Preppers of the Apocalypse - Part 2: Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival (5 page)

Chapter 7

Ash
moved away from the window so that the strangers couldn’t see him. Before he
did, he saw that they were two men and a woman. One of the men had a rifle, and
the other two people held pistols. Their car was an old Volkswagen Bug with mud
splattered down the side. These were the only kinds of vehicles that they were
going to see from now on, he realised. The only good car these days was one
without any electronics on board, and that meant that every single shiny car on
the road was now a useless pile of crap.

For
a second he thought about the future. How far was this going to go? Was there
going to come a point where everyone started using horses again? He didn’t even
know if the government was doing anything to get the power up and running. Back
at the ranch, Tony Shore had told him that even if they still had the
capability to get the grids back online, it would be at least five years before
they saw any progress. In that time, disaster writers had predicted that ninety
percent of the country would die. It gave Ash a chill down his spine to think
about it.

“We
need to get to Ellie,” said Chad.

Ash
snapped out of his thoughts. He remembered the brigands in the Lantern range
who had demanded a toll, and he knew that until proven otherwise, they were
going to have to treat the strangers as hostile. That meant they needed to be
ready for anything. They had to be ready to kill, if it came to that.

“We
left the guns on the kitchen table,” he said.

“Let’s
go down, but don’t make too much noise.”

They
got into the kitchen, where Ellie stood above a stove. On top of it was a pan,
in which baked beans and sausages bubbled away. Ash was so hungry that the
smell almost made him pass out. Ellie dipped a spoon in the pan, lifted it out
and tasted the beans. Ash wanted to rush over and grab the spoon off her.

“What’s
wrong guys?” she said, with the spoon in front of her mouth.

The
front door of the log cabin opened. Ellie put the spoon on the table and
reached into her pocket for her pistol. Chad picked up his own gun from the
table, and then raised his finger to his lips for them all to be quiet. Ash
grabbed his crossbow and made sure that it was cocked. He nodded at Chad, and
then pointed at the wall next to the door. He wanted him to stand there so that
they could catch the strangers by surprise when they entered the room.

“Keep
your fingers near your triggers,” he whispered. “We’ll try to reason with them,
but you might have to shoot.”

His
heart was pounding in his chest, and he wondered if he really had it in him to
kill a man again. He’d killed a mountain lion a few days earlier, but that
seemed different, somehow. Talking an animal’s life wasn’t the same as taking a
man’s.

A
door opened behind them. Ash hadn’t even realised that there was another door
in the kitchen, and by the time he span round, a man stood in the entrance with
a rifle pointed at Ash’s head.

“Drop
it, chief,” he growled.

The
man had a handlebar moustache that was greased at the tips. His forehead was
covered in worry lines, and his skin looked so tough that it could have been
mistaken for tanned leather. He wore a thick wool coat with a fur hood, and
over it he had a thin plastic waterproof cagoule. His khaki trousers were
covered in mud, and there was a small splatter of blood on his black boots. Ash
was quite a tall guy at six foot two, but this man towered over him in height
and dwarfed him in size. He was like a bear dressed in human clothes.

The
man shifted the rifle in his hands, but he never moved his aim away from Ash.
There were footsteps in the door behind them, and Ash knew that the other two
strangers had stepped into the room.

“I
suggest you don’t move an inch,” said the man.

Two
other two strangers walked in with their guns raised. One of them, the woman,
checked the side of the door and spotted Chad immediately. It was as if she was
used to checking for hiding places and traps.

“Put
your guns down,” said the woman.

Her
face was dirty, but it was obvious how attractive she was. Despite that, she
had a mean look on her face, and Ash got the sense that she’d happily shoot the
three of them if it came down to it. He wondered what these three strangers had
seen in the last couple of weeks to make them so hardened.

The
Bear man spoke.

“I
want you to slowly put your weapons on the table,” he said.

Ash
shook his head. He held the crossbow at waist height. He couldn’t risk moving
it up to eye level to take proper aim, but if it fired, it would still stick in
the Bear’s chest.

“No
way. We don’t know who the hell you are. You think that we’d disarm ourselves?”

“It’s
either that or I put a bullet in your thick skull.”

“Let’s
all calm down,” said the third stranger.

He
was a much smaller and thinner man than his friend. He had a rough beard that
was thick and black on his cheeks, but around his mouth it thinned out and
became grey. His hands looked soft, and his skin was pale. In contrast to his
bigger friend, he didn’t seem like he’d had a tough life.

The
Bear gave his friend a scowl.

“We
can’t have strangers coming into our house and stealing our shit.”

Chad
sprang away from the wall.

“This
is my uncle’s house,” he said.

The
woman followed him with her gun, one eye squinting through the sights. Chad
relaxed a little and leaned back against the wall, but Ash could tell from his
face that he wasn’t happy.

“Listen,”
said Ash. “We’re not here to steal. Or to get into a fight, for that matter.
This house used to belong to Chad’s uncle and aunt.”

“Well
it doesn’t anymore,” said the Bear.

“I
realise that. So we’re just gonna be on our way.”

The
woman let out a guffaw of laughter at this, and her eyes lit with amusement.

“Go?
Go where? You sure as hell don’t want to go to the city, I’ll tell you that for
free.”

“What’s
going on in the city?” said Ellie.

“You
name it, sister. Fires breaking out. A group of idiots torched a school. The
roof caved in and everything turned to ash. Some teenagers set fire to a pet
shop and watched the animals burn. The EMP was a blessing for arsonists.”

“What
about the police?” said Ash.

This
time the Bear spoke.

“A
few of them kept their uniforms, for the first few days at least. But after the
John Richmond Library riot, the rest of them went back to their families and
focussed on themselves.”

Ash
had been to the John Richmond library plenty of times. He’d spent nights in
there during college, usually to finish all his last minute cramming before a
big test. Sometimes, he used to wake up to find the place deserted and pitch
black, and he’d realise that he’d fallen asleep with his head in a copy of Modern
Business Leadership.

“I
can’t imagine a riot in a library,” said Chad.

“A
guy broke in to steal a copy of a book,” said the woman. “Apparently he was a
collector, and this book was hundreds of years old and they kept it behind a
locked cabinet. A security guard saw him and tried to subdue him, but the guy
freaked out and got violent. They struggled some, and the security guard died.”

“It
was pretty scary,” said the smaller man. “Things escalated from there. People
were tearing the library to shreds. And when they were finished there, they
started on other buildings in the area. Before long the police were running for
cover.”

Ash
had already decided that they were going to have to avoid the city. It wasn’t
safe to walk through such a busy area, especially not if it was full of
violent, frustrated survivors who were taking out their anger at the loss of
power on the city around them.

“Okay
guys,” he said. “We’re going to go. Thanks for the update, and we’re sorry to
have bothered you.”

“I’m
not sorry,” said Chad. “This was my uncle and aunts house.”

“So
where are they now? Seems to me, they left. And it’s finders keepers,” said the
Bear.

“Fuck
you,” said Chad.

The
Bear swung his rifle and pointed it at Chad now. His facial features were
screwed up, and a vein on his temple twitched. Ash could tell that this was a
man who got angry easily, and it was plain to see how this was going to go
down.

While
the Bear and the smaller man pointed their guns at Chad, and the woman directed
hers at Ellie, Ash realised he wasn’t being watched. Too quickly for anyone to
react, he reached across and grabbed Ellie’s pistol from the table.

The
Bear turned to look at him, and Ash saw his finger sliding along the trigger.
He realised that the time for threats was gone, and that the Bear was really
going to shoot him now. Ash didn’t want to do it, but he knew that he had to
act first. He raised the gun, aimed at the Bear’s large head and pulled the
trigger.

The
smell of gunpowder filled the room, and Ash’s ears rang from the blast. The
Bear slumped to the floor, his pierced head smashing against the bottom of the
sink cupboard. A piece of his skull was missing, and blood dripped down his
face.

The
woman turned toward Ash now, but before she could aim at him, Ellie grabbed her.
The woman pushed Ellie away. The sheriff tried to balance, but she put too much
weight on her injured ankle and screamed out in pain. Just as the woman fired
her rifle at Ellie, the sheriff fell to the floor and the bullet just missed
her.

Chad
sprang away from the wall now. He gave a cry that sounded almost savage, and he
threw a punch at the smaller man. The small guy was no fighter, and certainly
wasn’t a match for a physically fit, well-trained army recruit. With two
well-placed punches, Chad had knocked him to the floor.

Ash
swung his gun and aimed it at the woman’s head now. He saw that she was moving
her weapon to fire at Ellie. Ash didn’t think he could face killing someone
else.

“Hold
it,” he said.

The
woman looked at him, but kept her rifle pointed at Ellie. The aroma of
gunpowder was so strong that it was the only thing Ash could smell, and a
screeching sound rang through Ash’s ears from the gunshots. Across the room,
the Bear’s blood leaked from his skull and formed a thick puddle on the kitchen
floor.

“Now
just think about this,” said Ash to the woman. “You’re outnumbered. The big guy
is dead, and the other one doesn’t look like much of a fighter. Now, you seem
pretty mean to me, but you also look clever. Work out your odds, and think
about what you wanna do next. Do you want to walk away from this?”

The
woman paused and thought about it. She started to lower the rifle, and Ash felt
relief flow through him. He was glad to be able to walk away without any more
blood being shed. He felt worn away, empty, and the only thing keeping him
upright was the adrenaline shooting through his veins.

Then
the woman lifted her rifle up and pointed at Ellie. She turned her head to face
Ash.

“Screw
you,” she said.

Before
the woman could fire, Ash pulled the trigger of his pistol and blew a hole
through her back. The woman’s mouth opened and she let out a raspy sound,
before falling face first into the floor. There was a sickening crack as her
nose smashed on the laminate flooring.

Ash
took sharp, panting breaths. He wanted to let go of the gun, but it felt like
it was glued to his hand. The smaller man was on the floor now. He looked up at
Chad, and then at Ash, and there was fear in his eyes. He was like an animal
cornered by three predators and it flooded Ash with so much pity that he wanted
to be sick. How had it come to this?