Ryan Westfield - Final Chaos

Jim holstered his Ruger and moved fast, springing forward despite the pain.

In mere seconds, he was behind the man, his knife arm around the man’s throat in a semi chokehold.

Jim drew the knife across the man’s neck in one swift motion, pulling back hard on the knife.

The cut was good and deep.

Jim expected the man to drop down, to crumple right to ground.

But that didn’t happen.

The man didn’t die instantly.

Hot blood covered Jim’s hands and the knife. Jim withdrew his hands and took a couple quick steps back.

The man was coughing. But the cough sounded like it was coming through water. He was gargling on his own blood.

The man was gasping, sputtering. He sank to his knees. Blood was everywhere.

Thirty seconds later, the gruesome scene was over, and the man collapsed. Dead.

Jim made a mental note that it hadn’t happened like in the movies.

But it still worked.

Jim looked around him, wiped the blood from his hands onto his pants. He checked his pockets for the penicillin, which was still there. He wiped off his knife and closed it. He examined his Ruger. He opened the cylinder and began to reload it with spare rounds from his pocket.

He needed to get out of there. Who knew what might happen next.

He opened the back door cautiously, leading with his revolver.

The sun, even hidden behind the clouds was bright, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.

There seemed to be no one out there.

He went around the other side of the pharmacy, heading towards his Subaru in the parking lot.

He was half expecting the Subaru to be missing, or for it to have been ransacked. Or for someone to be waiting underneath it, or even waiting inside it.

But there was no one.

The parking and the nearby road were both deathly silent.

Inside the vehicle with the doors locked and the windows up, Jim got out a map. He was hoping to find a way back to the lake house without passing that intersection where he’d been ambushed by that van.

But there was no other way back.

He’d have to figure out something.

He cranked the engine, put the Subaru into first, and got back on the main road.

Even though everything was the same, it all looked different to Jim than when he’d come into town.

The stopped cars were still in the street. The houses and businesses were still silent. There was still no one in the street.

Jim had known the dangers when coming in. He’d understood the situation mentally.

But now he had a visceral, intensely real, situation to make it all seem different. More frightening. More unreal.

Jim’s clothes were covered in spots of blood and his back hurt so much he couldn’t sit completely upright in the driver’s seat.

The way back seemed shorter than the way in. Before he knew it, he was quickly approaching the intersection where he’d almost been shot.

Some may have stopped the vehicle and paused for a few moments to think. Some may have hesitated.

But not Jim.

Instead, he sped up, heading right towards where he knew the van would be.

He didn’t have a plan.

There was no point in making a plan when he didn’t know what would happen.

Jessica was holding her Glock as tightly as she could. The man’s strong hands were trying to wrench it free from her grip.

Her mind was racing a mile a minute, trying to come up with something.

Suddenly, she had it.

She jerked her head sharply, turning it to face the opposite direction.

She let out a fake gasp of surprise. “Rob!” she called out, even though Rob wasn’t anywhere in sight.

It was a classic trick. One that worked in cartoons and movies. And in real life, too.

He turned to look as well, thinking that she’d spotted her friend.

It was all the time Jessica needed.

She leaned her neck forward, opened her mouth wide, and bit down hard on his ear. She tightened her jaws. Hard.

He screamed out in pain.

She tasted hot blood.

His hands let up on the Glock.

Despite her wrist pain, Jessica yanked the Glock hard out of his two hands. Now she had it.

She pushed the Glock’s muzzle right into his torso.

She pulled the trigger.

The gun kicked.

A point blank shot.

He died instantly, his body losing muscle tension, going limp, and now weighing down heavily on her.

She pulled herself out from under him, grabbed his rifle, and dashed off to another tree. She didn’t want to wait around for someone else to shoot her.

She pressed herself against the tree trunk and tried to listen. Her ears were ringing. She heard no other sounds. No gunshots.

She hoped Rob was still alive.

If Rob had killed one of the Carpenters with those gunshots she’d heard, there’d be two Carpenters left. By her count, at least.

If Rob had died from those gunshots she’d heard, there’d be three Carpenters left.

Jessica tried to put herself in the place of the Carpenters. What would she have done if she were them?

Probably try to get in through the front door. Take what they could and leave. Cut their losses.

Then again, the Carpenters had no way of knowing that their family members had died.

Either way, they’d still probably go for the lake house.

And once they found out about the deaths, they’d go for revenge, if their past behavior was any judge.

She had to get back to the front door.

She started running, staying in the trees, taking the long way around the lake house that would take her towards the water. This was the only way she could stay within the cover of the trees.

She was sweating and panting when she got near the front door again, just a few minutes later.

Jessica stayed back, hidden among the boughs of the evergreen trees, waiting for something to happen, for someone to show their face.

Was it possible they were already inside the house?

Probably not, unless they’d gone in through a window. She might have missed the sound of a window breaking during her skirmish.

If they’d gone in through the door, it would have been busted open.

But she could see it there, closed and intact.

A gunshot rang out, breaking the silence.

It had come from the road.

Now at least she knew where the action was.

Another gunshot followed, and Jessica started moving swiftly in that direction. She tried to stay under the cover of the trees as best she could, not straying far from the trunks.

Finally, she saw Rob. He was maybe a hundred yards in front of her, out on the other side of the road. He’d taken shelter behind a tree.

Another hundred yards or so from Rob, off to the left, were the two oldest Carpenters.

It was a standoff. Each side was under cover.

Jessica watched as Mr. Carpenter moved slightly out from behind the trunk, getting off a single useless shot in Rob’s direction. They still hadn’t seen Jessica.

Jessica unslung one of the two rifles from her shoulder, holstered her Glock, and got the sights lined up with Mr. Carpenter.

It’d have to be a clean shot.

But she didn’t think she had the skill to pull off a headshot.

The chest was easier. Less risky.

She had it all lined up.

The safety was off.

She pulled the trigger.

The shot rang out.

Carpenter fell.

His wife screamed, a wail so painful that Jessica thought for a moment that somehow the bullet had hit both of them.

But Mrs. Carpenter was still very much alive.

And it was then that it hit Jessica. She’d just killed not just a husband and father, but two brothers, two sons. She’d almost decimated an entire family.

And it was a family that, before the EMP, while they might not have been the most engaging or polite, they’d been something. They’d been taxpayers, workers, maybe students. They’d been something. A family unit. Humans.