Getting Out

27

The next day when they woke at sunrise, the storm had blown over, leaving the woods pristine and perfect looking. The sun was shining brightly and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Max went over in his mind what had happened the night before. They’d eaten their first good meal in a long time. Max’s stomach was still feeling full from all the steak he’d consumed the night before. He’d even had a beer, one that Georgia had given him.

Despite the way meeting Georgia and her family had started, tensions were almost non-existent now.

Max liked Georgia and her kids. She wasn’t a malicious person. He could tell that right from the beginning. She was like him, just doing what she thought she had to do.

The others were still sleeping, in their wet clothes that were starting to dry.

Max seemed to be the only one awake.

He got up, a little stiff from sleeping out in the open on the forest floor.

He looked down at them. Georgia, Mandy, James, and Sadie were all curled up into little balls.

Chad… where was Chad?

Max started circling the little camp, moving in larger and larger circles until he found him.

Chad was wide awake, looking like he hadn’t slept the entire night.

“How you holding up, Chad?” said Max. He hoped that Chad was going to be coherent, at the least. He was seriously starting to lose his patience with his old friend.

“Hey,” said Chad. He sounded lucid, yet really down. He didn’t sound like the exuberant party boy he’d been earlier.

“How you feeling?”

“Not bad,” said Chad. “The withdrawal is starting to calm down a lot. I couldn’t sleep all last night, but I’m… I don’t know. I’m feeling better.”

Max nodded.

“I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t loaded,” said Chad. “It’s been… I don’t know… ages and ages. I should have quit that shit years ago. Maybe this is a wake up call for me, I don’t know.”

“I think it’s a wakeup call for humanity,” said Max. “Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“Come with me to check out the cars. It’ll give you something to do.”

They walked the short distance to the road where the cars still were.

“They’re smashed up pretty good,” said Chad.

Max nodded. “There’s no way they’re going to run.”

Max still had the keys to the Jeep in his pocket, where they would serve merely as a reminder of the life he once had.

“I was hoping to use the battery,” said Max. “And maybe some of the other mechanical pieces. I thought they could be useful in the future. But it looks like it’s all going to stay here. We’ll just have to carry what we can on our backs.”

There were still plenty of supplies loaded in the Jeep, and the SUV.

Max suddenly realized that he’d made a grave error last night—he should have been protecting the gear. But he’d been so fatigued, simply so tired, that they must not have been thinking straight.

But fortunately it seemed as if no one else had come along in the night to rob them.

Max remembered that last night Mandy had said she’d thought she’d seen something, some pair of eyes out in the darkness.

It sent a shiver of terror through him, but Max shook off the thought. It was probably just some animal, or maybe nothing at all.

“So,” said Chad. “I don’t remember much of last night. But it seems like we’re now friends with the people who drove right into us and destroyed the Jeep.”

“Yup,” said Max. “It’s not really their fault, you know.”

“So what’s the plan? We’re going to walk to the farm house?”

“Yeah,” said Max. “If you want to come, that is.”

Chad didn’t say anything for a moment. “I was ready to die,” he said. “I just wanted to enjoy the high for a little while longer. Honestly, my plan was never to come to the farm with you. I figured I would just get out at some point along the road and walk over a cliff or something. Not that I’d really figured much of it out yet… But now that I’m not high, well, things seem a lot different. So yeah, I’d like to come, if you’ll have me. I know I haven’t been a good friend over the years, and I haven’t been much help so far on this trip.”

Max studied him. He knew that sober Chad was a completely different person than high Chad.

“It’ll be good to have you along,” he said. “But it’s going to be a lot of work. We’re going to have to fight for our survival once we get there.”

Chad nodded. “I’m ready for that,” he said. “A fresh start is what I need… Could be the best rehabilitation program ever, really.”

Max chuckled a little. “We all need a fresh start,” he said. “We’ve been living hollow lives for too long, hollow little lives borrowed on credit. We knew deep inside that this day would come…”

Chad nodded slowly.

“So what’s with you and Mandy,” he said. “She’s your girlfriend or something?”

“Wow, you must have been really out of it,” said Max. “No, she was my neighbor. I’d seen her before, but we’d never spoken. I ended up shooting some guys who were trying to rape her. I would have thought that would have been the kind of thing you would have remembered, Chad.”

“Well, I was pretty out of it,” said Chad. “If I’m good at one thing, it’s getting high, really really high, and staying high.”

“You’re strong,” said Max. “You don’t realize it yet, but under that layer of fat you’ve been carrying about for years, there are muscles that want to work, muscles that want to work hard to eke out a living on the land.”

Chad laughed vaguely. “We’ll see about that,” he said. “I can only promise one thing, and that’s that I’ll try.”

“Good,” said Max. “Let’s go wake up the others. We’ve got to get some food and then hit the trail as soon as we can.”

“So the new people are coming with us?” said Chad. “How’s that going to work?”

Max shook his head. “Georgia said she’s taking her kids to some hunting cabin,” he said. “I don’t know where it is, but I imagine we’ll be parting ways today.”

Chad nodded.

Max and Chad made their way back to the campsite, where everyone was slowly waking up.

Mandy was the most awake, and she already had the stove going, preparing some instant coffee as well as two dozen eggs. “I thought they’d just go bad anyway,” she said.

“You’re right,” said Max. “We’ve got to start eating the perishable food as soon as we can. There’s no point in waiting. And we’ve got to remember to eat. We’ve gone too long strung out on hunger. It makes us create errors and problems. We’ve got to stay well rested and well fed, at least as much as possible, from here on out.”

“That sounds nice,” said Mandy. “That was the first time I’ve slept properly since leaving. Oh, and I’ve looked at the maps already.”

Max nodded. He was pleased that she was so useful, and taking so much initiative. It was good that he’d brought her along. He thought back to the time when he was considering whether or not to enter her apartment. Now, he was glad that he’d done it. At the time, it had felt like a terrible, terrible decision.

Mandy served the eggs to everyone. There weren’t any plates, so some ate the eggs off of pages of the atlas map, doing their best to keep the paper flat like a plate.

Max simply took the scrambled eggs in his cupped hands and ate them quickly. He sat on a rock, slightly apart from everyone else, watching them, and considering what would lie in store for them in the days ahead. This was a turning point, with the loss of the Jeep. But maybe it was good. The Jeep had to go sooner or later, considering the gas situation. And it had been a mental crutch for Max, a piece of his old life that he hadn’t wanted to give up. Better to get it over with in a single crash, like pulling a bandage quickly off of a painful wound.

Mandy and Georgia were huddled over the maps, discussing their routes.

Chad was off on his own, a serious expression on his face.

Georgia’s children, James and Sadie, were sitting by their mother.

From where he sat, Max could hear the conversation.

“So I think I know where we are now,” said Mandy. “And it looks like your hunting cabin is on the way to where we’re headed.”

Georgia grinned. “What do you say, Max?” she called out. “Are we coming with you, or are we just going to slow you down?”

“Better if we all go together,” said Max.

Now that they knew where they were headed, and it had been decided that everyone would go together until they reached the hunting cabin, they spent most of their time sorting through all the gear and food.

It was a big job, because in both vehicles, everything had been stuffed together in a very haphazard manner.

Max was dismayed to realize what he’d thrown out when he’d picked up Chad, to make room for him. It had been some food, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He’d inadvertently thrown out a bag full of ammunition, a bag full of medical supplies, and other odds and ends that he’d thought would be useful for surviving.

They had enough food for the hike and even after that. Even though there were a lot of them, the food was plentiful. Georgia had brought along a lot of food as well. For the most part, the parties kept their gear separate from one another. Georgia and her children carried most of their belongings, and Max, Mandy, and Chad carried their own things.

It turned out that Chad’s big frame could carry a huge amount. Of course, he would tire easily, because of his own extra weight that he was carrying, all those pounds of fat. Max warned him of this, and cautioned him to carry less gear. But Chad seemed determined to “pull his weight” among the group as it were, and he loaded himself with many extra things that might be useful.

Max lent Georgia and her children extra hiking backpacks. So they each had a large hiking backpack with gear strapped all over it.

Max carried a lot of weight himself. To repay him for loaning her the packs, Georgia lent Max’s party a rifle.

Initially, Georgia offered the gun to Mandy, but Mandy said she didn’t know how to use it.

“I’ll take it,” Max had said. He was familiar with rifles as well as handguns, even though he didn’t have his own. It was, by his own admission, a huge oversight in his planning.

In the end, Georgia had enough rifles for everyone. She didn’t want to leave them behind in her SUV, so despite Mandy’s protests, Georgia lent her one, as well as Chad. Georgia’s own children carried rifles, although it was clear that while her son knew how to use one, her daughter, Sadie held the gun awkwardly and at a great distance from herself, as if she was nervous of it.

So they looked like a very strange group of hikers, each with a gun.

But they were ready, and as they walked away from the cars, Max felt a sort of relief washing over him. Gone were the days of clinging to the past, to automobiles and machines.

It wasn’t as if Max was a Luddite. In fact, he appreciated technology and what it had done for his own life. It had made him comfortable. But he was practical, and he’d always understood the limitations of technology.

Mandy led the way, and Georgia walked beside her through the woods. Mandy knew the route, and was good with maps. She held a compass as she walked, and consulted it frequently.

Without Mandy, Max didn’t know what would have happened to him. Maybe he would have gotten lost. Maybe he would have tried to fight his way out of situations that couldn’t be fought out of. If he’d run into those villagers earlier, maybe he would have engaged them in a firefight where he would have been clearly outnumbered. He would have died. Or maybe he never would have even reached that little town… He didn’t know, and he put the thoughts aside, realizing that there was no point now in speculating about what could have happened. All he knew was that he was grateful for Mandy. And in the future, maybe he would be grateful for having Chad along.

He was surprised how well the two parties mingled together. There was a natural sort of trust that had established itself last night around the meal, and the party chatted amicably as they walked.

After Mandy and Georgia, James and Sadie followed at a short distance. Chad walked behind them, loaded down with gear, swearing up a storm, and grunting with each step.

Max followed behind everyone else, keeping some distance between himself and Chad. He kept his eyes and ears open for sounds around him. If there was anyone else out here, even though the possibility was remote, he wanted to see them first.

He kept his rifle ready in front of him, his finger laying along the trigger guard, with the safety off.

Bits and pieces of the conversation from Mandy and Georgia drifted back to Max, but he didn’t pay it much attention unless it was something practical.

It was good, thought Max, that they’d met Georgia. Without her, they wouldn’t be armed as they were now.

He hoped they wouldn’t encounter someone else out here, but the possibility was always there. He knew that he needed to expect the unexpected.

The trees looked gorgeous with the sun streaming down through the branches. It had been a long time since Max had been to this remote part of Pennsylvania, but he already liked it. It wasn’t a bad place to set up a nice life, not bad at all.

The going was somewhat tough, because they weren’t on any sort of path. They’d decided to cut right through the forest, rather than take the road. There were a few reasons for this. For one, Mandy had assured everyone that she knew how to get there through woods. There was supposedly a hiking path that they could take. They only had a mile or two to go until they reached it, and they could take that part of the way as they continued north. Cutting through the woods would shave many hours off their trip. They figured that they had about two days of hiking to get to the farmhouse, and maybe a day to get to the hunting cabin.

The main reason that Max liked walking through the woods instead of taking the road was that they had much less of a chance of running into anyone.

If people were starting to leave the cities and suburbs, they would come out here, and they would surely be in cars—the people who made it here already, that is. In the future, there would come the hordes of slowly walking masses, moving like zombies in low budget movies, looking for anything to eat, and willing to do anything to get what they needed.

Max’s mind turned to his future life, and what it would be like.

He had some vague plans, but when he tried to think concretely about what he would do, he drew some huge blanks that worried him.

His whole purpose now was to get there, to get to the farmhouse. But once there, how would life settle out? What would the day-to-day routine look like?

He supposed that he would live there with Mandy and Chad.

He looked ahead and caught sight of Mandy’s rear end, as she walked in her jeans. She was an attractive woman, and Max realized for the first time that he was attracted to her as a woman. It wasn’t just her body that drew him to her, but the growing awareness he had of her personality. She’d started the journey in the worst possible way. She’d been completely unaware, and perhaps even unwilling to accept what had happened. But now she seemed to embrace the situation and she was willing to do whatever necessary to survive. Max appreciated that kind of attitude.

She would make a good partner at the farmhouse. He had a feeling that she would accept him. He’d seen the glances she’d given him here and there. They weren’t quite glances of longing, or romantic interest, because the situation was so intense that it simply didn’t allow for things like that. But there was something there in her gaze, something like respect and understanding.

Maybe they could create a family there on the farm. Maybe Max could unearth some ancient farm equipment and get the farm producing food again. It would be a massive undertaking, with a host of complicated obstacles. The main one, thought Max, was that there were no farm animals there. But maybe in the coming months and years, it would somehow be possible to get them. After all, animals had a way of surviving even when humans couldn’t.