Max didn’t trust her, even though she looked like a trustworthy person. Or at least as trustworthy as they came after the EMP.
“Talk it over,” said Kara. “You have time.”
Max didn’t like to take orders from a stranger, but he was smart enough to realize that she had a point. Talking it over would be good.
Their supplies were perilously low, as they always seemed to be. Even a single meal would do them good, allow them to continue pushing on.
And information. They could get information from Kara and her group. Information about the route ahead, about the dangers that lay in their path.
“Come on, James,” said Max, walking away from Kara and heading towards the Ford Bronco.
Chad stood there, looking dazed. Max didn’t know what was going on with him. He didn’t bother calling him for a group discussion.
“What’s going on?” said Georgia, leaning out the window of the Bronco.
Max explained the situation.
“We’re going, right?” said Mandy. There was eagerness in her voice. Maybe it was the thought of a hot shower, or maybe it was just the idea of getting off the road. Hiding away, resting in some place that was safe and secure.
“Sounds like a bad idea,” said Georgia.
“I don’t know,” said Max. “Let’s at least talk it over.”
Georgia had enough respect for Max that she was willing to at least consider any idea he presented. She nodded at him.
“Pluses,” said Max. “Well, there’s the food, the brief security, and information. I’m not saying we stay there. Just check it out and head out.”
“Why don’t we just move there?” said Mandy. “Sounds like what we’ve been looking for, right? A place to stay safe, a place to build a new life.”
Max fell silent as the rest of them discussed the issue among themselves.
He knew which way the tide was turning with the group. They were tired and hungry.
He himself was badly injured. He could push himself, but sooner or later he’d get sloppy and make a mistake. Without resting and recuperating, that is.
They couldn’t go much farther with what they had.
In the end, Max simply said, “Come on, let’s go. But we’re not staying.”
Mandy couldn’t stop smiling. Even Georgia looked relived. And who could blame them? After all, it all sounded too good to be true.
And that was exactly what worried Max.
12
The four of them had walked for days. They’d taken the back trails. Derek and Sara hadn’t been lying about their experiences as hikers. They’d hiked these trails before, and knew them well.
They also knew how to improvise with shelters. They knew how to start fires, and they even knew how to accurately identify edible mushrooms without a guidebook.
John and Cynthia had been too scared to try eating mushrooms on their way to the farmhouse. John had enough sense to know that the death cap mushroom was common in Pennsylvania, and often masqueraded as an edible mushroom.
Before the EMP, there might have been a dozen cases of wild mushroom poisoning a year in the US. John was sure that after the EMP, with people desperate for food, there’d be even more. Only this time, there’d be no emergency rooms to go to. There would be no antidotes to take. People would writhe in agony until they died, with their loved ones watching them anxiously, hoping against hope that they’d get better, but knowing that they never would.
John wouldn’t have had any idea where they were if Derek and Sara hadn’t been able to show him on the map.
They weren’t yet at the Pennsylvania border, but they were very slowly making their way west, on the trails that wound through the thick forest.
The weather was getting that fall bite to it. It wasn’t yet cold during the days, but at night, it would have been cold without a fire.
They’d decided early on to take the risk of having a campfire. Maybe it wasn’t a rational decision. John didn’t know. They’d all rationalized it, saying that the chance of getting spotted was worth having the warmth. Not to mention warding off animals, and cooking food.
But in reality, what the fire mainly provided was a psychological advantage. There was something comforting and fortifying about looking into those glowing embers, those flickering flames, in the middle of a cold dark night in the woods, with no one around for miles. Hopefully.
Derek and Sara’s enthusiasm for having firearms had soon died down. They kept them in their packs and hardly ever took them out. They’d probably been the sorts of people who’d been opposed to firearms before the EMP. And while they recognized their importance and usefulness now, they still carried with them enough of their old attitude to make them hesitant to really begin to understand and use their guns.
John and Cynthia, on the other hand, spent long hours around the campfire examining their guns. They learned how to disassemble them, how to load them, how to check the chamber to see if there was a live round. Not to mention target practice. There was plenty of that, and gradually they were getting better. Significantly better. Not to mention more tolerant of the defending assault on their eardrums each time they squeezed the trigger.
Both John and Cynthia tried to work up Derek and Sara’s enthusiasm for guns. But there wasn’t any getting around the fact that they simply wouldn’t do it.
And as they progressed along their journey heading west, John grew more and more concerned. Not just about the whole gun reluctance thing, but about Derek and Sara’s overall attitude. That a lot of people were good and all that. He told them stories about his journey out of downtown Philadelphia, about the horrors he’d experienced, about the viciousness of once common people, but it didn’t do any good.
Part of the problem was that Derek and Sara felt at home on the trail. Sure, they were well aware that the EMP had happened, and that the world had changed, possibly forever. But their vacations, before the EMP, had always involved backwoods hiking. So to them, psychologically, they were basically just on vacation. They’d always enjoyed being away from civilization. And now they were. They enjoyed sitting around the campfire, telling jokes, while John remained vigilant, his eyes always darting around, checking for shadows, listening for strangers approaching.
Early in their journey, they’d abandoned the idea of hiking by night and resting by day. It had simply been too challenging, once the flashlights’ batteries had run out. And they’d run out surprisingly quickly.
When the clouds were thick in the night sky, there was hardly any light at all. Certainly not enough to walk by, even with darkness adjusted eyes.
John didn’t know what was going on, but he’d noticed that his own night vision was getting worse. Not that the others could see well either. But when they could see a little at night, he could see nothing at all. Just a curtain of blackness and nothing else. Maybe it was a vitamin deficiency, or maybe his eyes were just going bad. He didn’t know, and it wasn’t like he could hop on over to his general practitioner for a checkup.
They were hiking along a trail that was wide enough to walk two abreast. Derek and Sara led the way, chatting as if they were on their honeymoon hike again.
John and Cynthia walked about twenty feet back.
“We’ve got to do something,” whispered John. “They’re not listening to anything we say. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we come across danger.”
“But what can we do?” said Cynthia.
“Maybe we should break off and let them go their own way.”
“They’re better off with us, though.”
“This isn’t a charity. We’ve got to get something out of this deal. It’s not our job to protect them. Plus, they’re just as much of a danger to us as they are to themselves.”