Pilgrimage_A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story Read online

  He waved his men between the garage and northern fence, all four of them gliding to the right side of the house. Reggie stopped the four of them there, near the generator.

  “Do you hear that?” Reggie asked. “Is that Kepler yelling?”

  “I hear someone crying like a girl,” whispered Frederick.

  “What’s next?” one of the other two men asked, his back pressed against the house. “Where do we go?”

  “Calm down,” said Reggie. “We’re fine. They’ve blown their wad. They don’t know we’re here.”

  “You sure?” asked Frederick.

  “We’re golden,” he snarled. “We’re gonna get ours. Don’t worry.”

  “What’s the plan?” asked the nervous one.

  “You and your partner there”—Reggie pointed his gun at both guys he didn’t know—“you go around the back of the house. Try the windows. Look for a back door.”

  “And me?” Frederick shrugged.

  “You and me are going around the front,” instructed Reggie. “Same idea until we find our way inside.”

  “Then the barn?” asked nerves.

  “Then the barn,” said Reggie, moving to the front of the house.

  ***

  James was alone at the back side of the house. Mike and Steve went to the cottage to grab a pair of shotguns from under the bed. They were the backup/emergency weapons. And James knew they might need them.

  There were still four men alive. And as James lay belly down in the grass, he saw two of them. They emerged from the opposite side of the house, near the generator. Both of them were armed and they were moving cautiously. One of them approached a back window on the first floor and then backed away from the house. But they were too close to the home for James to risk taking a shot. He could miss and a bullet could hit the gas generator, or worse, he could put a bullet through a wall and hurt someone on the inside. The women, children, and Felix were supposed to be in the basement. But he couldn’t be sure.

  Think! James. Think!

  James knew the men couldn’t see well. Clouds had covered whatever moonlight might have helped them. They also didn’t know there was a pool between them and him.

  James pulled himself to one knee and leveled the rifle so he could see through the scope. The men were still checking the house, but they’d moved into just the right spot.

  “Help!” James screamed. “Help me! They got me. They got me!”

  The men turned and started running toward James, their rifles at the ready. They couldn’t see him. But they could hear him.

  “Help!” he cried again, just as the first of the two men stepped off the deck and into the pool. The second man followed a step behind.

  James marched to the opposite edge of the pool, moving to his left and away from the sound of his voice. He stood silently, in the dark, as the men emerged from the water, stunned and gasping for air.

  Neither of them found it before James fired four more shots.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Eight down,” James murmured. “Two to go.”

  ***

  Reggie and Frederick ignored the scream for help and the splash of someone falling into a pool or pond. They were focused on getting inside the house.

  “The fewer brothers left,” reasoned Reggie, “the more we keep.”

  Frederic nodded in agreement.

  “Try that window!” Reggie motioned to what look liked a half-open window next to the front door. “I’ll help you up.” He clasped his hands together, and Frederick stepped into them, lifting himself up so he could push up on the bottom of the wooden sill.

  “It’s open!” Frederick looked down at Reggie and then dropped his knees onto the sill to climb in. As he did, two large shards of glass split the skin and drove their way into the joints. As he let loose a blood-curdling scream, he lost his balance. He tried to catch himself with his hands. But they too found glass, which tore through his palms as he fell backwards onto the ground.

  Shaken, Reggie stepped back from Frederick and watched him shudder with pain. Then, thinking better of it, he swung his rifle around, pressed its barrel into Frederick’s forehead, and fired once.

  Incensed, Reggie stepped to the front porch and aimed his rifle at the front door. He opened fire, torching the deadbolt, freeing the door from its hinges.

  He was in.

  ***

  In the basement, they could hear the explosions, the crack of rifles, and the occasional scream or call for help. They couldn’t do anything about it but wait.

  Then they heard the front door bang open.

  Someone would knock at the door at the top of the stairs. Someone would be alive and would come for them.

  The question each of them wondered privately, to themselves, was who that someone would be.

  “I think we should turn off the lights,” Leigh suggested. “That way, whoever comes to the door won’t be able to see us.”

  “I don’t want the lights off,” whined Sloane. “I don’t want to be in the dark.”

  “I think it’s a good idea, Leigh,” said Felix. “But I’m afraid it’ll only cause more problems. We either stop them at the door. Or we don’t.”

  Everyone agreed with Felix. He was in charge.

  Kosia grabbed her shotgun from beside the love seat. Mitch grabbed his.

  The two of them joined Felix at the base of the stairs. Waiting.

  They could hear banging and cursing overhead. Someone was looking for them. And it wasn’t their husbands.

  Sloane recoiled against every loud noise from above. Max pulled her onto his lap and held her. He whispered in her ear to calm her.

  They could follow the footsteps above as they stomped across the floor, moving from one side of the house to the other. Then they stopped.

  “It’s too quiet,” said Kosia. “I don’t like this.”

  Bang! Bang! Bang! “Open up! Open this door!”

  He’d found them.

  “I know you’re in there,” he growled. “Open the door or I’m doing it!”

  “What do we do?” asked Leigh.

  “Shoot him when the door opens!” said Felix.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! “That’s it! I’m coming in.”

  An explosion of wood and metal followed as the man opened fire on the door. He sprayed it from top to bottom, leaving little more than a jagged fence post of a door, which he kicked in, and he started down the steps.

  He didn’t make it past the first one.

  Kosia, Felix, and Leigh all fired at least three shots at him as he took his first step. At the same time, Steve and Mike Kelly hit him in the back and side. They’d burst into the house just as Reggie opened fire.

  Full of homemade shotshell, Reggie hovered for a moment before tumbling head over feet down the stairs. He landed awkwardly, cracking his neck on the final step.

  Steve and Mike raced down the stairs after him, running to find their families. They met them with strong embraces, crying in each other’s arms. James appeared at the landing, rifle in hand. He dropped it and ran to meet Leigh and the kids.

  None of them noticed, until Denise did, that Felix was sitting on his knees facing the stairs. He was having trouble breathing.

  “Felix?” Denise wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “Are you—oh no, Felix! Felix!”

  Felix turned to his wife and looked in her eyes before he closed his and collapsed into her lap. Blood leaked from the hole in his chest onto her pants.

  “Oh no! Felix!” Denise said over and again. “No!” She sobbed, holding her husband’s head in her lap. She was rubbing his face, rocking him back and forth. “Noooo!” she wailed.

  They tried comforting her. They tried resuscitating Felix and worked to stop the bleeding. None of it helped.

  “He died a hero,” James told Denise, holding her hand as she rocked back and forth unable to let go of her husband. “He really did.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “But everyone was a hero tonight.”


  CHAPTER 51

  EVENT +218:00 Hours

  Sweet Valley, Pennsylvania

  “You don’t have to leave.” Steve leaned on the driver’s side window. “You can stay as long as you like. You earned it.”

  “I appreciate that,” said James, his hands gripping the wheel, “but we need to get home. We have to see what’s left.”

  “I understand,” said Steve. “But it’s not safe out there.”

  “It’s not safe anywhere.” Leigh leaned toward the open window.

  “I know.” Steve sighed. “But it could be tough to get home. You could run into a lot of problems along the way.”

  “Nothing worth having is easy.” James tried to make light of it. “We’ll be careful.”

  “You’ve got plenty of food,” Steve said. “Lots of gas. A supply of weapons.”

  “We can’t thank you enough,” Leigh said. “You and Kosia have been so wonderful to us.”

  “We owe you our gratitude.” Steve placed his hand on his chest. “For all you did that night, to the cleanup afterward. Plus your help with Felix’s memorial…”

  “Is Denise going to be okay?” James asked.

  “Except for visiting the grave behind the barn, she hasn’t come out of the cottage since we put it back together,” he said. “I imagine she’ll want privacy for a while.”

  James looked past Steve at the front porch. Mike was jogging toward them, waving.

  “Hey!” he called as he got close. “I was just listening to the radio.”

  “And?” Steve asked. “What are the Canadians saying now?”

  “The feds are setting up zones.” Mike joined Steve at the truck window.

  “What does that mean?” asked James.

  “They’re calling them TRZs,” Mike explained. “Temporary Recovery Zones. They’ve got these areas up and down the East Coast, from Maine down to Virginia. They even stretch into New York.”

  “What about Pennsylvania?” asked Steve.

  “We’re in TRZ 4,” said Mike. “At least that’s what they’re saying. They’re doing it to control access, keep order.”

  “You said down to Virginia?” asked Max from the backseat. Sloane was buckled in next to him, Noodle on her lap.

  “Yes.” Mike nodded. “I think Maryland is TRZ 5.”

  “So we’d have to cross zones,” said Leigh.

  “Yeah,” Mike agreed. “I don’t know what that means, though.”

  “It’s probably not a good thing,” James suggested.

  “Not too late to stay.” Steve cocked his head and smiled. “Just because you already said your goodbyes doesn’t mean you have to go.”

  “It does,” James said. “We need to take our chances. We have a home. And we’ve made it this far.” He shook Steve’s hand and then Mike’s and rolled up the window.

  James shifted into drive and circled away from the main house and through the opening at the front gate. He paused at the intersection of the driveway and Route 4024.

  “Which way?” he asked Leigh.

  “Whatever you think, Rock.” She took his left hand with both of hers, pulling it into her lap. “I trust you.”

  PART 3

  ADVENT

  CHAPTER 52

  EVENT +1 Week, 3 Days, 15:42 Hours

  University Park, Maryland

  Temporary Recovery Zone 5

  James Rockwell stood over the body, straddling a thickening pool of blood on the tile floor. The candles on the kitchen counter cast a macabre, flickering glow over the fresh corpse.

  James’s neighbors, Jacob “Sonny” Lawrence and Grant Wood, stood together on the opposite side of the counter. Both of them were armed. Neither fired the deadly shot, but they watched James in stunned silence as he hawked his prey.

  James looked behind him, past his neighbors, assured nobody else was coming down the stairs from the second floor, and knelt down to look into his victim’s eyes.

  They were open and full of life just thirty seconds earlier. Their bright blue was fading into a dull gray. The pupils were blown and fixed. James brushed back the wisps of her jet-black bangs so he could better see them.

  “You shouldn’t have killed her,” said Grant, straining to whisper. “You could have wounded her or knocked her unconscious. Too many people have died already.”

  “That wouldn’t have worked.” James stood and leaned across the counter. “Wound her and she has a chance to fight back. Knock her unconscious? She saw me from across the room. I had to fire.”

  “But you killed her!” Grant protested. “We didn’t come here to kill women!”

  “Look.” Sonny Lawrence put his hand on Grant’s shoulder, his dark skin glowing in the candlelight. “It’s regrettable. But it was unavoidable. We came here knowing the risks, Grant. We came here to help James, whatever that meant.”

  “If you want to leave”—James pointed toward the front of the house—“then walk out! We have a job to finish. You’ve done your part. You saved my life once already. You’re good.”

  “That’s not it,” Grant softened. “I want to help. I just can’t believe we killed her.”

  James knew Grant wasn’t game for the mission from the beginning. Grant was a good man, but he was not cut out for the world post-event. His wife, Emma, goaded him into it. So he’d tagged along, armed with a Smith & Wesson revolver and a healthy dose of skeptic fear when they’d left Sonny’s house an hour earlier, just after dark. He’d surprised James when it mattered and did what had to be done. Still, as they neared the final push, he was a reluctant participant, and from the beginning he’d second-guessed every morally questionable move.

  They’d approached the house from the backyard, hopping a fence that separated the property from the busy street that ran behind it. James could see the candlelight glowing from the family room on the first floor and the master bedroom above it. The backyard sloped steeply upward from the fence line to the house, such that the basement, not visible from the front elevation, looked to be the first floor from the rear.

  They had crouched low at the fence line, sitting in silence for a moment to be certain no one had seen or heard them land hard in the grass. Satisfied they were undiscovered, James led the men slowly and deliberately toward the basement entrance.

  They’d stopped at the large cedar play set, hiding behind the large plastic yellow slide. On his knees, James checked his rifle, a Bushmaster 300 AAC Blackout. It was light and compact, and though it didn’t have a sight or a scope, James knew he likely wouldn’t need either.

  It was a semiautomatic killing machine with sound and flash suppression. Only the person at the other end of the barrel would know he’d pulled the trigger.

  James and his compatriots had crossed the short distance from the play set to the concrete slab abutting the back of the house. Above the slab was a large wooden deck that extended off the first floor. James looked up at the slivers of light peeking through the slats between the pine boards and then pulled a pair of paperclips from his pocket, handing them to Sonny.

  Sonny leaned his own rifle against the wall adjacent to the basement door and knelt down to check the clips. He’d bent both of them with a pair of needle-nose pliers. One of them was formed into an “L” shape, with part of the clip bent back over itself. The second clip was straightened and then bent at a ninety degree angle. The end was bent into a series of forty-five-degree angles, creating a rake.

  Sonny, a retired police officer, had taken the rake and slipped it into the lock. He’d rocked it back and forth until he felt a series of clicks pop the interior pins. Then he’d inserted the “L” shaped clip on top of the rake, turning it clockwise and then counterclockwise to figure out the direction of the lock. He’d felt it twist and pop.

  With the lock picked, Sonny had put the clips into his pocket, grabbed his Bushmaster, and slowly turned the doorknob. He’d pushed gently with his shoulder and then used his foot to swing the door open fully.

  James moved in first with his
rifle leveled at his chest. He’d swept the dark room, his eyes slowly adjusting to the lack of light.

  To their right was a storage closet and to their left were a washing machine and clothes dryer. There was a small plastic sink hung on the wall between the two. Grant had quietly closed the door behind them and stepped further into the basement. Standing at the center of the room, the stairs leading upstairs extended twenty steps up to their left. The door at the top of the stairs was closed, light from the family room glowing under the gap between the bottom rail and the floor. James turned his back to the steps and saw the large open shelving unit, which held bottles of cleaning supplies and boxes of detergent.

  They’d walked to the wall opposite the basement door and found a worn sectional sofa to one side and a gun safe to the other.

  James’s eyes fully adjusted to the darkness and he’d knelt down to check the safe. It was intact. That was a good sign, he’d thought, before crossing the distance to the stairs. He didn’t need anything out of the safe for the mission. And if he failed, he didn’t want anyone having access to the weapons inside.

  “Are you ready?” he’d asked his neighbors before ascending the steps one at a time. Carefully, the men moved to the door.

  “The family room is to our immediate left,” James had whispered. “The kitchen is catty-corner to our left. There is a hallway to our right.”

  “I’ll take the hallway,” offered Grant.

  “I’ll take the family room and stairs,” said Sonny.

  “The kitchen is mine, then,” James had agreed before throwing open the door onto the first floor and immediately affixing his gaze on the kitchen, stepping toward it as he focused.

  Standing behind the counter, at the sink, was the woman of the house. She was slender, her cheeks drawn, small circular scabs on her chin and forehead. Her jet-black hair was thinning and shoulder length. James had seen her before she saw him. He’d pulled the trigger on the Bushmaster without thinking about the consequences, unleashing a single thirty-caliber slug into her chest. The only sounds had been the suppressed thump of the rifle firing and the sickening thud of the woman collapsing onto the kitchen floor.