Ryan Westfield - Getting Out

He was surprised how well the two parties mingled together. There was a natural sort of trust that had established itself last night around the meal, and the party chatted amicably as they walked.

After Mandy and Georgia, James and Sadie followed at a short distance. Chad walked behind them, loaded down with gear, swearing up a storm, and grunting with each step.

Max followed behind everyone else, keeping some distance between himself and Chad. He kept his eyes and ears open for sounds around him. If there was anyone else out here, even though the possibility was remote, he wanted to see them first.

He kept his rifle ready in front of him, his finger laying along the trigger guard, with the safety off.

Bits and pieces of the conversation from Mandy and Georgia drifted back to Max, but he didn’t pay it much attention unless it was something practical.

It was good, thought Max, that they’d met Georgia. Without her, they wouldn’t be armed as they were now.

He hoped they wouldn’t encounter someone else out here, but the possibility was always there. He knew that he needed to expect the unexpected.

The trees looked gorgeous with the sun streaming down through the branches. It had been a long time since Max had been to this remote part of Pennsylvania, but he already liked it. It wasn’t a bad place to set up a nice life, not bad at all.

The going was somewhat tough, because they weren’t on any sort of path. They’d decided to cut right through the forest, rather than take the road. There were a few reasons for this. For one, Mandy had assured everyone that she knew how to get there through woods. There was supposedly a hiking path that they could take. They only had a mile or two to go until they reached it, and they could take that part of the way as they continued north. Cutting through the woods would shave many hours off their trip. They figured that they had about two days of hiking to get to the farmhouse, and maybe a day to get to the hunting cabin.

The main reason that Max liked walking through the woods instead of taking the road was that they had much less of a chance of running into anyone.

If people were starting to leave the cities and suburbs, they would come out here, and they would surely be in cars—the people who made it here already, that is. In the future, there would come the hordes of slowly walking masses, moving like zombies in low budget movies, looking for anything to eat, and willing to do anything to get what they needed.

Max’s mind turned to his future life, and what it would be like.

He had some vague plans, but when he tried to think concretely about what he would do, he drew some huge blanks that worried him.

His whole purpose now was to get there, to get to the farmhouse. But once there, how would life settle out? What would the day-to-day routine look like?

He supposed that he would live there with Mandy and Chad.

He looked ahead and caught sight of Mandy’s rear end, as she walked in her jeans. She was an attractive woman, and Max realized for the first time that he was attracted to her as a woman. It wasn’t just her body that drew him to her, but the growing awareness he had of her personality. She’d started the journey in the worst possible way. She’d been completely unaware, and perhaps even unwilling to accept what had happened. But now she seemed to embrace the situation and she was willing to do whatever necessary to survive. Max appreciated that kind of attitude.

She would make a good partner at the farmhouse. He had a feeling that she would accept him. He’d seen the glances she’d given him here and there. They weren’t quite glances of longing, or romantic interest, because the situation was so intense that it simply didn’t allow for things like that. But there was something there in her gaze, something like respect and understanding.

Maybe they could create a family there on the farm. Maybe Max could unearth some ancient farm equipment and get the farm producing food again. It would be a massive undertaking, with a host of complicated obstacles. The main one, thought Max, was that there were no farm animals there. But maybe in the coming months and years, it would somehow be possible to get them. After all, animals had a way of surviving even when humans couldn’t.

When Jeremy woke up, the pain was even worse, if that was possible, than the moment that he’d been shot.

He immediately thought: there’s no way I’m going to survive this. He figured there was simply no way he could go on with the pain, and medical treatment, well, he didn’t think that was going to happen.

But maybe… maybe it would. After all, just because the power was out, it wasn’t as if the doctors had disappeared, right?

The soldiers had been harsh with him, sure. They had dragged him off. But they had, after all, treated him somewhat. They had stopped the bleeding, and he was alive, whereas if they’d left him there he would be dead.

Maybe they’d just been following orders. Maybe they’d been under orders to get food at whatever cost. The military needed to be fed just like the citizens. And if peace, law, and order were going to continue to reign supreme, then feeding the military and police could be considered of the utmost importance.

Jeremy was vaguely aware of his surroundings. He knew he was somewhere with a lot of other people. His vision was blurry as he looked around, and something had happened to his glasses. He saw just a blurry mass of people. It might have been the same day, or maybe the next. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know how to tell.

But without his vision being as good as it should have been, he still knew there were many, many people. He could hear them, their cries of pain and their moans of hunger. He could smell them, the pungent human smell of many, many unwashed bodies.

Jeremy sat up despite the pain. He pulled up his khaki pant leg that was stained with dried blood. He looked at his wound. As he’d suspected, the soldiers had put some kind of field-treatment military medical supply on it. It looked like a white patch, a large bandage, that stuck to his skin with some kind of glue. It was completely soaked through with a rich red blood, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

Jeremy didn’t dare try to stand up. He knew that he would never be able to. His leg hurt too much. Simply too much. He had to grit his teeth just to stand as he sat there in a crouched position.

“Hey,” said Jeremy. It seemed to take all of his strength to speak. His stomach rumbled horribly at him. His leg ached. His whole body ached.

The woman next to him, who he could see fairly well, ignored him.

“Excuse me,” said Jeremy. He reached out and tugged at her sleeve.

“Get away from me!” she cried at him, pulling her arm violently away from him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Jeremy. “But can you tell me where we are? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on. And it’s not good.”

She paused and didn’t say anything.

“Tell me,” said Jeremy desperately. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold this “conversation” that he was having. His mouth and throat were parched, and each word seemed to only cause him more pain. “Tell me what’s happening. Where are we? I don’t seem to have my glasses.”

“Your glasses?” laughed the woman. “You’re not going to get them back. You’re not going to get anything back.”

She was a woman in her early forties, only a few years older than Jeremy himself. But she looked much older. Maybe it was that the makeup she’d been wearing had smeared and run. It looked as if she had been crying intensely. And where there was no makeup, her skin looked like that of a much older woman.