Ryan Westfield - Defending Camp

“They’re here.”

Art was too dazed to do anything. He just watched as they grabbed shotguns from where they’d been leaning against the wall.

A third man appeared, not wearing a mask. He reached for a high-caliber revolver that was stuck into the waistband of his pants.

The masked men tore the plastic bags off their faces, revealing them fully for the first time.

One didn’t look familiar.

The other did. Even in his heavily fatigued brain, Art was pretty sure that the guy had been the cashier at a small health food grocery store that Art had shopped at frequently.

For some reason, the recognition didn’t surprise Art. It seemed fitting, somehow, that his old, normal life had become this twisted. People from his past were popping up, almost like characters in a movie, but the script had been all rearranged, and no one was the way they’d been before.

Art heard the front door burst open.

Heavy footsteps. Fast.

Shouting. Yelling. Deep voices.

It all seemed familiar. And yet Art felt like he was on the wrong end of it.

Was it the militia that’d come? It sure sounded like them.

A gunshot rang out through the house.

Another. And another.

Someone screamed. They’d been shot. It was all happening in another room.

Two of Art’s captors rushed out of the room, guns ready.

Two quick gunshots followed.

One of Art’s captors was left alone in the room with him.

Art hadn’t moved a muscle. He was going to take what was going to come, whatever it was. He was defeated, mentally and physically. He had no fight left in him yet again. How many times had this happened to him, where the will to live had left him?

His captor pressed a handgun against Art’s temple. Hard.

“You’re going to be my ticket out of here,” he growled.

The door burst open, a booted foot appearing. The door slammed into the wall.

Figures rushed in.

Art recognized them. They were his crew. His troop, or regiment. Whatever you wanted to call it. They’d never had an official name. The faces were the same faces he’d woken up to every morning since the EMP, since he’d been “recruited” into the militia.

“Hold your fire,” shouted Art’s captor. His arm was around Art’s neck, holding him close to himself, keeping the muzzle of his gun pressed hard into Art’s temple.

Art saw the recognition in the faces. They knew it was Art. Their eyes flickered over the situation.

“Your buddy here dies, unless you guarantee my safe departure. You wouldn’t want your friend here to die, would you?”

Art saw no emotion in their faces.

They didn’t care if he lived or died.

And he felt the same way about them.

Most of them, anyway.

They were all just in it to survive as long as they could. These men held no personal grudges against these rebels. Many of them didn’t even care what happened to the militia, so long as it didn’t affect their personal survival. They were here on orders. Just as Art was.

If they were to shoot Art’s captor, it’d be a tricky shot.

Art would probably get shot, at best, in the process.

And they were definitely going to shoot.

This was the end.

Art closed his eyes.

He felt nothing.

No relief.

No longing.

No pain.

The shot rang out.

Art opened his eyes. He was still alive.

His captor was on the floor, blood all over him.

Blood covered Art’s side.

Art stood up, unsteady on his feet. His hands and feet were still bound. He looked at his fellow soldiers and they looked back at him.

One of them laughed, breaking the strange moment. It was Bobby.

“I was sure I was going to hit you too, Art,” he said, laughing.

“Good shot,” muttered Art.

Heavy footsteps came from the hallway.

Art looked up to see Sarge’s imposing figure in the doorway.

Sarge never came along on raids. Not once.

He paused only for a moment in the doorway, then made a straight line towards Art, arms swinging viciously at his sides.

“You bastard,” he said, through gritted teeth. “How many times are you going to fail?”

Sarge moved fast. His arm swung up and around. His fist, rock hard, collided with Art’s jaw.

Art fell to the floor, his bound hands in front of him, unable to brace himself against the fall.

His shoulder hit the wood floor first, his head lashing around and smashing into the floor.

He blacked out. Darkness overcame him. But it wasn’t death. Not yet.

Dan had walked through the night until the light had started to break. He’d been exhausted, and he knew he had barely put any distance between himself and his home.

He’d taken a brief nap, sleeping about one hour, hiding himself underneath a large bush.

He still hadn’t gotten out of the suburbs.

Dan took a drink of water. He wasn’t hungry. His stomach seemed to have shrunk down over the last few weeks, and his appetite along with it. He was running on adrenaline now, helping to keep his appetite at bay.

He’d need the food later. He had a long journey ahead of him.

His plan was to get out of the populated areas as quickly as possible. It seemed that if there was going to be trouble, it was going to be from people. He needed to get where there weren’t people.

Maybe not having a vehicle was going to work to his advantage. In the long run, at least. It would have been better to simply drive on out of the suburbs, leave the car somewhere, and continue from there on foot.

If he could just get far enough north, towards the highways, he knew he’d be able to stay behind the cover of the trees that lined Route 100 which ran north into Pennsylvania. After that, there weren’t as many towns, and there weren’t those long stretches of suburbs. At least that was how it looked on the map. It was a little hard to tell.

Looking at the map, the hunting grounds in Pennsylvania looked so close. Only mere inches away.

But in reality, it was days if not weeks of walking. Dan didn’t know how to judge how long it would take him.

One thing kept crossing Dan’s mind, and that was that there didn’t seem to be many people. Most of the houses looked abandoned.

What had happened to everyone?

Right after the EMP, most of his neighbors had fled the neighborhood, driving off in their fully-packed cars.

But where had they gone? Had they gotten stuck on the highway somewhere? Had they met some gruesome violent death at the hands of some unknown enemy?

Dan walked as quickly as he could, despite being horribly tired. His body kept telling him that he needed to sleep more, that it couldn’t go on. But Dan had a strong mind, and he knew that he could push himself. He knew he could take it. He wasn’t going to give himself any excuses.

Dwight Street was up ahead, a two-lane road that cut through the entire suburban area, running west to east. It was lined with businesses. There was a small section of local businesses, mom and pop pizza places, coffee houses, and record stores. The rest of the road had slowly, over the years, been converted into what was essentially a long strip mall.

Dan didn’t want to take out the map out in the open while he was walking. He knew he needed to keep his attention on his surroundings. At any moment, he half expected a door to burst open, or gunfire to erupt out of a window. Who knew what people’s state of mind right now was. They might be ready to shoot to kill on first sight. The fact that he was a kid probably didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to save him. Not with the way things were now.

Without taking out the map, Dan was fairly certain that the quickest path out of the suburbs would require that he head down Dwight for a few blocks. Train tracks ran alongside Dwight Street, and if he could get to them, he could use them as his own personal highway out of the area, allowing him to avoid walking by too many houses and businesses.