Staying Alive

26

Somehow, John had fallen asleep. He woke up with the early morning light. The birds were chirping as if the world hadn’t ended, as if society hadn’t collapsed.

John sat up, wincing in pain from his shoulder.

He was in a nice suburban backyard. There was a small in-ground pool, a glass outdoor table, lawn furniture. There was a croquet set, a couple hoses, and a small flower garden. Someone had planted something in a series of cinderblocks that lay against the back of the house.

By all appearances, it was a charming suburban backyard.

And it felt like a peaceful day. No lawnmower engines buzzed. No cars honked.

Then again, certainly no one was making coffee and reading the daily paper. No one was watching cartoons.

If there were people still in the house, they were hunkered down, probably in the basement or the attic, clutching whatever object they’d found that was the most weapon-like.

John cursed himself for falling asleep. He needed to keep moving. The smart thing to do would be to move by night. At least that way, he could try to avoid being seen by the militia. But in the broad daylight, what chance did he have? From what Bill had said, the militia controlled all the roads. And there wasn’t any getting out of there without getting onto the roads at some point. There was only so far he could go through backyards.

John’s kitchen knife lay next to him on the grass. The blade was coated in dried blood, and John carefully wiped it along the dewy grass, cleaning the blade. The kitchen knife had become his only reliable companion. When he’d left his apartment, he’d never thought he’d last long at all. And a lot of that “lasting” had to do with his knife. Well, that and dumb luck.

John shouldn’t have been alive. He’d made four “friends” so far since his apartment, if you could really call them that. And he’d seen each one killed before his eyes. Why did John deserve to live and they didn’t?

But he pushed those thoughts away. There was no sense in dwelling on that now. In doing so, John had another thought: his own thinking process was changing. That was natural. The EMP aftermath had shaped and molded his brain. Intense experiences tended to do that. John was noticing that slowly, little by little, he was becoming more practical minded. This way of thinking reminded him of his brother Max, who always looked to the practical first. Or at least what Max considered the practical.

John needed a place to hide out for the day. He wasn’t going to risk traveling far during the daylight. Not after what he’d seen yesterday.

He didn’t dare try to enter this house here. There was no way to know whether it was abandoned or not.

If he tried to enter, there was a good chance he’d be attacked by the occupants. John didn’t want to fight some innocent family trying desperately to hold on. He was now willing to fight, but not like that. He’d fight people who came after him, who tried to take his own life away.

The thought of entering the house, though, was temping. Inside, there might be food, water, a place to rest comfortably.

But it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t risk it.

John moved over to the cinderblocks. The plants growing inside looked odd. Long green stems. But no flowers. They triggered a distant memory. He’d seen them somewhere before.

On a hunch, John dug down into the earth. His instinct had been right. Down in the dirt, potatoes were growing. He’d heard about this before—some trend of growing food inside cinderblocks. He didn’t get it, but he didn’t need to.

John dug until he’d recovered all the potatoes. There was another batch of cinderblocks, and John dug through those. These didn’t contain potatoes. Instead, under the leaves, John found small wilted-looking peppers. He picked these as well.

He couldn’t eat just yet. Instead, he surveyed the area, hoping to find somewhere to hide out.

In the yard next door, there was a small shed. Maybe that would work. He could hide out in there until nightfall. He’d need some luck, though. There was a good chance someone might enter the shed, looking for something useful, like gasoline or other supplies.

John had to climb over a fence to get to the next yard. He threw his handful of potatoes and peppers over the fence first, and then hoisted himself over. His shoulder still burned with pain from getting smacked by the gun.

He wished he had that gun. But there hadn’t been time to think of things like that. If he’d gone for the gun, there was a good chance he’d have been shot trying to get it, or trying to get out the window.

John gathered up his potatoes and peppers. He was so hungry that his mouth was salivating as he scooped them up. The smell of the peppers was intense and delicious, and John didn’t even like peppers. It was hard for him not to sit down right there and eat everything. That was how hungry he was.

Fortunately, the shed was unlocked.

It was dark inside, and cramped. He couldn’t see much at all at first. Only a little bit of light came in through a couple gaps where the roof hadn’t been fitted correctly to the walls. It wasn’t one of those quality Amish sheds that many in Pennsylvania had. It was just some cheapo knock off, assembled hastily and poorly. But that worked in John’s favor now, since gradually, his eyes adjusted the darkness and soon enough he could see fairly well.

John didn’t waste any time. He ate the potatoes first. They were raw, of course, but he bit into them like apples, eating the skin and everything. His stomach started to ache almost right away, but he ignored it. It was more important to get food into his stomach than worry about whether or not the raw potatoes might make him sick.

Next, he ate the peppers. Normally, he hated spicy food. But the potatoes hadn’t been nearly enough. After all, when was the last time he’d eaten? There’d been that stale bread, but that didn’t have any protein. And then there’d been that bar food. Not much protein there either.

John remembered reading that potatoes actually contained high quality protein. They didn’t show up on the normal nutrition charts as high-protein foods, however, because the protein content was normally measured against the whole weight of the potatoes, including the water. The article John had read had mentioned that during lean times in Ireland, workers were known to survive on nothing but potatoes. Of course, John didn’t know whether he’d be able to effectively assimilate the protein in raw potatoes. Judging by his stomach cramps, there were some problematic components of the potatoes that were normally neutralized by cooking.

Whatever, he couldn’t worry about that now.

The peppers stung his mouth horribly. They were incredibly hot. John didn’t know what type of peppers they were, except that they were an orange-red and incredibly shriveled looking. He was pretty sure that the more shriveled a pepper appeared, the hotter it was on whatever index it was that the experts used to measure spiciness.

For a long while, perhaps hours, John sat with his back against the cheap plywood shed wall. His mouth burned, since there was nothing to wash the peppers down with. His back ached, his shoulder and stomach hurt, and his legs were cramping up, since there was no room to stretch them out.

But at least he was safe for now.

Relatively safe.

Finally, John’s legs couldn’t take it anymore. He had to stretch them.

He was nervous about making any noise that could be heard outside the shed, in case someone was nearby. He had no way to know if someone was inches away from him on the other side of the shed walls. He doubted he’d be able to hear soft footsteps on the grass.

So far, though, he hadn’t heard any noises at all. Nothing but the birds.

John set about rearranging the things in the shed as quietly as he could. It seemed as if no one had been inside it in years. There was a thick layer of dusty grime over most things, and soon John’s fingers and hands were filthy.

There was an old lawnmower in one corner, along with a plastic gas can that made the whole shed smell like gas and made John even more nauseated than he already felt. The half-opened cans of paint and lacquer didn’t help either.

John suddenly realized that having gas inside the shed could be bad. Really bad. Surely people would need gas now, more than ever before. Someone was bound to start entering sheds, looking for gas.

But maybe he’d be lucky. Maybe no one would come.

As John was rearranging things, moving them as slowly and quietly as he could, stacking them on top of one another, he realized he should be looking for things that could be useful to him. He felt dumb for not thinking of it earlier.

There wasn’t bound to be food in the shed, but there had to be something he could use… some sort of weapon, maybe, or some flashlights. If he could find some old camping gear, maybe that would help him.

It took John at least another hour to find what he was looking for. He’d finally arranged all the old rotten wood in one corner. He’d gotten all the rusty gardening tools together and put them above the wood. He’d taken a long hoe that seemed like it was well made and set it aside, thinking he might take it with him. The handle was a strong, dense wood, and the metal head, while a little rusty, seemed like it was well made, of real steel. It was one of those old tools, from back when things were made properly. The edge had been maintained and sharpened over the years, possibly obsessively, until it had been left to sit unused in the shed for who knew how long. It’d probably been used for edging work. John cut his finger as he ran it across the blade.

John could use it as a weapon and a walking stick.

There was also a hatchet, completely covered in rust. It was one of those classic hatchets, the kind they’d sold in hardware stores across the country for decades. They cost about $25 and worked fine, but they weren’t very stain resistant. Taking an edge wasn’t their strong suit, but it would do the job, even with the rust and imperfect edge.

The hatchet could be a good weapon. And if John ever got into the woods, out of the suburbs, maybe he could use it to build a shelter. That was the sort of thing Max would have thought of. And this was the time when thinking like Max, well, it was just the right way to think about things.

John didn’t find the payload for another twenty minutes, moving everything around so slowly and delicately, conscious of the noise, always listening for approaching footsteps or the sound of an engine.

Underneath a dirt-caked tarp, there it was.

An ancient backpack. Looked like army surplus, maybe. It was the kind of pack that hippy kids used to use to hitchhike around the US in the ‘70s.

The pack seemed full. John tried not to get his hopes up. For all he knew, maybe it was just filled with trash, empty liquor bottles or something, a memento of a misspent youth long ago.

He almost couldn’t believe it when he opened up the pack.

Inside, it appeared to be completely full of camping gear.

There was an ancient tent, large and bulky. But it fit inside the pack just fine.

There were two water bottles, full of stale water. Who knew how old the water was.

There was a small emergency medical kit, and a bottle of prescription sleeping pills. Best of all, the rest of the pack was filled with energy bars. They had old labels on them, with graphics that made John think they’d been produced sometime in the mid to late ‘90s.

The contents of the pack were strange. John’s best guess was that about twenty years ago, someone had packed up their old backpack for a camping trip that they never ended up taking. After that, the bag had stayed, still packed, forgotten in the shed.

There wasn’t much else in the pack. It wasn’t complete by any sense of the imagination. But it would be enough.

John immediately went for the water. He smelled it first, and it had a strange odor to it. But he figured it was a risk he’d have to take. He took his first sip and almost spit it out.

But John realized that the majority of the strange taste was most likely coming from the aluminum of the water bottle seeping into the water. He could deal with a little aluminum. It wasn’t like he’d die from that any time soon, if at all. And if there was bacteria in the water? Well, he’d deal with that too. It was better than dying of thirst.

He had to force himself not to drink the whole bottle at once. Who knew when the next time he’d get water was.

John tore into one of the energy bars, which had gone hard and stale over the years. But it didn’t smell too strange, and it actually still tasted good. It had a lot of sugar in it, and John wouldn’t have been able to describe how intensely pleasing the taste of real sugar was in that moment. It seemed to warm his body and give him more mental strength to continue.

Now he had gear. Maybe he actually stood a chance.

Now all he had to do was get out of the suburbs and not get discovered. That was going to be hard, if not impossible.

But he’d try.

John dozed off once or twice during the rest of the day, but mostly he just waited. He tried his best to think of a plan, to map out a route. But his thinking wasn’t as clear as he would have liked. Probably from the intense stress he was feeling. He just couldn’t seem to conjure up a picture of a map in his head.

The best thing to do was simply try. He’d head through the yard and parks as much as he could, keeping off of the roads. He’d eventually make his way far enough north that the suburbs would give way to the more rural areas. Then, he’d stay away from the highways and roads and stay well within the woods, hidden from prying eyes by the trees and thick late summer foliage.

If he made it that far, his biggest problem might simply be finding the farmhouse. He didn’t have a map, and he hadn’t been to the farmhouse since he was a kid. He vaguely remembered what the area looked like. But it wasn’t like he’d ever actually driven up there himself. He’d been a kid, riding in the back seat with Max. His parents, obviously, had done all the navigating.

It seemed like a long shot. Almost impossible. Then again, maybe he’d see something along the way that would give him a clue to where he was and where he needed to go. Maybe he’d come across some landmark.

That was all based on the hope that he wouldn’t simply die in the woods.

The day seemed to stretch forever, with nothing to do but stare at the walls, make seemingly futile plans, and re-check his newfound gear over and over.

Finally, it was nightfall. There were still no sounds outside the shed.

John waited through dusk, growing increasingly impatient. Why couldn’t the sun just set faster? Did it really have to take its sweet time going down? Didn’t it need a rest like everyone else?

Maybe John’s thoughts were turning a little strange. Then again, maybe it was normal. Since the EMP, John had probably spent more time alone than he had in a long, long time. His work life involved dealing with people constantly, and he wasn’t the type to stay at home by himself. He’d always been out and about, with a hot date on his arm and money in his pocket.

John had read stories about people in extreme situations, people who’d had to fight for their lives. He remembered a story about a man who’d been stuck at sea for six months, living off seagull meat and blood. When he’d eventually been rescued, he’d been unrecognizable to his family. Not that his appearance had changed much. Instead, it was his personality. He was just different. A human can’t go through such a harrowing experience and come out the other side the same person. It’s just not possible.

But that man at sea had a civilization to come back to.

John didn’t.

And no one else did either.

Maybe whatever changes John was going through mentally, they’d be permanent ones. And maybe that wasn’t so bad. He was adapting to his new environment. He’d killed it in the financial field, and now those skills didn’t serve him anymore. Maybe it was a testament to his character that he was able to make the changes necessary, even if he was doing a clumsy amateur job of the whole thing so far.

In the silent darkness, John got his things together. He hoisted the ancient backpack onto his shoulders. It was heavy, and his shoulder hurt from the strap.

He tucked the rusted hatchet into one of the straps on the side of the backpack. He put his kitchen knife in an odd sort of pocket that someone must have sewn onto the side of the backpack. It fit in there nicely, and with a little luck, he’d be able to reach it easily.

One hand was free, and the other held the long hoe.

His heart was pounding in his chest as he finally reached for the handle to the door of the shed.

It was time to continue his journey.