Final Panic

26

Rob was OK with the plan. He figured that they’d done the best they could, right after the EMP. Heading to the lake house had been a good decision. Just because it hadn’t worked out in the end didn’t mean it’d been the wrong thing to do.

They were still alive. And they had a chance to keep living. Those were the things that mattered most.

Rob also figured that Jim knew better than he did. He didn’t totally trust himself. He’d improved somewhat, and at times he’d felt like he’d been on the right track. He’d done some good. He’d saved Jessica, but then again, he’d frozen up at the wrong moments, crucial points where he could have been more useful, like when he and Jessica had been escaping in the Subaru.

It hadn’t been that long since the EMP, but it had felt like a lifetime. Things had changed. For all of them. But for Rob in particular. He knew that his thoughts were different now. He thought about things in a completely new way. Instead of scrambling to pay his bills, or avoid getting his car towed, he was thinking about the really crucial things in life: food, shelter, and friends.

He knew very well that if he’d been on his own, he’d be a dead man. Likely, he would have starved to death or met his end trying to find food. Maybe a knife, or a bullet to the stomach. It wouldn’t have been pretty, whatever it would have been.

Rob had always heard that humans were social animals. Back in the pre-history times, humans had roamed the earth in small groups, hunting animals and finding edible plants, making medicine from their extensive, scientific-like knowledge of the environment in which they lived.

Those early humans wouldn’t have gotten far if they hadn’t been in groups. If they’d wandered, alone, or in pairs, they would have quickly met death, and the species as a whole would have never survived.

The modern pre-EMP world had, in a way, made everyone feel that they were in their own world. Before the EMP, rates of isolation were higher than they’d ever been. For the first time in history, people felt like they didn’t need anyone else. Sure, that wasn’t everybody, but Rob had noticed it in himself. And it’d made sense. After all, he’d been responsible for his own taxes, paying his own rent, buying his own food. Basically, everything he’d done had been for him and him alone. Sure, not everyone was in that situation, but plenty were.

Before the EMP, entertainment had been a huge industry, and it just so happened that the more the industry progressed, the more individualized entertainment had become. Decades earlier, families had clustered around their one radio, and then their one television. But right before the EMP, it wasn’t unusual for each family member to have not only their own TV, but their own computer, their own individual phone, and who knew what else. Families didn’t have to watch the same programs, which was good in a way, but overall it had probably made each person simply feel more cut off from everyone else.

And feeling cut off was no way to survive in a post-EMP world. Rob realized now more than ever that he had to rely not just on himself, but on Jim, Aly, and Jessica. Together, they had a chance. And on their own? Probably not much of one.

If, before the EMP, Rob and Jim and the others had had the foresight to connect with others in an informal sort of way, things might have gone a lot differently for them. For instance, they could have planned things out so that they’d have had not only a place to head after the EMP, but similarly minded people with whom they could trade goods and services with. Maybe someone would have a patch of potatoes, and another person would have a bunch of chickens.

That wasn’t to say that Rob had any problem with individualism. It might have seemed somewhat contradictory, but he felt more like an individualist now more than ever. After all, he knew that he was totally and completely responsible for his own survival. It wasn’t like there was any government or group that was going to step in and save him when things went bad. There wasn’t just no 911 system, but there were no fire departments either, nor hospitals, nor any other social services.

It was just Rob and his little bands of friends. Each one of them had to pull their weight, or the whole metaphorical boat could sink. They were each individuals, yet all part of a cohesive group that would help each one of them survive.

“You OK, Rob?” came Aly’s voice.

“Huh?” said Rob, realizing that he’d been staring out the window for quite a while, not paying attention to what had been going on around him. “Uh, yeah. I’m fine, why?”

“You look like you’re daydreaming or something.”

“Just thinking.”

“We’ve got a lot of that to do. Here, check these out. Turns out this RV is loaded with maps. Help me with them, would you?”

“Sure,” said Rob, as Aly handed him a couple of folded maps of the eastern states.

Rob glanced at the maps, and then back out the window for a moment.

Suddenly, he realized that what he was looking at was familiar. It was the same road that he’d been on just yesterday when he’d been trying to find Jessica.

They were right near Danny and Lonnie’s house. And about thirty seconds later, Rob spotted their house.

Something didn’t look right about it. Then Rob noticed it: the front door was hanging wide open, completely visible from the street.

“Stop!” cried out Rob, reacting on instinct, rather than thinking about what he was doing.

“What is it?” said Jim, from the driver’s seat, already slowing down the RV.

“I know the people who live there,” said Rob, who was already getting out of his seat.

The RV slowed to a complete stop, right in front of Danny and Lonnie’s house.

There was nothing else wrong with the house. There weren’t vehicles there that shouldn’t have been there. The blinds were drawn as usual.

But the front door shouldn’t have been like that.

“What’s the big deal?” said Aly, from the bed. “A house with an open door?”

“I know them,” said Rob, and he explained briefly how he’d met the older couple on his way to look for Jessica.

“Should we go in?” said Aly.

“There’s nothing we can do for them,” said Jessica.

“What do you think, Jim?” said Rob.

Jim thought for a moment, and then said, “You’re the one who met them, Rob. It’s got to be your call.”

It was a big deal for Rob to hear that from Jim. After all, Jim had always been the unofficial leader. And he’d continue to be. But he was passing this decision onto Rob, and it wasn’t like Rob was just deciding on what kind of dessert they were going to have after dinner. This could be a life-and-death matter.

There wasn’t really any practical reason to enter the house. The way Rob saw it, either Danny and Lonnie were OK or they weren’t. They’d either be dead or alive. Of course, there was a slim chance that if they’d been attacked, they’d be alive, but just barely hanging on. Of course, that would be the worst-case scenario, since it wasn’t like Rob could offer them to come live with him and his friends. They weren’t going to be able to take on stragglers.

“I’m going in,” said Rob. “The rest of you stay in the RV.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Rob,” said Jessica. “We don’t know who’s in there, or what happened.”

“If they were attacked, the attackers are probably gone now,” said Rob. “Why else would they leave the door open?”

“Maybe to invite others in. You know, to trap them.”

Rob scoffed. “I doubt it,” he said. “But anyway, if you’re right, then I’d better take the risk myself. Our group has one thing to gain from this. It’s kind of selfish of me, in a way.”

“It’s not selfish. You’re trying to help them.”

“There might be no one left to help.”

“What do you think, Jim?” said Jessica. “Should we let him go in alone?”

Jim shook his head. “I’m going with you, Rob,” he said. “I’ll back you up.”

They wordlessly got ready.

“Be careful,” said Aly, as they stepped down out of the RV.

Neither Rob nor Jim spoke as they approached the house.

“I’ll go in first,” said Rob, his gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger.

Jim nodded.

Rob crossed the threshold. It was dark inside, but there was enough light coming in through the door that Rob could see even with his eyes not yet totally adjusted.

He could hear Jim’s footsteps behind him as he walked through the house, into the room where he’d sat so recently with Danny and Lonnie.

Danny and Lonnie were there. But they were dead. Their bodies lay on the floor. Their throats had been slit, and blood was in their mouths and on the floor, pooling out around their bodies.

Rob and Jim just stood there in silence, looking at the bodies. There were no sounds in the house, and Rob seriously doubted anyone else was there. For one thing, everything that looked remotely valuable had been taken. The room in which the bodies lay had been stripped of almost everything, including pieces of furniture, which seemed strange, since furniture was most definitely not essential to survival.

Rob should have expected that something like this would happen to them. Their imaginary shotgun hadn’t been enough to protect them, and they were easy targets.

“People are cruel,” said Rob. “They didn’t have to kill them.”

“We’ve got to get used to it,” said Jim. “That’s the world we live in now.”

“They seemed like good people,” said Rob.

Jim nodded.

After a quick check of the rest of the house, in case there was anything they might be able to use, they left the house and climbed back in the RV.

Jim wordlessly started the RV and began driving. Aly and Jessica could tell, without anything being said to them, what had happened.

So they drove in silence, heading down the tree-lined road on a gray upstate New York day. They were headed into the complete unknown, and they all knew it. More than ever before, they all knew that there was certain danger that awaited them down the road. They knew that for the rest of their lives, there’d be no chance of living in peace and tranquility.

A completely new life awaited them, one in which they’d have to fight not just to feed and clothe themselves, but to keep themselves from being killed by those who were stronger and more vicious than themselves.

The odds weren’t in their favor. There was every chance in the world that they’d never live out their full lifespan, but instead meet some untimely end. But wasn’t that how humans had existed before the advent of modern society? For thousands and thousands of years, that’d been the human existence, never knowing which day would be your last.

Rob knew that they had the stuff to survive. It was deep in their bones. It was an attitude, something ancestral and ingrained in their brains. Humans weren’t meant, after all, to shop for their food in supermarkets and play social games of niceties. They were meant to hunt for their food and know how to defend themselves.

It was a return to the old way of life. They were losing security and safety, but they were gaining something. Something hard to describe. Something that might be called freedom.

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