Preppers of the Apocalypse - Part 1: Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival Read online

  Someone had dragged a sofa and two chairs out of a furniture shop and left them in the middle of the road. The Reedley pharmacy, as Tony had said, had been raided, and the front of the store was littered with discarded brown vials of pills. A couple of cars were abandoned on the roadside, one with the front doors open and another with a set of keys sitting on the roof with a pink fluffy dice on the keyring. None of the shops were open, and not a single building showed the signs of having any power.

  There was a smell in the air of food starting to rot. South down the street was a butcher’s shop, and Ash supposed that the refrigerators had failed and the meat had begun to spoil. It was crazy that just a few days without power were all it took to tear the fabric of society. He looked at the butcher’s shop again and thought of the rotting carcases.

  Salt your meat, said a voice.

  Ash realised it was the voice of his father in his head. He remembered dad sitting across from him on a log and roasting a pork leg on a spit. He explained to Ash how to make food last longer. For meat such as pork, the best way was to salt the meat, because that meant that the things that normally make food rot, such as mold and microbes, lost their moisture and with it their ability to ruin your lovely pork joint.

  He wished his father had given him advice about what to do if he was stranded hundreds of miles away from home, in a town where everyone hated him, with no transport and a wife in danger. Even the old man would have been lost with this one, no matter how good a survivalist and prepper he was.

  He needed to get transport. That had to be the first step. But how was he going to do that? The only way, he guessed, was to buy a car off someone. He couldn’t really afford to spare the cash, but what other option did he have? In times like these, money didn’t mean much.

  He crossed the street to where a green dollar sign marked the outside of a bank. He stood in front of the ATM, reached into his back pocket and pulled out his brown wallet. He took out his bank card and was about to try and put it in the machine when he stopped.

  What the hell am I doing?

  It seemed like his brain was trying to cling onto the world that he used to know, and it was yet another example of how much he took things for granted. His money was in the bank and the banks had gone belly up, at least around here. With the power gone and computers down, did their money even exist anymore? Did the dollars stored in the bank vaults still belong to those who put them there, or once the digital numbers disappeared, did people’s life savings go down the plug hole too?

  He decided the only thing that he could do would be to sell the Merc, but it was miles out of town and he didn’t think he could face the walk in his present condition.

  He looked at the end of the street where Tony was starting to disappear from view. Part of him wanted to go with him to his land outside the town. At least it would be safe there, he guessed. As Tony turned the corner, Ed noticed the town hall at the end of the road. There was a wooden sign outside with words painted on it in red.

  Emergency Town Meeting. Come one and All. Everyone Must Help.

  When he got to the town hall he opened the door a crack and slipped in, and then let it shut softly behind him. The town hall could have housed a few hundred people, but there were only fifty in there today. The power was out and dark shadows sprang off the walls. The air was stuffy and smelled of sweat. Ash moved into a patch of darkness at the back of the room and listened.

  A man was stood on stage talking at the crowd. Ash squinted and realised that it was Kenny, the guy in the Knicks shirt who had come within inches of knocking him out when he was leaving the mayor’s office. It seemed like he’d assumed leadership in the meeting. Ash felt like leaving, but he had nowhere else he could go.

  “What about Blackwater and Olton?” said Kenny from the stage.

  A man two rows in shouted back at him.

  “We sent the Adam’s brothers to Blackridge but they ain’t come back. Yellow Pete trotted back into town on his horse a few hours ago. Says it’s the same in Olton, ‘cept people are even more pissed than we are. One man got stabbed over a hand crank radio.”

  “What about the military base?” said Kenny.

  “No one goes near there.”

  “Then maybe we ought to.”

  The man in row two folded his arms.

  “I’m not risking it. They’ve got itchy fingers and shoot on sight.”

  Four rows back on the opposite side, a man stood up. He was short and had a belly that drooped over his belt. He wore a thick coat with a fur hood. He looked like the kind of guy who was happiest sprawled out on his sofa with a six pack next to him.

  “We need to be wary of the nuclear plant,” he said, in a voice more refined than Ash expected. “If the power’s gone, the rods will need to be cooled. If they aren’t, I wouldn’t like to be within a hundred miles of the place.”

  Kenny paced the stage.

  “I don’t understand what you mean. I’m not a scientist like you, Greeb.”

  The scientist named Greeb took his seat as if he had just realised that everyone in the room was staring at him and he was uncomfortable with it. Once he was in his seat, he carried on talking.

  “Reactors are usually in a state of controlled meltdown. Controlled being the key word there. We need the nuclear rods to meltdown because that turns hot water into stream, which then triggers the turbines and makes us a fresh batch of electricity. The rods are kept from reaching dangerous meltdown levels by cold water flow controlled by pumps. And guess what powers the pumps?”

  Kenny stopped pacing.

  “Electricity.”

  “Correct,” said Greeb.

  “So what happens if the rods aren’t cooled?”

  “The plant goes into full meltdown, and anyone in the surrounding areas dies of radioactive poisoning.”

  Kenny folded his arms. He stared out at everyone in the room. He stood tall with his shoulders straight, and Ash could tell that this was a man who was scared of nobody.

  “We need to go check out the plant,” he said. “I’m not giving up Pasture lightly, but I’m not waiting here for some toxic wind to blow my way. We gotta know for sure if they managed to cool down the plant or not.”

  There were some murmurings in the room, and a lot of the forty men and women in the room turned to the partners with worried faces. They started to chatter amongst each other, but Ash couldn’t pick out any of the words.

  Kenny stomped his feet. The echoed of his boots silenced the room.

  “We got any volunteers?” he said. “Anyone who wants to do this fine town a service?”

  Ash decided it was time he left. Maybe with everyone here, in the town hall, a car might be left unguarded. He could get in it, start driving and get home by morning.

  No, he thought. I can’t do that. I can’t steal from them again. I’ve already taken enough.

  He walked out of the shadows and to the back door of the hall. As he opened it a ray of sunlight crept in. As he went to step through the door he tripped and fell into it, and the noise of his fall made every person in the room turn around to see him.

  “Mr. Hobbes,” said Kenny from the front of the room. “Everyone’s favourite salesman. Glad you could join us.”

  The stares of the people in the hall were so angry that they smouldered, and Ash worried they made the room a fire risk. He had no doubt in his mind that most of them would love to tear him to pieces. He looked at the door and the sunlight beyond it and thought about running away, but where would he go?

  “Grab hold of him,” said Kenny.

  Footsteps echoed across the wooden floor of the hall, and then seconds later he felt arms take hold of his shoulders and pull him back.

  Chapter 4

  Ash tried to shrug away from the grip on his shoulders, but when he turned he saw that the man holding him had two feet in height and an inch of muscle on him. Ash stopped struggling. At the end of the room, Kenny jumped off the stage and landed on the floor. He walked across the
hall with the thud of his tan hide cowboy boots echoing against the walls.

  Everyone in the hall stared at him now. There didn’t look to be a single sympathetic face among them, and Ash wished he was far away. He wished that he’d never even heard of Pasture Down, that he’d never gotten into his car and begun a lonely journey that had taken him to a place hundreds of miles away from home and had left him stranded there.

  “Listen,” he said as Kenny approached him. “I just want to leave this place and go home. My car’s dead, and I need to get back to my wife.”

  “Your car isn’t going anywhere again,” said a voice across the hall. It was Greeb, the man who sounded like a scientist but looked like he lived in a trailer. “I saw your motor. Pretty fancy.”

  “Unfortunately it’s part of a trend in cars that started back when glam-rock and mullets were popular. Too many vehicles these days rely on engine management computers. That’s good when things are normal, but it means that whatever fried the power did the same to the electronics in your shiny car.”

  “In any case,” said Kenny, who looked bored of the conversation, “I don’t give a damn about your wife or the rest of your family. Did you give a shit about ours when you screwed us over?”

  “My wife’s in trouble,” said Ash.

  “We’re all in trouble.”

  The worst thing was that Ash knew Kenny was right. There wasn’t a single reason why anyone in this town should care about Ash’s troubles. He was just a stranger passing through, but all the people in this room had invested their lives in the town. He looked around and saw men who probably worked farms on the outskirts, women who owned business on the high street. Their lives had been flipped around, and Ash was begging for help as if he was the most important person there.

  “Listen Mr. Hobbes,” said Kenny, practically spitting the word ‘mister’, “I’d love to kill you. And I’m saying that in front of a whole bunch of witnesses. That’s just how I feel. Thing is, I can’t. I got other things to think about, and I’m not a killer. I don’t ever want to see your face again, so I’m gonna do this; I’ll give you one of my old rides so that you can get your lying ass out of Pasture and never come back.”

  Ash almost broke into a smile, but had to remind himself that he was still the most hated person in the room.

  “Okay,” he said, trying not to betray emotion.

  “There’s a condition,” said Kenny.

  “What is it?”

  “You gotta drive to the nuclear plant and see what’s happening.”

  “What if it’s in meltdown?” said Ash.

  Greeb shifted in his seat. “Then you’ll get radioactive poising and, depending on the level of exposure, become sick and possibly die.”

  “You’ll be our warning system,” said Kenny. “If you come back sick as a dog, we know we’ll have to haul ass.”

  Ash thought about it. The last thing he wanted to do was drive to the nuclear plant, because in the circumstances it seemed like a suicidal thing to do. He remembered once seeing pictures of Hiroshima after the bomb had hit, and the images had stayed with him for months. Did he really have a choice, though? There was no other way for him to get out of town, and it would take him weeks to walk the two hundred miles that separated him from Georgia. He couldn’t just abandon her.

  “Okay,” he said.

  An idea hit him. He could agree to go to the plant. Kenny would set him up with a car, but as soon as Ash left Pasture Down he could hit the road and gun the engine, and if he got far enough out of town before they realised what he was doing, they would never catch him.

  “Then we got a deal,” said Kenny. “I’ll give you my old Chevy. But I want someone to go with you. Your cheating ass lied to me once and I’m not going to let you do it again.”

  The town hall door opened behind them. Daylight streamed in and chased away the darkness. Ash turned and squinted in the light, and he saw Tony Shore in the doorframe. He’d never been gladder to see a guy in a hunting jacket holding a rifle.

  “I’ll go with him,” Tony said.

  ***

  Outside on the street, they got the car ready for the trip. The nuclear plant was over twenty five miles out of town, and Tony insisted that they take his pick-up truck rather than Kenny’s Chevy. Tony’s pick-up was a red Toyota Hilux. It must have been at least thirty years old, but he had paid an almost obsessive level of attention to the red paint job and metal framework. Sat in the afternoon sun, it was so red that it gleamed. It looked like it had rolled straight off the lot.

  “Check the liquids,” said Tony.

  “’Scuse me?” said Ash.

  “Pop the bonnet and make sure it’s got enough oil. Last thing we need is to break down.”

  Ash lifted the bonnet and hooked the latch to make it stand on its own. He didn’t want to have to ask Tony questions and seem like he was completely helpless, so through trial and error he found and checked the coolant, oil and brake fluid. As he worked slowly on the basic car maintenance, he imagined his dad stood over his shoulder and shaking his head.

  You know this stuff, Ash. Or you knew it. Why’d you let yourself forget?

  “Brake fluid needs topping up,” he said, feeling proud of himself. He moved away from the bonnet.

  “There’s some in the back,” said Tony as he crouched against a rear tire and checked how worn it was. “I like to be prepared for anything. Any situation can happen, even the most unlikely. Whoever thought an EMP would go off?”

  “My dad did,” said Ash.

  “Was he a prepper?”

  “He wouldn’t go to the shop for milk without having an alternative route in case he hit trouble.”

  “That reminds me. The route to the plant. We’ve got two choices, and I want you to think carefully before you answer me. One route is on the 54 out of town. Takes around twenty minutes on a good day. The other is over a rocky plain that stretches far outside of Pasture Down. It’s full of boulders and pits where they dig for lime.”

  “Seems obvious,” says Ash. “We take the road.”

  “You need to get your survival skills tuned. Didn’t your prepper Pa teach you anything?”

  “He did, but I didn’t listen.”

  “Think about it. The first thing some people will do when they realise the power is never coming back is leave town. Add to that the fact that some folks would have been driving on the road when their car died, and I’d hazard that the simple route is blocked by fancy cars with fried electric circuits.”

  Ash topped up the brake fluid and then screwed the cap back onto the bottle. Tony stood away from the tire and folded his arms. Ash handed him the brake fluid.

  “I ain’t your butler. Put it in on the back.”

  The rear of the pick-up was full of enough gear to survive four Armageddons. It seemed like the entire space was crammed with whatever Tony thought he might need at some point in his life; a big box of strike-anywhere matches with white phosphorus tips, a box stuffed with curled up maps, piles of energy bars and military rations that he had procured from somewhere. There was duct tape, rope, knives and so much more stuff that Ash was surprised that the vehicle could still run under the weight of it.

  “You came prepared, didn’t you?”

  “I saw this coming.”

  “The EMP, or whatever it is?”

  “Not the EMP, as such, but something. Anything. Some kind of disaster. I’ve always thought it was heading our way. You should see my ranch.”

  “Are you a prepper too?”

  Tony laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. It’s more than likely you’ll need to see it, because there’s no way you’re getting home without supplies.”

  ***

  As they left Pasture Down and hit the rocky wilderness that led to the plant, the sun was beginning to sink in the sky. Ash kept the window down while Tony drove, and the breeze slapped his face at sixty miles per hour and practically glued open his eyelids. The horizon seemed uniformly bland; just an expanse of
yellow rocks with weeds poking through here and there. Ash knew that there were farms on the outskirts of the town, but it didn’t look like anything could grow out here in the wilderness.

  “Is family important you, Ash?” said Tony. He didn’t take his eyes away from the windscreen.