Finding Shelter

1

Max had been walking alone for a week straight. He’d traveled only at night, walking around dusk and going to sleep a little before sunrise.

He wore a large camping pack, mostly full of food and water, as well as things like extra ammunition, maps, a compass, lighters, and some extra clothing.

He still had his Glock with him. He wore it as he always did in its holster. As he walked, he carried an AR-15 in both hands. Only rarely did he sling it over his back. The world had only gotten nastier, and he didn’t like walking without his finger close to the trigger if he could avoid it.

It had been several months since the hordes of desperate people had invaded the campground. Months since Max had led the defense of the camp. Months since Max, Mandy, Georgia and the others had barely survived.

In those months, a lot had happened. They’d started to construct something that really resembled a home, with actual structures that resembled buildings. They’d been able to gather more supplies and had in many ways made their day-to-day lives more comfortable.

In some ways, the world was quieter than it had been. Or at least in their part of the country. Max theorized that the masses of people had really all but died out. They’d done some rudimentary calculations on what percentage of the original populations would be left alive, and the numbers weren’t pretty. But, in a way, they were comforting. The fewer people that lived, the less danger Max and the others were in.

Of course, those that were left were the people who knew how to survive. They were the dangerous ones. And, in many cases, the amoral ones, the ones who would do simply anything, no matter what, to keep on breathing.

Those were the sorts of people that Max was worried about coming across. They were the reason that he kept his hands on his long gun as much as he could.

Max and the others had done their best to leave the camp as little as possible. They’d had to leave mostly to forage for supplies, hunt for food, and do some scouting, to make sure nothing terrible was coming their way, no army or horde of desperate and violent people. There’d been some contact with people, travelers mostly, who’d seemed if not trustworthy than at least not immediately violent. From them, Max and the others had heard news of the nation.

It wasn’t really news so much as rumors. Rumors that seemed to float around like the wind. There was no way anyone could know what was true, except to sort of try to get a gut feeling about how it all sounded.

There’d been wild tails that had immediately seemed false. Then there’d been stories that had initially seemed false, but kept coming up again and again.

One thing that Max had heard over several months, from several different people who’d seemed more or less honest, was that there was a group of good people who were trying to gather together, looking to bring back stability to the torn-apart nation. Max had heard various things about the group, that they were all former members of the armed services, that they were mere civilians, and that it was a mix of all sorts of different men and women, from various backgrounds.

What seemed common to all the stories was that such a group existed, and that they were looking for new people to join.

Gradually, as the idea of the group’s reality formed slowly in Max’s head over the passing months, he decided that he liked the idea of it. But when asked by anyone if they’d have any contact with it, Max would just shrug and say that it was better to wait and see what happened. He was by no means a selfish person, but the idea of traveling so far from the community he had worked so hard to create, only to see what was happening with another, well, it just didn’t seem like a good idea. It seemed like too big a risk. Too big a sacrifice. And for what? For a gamble.

But then the big news had hit. Mandy was pregnant. With Max’s baby, obviously.

Things had gotten pretty serious between Max and Mandy. He’d even proposed to her and they’d had a little somber ceremony. No ring. No dress. Only John to officiate the ceremony. But it had been something.

No one was surprised when Mandy had announced her pregnancy. Max had gotten claps on the back from everyone, but the mood hadn’t been completely celebratory. After all, it wasn’t like there were cigars to pass around. Or a bar to head down to for a round of drinks. Instead, the future of the world, and the baby’s future, seemed like a huge, heavy weight that brought the atmosphere down severely.

After all, what kind of future could Max and Mandy’s baby hope to have? It would grow up in a world completely torn apart, a world of uncertainty and madness, a world where the strongest and most vicious survived and the rest had to cling on or perish.

Max and Mandy had had long talks at night by themselves in their little lean-to, discussing their child’s future. It was because of these talks that Max had changed his mind about the group that was forming to the west of them, this group that they kept hearing rumors about.

Max had decided, completely on his own, that if there was anything he could do to ensure that his child grew up in an orderly world, then he was going to do it. And that meant traveling to see if he could help. If there really was a group out there that was interested in forging the nation once again from its own ashes, then Max knew that, for the sake of his future child alone, he needed to do everything he could do to ensure that the group had success.

Max didn’t want his kid to grow up in the world the way it was now. The way Max saw it, he could either do that or stay back at the camp, and do his best year after year to protect his kid. Until Max’s own time came. And then the kid would be on its own, using what Max had been able to impart.

That wasn’t a bad option. In fact, it was what he had mentally resigned himself to for a long while.

But how could he live with himself, if he didn’t do everything that he could do to try to actually create order again in the world?

He had heard good things about the group that was forming. Reasonable things. Realistic objectives. Realistic goals.

And the leader? Apparently, there was a leader who was not only charismatic, but wasn’t in the least bit a charlatan or a demagogue. He wasn’t leading people astray. He wasn’t trying to form some kind of cult. He was some kind of ex-cop or ex-military guy. The stories varied sometimes. But what all the stories agreed on was that this man’s name was Grant, and that he was about fifty years old.

What Grant wanted to do was start establishing order on a local level. He needed representatives from various areas to travel to him, to discuss the plans, and to establish what would essentially be police-force-type military all around the country. They’d try to make some kind of headway against the mounting violence of the roving bands of absolute criminals who were wreaking so much havoc.

Max would travel there, see whether this leader Grant was the real deal. He’d hear his terms, and if he thought it was all well and good, he’d return to the camp to carry out the plans, whatever they might be.

Max wasn’t taking anything at face value. He wasn’t that kind of person, and if anything, his experiences since the EMP had proved his natural skepticism to be right on the money most of the time. If anything, he’d learned to be even more careful than he naturally was.

Max planned to spend more time at Grant’s camp than strictly necessary. The idea was to hang around and really see if this was something legitimate or whether it was just another man trying to gain power in desperate times by appealing to people’s natural desire to improve things.

No one had wanted him to go. His brother had argued with him for days. Georgia had told him it was a terrible idea. Dan, who’d grown to really look up to Max, almost like a son, had said nothing, but Max could easily read the disappointment on his face.

Mandy had been the most convincing. After all, they’d found that they loved each other. She was carrying his baby. She had the most say of anyone. And she hadn’t wanted him to go.

Max’s reasoning had been that he wasn’t going to be away for that long. It wasn’t like he was leaving permanently to join up with some distant militia. He was going to be there for a few weeks. Add on a week of travel at either end, and it was just several weeks really. No more than six, Max had told Mandy.

He’d told her how he was doing it for their child, and she’d asked him how he could possibly leave her while she was pregnant.

It’d been the toughest decision Max had ever made, and he’d told her that. The idea of restoring order, of starting to squash the chaos, was just too big a draw.

Because while there hadn’t been many attacks on the camp since the hordes several months ago, and while the masses had for the most part died off, it wasn’t as if the world was safe. Far from it. Along with the rumors of Grant and his militia and plan came rumors of other groups forming. Groups of vile men and women. Groups who wanted nothing more than power. Groups of the types of people that society had, before the EMP, hemmed in and tried to control.

Without someone with a plan, without some good people standing up for what was right, the world was only going to get worse. More violence. More chaos. More horrors.

In the end, Mandy had agreed that he go. Better before the baby was born, anyway.

So far on his solo journey, Max had barely seen any sign of any living person. He’d come across some animals, the odd herd of deer, a couple of lone rabbits. Plenty of birds. He hadn’t shot at them. He had enough food, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

The moon had been waxing as he walked, so it was only getting brighter at night. It was easy enough to see. But he did, in many ways, crave the sun.

It was cold at night. It didn’t matter how many layers he wore. The chill seemed to soak through right to his bones. The only thing that made any difference was keeping up a fast pace. Normally, the sound of his own boots on the ground was the only thing he heard.

It was lonely, left in the dark with just his thoughts. Dark thoughts of what the world might be like for his child if he didn’t succeed on his mission. Dark thoughts of what might happen to Mandy if the world kept turning the way it was turning. He couldn’t shake the horror stories that had floated over to their camp along with the other rumors. Stories of people who ruled through fear and torture. People who had sick minds. People who had been, in some way, cast aside or slighted by the pre-EMP society, and who now found an opportunity to seek their revenge on those they believed had harmed them and held them back.

Max was exhausted from a full night of hiking. His leg was hurting him, and he’d been popping aspirin at four-hour intervals to help keep the pain from becoming unbearable.

Dawn had already hit.

Max should have stopped an hour ago. But he’d wanted to push on. He’d barely noticed the light starting to creep up around him.

The sun wasn’t yet up in the sky, but the world was once again illuminated.

It had rained off and on throughout the night, and Max was wet, not to mention sweaty. And getting a little overheated from the walking.

And he had a lot to do before he went to sleep. He needed to look over his maps. If he’d calculated things right, he should be only a day away from Grant’s camp. That meant that he had to strategize more, think things over. He didn’t just want to walk in there without his plan fully formed. Of course, he’d been thinking his plan over since he’d left Mandy and the others. But there were always last-minute details to hammer out. He needed time. Time sitting down with a pen and paper and a map.

Sometimes it helped to write things out. Sometimes it helped to see the map in front of him, no matter how much of it he had committed to memory.

The long nights of exhaustive walking made it harder for him to visualize things like the map in his mind’s eye. Not to mention harder to think clearly without writing down the ideas.

All night, Max had been walking along a little two-lane country road. He’d been staying about ten feet off of the shoulder, walking near the tree line.

There’d hardly been anything at all. Just the occasional abandoned gas station. The occasional little run-down country house.

And he wasn’t expecting to see much more until he arrived at Grant’s camp.

But what he saw now made him stop dead in his tracks.

His finger reflexively went inside the trigger guard, pressing ever so slightly against the trigger.

Up ahead, down the wet road, there was an old Jeep parked horizontally across the road. A car could have driven around it, but it would have had to get very close to the Jeep, not to mention drive partially off the road.

Max guessed that there was a good reason someone wouldn’t want to get their vehicle very close to that Jeep.

It wasn’t there by accident. It looked purposefully placed. It was a strategically advantageous location, right at a bend in the road, with the trees particularly close to the road and nothing else around for at least a mile in either direction.

No one appeared to be there. But Max knew someone was. Probably more than one person.

Max stayed as still as he could. He’d have rather been on the ground, but he knew that if he moved he’d be more likely to be seen.

Possibilities raced through his head.

Who’d put that Jeep there?

Was it Grant and his men? Maybe their project was bigger than Max had expected, with bigger boundaries? Was this Jeep an outpost of a well-ordered militia camp, or was it something else entirely?

It may very well could just be a couple of murderous rogue bandits, waiting for their next victim?

If that was the case, Max didn’t have any intention of going down easy.