After the Blast (Soldiers of New Eden Book 1) Read online

  After the Blast

  By

  T.L. Knighton

  It started with a blinding flash, though I got lucky. I had been digging for a pen in the glove box and only caught the briefest glimpse of it. “What the hell?” I asked into my cell phone. My answer was emptiness. “Mark? It’s Jason. You there?”

  The emptiness didn’t worry me. I had a crappy cell phone plan, and dropped calls were a way of life for another seven months when I would get out of that God forsaken contract. When I found the pen, I sat up in the car. Traffic jams could be useful after all if you knew how to make use of the time. However, by the time I sat up, people were running.

  I looked around, desperate to try and find the cause. I had seen too many movies where people just started running because everyone else was. It didn’t tend to work out well for a lot of them if memory served.

  My search didn’t take long. A giant mushroom cloud is kind of hard to miss. Oh crap! I thought as I reached for my keys. Turning the ignition, I was gifted with precisely nothing. The battery sounded dead. I guess that explained why people were running.

  I was in Jesse’s car, which meant there was an emergency kit in the trunk. I popped the lid and began to dig through the piles of baby stuff that littered the trunk. There it is, he thought, pulling out the backpack full of stuff. Nothing major, just some food, a few bottles of water, a couple of chem lights, things like that.

  Closing the trunk lid, I stared down the road. Jess liked to joke that I was a “big” guy, but the reality was I was fat. High school athletics had kept me slim and trim back in the day. A sedentary job and changed all that. Oh well, no sense worrying about it now as began to move down the road.

  I kept myself near the shoulder. Panicking people kept stampeding through the middle of the highway, despite the fact that there was no way to outrun the radiation. If you were going to die, you were going to die. My only goal was to try and make it home, at least so I would die with my family if that was my destiny.

  Grabbing the emergency kit was a good idea. Before I had gotten more than a couple of miles, the light began to fade. I cracked open a chem light and pushed on a little while longer, but there was no way I’d make it home. A forty mile drive might only take an hour, but even there was no way I could make that walk at one shot.

  Camp, such as it was, was made in a pecan orchard. It was one of a thousand that dotted the sides of South Georgia highways. I would still see the occasional person, but not so much now. I guess they had all either made it home of collapsed from exhaustion. Who knows?

  The next morning, the sky was overcast. I had been holding out hope that it was just a single blast. Maybe a terrorist attack, but the lack of a visible sun wasn’t helping me hold onto that hope.

  I packed up my “camp” – really, it was just a space blanket, a couple of meal replacement bars and some water – and trudged on toward home.

  When the blast happened, it was behind me. I was moving away from the blast, but now I was seeing cars burning, with billowing black smoke reaching up toward the sky. The cars were fully engulfed, meaning they weren’t that old. The blast couldn’t have done it. Whatever had done this had to be from something even more dangerous.

  Keeping to the trees as much as possible, I continued on. Exhaustion kept threatening to take me, but thoughts of Jesse and Ricky kept me going. I would stop occasionally to drink some water and try to gather my strength, but I wouldn’t let it last too long. If I let it, the land would reach up and claim me as its own. I was so exhausted, I didn’t even realize I was close to home until I was standing outside of my house.

  It was dark when I got to the house. My car was missing. I walked up to the door and tested the knob. It was locked. Unlocking it, I entered the house, carefully closing the door behind me. “Jesse?” I called out. Nothing.

  I made my way to the master bedroom. Opening the closet door, I looked for the thing I most feared ever having to use, my father’s old twelve gauge shotgun. I had maintained it like he had always taught me, but there hadn’t been a lot of opportunity to shoot it. Luckily, that meant I still had plenty of shells.

  I loaded the shotgun and collapsed on my bed. The intention had only been to sit and rest for a moment. Unfortunately, my next recollection was waking up after God only knows how long.

  Rested, checking the rest of the house wasn’t nearly as bad as it would have been the night before. I could tell it was day, but again the sky was overcast. The weatherman had called for clear skies, but it was hardly the first time he’d been wrong. At least, that’s what I told myself. Deep down, I knew what that sky meant. I just didn’t want to admit it.

  On the refrigerator was a note from Jesse. She had seen the cloud and taken off in my car to her mother’s house. Janice lived in the mountains of North Georgia, a good four hours away by car. Apparently, whatever knocked out Jesse’s car didn’t hit here.

  I knew the major highways were going to be a nightmare, but Jesse had always preferred to take the back roads to her mom’s. Hopefully, she’d go that route again. Jesse was smart. She probably would.

  Knowing that Jesse and Ricky were likely safe, I began to notice the soreness in my legs. I was seriously out of shape. Well, I was about to hike into the North Georgia mountains. I suspected that would change soon enough.

  In my closet, next to where the shotgun had sat, was an old backpack. I had bought it when Jesse and I had talked about taking up backpacking. We had gotten a lot of gear, most of which had only been tested. Luckily, it was still in the backpack. I took out the tent and replaced it with an ultralight tarp we bought before our real life had gotten in the way. I then took the bag down to the kitchen.

  Every can of food I could find was stuffed into the bag, along with all of the shotgun shells. I also grabbed my nine millimeter pistol and its holster, strapping it to my hip. Extra ammo was deposited into the pack, which now felt like it weighed the same amount approximately as a small elephant.

  The hacksaw that we kept in the utility room was just what I needed for the shotgun. Dad had been an avid duck hunter, and the pump shotgun was what he liked for that task. Unfortunately, a twenty-eight inch barrel was just too much. Using the hacksaw, I cut the barrel down. It was probably illegal as hell now, but I hadn’t seen a cop since the blast.

  I grabbed an old road map and a small can opener on my way out of the house.

  Days drug by. Most of it was just walking, but walking with an intense terror. We were well clear of the blast itself, but not all of the effects. Law and order were gone. I had hidden the shotgun inside of the backpack, just in case, but after a few days, I quit bothering.

  It was about a week when I crossed a line I never thought I would have to cross. I had made camp for the night among some small trees. The brush was fairly thick, but I had stumbled into it. Seemed like a fairly decent place to call it a night.

  I was heating up some beans and franks on a camp stove. It wasn’t healthy by any means, but walking all day was making me hungry. On top of that, I only had so much food, so I was trying to ration it as much as possible.

  About the time dinner was ready to eat, I heard a noise. It sounded like something crashing through the brush. I readied the shotgun, hoping it was some small animal. I had never cleaned a kill before, but it seemed like it was time to figure it out.

  The crashing kept inching closer. To my surprise, it wasn’t some kind of game animal, but a person. He was dirty as hell, with his clothes ripped in several place. From the moment he had burst through the brush, he had been preoccupied with knocking off the dirt and brambles.

  With a last brush, he looked up, notici
ng me for the first time. Well, he might have noticed the shotgun pointed at him first, but close enough for my purposes.

  His hands shot up to about his shoulder level.

  “Whoa, there buddy. I’m not here to hurt ya,” he said.

  “Then why are you here?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m just trying to get home,” he said. “Columbus.”

  “I think it got nuked,” I said. “I saw a cloud from that direction. It was too close to be Atlanta.”

  The man collapsed on the ground, sobbing. I figured he had family there.

  “Don’t take my word for it though. I just saw a cloud from that general direction, but it might have been anywhere really. It’s not like I’m an expert at this kind of thing,” I said, hoping to soothe the man.

  He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” he said.

  “If, and I’m stressing the word ‘if’, but if it got nuked, you’ll know before you get too close. If you’ve got people there, it’s worth knowing for certain though,” I said.

  He just nodded, then shot his eyes toward my food. “You got any more of that? I haven’t eaten in a few days,” he said.

  I had more, but I still had a long, long way to go, and it wasn’t going to last me nearly as long as I needed it to. “Sorry, this is it. I scrounged it earlier today. It’s my first meal since the blast,” I said. Yeah, I lied.

  “Can you share a bit?” he asked, his mouth twisting into a feral snarl.

  “Not really. I need my strength. I’ve got a lot farther to go than you do.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Help a buddy out.”

  “I just met you. You’re not my ‘buddy’ or anything of the sort,” I fired back.

  That appeared to be the wrong thing to say. The man in front of me produced a knife out of nowhere and launched himself at me with almost inhuman speed.

  I grabbed the shotgun and fired, but not before he was only inches from the barrel. The double aught buckshot slammed into his chest at point blank range, his blood splattering over me and my dinner.

  The body fell to the ground, the man’s eyes still open and staring at me, an unspoken accusation still hanging there in his gaze. I reached over and closed his eyes, and then sat back and ate my beans and franks.

  A part of my mind was screaming at me for what I had done, but another part recognized a couple of key facts. One was that, while I probably could have shared my food with him, that didn’t excuse him attacking me. The second one was the realization he had pulled a knife out of somewhere when he came at me. I didn’t see it when everything happened, but there it was on the ground. An empty sheath was on the dead man’s belt. “It really was a case of him or me, huh?” I thought, shoveling a spoonful of beans and franks into my mouth.

  There was a third realization, one that made me a little uncomfortable. It was the realization that this really didn’t bother me that much. It should have. I should have been a complete wreck, but I wasn’t. Here I was, eating the most ridiculous meal possible as if nothing had happened.

  I tried to shrug it off. After all, it was him or me, right? At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

  The next morning, I packed up my stuff and headed out, leaving the body behind for the scavengers. On the other hand, I had a new knife and sheath hanging from my belt. He didn’t have much else going for him.

  Along the way, I kept encountering the remains of incidents like what I had been through, only this time it looked as if the aggressors got the better end of the deal. Men, women, children, even pets were slaughtered; no remnants of belongings left with the corpses that now littered the landscape of Georgia.

  The weeks bled together as I walked. Through it all, the sun never showed up, and plants were starting to show it. Everything was dead or well on its way. It was probably not such a bad thing that I had never bothered to learn edible plants since there weren’t any.

  From time to time, I’d find a house abandoned. The odd scrap might have survived from the looters who were there before me. I didn’t like what I was doing, but it wasn’t doing anyone any good just sitting there, and I needed it.

  As the weeks drug on, my waistline shrunk. It wasn’t a surprise when you thought about it. Tons of walking and, at most, a can of food per day just isn’t a recipe for weight gain by any means.

  To make matters worse, I didn’t have a compass or anything of the sort. For the backpacking, I had gotten a GPS system which was useless. All it could have been good for now was as a paperweight. Without that, I had a hard time getting a directional fix. To make matters worse, the constantly overcast sky made it impossible to use the sun. I got lost. A lot.

  It was the third time I got lost. I was hearing a lot of whooping and hollering in the distance. Sane people didn’t do that these days.

  Carefully, I crept closer. After some time, I came across what looked like an old farmhouse. The white paint had started chipping away long before the blast. Three men had their backs to the woods that concealed me, all of them pointing military style rifles at a man, a woman, and a small boy.

  From within the house, screaming could be heard. It was a female voice. Judging by the look of the woman’s clothes, whoever was inside hadn’t been the first.

  The man was bloody, with one eye swollen shut by a terrible bruise. As for the boy, he looked to be eight years old at the most. There was nothing he could have done.

  For a moment, I had considered just passing by. A voice from deep within me stopped me. “Can you really do that?” it asked in Jesse’s voice. She was asking me.

  “No, I guess I can’t,” I muttered.

  Whatever I was going to do, it had to be quick. There were three of them, and they were armed with rifles that gave them better range than the shotgun I was carrying. Luckily, they were about twenty yards ahead of me.

  I was milling my options when an idea hit me. I sat down the shotgun gently, and then picked up a stick.

  Carefully, I stood up and chucked it as hard as I could manage. The stick landed in the woods near the side of the house. The three men’s heads shifted that direction, and I moved.

  My pistol cleared my holster in an instant as I began to run toward the three men, screaming like a banshee.

  The three bandits swung their heads in my direction, their rifles swinging just a moment later. That moment was all I needed as I began firing into them men. I have no idea where most of my rounds went, but enough slammed into the bandits that their weapons dropped from their dead hands an instant before their bodies crumpled to the ground.

  I looked at the three hostages who stared back at me in shock, pressing my finger to my lips. I needed them quiet.

  The door to the side of the house screeched open, and then a voice called out, “Who the hell said to shoot?”

  A man came around the house, dragging a young girl by the hair. The girl was probably around sixteen. The man wore a tank-top style undershirt and jeans that he hadn’t even bothered to zip up. When he saw his three men, he came up short.

  “I’ll ask permission next time, asshole,” I said as my finger carefully pressed down on the trigger.

  The nine millimeter round tore through the man’s skull, causing him to release his grip on the girl as he fell.

  The two adults ran toward the girl who had fallen down, crying. I walked back to the three men I had killed and searched the bodies. All three wore tactical vests, though they didn’t have a lot of ammo. I took one that looked about my size and put all the ammo I could fit into it, then slung the rifle.

  “Hey, mister?” a male voice said.

  I turned around, seeing the battered man. “Yeah?”

  “I just wanted to say thanks. We really appreciated what you did here. I don’t suppose many folks would do that these days,” he said.

  I shrugged. “I guess I’m not most folks then,” I said, then pointed to the girl. “Is she okay?”

  The man hung h
is head a bit. “Don’t rightly know. Hope so though.”

  I nodded.

  He lifted his head and said, “I don’t suppose you’re hungry?”

  Hungry? I ate a can of green beans two days ago, and that was it. Calling it “hungry” was an understatement.

  “A bit, I guess,” I found myself answering.

  The man’s bloody face smiled, revealing a handful of missing teeth. It wasn’t exactly clear if they were from the beating, or some time before, but it’s also not like it mattered.

  “My name is Zack,” he said, and then pointed toward the others. “That’s my wife Lucy, my son Mike, and my daughter Chloe.”

  “A pleasure. Jason,” I said. My own name sounded odd after so long without hearing it.

  Zack ushered me into the house as Lucy went about fixing some food. Mike ran off into the woods while Chloe sat down at the table opposite of the seat I was given.

  When Mike returned, he had a handful of things that he dutifully handed to his mother before running off. “We’re a bit more fortunate than most,” Zack said. I just nodded.

  “Got it hidden somewhere else? Smart,” I said. I began to tell them the horrors I had seen. I told them about the bodies. I left out a few of the gorier details. No reason to ruin my appetite, after all.

  “We’d heard it was bad out there,” Zack said. “This farm’s been in my family for years though. I didn’t see any reason to leave it.”

  “There isn’t. Not really. Not unless you’re seeing a lot of their kind, anyways,” I said.

  Zack shook his head. “Naw. This was the first time for that.”

  “You armed?” I asked.

  Zack shook his head again. “Not really. Had a double barrel, but they wrecked it quick enough,” he said.

  “Take the AR-15’s those guys have. There should be a decent amount of ammo, all things considered. It’ll serve you better,” I said.

  Zack nodded his head.

  “There’s more up in my room,” Chloe said. It was the first thing I had heard her say since I heard her screams.

  Zack’s eyes widened. He then stood up and looked at me, and then said, “If you’ll excuse me just a minute.”