“Why didn’t you leave?”
“It’s a long story,” said Rob, a look of sadness crossing his face. “Let’s not go into that now.”
Dan didn’t want to intrude too much. He figured it was something personal. Maybe Rob had lost someone important to him. He hadn’t asked about Rob’s family, and Rob hadn’t mentioned anyone.
“Why are some of the cars working and some aren’t?” said Dan. “I thought they’d all be knocked out of commission.”
“So you know how an EMP works?” said Rob, an eyebrow rising in surprise.
“Doesn’t everyone, at this point?”
“I’ve met a lot who haven’t.”
“I heard about it at the hardware store where I used to work,” said Dan. “One of the guys there was always talking about it. Most people didn’t pay any attention to him. They said he was paranoid and all that. But I’d listen to his stories sometimes.”
Rob nodded. “So I don’t know either why some vehicles are affected and others aren’t.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Frankly, it’s been the least of my worries. But now that you ask, I guess everyone has their own idea about how something like an EMP is supposed to work, and then reality turns out to be much different.”
“Makes sense,” said Dan. “Hey, check this out.”
They’d just entered the kitchen, which stank of rotting trash, and Dan had started opening cupboards at random. Some of them were just filled with dishes, as well as pots and pans. Normal kitchen stuff for the most part. But one of them was full of packaged food.
There were boxes of crackers, boxes of pasta, cans of tuna fish, smoked oysters. All sorts of non-perishable foods.
Rob started clicking his tongue. “Looks like we’re in luck,” he said, grabbing as much of it as he could in his arms. “See if there’s any silverware in one of the drawers.”
Sure enough, Dan found forks, knives, and spoons neatly arranged in one of the drawers, just as they would have been in his own house.
“Let’s have ourselves a little feast,” said Rob, settling down in one of the kitchen chairs, dumping the food onto the table, and immediately going for the oysters. He pulled the tab back on the top of the tin, greedily grabbed a fork from Dan, and speared one of the smoked oysters on his fork. He held it there in front of his face for a long moment, apparently savoring the idea of eating it before actually put it in his mouth. “I’ve always loved oysters,” he said, before devouring the oyster in a single bite. “Wish we had some hot sauce.”
“This is great we’ve got some food,” said Dan, still standing. He was starting to feel nervous again, about the possibility of someone getting into the house.
“Come on, kid, sit down and eat something. You’ll feel better.”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “I will. But shouldn’t we be on the lookout for more of the scrounger people?”
Rob nodded with his mouth full. “Yeah,” he said, once he’d finished chewing. He’d already eaten almost the entire tin of oysters, and was now preparing to drink down the oil that they’d been soaking in. “We should. But like I said, we can’t leave with her in that condition. So there’s nothing to do for now but wait. And while we wait, we might as well eat.”
“What are we going to do if they try to break in here? They were just trying to break in next door, after all.”
“We’ll fight when the time comes, if it comes,” said Rob, who’d moved onto a package of salted crackers. “Here, you’d better eat something. Don’t worry, we’ll save something for her too, for when she wakes up.”
Dan was a little thrown off by Rob’s cavalier attitude, but he realized that there really wasn’t any way they could mount a proper watch on the house. Putting one of them outside was too risky. And if one of them was upstairs, looking out one of the windows, it’d be obvious from whoever was approaching on the street.
What was more, there were only two of them. And there were four directions they could be approached from.
Maybe Rob was right. The best notice they could get that someone had arrived was sound, the sound of someone breaking a window or trying to break a door. Rob had locked the door behind them, so unless the next scrounger had a lock pick kit and some skill, they’d hear whoever it was.
Dan sat down opposite Rob, and Rob passed him the crackers. Dan ate them with relish, shoving many of them in his mouth at once.
“I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” said Dan, speaking with his mouth full of food.
“That’s the way it goes,” said Rob. “It’s the adrenaline. It rises when we’re hungry, and it keeps our hunger away. But it does it by breaking down muscle tissue to turn into glucose. It’s called gluconeogenesis.”
Dan nodded, but he wasn’t really listening that carefully, and he wasn’t sure he’d understand if he had been. The important thing now was food. Eating it. Not understanding how near-starvation worked.
Dan quickly moved on from crackers to a tin of tuna, which had a quick-open top to it. The first bite in his mouth, it seemed as if nothing had ever tasted so good. And Dan didn’t even like tuna. In fact, he’d never liked seafood of any kind before. Until now, that was.
“You think we should go check on her?” said Dan, reaching for a jar of unopened peanut butter. He’d never thought that he’d be so interested in eating peanut butter. He’d always hated it. Up until now, that is, when it meant plenty of concentrated calories.
Rob shook his head. “In a minute,” he said. “She’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
“You’ve done a surgery like that before, then?”
“A couple of them,” said Rob, vaguely. “Some of them worked out, some didn’t.”
With his stomach starting to get full, Dan felt like he had enough courage to ask Rob what had happened to him right after the EMP.
“How did you survive this long?” said Dan, speaking more abruptly than he would have liked.
Rob eyed him for a moment without saying anything. For a second, Dan was worried he’d caused a tense moment. After all, he’d just met Rob, even though it felt, in some ways, that they’d known each other much longer. Probably because of what they’d been through already.
Rob shrugged. “I just kept on going,” he said. “That’s about the best anyone can do.” He opened up a package of cookies, and started flipping through them with his fingers, apparently trying to find and select the biggest cookie of them all. “So what’s your plan, kid? Is there any point in asking where you’re headed, if you’ve got any plans? Or are you simply on the run, living from day to day like the rest of us?”
Dan found himself talking more than he had in a long time. Maybe it was the food, or maybe it was just having company. His grandfather had been sick at the end, uttering only a few words here and there. Dan had spent most of his time since the EMP in worried, panicked silence.
Dan told Rob about his grandfather, about the trucks he’d seen. He told him about waiting and waiting, not knowing what was going on. He told him about the voice on the radio that he’d gotten working, a man named Max, who had a camp setup. He told him about the soldiers, about his friend from the hardware store who’d died. He told him about the man that he’d killed, and he told him about how the injured woman had saved his life, and then how Rob had saved it again.
“So this Max, what happened with him?”
“I don’t know,” said Dan. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to him again. But I know where his camp is.”
“So that’s where you’re headed?”
“If I can get there, yeah,” said Dan. “But I don’t know if I can really make it. I lost my pack. I lost the gear I had. I’d barely gotten far from my house when those soldiers picked me up. I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t have a gun… I did what I could. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it all the way north to where Max is.”