Preppers of the Apocalypse - Part 1: Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival (5 page)

Chapter 6

They
parked the jeep on the edge of town so that they didn’t attract too much
attention. Chad pulled his door handle, kicked open his door and leaped out. He
took a big stride and started doing warm-up lunges as though he were about to
go on a run. Ash looked at Tony. His forehead was covered in sweat.

“Can
you walk?”

“I
told you. I can hop.”

Ash
left the jeep and held out a hand out for Tony. The man didn’t take it, and
instead grabbed the doorframe and heaved himself out. The colour rushed back to
his face, but Ash could tell it was because of how much he was straining to get
out.

They
could hear raised voices and banging noises coming from somewhere in town, so
they decided to walk quietly through the streets. When they reached the corner
of the main street they stopped. The voices were louder now, and Ash saw what
was happening.

There
was a green military truck parked lengthways across the road. Soldiers walked
to it with arms full of supplies, put them in the back of the truck and then
went to collect more. Ash watched as they raided the pharmacy, grocery store,
outdoor clothing shop and even the utility emporium. A group of Pasture Down
citizens stood across from the lorry, with Kenny at the front. They had their
arms folded and most looked angry, though they were subdued by the M16’s
pointed at them.

One
man sat on the bonnet of the army truck, a metre off the ground, and peeled an
apple with a knife. He let the skin drop to the floor and once the flesh was
bare, he bit into it. He stared at the Pasture Down folk as he chewed.

“That’s
Beele,” said Chad. “He used to use that knife to kill the rats we caught in the
barracks. He’s never cleaned it, to my knowledge.”

A
man broke free from the Pasture group and stood below Beele. Ash recognised the
man as Frank Tealman, the owner of the Food O’ Mart which was being raided by
the soldiers. Frank’s face was red, though it wasn’t through anger. Ash didn’t
know him very well, but even he was aware that Frank couldn’t start the day
without draining a quart of bourbon.

“Why
are you doing this? What the hell are we supposed to do when you’ve bled us dry?”

Beele
opened his mouth and spat a spray of apple chunks to the floor.

“Sorry,”
he said. “Pips.”

“Tell
your men to put down my plum tomatoes and get the hell out of my shop,” said
Frank.

Beele
placed his hands on his lap.

“Needs
must,” he said.

“This
will all pass in a few days,” Frank said. “And you’re gonna leave me high and
dry without any stock.”

Beele
glared at the shop owner.

“America
is never going to recover. Don’t you understand what has happened? This isn’t
someone forgetting to pay the power bill. A god damn EMP has crippled the
mainland. The American dream is a nightmare now, buddy.”

Frank’s
face screwed into a mask of anger and he started to move closer to Beele. Before
he could take a step, the army commander pulled a handgun from a holster at his
side and shot the shop owner through his skull. Frank Tealman was dead by the
time he hit the floor. A wisp of smoke drifted from Beetle’s gun, and then the
streets were silent. Even the soldiers had stopped in their tracks.

“Back
to work everyone,” said Beele, and dropped down from the bonnet.

In
just over an hour the soldiers emptied each shop of everything worth taking.
They loaded their truck with tinned foods and water bottles. They siphoned the
fuel from nearby cars and then raided the gun store on the corner. Satisfied,
Beele ordered them to get back to their vehicles and leave in formation. Within
twenty minutes, the soldiers were gone. They were like a plague of locusts who
had buzzed through town, stripped it bare and then left.

Ash
helped Tony to his feet and supported him as they walked into the centre of the
town. Chad followed with tentative steps. As they reached the Pasture Down
folk, Ash realised that there were fewer of them now than there had been in the
town hall. Perhaps some had skipped town.

Kenny
was the first to see Ash. He broke away from the crowd and met him in the
middle of the road. A few minutes earlier the soldiers had kept him in line.
Now that they were gone, it looked like his confidence had returned.

“Look
who’s back. And I see you’ve got a friend.”

“The
plant’s in meltdown,” said Ash. “We need to leave. I don’t even know how long
it takes for radiation to be carried by the wind. Where’s Grebe?”

Kenny
shook his head. “No idea, and it’s none of your business anyway. “ He gestured
toward Chad. “Who’s this guy? You made friends with the soldiers? Don’t you
know that they just cleaned us out?”

“He’s
okay,” said Ash. “He helped us get here.”

Kenny
turned and looked at the crowd of Pasture folk. He looked like a shepherd
addressing his flock. The crowd waited for him to talk, seeming to hang on his
words. In times like this, people needed to be told what to do and how to
think, and Kenny loved to hear himself talk.

“Anyone
with a working car,” he said, “Better bring it here. We need supplies. Dry
food, canned food. Stuff that won’t go rotten after a few days on the road.
Fill your trunks with bottled water and things like that. Use your goddamned
heads.”

“Where
are we going?” said a man.

“I
don’t know,” said Kenny. “Gimme a break. I don’t have all the answers.”

People
began to file away toward their homes. Most wouldn’t have had far to go, since
many people in Pasture Down had built their houses near the town. It was as
though they loved the place so much that they couldn’t bear to be too far away
from it. Sure enough, within two hours most people were back. Some turned up
with sacks over their shoulders, and one man rode a motorcycle. Only three
people had working cars.

Kenny
shook his head.

“This
is goddamn pathetic. We can’t all leave in three cars. Hell, one of them is
gonna have to be our supply vehicle anyway. So here’s what’s going to happen.
I’m going to order you according to how much you contributed. The people who
came back here with nothing but jerky and a bottle of water, well guess what?
You’re gonna walk.”

People
began to chatter amongst each other. Some argued over how much they had
contributed, while others looked scared. Ash wondered how many people in
Pasture Downs had simply stayed at home during the power cuts. Some folks, the
sensible ones, had probably locked their doors and kept to themselves.

Kenny
turned and glared at Ash.

“You,”
he said. “Wherever you’re going, you’re going to have to walk.”

“But
we had a deal.”

Kenny
shook his head. “I need my Chevy. You’re lucky I don’t just kill you. After
what you did to this town, the fact you can even walk in the first place is
luckier than a four leaf clover sliding down a double rainbow.”

Before
Ash could even protest, Kenny turned back to the crowd.

“Where’s
the sheriff?” he said.

Nobody
knew where Sheriff Ellie had gone; people had seen her leaving town a few days
earlier, but they didn’t know where she was now. She would no doubt have been a
useful person to have on the road, but Kenny wasn’t going to wait for her.

“If
you see the sheriff,” he said. “Tell her she missed her ride.”

With
that they loaded up their cars and drove away from Pasture Down, leaving Ash,
Tony, Chad and a handful of townsfolk stood on the main street wondering what
the hell they were going to do.

“Now
what?” said Chad.

Ash
rubbed his forehead.

“Don’t
you have a home to go to?”

“Not
much out there for me, really. Mom’s in a nursing home. She went south when dad
died and she couldn’t keep the house by herself. Don’t have brothers or
sisters, never had a girlfriend. Got an uncle and aunt, but I don’t know if I
should go there.”

“We
need a ride. I gotta get home,” said Ash.

“The
jeep won’t be safe. If Beele or the rest of the unit catch us in it, they’ll
pull us over. Once they do that, we’re screwed.”

“Before
we do anything I have to get to my family,” said Tony.  “The sheriff has a 4x4 parked
underneath the station. The keys will be in her office.”

Ash
didn’t much feel like going back to the sheriff’s office after having been
locked in there for days, but there wasn’t much else they could do. If there
was transport there that they could take, then he was going to have to do it.
They could drop Tony at his ranch and then he was going to gun it across the
plains and out of Pasture.

When
they opened the Sheriff’s door, they found Ellie stood above a desk. She had
cleared four desks of their belongings and connected them in the middle of the
room. A series of maps was stretched out across the surface, and she had drawn
lines through some of the sections.

She
looked up toward the door. A cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth, but
it wasn’t lit.

“You’re
here for the 4x4, aren’t you? We’ll I’m not going anywhere.”

“The
plant’s about to go toasty,” said Chad.

“Who
the hell are you?”

Ash
stepped in front of Chad.

“Don’t
worry about him,” he said.

The
sheriff stepped away from her desk. Her hair was tied back and looked greasy,
and the skin on her face sagged as though she hadn’t slept in days. Ash wasn’t
bothered if she had lost sleep, and he wanted nothing more than to rip her new
one for leaving him locked up. He clenched his jaw and held it in. He needed to
get home, and Ellie had the wheels.

“My
boy has run away again,” said Ellie.  “So I’m going nowhere until I find him. I
don’t give a shit about the plant.”

Tony
hobbled across the office and pulled a chair toward him. He grimaced as he sunk
into it.

“You’re
gonna die if you stay here.”

“Whose
fault is that?”

Ash
paced forward a few steps.

“If
we help you find your son, can we get a ride?”

“I
don’t give a shit about anything except my boy.”

“We’ve
all got families,” said Ash.

Ellie
nodded. “Yeah. And I hope yours is proud of you.”

Tony
rolled up his trousers and inspected his leg. His thigh was turning a worrying
blue colour from where the vehicles had trapped it. It looked like a bruise, but
for all Ash knew, it could have been internal bleeding. They needed to get help
for him before long.

“Where’s
your son usually run to?” he said.

“The
forest. His dad used to take him when he was younger. Little asshole knows I
hate him going there.”

Chapter 7

Finding
Ellie’s son hadn’t been difficult. They took her 4x4 to the edge of Holwood
Forest. It was a mass of trees that from the outskirts looked impenetrable.
Each section of it looked uniformly alike, so much so that Ash had no idea
where to start looking. Ellie had guided them to a spot and killed the engine.
Ash heard crickets call and birds shriek.

“This
is it,” said Ellie. “He usually comes this way.”

The
further they walked into the woods, the more the blue sky was drowned out and
replaced instead by the treetops which cast a blanket of black over them. They
walked through the forest for two hours and Ash’s body began to remind him that
it had been a long time since he had eaten, and even longer since he had taken
a break.  Finally, when he felt ready to collapse onto the forest floor, Chad
shouted that he’d found someone.

By
the time they got back into town the sun had fallen and the sky was the murky
dark blue of dusk. Ash felt his arms and legs ache and his eyelids start to
drop. They parked the vehicle in the centre of town. Tony stayed in the back
seat, one hand wrapped around his injured leg.

“I’ll
check the pharmacy for painkillers,” Ash said.

“We
may as well stock up while we’re here,” said Tony, his voice rough. “It’s been
raided once, and it’ll be raided again. In a few days when more people realise
how serious this is, they’ll start to panic. We don’t want to have to come here
again and get caught in the violence and looting.”

Ellie
rested against the bumper and rolled a cigarette with practiced fingers.

“I
need tobacco. What else?”

“Now’s
not the time to think about luxury,” said Tony. “Your vehicle will struggle to
carry us all if we overload it. What’s the weight limit?”

“Around
1500 kilograms,” said Ellie.

Tony
shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right. I think that’s the towing limit.”

“Jesus.
I don’t give a shit. Just tell us what we need and we’ll get out of here.”

Tony
sat up and looked at Ash.

“The
salesman will tell us,” he said.

Ash
felt under pressure. Ellie, her son, Tony and Chad all stared at him and waited
for him to speak. Was this some kind of test? Tony seemed to be on a quest to
bring out Ash’s survival skills, and he saw himself as a mentor. In a stupid
way, Ash liked it, and he didn’t want to disappoint him.

“Let’s
see,” he said. “The basics first, I guess. The three minute rule. We need as
much water as we can get, so go check the grocery and see if the soldiers left
any water bottles. Don’t just check the aisles, either. There will be a stock
room at the back. If it’s locked, get a fire axe from the wall and just smash
through the door.”

“Aye
aye, captain,” said Chad, and put his hand to his forehead in a comic salute.

“You
just nominated yourself as the waterboy, then,” said Ash, and glared at the
recruit. “And while you’re at it, go to the outdoor clothing store. They might
have a survival or camping gear section. If they’ve got any water filters, get
as many as you can carry.”

As
he looked at the shops of the main street and told the survivors what they
needed, he started to feel his dad’s words and lessons flood back to him. He
told them to get everything they needed; iodine tablets, fire starters such as
matches or flint, compasses, maps, first aid kits, crowbars, wrenches, cooking
pots, blankets, water canteens.

After
they had gotten as many of the things as they could and loaded up the vehicle,
Ellie slammed the boot shut.

“You
helped me find Ben,” she said, and put her hand on her son’s head. “So you can
use my wheels. What’s the plan?”

“Town’s
not going to be able to support us, and it’ll get dangerous here,” said Ash. He
looked over at Tony and saw that in between grimaces of pain, the man gave him
an approving nod.

Chad
leaned against the car. He had a small ukulele in his hands that he’d raided
from a discount furniture store. According to him, the stringed instrument was
essential survival kit. As he watched the recruit struggle to tune it, Ash
wasn’t sure he agreed.

“We
need somewhere self-sufficient,” said Chad.

“What
about your aunt and uncle?”

“I
figure I’m safer with you guys. And I never really liked them anyway.”

“I
have some land,” said Ellie.

Tony
spoke from the back of the 4x4.

“But
have you actually done anything with it?”

The
sheriff shook her head. “No. But we could grow things on it, given time.”

“My
ranch has crops planted already. They’ll be ready to eat sooner.”

Ash
folded his arms.

“Listen,
guys. I’m going to sit this discussion out. I need to get back to Georgia.
She’s on her own and I don’t know what’s happened to her.”

“I’m
not being a jerk,” said Tony. “But you won’t make it on your own. You’ll die
out there, Ash.”

“Doesn’t
matter. I gotta try.”

“How
about you take me to my ranch?” said Tony. “We can have some food and decide
what to do on full stomachs. The brain’s capacity for decision-making isn’t
great when you’re tired and hungry.”

***

When
they got to the ranch, Ash saw that Tony hadn’t understated how prepared he
was. The acres of land had been fine-tuned for survival with a level of detail
that would have even put Ash’s dad to shame. The group were tired when the
drove into the ranch, but as soon as they got there Tony pushed open the door
and got out, the pain in his leg seemingly lessened by the feeling of being
home.

Tony
gave them a tour of the ranch, but instead of walking them round it he just
pointed and explained what he had done. He sounded like a proud father bragging
about how good his son was in school.

There
was a giant tank on the west side of the house. It was as close to the exterior
wall as possible, and the roof of the house was slanted so that rain water
could run off it, divert into a channel Tony had cut into the roof, and then
collect in the tank, which would filter it and then store it for use. If there
was ever to be a problem with the tank, Tony explained, there was a pond nearby
that they could collect water from and boil if it ever came to it.

There
were two fields. One had cows grazing on it, with a barn at the end, and the
other had crops planted. Tony’s plan was to breed the cattle and rotate the
crops. In the barn he had a store of dried and canned food that would be good
for a year or two while he mastered self-sufficiency.

There
were solar panels on the roof of the house and barn which Tony had always
planned to hook up to a localised grid. He’d tried learning electrics, but he
hadn’t gotten far before the EMP had hit.

“Don’t
suppose any of you used to be an electrician?” he said.

Ash
shook his head.

The
door of the farmhouse opened and a woman strode across the farmland. She was
tall and walked with her shoulders high. The sleeves of her shirt were red and
they were rolled up above her elbows, revealing biceps that were bigger than
Ash’s.

“Tony
Shore,” she said. “Where the hell have you been?”

She
looked at Ellie, Ben and Chad and smiled. When she saw Ash, her faced changed.
It scrunched up, and he saw that she clenched her fists. He had no doubt that
in a fight, she would beat the hell out of him.

“You
got a nerve coming back here,” she said.

Tony
held a hand in the air.

“Leave
him, Mags. He helped me get here. Everyone, meet my wife Magdalene, or Mags if
she likes you.”

Mags
lead them back to the farmhouse and served up steaming dishes of a stew she had
made. As Ash took his first taste, he felt his stomach cramp. He didn’t realise
how long he’d gone without food, and it seemed like his stomach was punishing
him for it.

As
they ate, they discussed a plan. For Tony, the journey was over. Even if his
leg wasn’t busted, there was no way he was going to leave his ranch. This was
his bug out place, and now that he was here, he had a lot of work to do.

“I
gotta go through the mountain pass and around the city,” said Ash. “I have to
find Georgia.”

Mags
shook her head.

“Quickest
way is the tunnel. It goes under the mountains and it’ll get you through in an
hour. It’ll take you days to drive over the mountains.”

“I
thought the tunnel would be dangerous in the present situation.”

“Depends
how desperate you are to get home, I guess.”

Within
a few hours a plan was formed. Tony was generously going to loan Ash one of his
vehicles, as well as enough supplies to make the journey home. Chad was going
to come with him, because he said he would only get bored if he just stayed at
the ranch. Surprisingly, Ellie also wanted to come with Ash.

“I
got business near the city,” she said.

Ash
gave her a questioning look. Ellie looked at Ben, and then she looked back at
Ash and, mouthed the words “His father.”

After
sleeping straight through the night, he woke the next morning and felt like he
could have stayed in bed for another day. He got out of bed, went downstairs
and ate breakfast. Chad and Ellie helped him load up one of Tony’s pick-ups.

“You
gotta understand,” said Tony. “This is a loan. When you find Georgia, I want
you to bring it back. And I want to meet the woman stupid enough to marry you.”

Ash
smiled. “Is this your way of saying I can stay here?”

Mags
glared at Ash. “We talked about it last night. I still think you’re a son of a
bitch, but Tony told me how much you helped him. So go and get your wife, and then
come back here.”

In
many ways Ash didn’t want to leave the Shore ranch. They had everything set up
for them to survive here, and they seemed like a warm couple who would do
anything to help others. Tony was an encyclopaedia of survivalist knowledge,
and even though he was leaving with a police sheriff and a soldier, Ash still
felt cold when he thought about the world they were journeying into.

Things
had been bad enough in a small town like Pasture Down, so he couldn’t even
imagine what it had been like in the city. Ash had a strong feeling that he
wouldn’t make it; that something was going to happen to him. It didn’t matter,
though. He was beginning to realise that being a man meant thinking about
people other than yourself. On top of that, he was starting to remember the
lessons his dad had taught him.

He
thought about the old man. He’d be out there somewhere, holed up somewhere
safe, smiling to himself because he’d finally been proven right. He thought
about Georgia, at home or wherever she was, and hoped to God she was alright.
It didn’t matter what the world had become now. Ash would travel through it.

He
turned and looked at Ellie and Chad.

“We
ready?” he said.

The
young recruit grinned. Ellie threw a cigarette to the floor and crushed it
under her boot. She nodded.

“Then
let’s go,” said Ash.

With
regret in his heart he drove the pick-up truck away from the Shore ranch and
into the wider world, or whatever was left of it.