Ryan Westfield - Final Panic

“Let’s hope we don’t find any bodies,” Rob was mumbling, more to himself than to Jessica.

Just as he said it, he spotted a body. It was in the corner of the house.

He’d tried to mentally prepare himself for the sight during the night, but what he’d imagined in his head was very different from what he saw now. He’d imagined some charred bones, maybe a skull. Something out of some scary movie, almost cartoonish in nature.

But what he saw shocked him.

It wasn’t a skeleton.

Instead, it looked more like a bloated doll, some grotesque representation of the human form. And it was all completely blackened, the way a marshmallow gets when you hold it too long over the flame.

Rob stood there, frozen, staring at it. In all likelihood, it was one of his friends.

“Jessica,” he whispered. “You’ve got to see this.”

“What?”

Jessica arrived at his side, saw the burned corpse, and immediately vomited. She leaned down, bending over, vomiting out what little was left in her stomach.

It wasn’t really solid, more like some off-color gunk, something you might find at the bottom of an old swimming pool.

Vomiting was an understandable reaction, given what they were looking at. Their pre-EMP lives hadn’t prepared them for such sights. No amount of scary movies with Hollywood effects could have prepared anyone for this.

“You OK?”

“Fine.”

“You see any more bodies?”

“No.”

There wasn’t any point in looking for identifying characteristics of the corpse. Everything was burned beyond anything Rob had seen before.

They kept looking, combing over every inch of the rubble.

There were no more corpses.

“So this must mean that…”

“Let’s not bother with that,” snapped Jessica. “We don’t know who that is over there. Let’s not make any assumptions that are going to hinder what we’re going to do now.”

“Fair enough. And what is it that we’re going to do now?”

“Look for the others.”

“Where?”

“I thought we talked about this. You’re the one with the plan.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Don’t let the corpse affect you. We’ve got to keep on going.”

After a quick trip to the lake, so that the dehydrated Jessica could get another drink, they set off down the road that led, more or less, around the lake.

The plan was to search the area for their friends. Or any sign of them. Before leaving the burned house, they decided they needed to leave some sort of message, in case the others were alive and returned.

They tried carving a message in a piece of bark, but it was harder than it seemed to actually write out words. In the end, they settled for “J+R, BRB.” It was internet or phone slang, and Rob knew that Jim, having worked on so many broken cell phones, would know what it meant.

They set off down the road, not feeling like there was much hope at all. Rob tried to keep his growing despair hidden from Jessica because he knew that it wouldn’t be helpful. But he did wonder if she wasn’t doing the exact same thing as he was.

They hadn’t gone very far when they spotted an RV parked just off the road. Two wheels were on the road, and two were off.

“Is that…?”

“That’s the RV I saw with Jim. The exact same one.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“The one with the creeps?”

“The exact same one.”

“Should we check it out?”

“What choice do we have?”

With their guns drawn, a shotgun and a handgun respectively, they knocked on the door. Jessica hung a little back, in case something happened. Something like a shotgun blast to the door.

Rob waited, then knocked again.

“No answer?”

“You’d have heard it, wouldn’t you?”

“There’s no need to get snappy with me.”

“What should we do?”

“What are you waiting for? Go in.”

Rob shrugged and tried the handle. To his surprise, it was open.

It was a little darker in the RV than it was outside, but there was still plenty of light to see by.

At this point, after what he’d been through, he’d thought that nothing would surprise him. But as he took in the scene inside the RV, his jaw dropped.

There were four bodies on the floor. There was blood on the ground. Blood all over, really. It had pooled up here and there, and run across the floor, which was at a slight incline.

Two of the bodies he recognized.

They were Jim and Aly.

“Rob? Everything OK?”

Rob was choking back tears as he said, “There’s nothing to see in here. Don’t bother coming in.” He wanted to spare Jessica from this sight. He wasn’t exactly sure why. It was just an instinct. It was just what came to him.

But she ignored him, of course.

“What the hell?” she exclaimed.

Suddenly, one of the bodies stirred.

Someone wasn’t completely dead.

Rob leveled the shotgun at the body.

“What are you doing?” shrieked Jessica. “That’s Jim!”

Rob had reacted instinctively and quickly, too tired to actually realize he was pointing the shotgun at his best friend.

“Shit,” he muttered, rushing over to Jim, stepping on one of the other bodies as he did so.

“What’s going on?” came Jim’s voice.

His voice was hoarse and he sounded strange. But he was alive.

The last thing Jim remembered was discharging his gun.

He had a vague idea that he was in an RV. And that Aly was with him. And that he’d been tired. Very tired. More tired than he’d ever been.

And that was it.

And now Rob and Jessica were peering down at him, asking him what seemed like a million questions at the same time.

Jim’s head throbbed and his muscles burned. Slowly, the events of yesterday started coming back to him, images that flashed across his mind. Images of the lake. Swimming. Almost drowning. Stashing the gear. Aly.

“Aly?” croaked Jim, his throat painfully dry.

“I’m working on it,” came Jessica’s reply.

“Aly, Aly, wake up, Aly.”

Jim was involuntarily holding his breath, waiting to hear what had happened to his wife. He managed to turn over, with Rob’s hands helping him, so that he faced Aly

There wasn’t blood around her.

It seemed like too much to hope that she’d be alive.

“Morning,” mumbled Aly. Her voice was sleepy. But it was her voice. And she was alive.

Jim stood up abruptly, unsteady on his feet. Rob tried to hold him back, but Jim staggered forward until he’d reached his wife. He tried to hug her from his standing position, but soon he collapsed to the floor, his arms wrapped around her.

“I can’t believe you two are alive,” said Rob. “We thought…”

“So, you saw the house?” said Aly.

“The house?” said Jim. He felt like there was a memory there, but he couldn’t quite get to it.

“It burned down,” said Aly. “Didn’t you see it?”

The memory came in a flash. The flames. The collapsing walls.

“I must have been hit on the head harder than I thought.”

“Join the club,” said Jessica.

Slowly, Jim started to wake up. The throbbing in his head was still there, but someone handed him a glass of water, and it seemed to help.

Soon, all four of them were talking at the same time, each of them telling their story to the others. Jim didn’t end up talking much, and instead of telling every detail of his story, he listened attentively to what had happened to the others. But Jim had always been like that, more or less, knowing that he had more to learn from others. For what information he needed to impart, he tried to keep it as succinct as possible.