Preppers of the Apocalypse - Part 2: Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival (3 page)

Chapter 3

They
spent the night eating MRE’s in the pick-up. With the windows rolled up it
became stuffy, but opening them was an invitation for any flying insects in the
area to seek refuge. As the night went on the temperature began to drop to the
point that they needed to use their sleeping bags, though the vehicle was so
cramped that the best each of them could do was to place their bag on top of
them.

The
next morning the splutter of the engine broke the stillness of the forest
around them, and they rolled along the mountain path. Their progress so far had
been slower than they hoped, and Ash was worried that they were going to have
to cut their calorie intake even further before long. It was either that, or he
would have to try and remember the long-forgotten hunting skills that his dad
had taught him.

The
cliff edges on both sides fell back after a while, and a large patch of forest
greeted them. Every few hours they stopped so that they could have something to
eat and then stretch their legs. Ellie would roll herself a smoke, and Chad
would destroy the tranquillity of the area by strumming the ukulele that he had
picked up in Pasture Down. Ash filled up the gas tank with a red metal can with
a dent in the side of it.

“Only
three cans left,” said Chad.

“Not
good, is it?” said Ash, as the gas gulped out of the can.

“Think
we’ll get through the pass?”

“I’m
hoping it’ll take us most of the way. If we have to walk a mile or two at the
end so be it, but we need to clear the mountains as best we can.”

“Son
of a bitch,” came a cry at the front of the pick-up.

When
Ash put down the gas can and walked around the vehicle, he found Ellie sat on
the floor rubbing her ankle.

“Don’t
tell me you tried walking?” said Ash.

“Don’t
patronise me,” said Ellie, her faced straining with pain.

Chad
leaned with his elbows on the hood of the pick-up. His cheeks and chin were
covered by three days of beard growth. It seemed that with each passing day his
image moved further away from the shaven, crew-cut standard expected of an army
recruit.

“We
better splint your ankle,” he said. “Or you’re gonna do some serious damage.”

Chad
walked around to the trunk, searched through it and then came back to the front
of the pick-up holding a roll of duct tape and a pair of scissors. He held them
up and grinned.

“Now
we need to tear a piece off someone’s sleeping bag. Who’s gonna volunteer? I’m
making the splint, so I think that excuses me.”

“And
I’m the injured party,” grunted Ellie.

Ash
sighed. “Guess that means it’s me, doesn’t it?”

Chad
made a splint for Ellie’s ankle using the tape, the sleeping bag and a sturdy
stick that he’d found on the floor. When he passed it to Ellie, she waved him
away. Instead she picked up the crossbow that Ash had left on the bonnet of the
truck and pointed it toward the forest.

“Saw
a rabbit,” she said.

Ash
looked to the bank of trees but couldn’t see anything. Then he followed Ellie’s
gaze, and he saw a small shape hopping through the bracken. Ellie raised the
bow and was about to fire, but she put her weight on her injured ankle and then
cried out in pain.

“Time
you listened to us,” said Chad. “Stop trying to be a hero.” Then he grinned,
and added: “That’s my job.”

A
few hours later they were driving along the road. It wound away from the forest
area and came to a section with a sudden drop to the right of them. Ash steered
the vehicle carefully over the rough road, aware that the drop to the right was
at least fifty foot high.

“Maybe
you should let me drive this bit,” said Chad from the back.

“I
can handle it,” said Ash.

“Listen,
buddy. I drove a jeep for the army. I’m trained for riding over
dangerous-as-hell terrain.”

A
few minutes later, Ash sat in the back of the pickup while Chad drove. He turned
the vehicle carefully, but his confidence behind the wheel meant he could drive
a little faster than Ash. As they followed the road, the drop to the right hand
side of them became worse. To their left the edge of a cliff pressed in close
to them. Every so often rocks would break away from the cliff and tumble down
toward the road, landing on the ground next to them. With each falling rock,
Ash felt his heart rate jump. One jerk of the steering wheel could send them
plunging down the mountain.

Suddenly
a larger rock broke away from the mountain. They heard a crumbling sound, and
then the rock thudded onto the back of the truck. The sound of it was enough to
jerk Ellie from the nap she was taking in the passenger seat. It was so loud
that it sounded like it had done some serious damage.

Ash
turned round and looked at the back of the truck. He felt a chill rush through
him. A rock had fallen from the side of the cliff and hit the back of the
pick-up. It the unluckiest way possible, it had hit the panel that kept all
their supplies securely in the trunk and destroyed it. As the road sloped
upwards, their supplies began to tip out of the vehicle and fall into the void
to the right of them. Ash saw kerosene lamps and MRE’s fall into the stream
fifty feet below.

At
the top of the slope they stopped the pick-up. The cliff side had withdrawn
now, so that they had space to get out of the vehicle. Ash hurried to the trunk
and prayed that they hadn’t lost much. It seemed that his prayers were ignored.
Chad joined him at the back.

“What’ve
we lost?” he said, his face white.

Ash
put his hand over his mouth. His throat felt tight.

“About
a weeks’ worth of MRE’s. That’s most of our rations.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.
My thoughts exactly.”

Thirty
minutes later, after recounting their supplies, it seemed like they might have
enough to make it through the pass, but they were going to lose a hell of a lot
of weight. They were already working at a calorie deficit, and they were going
to have to try and survive with a further drop of 400 calories. All the while,
the physical stress of passing through the mountains was making their bodies
use more energy than normal.

“Some
people would kill for this,” said Chad, trying to grin. “A diet like this is
hard to get. Maybe I’ll patent it. The Lantern Mountain Weight-loss Regime.”

“This
isn’t funny, “said Ash.  “We need to get food. What if something happens to the
vehicle? If we have to walk the rest of the way, we’re screwed. We’ll need to
take on more calories, but we don’t have the supplies to cover it.”

“So
what are we gonna do?”

“I’m
going to have to go hunt.”

***

This
was how Ash found himself stood in the middle of another patch of trees with a
crossbow in his hand. The treetops spread wide above him and smothered out the
light. He had his weapon cocked, arrow ready. Chad and Ellie were over at the
pick-up playing cards on the back seat.

He
stepped over broken twigs and tried to avoid getting his foot hooked on the
vines and branches that lay strewn on the ground. He looked out for mushrooms
and berries. At this moment in time, he’d take any kind of food that they could
get. What they really needed, though, was meat. If he could catch and kill a
rabbit or something bigger, it would sustain them for a day or two and ease
some of the burden on their remaining MRE’s.

Branches
snapped somewhere to his right. As quickly as he dared, Ash turned around to
look. He needed to be quiet, he knew. His father had taken him hunting plenty
of times on their trips, and he’d always impressed on him the number one rule
of hunting.

Keep
your mouth shut and your steps soft,
he used to say.
Pretend
like you’re dancing on landmines.

Ash
held his breath and span around. He expected to see a rabbit running through
the forest, and he hoped his aim would be good enough to hit it. When he saw
the source of the noise, he wanted to drop the crossbow and run.

Across
the patch of trees, slinking through the bushes with an agility that seemed
almost supernatural, was a mountain lion. Its body was muscled and meaty, and
its jaws looked strong enough to snap his arm in a single bite. It prowled
across the forest floor with a stealth that Ash could never have hoped to
master.

Ash
stayed still. He prayed that it wouldn’t see him. He wasn’t a religious man,
but he was finding more and more that he needed something to cling to these
days, some kind of hope that would guide him through the tough times.

For
the second time in the trip, his prayers were ignored. The mountain lion
snapped its head toward him, and in that moment Ash knew that the animal had
spotted him.

Chapter 4

As
the animal prowled towards him, Ash felt his legs turn to jelly. He wished he
was far away from here; anywhere else in the world, it didn’t matter. He’d even
take the anger of Kenny and the other Pasture Down townsfolk if it meant he
could escape.

The
animal dipped its head toward the ground. It headed toward him in slow,
purposeful steps, and it took a zigzagging path as if it was trying to size him
up before committing to a battle. Ash tried to think of a course of action. The
words were in his head, somewhere, ones that would tell him what to do.

His
dad had taught him hundreds of lessons over the years, but dealing with
mountain lions had never been one of them. They had never seen any on their
camping trips, and had usually stuck to areas where the biggest animal you
would ever see was wild deer.

Think,
Ash. Pretend your life depends on it.

Suddenly
he remembered something. It wasn’t a lesson his dad taught him this time. It
was something he’d seen in a documentary on a National Geographic special, a
hunter’s story of being faced with a hungry cougar when he’d accidentally
wandered near it its cubs.

As
the animal slunk across the vines and the bracken, Ash willed his brain to unfreeze.
He held the crossbow tight in his hand. He could picture the hunter on the
television. His chubby face, cheeks red from either alcohol or just plain lack
of fitness. His eyes glassing over as he told his story.

Don’t
run.

That
was the first rule, and it was painfully obvious. Where sprinting was
concerned, Ash would be the clear loser. Besides, Ash had spent most of his
life running away from various things; his responsibilities, his morals, facing
up to his dad.

Appear
larger.

He
wasn’t a big guy, but he needed to look like one. He needed the lion to lift
its head toward him, see how big he was and then think to itself “
this isn’t
going to be worth the effort”.
Ash unzipped his waterproof jacket and let
it flap open. He raised his arms above his head, never losing his grip on the
crossbow.

The
lion stopped in its tracks. Its paw crunched over a twig, and it looked at Ash
quizzically. Had he done enough? Did he look mean enough to deter the animal?
He decided that he was going to have to find his voice. Overhead, two birds
fluttered away from the treetops and into the air. Ash wished he hadn’t walked
so far away from the pick-up.

“Stop,”
he said, but he knew his voice wasn’t strong enough. He took a deep breath and
puffed up his chest.

The
animal took two tentative steps forward. Ash felt his pulse fire. He could
almost smell the sweat pouring from his armpits, and he felt it run across his
forehead.

“Stop,
you bastard,” he said.

The
animal took another few steps. It didn’t look like he was going to be able to
scare it away, and there was no way he was going to die in the middle of the
forest trying to having a stern conversation with a mountain lion. Ash slowly
brought his crossbow to eye level. He sighted the lion, filled his chest with
air to steady his aim.

“Please
god, let me hit it,” he said.

Despite
a lifetime as an atheist, this was the third prayer he’d said in less than
twenty four hours. He hadn’t converted, though. This was no religious
experience. This was just a scared guy trying to find some help in a world
steadily tumbling into shit. He envied the people who had found God and who
truly believed in him, because he knew that they would deal with the end of the
world better than most. Hell, some of them would even welcome it.

He
checked his aim once more, brushed the trigger with his index finger, and then
pulled. There was a swishing sound, and then the lion gave a cry of pain that
was something between a growl and a squeal. The arrow had pierced its neck, and
the animal fell to its side and snapped the branches beneath it. It thrashed on
the floor for a few seconds, before becoming still.

Ash
dropped the crossbow to his side. He stood in the forest for a second, his
brain struggling to catch up with what had happened.
I actually hit it,
he thought.
I goddamn hit it.

He
walked over to the lion and stood above it. Its eyes were like crystal now, the
life in them drained away. Its body was packed with muscle, and it looked like
a creature too powerful to have died by Ash’s hand. Suddenly he felt pity well
up in his chest. He almost wished he could rewind time and suck the arrow out
of its neck and back into the bow. It seemed like such a pointless death for a
mighty animal, and the whole thing was unjust. Ash had wandered into its
territory. It wasn’t as if Ash had been at home and the lion had broken into
his garden.

Still.
It was either him, or me. What would happen to Georgia if I died? What about
Ellie and Chad?

***

An
hour later, As Ash dragged the mountain lion out of the edge of the forest, Chad
got out of the pick-up truck. He stood and stared for a few seconds, wide-eyed
as if he couldn’t believe what he saw.

“Is
that what I think it is?” he shouted.

“You
just gonna stand there, or are you gonna help?”

Ellie
scooched over the back seat and sat with her legs handing out of the vehicle.

“Is
that a lion?”

“You
goddamn legend,” shouted Chad, and ran over to help.

Ash
and Chad pulled the lion over to the pick-up. Blood dribbled from the arrow
wound on its neck, and its coat was covered in mud from the forest floor. By
the time they let go of it, both men felt drained. Ash’s pulse finally settled
as the adrenaline left his body, and he felt like just flopping down to the
floor and closing his eyes for a few hours.

“Can
we cook it?” asked Chad.

“You
have to be careful,” said Ellie, legs swinging over the side of the seat. “My
dad was a weekend hunter. He had this rule; always cook what you kill. He shot
a mountain lion once, and he showed me how to cook it. Thing is, they carry
trinchinella, a parasite that will put you in the grave if you undercook the
meat. So you better roast the heck out of this thing before we eat it.”

Chad
stood over the lion and stared at it in wonder.

“Still,”
he said. “There’s a hell of a lot of meat on it.”

Ellie
shook her head.

“This
is a predator. What you’re looking at there is mostly muscle tissue. Might get
a day or two of food out of it though.”

“Looks
like our MRE’s can take a rest,” said Ash. “I saw a stream in the clearing too.
So we can fill our bottles and use the water filter.”

***

As
the sun began to fall from the sky and twilight settled over the sleepy
mountain, the three of them roasted the heck out of the meat, as Ellie put it. Chad
took over cooking duties under Ellie’s supervision, showing great patience as
she bossed him around. Ash guessed that as a recruit, the guy was used to
taking orders.  They sat in the pick-up truck under a twinkling night sky and
ate the meat.

“It’s
sharp as hell, said Chad. “But you know what? Compared to the MRE’s, this is
the best meal I ever had.”

When
they finished, Ash climbed into the driver’s seat.

“We
lost a lot of time today,” he said. “So I think we better drive for a couple of
hours before we lose the light completely.”

“It’s
getting dark. I’m not sure we should go,” said Ellie.

“I’ll
drive slow and keep the headlamps on. If the terrain looks patchy, we’ll stop.
I just don’t want to sit still more than we have to.”

“You’re
the boss,” she said. This time, it didn’t sound sarcastic.

Ash
put the key in the ignition and twisted. The engine coughed, and then died. He
tried the ignition again. Nothing.

“Oh
crap,” he said.