Ryan Westfield - Getting Out

“Come on, man,” said Chad. “I’m an American, just like you. I’m from Pennsylvania. Born and raised.”

He’d been over this a thousand times. He didn’t have the patience for it anymore, despite his position as a prisoner.

“That so?” said the man lazily, his mouth full of chewing tobacco. He spat onto the ground in front of him, and rubbed the ground with his boot, digging the toe into the soil.

“This is bullshit,” said Chad. “Where’d you take my friends?”

“They’re fine,” said the man.

Chad got the sense that these men didn’t want to hurt them.

“I get it, man,” said Chad. “You’re just scared. We all are. But we’ve got to learn to work together on this.”

“How’s that?”

“The way I see it,” said Chad. “It’d be a lot better for you guys if you just let us all go. You could concentrate on doing shit you actually need to do, like finding food, that sort of thing… You can’t be spending all your time essentially working as prison guards… This is just crazy.”

“You watch your mouth.”

“He giving you any trouble?” called one of the men from the campfire.

“Nah, he’s fine.”

“Listen,” said another man around the campfire. “I got to get going. Sally’s going to be worried sick about me.”

“The old ball and chain,” muttered someone else. “Our country’s been attacked and she won’t even let you stay out all night. Doesn’t she know there are some things worth fighting for?”

“I don’t see us doing a hell of a lot of fighting.”

Chad had had enough of it all.

“Shut up!” he screamed, at the top of his drug-deprived lungs.

The men were all stunned into silence.

“You obviously have no idea what you’re even doing!” shouted Chad. “You don’t even know how to interrogate me properly. Now I say either let me and my friends go, right now. That’s option one, OK?” He wasn’t sure he was completely making sense, but he was too far gone and too frustrated to care. “Option two is you go get me my damn pills right now. OK? Option three is that you just torture me already, because I’ve had enough of this shit.”

The men didn’t know what to do. They were all standing in front of him now, staring at this strange prisoner who’d just screamed at them. They shifted their weight. They spat their tobacco juice.

“You know,” said one of them. “Maybe he’s got a point. We didn’t really torture him.”

“Come on, we’re not like that. Plus, Sally would kill me if she knew I was out here torturing people.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. If you can’t handle it, then head home.”

“Just kill me,” shouted Chad.

The last thing he remembered was a boot coming towards him, right towards his face. He lost consciousness quickly. If he had been conscious of what was happening, he would have been happy to pass out. It was better than the reality of the withdrawal he was experiencing.

Georgia had walked for hours. There hadn’t been any houses, or any cars passing by. She was about to give up and turn around. After all, she’d told James and Sadie that she would be back before the end of the day. She was weary and tired and she didn’t feel as if she was completely thinking clearly. But at least she was cognizant of that fact, and would be able to take precautions against making rash decisions. All she needed to do was double check the decisions she was making. She would need to pause and reconsider something that would have otherwise been an obvious decision. That was something she’d learned being out in the woods for days on end in her younger years.

The sky was dense with grey, ominous clouds. But so far there was no rain.

The air was cool out here, whereas in the suburbs it had been swelteringly hot, as spring was growing into a scorching summer.

Georgia sat down on the side of the road to think again about returning. Should she press on farther? She didn’t have a watch, and obviously her cell phone wasn’t working.

For the first time, Georgia heard the sounds of birds around her. They’d been strangely absent all along this journey. Then again, she’d been concentrating on other things, and hadn’t exactly had time to listen to the birds chirp.

Georgia’s mind turned towards the situation as a whole. Again she wondered whether this was a localized event. She was pretty sure that it was not. For instance, if part of Pennsylvania experienced a complete blackout, or an EMP, then surely the rest of the country would come to their aid. The national guard would be sent in, and there would be volunteers showing up by the truckload. Nothing like that was happening. If it had been the entire United States, then foreigners were about to show up. Georgia didn’t know if they’d be invading soldiers, or peacekeepers coming to help.

Georgia was cynical in a lot of ways. She didn’t expect foreign peacekeepers to show up to help. She expected soldiers, and she expected them quickly.

So the only logical conclusion was that the entire planet had been affected…

That must mean that it was some kind of natural event, like a solar flare, rather than something artificial… Nothing Georgia knew about could have that kind of worldwide range.

Then again, Georgia realize she was tired and she was getting a little ahead of herself. There was no way she could determine what had happened all over the entire world. Not while she was alone on a remote rural road, with no cell phone, no internet, no communications whatsoever.

Georgia decided to give it another ten minutes.

And she was glad she did.

She had to convince her tired feet to move, one step at a time. But at the top of a long, sloping hill, she saw something.

At first, all she saw was a streak of pink against the background of the forest. The house was so far in the distance that she had to keep walking for some time before she could clearly make out that it was a house. It looked so small in the distance.

When she got closer, she saw that there was a small compact car parked in the driveway. Obviously, no lights were on in the house.

Georgia took a deep breath before continuing onward. Her shoulder was sore from carrying the rifle. Her feet hurt even more. She knew she would have been able to tolerate all this if she was better rested and better fed. But when food and sleep start lacking, everything else gets much, much harder.

It took Georgia what must have been at least another half an hour to walk to the house. She left the road and walked through the woods, which made the distance longer and the path harder. But she wanted to make sure she wasn’t seen.

Georgia didn’t know what the odds would be that someone was in the house.

She took the rifle from her shoulder and held it in her hands, ready to use it if needed.

Georgia didn’t want to kill. Especially not when she was the one robbing someone else. She would kill to defend herself or her kids. But when she was out on the prowl? Could she justify that to herself? She knew that they needed a vehicle… but could she really do it?

I’ll just have to cross that path when I get to it, thought Georgia. But she realized that that was a dangerous proposition, and she promised herself that she would do everything she could not to kill another human being… unless the person was threatening her… Then she would have to do what she had to do.

Hiding behind a tree and peeking out from it, she studied the car. It certainly wasn’t an SUV, a truck, or anything with four wheel drive. It was a small compact car, made in Japan.

It might have been a Honda or Nissan, or even an ancient Datsun, but it looked like the markings might have been taken off, and Georgia wasn’t that familiar with those types of cars.