Finding Shelter

24

Georgia had killed the man.

Somehow she hadn’t died. Somehow John hadn’t died.

They’d lain there, the two of them, exhausted, completely spent, after the fight, among the bodies, laughing.

It had felt strange to laugh. Strangely freeing. It was all over. For the moment. Until the next fight. Until the next random encounter with strangers that turned to violence.

It wasn’t normal laughter. It wasn’t exactly nervous laughter. It was instead the type of laughter that happens when you don’t know what else to do, when there are no words, sayings, or facial expressions that can begin to sum up the absurdity of the situation.

Finally, Georgia had picked herself up off the ground.

John’s laughter, meanwhile, had shifted back to grimaces and grunts of pain. His leg was in a bad way.

“We’re going to set it when we get back to camp,” said Georgia, examining the injury. “I don’t want to wait around here any longer than we have to.”

“You think they’re all gone?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“What’s that?”

“Try to get on out of here. I’m going to make a sled… I’ll have to drag you back.”

“I can walk. Don’t worry about me.”

Georgia let out a little laugh. “There’s no way you’re walking out of here. Not on that leg.”

“I’ll use a stick… just get me something to walk with. I can do it. It’ll be just like when I had crutches back in junior high.”

“Be my guest,” said Georgia. “How about this? You try that, and I’ll work on my method for when yours fails.”

“It’s not going to fail.”

Before Georgia could start getting the sledge prepared, she had to take a tour of the surrounding area. She made her way back to where they’d seen the large truck.

There was no sign of it.

The only sign that it’d been there were the dead men that it’d left behind. Georgia wondered whether the driver alone had driven off, or if there’d been other men with him.

Georgia, as a matter of habit and practicality, went through the pockets and belongings of the dead men.

There was nothing to identify them by. No wallets. No dog tags. Nothing at all that identified them in any way.

What had happened to all their stuff from before the EMP? It seemed as if someone had arranged things so that these men would not be tracked to any kind of organization.

Whatever.

Georgia didn’t care.

She just wanted to get out of there. She just wanted to stay alive.

She gathered up their weapons, their knives, their ammunition, their guns. She gathered up what she could carry of their food and she took a couple pieces of clothing to use for the sled.

Georgia used her knife to cut down some small trees nearby. They were nothing more than saplings, really. She lashed them together in a clever way with the clothes, forming a sort of inverted triangle on which she’d drag John back to the camp.

It would take a while. And it would be hard. But she’d be able to do it.

“How’s that idea of yours working out, anyway?” called out Georgia, looking up from the sled she was constructing. “Those crutches going to get you back to camp?”

“Sure,” shouted John, as he tried to stand up on the sticks that Georgia had tossed over to him.

He cried out in pain as he fell down.

Georgia didn’t have it in her to laugh. She was too beaten down, and she was imagining the painful journey that they had back to camp in front of them.

What’s more, she was thinking of her daughter.

Now, after this encounter, she felt like she was only that much further away from finding Sadie.

“Here,” said Georgia, walking over to John. “Let’s get you onto this thing…”

It took a little while to get John situated properly, and when he was, Georgia didn’t waste any time.

It was, after all, a long way back to the camp.