William Stone: How We Survive: EMP Survival in a Powerless World

Reluctantly, he nodded.

The bearded guy gestured that he was keeping his lips zipped. “Cool. You let me have the weapons and the Hatfield clan lives happily ever after. You don’t; you die. Simple as that.”

The wheels in his mind spun into a blur. “Okay, I need you to get rid of those guys for a few hours tomorrow morning. Then we can go over, get the weapons, and let me go back home to my family. Deal?”

“You got it. Tomorrow morning, we’ve got a few hours alone. You try to get cute and you will pay the highest price you can imagine. And you know good and well that without you, your family can’t survive, either.”

Hatfield stared at the man, looking for an opening, idea, anything. He sipped from his test tube, giggling to himself. Then he strolled away, whistling like a man about to inherit a throne.

HATFIELD’S DREAMS were hellish that night, a surreal mixture of danger and puzzling messages. Worst of all was how quickly his dreams ended. He woke up, hands tagged behind his back and gagged on the wooden floor of the hallway. Once his vision snapped into focus, the scenario became more frightening. He saw the hallway’s floor lined with the bodies of homesteaders. Unable to climb to an upright position, he used his feet to push himself over, checking to see what had happened.

After a quick scan, they all seemed to be alive, but like him, they’d been hogtied and gagged. The door to the next room was open. He tried to slide closer to it to see what—if anything—was happening in there.

But sliding quietly wasn’t possible. Something in his back pocket was scraping loudly along the floor. He clumsily reached for it and fished it out. Then he twisted himself over to take a look at what it was. It was the medication he’d gotten from Jade’s bunker—the one he promised not to misuse.

With his pocket now free, he held the medication in his hand and silently slid toward the door, immediately hearing the sound of a baritone humming to himself inside. He looked up and found the bearded gangbanger gazing out of the window and basking in the early morning sunlight as he cleaned his rifle.

On his bed, leaned against the pillow, he spotted the steaming test tube. An idea hit his head like a bolt from an electric fence. The medication was right there in his grip. Yes, he’d promised to save plenty of the medication for emergency use, but surely there would be plenty remaining after he’d taken care of the bearded gangbanger. There was only one of him, after all.

Hatfield tried to creep closer to the test tube, but that would be tricky—maybe impossible without his movement being detected.

But still, he was only roughly six feet away, seven at the most. And he was preoccupied with cleaning his rifle. If only he could have gotten a distraction.

Without looking up from his gun, the bearded gangbanger yelled, “Say, Mo! You need any more bullets in that thing? I got plenty!”

The shout brought Hatfield’s heart to a thunderous pound. Not only did it startle him, but it also made it clear that there was at least one other gangbanger around. Worse yet, Hatfield wasn’t sure where he was. So even drugging the bearded guy wouldn’t complete the task.

Just as his mind raced in search of answers, the other gangbanger answered from outside the hallway. “No, I got plenty myself!” That call seemed to come from the living room.

Hatfield shifted his eyes, trying to look out of the hallway to get a sense of where he was exactly.

Just then, the bearded gangbanger called out to somebody else. “How about you, Rick? You doing okay on bullets?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Rick answered. This call seemed to come from the kitchen.

The bearded gangbanger had more to say. “Hell of a performance by Rick. That jackass Nathan really bought your story about you finding a bunch of junk food lying around somewhere.”

“Yeah, well,” Rick answered. “I figured everybody would be sick of all this damn rabbit food these homesteaders like to eat all the time. Seemed like a good way to get rid of them.”

As Hatfield tried to creep closer, the bearded gangbanger went on, his gaze still landing on his rifle. “I just hope these sons-of-bitches bring back some potato chips. I swear on my pet boa if I have to eat one more—”

Hatfield froze, troubled by the gangbanger’s sudden stop. With his eyes sealed shut, he heard heavy footsteps come closer. Within seconds he heard and felt the guy’s breath on his face. “Is it just me, Rick, or is this dude moving?”

“What’s that?”

“I swear I put him down at the other end of the hallway.”

The bearded gangbanger grabbed Hatfield by the ankles and slid him down the hallway. He did his best to keep his eyes shut and his body limp. Also, he had to make sure he didn’t drop the medication bottle on the floor, so he kept his hands firmly clasped and behind his back.

From there, he heard the footsteps move away in a slightly different direction, eventually ending with the slam of a creaky door that he recognized as the bathroom door. Knowing he didn’t have much time before he’d be back, Hatfield widened his eyes and gazed into the bedroom, immediately spotting the steaming test tube on the bed and the rifle next to it, chamber open and bullets on the pillow.

He tilted his head, hoping he could tell by the sounds how much time he had, then pressed his back against the bedroom door in an effort to lift himself off the floor.

But it didn’t go well. He hit the hardwood with a loud thump. Hatfield froze, more cautious now and tried the same move more slowly. This time he reached his feet and came all the way up, medication bottle still—barely—in his grip.

From there, he took quiet steps to the bed, trying to lift the top off the bottle. He got halfway there, then desperately tugged at it. But the top was stubborn, not coming up no matter how much effort he’d put into it.

He tugged harder, yanking with all his might, teeth clenched, forehead creased. When it finally snapped open, a teaspoon or so of it spilled on the floor. He ignored it, charging ahead with his plan as he turned around, tried to angle the bottle toward the test tube and pour just enough to get the job done.

Craning his neck in agony to see what he was doing, he poured about a tablespoon of it, then he reached down and gave the tube a shake, hoping the medication wouldn’t wind up in one suspicion-raising blob.

Then came more footsteps, harder and a little faster than before headed directly to the bedroom. Hatfield went to his knees, hitting the floor with as little noise as he could manage, then slid himself to the bedroom door, making extra effort to keep the now-open bottle from spilling.

From there, he could see he’d forgotten something. The puddle of medication was right there.

The footsteps got louder and closer. Crawling back to wipe up his spill would take superhuman speed. No choice but to leave it. He pressed his feet against the wall and gave himself a hard shove, sliding down the hallway just seconds before the footsteps reached the hallway.

He could hear and feel the bearded gangbanger’s steps just miss his body as he went down the hallway. Once there, he seemed to stop. Nearly a minute went by without a sound.

Hatfield panicked, worried that he was standing at the door, leering down at him. He gave his eyelids a slight lift, seeing nothing at the doorway.

“Doggone it, Rick!” he called from the bedroom. “You think you could maybe pour this liquor so that you can get as much in the tube as on the floor!”

“What’s that?” Rick answered from a distant room.

“Never mind.”

He could now hear the guy gulping down the mystery liquid, then placing the tube on the windowsill. Seconds later, he heard the metallic clank of the bearded gangbanger lifting his rifle. And the clanks weren’t done. He now heard the chamber being slammed shut and the rifle being cocked.