Getting Home

1

“I’ll be right back,” said Dan.

The woman mumbled something unintelligible. Her hair was in her face, tangled and stained with her own blood. Blood ran down from her nose and into her mouth. The sleeve of her shirt was partially torn open, revealing the gunshot wound she’d received just minutes ago.

Leaving the wounded woman lying against the house, Dan rushed around to the back. The back door was locked. He considered trying to break it down, but it looked sturdily made, with a deadbolt. Dan wasn’t big. He was just a kid, and much smaller than average.

How was he going to get inside the house?

He needed to do it soon. He needed to get himself and the woman out of view and into the relative safety of the home. They both needed to be out of sight. Dan didn’t know where they were, and who was there.

Anyone could come by at any moment.

Dan’s heart was pounding and his throat felt constricted as he scanned the back of the house, looking for a way in.

There was a window low enough for Dan to reach.

He had nothing with him. His knife was gone, as was his pack.

Dan’s eyes scanned the dingy back yard frantically, looking for a rock. For something with enough heft to work.

He was so anxious to get inside that he almost tried to use his elbow. But he managed to stop himself. It was likely it wouldn’t work, and he’d just end up with an injury that would hurt him down the line.

Surviving was a constant compromise between immediate and future needs. Sometimes, the immediate was more important. Like when it was an obvious life or death situation. Other times, like now, it was important to take a mental step back and consider the outcomes.

There were no rocks visible in the yard. But there were bricks that were half-buried in the ground, forming an outline of what once might have been a small garden plot.

Dan quickly dug out one of the bricks. He didn’t want to injure his hand or wrist on the glass, so he took off his shirt and wrapped it around his arm. Using the brick, he smashed it against the glass window pane.

It shattered, leaving long fragments of glass trailing out from the wood. It took just a few moments to knock them away with the brick.

Dan dropped the brick, shook the glass out of his shirt, then got it back on.

He was able to pull himself up and get through the window without getting cut. He stepped down gingerly onto the house’s battered wooden floor. The shattered window glass covered it, and it crunched underneath Dan’s sneaker.

Dan suddenly realized that he’d assumed no one was home.

But he hadn’t even knocked on the door to check.

Considering what he’d just been through, it was an understandable mistake. He was overwhelmed and scared and knew he needed to act fast. But whether it was understandable or not didn’t matter.

If someone dangerous was in the house, he might die. He had nothing to defend himself with.

Dan stood perfectly still, painfully aware of how loud his breathing was. He waited and listened for any sounds.

But there was nothing. Not a single creak of the flooring. Not the faint hint of someone’s breathing or movement.

Nothing.

Since the EMP, everything had gotten quieter. There wasn’t that faint background noise from distant traffic that you never even noticed. There wasn’t the sound of a heater or a water pump.

Nothing.

Dan had to get the woman inside the house. There wasn’t time to check every room, to be absolutely certain that the house harbored no one.

He made his way into the kitchen, found the back door, and unlocked and unbolted it from the inside.

He found the thirtyish year old woman still slumped against the outside of the house, right where he’d left her.

“OK,” said Dan. “We’re going to get you inside. Don’t worry. You holding up OK?”

The woman nodded vaguely.

She seemed to be getting worse.

“Can you answer me?” said Dan.

“…Yes,” she said, after a long pause, blood from her nose entering her mouth as she opened it.

Dan and the woman had been lucky. The pickup truck driver hadn’t spotted them jumping off. And none of the other soldiers had either.

Hopefully, the soldiers wouldn’t know where Dan had jumped off. The route they’d followed was long. It’d be too hard for the soldiers to retrace and it and search each house along the way.

Dan and the woman should be safe from the soldiers in the house.

All he had to do was get her in there.

“All right,” said Dan, crouching down. “I’m going to try to pick you up. OK?”

He didn’t wait for her response.

He grabbed her under her armpits and pulled hard. He knew how to lift, to use his legs rather than his back.

It wasn’t that she was heavy. She’d probably been an average weight for her height before the EMP, and since then she’d obviously lost weight. Just like most everyone else.

Dan was a strong kid. But he was just a kid. An unusually small short one at that.

He strained as he tried to pull her up.

He finally got her up into a standing position, back on her feet.

There was no way he could carry her inside.

“Can you walk if you put your weight on me?” said Dan.

“I think so,” she said.

She leaned heavily on him, and Dan pushed back against her with all his force. Like this, leaning crazily into each other, they managed to inch slowly step by step down the driveway to the back yard where the open door awaited them.

Somehow, Dan got her up the small concrete steps of the back stoop and inside to the kitchen where they both collapsed, exhausted, on the floor.

“OK,” said Dan. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be OK. I’m going to get that bullet out of you. You’re going to be fine.”

But Dan didn’t know that everything was going to be fine.

His eyes scanned the kitchen for something he could use.

He checked the drawers and cabinets, opening them frantically. He didn’t bother looking for food and water. They’d have to worry about those sorts of supplies later.

Right now, he needed something to dig into the wound with, something to pull the bullet out with. He needed alcohol to sterilize the instrument with. And he’d need something to tie around the wound tightly, to stop the bleeding.

He wasn’t expecting to find a full-fledged medical kit. On first impression, without careful inspection, it seemed as if whoever had lived in the house had abandoned it. If they’d had any time at all, they certainly would have taken with them whatever medical supplies they’d had.

If Dan hadn’t lost his backpack, he’d be in much better shape.

But he had nothing.

There were some knives in the drawers. Regular dull kitchen knives, made of cheap steel.

He couldn’t dig out a bullet with a knife.

Dan’s eyes fell on an open door towards the end of the kitchen. It led to the dark basement below.

Maybe there’d be tools down there. Maybe pliers would work. He could sterilize the pliers as long as he had some alcohol.

It gave him a little hope, calming his mind a little.

“I’m going to head down to the basement,” said Dan, crouching down to speak directly to the woman in a soft voice. “It’s going to be OK. I’m going to get something that will help us get that bullet out of you. Don’t worry.”

Suddenly, there was a noise outside. From the back yard.

It wasn’t loud. Dan wasn’t even sure what it was, or if he’d really even heard it.

He and the woman both froze in place. Dan didn’t move a muscle.

Then he heard it again.

It sounded like a footstep. Unmistakable. Dead leaves in the back yard crunching under a heavy foot.

Dan hadn’t heard the sound of any vehicles. Hopefully it wasn’t the soldiers who’d come back for them.

But who was it?

The best-case scenario was that it was someone inoffensive. Someone nonthreatening, nonviolent.

The chances of that were slim. And Dan knew that.

Dan’s eyes skipped across the room, towards the drawer he’d just opened that had the kitchen knives.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d killed with a kitchen knife.

Another footstep. This one louder than the last one.

They were out of view for now.

But the window was broken, the cool air coming in. If Dan got up, surely the approaching stranger would hear him.

He’d have to make it fast. Get the knife and be ready.

That was the plan.