Ryan Westfield - Getting Home

John moved as fast as he could. His body was in pain, sore and exhausted. But he was also pumped full of adrenaline.

The man with the tire iron saw him moving, seemed to sense the threat. He stopped where he was, the tire iron raised.

This wasn’t the time for subtlety.

John rushed him, swinging the gun in his right hand in a wide arc.

The tire iron collided with it, knocked it out of John’s hand. It clattered to the dirt.

John went for his knife in its holster.

But it was too late.

The tire iron collided with his shoulder, sending pain shooting through him. His arm felt immobilized. It hung limply at his side.

The tire iron was swinging again.

John raised his left hand swiftly. He caught the iron. It slammed into his palm but he ignored the pain and wrapped his fingers around it.

He pulled the tire iron toward himself swiftly and with as much force as he could.

This pulled the man towards him.

John brought up his knee. He caught the man in the stomach. Hard.

He heard the breath escape him.

John tugged on the tire iron. But the other man’s grip was strong. He couldn’t get it free.

John brought his knee up again. He still couldn’t move his right arm much, but he was starting to feel twinges of feeling in his hand where it had gone numb.

Someone else was near him. A flash of movement. A long coat swirling with movement. John only got impressions of what was happening.

John’s mind tried to move his right arm up to defend himself. Desperately. But the arm didn’t move.

John’s knee slammed again into the man’s stomach. He was still pulling on the tire iron as hard as he could.

Something slammed into his head from the right. Felt like a rock. Maybe it was just a fist.

Gunshots all around him.

Someone else had broken past the line, gotten into the little huddle of desperate survivors by the van.

John was out of options.

He threw his head forward as hard as he could, going for a head-butt. Just like he used to do in soccer when he was a kid.

His forehead slammed into the man’s face. Blood was everywhere. On John’s face, too.

Something slammed into his head again. His vision went blurry.

A gun sounded right next to his ear.

He went almost deaf. Nothing but ringing in his ears.

Pain in his right arm now. Something was grabbing it.

The man in the coat to his right had fallen. His head had broken open like a watermelon. The upper portion of his skull had exploded into fragments. Almost like a busted watermelon lying on the ground. His brain was exposed, the wrinkled substance looking strange there on the ground.

The brain was some of the most advanced biology in the world, and it was lying there useless on the ground. Destroyed. And what had it accomplished before its end? Nothing. It hadn’t been able to keep up. It hadn’t been able to adapt.

The long coat lay spread out on the ground like an angel’s wings.

John’s brain was going to weird places. It was exhausted. It was stressed. It was losing track of what was happening.

Everything seemed to be happening both slowly and quickly.

John felt something crash into his face. The man with the tire iron had head-butted him. John tasted his own blood now. His nose was probably broken.

Another rapid burst of gunfire. Close enough that John could hear it over the intense ringing in his ears.

The neck and head of the man in front of him were suddenly ripped to shreds. Blood covered John.

The man’s face fell apart. Exposed bone. Cartilage. Huge chunks of flesh just hanging there. A bullet lodged into his eye.

Even in death, he gripped the tire iron tightly.

John finally let go.

He reached for his handgun with his good left hand, but it wasn’t in its holster.

He couldn’t remember what had happened to it.

The fog had entered his mind.

He was confused. Deaf. Disoriented.

His head turned rapidly as he took in the landscape.

All he saw, out past the van, were bodies. Bodies rushing at them. Bodies screaming, in pain and anger and violence. Bodies falling. Bodies lying dead on the ground. Bodies with various injuries.

This was what the world had come to.

Rob didn’t know who he was fighting with. But he knew what he was fighting for.

Survival.

And he knew who he was fighting. He was fighting violence and evil. He was fighting the worst of humanity. When there was nothing left, when there was nothing left to hem it all in, the violence and anger exploded out of the individuals. They’d become something else entirely.

What was he doing here?

It didn’t seem like they’d make it.

It wasn’t the safe haven he’d thought it’d be.

He’d seen the signs coming in. He’d seen the people walking like stragglers, lumbering along with that blank look in their eyes.

He must have known, somewhere deep inside himself, that he wasn’t going to find safety.

He could have turned around.

Hell, he could have left the kid and Olivia there on their own. He’d already helped them once. He didn’t owe them anything.

Maybe it’d been the memory of his own family that’d pushed him to do it. He’d wanted to get the kid to a safe place, even if he’d never admit that out loud.

The memories of his wife and son and daughter were still fresh in his mind. He could laugh all he want. He could chuckle and act like nothing was a big deal. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t see their faces each time he closed his eyes. It didn’t mean that he didn’t feel the terrible pain in his heart when he thought of them and their deaths.

The sound of the battle raged around him.

Rob was taking them out. He was shooting methodically. He was working like a machine. He was barely pausing to breathe.

His heart was pounding. He was covered in sweat.

There was a young girl running around handing out ammunition to everyone. She carried it in huge duffel bags. She had to sort through it to find what was needed.

She was there now, handing the kid Dan a couple clips for his handgun.

“You got any for me?” shouted Rob.

She glanced into her bag. She wore two rifles strapped to her back. They looked far too big for her.

But she knew how to use them. He’d seen her shoot a woman in the head without flinching. Without batting an eyelash.

“Here,” she said, shoving some clips into the pocket of his light jacket.

Rob nodded at her and she scurried off behind him out of view.

Rob slammed the clips into his AR-15.

Three men were coming for them at an angle. They were young. Somewhere in their twenties.

It was a shame.

They could have been something. They could have done something with their lives.

But the EMP had changed everything.

Rob pulled the trigger. He caught one in the chest. He fell. Didn’t scream. Didn’t cry out. Just fell face-down into the dirt.

His companions did nothing. They didn’t even seem to notice.

They were too far gone for that.

Olivia, who was stuck in the car, was shooting out the window with a handgun. It seemed that she barely knew how to use it. But she was trying. Once in a while, she’d hit someone.

Rob wondered if he should tell the girl, next time she came around, if she should give Olivia any more ammunition or not. He didn’t know how much ammo was left. And he didn’t know if Olivia was using it wisely or not.

But there probably wouldn’t be any choice either way.

The mob couldn’t be held off much longer.

Twenty of them were rushing.

And it didn’t seem to be the last of them.

Gunshots sang out around him.

Rob’s ears were ringing intensely.