Ryan Westfield - Staying Alive

“I’m guessing there were two groups, fighting for control of the house,” said John.

“Makes sense, from what I can see,” said Cynthia.

They moved from room to room. In the upstairs, there were no bodies.

“This is the bedroom Max and I stayed in once when we were kids,” said John, gesturing to an open door.

Inside, there was an unmade bed. On the bedside table, there was a book on a nightstand, lying halfway open, spine up. It was a book on edible plants in Pennsylvania.

John picked up the book and flipped through it. There were notes in the margins, and the handwriting was unmistakably Max’s.

“It’s Max’s handwriting,” said John.

“Look at this,” said Cynthia, flipping through a cheap notebook she’d taken from the bed. “It’s some kind of journal.”

John took it from her and opened it. There weren’t many entries, and they weren’t dated. It was unmistakably Max’s handwriting, the same adult-like writing he’d used even as a child.

“Worried that people will be coming from the cities,” read the first entry. “We have someone on watch at all times. But we may have to abandon the farmhouse and head to more rural areas. Lower population density means lower risk.”

Below the entry, there was a rudimentary plan on how Max and his group might escape. He made mention of various people that John had never heard of, names like Mandy and Georgia. At the bottom, though, the name “Chad” appeared.

“Chad?” muttered John. “Chad Hofstetter? No, it couldn’t be…” John remembered Chad well from childhood, the guy who’d never had it together and was never going to get it together. Last John had heard, Chad was still partying hard and working odd jobs to pay for his drugs, selling his blood plasma when he couldn’t come up with the money for his next fix.

“Sounds like your brother is still alive,” said Cynthia.

“Maybe,” said John. “Sounds like he got out. But what are we going to do?”

“We could stay here.”

“Stay here, and wait for more people to come, ones like the dead men in the hallways and living room? We don’t even have any guns.”

“We could try,” said Cynthia.

John sat down heavily on the bed.

“I guess so,” he said, looking around the room that was so similar to his memory. So similar and yet the situation was so different. Society had collapsed. Who would have thought that he’d be back here decades later, wondering if he’d survive the next day?

“There are guns,” said Cynthia. “Didn’t you see all the guns those dead men have? There are dozens of them. We could use them to defend this place. We could even hunt animals… We’ll do watch shifts, just like when we were hiking…”

She seemed to think it could work. John wasn’t so sure.

“I guess,” he said. “I mean, I’m tired of walking. I’m tired of running…”

“There’s food here, too,” said Cynthia. “I mean, there must be. Those guys have gear. Didn’t you see their packs? Probably stuffed to the gills with food.”

John didn’t know why, but he started laughing. It just seemed to crazy to him that Cynthia sounded excited about the food in some dead men’s packs. Then again, he’d shared a similar feeling when examining the crashed aircraft.

John let himself fall back onto the bed. His knees hung over the mattress, and the tips of his shoes barely touched the hardwood floor.

He kept laughing, laughing at the situation, laughing at the world, laughing at everything.

To John’s surprise, Cynthia lay herself down on the bed. She turned on her side and pushed herself up against John. She buried her head in the crook of his arm and laughed along with him.

Sadie’s tears had been slow to stop.

She remembered James pulling her, practically dragging her, away from the van and into the woods.

The four of them had sprinted through the trees. The branches had smacked into them, cutting them.

They’d run and run, and Sadie had cried the entire time. She couldn’t believe that her mom and Max had done what they’d done. Sadie had protested, but no one had listened. And she couldn’t believe that James had gone along with the plan.

Chad had led the way, followed by James and Sadie. Sadie’d never seen Chad run so fast. Mandy took up the rear, shouting words of encouragement, telling them to keep going, to keep running.

They’d all run until they couldn’t run any more, until their feet ached and their hearts pounded, feeling like they’d give out, until their lungs ached for air.

And they hadn’t stopped to rest. Chad had urged them forward, telling them they had to at least walk.

There was no way to know what had happened to her mom and Max. Sadie remembered hearing the van speeding away, the door slamming. But that was it. By the time the Bronco drove by, that evil, vicious looking SUV, Sadie and the others were too deep into the woods to hear it.

No one spoke as they walked through the woods for hours and hours. The hours turned into a full day. They’d seen nothing and no one, nothing except the endless trees.

Memories of her former life flashed through Sadie’s mind as she walked. She remembered the times that her mother had wanted to take her hunting, but Sadie had been more interested in watching TV and texting her friends. She remembered how she’d never wanted to go to school, to sit in those boring classrooms and listen to someone tell her stuff she either already knew or didn’t need to know. How she longed for a classroom now! Those climate-controlled rooms, once so bland and stark, couldn’t have seemed more appealing compared to the forest, the horrible forest that seemed to stretch forever, terrible and vicious in its own way. And those chairs! The straight-backed chairs permanently fixed to those tiny, obnoxious desks. What Sadie wouldn’t have given to have one with her right now…

Sadie felt guilty about even thinking about comfort when her mother was most likely dead. But she couldn’t cry any more. It felt like her eyes had no more tears to give.

“Sadie,” said James, tugging on her sleeve.

“What?”

“Didn’t you hear Chad and Mandy? We’re stopping for the night.”

“Oh,” said Sadie.

She felt dazed, lost in the strange world of her own thoughts.

“We can’t start a fire,” said Chad. “It’s too risky.”

“Here,” said Mandy, putting her arm around Sadie and handing her a bag of beef jerky. “Eat some of this. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Sadie, which was the truth.

But Mandy and everyone else urged her to eat, and she did feel better afterwards.

The night was long. Impossibly long. They had nothing to sleep in. No sleeping bags, and the ground was cold. Summer was approaching its end, and the cold weather would be coming in soon.

“James?” whispered Sadie, curled up in the darkness. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“You think Mom’s OK?”

Sadie didn’t know why she asked. She was already convinced that her mother and Max were both dead, and that the men in the Bronco would be coming for them soon.

“Yeah,” said James. “You know Mom, she’s tough. And Max, you can’t get anything by that guy.”

“Thanks,” said Sadie. She suddenly realized that she’d asked because she was looking for comforting words, even if she knew in her heart that they were wrong.

The group barely spoke in the morning, except for a brief discussion about whether they were on the right track to get to Albion, the small town that Max had mentioned.

Sadie didn’t get the sense that any of them actually thought there was a good chance of meeting Georgia and Max at Albion. But they all knew that they had to at least try.