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.
25
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.
Jessica and Rob described the body they’d seen in the house, and Aly recounted her story of what had happened to Jordan, how he’d been passed out drunk, and she’d done everything she could to save him.
No one was particularly upset about losing Jordan, least of all Aly. He hadn’t been good to anyone, and in his last moments, he’d decided to get drunk instead of protecting his niece like he should have been. It was almost a miracle that Aly had managed to get out of there alive.
It was also almost a miracle that nothing had happened to Jim and Aly after they’d passed out from exhaustion. They’d slept through the whole night in the RV with the door unlocked. No one had been watching. Neither of them would have been prepared for any kind of attack.
Jim didn’t waste any time feeling shame or embarrassment. He’d done everything he could. Sometimes things worked out that. He always did everything he could to prevent situations like that, but sometimes things simply didn’t work out the right way.
Somehow, before they knew it, an hour had passed, and they realized that they’d been sitting there talking with two dead bodies in the RV with them.
Jim and Jessica took it upon themselves to perform the grim task, dragging the bodies down the RV steps. They took them a little ways off the road and left them there. Burying them didn’t seem appropriate, considering the circumstances, and it would have taken a lot of manpower, not to mention calories. Calories that they couldn’t spare.
When they returned to the RV, Aly was going through the cupboards and handing things to Rob, all the while instructing him on how to prepare a breakfast.
“Just don’t go crazy,” advised Jim. “This food has got to last us a while.”
“But you managed to save the other stuff, right? The stuff that that fake cop guy, whatever his name was, stole?”
“Yeah,” said Jim, nodding. “But we’re going to have to go get it. After breakfast, I guess.”
“After breakfast?” said Jessica. “Why wait? We’re in an RV, after all. It’s a kitchen on wheels.”
They all laughed as much as their tired bodies would allow, and Jim used the keys he’d taken from the dead man, got into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.
“You know how to drive one of these things?” said Jessica.
“Not really.”
It turned out that it wasn’t that difficult. Then again, it wasn’t like there was any traffic.
Driving back around the lake in the RV was a lot easier than having to walk around it or having to swim across it.
As he drove, Rob was pouring out cereal, measuring out sugar, occasionally spilling things when they went over bumps. Aly was resting in a chair, observing and criticizing, and Jessica had taken it upon herself to review the entire RV to see what kind of supplies they had at their disposal.
“Lots of pills here,” she’d call out when she came across another stash of pills.
“Seems like that’s all they have.”
“Well, pretty much. There’s not much in the way of survival gear.”
“Hopefully no one’s stolen our stuff from where Jim stashed it.”
Jim ignored the chatter for the most part, and let his mind wander a little as he drove. He thought about what they would do next. It wasn’t just enough, after all, to have gear and supplies. Nor an RV.
No, they needed more than that. They needed a secure location. They needed to be strategic.
Maybe they could stay at the lake. But one couldn’t say that it had worked for them so far.
And now without a home, what reason did they have to stay at the lake? Sure, there were other empty houses that they could move into. But Jim found that now he had a different perspective on the post-EMP world. When it had happened, all he could think about was getting out of Rochester, getting far away.
Now he realized that there was more to it all than just getting out of the city. It was clear that the power wasn’t going to come back, and that society was just going to further disintegrate from here on out. They were in this for the long haul, and likely it’d be better to get even farther away.
“What’re you thinking about, Jim?” said Jessica, suddenly sliding herself into the passenger seat next to Jim.
“Where we’re headed next.”
“You’re thinking the same way I am, then. We can’t stay here.”
“I guess we could. But I don’t see a good reason to. And if we’re going to try to maximize our potential for survival, we’ve got to find a place where everything works out just right.”