Ryan Westfield - Getting Out

It hadn’t been that long since the EMP, but already he was fatigued beyond the point he would have thought possible.

What was more, he didn’t know why they were going to see this sick man. It wasn’t like Max was a doctor. He’d worked in an office, and medical care and first aid were weak points of his.

“Were you ever a nurse or something?” whispered Max to Mandy, as he followed her up the stairs.

She shook her head. “I thought maybe we could help.”

Max sighed. He just didn’t see how they were going to help.

He couldn’t help checking out Mandy’s ass as he followed her up the stairs. Even wearing pants, her legs looked long, shapely, and athletic, and her ass was muscular, firm, yet just large enough. And her pants being soaked didn’t help keep Max’s attention away. His eyes felt drawn to it like a magnet.

“Pop,” said Tod, already entering his father’s room. “There are some people here to see you. They wanted to see how you’re doing… We thought they were foreign spies, but it turns out they’re just from Pennsylvania like us.”

“Aw, shucks,” said Max, walking into the room. “Yeah, turns out we weren’t spies at all…”

Tod gave Max a confused look. Max supposed he himself was still a little bitter about the whole being imprisoned experience. And he also supposed that Tod wasn’t really up on sarcasm, or irony, or whatever it was Max was employing.

“How are you doing, sir?” said Mandy, kneeling down by the man.

He was propped up in his chair, various pillows helping to support him.

Max studied him. He looked like he was dying all right. Max knew that dialysis was serious business. Without it, this man would die, and there wasn’t anything he or Mandy could do about it.

Max knew that Mandy must have already known that. But she was a deeply caring person in a lot of ways. She wanted to confront the suffering of others head on. She didn’t want to run away from it.

Max wasn’t sure whether he wanted to run away from it or not.

The man looked really sick. Max hadn’t seen someone in this bad of shape for a long, long time. He had a slightly blueish tint to his skin, and he was breathing laboriously.

“How’s it going, sir?” said Mandy again.

“She asked how you’re doing, Pop,” said Tod.

The man looked at Tod and then at Mandy. His eyes went down to her breasts, and he stared at them for a moment.

“Good to see some nice sights around here,” he said.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Tod, blushing in embarrassment for what his father had said.

“It’s fine,” said Mandy. “How are you feeling, sir?”

“Pain,” said the man, his face going blank. “Pain, nothing but pain.”

Mandy looked at Max, who shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly. He didn’t see why they were here, except that Mandy had too big of a heart.

“Come on, Mandy,” he said. “We should be getting out of here.” There went his dreams of sleeping by the fire and having a good meal before getting back on the seemingly never ending road, filled with rain and storms, and countless obstacles that he still had yet to cross.

“Pain,” said the man. “I knew it would end soon. I had a feeling about this. When the power went out, I shrugged it off. But then my kids were telling me their phones weren’t working. I’m headed out, and that’s fine. I had a good run, I just didn’t know the end would seem so bleak and… painful. I just…”

He slumped a little in his chair, tired with the fatigue of having to speak for so long.

“What are you giving him for the pain?” said Mandy.

Max didn’t know what kind of pain the guy would be in. Max associated pain with broken wrists, broken bones, blunt trauma, that sort of thing. Maybe back pain, too, not that he’d ever had much of an issue with that.

“Just some aspirin,” grunted Tod. “We don’t have much more than that.”

“Well, what about those pills Chad has?” she said to Max.

“I’ll go get them,” said Max instantly.

Chad didn’t need those damn pills. But this guy did.

“I’ll be right back,” said Max, nodding to Tod, who nodded back.

Max jogged down the stairs despite his growing fatigue. His wrist was still killing him.

The rain outside was heavy, but Max was already wet. The thunder was crashing all around. It sounded like a bowling alley on steroids. Lightning flickered in the sky. The wind was intense. The trees swayed in the gusts like they would fall over.

The town looked different in the rain and the storm. It looked like a little oasis, a little haven being battered by the forces of nature.

Max knew that his own journey was changing. That was what the storm meant to him. So far, he’d escaped the clutches of his dying civilization. He’d battled other humans. He’d shot two of them. He’d done what he had to do to get out.

The further out he got, the less people he would encounter. That was going to be the big change for Max, and whoever was going to come with him.

Max knew what the future held. It was this storm. This storm was it.

Max would be facing nature, wild and intense, dangerous and possibly disastrous. There wasn’t any way to prepare for that. Sure, he had some gear. He had the Jeep. He had the guns.

But it would be him against not just the elements, but against the faceless void that people called mother nature, the unsympathetic beast composed of a thousand beasts all together.

There would be moments, Max knew, when he would be hungry and cold. He would be on the verge of starvation, unless he could use his own wits to outpace what was going to come for him no matter what. That was death, cold and silent, the grim reaper facing him down with a pointed scythe and not a care in the world, breathless and boney.

Max knew there was no end in sight. Civilization had collapsed. Gone were the comfy baths, gone was hot water entirely. Gone was everything he’d known. Gone was the fast food. Gone were the grocery stories and the automobiles. Once the gas was finished, there would be no more point to the Jeep. There’d be no point to his cook stove either.

Max would have to learn everything again. He’d have to do what people had done on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years, and that was survive, even when the faceless void yawned its impressive toothless grin right in his pitiful human face.

But there was hope. There was a way to cheat death. And that wasn’t mere survival. It wasn’t finding comfort among the wilderness. It was procreation—creating more humans so that the human race could continue. For how long, no one knew. An eternity stretched in front of him, a great chasm from which there was no return, and year by year it would swallow the humans given to it. It would swallow them eagerly without compulsion or feeling. The human race would continue mating, giving birth, dying, throwing humans right into that ceaseless void, wherever it was, wherever it appeared. It would swallow that old man up soon enough, and it would swallow Max up when it had the chance.

Max must have been more tired than he’d thought. This was heavy shit he was thinking about. His mind seemed to be reeling. It seemed to be in some strange place.

The rain pounding forcefully onto him, Max approached the Jeep.

“Chad!” he screamed. “Get up! What the hell are you doing?”

Chad was lying in a pool of muddy water, the rain pounding down onto him.

He was facing the ceaseless void of nature, the intense majestic forces that could destroy him in an instant without a care.

They were up against nature. And it wasn’t just Max and Chad. It was everyone, everywhere.

Chad had never looked happier. A huge grin was plastered on his face.