It seemed to take forever, but in the end, Sadie would guess that it took over ten minutes for her to regain the use of her limbs.
She stood up. Finally. Her legs were shaking. It felt like her blood sugar was low.
There were screams of pain coming from the front of the house.
Sadie found her way into the kitchen. There was a large kitchen knife lying on the table. Sadie grabbed it. It was about as big as her forearm.
But she was strong enough to wield it. She was strong enough to swing it, if she had to.
There was a backdoor by the kitchen.
Sadie opened it. Turned the knob. She was half expecting that someone would come from behind and stop her.
But no one did.
As she was halfway through the doorway, she turned around one last time, and she saw that Lilly had come back in.
“You’re leaving?”
Lilly’s face was just sadness. Sadness at losing her father. Maybe sadness at not having a friend.
“I’m leaving,” said Sadie. “Sorry about your dad.”
Lilly just nodded.
Sadie felt an intense sadness as she stepped through the doorway.
But as she got farther and farther away from the house, the knife still in her hand, the sadness disappeared.
It was sad about Lilly. About her dad.
But that was the way things were now.
Sadie wasn’t sad that she’d lived. That she’d survived.
It’d take her a while to get back to camp, but she knew that she’d get back.
She felt foolish, having left at all. She felt even more foolish, having fallen for Terry’s tricks.
She knew that she wouldn’t be fooled again.
If she ran across anyone that she didn’t know on the way back to the camp, she would hack at them with her kitchen knife. She’d give them hell.
Sadie was already pretty far from the house, maybe a quarter of a mile, when she realized that she had made a huge mistake.
Would Max or her mother have wanted her to walk all the way back to the camp without a gun?
No, they wouldn’t. They wanted her to have a gun with her at all times.
A knife was something. But it wasn’t a gun.
She hadn’t gone to get her gun because it would have meant confronting Terry. It would have meant confronting death, and the pain and damage that she’d had to cause in order to survive.
But that was life now. Sadie had learned a lesson. She couldn’t survive without a fight. She couldn’t survive without killing. Without taking life.
And she couldn’t trust strangers.
Sadie made her way back to the house. She needed that gun. She was going to get it.
She made her way around to the part of the yard where she’d shot Terry.
He was lying there, with his wife kneeling over him. His wife was singing to him in a low voice, and Terry was groaning in pain.
For some reason, Sadie knew that the sounds he was making meant that he was close to the end. Very close.
Sadie spotted her gun. It was lying close to Olivia, who had her hands on Terry’s stomach. There was Terry’s blood all over her hands. They were soaked in it, and Terry’s clothes were completely soaked in his blood as well.
“Sweet little Terry….” Olivia was singing. “Sweet little Terry, my dear…. My darling…”
It was a strange song. The sort of song that didn’t really have a tune.
And the blood provided a strange backdrop to the sound.
Sadie held the knife in her hand. She was ready to use it. She scanned the area for Lilly, but she was nowhere to be found. Probably she was cowering indoors.
Sadie knew that she’d use the knife if she had to.
But if she didn’t need to, then she wouldn’t.
She walked softly towards the gun, trying to make as little noise as possible.
There were a couple of tense moments, but Sadie got the gun. Her hand wrapped around the handle and she felt suddenly more confident. More secure.
“I love you, Terry,” Olivia was saying. She’d stopped her song.
Terry was making choking sounds. The grunts of pain had stopped. It sounded like Terry couldn’t breathe.
Sadie, meanwhile, was walking backwards. The gun was in her hand. She’d left the knife behind.
The noises Terry was making were fading. Then they stopped.
Olivia was sobbing now.
The door opened, and Sadie saw Lilly walk outside, heading towards her mother.
Lilly spotted Sadie. She turned her head.
Would Lilly give Sadie up?
No. Apparently not.
Lilly said nothing. She clearly saw Sadie, but she said nothing. Instead, she turned her head back towards her mother, and continued to walk towards her silently.
She was heading towards her dead father. About to pay her respects.
Sadie turned on her heel and started running away.
She ran until she was out of breath and her legs ached. It felt good to have her legs ache, after being immobile and unused for so long.
She would get back to the camp.
And if someone happened along the way, well, she was ready. She had her gun. It felt good in her hand, and she knew how to use it.
24
Georgia had killed the man.
Somehow she hadn’t died. Somehow John hadn’t died.
They’d lain there, the two of them, exhausted, completely spent, after the fight, among the bodies, laughing.
It had felt strange to laugh. Strangely freeing. It was all over. For the moment. Until the next fight. Until the next random encounter with strangers that turned to violence.
It wasn’t normal laughter. It wasn’t exactly nervous laughter. It was instead the type of laughter that happens when you don’t know what else to do, when there are no words, sayings, or facial expressions that can begin to sum up the absurdity of the situation.
Finally, Georgia had picked herself up off the ground.
John’s laughter, meanwhile, had shifted back to grimaces and grunts of pain. His leg was in a bad way.
“We’re going to set it when we get back to camp,” said Georgia, examining the injury. “I don’t want to wait around here any longer than we have to.”
“You think they’re all gone?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“What’s that?”
“Try to get on out of here. I’m going to make a sled… I’ll have to drag you back.”
“I can walk. Don’t worry about me.”
Georgia let out a little laugh. “There’s no way you’re walking out of here. Not on that leg.”
“I’ll use a stick… just get me something to walk with. I can do it. It’ll be just like when I had crutches back in junior high.”
“Be my guest,” said Georgia. “How about this? You try that, and I’ll work on my method for when yours fails.”
“It’s not going to fail.”
Before Georgia could start getting the sledge prepared, she had to take a tour of the surrounding area. She made her way back to where they’d seen the large truck.
There was no sign of it.
The only sign that it’d been there were the dead men that it’d left behind. Georgia wondered whether the driver alone had driven off, or if there’d been other men with him.
Georgia, as a matter of habit and practicality, went through the pockets and belongings of the dead men.
There was nothing to identify them by. No wallets. No dog tags. Nothing at all that identified them in any way.
What had happened to all their stuff from before the EMP? It seemed as if someone had arranged things so that these men would not be tracked to any kind of organization.
Whatever.
Georgia didn’t care.
She just wanted to get out of there. She just wanted to stay alive.
She gathered up their weapons, their knives, their ammunition, their guns. She gathered up what she could carry of their food and she took a couple pieces of clothing to use for the sled.