The RV slowed to a complete stop, right in front of Danny and Lonnie’s house.
There was nothing else wrong with the house. There weren’t vehicles there that shouldn’t have been there. The blinds were drawn as usual.
But the front door shouldn’t have been like that.
“What’s the big deal?” said Aly, from the bed. “A house with an open door?”
“I know them,” said Rob, and he explained briefly how he’d met the older couple on his way to look for Jessica.
“Should we go in?” said Aly.
“There’s nothing we can do for them,” said Jessica.
“What do you think, Jim?” said Rob.
Jim thought for a moment, and then said, “You’re the one who met them, Rob. It’s got to be your call.”
It was a big deal for Rob to hear that from Jim. After all, Jim had always been the unofficial leader. And he’d continue to be. But he was passing this decision onto Rob, and it wasn’t like Rob was just deciding on what kind of dessert they were going to have after dinner. This could be a life-and-death matter.
There wasn’t really any practical reason to enter the house. The way Rob saw it, either Danny and Lonnie were OK or they weren’t. They’d either be dead or alive. Of course, there was a slim chance that if they’d been attacked, they’d be alive, but just barely hanging on. Of course, that would be the worst-case scenario, since it wasn’t like Rob could offer them to come live with him and his friends. They weren’t going to be able to take on stragglers.
“I’m going in,” said Rob. “The rest of you stay in the RV.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Rob,” said Jessica. “We don’t know who’s in there, or what happened.”
“If they were attacked, the attackers are probably gone now,” said Rob. “Why else would they leave the door open?”
“Maybe to invite others in. You know, to trap them.”
Rob scoffed. “I doubt it,” he said. “But anyway, if you’re right, then I’d better take the risk myself. Our group has one thing to gain from this. It’s kind of selfish of me, in a way.”
“It’s not selfish. You’re trying to help them.”
“There might be no one left to help.”
“What do you think, Jim?” said Jessica. “Should we let him go in alone?”
Jim shook his head. “I’m going with you, Rob,” he said. “I’ll back you up.”
They wordlessly got ready.
“Be careful,” said Aly, as they stepped down out of the RV.
Neither Rob nor Jim spoke as they approached the house.
“I’ll go in first,” said Rob, his gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger.
Jim nodded.
Rob crossed the threshold. It was dark inside, but there was enough light coming in through the door that Rob could see even with his eyes not yet totally adjusted.
He could hear Jim’s footsteps behind him as he walked through the house, into the room where he’d sat so recently with Danny and Lonnie.
Danny and Lonnie were there. But they were dead. Their bodies lay on the floor. Their throats had been slit, and blood was in their mouths and on the floor, pooling out around their bodies.
Rob and Jim just stood there in silence, looking at the bodies. There were no sounds in the house, and Rob seriously doubted anyone else was there. For one thing, everything that looked remotely valuable had been taken. The room in which the bodies lay had been stripped of almost everything, including pieces of furniture, which seemed strange, since furniture was most definitely not essential to survival.
Rob should have expected that something like this would happen to them. Their imaginary shotgun hadn’t been enough to protect them, and they were easy targets.
“People are cruel,” said Rob. “They didn’t have to kill them.”
“We’ve got to get used to it,” said Jim. “That’s the world we live in now.”
“They seemed like good people,” said Rob.
Jim nodded.
After a quick check of the rest of the house, in case there was anything they might be able to use, they left the house and climbed back in the RV.
Jim wordlessly started the RV and began driving. Aly and Jessica could tell, without anything being said to them, what had happened.
So they drove in silence, heading down the tree-lined road on a gray upstate New York day. They were headed into the complete unknown, and they all knew it. More than ever before, they all knew that there was certain danger that awaited them down the road. They knew that for the rest of their lives, there’d be no chance of living in peace and tranquility.
A completely new life awaited them, one in which they’d have to fight not just to feed and clothe themselves, but to keep themselves from being killed by those who were stronger and more vicious than themselves.
The odds weren’t in their favor. There was every chance in the world that they’d never live out their full lifespan, but instead meet some untimely end. But wasn’t that how humans had existed before the advent of modern society? For thousands and thousands of years, that’d been the human existence, never knowing which day would be your last.
Rob knew that they had the stuff to survive. It was deep in their bones. It was an attitude, something ancestral and ingrained in their brains. Humans weren’t meant, after all, to shop for their food in supermarkets and play social games of niceties. They were meant to hunt for their food and know how to defend themselves.
It was a return to the old way of life. They were losing security and safety, but they were gaining something. Something hard to describe. Something that might be called freedom.
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Note from the author
At this date, this is the ninth post-apocalyptic novel that I’ve written. For a long time, I’ve thought about the fragility of the various aspects and institutions of modern society. I’ve thought about what could happen, where the weak spots are, and how I and others would respond to social breakdown.
When I started writing fiction, I was excited about exploring in stories the situations I’d played out in my head for so long. I was eager to share the ideas with others, and to get feedback in a way that wasn’t available to me before.
To my surprise, I’ve found that writing about post-apocalyptic scenarios has changed the way I think about them in unexpected ways. If there’s one thing I know about writing stories, it’s that it’s the characters, their emotions, and the suspense that comes from them, that makes the stories interesting to read. Descriptions of gear and survival techniques are certainly important, if not crucial, to stories such as these, but they are not the heart and soul of the book.
So in that sense, I’ve found myself concentrating more on the interactions between the characters, trying to imagine how they would really feel, and the thoughts that would go through their heads as they encounter these incredibly difficult life-and-death situations.
It was in concentrating more on the characters, what they feel, and their interactions with one another, that my thinking about these events slowly began to change.
There are plenty of things to fear in a situation like an EMP. Loss of power. Loss of services that we’re used to, like the transportation and availability of food products. But I believe that the most frightening thing, and the most serious threat, is that you will no longer be able to trust other people. In such a situation, your neighbors may turn on you, and strangers will be a serious threat.
Some people have responded to the idea of social breakdown by forming self-sufficient rural communities, where the members either currently live, or would retreat to should there be some catastrophic threat. There are advantages to this way of thinking: In most situations, communities would be more resilient than individuals.