Unprepared Page 7

  “Nice. Bonus points if you can guess the year.”

  Kelly thought out loud.

  “It was just after Star Wars, so I’m guessing late ‘70s... 1978 or 1979?”

  “1979 is correct. Alright. How about a challenge… Alright, what about ‘There's no crying in baseball’.”

  “Oh shit. I know this one,” Kelly said. “It was Tom Hanks... And Madonna. Oh… I know it.”

  “You have ten seconds.”

  “Oh… It’s on the tip of my tongue. There’s no crying in baseball. Argh! I know this!”

  “Ehhhhhhhh! Time’s up,” David responded, making a buzzer sound. “It was ‘A League of Their Own’.”

  Kelly turned the tables on David.

  “Alright smart-ass. When was it?”

  David laughed. “I don’t actually know. I was just going to say yes to whatever year you suggested!”

  Kelly hit David’s arm, playfully. This was a great distraction to the problems of the day.

  “Hey, babe,” she said, noticing a structure up ahead. “There’s the rail bridge.”

  The two walked up to the tracks and onto the concrete railway sleepers. It was going to be a long journey home, but at least they knew they were, literally and figuratively, on the right track.

  “Can you get the water out? I’m getting thirsty,” said David.

  They stopped walking, the sun overhead. Kelly reached into the backpack and fished around for the water bottle, before handing it to David.

  “You said that when you filled it up, there was brown water coming out the faucet?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I, uh, don’t know if you want to drink it.”

  “Hm. We should have filled it up at the river. Can you see if there’s a river or something nearby?”

  Kelly checked the map while David looked around, scanning for anything which could be a threat or for anything that could be useful. The railway was lined with trees and bushes on both sides. Even if there was a house on the other side, they were safe from prying eyes.

  “The closest stream… is... Hmm… two miles back.”

  Kelly continued searching.

  “There’s nothing in our immediate path, but the tracks will be going through a town called Forest.”

  David was too thirsty to attempt a Forrest Gump reference.

  “How far away is it?”

  “Looks close. Less than a mile.”

  “Alright, let’s do it. If it’s not safe there, or if we can’t get any water, I’ll chlorinate whatever’s in the bottle and drink that.”

  The town of Forest is technically part of Lynchburg, but it might as well be part of Auckland, New Zealand, because their home was still several miles on foot through areas that could be potentially dangerous, having been without modern amenities for 22 hours. So far, all the interactions David and Kelly had experienced with strangers, while sometimes frightening, had ultimately resulted in no harm. Their best defense wasn’t the pistol in their backpack. Their best defense was staying the hell away from people. People were the problem. A problem which grew with each passing minute.

  A gunshot rang through the air.

  Kelly stopped abruptly, causing David to walk into the back of her.

  Another gunshot.

  And another.

  Two people were firing guns at each other, somewhere up ahead. Or was it three. It was hard to tell, but the firing continued. Faint yelling could be heard. Several more shots followed in quick succession.

  “Let’s keep going,” Kelly instructed.

  They walked under a road underpass, heading in the direction of the gunshots, the train tracks being in their own, man-made gully. This soon leveled out and the trees became shrubs, which became grass as they approached a clearing. A horse with an unmanned saddle walked in their direction, about 300 yards away, but when it saw the two, it changed direction and walked down a side street, heading away from them.

  “Shit, that looks like a body,” Kelly said, pointing ahead.

  They got closer. There was indeed a body lying outside a gas station. Being out in the open in a built-up area didn’t feel right after hours of isolation and relative safety.

  “No way. Dave, it’s a policeman,” Kelly added.

  David studied the body in the distance, his eyes straining.

  “It looks like that sheriff from this morning.”

  They got about two hundred yards from the gas station and stopped.

  “Kel, look by the door of the gas station. There’s another body.”

  They looked around, searching for potential threats. The scene was empty. If there were people nearby, they were either scared and hiding or they’d not been able to return home after fleeing from Wednesday’s non-existent hurricane.

  “What should we do?” Kelly asked. “We're going right past that gas station.”

  “Well, we can’t do anything to help. They’re both dead and there’s no one to call,” said David.

  “I know. I’m just not feeling very comfortable here. We need to get around this scene and carry on.”

  “But we do need water, babe. Or anything to drink, really.”

  A few seconds went by before Kelly came up with a solution.

  “Let’s walk past the gas station, eyes ahead, acting uninterested. But if the coast looks clear, we’ll go in and grab water or whatever drinks they have then leave.”

  “OK,” David responded, his heart in his mouth. “Get the gun.”

  They walked slowly, closing in on the gas station, trying not to make a noise with their footsteps. Such noise would make it harder to hear anyone approaching. Kelly had the gun in her hand, hidden under the sweater wrapped around her waist.

  They changed their course slightly, now moving fairly directly toward the gas station pump area. The air was silent yet the atmosphere was electric. Just a little water or soda, whatever was available, that’s all they needed, then they could get the fuck out of there. Kelly's eyes darted around from behind her sunglasses.

  “I think it’s clear,” she whispered, the pistol grip becoming sweaty in her hand.

  David scanned the area, focusing on houses, hopefully empty, grass blowing in the breeze and two dead men. They moved towards the open front door of the gas station, the bloodied corpse of a young man now visible, propping the door open. The image burned into both their minds. The guy looked about twenty. His mouth was open, full of blood, still wet and stuck to his cheek, his eyes open, staring eternally towards a shelf holding bottles of windshield washer fluid outside the shop. A handgun lay just out of his frozen, claw-like reach.

  Kelly took their Glock out from under her sweater and extended her arms outward. She went in first, impulsively kicking the young man’s gun away and carefully stepping over his body. David followed, his head craning in each direction as he scanned for threats.

  The store was a mess. There were papers on the floor and one shelf had been knocked over, but ultimately the building was devoid of food, drinks and people.

  “Hello?” Kelly called inside the empty store.

  No answer.

  David scanned the empty shelves.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said.

  “Find something. Anything, and let’s go.”

  He looked around. There was a squashed chocolate bar on the ground, half sticking out of its wrapper, but they didn’t need food. They needed water. He noticed a bottle on the ground, rolled under a shelf.

  “Tomato juice.”

  “Take it,” Kelly instructed.

  David reached under the shelf and fished it out.

  “Kel, let’s go, let’s go.”

  She turned, gun extended, and walked slowly to the exit. In the silence, the sound of footsteps outside were easily detected. Kelly made eye contact with David. They needed to get out of there. Who knows who was outside. The police? The owner? A looter? It didn’t matter, as the rule of law had been eroding quickly, ever since the electromagnetic pulse.

  Kelly crouch
ed down behind a shelf, David alongside her.

  The footsteps came closer. Whoever it was had changed their style of walking and was now trying to be quiet. The footsteps stopped and a metallic scrape was heard outside the gas station store. Then the unmistakable sound of a pistol magazine being removed, inspected and replaced.

  Their pulses racing, David and Kelly looked at each other.

  “I think he’s got the dead guy’s gun,” David whispered.

  Maybe the unknown person outside wasn’t a threat? Maybe he or she was just as scared as those two cowering behind the barren shelf? Did the person outside know that they were inside? Kelly's mind raced. The footsteps stopped at the door, replaced by the sound of rummaging around in fabric. It definitely sounded like the now-armed mystery person outside was checking the pockets of the dead guy in the doorway.

  The footsteps became slower; more intimate. One was sticky on the floor. The person was in there with them, breathing the same air. By now David and Kelly assumed that the person couldn’t have known they were all sharing this room. A moment of tense silence was broken with the sound of rustling plastic directly on the other side of the shelf. There were three people in that room, two of them with weapons, and all of them about three feet apart. They were facing a thief, just like themselves, but one who searches dead bodies for money and takes their guns. In the moral hierarchy, Kelly and David had to believe that they were the ones with justification to act in self defense preemptively. Kelly turned to David. She had an idea. A distraction. With her left hand she quickly waved at David to get his attention. He looked. She mimicked that he should throw something towards the corner of the store, away from them and she would go the other way with the gun. He nodded.

  The plastic rustling noise stopped and the footsteps began pacing slowly towards the left end of the shelf, closest to where David was crawling on his hands and knees. Kelly was also crawling, but to the other end of the shelf. David picked up a pair of broken sunglasses from the floor. He turned to Kelly, who gave him a nod. The next events happened unplanned, unexpected and in less than four seconds.

  David tightened his chest and threw the sunglasses against the far wall, immediately distracting the armed man who spun around in the direction of the store's corner. Kelly jumped up at the other end with her gun aimed and screamed.

  “Drop the gun!”

  The man spun back around, and it was the first time she’d seen his face. He was about the same age. He was black. Why was he here? Seeing his eyes and face made the stranger less like a threat, and more like another person, capable or love and laughter, just like herself. Kelly didn’t want to pull the trigger, but the man began to turn his torso and raised the gun up in her direction. Both David and Kelly saw this happening, as if in slow motion, with Kelly ducking down. Before he could fire David tried to buy her a crucial second by distracting the man. David shouted and threw a can of engine lubricant up at him.

  “Hey!” David screamed; a hidden voice on the man's right-hand side, somewhere behind the shelf.

  This caused the man to turn towards David, overwhelmed by the distractions all around him taking place before he could fire.

  Kelly popped up to see the man spinning back to face her, his gun racing to aim at her. He fired a shot but he was too soon; it missed in the confusion. Kelly knew that this was now life and death, squeezing the trigger, once, twice, three times in the man's direction. The controlled explosions of bullets immediately gave way to a dry, empty silence.

  “You OK?!” She shouted to David.

  “I’m OK!” he replied.

  The look on the man’s face was one of disbelief. His mouth was agape and he was swaying on his feet. Blood had begun to erupt from his chest and neck as his eyes looked around, trying to comprehend what had happened and how to save himself. Kelly fired her gun again. The impact of the bullet pushed him against a wall-mounted shelf. He appeared to immediately lose energy, collapsing and sliding down to the floor. He was dead.

  A stunned silence filled the walls of that room. The silence of life being extinguished, followed by a moment of sharp lucidity.

  “Let’s go! Now!” David shouted, picking up the bottle of tomato juice.

  They both met at the exit at the same time, Kelly with her gun still extended, her hands now shaking. They walked away quickly and headed straight for the nearest bushes to get out of sight. Once behind the treeline, they ran. They ran as fast as their legs would allow until they couldn’t breathe.

  After almost five minutes of running, they eventually collapsed on the leafy dirt amongst the trees. Kelly still had the gun in her hand. David reached over and took it off her as she was still visibly distraught. He threw it a couple of feet away.

  “I… I… killed… him…” panted Kelly, between breaths.

  “You did... the right thing…. He…. would have killed us... It was self defense.”

  They sat on the ground, breathing heavily.

  “His face,” she said. “He was frightened.”

  “Yeah... I know... so were we.”

  “I can’t get his face out of my mind.”

  David put the gun on the ground and held Kelly tightly. He leaned in far enough to kiss her on her cheek.

  “You did the right thing. Honestly. You mustn't feel bad. You can't.”

  A tear rolled down her face.

  “David, I’m a murderer.”

  “No, you’re a fucking survivor.”

  He held her tightly for another few minutes. Kelly eventually calmed down and her breathing eased. She wiped her eyes and let go of David, who reciprocated, before giving her some space.

  “I just can’t believe it,” she said. Then her demeanor changed and she became angry. “That bastard. That fucking bastard! Why did he do it?! Why didn’t he drop the gun?!”

  David sat in silence. She was a tough woman. She just needed space and a moment to get these emotions out of her system.

  “He could have walked away! Why didn’t he walk away?”

  David nodded, looking at the ground.

  The sound of the wind in the trees and birdsong continued arrogantly, as if nothing had happened. As if nature didn’t give a fuck about human life or death.

  “I wish we never… I don’t know what I wish… I wish this none of this ever happened,” Kelly continued. “Today has been nothing but fear and death. God, I hope the army comes in and fixes everything. We can’t go on like this.”

  David was silent for a moment, but he was also realistic.

  “The army might not even exist anymore. Who knows how far this EMP has gone. Maybe army trucks are on their way from Chicago or Los Angeles as we speak. Or maybe the whole country’s up shit creek. We don’t know, but we have to continue. What you did was necessary. It meant that you and I are here now, alive. I… I’m proud of you.”

  Kelly was silent. David was right. But she now knew that killing another human being isn’t like it’s portrayed in the movies. It affects you, even if the other person wanted you dead.

  “I love you,” she said to David.

  “And you know I love you too.”

  David handed over the tomato juice.

  “Here. Drink this.”

  Kelly raised the bottle to her lips and began drinking. Given its blood-like color and consistency, the tomato juice was possibly the least suitable drink imaginable after enduring a fatal shooting, but the two were thirsty and they downed it quickly.

  It was now 24 hours since the electromagnetic pulse had changed their lives. After a full day of exhausting movement, they now found themselves on the outskirts of Lynchburg, continuing on the railway tracks. They resumed their roles, with Kelly acting as navigator and David carrying the supplies. Kelly came to a stop, noticing that they were approaching a bridge over a river, and she began studying the crinkled map.

  “I think we’re about a mile or two from home now. This river here… I think it’s Dreaming Creek. If we want to avoid the roads then we’re going to h
ave to walk down it. This creek should take us behind the subdivisions, minimizing the chance of human contact.”

  Right now, all David wanted to do was get home and hide from the world.

  “Sounds good, babe,” he said, attempting to be upbeat. His efforts were rendered useless by frantic gunshots somewhere in the distance. He looked at her, a serious expression on his face.

  “Let’s go.”

  Kelly crossed the short railway bridge first and walked down the embankment with David close behind. They were less than an hour from home, but now they were entering a scenario they’d been trying to avoid all day: they were returning to civilization. Or what remained of it.

  They walked quickly along the edge of the creek, going past a small lake, until they had no choice but to head inland.

  “I know where we are now,” Kelly said. “We’re about half a mile away. We need to go east now. But there’s no way around it. We have to walk on the streets. We can’t cross people’s yards while they’re starting to panic.”

  “Ok, let’s do it. I’ve got the gun. Let’s go fast.”

  Kelly walked quickly for about a hundred yards until they entered a clearing and the backs of two houses.

  “We’ve got to get between these houses and onto the street.”

  “Let’s go. The houses look all locked up. I’m guessing they haven't make it back yet.”

  Fortunately, David was right. The owners of the houses were either hiding inside or hadn’t come back yet, probably trapped on the highways somewhere miles out of town. If there was a mass influx of residents, it wasn’t going to happen for a day or two. If they even survived, wherever they were. Perhaps they were all stranded on the roadside? Many had almost certainly begun fighting for water and food.

  With half a mile to go, David felt the keys in his pocket. Never had pieces of machined metal felt so good to have in his hand.

  The two of them walked quickly through the back of another section and approached Leesville Road, normally busy with traffic at this time in the late afternoon, but today it was completely motionless. There were dozens of cars, of course, but they were all stopped in awkward positions. It’s was a strange sight to behold. Dozens of colorful vehicles, of all shapes and sizes, all clean and shiny, parked in the middle of their lanes. At this moment it struck David that an EMP attack was the ultimate social leveler. Rich or poor, SUV or hatchback, they were all rendered equally useless. This rare moment of pondering was broken by another barrage of gunshots from a nearby street. It might have been a looter. Perhaps it was the police. Did the police still exist?