Sadie suddenly started giggling.
“What is it?”
“You can put your hands down,” she said, a smirk on her face. It seemed really funny that he still had his hands in the air. Maybe the funniest thing she’d seen in a long time. Maybe the only funny thing she’d seen, come to think of it.
After all, in a normal situation, before the EMP, she would have shaken the hand of a friend’s father. Not pointed a gun at him, his hands up in the air.
And it also seemed funny that an adult man would surrender immediately to a child.
A child with a gun, though.
Terry finally put his hands down and grinned sheepishly. “That’s funny,” he said. “Really funny.”
And he started to laugh.
His mouth hung open as he laughed.
It was a big laugh. One that seemed to echo.
It was a little strange, and Sadie looked up at him, waiting for him to stop.
Finally, he did, after what seemed like a long time.
“Well,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go. My daughter will be really excited to meet you.”
Sadie grinned. She was excited. This, after all, was what she’d been after.
“The only thing is, though,” said Terry, “won’t your parents wonder where you’ve gone?”
“Not for a little while,” said Sadie. “My mom’s asleep. She won’t wake up until the afternoon. She had a night shift.”
“Ah,” said Terry. There was a look on his face as if he was considering something carefully. “Why don’t you tell me more about your mom, and the others, while we walk?”
“OK,” said Sadie, eagerly.
It was nice to talk to someone new. Someone she hadn’t talked to before. Someone who was eager and interested in her life. Someone who seemed to understand her.
She and Terry set off, walking side by side, towards Terry’s home, the home that he shared with his wife and daughter.
7
Georgia had fallen asleep in the back of a pickup truck, with a sleeping bag draped over her.
Normally she slept in a lean-to structure. But sometimes lately she’d been wanting to sleep outdoors more. Not that the lean-to really felt like “indoors.”
She didn’t know why she’d felt like this, like she always wanted to be outside, no matter what. Maybe it had something to do with a feeling she’d been experiencing over the last few months.
It was the feeling of being trapped. Of not having any options. Of having to stay in the same place all the time.
Georgia had never been the type of woman to be content staying at home, cooking and doing the housework. That’s why she’d always had to take those hunting trips. That’s why she’d often had a gig of driving around, delivering one thing or another, either as a main job or just a side gig.
She’d always liked the feeling of being on the move. Of being out and about.
And since the EMP, she’d been constantly on the move. She’d often wished they’d had a safe haven, rather than running from one spot to the next.
And now that they had their safe haven? Now that the hordes had been killed off? Well, she was happy for the safety. For the security.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were stuck. That they were sitting ducks. That sooner or later something would come along and get them.
When she slept in the night, she’d bolt awake at least once an hour, drenched in sweat, her heart pounding, reaching for her gun.
The first thing she thought of was: who’s there? What’s the threat?
The second thing she always thought of was: where are Sadie and James? Are they safe?
Waking up after a full night’s sleep was a little different. She’d managed to calm herself down each time she’d woken up in a cold sweat. By the time she woke up after about seven hours of sleep, she was tired, rather than well rested. But at least she was no longer sweating.
Georgia pushed the sleeping bag off her. It was still damp from the sweat from earlier that “night.”
The night, of course, had really been the daytime.
She was exhausted as she hauled herself out of the truck bed. Her muscles ached. Her joints ached. It seemed like her bones even ached, although she didn’t know if that was even possible.
Night was starting to settle. Dusk was falling.
Had she slept longer than she’d meant to?
There was movement around the camp. People coming and going from the various structures.
She glanced at her wrist, expecting to see the time on a watch.
Almost to her surprise, there was a watch, one that Max had found for her a week ago on a dead man’s wrist. (The man had apparently starved to death, out on the nearby highway, wasting away to almost literal skin and bone.) She’d gotten used to not having a watch that worked. She’d trashed her own watch right after the EMP, still keeping the habit of looking at her wrist.
Most watches from the pre-EMP world were quartz watches, which meant that they kept time by way of a vibrating quartz crystal. They were commonly known as “digital” watches, but even watches with an analog face were usually powered by quartz crystals.
It turned out that all the quartz watches had been destroyed from the EMP. Or at least all the quartz watches that they’d managed to find so far. Max had said that he’d expected to find some that had been shielded, either by their accidental placement somewhere, or intentionally, by their own case design.
But so far mechanical watches were the only timekeeping devices that seemed to still work. Georgia remembered seeing the inside of one when she was a kid. It had been her father’s watch, which had become too inaccurate, and he was cursing at it as he tried to adjust it himself. All he’d ended up doing was mangling the miniature gears inside of it, and it had never worked properly again.
Unfortunately, most mechanical watches, unless they were expensive, were not that accurate. The few that Max and the others had come across on dead men and women (mostly men) didn’t keep very good time.
It seemed that the one Georgia wore now had gone from keeping time very badly (at least a few minutes slow each day) to not working at all. The watch had stopped right at three o’clock, all three hands frozen.
She shook her wrist, thinking that the power reserve of the watch was weak, and that it needed to be moved around a little, to start it back up.
Unfortunately, nothing happened. The second hand remained motionless no matter how much she shook it.
Annoyed, Georgia took off the watch and tossed it aside, not caring where it fell.
It was just a piece of junk. Worthless.
Then she realized that someone might be able to get it working again. After all, John seemed to possess some strange knack for getting things going again, when no one else could. It was strange, because Max and Georgia were both much more mechanically minded than John was.
Better save the watch. It was a lesson they’d all had to learn at one point or another. Throw nothing away. Who knew when you’d get anything like it ever again?
She had to hunt for it, getting annoyed with herself for discarding it.
It was a huge, garish watch. Not to her taste at all. Neon colors all around it. Strange shapes for the hands. An astoundingly cluttered dial. Simply distasteful in all respects.
It had looked ridiculous on her wrist.
She’d hoped that it’d be at least easier to find among the dead leaves and weeds, due to its large size.
Georgia was getting madder by the minute now.
Where was that watch?
Her stomach was rumbling, and she remembered that she hadn’t eaten any dinner.
She’d been too exhausted at the end of her watch shift and had just hit the sack right away.
Suddenly, a cry of pain pierced the air. A female sound. Higher pitched than a sound a man would make. Probably, at least. No way to know for sure.