody else, a paralegal. His name’s Tyler. Nice guy, but a little fidgety when it comes to talking about taking long trips. I think he’s a little phobic about going overseas.” Sheryl looked off with a bit of wistfulness. “We were going to see a performance of Cats at the Saenger Theater. We pre-ordered the tickets and were going in a cab.”

  “Sounds like you didn’t make it. What happened?”

  Sheryl’s voice turned bitter. “Someone pulled the doggone plug on the entire world. We ordered the tickets the night before it all went to hell. I have no idea what happened to Tyler. The last thing I saw was his law firm on fire as I was running for my life down Arthur Road.”

  Jacob’s lips went dry. “I’m sorry.”

  Sheryl’s bitterness remained in her tone. “Yeah, everything was going great, and now it’s gone. I bet almost everyone I knew back in Chantilly is dead. And if they’re not, they will be.” She smirked. “I bet you’re glad you didn’t follow me to college. You’d be in the same boat as me now, wouldn’t you?”

  “But if I was there with you, I could have helped you escape the city.”

  Sheryl jabbed her finger into the woods. “But you wouldn’t have your home. Sure, somebody’s stolen it, but you still can get it back. You still can live there. You still have your life. What the hell do I have?”

  “Sheryl, you can live with us,” Jacob said quickly, “My door’s always open to you.”

  Sheryl chuckled. “Amazing. All this time I thought I could give you a home in the city and now…” She threw up her hands. “Turns out I was the crazy one all along.”

  “Believe me, I wish I was still the nutty homesteader out in the wild. I wish none of this had happened, that you didn’t have to suffer through this, and that so many people didn’t have to die…” His voice trailed off. “I wish I could make it right for you.”

  The two siblings fell quiet. Finally, Sheryl asked to break it off until tomorrow, as she wanted finally to get a peaceful night’s sleep. Jacob agreed and provided her some covers so she could sleep peacefully.

  Jacob greeted the sight of his home with both joy and fury. Joy that he finally had made it back here after all the turmoil and terror of the past week, but fury that his home was occupied by interlopers. It was like he had journeyed all this way only to run into a solid brick wall.

  He and his family had traversed the woods to the fence that separated his property from the surrounding land. He had picked a place where vines grew along the fence and a large tree overshadowed the barrier. This provided a good place to take watch over the back of the house without being seen.

  In addition to Jacob, Brandon, Jubilee and Domino all held their own binoculars or telescopes. “Let’s have a look at home, shall we?” Jacob asked as he raised his binoculars to his eyes.

  Except for the movement of livestock and the swaying of the crops with the wind, the back fields of the Avery residence remained still. A few minutes of observation found no signs of the interlopers.

  “Let’s go around to the side.” Jacob pointed to the line of trees slightly apart from the fence. “But stick to cover. We might be far enough away from the house, but I don’t want to take chances.”

  Jacob led them through the trees until he found a good vantage point to observe the side of the house. He insisted they climb down on their bellies to look at the house, since the land was pretty open between the house and this part of the fence. The shadow of the nearby trees should keep them concealed.

  “I hope they’re early risers or this could take all day,” Domino said.

  Domino got her wish in a hurry. A tall, lanky man with a light brown complexion wandered past one of the side windows. Jacob drank in every detail, but what he really wanted was a read into the man’s soul. Was he a desperate man seeking shelter, or a thief? Jacob had confirmed part of Sheryl’s account, but so far nothing more.

  “We got one of them. He looks like he’s headed for the kitchen. Let’s move up to the front of the house.”

  A short time later, Jacob and his party had set up watch where they could view the scene inside the kitchen.

  “Ow!” Sheryl rubbed her right arm. “Sorry. This is just a little…”

  “Tight and prickly. I know,” Domino said with some sympathy.

  Unfortunately, the only place they could observe the kitchen was this spot nestled under a patch of very thick tree branches. The branches were small and prickly in places, forming a kind of thicket that covered much of the ground. Jacob and his family were forced to crawl under it to observe the
people in their house.

  “Just don’t move quickly,” Jacob said as he trained his binoculars on the house. Then he realized they now were close enough to his front driveway that he could put eyes on there as well.

  “Brandon, can you crawl to the right end and turn your scope out to the driveway?” he asked. “Just in case. I want to cover the front door at the same time.”

  “Roger.” Brandon crawled away from them until he reached the right spot to observe their front yard.

  “Well, I definitely see the lady Sheryl was talking about,” Domino said. “A little shorter than the man. I don’t see any weapons on her, but I can’t see past her waist. The sink’s in the way.”

  Jacob closely watched the man and the woman in the kitchen, but as the minutes passed, he still could not spot their weapons, if they carried any. The windows were not big enough to show off the entire kitchen.

  “No one else is joining them,” Domino said. “If they had kids, wouldn’t they join their parents for breakfast?”

  “Maybe they have a baby,” Sheryl said.

  Jacob’s face tightened. He hoped the interlopers hadn’t brought a child that young with them. That would make extricating the couple even harder.

  A faint rumble pricked Jacob’s ears. Was it about to rain? The sky was fairly cloudy, but hardly suggested an eminent downpour.

  Brandon’s voice exploded. “Hey! There’s a truck coming!”

  “A truck?” Domino turned her head.

  “Where?” Jubilee spun her head around and her cheek struck a branch. “Ow! Shit!”

  “Calm down!” From where Jacob laid, he could not see the road leading to his house. “Brandon, what does it look like?”

  “It’s a delivery truck, Dad. It says ‘Corbin Transportation Lines’ on it!”

  Jacob pulled his binoculars away. “Damn.” He started squirming back toward the opening of the thicket. “We’ve got to hurry, get to a place where we can watch the driveway.”