Rose had gotten there too late. She’d been all over in search of Jake.
When she’d finally found him, he’d already been shot.
She hadn’t brought a gun with her. She’d been too frantic and too concerned about Jake to remember a firearm. The whole world of guns was completely foreign to her. It always had been. Even over the last day, with the imminent threat of an attack, guns were still the last thing on Rose’s mind.
And she was regretting that attitude now.
She was panicking. There wasn’t anything she could do.
But she had to do something.
Rose had hidden behind a tree, peeking her head out. When she’d been trying to figure out what to do, half-paralyzed by fear and panic, she’d seen the stranger shoot Jake again.
Jake was still alive.
He could be saved.
She’d finally acted.
The stranger had been distracted by his own semi-coherent ramblings. Rose had dug through the snow until she’d found a heavy stick. A good, heavy one. Plenty of heft to it.
Rose held the branch high above her, then swung it down as hard as she could. She heard and felt the heavy wood connecting with the man’s skull.
The stranger fell heavily onto the snow with a grunt of pain. Half his body had fallen on top of Jake.
“Jake! Are you OK?”
Rose bent down, frantically trying to push the stranger’s body off of Jake. The stranger wasn’t moving. He was heavy, but she managed to push him completely off of Jake.
Jake didn’t look good. The color was draining quickly from his face. His eyes were half-closed. He’d been shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the knee. Blood had soaked through his jacket at the shoulder.
“Rose…” said Jake, his voice sounding like it was fading away.
“It’s OK, Jake,” said Rose. She was trying to make her voice not sound as frantic as she felt. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “It’s going to be OK, Jake.”
“We should have…”
“What is it, Jake?”
Rose felt completely overwhelmed. She couldn’t do this. She didn’t have it in her to watch the only man she’d ever loved die before her eyes. She tried to remember something about first aid. Shouldn’t she make a tourniquet, or do something to stop the bleeding?
She didn’t know.
She stared down at Jake’s face that was so full of pain she could barely stand to look at it, not having the slightest idea what she should do next. She was letting the panic overwhelmed her and take control of her completely.
Rose’s leg was pushed up against the stranger. He still hadn’t moved, but she didn’t know if he was dead. She hadn’t checked his pulse, or even looked at his face since he’d hit him.
Rose’s heavy stick lay on the ground, half buried in the snow, completely forgotten.
The stranger’s leg suddenly moved. Rose felt it against her.
She spun her head to look at him.
Just at that moment, the stranger made his move.
He’d either been lying in wait, waiting to make his move, or he’d just woken up out of his daze.
He moved fast, scrambling into position, and then lunging up from the snow at Rose.
His body hit hers heavily. He knocked her onto her back. Her head hit the ground hard, her neck snapping back. Snow kicked up into the air around them.
The stranger’s face was right against hers. He kept her pinned down with one arm. She thrashed at him, scratching his face with her nails, drawing blood.
But he just grinned down at her.
She couldn’t get out from under his weight.
But it’d be OK.
Jake would save her. He was so close by. He was right there. He’d always been there for her before.
It’d only be a few more seconds. Just a matter of time.
“Jake!” cried Rose.
The stranger was reaching for something in the snow. His eyes didn’t leave Rose’s as he fumbled in the snow with his free hand, searching for something. Probably his gun.
“Jake!”
But there was no answer from Jake.
What was he doing?
“Ah, there we go. Found it,” muttered the stranger, leering down at Rose with intense eyes full of anger. “This is a new world now, lady, and you’ve got to learn to finish what you start. You don’t bash someone in the head like that and not finish the job. ‘Cause they’re going to come back for you.”
“Jake!” cried out Rose. There was an intense desperation in her voice. She’d never even heard herself use that tone before. She felt more hopeless than she’d ever felt.
Sure, she’d encountered problems in the past. Life before the EMP hadn’t been easy for her, in comparison to her friends. But those problems were nothing in comparison to the problems of her new life.
And now she’d finally encountered the worst problem of all. The one she’d never survive.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” snarled the stranger. With his thumb, he pulled back the hammer of his gun. “More than anything, I’m doing you a favor.”
“Please,” cried Rose. “Please don’t.”
If she could buy more time, Jake would save her. He was gravely injured, but surely he’d manage to marshal his strength to save the love of his life.
“Too late, lady.”
The stranger seemed to be enjoying this. That was good. All she need was more time, and the stranger seemed willing to give it to her.
“I don’t deserve this,” cried Rose.
“We deserve everything we get. It’s all coming to us, whether we like it or not.”
Was Rose going to leave the world believing that someone else would step in and save her?
Finally, something clicked in her mind.
Her survival instincts kicked in.
Strong instincts.
No one else was going to help her.
Jake wasn’t going to.
No one was.
Only she could do it.
Rose let out a furious scream and pushed herself up against the man, using all her strength and all her weight.
She broke free from his pin, from his one arm that had pinned her down. Only her upper body was free. His knees, hard and knobby, were still pressing into her thighs.
Rose’s hands went for his gun.
But it was too late.
The stranger pulled the trigger. The revolver discharged.
The bullet struck Rose in the arm.
The pain surprised her, sending a shock of adrenaline through her whole system.
She’d been shot, something that she never would have thought remotely possible in her previous life. Getting shot was something that happened only to people in the newspapers, only to criminals and cops and soldiers. Not to people like Rose.
Rose didn’t let her surprise stop her. She had both hands around the stranger’s gun.
He didn’t want to let go.
Rose pried at his fingers.
She bent her neck, craning it, getting her mouth right against the stranger’s exposed wrist.
She bit him. Hard, sinking her teeth into his flesh.
The stranger screamed. His grip on his gun loosened.
Rose seized the opportunity. She managed to get the gun away from his grasp.
The stranger didn’t let his pain stand much in his way. His hands came towards her. Fast.
He didn’t go for the gun. Instead, he went for her throat.
Rose felt his large, strong hands tighten around her throat.
She couldn’t see what she was doing. The gun was in her hands, but it was wedged between their two bodies. He was pressing down against her again with all his weight, his hands never leaving her neck.
Rose knew she didn’t have much time. A few more seconds and she’d lose consciousness.
The fingers around her neck tightened.
Squished between their bodies, the gun was pointed to the side.
It took all of Rose’s strength to get the gun pointed slightly to the sky. That way when she pulled the trigger, the bullet would hit the stranger.
It didn’t seem like she could do it. His body was too heavy. Her hands felt weak. The arm that had been shot didn’t seem to be working quite right. It was incredibly weak.
Finally, with one last desperate effort, she got it.
The gun was angled slightly up. She hoped. She still couldn’t see it at all.
Rose squeezed the trigger.
The recoil was intense, sending pain down her already-injured arm.
The noise of the gun was defending.
The hands around her throat loosened up immediately.
The stranger’s face was right up against hers. She’d never forget the expression it wore.
He was dead. Or just about dead.
Rose could barely get the body off of her own. It took all her effort, as well as ignoring the pain in her arm. But she got him off. He rolled over into the snow onto his back, no life left in his face.
Rose scrambled to her feet. She was covered in snow and blood. Her throat was intensely sore. The gun was still in her hand.
“Jake!”
She scrambled over through the snow to Jake, who was lying completely still.
“Jake! Say something!”
Rose dropped down onto her knees, setting the gun down into the snow. With the hand of her good arm, she pawed frantically at Jake’s face.
But there was no life in it.
Jake wouldn’t answer her anymore.
Rose wasn’t going to give up.
Despite her bad arm, she began pumping up and down on Jake’s heart with both hands. She didn’t know how to properly execute the maneuver she was trying to do. After all, she’d never studied first aid.
It was futile.
Jake was dead.
Rose kissed Jake’s lifeless lips, which had already grown cold, and then sank down into the snow. She curled herself up into a little ball, pressing herself against Jake’s dead body.
The man she was supposed to spend the rest of her life with was dead.
Rose’s face was pressed into the freezing snow. She began sinking down into a tumultuous depression. The pain in her arm was nothing compared to the anger and despair raging inside her mind.
She stayed like that for a good ten minutes, sinking deeper and deeper into complete hopelessness.
But her thoughts started to shift.
Rose didn’t know what it was. Or where it’d come from.
She knew it wasn’t quite hope.
But it was something.
She had to go on. She had to continue.
She had to try to stay alive.
She was going to act.
Maybe it’d been listening to Max over the last week. Maybe his attitude had rubbed off on her in some subtle way. Maybe it’d been spending time with the new group of people, the group who always managed to go, go, go, the group that never stopped when the situation seemed completely impossible, completely hopeless.
She rose slowly to her feet.
The pain in her arm was intense. She unzipped her jacket to examine the wound. She didn’t know what to make of it. This was her first encounter with bullet wounds.
It was more strange than horrifying to see her own flesh injured in such a way. Rarely in her life had she ever had a serious injury. She’d never even accidentally cut herself on a knife.
The bleeding didn’t seem to be too bad. At least not yet.
Since Rose didn’t know how to stop the bleeding, she decided to ignore the wound for now and try to get back to camp.
The revolver lay partially-buried in the snow. Rose reached down with her good arm and grabbed it.
Rose took one last glance at Jake. There was nothing she could do for him now. Or his body. She’d come back with the others to give him a proper burial.
She felt a pang of guilt in her chest as she turned away from Jake’s body. She was leaving him out here like he was a dead animal.
But Jake would have wanted it this way. He would have wanted her to continue.
Rose passed the man she’d shot. He had another gun on his back. Some kind of huge rifle. Rose didn’t think she’d be able to carry it with her injury, and she didn’t know how to use it, so she left it.
She didn’t think to look in the man’s pockets, or his small sack, for anything useful. The only thing on her mind now was to get back to camp.
Rose set off, her boots wading through the snow that had started to ice over in the cold.
It was a long way back to camp. But Rose was confident she could find her way back. The moon was bright, and she had no trouble seeing.
Rose kept the gun ready, her finger on the trigger in case she encountered someone else. She knew she had to keep her guard up.
It wasn’t until she’d been walking for a good five minutes, all the while not turning around once, that Rose realized how exhausted she was. The adrenaline in her system had started to die down slightly, allowing her to feel her exhaustion. She’d been through more than she’d ever been through before.
Suddenly, she heard something to her right.
Rose turned just in time to see something darting out from behind a tree.
Rose stood her ground. She wasn’t going to back down. She’d fight if she had to.
She couldn’t yet quite see what it was. The trees were in the way. It was just sound now.
Rose stood with her legs wide and raised the gun with her one good arm. She tried to hold it as steady as she could.
But it wasn’t a person. It wasn’t an enemy.
It was a dog. Nothing more than a dog. Big and furry, with pointed ears. Probably a German Shepard. The dog had seen better days. It was skinny, to the point of looking underfed. Its fur was matted in places, not to mention filthy. But despite the dog’s bedraggled appearance, there wasn’t a trace of malice in its features or movements.
Rose slowly lowered her gun, and stared in wonder at the dog, who looked back at her, cautiously approaching.