Surviving Chaos

12

Max didn’t know exactly how he’d done it, but he’d found his way back to the road he’d come in on.

He’d gone through more backyards, winding his way through the town’s lesser-traveled areas. He’d passed some kind of old barn, and what had looked like an ancient and now-defunct granary. He’d found himself on the other side of the graveyard he’d seen when he’d come in.

The road was right on the other side of the graveyard, but Max knew he’d have to stay deeper in the woods alongside the road. He needed to reduce his chances of getting discovered. He didn’t know if they were still after him. But it was likely. After all, he’d killed those three young men. The mob would want blood and revenge.

Max walked through the graveyard, heading towards the woods. The ground was bumpy and uneven. He had to weave his way through the headstones, since they weren’t exactly in orderly rows.

Max tried to turn his attention away from the young men he’d killed. But his mind kept going back there. They’d been how old? Twenty-one, maybe older? It was hard to say.

There wasn’t anything else he could have done.

But that didn’t mean it should have happened.

And what was it all for? For a few gallons of gasoline. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Max knew he’d do it again, if he needed to. If he could have done it over, he would have done the same exact thing.

And he wasn’t doing it for himself. He was doing it for the others. For Mandy, Georgia, James, and Sadie.

They’d started out as complete strangers. Except for Chad.

But they’d become like a family. Maybe even closer. Before the EMP, Max had noticed that families had been becoming more fragmented. There were a thousand reasons for why it happened, and Max hadn’t spent much time speculating on them. He just knew what he’d seen.

Max hadn’t had a family of his own. But his new friends had become his family. He’d do anything for them. And he knew the feeling was mutual.

Max was feeling weak again by the time he got to the edge of the cemetery. He didn’t dare sit down to rest, knowing that people could appear at any moment. It seemed as if the cars from the area, the ones left, at least, were not working. But that was just a guess. It wasn’t enough to go on. A car might drive down the road at any moment, the driver spotting Max just heading into the woods.

He had to keep moving. He unwrapped his third Mounds bar and took a small bite. He tried to make it last, but it wasn’t any use. In a couple seconds, he’d devoured the whole thing.

Soon, he was feeling a little better.

But he knew that it wouldn’t last for long.

And he had a long way to go. A long way to go without any food.

But he could make it. Max knew that the human body was capable of extraordinary feats. As long as the person kept the right mental state. The mental aspect of things was, in Max’s opinion, what got to most people.

Before the EMP, Max had read plenty of stories of survivors, people who had survived when others hadn’t. Obviously having the right gear and being prepared was the number one thing that had helped people. But an often overlooked aspect of survival was the mental game. Sometimes those who had the same physical supplies as others ended up surviving, provided they could keep their head straight.

Max knew he could keep his head straight. He had a clear goal in mind, something to make him push himself, something to keep him going. He needed to get back to his friends with the gas. They needed him.

But what good would such a small amount of gas do? They could go what, twenty to forty miles on it? Max wasn’t sure how much gas it really was. He also wasn’t sure what kind of gas mileage the Bronco would get. But he knew it wouldn’t be good. It was an old vehicle, long past the point when it was getting the gas mileage stated by the manufacturer. And Max was sure it had never been good in the first place. It was a heavy vehicle, built more like a truck than a car, unlike some of those newer SUVs.

Max kept his eyes peeled for signs of anyone. More importantly, he listened for sounds. But there was nothing.

It seemed like no one was coming for him.

“Seemed” was the important part. It didn’t really mean anything.

Max knew that even when he felt perfectly safe, when everything seemed to be going just right, a threat could be lurking around the next corner. Or even closer.

Before the EMP, Max had often heard his colleagues say things like, “but I feel perfectly safe in my neighborhood.” Max had normally bit his tongue, but he knew well enough that that feeling didn’t mean anything at all. He’d read the crime reports, and he knew that perception was often completely different from reality.

Max let his mind wander as he walked. That didn’t mean that he let his attention drift from being vigilant. Instead, it was a strategy. A survival strategy. He kept his thoughts from turning to dark places, to the tragedy at hand. Instead, he focused on planning and plotting the next moves, of devising new types of animal traps, of trying to figure out ways to get more ammunition.

The stolen ammunition was a real blow to not only their security but their hunting ability as well. Without ammunition, the rifles were almost useless, and while it wasn’t completely impossible, hunting with handguns would be extremely difficult. And they couldn’t afford to waste the ammunition they had on shots they were likely to miss.

Max had gotten a few miles away by the time it was too dark to keep walking. He retreated farther back into the woods, away from the road, before looking for a spot where he’d spend the night.

He couldn’t walk at night in the woods. He had his flashlight, but the battery had long since died.

Even if he’d had a flashlight, it would have made him visible, a walking target in the woods.

And it was too dark to walk without a light. It was the dark of the moon, or near that point, and the sky was cloudy anyway.

With the last light that remained, Max found a rock and began digging a shallow hole in the ground. He didn’t dig deep, just a few inches. His thought process was that it would give him some protection against the cold.

He’d have dug deeper, but he knew he needed to conserve his energy. It was a game of energy against time at this point. A game of entropy. Every passing minute that Max went without food, he’d lose energy. Every step he took from here on out, he’d lose energy.

But he could do it.

Max chose his sleeping spot by guessing which way the wind was coming, by holding up a dead leaf and observing it carefully in the dying light.

The wind had seemed to be coming from the east, so Max had made sure to dig his shallow hold on the western side of a large tree. It would give him some shelter from the wind.

Once the sun had set completely, there wasn’t much to do. Max already knew he was going to save his remaining candy bars for the days to come. There was nothing to eat, and he drank only a little water.

He lay there, in the hole, knowing that the cold would keep him awake most of the night. He was already used to sleeping on the ground, that in itself wasn’t a problem. But there was no way around the cold. As the night continued, the cold seemed to dig into his bones, and when he finally had drifted off to sleep, he’d only find himself awake again ten minutes later.

Morning came, and Max slowly got up. His whole body was stiff. He unwrapped a candy bar, ate it, and washed it down with a few swigs of water.

Another long day was ahead. Hopefully the fatigue and hunger were the only problems he’d have to deal with.

Max didn’t think it was likely he’d run into anyone. But if he did, he’d face them just as he’d faced the others before them.

The day dragged on and on. Each step had become a challenge. His body simply needed more sustenance. There wasn’t a trace of protein in those candy bars, and Max knew that his body at this point was in a catabolic state, breaking down its own muscle tissues to provide him with the glucose and protein he needed.

Max hiked for three more days, through the cold air of the woods. He came across no one, but he didn’t let his guard down. He kept his mind active with planning, as well as memory games.

Before the EMP, Max had read an interesting book written by a man who’d been a prisoner of war in World War II. Max had found the book in the break room at work, and while at first he’d just idly flipped through the pages, as the days had gone on, he’d found himself reading more and more.

To torture the man, his captors had buried him up to his neck. They’d left him like that for days and then weeks, feeding him water and bread.

Physically, it was torture. But the mental aspect of it was far worse.

As a survival technique, the POW had began trying to replay movies in his head. At first, he couldn’t remember more than a single scene. But the more he thought about it, and the more he’d wracked his brains, the more he remembered. Within days, he could remember the entire movie.

The movie trick had kept him distracted, and kept him alive. It had kept him from completely losing his sanity.

Max did something of the sort now, trying to remember old books and movies.

Max walked for four days. The last two, he had nothing to eat. The candy was long gone. He had trouble keeping track of how many days he’d been walking, and for some time, he believed he’d somehow missed the camp and gone right past it.

But then, on the fourth day, around mid-afternoon, Max suddenly saw the marker he’d left for himself on his return.

He breathed a sigh of relief, found the path where they’d pushed the Bronco, and walked, exhausted, towards the camp.

About thirty feet away from camp, Max knew something was wrong.

The Bronco was still there, sitting just as it had been when Max had left.

There was a fire burning in the fire pit. It looked like more wood had been added recently. It was burning steadily and brightly.

Everything looked normal. Just as it should.

Except for the fact that no one was there.

But there were no signs of a fight.

Max’s hand went to his Glock. He pulled it out and held it in front of him. His hands were shaking with fatigue and hunger as he tried to steady the gun.

Max’s thoughts went to Georgia. She must be in the Bronco. From where he stood, he couldn’t see whether she was in there or not. If she was lying down, as she probably was, she wasn’t visible through the windows.

Max paused, listening. But there was no sound.

He didn’t want to call out to see if Georgia was there. If something had happened, if someone had attacked them, alerting the attacker to his presence was the last thing Max wanted to do.

Max knew he was in no state for another fight. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t go down trying. It was what he had to do.