Surviving Chaos

30

“You feeling OK, Mandy?” said Georgia.

“Yeah,” said Mandy. “The headache’s finally going away.”

“They must have knocked you on the head pretty hard.”

“Eh, it wasn’t that bad. Didn’t leave much of a mark, according to Max.”

“Well, Max has a strange definition of injury. If it doesn’t kill you, it wasn’t that bad.”

Mandy laughed, and took another bite of her venison.

It’d been less than a full day since Max and James had rescued her from the pot farmers. When they’d hiked back to Georgia and Sadie, they’d found them with two newcomers, Jake and Rose, former travelers who’d been tormented by the same people who’d kidnapped Mandy.

“Yeah,” Rose had said. “Nothing they did really made much sense. I’m not surprised they decided to kidnap you and enslave you on the spur of the moment, even though they could have done the same to us.”

“They were too stoned,” Jake had added, “to really think clearly.”

“Didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous, though,” said Mandy.

“Nope, definitely not.”

At first, Max had taken Georgia aside to discuss the newcomers, and whether or not they could be trusted. Mandy, on the other hand, had a good feeling about them from the moment she met them. They weren’t exactly survivalist types, but they were warm and friendly. She could see they didn’t have a mean bone in their bodies.

Apparently whatever Georgia had told Max was good enough for him, and everyone set about eating the deer that James had shot earlier.

They’d all slept well that night. As well as they could on the cold ground. But the fire had kept them relatively warm.

Everyone except Max, of course, who’d insisted on taking first shift.

The tentative plan for tomorrow was to start gathering useful gear at the pot farm and head back to Rose and Jake’s van to see what kind of structures they could build for the coming winter.

No one had explicitly stated it, but it seemed to be understood among everyone that the two groups would join together. At least for the winter. Or at least until something went south. Mandy hoped it didn’t. She liked being around another woman close to her own age.

The sun had fallen, and they were sitting around the campfire again. Just like the night before.

Max was sitting slightly away from everyone. Away from the fire, it was much colder. He was hunched over a radio, which was issuing nothing but hissing static.

“You really like that radio, huh?” said Jake, walking over to him to hand him another piece of venison.

Mandy watched as Max accepted the venison without looking up.

“I just can’t believe it works,” said Max.

“I don’t even know why we have it with us,” said Rose. “It was the one impractical thing I let Jake bring when we set out to tour the US.”

“Impractical?” said Jake. “Come on, it’s the only type of communication device that’s likely to work now.”

“But you never found anyone, did you?” Rose turned to Mandy. “He spent almost every night with that thing before the farmers stole it from him.”

“Did you find anything?” said Mandy.

“Never,” said Jake. “But Max thinks he’s going to. Right, Max?”

Max didn’t answer. He just adjusted the knobs silently, peering at the radio as if it could tell him something.

“I don’t get why it still works,” said Mandy.

“I guess the van worked as a Faraday cage,” said Jake. “Pretty wild, right?”

Mandy nodded.

Suddenly, through the radio’s static, came a voice.

Everyone froze in place, in complete surprise.

“Anyone there?” said the voice, crackling a little as it piped through the radio.

“Who’s there?” said Max.

Everyone else remained dead silent, turning all their attention to Max and the radio.

“Name’s John,” came the voice.

“John?” said Max, a strange expression on his face.

“And who am I speaking with?”

“Max.”

“Max? You sound familiar, Max.”

“So do you.”

“You couldn’t be…”

“I’d know that voice anywhere.”

“We haven’t spoken in what… a decade?”

“It’s hasn’t been that long. We saw each other…”

“Exactly. I don’t remember either.”

“I can’t believe you’re alive.”

“I knew you were. News is out about some of your more, um, intense exploits.”

“What’s going on?” said Mandy, interjecting. “You know this person?”

“Yeah,” said Max, turning to her with a smile on his face. “It’s my brother.”